You can always count on a couple of things when it comes to the free agency period: Relievers will be given multi-year deals and the San Francisco Giants will normally act quickly on a free agent and overpay him.
Or, both will happen in the same deal.
The first official signing of the 2011-12 free agency period was left-handed reliever Javier Lopez, who was given a two-year contract at $8.5 million by the Giants. There are many problems with this deal, but the biggest problem of all is that after the bad deals handed out to Freddy Sanchez and Aubrey Huff so early in free agency, the Giants continue to overpay in areas that they don’t need to overpay in.
The long list of relievers who have lived up to multi-year deals doesn’t really exist. In reality, relief pitchers should work within one year contracts with options, but due to Lopez being a savior on the 2010 World Series team and having a sub-3.00 ERA in 2011 while being able to pitch to both lefties and righties, the Giants decided to reward him for the services he’s provided. That the Giants continue to do this shows that Brian Sabean hasn’t wrapped his mind around the notion that relievers are fungible and can implode at any time. Someone hasn’t been reading Dave Cameron.
While that list in Cameron’s article talks about relievers getting three years or more on a contract, there hasn’t been too many relievers in recent memory that exceeded their contract value in a deal of more than one year. Last year, Scott Downs, Matt Guerrier, Jesse Crain, Joaquin Benoit and Rafael Soriano were all given multi-year deals last year. Crain, Downs and Benoit lived up to their contract values but didn’t exceed it, while Soriano and Guerrier underperformed. On Sabean’s own team, Sergio Romo had one of the greatest seasons by a reliever of all time, accumulated 2.2 WAR in only 48 innings, and was only paid $450,000. There are more Sergio Romos out there than Javier Lopezes, but because some of the better relievers are given deals that don’t match up with their true value, the rest of the free agent crop will see this Lopez contract as the standard bearer.
The Giants did this before with Jeremy Affeldt’s current contract, which saw him get two years at $9.25 million with an option for this year at $5 million or a $500,000 buyout. For a contract where he should have been a two WAR pitcher to earn that contract’s value, Affeldt was worth 0.4 WAR, or about a $2 million pitcher. He shouldn’t have his option picked up, but chances are that with Lopez getting this contract that the Giants might actually pick up Affeldt’s option, meaning that they will give $9 million plus to two left-handed relievers. Not exactly a market inefficiency.
There’s a good chance Lopez won’t be the only reliever to receive a multi-year deal, as guys like Heath Bell, Ryan Madson and Jonathan Papelbon could all get $10 million per year, too. This isn’t nearly the free agent crop like the 2010-11 one was, but teams need to realize that even with one good year, relievers are a year-to-year entity and need to be treated as such. Or, if your’e the Giants, you just hope that time around, it works.
