Yesterday was the deadline for arbitration-eligible players and their teams to exchange dueling salary figures in advance of arbitration hearings in February. The San Francisco Giants set a record in their $17 million offer to Tim Lincecum, the highest such amount ever offered a player with fewer than six years of service time. Lincecum countered with his own record-setting figure of $21.5 million.

Those numbers are close enough to lay the groundwork for a deal between Lincecum and the Giants, somewhere in the $19-$20 million range. That’s right where our own Matt Swartz pegged Lincecum’s 2012 salary ($19.2 million) in his arbitration predictions published at MLB Trade Rumors.

If the two sides don’t reach agreement before an arbitration hearing, who has the better case?

Baseball arbitrators are to make their decision based on the player’s performance, his prior salary, and the salaries of other players in his service-time class. The arbitration rules, however, do contain a “special accomplishments” provision which allows players to compare themselves to other players who’ve achieved similar accomplishments in the same time frame.

To the numbers.

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Episode 124
Wendy Thurm, who’s written for FanGraphs since October, is different from most of the site’s writers in terms of the amount of X chromosomes she possesses. Her capacity for providing crack analysis to our electronic pages is very much the same, however.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 49 min. play time.)

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The San Francisco Giants are hoping 2011 was the beginning of great things for veteran pitcher Ryan Vogelsong. After posting mediocre numbers that led to a three-year stint in Japan, the 34-year-old returned to the United States with a vengeance this past season, posting a 2.71 ERA in 179.2 innings. The Giants rewarded that performance on Wednesday and signed Vogelsong to a two-year, $8.3 million extension.

Since they already had him under team control through arbitration for 2012, the contract essentially just buys out his 2013 season (for something like $4 to $5 million in salary) when he would have otherwise been eligible for free agency. Given Vogelsong’s inconsistent career, making the decision to lock him up now seems a little odd. Is there reason to believe that Vogelgong’s 2011 performance represents a true step forward that would justify guaranteeing his 2013 salary in advance?

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There are some crazy-good ballplayers who ply their trade at second base. There’s Dustin Pedroia, Ian Kinsler, Chase Utley, Howie Kendrick, Brandon Phillips, Robinson Cano, and Ben Zobrist. There are other good — if not crazy-good — second basemen, like Rickie Weeks and Danny Espinosa. None of these good-to-crazy-good second basemen plays for a team in the National League West.

Which raises two interesting questions:

• Who will play second base in the National League West in 2012?

• How do you think they’ll perform?

In other words, it’s time to get in your 2012 Fan Projections for NL West second basemen.

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I can’t. Make sense of the Giants’ off-season moves, that is.

Last season, the Giants were 28th in the majors in wOBA (.294), 29th in wRC+ (83) and 29th in runs scored (570). Yes, the Giants lost Buster Posey at the end of May and Freddy Sanchez in June to season-ending injuries, and they lost Pablo Sandoval — their most effective hitter — for six weeks in the early part of the season. But the Giants added Carlos Beltran at the end of July, and after a slow start due to a wrist injury, Beltran posted a .404 wOBA over his final 161 plate appearances. The Giants simply couldn’t overcome career-worst seasons from Aaron Rowand and Miguel Tejada, who were released at the end of August, and poor offensive performances from Aubrey Huff and Andres Torres.

The only other teams with sub-.300 wOBAs in 2011 were the Mariners, Padres, Twins and Pirates, all of whom ended the season with losing records. The Giants finished 86-76 on the strength of their pitching. Obviously. So heading into 2012, the Giants were sure to focus on significantly upgrading the offense, right?

Not really.

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On Tuesday, we took a look at the New York Yankees surprise acquisition of SS Hiroyuki Nakajima via a $2.5M positing bid — the lowest bid for a position player since 2000. Now, it sounds increasingly likely that the Yankees will explore trades for the 29-year-old infielder.

According to Ken Rosenthal, the Chicago Cubs and the San Francisco Giants are both interested in Nakajima, and — frankly — I am surprised there are not even more teams rather interested in one of Japan’s best hitting shortstops.

Rosenthal got some quotes from a rival scout that are somewhat illuminating on the defensive makeup of Nakajima:

“This kid wants to play baseball,” the scout said. “He’s not going to take Jeter’s place, but he’s capable of being an everyday shortstop in the big leagues.”

The scout projects Nakajima as a .270-.280 hitter who will drive in runs and use his instincts to steal bases, despite being a below-average runner. He lacks arm strength at short, but has great hands, very good range to his left and hangs in on the double play, the scout said.

So does Nakajima fit with the Cubs or Giants?
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In seeing Rhiner Cruz‘ name as the top pick in this year’s Rule 5 draft, my first thought was this would be the last time I ever spent a tangible amount of time prepping for it. In a moment of clarity, the Houston Astros helped me understand just how important the Rule 5 draft is NOT.

Even after reading Adam Foster’s piece breaking down Rule 5 draft picks between 2007-2010 which hammers home the fact players selected essentially have zero value on average, I was still hopeful for something…. anything worthy of excitement from a prospect perspective.

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The magic of the Winter Meetings continued late into the evening on Day Two, with the Mets and Giants agreeing to the first trade of the meetings. The two teams agreed on a swap of center fielders coming off a bad year, with Angel Pagan heading to San Francisco in exchange for Andres Torres as well as reliever Ramon Ramirez.

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He didn’t win a Gold Glove. He didn’t win a Fielding Bible Award. But Pablo Sandoval may be the best defensive third baseman in the National League, if not the majors.

Yes, I’m a San Francisco Giants fan. A season-ticket holder, in fact. So I do see a lot of Sandoval at the hot corner over the course of the season. But neither my fandom nor my eyes have blinded me. Sandoval is just that good. And not “good for a guy who looks like the Kung Fu Panda”; just flat-out good.

Let’s start with the numbers. Sandoval only played 904 innings at third base in 2011, as he missed about six weeks with a broken hamate bone in his right hand. Adrian Beltre — who won the American League Gold Glove and Fielding Bible Award for his play at third base — logged 980 innings at third. Placido Polanco — the winner of the National League Gold Glove — manned the hot corner for 1,044 innings. Evan Longoria was at third for 1,124 innings. Those were the top four defensive third baseman in the majors in 2011.

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Of course the internet baseball community hates Barry Bonds. Despite being clearly one of baseball’s greatest players, his career will always be overshadowed by his presence as Mr. BALCO, as the center of the steroids scandal which loomed over baseball for much of the last decade. Not only that, but he had a tendency to come off as short and angry with the media. A combination of cheating and nastiness hardly endears people to your cause.

But, naturally, I am not fully satisfied with anything until I can quantify it. Luckily, the Baseball-Reference Elo player rater exists. With the help of the users of Baseball-Reference, who have cast over one million votes rating players, we can see just how the internet baseball community (at least, that rather large part that uses Baseball-Reference) view players. Voters are welcome to use objective criteria from WAR to batting average, and obviously nothing is preventing them from hitting one player’s button if they simply like that player better. To me, finding a subjective measure of the opinions of greatness to put next to our objective measures is incredibly interesting.

Make no mistake: Barry Bonds is clearly one of the top hitters — if not the top hitter — to ever play the game. Between the home run record, 175 career wRC+, 168 career fWAR, and 172 career bWAR, it is impossible to argue with his on-field accomplishments. So when we see the Baseball-Reference crowd has him rated as the 26th best player of all time, right between Cal Ripken Jr. and Ken Griffey Jr., we know it goes beyond what’s on the field. Observe, the massive difference between how Bonds is rated by the people and how we would predict he would be rated simply by WAR (using the Baseball-Reference version as it is the one presented to the voter), looking at the top 50 players in the rankings:

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