A Very Quick Note on Hunter Pence

by
September 28, 2013

On Monday, we’ll have a more thorough write-up of Hunter Pence’s new $90 million contract with the Giants. For now, though, I figured this comparison was kind of fun: Here’s Nick Swisher in the three years leading up to the free-agent contract he signed last winter, compared with Pence’s performance during the past three seasons.

 

Name PA AVG OBP SLG wOBA wRC+ BsR Off Def WAR
Nick Swisher 1894 0.274 0.366 0.478 0.367 129 -8.8 55.1 -8.0 11.4
Hunter Pence 2034 0.283 0.342 0.469 0.352 125 7.2 64.4 -22.8 11.2

Swisher got 4/56. Pence got 5/90. Pence is a hitting free agency a year younger and is coming off a significantly better walk year season, so it’s not a surprise that Pence got more than Swisher. Plus, with baseball’s economic strength, salaries should be expected to inflate every year for the foreseeable future. This is still a pretty big gap though.





 

Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.

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semperty
10 years ago

Definitely don’t like this deal for San Francisco. I just don’t see him being worth $18M a year for more than maybe two of the five years (even then I’d question if he’ll be worth it for that long)

1
channelclemente
10 years ago
Reply to  semperty

To us, he’s worth every dime. But then, we believe in synergy…not plug and play.

-5
Free Bryan LaHair
10 years ago
Reply to  channelclemente

aaaaannnnnnndddddd the entire giants roster will be watching the playoffs on MLB network

3