For a long time, the knock on the San Francisco Giants’ farm system was that it was awful at developing position players. While the organization could churn out quality arm after quality arm, they couldn’t do the same for bats as hard as they tried. All of that changed when Buster Posey arrived in 2010 which, coincidentally, is the time the Giants started winning World Championships. Funny how that works.
Now, one of the keys to the Giants’ sustained success is the quality of position players they’ve been able to produce and, most importantly, keep around long term. Brandon Belt is the latest example of that, agreeing to a six-year, $79 million extension this past weekend that buys out the last year of his arbitration eligibility and will keep him in San Francisco through 2021.
It looks like a great deal on paper for the Giants. Belt’s salary will be just over $8 million next year, which is what he likely would’ve made through arbitration anyway, and then jumps to $16 million per year over the next four years. That’s a reasonable deal for a first baseman who’s hit .272/.348/.457 over his career and who’s played Gold Glove-caliber defense, too. When healthy, Belt is the lefty power bat the Giants need to balance the middle of their order. He’s a threat at the plate and can save a game with his glove, and $79 million to lock up a guy like that long term seems like a relative bargain.
There is risk, of course. Belt has been prone to injuries throughout his career (bad luck injuries, but injuries nonetheless) and has missed significant time the past two seasons in particular. The contract will take him through his age 33 season and the possibility of decline looms large. But those risks seem minimal when compared to the reward: an above average player who still has the potential to get better as a hitter signed to a team-friendly contract.
Belt’s extension is yet another sign that the Giants are committed to keeping their homegrown talent. For a team that was once maligned for not being able to develop position players, it’s remarkable to think that the core of their offense is made up almost exclusively of players from their system. Posey, Belt, and Brandon Crawford all have contracts that will keep them in San Francisco through at least 2021. Matt Duffy and Joe Panik haven’t even hit arbitration yet and can’t be free agents until 2021, anyway; chances are the Giants will try to lock them up with extensions before then, too.
Factor in Madison Bumgarner’s bargain of a contract and the Giants look particularly smart, paying much less for their own talent than they’d have to for comparable players on the open market. And the money they saved by retaining their own players allowed them to spend big on the free agent market this past winter, committing almost a quarter of a billion dollars to patching up holes on the roster. That’s not a luxury they could have afforded without developing from within.
Belt’s extension should be seen as another win for the Giants, a young, productive player locked up at a reasonable price for years to come. It’s become their M.O. over the past few years and has resulted in a team that’s built to be a perennial contender.
It’s hard to believe, but Belt’s extension (and Crawford’s, and Posey’s, etc.) proves one thing: the Giants, once mocked for not developing any hitters and relying too heavily on old players, have become one of baseball’s model franchises for developing and keeping their own young talent.
