A Very Quick Note on Hunter Pence
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.
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)
To us, he’s worth every dime. But then, we believe in synergy…not plug and play.
aaaaannnnnnndddddd the entire giants roster will be watching the playoffs on MLB network