Figuring out the Giants 2012 payroll

Franchez’s $6M and Affeldt’s $5M 2012 salaries can also be mostly recouped if the Giants bring in cheap, young options to replace them. Panik and/or Culberson could be ready to take over 2B by 2013 and there should be a bevy of cheap, power-armed relievers itching to take Affeldt’s spot by 2013 (Correa, Otero, Harrold, Dunnington, Bochy, Marlowe, Law, Bandilla, Mizenko).

In sum, I count over $40M in payroll coming off the books after the 2012 season. It’s plain to see that the Giants should be able to sign Timmy and Cain to long-term extensions (if they want to stay with the org), keep their other young core player’s intact, and still have around $15M to spend in the free agent market after the 2012 season. Alternatively, some of that $15M could be put to good use this offseason to back-load a contract for Beltran, Willingham, Furcal, or even Jimmy Rollins.

It’s extremely, extremely critical for Sabes & Co. to nail down what is in the minds of Cain and Timmy (to a lesser extent) in terms of their desire to become free agents after 2012 and 2013. If Cain can’t be locked into a long-term contract extension (for at least 2 years) within the next 30 days then Sabes has to assume that he’s going to opt for free agency next Fall. If that’s the case then Sabes also has to assume that Cain will not be a Giant in 2013 (we won’t be able to match the 8-10 year deals that Cain will get). Counter-intuitively, if Sabes comes to that conclusion, then he should go all-out right now to sign Beltran, Rollins, Willingham or Furcal. Because, if Cain is only going to be around for 1 more season then the Giants need to go into an extreme win-now mode.

Similar reasoning holds for Timmy. If Sabes concludes right now that Timmy is very likely to become a FA after the 2013 then Sabes should break the bank for the 2012 season (sign Beltran or Willingham or Rollins) and then trade Timmy after the end of the 2012 season. He’ll get a much better return for Timmy in trade than he could expect with 2 comp picks in the 2014 draft.

As far as I can remember, the Giants have had only 1 guy actually get an arb hearing in the past 10 years. I’ll bet real money right now that none of these guys end up in a hearing. Serioiusly, the only 2 guys that could end up putting a dent in that $6M cushion if they actually made it to a hearing are Timmy and Panda. All the other guys are just as likely to get less money than I budgeted.

I can’t see the owners shooting Sabes down for an extra $6M to spend on a trade in July or August if the Gaints are in contention. They’re already getting bad enough publicity for what they’ve already done.

Maybe they’re hoping to sign long-term deals with some of their other players who don’t havet big arbitration awards under their belt, like Panda and Bumgarner, and would appreciate a signing bonus up front.

They’ve also said in previous years that they like to keep some of the payroll free for mid-season acquisitions.

I don’t see how any extension of Cain will use up an resources for 2012. He’s signed for 2012. His extended salary will be paid out from future budgets.

They don’t add up to a lot, but, they’ve got to be budgeted for, and they’re significant when we’re talking about the margins of the payroll.

With all the uncertainty involved in baseball, particularly regarding the development of prospects, having even a semi-definite plan in mind may prevent you from moving smartly.

Say, for example, that the Giants currently plan to have Gary Brown and Joe Panik be Opening Day starters by 2014 – earlier if possible, but 2014 at the latest. Then they don’t sign an under-appreciated Michael Bourn in the 2013 offseason despite easily being able to top the three years and $30M he gets(for reference, he’s been worth $19-22M over each of the last three years) because they’re committed to having Brown, who just earned a September callup in 2013 after stagnating somewhat in Richmond and Fresno from 2012-13, be their 2014 CF.

Panik, meanwhile, posts about a 90 wRC+ in the first several months of the 2014 season with slightly above-average defense at 2B, making him a worthwhile but replaceable player. When offered Rickie Weeks straight up for Panik by the Brewers (who are now rebuilding as Greinke and Marcum departed for free agency and Gallardo’s decline into mediocrity has dropped them to 4th place in the Central division), they don’t take it because they are committed to Panik at the second base position despite questionable peripherals and generally mediocre performance.

Point is, the long-term vision should just be to win. You don’t know how that’s going to happen two years from now – you barely know how it’s going to happen next year. If Cain hurts himself in May (please no) and Vogelsong regresses, what we think is our base will not be particularly strong. The best thing for a team is flexibility – you give some of that up because you have to in order to retain top players. But I don’t think the Giants ought to be thinking “Okay, this is what we’re doing now because next year we’ll have this and then we’ll do this and…” An obvious point to be sure, but I’m not convinced they’re thinking along those lines.

Agreed, there’s a hell of a lot of assumptions that go into forecasting a 2013 payroll, but I trying to replicate a process that Sabes might be going through now, or have gone through recently, in order to figure out what type of leeway he has in this offseason’s budget. If Sabes hasn’t gone through a similar exercise then, IMO, he would be almost criminally negligent.

You’re right in saying that Buster will also be a Super 2 arb guy. I thought that Super 2 also had a performance factor (which would exclude Buster in light of all of the time he sat out this season), but when I looked it up just now I see that Super 2 is only calculated off of service time with respect to the entire pool of major league players that have between 2 and 3 years service time at the end of any given season.

As for Pablo, a huge part of deciding what he will be payed in 2013 is how he performs in 2012 AND what his salary was in 2012. I dindn’t feel comfortable assuming that Pablo will have another year with numbers like 2009 and 2011, not to mention assuming that he’ll stay healthy and on the field all season. I also predict that Panda won’t be paid more than $3.5M in 2012, which would make the jump to $8M quite signifcant for a player in only his 2nd year of arb eligibility.

Both guys can be unrestricted free agents next offseason and I don’t see Melky wanting to stay in SF (bad hitting environment and can likely get more money and be closer to his home base playing in the east) if he has a good season in 2012. If he has a bad season then I think the odds are very high that the Giants just let him walk away. I think it’s much more likely that Pagan will have a decent season, that he’ll want to stick around in SF, and that the Giants will want to keep him around due to his ability to also play RF or LF without an appreciable dropoff in offensive production to what the Giants were getting from their corner OF spots.