were all good signings. Omar was great the first couple years. Durham was great in 06. Richie wasn’t great but was still productive last year. Bengie’s been excellent with our pitching staff and helped a lot in raising Timmy and Matt, and he’s still (somehow) one of the best hitters in our lineup. Matheny was excellent behind the dish up until he got knocked in the head too many times; that’s in no way Sabes’ fault. Sanders was a cheap, one year deal and he helped us in the postseason. And also Tomko was good for the value we signed him at. He didn’t really cost us anything. The rest were all horrible and high-cost, but still, not all of the ones on the list were bad ideas.

I guess when I was first looking at the list I mentally broke it down into groups likes this.

Guys who we got more than we expected out of:
Bengie
Durham (for the most part)
Tomko (because we didn’t pay him anything)
Grissom (His first 2 years were pretty great)
And of those 4, only Bengie can’t really be argued.

Guys who we got what we expected out of:
Aurilia
Matheny (I liked the guy but the injury obviously drops how he’s viewed)
Omar (A very good Giant but great defense and some mediocre hitting is pretty much what we knew we would get)
Tucker
Sanders (and this is generous since his HRs and AVG. dropped off from the previous season and his defense and inability to lay off a high fastball killed us)
Dunston
Rowand (still too early to call)

Guys who crapped the bed
Dave Roberts
Barry Zito
Benitez
Morris
Alfonzo
Davis (just one year but he hit .204)
And we paid a ton of money for most of the guys on that final list

The Giants free agent signings that I was strongly opposed to were Neifi Perez, Mike Matheny, Jose Vizcaino, Matt Morris and Barry Zito. I guess the Matheny signing turned out the least offensive (no pun) of those.

To me those were obvious mistakes that I protested heavily at the time. I protested the Matheny signing the least and the Zito signing (because of the dollars involved) the most.

There have been few Giants free agent signings that I liked, but those were the ones I absolutely hated. The ones I liked (and remember) were Sanders, Alfonzo (Oops! I should have questioned the Giants being the only team not to require a physical from Edgardo, but back then I trusted Brian Sabean.), Durham, Cruz and Sweeney.

The signing I have been most wrong about (aside from Alfonzo) was that of Bengie Molina. I didn’t like that signing, feeling that Bengie was already wearing out and would be something of an albatross before his contract expired. Clearly Bengie has worked out much better than I thought — primarily because of his clutch hitting.

Zito is particularly galling — because of the money that was involved and because his peripherals made it so obvious he was slipping a LOT. Even I thought he would do better than he has thus far, but the most I would have paid for Barry was half as much as he got. And I wouldn’t have gone beyond four years, even at $9 million per season instead of $18 million.

I hate to say it, but every time Barry throws a pitch he earned about $5000. Maybe that’s the problem. Instead of thinking about how he will get hitters out, he’s thinking should I throw this pitch and earn $5000 or just take a little breather?