Giants show free agents aren’t always as important as they may seem

The Hot Stove is bubbling and the top fee agent names, alongside plenty of lesser lights who are out of contract, are the focus of endless trade rumours once again.

It’s always a lot of fun following the stories throughout the offseason, but the San Francisco Giants’ recent World Series triumph shows that free agent signings can turn out to be less important than they seem during the long winter months.

The Giants’ two biggest earners were acquired via free agency and they have both proved to be poor acquisitions. 

Pitching was/is the Giants’ strength, but they won the World Series despite leaving an $18.5m starter out of the rotation throughout the postseason. Barry Zito has been as disappointing as many expected since signing his seven year/$126m contract in December 2006.  Meanwhile outfielder Aaron Rowand was pushed to the margins during the postseason and is owed $24m over the next two seasons.

The Giants’ main free agent signing one year ago was Mark DeRosa and he missed the vast majority of the 2010 season due to injuries.  His absence didn’t hurt them too much in the end. 

What made the difference for the Giants was their outstanding home-grown pitching staff  (Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Jonathan Sanchez and Madison Bumgarner all came through the Giants’ farm system) and some relatively cheap, fill-in player pick-ups like Cody Ross (claimed off waivers) and Pat Burrell (salvaged from the Rays’ scrapheap).  

The former group are particularly relevant to the free agent discussion.  Teams are now much less prone to giving up their top draft picks as compensation for signing above-average/average free agents than in the past.   The importance of keeping hold of your high draft picks, and making good selections when the draft comes along, has never been appreciated more than it is today, partly because it is so expensive to acquire players on the free agent market.

You don’t mind giving up a draft pick, and a fair amount of money, for genuine talent.; however it’s a thin free agent crop this year. 

Cliff Lee, Carl Crawford and Jayson Werth are the biggest catches, with the likes of Adrian Beltre, Victor Martinez and Adam Dunn leading the next wave (I’m leaving Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera out of the equation as they are sure to return to the Yankees). 

Maybe there will be a bargain or two along the way: the Giants certainly got a nice return on their $3m investment in Aubrey Huff this year.  In general, though, there are few certainties and plenty of players who might make a difference, or might not.

Which should make for a fascinating few months.

A brief apology

While I’m here, apologies for the very unusual lack of updates over the last two weeks or so.  For the first time in many years, I was unable to pay close attention to the World Series so I couldn’t offer much to add to the story from what you could read elsewhere. 

Our typical feast of offseason content (book reviews, musings on the season just gone, analysis of the free agent signings, ‘keeping score’ features and much more) should be off and running now.