It’s nice to see a salary breakdown here so it becomes clearer how much money we still owe for Benitez and Bonds. That is insane. I wish I was really good at baseball.
Although you’re right that committing so much money to so few players seems like it’ll handicap putting together future rosters, maybe the Giants are interested in a huge bump in payroll considering their new media contracts; and they have faith in the farm system producing those very players who will make the minimum and contribute (Madison, Alderson, Posey, Noonan, Angel, etc etc etc.)
I would still like to see Timmy CC Cain as the top 3…can’t imagine what that would look like for a 3 game series at Pac Bell

And I’m at the point now where I want Tex in a Giants uni. Screw the payroll.

At the beginning of last season I was sure the Giants were 2 – 3 years away from fielding a competitive team, and I wanted them to reach that competitiveness through the farm system. But with the emergence of Timmy this year, I’m thinking these are years that should not be wasted through a slow rebuild. What if Timmy duplicates last year, Matt continues to progress and wins something close to 20 games, Sanchez continues to progress and his stamina allows him a full season, and the Giants have the same offense next year that they had this year? Those things might not happen of course, but I would rather be prepared if they do than assume they won’t. Add Beltre and Tex and the Giants just might win a bunch of games with offense and pitching.

You need to factor in 2013 dollars and contract value. The 6-year, $120 million dollar contract of 2008 will most likely be, by 2013 (thanks to the Yankees, Red Sox and other large market teams), 6-years, $140 million to $160 million.

but I read that the Giants are making it clear to CC that we are still serious in our pursuit of Furcal and being competitive now. So if we get a ‘deal’ on Sabathia (let’s say 6/130) and sign Furcal (4/48) we would be looking at 77.1 + roughly 33.5 = 110.6. Not a ridiculous number this day in age but still much higher than the team is saying they would like to spend.

My question is this (note: rosterbation to follow)

1. Furcal SS
2. Winn RF
3. Sandoval 3B
4. Molina C
5. Rowand CF
6. Lewis LF
7. Ishikawa 1B
8. Frandsen 2B
                                                                                             
Phelps 1B
Burriss IF
Roberts OF
Schierholtz OF CL Wilson
Velez IF/OF

1.Sabathia
2. Lincecum
3. Zito
4. Cain
5. Sanchez

LR Lowry
RP Tashner
RP Hinshaw
RP Romo
RP Sadler
RP Affeldt
CL Wilson

Is this team any better than last years model?

If the Giants sign a big, expensive free agent, the farm system will need to produce several quality pitchers and hitters to supplement the roster if the team is to contend in the next few years.

That’s true, and that is part of my fear w/ making a big signing with Zito on the books.

But guess what – If you don’t sign FA’s, you also have made yourself dependent on the farm system to produce several quality pitchers and hitters. (where else are you going to get them?)

You’ve gotta get good players from somewhere. If you sign the FA, you get a good player and you need your farm to produce good supplemental players to go anywhere.

If you don’t sign the FA, then you need the farm to produce some good players and you can then sign some FA supplemental players if you want to go anywhere.

Or you can just be the Rays and have the farm produce it all, but that is probably not a viable strategy.

So what is a better strategy? Signing FA talent and filling in the gaps from the farm or producing talent from the farm and filling in the gaps through FA?

Either way, you need the farm to produce in order for the team to be any good. It all comes down to that.

Or you could take the middle road, and sign a bunch of Durhams, Tuckers, Rowands, and Roberts type players. We all know how well that works.

zito in 2014 is a steal….haha

Why don’t we just sign CC, Teixeira, Ramirez and Furcal and bump our payroll up to Yankees/Red Sox range…

Furcal
Lewis
Sandoval
Teixeira
Ramirez
Molina
Rowand
Frandsen

With our pitching I’d say that’s a minimum of 3 consecutive world series titles.

david wright, cc sabathia, mark teixera, ichiro, and and ryan braun…can someone put a price tag on that for me?

Those are pretty interesting charts. Let’s try to guess how good that team would be, circa 2012.

Say Sabathia, Lincecum, and Cain are collectively 12 wins above replacement by then. (They were at 16-17 in 2008.)

Say Lewis, Wilson, and Sanchez have developed to be very slightly above average, for a collective 7 war.

Strike the third random free agent in order to balance the budget. (Of course the payroll should be well over $100 million by then, but your free agent salaries look pretty low, so let’s assume that balances out.) The two free agents who are left aren’t getting paid much, so let’s assume they don’t contribute much: a collective 3 war.

Add 1 for a declining Rowand and zero for an already-declined Zito. That gets us to 23 wins above replacement, or around 71 wins altogether.

So we need another 19 more to be a good team, and we have 15 players with which to get there — or, since the guys at the end of the bench won’t make much difference either way, call it 10 players. That’s 1.9 each. So every one of those 10 players must be basically average.

How hard is that? Well, Sandoval is probably at that level right now (if he’s a catcher). Schierholtz too, or close to it. Sergio Romo would be about 1 war if he pitched all season as he did in 2008. Frandsen at second would need to hit around .275/.330/.410, with average defense, to reach that level. Burriss at short would need to hit .270/.330/.380, with average defense. Etc. So it’s hard, but not impossible.

Now run the numbers without Sabathia. You have an extra $20 million to spend in 2012 — but you need an extra four wins to get to 90. So you’re still going to need either (a) an expensive investment in free agents, or (b) remarkable success in developing players from within the organization.

The difference between the two schemes, it seems to me, is you’re taking on significant risk for the long-term, in that Sabathia might well have broken down by 2012; but in the short term you’re substantially increasing your chances of winning, with all the revenue-boosting and general joy-to-the-world-bringing that comes with it.

One thing that hasn’t been mentioned is the signing of Tex and how that would affect Angel in the future. I know he isn’t ready yet to make an impact in single A +, but if we are considering the Giants’ success in the next 3-4 years is inextricably tied to their success in developing players in the farm system, what happens when Tex is in his 3rd or 4th year of the contract paying him 20 mil a year and Angel is knocking on the mlb door with 30 hr seasons at Double-A? Do we try and trade Tex? Angel? Am I dreaming up a Jim Thome/Ryan Howard scenario?
I like the CC signing better because he would instantly become our best hitter, would take a hometown discount (it sounds like at least), would give us a (rather) monster rotation, allow us to possibly trade one of our pitching prospects for a hitting prospect, is extremely athletic despite his size (6’7, 300) and I really want the Giants to have a big fat lefthander on the mound, a fat dude behind the plate, a fat dude playing third base, and Tim Lincecum sitting on the bench going damn, I can’t even bench press half of CC. That’s a world I want to live in.

The Giants accounting department can figure out all that stuff. I would sure love to see a pitching staff of cc, lincecum and cain. You can wait on the young hitters or sign a free agent hitter.

About having Tex and Anvil. I don’t ever remember a team having too many good players. I remember teams not having enough good players.

The thought of of sabathia, lincecum, cain, alderson, and burmarger just makes me a little happier. If we sign CC (and for some reason i have a feeling we will.. if he wanted the yanks offer he would have accepted) i think we should immediatley trade sanchez. Also the thought of also signing Furcal, which i am in favor of could create a great team for many many years to come.
Assuming we could (big assumption) sign bot CC and Furcal plus trade sanchez for Beltre + AA prospect, just lloking ahead…

SS- Furcal
LF- Winn
1B- Sandavol
3B- Beltre
C- Molina
CF- Rowand
RF- Lewis
2B- Frandsen/Burris

Sabathia
Lincecum
Cain
Ace (zito.. obviously)
fill in ( Martinez, English, Pucetas) or low risk IE Hampton, Prior, Pedro
Rotation would only be this way for one season, with Mad-Bum and Tiimy-A on the way.
Total guess but could happen, I BELIEVE.

Don’t count your chickens before they hatched. The Giants haven’t signed anyone yet. If the Giants trade their young pitching, you are filling one hole by creating another hole. You never have enough pitching. If you trade your young pitching you could be sorry. What if the Giants traded Lincecum. All teams are always looking for hitting and pitching. There isn’t much pitching to go around. If you traded cain or sanchez, you would have to replace them with pitchers that give up 6 runs in 3 innings. There is no guarantee that the prosects will make it to the majors.

We have one of the best farm systems in all of baseball for producing pitchers; we could easily spit out a 4th/5th starter at least. We have MadBum, Tim 2, Sosa, Pucetas, Nicholson, Tanner, Barnes, etc. And we’re also poised for another good draft. And another point; every team that wins a WS has to create a good amount of its team through the farm system. The only team that can get by without that is the Yankees. Our system is also getting a lot better at producing hitters. We have Posey, AnVil, RafRod, Noonan, Kieschnick, Crawford, and mooore. Isn’t it fair to expect at least one good hitter to emerge out of all of them?

I would like to see what sanchez does next year before you trade him. He is a hard thrower and he had 150 strikeouts. He had a good first half. If he is the real deal you have 3 good starting pitchers. You could go after burrell or dunn. If you are strong you can hit it out of any park, like bonds. I can’t wait for the season to start and see how the young players do. GO GIANTS!