This is a very obvious idea, but it’s an important one to reiterate as the San Francisco Giants prepare for the offseason.
Remember when the San Francisco Giants signed Barry Zito to that immediately disastrous long-term deal and it wound up working out? Does it only matter because it did?
The A’s paid Zito $18.24 million across 7 seasons for a 3.55 ERA (4.17 FIP) in 1,430.1 innings pitched — about 24 wins above replacement. The Giants paid Zito $126 million over 7 seasons for a 4.62 ERA (4.61 FIP) in 1,139.1 innings pitched — about 6.5 wins above replacement. But then he pitched 7.2 shutuout innings in Game 5 of the NLCS when the Giants looked dead and buried (#RallyZito) and he outdueled — and out-hit — Justin Verlander in the World Series. Is a pair of masterful games when the team needed them the most enough to make up for an aggressively disappointing long-term deal?
Yes! Absolutely! That used to be conventional wisdom.
When The Simpsons revisited their famous “Homer at the Bat” episode from 1992 in 2010’s “MoneyBART,” Bill James — “The Father of Baseball Analytics” and verifiable online crank — guest starred in the episode to deliver this line:
“I’ve made baseball as much fun as doing your taxes!”
It’s an idea that was perfectly cemented in this tweet from 2012 which conveys the overarching idea that a lot of the romanticism and poetry about baseball has largely been removed from the national conversation about the sport. And if you look at Farhan Zaidi’s body of work or the Tampa Bay Rays, or really most teams these days who aren’t the Dodgers or Yankees, you get the sense that the best type of fan is not only one who knows how to do taxes but can also serve as an insurance agent on the side.
The risk management game is not the game of baseball, and yet because the general manager — thanks to Moneyball — has become a much larger cult of personality, it actually kind of is. We’re all committed to a franchise’s long-term prospects. We’re all doing the owners’ bidding by thinking about the risk-reward of contracts, particularly in their length, and we do it in large part because we think it’s a virtue.
Fan is an abbreviation of fanatic, but it’s also a gussied up synonym of “hope.” To be a fan is to have hope. Somehow, a lot of fans have conflated “financial flexibility” and “sustainability” with “hope.” So, the conventional wisdom has changed, and saying the Barry Zito contract was “worth it” is more of a joke.
Barry Zito’s decline prior to his 7-year deal with the Giants was obvious to nearly anybody who paid attention. I barely had an understanding of the advanced stats, but even I could see the decline, and I’m an idiot! Still, replacing a departing Barry (Bonds) with another Barry (Zito) was too good for Marketing Genius Larry Baer to pass up and so the team consummated the deal. Now, Barry Zito wasn’t a terrible pitcher and so it was a bit of a surprise that he fell so fast so quickly.
Which made his phoenix storyline in 2012 (#RallyZito) all the more incredible. But!
It was a surprise on the scale of “Where has this Zito been?” and not “This is a completely different Barry Zito than we’ve ever seen before.” He wasn’t suddenly Randy Johnson out there. He was simply Peak Zito, even if that peak had come several years earlier (a Cy Young in 2002, MVP votes in 2001 & 2002, All-Star appearances in 2002, 2003 & 2006). Talent is talent, and sometimes the past is epilogue.
I bring this up because someone on social media (and I now can’t find the post) called the Yankees’ Giancarlo Stanton “Giancarlo Zito” the other night after his dramatic performance in Game 5 of the ALCS (which led to CS MVP — watch a highlight reel of all the damage he caused in the series; it’s really something!). It makes some sense: a previously great athlete who played his way closer to irrelevance only to come roaring back when the team needed him the most.
Before the Yankees traded for him (and the remaining $294 million on his contract), he’d amassed 33.6 wins above replacement for the Marlins on a line of (.268/.360/.554) across 8 seasons and 4,120 plate appearances. In 2,776 regular season plate appearances across 7 seasons for the Yankees, he’s hit .241/.323/.483 and amassed just 9 wins above replacement. Not quite the same degree of flop as Barry Zito — and really not a “flop,” actually, when you consider that this line is good enough for 20% better than the league average. Zito was barely, if ever, average.
As usual, I have a long windup to deliver this: while there are bad long-term contracts, long-term contracts are not inherently bad. This offseason, we don’t need to provide cover for management by dismissing them out of hand. 99.9999% of us who root for the team don’t have a financial stake in it. We’re not getting smaller dividends because of Matt Chapman’s extension or if the Giants sign Juan Soto in the offseason, but we’ll probably have more lifelong memories if they do sign him (though, of course, they won’t).
Did the Johnny Cueto deal not work out or did Bruce Bochy’s bullpen management in game 4 of the 2016 NLDS and ownership’s generational ineptitude when it comes to building a strong farm system have more to do with it looking bad? If the Giants had put together a better team, he might’ve been able to scare the bejesus out of some other team ahead of an elimination game. Teams still need to develop a roster in concert with big contracts. To that point, Aaron Judge is a guy the Yankees got from their farm system and have since added players around. There was a comment made many times about the Giants in the Zaidi years: a great roster of supplements with nothing to supplement.
Of course Buster Posey has to be smart about it. Maybe Willy Adames is the smarter bet than Pete Alonso. Maybe Santander over Teoscar Hernandez. Max Fried instead of Blake Snell. The Johnny Cueto contract (6 years) would’ve looked better had it not also been paired with Jeff Samardzija’s 5 years. So, betting big on the best odds is still the way to go.
But the truth of the matter is that taking risks can be its own reward. It doesn’t change the overall mission to create the best team possible, and sometimes, it works out so well that even when it’s bad, it’s still good.