The San Francisco Giants will have an early vacation this season and part of their failure to make the playoffs can be set upon the shoulders of their 2010 success. They may have won the World Series last season, but the organization was naïve to think that they could build a 2011 champion based upon those same principals.
The 2010 World Series MVP was Edgar Renteria. Yes, the same Edgar Renteria that hit .276/.332/.374 with three home runs in 267 plate appearances during the regular season. When Renteria wasn’t on the field, Juan Uribe filled in at short. Uribe hit 24 home runs, played very good defense for the and put up 3.1 fWAR. The Giants clearly made the right decision by not offering Uribe a multi-year deal this past offseason and not dipping back into the Edgar Renteria pot-o-luck, but then they went out and signed the (supposedly) 36-year-old Miguel Tejada, who hit .269/.312/.381 with 15 home runs combined between the Orioles and Padres last season. Signing the aging Tejada was one thing, but signing him to play shortstop was a move doomed from the beginning. Tejada had posted a –12.4 UZR playing shortstop for the Astros in 2009 and he posted a 0.1 UZR in limited action at short for the Padres in 2010. The $6.5M Tejada experiment lasted only 343 plate appearances and 334.1 innings in the field. Putting all their eggs in the basket of Miguel Tejada caused them to rely on rookie Brandon Crawford, who played fine defensively, but was completely overmatched at the plate (.198/.282/.278).
Perhaps an even bigger mistake over the offseason was signing the resurgent Aubrey Huff to a two-year/$22M deal. The Giants had struck gold with Huff in 2010, signing him to a one-year/$3M deal after he found very little interest on the free agent market. Huff provided a career best 5.8 fWAR while posting 26 home runs and a career best .388 wOBA. While the Giants knew they needed to improve their offense, they may have been blinded by the tremendous value they received from Huff the season prior. He put up the numbers, now he wanted to get paid and for more than one year. They looked past the fact that he was turning 34 in 2011 and that he had not put together solid back-to-back seasons since his 2002-2004 days. In essence, they spent $11M for a below replacement level player this season and are on the hook for the same $11M in 2012, when Huff will be 35.
Huff was merely one of the surprising values the Giants found in the bargain bin last year.
Andres Torres, a 32-year-old journeyman, rose up from the dust to play tremendous defense in center field, post a .363 wOBA, hit 16 home runs, steal 26 bases and tally 6.6 fWAR. He put up those impressive offensive numbers with a below average contact rate (77 percent) and a .331 BABIP. Granted, even with a regression, Torres should have put up better numbers than he has, but he started out the season missing a month due to an Achilles injury.
By the end of the 2010 regular season, Torres was being flanked by Pat Burrell and Cody Ross. Both players were claimed off of waivers and both played exceedingly better than they had with their previous teams. Ross only played in 33 regular season games for the Giants, but he hit .288/.354/.466 with three home runs for them down the stretch. However, it was his incredible postseason that probably earned him an everyday job and a one-year/$6.3M deal. Ross went crazy last October, hitting .294/.390/.686 with five home runs in only 59 plate appearances. His OBPs for the last three years are as follows: .321 in 2009, a .322 in 2010 and .325 this season.
Pat Burrell hit .266/.364/.509 with 18 home runs in 341 plate appearances after hitting only two homers in 96 plate appearances with the Rays. While not much money was invested in brining Burrell back for the 2011 season, Burrell failed to produce much at all at the plate and continued to be a detriment in left field before his season all but ended due to a foot injury in July.
Now, I will certainly point out that the loss of Buster Posey, their all-star catcher, early on and the loss of Pablo Sandoval for 41 games didn’t exactly help the offensive woes either. Freddy Sanchez’s shoulder injury certainly hurt as well, but those three loses alone did not break the Giants’ season.
Sandoval returned within 30 days hitting the DL and the Giants went 26-16 while he was out of the lineup. He has posted 5.4 fWAR to date.
Unlike 2010, the Giants were unable to strike gold with their replacement acquisitions. Jeff Keppinger, Orlando Cabrera, Bill Hall: All whiffs. One thing they didn’t do this season, something that worked out quite well during their World Series year, was allow their top prospect to play everyday at the big league level.
After destroying the minor leagues the season before and fresh off an impressive spring, Brandon Belt found himself on the Giants opening day roster. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t get off to a Buster Posey-esque start. After only 60 plate appearances, Belt found himself back in triple-A. He received only 21 major league plate appearances in July, 57 plate appearances in August and 52 plate appearances so far this month. All told, that’s 197 sporadic plate appearances on the year. Belt was definitely not having any problems at triple-A, where he hit .309/.448/.527 in 212 plate appearances.
Even with his lackluster major league stats, Belt has been worth 0.7 fWAR, which compared to Aubrey Huff and his –0.8 fWAR, looks like an upgrade.
The Giants made a last-minute effort to save their season at the trade deadline and it cost them their top pitching prospect, Zack Wheeler. Carlos Beltran was supposed to be the big piece of the puzzle that led the Giants to the promised land once again. Beltran has done his part, hitting .331/.376/.558 with six home runs in 165 plate appearances since joining the club. The problem was that the team failed to see that his addition alone would not be enough. As a team, they had struggled to keep pace with the punchless, cellar dwelling San Diego Padres in terms of runs scored among teams in the NL West. In August, the Giants scored only 78 runs, their lowest total in any month this season.
To say that the Giants’ 2011 season was a complete failure would be a bit harsh. They are still going to finish the year with a winning record and, until the recent surge by the Cardinals, had a shot at the NL Wild Card. That being said, this team wasted a lot of money over the offseason, brining back a group of players that overachieved in 2010 and were due for a regression. They brought in a questionable, aging shortstop that had no business being moved back to the position. They kept plugging Aubrey Huff into the middle of the lineup while they let Brandon Belt mash at triple-A. They had no backup plans in place when their offseason plans eventually fell apart at the seams.
Sure, the Giants have a great pitching staff, but the Diamondbacks have a pretty solid rotation too. The difference is that the D-Backs can hit – they’ve scored the fourth most runs in the National League – and the Giants, even with a healthy Buster Posey, weren’t nearly as strong offensively as they needed to be.
Hopefully for Giants fans, the front office has learned their lesson.
