Wednesday BP, 12/12/18

Let’s check in on some former Giants. If you didn’t hear, Andrew McCutchen signed a three-year, $50 million deal (with a fourth year option) with the Phillies yesterday, which really shook up the industry. The former GMs who have media jobs lambasted the deal as an overpay, given that he’s in his age 32-35 seasons over the course of it, and an obvious decline candidate.

Still, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that at least for the first two years of the deal, McCutchen will be an above replacement level player, and it won’t take much more than that to make the deal worth it, either by being equal to market rate for wins or with a little surplus value in there.

He is still a good baseball player, and for some reason, that has become a dirty word for a lot of teams. “Good,” the thinking is, is good enough for the league minimum. Players should not be paid above that unless they are really great and “controllable” for 3+ years.

Anyway, I figured he’d get something like 2 years, $32-$34 million, so he has a much better agent than my brain.

Meanwhile, Gorkys Hernández signed a minor-league deal with the Boston Red Sox. Did you know that his agent is the recently retired catcher Miguel Montero?

It’s hard to know if that was the best deal for him out there, but I certainly wish him luck. There’s no reason for an athlete to think their career is winding down after the best season of their career.

Finally, let’s check in on Hunter Pence down in the winter league:

Perfect.