![\"MlbHlSq\"](\"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/wp-content\/MlbHlSq.jpg\" "\\"MlbHlSq\\"")
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.<\/p>\nThe 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.<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s always a lot of fun following the stories throughout the offseason, but the San Francisco Giants\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 recent World Series triumph shows that free agent signings can turn out to be less important than they seem during the long winter months.<\/p>\n
The Giants\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 two biggest earners were acquired via free agency and they have both proved to be poor acquisitions.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Pitching was\/is the Giants\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 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.\u00c2\u00a0 Meanwhile outfielder Aaron Rowand was pushed to the margins during the postseason and is owed $24m over the next two seasons.<\/p>\n
The Giants\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 main free agent signing one year ago was Mark DeRosa and he missed the vast majority of the 2010 season due to injuries.\u00c2\u00a0 His absence didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hurt them too much in the end.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
What made the difference for the Giants was their outstanding home-grown pitching staff\u00c2\u00a0 (Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Jonathan Sanchez and Madison Bumgarner all came through the Giants\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 farm system) and some relatively cheap, fill-in player pick-ups like Cody Ross (claimed off waivers) and Pat Burrell (salvaged from the Rays\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 scrapheap).\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The former group are particularly relevant to the free agent discussion.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mind giving up a draft pick, and a fair amount of money, for genuine talent.; however it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a thin free agent crop this year.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m leaving Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera out of the equation as they are sure to return to the Yankees).\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
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.\u00c2\u00a0 In general, though, there are few certainties and plenty of players who might make a difference, or might not.<\/p>\n
Which should make for a fascinating few months.<\/p>\n
A brief apology<\/strong><\/p>\n While I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m here, apologies for the very unusual lack of updates over the last two weeks or so.\u00c2\u00a0 For the first time in many years, I was unable to pay close attention to the World Series so I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t offer much to add to the story\u00c2\u00a0from what you could\u00c2\u00a0read elsewhere.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n Our typical feast of offseason content (book reviews, musings on the season just gone, analysis of the free agent signings, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dckeeping score\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 features and much more) should be off and running now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The San Francisco Giants\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 recent World Series triumph shows that free agent signings can turn out to be less important than they seem during the long winter months<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[247,553,134],"class_list":["post-9485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb-2","tag-hot-stove","tag-mlb-2","tag-san-francisco-giants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9485"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9502,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9485\/revisions\/9502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}