Thanks.

And I have Tom Gorzelanny on my fantasy team. I've been pretty happy with the signing.

It also hurt when my A's friend joked that if you combined Lincecum's stats and salary with Zito's, only then you could make the case that the Giants were getting good value for the money they spent on pitching.  

However, I think he'll turn it around, it's not my money, and $17 million per year won't seem like an outrageous amount in 2012. Which isn't to say it wasn't a dumb signing, because it was; they could have had him for probably $20 million less than they paid.

In summary, put me down as a 5 and a big "Meh."

I'm a lot more down on the contract situation, though, than I was originally. I thought it was too much, but that Zito would still be as good for 3-4 years of it, so it'd be kinda worth it during that time and limiting the albatros years to a minimum.

Now, I'm not so sure. I think he'll be fine this year and probably/perhaps next year, but after that I'm doubtful. Friday, I just kept thinking Zito is the next Reuter - a guy who is afraid to throw a ball in the strike zone. Hopefully, we'll be able to move him to the Yankees in a year or two when they don't have Clemens to worry about. I'd pretty much take anyone in return if they take that contract.

People just have to get over the contract.  

It was no worse than signing Bonds to a 5 year $90M contract going into his 40's when no player in history has ever really hit that well in their 40's.  Sure, if you were to bet, he's the one, but Mays was going along great into his mid-30's then suddenly fell off the map power-wise.  Plus you never knew about freak injuries taking him out and then we would have been stuck, like we were with Nen and to a much lesser extent, Matheny.  We were stuck in 2005 as it was when he had a freak accident bumping his knee into a table.

And Zito's contract actually is pretty reasonable on a year by year salary basis, $10M for this year, $14.5M next year, the main problem is the length, 7 years for one of the most fragile commodities around, a pitcher.  

If you are bugged that much by the contract, then don't follow the Giants anymore - the contract's not going anywhere else.  Else, move on except for annual reviews where you assess where the Giants could be without the contract.

Zito has been on a downtrend but the key thing for him is that he's like the bumblebee of the DIPS theory - he's not suppose to exist.  So any analysis using DIPS theory to try to analyze him, I believe, is futile.

The thing I pay more attention to is his recent ERA's:  3.87 and 3.83.  And when he is on, he is on, and when he is off, he is off.  But he's on more than he's off, and that helps keep the ERA lower than most starters.

See, what I find is that people have no idea what's a really good ERA is.  Guys see those ERA and don't think it's that good.  In 2006, Zito had the 10th best ERA in the AL with a 3.83 ERA.  10th best!  14th best was 4.08.

So yeah, maybe he doesn't pitch like an ace does, but he does pitch among the elite.  And we are not really paying him to be an ace, we are paying him to be a workhorse who can deliver a lot of quality innings, who is still a good pitcher in any case, and hopefully he can do it for a lot of years.

Generally, a pitcher's most reliable and peak years are from 29-34, which covers Zito's first 6 years (see 2007 Baseball Forecaster).  It doesn't mean he will be either, but generally those are his peak years.  What this means is that the risks of him being either not reliable or not productive, is minimized for those years, but they are not minimal, for after all, they are pitchers.

But anytime you take on a free agent, you are taking on a variety of risks involved.   Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.  

In Kevin Brown's case, you are talking about someone who is entering his 40's at the end of his contract.  Some pitchers are still going strong at 35, which is Zito's age at the end of this contract.

In Mike Hampton's case, he was really doing it via low HR rate.  His K/9 rate was low, his BB/9 was high, his K/BB was substandard, it was his very low HR/9 that saved him all those years before his big contract, as his BABIP was like most everyone's, it regressed to the mean of .300.  That low HR/9 was due to his high ground ball rate.

However, in his years with the Rockies, his peripherals were still bad, but now his HR rate is doubled over his career, tripled over his previous two years.  However, once he got to Atlanta, he's good again.  Unfortunately, he blew out his arm when he was 32 and he hasn't been able to pitch since.  

In Zito's case, he does it with a very low BABIP.  He is the unique case in DIPS theory who can keep his BABIP lower than most, which Tom Tippett (of Diamond Mind Sim game) covered in his study of that.  Also, more importantly, he's never been on the DL, keeping his arm and body in top health.  

Hampton on the other hand missed a number of starts, about 15-20 games in total in 1995 and 1996, when he was only 22-23 years old, so he was injured pretty seriously when young, so he had a history of a bad injury.  So he may be the best comparison, but it is lacking on two fronts, one, going to a bizarro park, and two, having an injury when he was young, indicating some susceptibility to injury at an early age.