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Arbitration time! Oh, this is much better than actual baseball, talking about salaries. Sometimes I wish they just exchanged numbers all year long and ignored the actual games. It would be LARPing on a grand scale, something between Baseball Mogul and Diplomacy. It would be the best. I definitely didn't stay up last night and watch the last two innings of Game 7 because I'm desperate to watch a baseball game.
So far, the Giants have settled with Travis Ishikawa ($1.1 million), Yusmeiro Petit ($2.1 million), and Hector Sanchez ($1 million) on one-year contracts, but they still have four players to sign. Here are those players, what they asked for, what the Giants offered, the midpoint, and the usually accurate MLB Trade Rumors estimate of what the player would normally settle for:
| Giants figure | Player figure | Midpoint | MLBTR estimate | |
| Brandon Crawford | $2.4 million | $3.95 million | $3.175 million | $2.5 million |
| Brandon Belt | $3 million | $4.5 million | $3.75 million | $3.4 million |
| Gregor Blanco | $3.3 million | $4 million | $3.65 million | $3.5 million |
| Casey McGehee | $4 million | $5.4 million | $4.7 million | $3.5 million |
Apparently, Casey McGehee isn't the nifty bargain he was supposed to be. That's what happens when you get a guy who can hit a home run almost every month -- break out the checkbook. All of the midpoints are higher than the MLBTR estimates. When the team wins the World Series, the spice must flow. Agents know this.
Of note: The last time the Giants actually went to arbitration was with Mike McCormick in 1962. At least, that's what it seems like. It was really 2004, when A.J. Pierzynski and his dumb face decided to get the blissful marriage started on the wrong foot. Pierzynski won the arbitration case because the arbitrator was in league with Anton LaVey and Tommy Lasorda.
They'll probably settle with all of them close to the midpoint, and in Crawford's case, possibly work out an extension. 'Tis the Giants' way. Now everyone shut up until baseball gets here. I'm just going to sit here and wait.