New York Nine

Onto the San Francisco Giants, a team with some bright spots but a lot of black holes that are going to be a lot to compensate for. Indeed, as you can see on the cover of MLB 2k9, ESPN the magazine, Sports illustrated and countless other media outlets Tim Lincecum brought national interest to a team that is pretty godawful aside from him. As they had in the past Brian Sabean have made some pretty dubious moves, and while there were some bright spots, it leaves the giants much where they were last year, near the bottom of the NL west looking up.


Arguably the biggest and most awful signing of the Giants made was for the incomprable Edgar Renteria for two years 18million. Going into his age 33 season after last year you have to question why they'd give him big money in a market that superior players like Orlando Hudson and Orlando Hernandez are getting less. I meant the guy hit .270/.317/.382 with subpar defense, what's is there to like? He's probably a better hitter than Omar Vizquel at this point, but not a whole lot, thats pretty putrid, and that is in the formerly vaunted Tigers lineup in a far more hitter friendly park, how do you think he'll do in a pitchers park in a really shitty lineup?


This is not to say they did nothing good, as they were able to sign Randy Johnson to be their very capable third starter. Getting pretty old at this point 45, last year Johnson proved to be still a pretty capable starter tossing 184 innings striking out 173 and only walking 44 with an ERA+ of 117. Not great, but you could do a lot worse on a medicore team for your third starter. Add him in there with Lincecum, Matt Cain, Jonathan Sanchez, and the incomprable Barry Zito as your five, thats a pretty good staff, now if only they they had anyone who could hit it out of the infield.


Sabean also made considerable improvements in the bullpen as well, signing Jeremy Affeldt and Bob Howry to two and one year deals respectively. Affeldt esepcially, has proven to be a very capable and useful lefty, tossing 78 innings and striking out 80 with a very nice ERA+ of 135 and ERA of 3.33. Howry, coming off a down year at 35 I would still consider a good signing considering its price and the fact that prior to that last season where he was pummeled for an ERA over five, the four seasons before that were all featuring ERA+ of over 140, thats pretty good buy low.


Despite this nice cost effective pitching moves by the Giants, this is a team with a whole lot of holes in their lineup. With an outfield that no one had an OPS over .700 and your catcher is your cleanup hitter you're going to have some serious problems scoring runs for a pretty formidable pitching staff. Pablo Sandoval the new third baseman is being hailed as a new slugger, manning the third spot in the lineup will probably give them a bit of a boost, but I dobut it will make much of a difference, this is a team still a long ways to go. I begrudingly give their offseason a B, but this team still sucks pretty bad. Don't hold your breath for an above .500 season on the strength of Lincecum, there's just too much sucking going on there for him to make that much of a difference.