Zito! :D

I don't know what to think about this trade ... good pitcher getting a great pitchers salary.

just think about the past few years and the pitchers brought in who didn't live up to their expectations ... hopefully zito will do great though

the team is looking strong too as they decided to go a veteran route one more year. i wonder how klesko will do at at&t park ... lefty power behind bonds?

glad to have rich aurilia back .. was one of my fave players when he was the ss before.

omar back, durham, winn ... solid defensive team.

dave roberts is still lightning fast on the bases .. will be interesting how he does this year.

solid young pitching in cain & lowry .. still hurts what schmidt did ... makes the rivalry that much better though.

beat l.a

can't wait to get to a few games bringing the camera or the portable rig to enjoy a ballgame with some music ...

nl west .. we're coming ...

I'm iffy on this deal. I'm highly against giving any starting pitcher that can only contribute once every 5 days over 15 million (and in this case 18 million). However, this team is in desperate need of getting younger, so I'll try to take this as a positive. I really don't think Zito can help push them into the playoffs this season. With that bullpen, there is no way they can seriously contend for the wildcard. Outside of maybe Correia, there is not one reliable arm that can consistantly be relied upon in the entire relief core.

They would have been better off signing a guy like Aramis Ramirez or waiting for Miguel Cabrera.

This team needs to rebuild their system from the ground up, but apparently Sabean missed the memo...

The Giants aren't competing for anything but third place, even in this division.

-Matt

i've been following this since b4 the winter meetings.

for that much, you guys can have him. Bonds is retiring, and u need another marquee player I guess... Thing is, he isn't really the big ace his salary dictates. yet, he is young, 3.5 era, cy young award,...and umm, wants to win a few world series (gluck with that one).

This market is rediculous, scott boras is a definate money machine, and i'm really glad the mets didn't help aid in zitos inflation by being hard line with the salary and years requirements. We don't need him 126 million 7 year bad.

When i read his news at 1:00 pm today, i was a bit dissapoitned, yet sort of relieved a rival team like the yankees didn't scoop him up. I also read the newsleaks by the rangers earlier in the day so i sort of saw it coming. Now i can just look at metsblog a 'lil less and get back to work.

I for one hope we don't lose any of our prospects like milledge, pelfrey, humber, in attempts to trade for someone mediocre.

Also, to the thread starter, how exactly are the giants now the favorite to win the wildcard? The division is actually pretty competive, and the giants really need more then a 2nd/3rd slot pitcher to make a real difference.

Aside from the contract amount, the Bonds deal wasn't that bad because it was for one year only. This gives the Giants somebody to plug in the leadoff hole in their lineup. I don't think any pitchers would be shaking in their cleats with Ray Durham batting in the 4 slot. Bonds for one year would also allows them to go after a (I pray) young marquee hitter next offseason. I do wish Bonds would've just retired to remove the dark cloud questionable records and let the team move on. Plus, Todd Linden deserves a starting shot and a chance to develop at a corner OF opening. In ten years, there have been ZERO postion players drafted by Brian Sabean that receive regular playing time. Aurilia, Mueller, Feliz, Benard, and (I'm digging deep into the barrel) Doug Mirabelli were all drafted before the Sabean era.

The Giants wont be contending for anything anytime soon. They have a roster full of Geriatrics and one of the worst farm systems in MLB. The Zito deal just seals their fate. Thank god Tom Hicks stayed out of the insanity and stood his ground on Zito.

Bonds is worth 16 million in SF, and about 20 mill on any other team. Its the OBP that your paying for. Not his "knee's" that don't work, or his homeruns, or his great attitude (or lack there of).

.454 OBP, which if he had enough at bats (because he gets walked so much, in such a short period of time) would rank him 1st overall, ahead of Albert Pujols.

Any team in the MLB would gladly pay 16 mill for him to sit at the plate, take 4 balls, or hit a HR once every 7 at bats. BUT because he is a ******, and would be such a problem off and on the field, they let him stay where he was comfortable, and would make the least noise.

If you have Bonds, Omar, Matt Morris, and alot of other expensive players, who are old in age, you might as well spend some money, and try and ride this out.

What are their options, beyond patch work?? You dont all of a sudden, find prospects out of the blue. So for that, they draft them, so that will take time. The players they own, will not warrant prospects in return, if they traded them away (Matt Morris, etc etc)

Your timetable is pretty much cleared, when Bonds, Ray Durham, and the rest of the older players, retire, or move on. And from there, is when you start doing what Cleveland or Florida did, by bringing in youth and winning with them, earlier then expected.

Bonds, Zito, Morris, gives you a greater chance to win today, then having top prospects on the field. And SF makes ALOT of their income, based on Barry Bonds, and attempting to win, so you might as well stay rich, until its time to really make an attempt and winning

1) The reason why Sabean hasn't started a single position player is because they haven't managed to develop or draft any. This team is headed downhill due to their inability to develop their own hitting talent and their denialist policy toward rebuilding, something that will keep them from contending with the D'backs next season (Carlos Quentin, Stephen Drew, and Brandon Webb are all better than Zito and far cheaper). Instead of punting picks on Michael Turner or trading Francisco Liriano for a has-been or a never-was (for some fun, look up who they got in return for "the next Santana"), they'd be better off hanging on to what little minor league talent they have left and building from the ground up.

2) I meant that they should have signed Ramirez or Cabrera over Zito, not over Bonds.

People tend to separate pitching from hitting, but they are one and the same from an opportunity cost and VORP position; how can I maximize value from limited resources?

Bonds is a valuable asset at $16 million to any team so long as he can play (which is frequently not the case).

-Matt

Being a Jays fan, and seeing these kinds of deals getting handed out this year, Burnett was a steal at $10 or so mill per year. Although I have to admitt Zito is a good pitcher, he really needs to step it up to Santana/Halladay level to make his contract worth it, or San Fran would be saddled with another big contract for a while.
Oh, and does anyone know the details of the contract (ie. no-trade clauses)?

It's true Sabean hasn't drafted any everyday position players but that's partially because he's always focused his drafts on pitchers. That doesn't excuse his preference of "veteran savvy" over potential in young players. At the time, giving up Liriano wasn't a big deal. Sure he had lots of raw talent, but at the time his minor league numbers were very mediocre and he was extremely injury prone. Something that's caught up to him again in the bigs. It did bother me that Sabean essentially threw in Liriano and Bonser when Nathan alone should've been enough to nab Pierzynski - but I won't get into that . But that trade did illustrate Sabean's reluctance to start a young player (Torrealba) by filling a position that did not need filling. This led to Sabean signing medicore talent like Tucker (and lose picks) as you mentioned to inadequately fill a position that needed filling. The next offseason, Sabean did the same crap again by signing Matheny to start despite having weaker offensive and defensive skills to Torrealba. The point is that not only is Sabean not developing position players, he's not even giving them the slightest chance to develop.

This was one of those years where the smart teams didn't sign any "first tier" free agents.

My prediction for next year is that Doug Davis posts a +/- 10 VORP within Zito and doesn't cost the D'backs an extra fifteen million. At least Davis can post a K:BB ratio north of two...because from a "stuff" and stats perspective, that's who Zito compares to...except Doug Davis has the better fastball, of course.

-Matt

Your comment doesn't make any sense if you acknowledge that San Francisco has intentionally drafted first round picks that they knew they would not sign, or in the case of Michael Tucker, intentionally signing a free agent they knew they would not use so that they could forgo a draft pick.

If they were really "set" on drafting and developing even upper tier pitchers, why did they pass on Jered Weaver, the best college pitcher ever?

Jered Weaver would have cost the Giants a fraction of Zito's annual salary, yet he will win over a dozen more games over the next five years.

Zito isn't posting a 2.56 ERA any time soon, even in the NL.

The San Francisco Giants have become a garbage franchise that share the same intellectually bankrupt platitudes of the media: you have to buy pricey free agents in order to win.

No one talks about how the Atlanta Braves developed most of their talent or that the Yankees developed their winning core of Bernie Williams, Alfonso Soriano (who was traded for Rodriguez), Derek Jeter, and Jorge Posada. Why? It's inconvenient to do so in that it fails to fit their specious heuristic.

-Matt

I didn't say the Giants drafted players in the first round they could not sign. Where did you get that? Since Matt White problem in 1996 (if you don't remember it was the same as the JD Drew situation), the Giants have mostly picked somewhat lower-tiered talent that would've gone in later in the draft because they would always sign for less. I guess you can speculate that they threw gave up the first round pick to avoid having to pay a signing bonus, but there's nothing really to back that up.

Why bring up Jered Weaver? The Giants didn't have a draft pick to choose him before the Angels picked him up. http://www.thebaseballcube.com/draft...ound-1-1.shtml . The pick the Giants lost by signing Tucker was #29. You obviously know the sport, so you shouldn't need to be reminded how unpredictable and difficult it is to project players in the baseball draft. Heck, 8 other pitchers were drafted before him.

Edit: Tucker wasn't a player they signed and did not use. Unfortunately for the Giants, he played as the everyday right fielder. I brought up Tucker because if they were going to trade Nathan, it should've been to fill the RF position.

OAK has done wonders, at signing lower tier players, to avoid paying high signing bonuses, but when they do it, it all pans out and works. And if SF did this, and had the same results, it be a compliment, rather then an insult to question it, since they are not doing as well "draft related" over the years