Evaluating the Giants’ Diversification Strategy
Two weeks ago, the San Francisco Giants were in the midst of a push to try and steal Zack Greinke away from the Los Angeles Dodgers. With a strong offensive core in place, upgrading the pitching staff was the obvious move for the team this winter, and pairing Greinke with Madison Bumgarner at the top of the rotation would have given the team one of the best pitching duos in baseball. However, their dreams of landing Greinke were dashed when the Arizona Diamondbacks came in and blew away the competition, offering a six year and guaranteeing $206 million in salary; neither the Dodgers nor the Giants were reportedly anywhere close to that number.
Over the last couple of weeks, their backup plan has come into focus; sign two good pitchers instead of one great one. First, it was Jeff Samardzija, and then yesterday, it was Johnny Cueto, with the team agreeing to guarantee $220 million to the pair over the next six years; significantly more than they were willing to spend on Greinke by himself, in fact. And this brings up an interesting question: since the Giants apparently had $220 million to spend on starting pitching this winter, would they have been better off just outbidding the Diamondbacks to land the ace they wanted, or is spreading the wealth around a better plan?
Let’s start where we usually start; the projections. But since we’re dealing with a two-or-one question, we don’t just want to look at the individual forecasts for Greinke, Cueto, and Samardzija, but the combined performance the Giants should have expected from Greinke and the cheap option who would have still had a rotation spot in the sign-the-ace plan; in this case, that would be Chris Heston. Heston will still likely make some starts for the Giants next year, since every team needs more than five starters to get through the season, but he’s the one getting the diminished role due to the team adding two starting pitchers, so we’ll compare Cueto and Samardzija to Greinke and Heston.
Here’s how Steamer projects the two pairs of pitchers for 2016, with the caveat that Steamer’s current projection for Heston includes mostly bullpen work, so his projection was manually altered to reflect his expected production as a full-time starter, putting him at about a +1 WAR level.
| Pitchers | IP | H | ER | BB | K | WAR |
| Johnny Shark | 402 | 374 | 148 | 96 | 345 | 5.9 |
| Chrack Greston | 389 | 365 | 146 | 105 | 336 | 5.5 |
In the short-term, the numbers are pretty similar, with Samardzija and Cueto expected to throw more innings, since Heston isn’t necessarily a guy you can count on to pitch deep into games. In both scenarios, one of the two pitchers has a recent history of beating his peripherals, while the other has a history of underperforming them — though in a much smaller sample in Heston’s case — so the expected variance from their overall FIP-based WAR shouldn’t be dramatic, though you might give a slightly larger edge to the Johnny Shark combination since Cueto’s positive ERA-FIP divergence has been larger than Samardzija’s negative gap. If you’re convinced Cueto can continue to beat his FIP by a significant degree going forward, maybe Johnny Shark is more like a +6.5 WAR tandem for 2016.
But as I noted right before Greinke chose to pitch in Arizona, his value goes beyond what he does when he throws the ball off the mound. Greinke has become an excellent defensive pitcher, and he’s also been the best hitting pitcher in baseball over the last three years. Cueto and Samardzija, on the other hand… well, just take a look for yourself.
| Pitchers | PA | BA | OBP | SLG | wOBA | wRC+ |
| Chrack Greston | 277 | 0.237 | 0.277 | 0.330 | 0.269 | 72 |
| Johnny Shark | 260 | 0.144 | 0.157 | 0.179 | 0.150 | -17 |
Obviously, the Greinke/Heston numbers are skewed towards Greinke’s at-bats, and splitting those at-bats closer to 50/50 would drag down their combined numbers a good amount. But it’s pretty clear that the Greinke/Heston combination would have made up a decent amount of the gap in pitching value with their offense, as Samardzija and Cueto are basically replacement level hitting-pitchers. Factoring in the offensive value gained by adding Greinke’s bat, I think we can wipe out most, if not all, of the previous advantage given to the Johnny Shark duo. Of course, Heston will still pitch some innings even with Cueto and Samardzija around, and those innings would have to go to some less effective depth piece in the Greinke scenario, so there is still an argument for the team to be slightly ahead in the short-term by adding two good pitchers instead of one great one.
But this wasn’t a one year decision. The Giants walked away from Greinke because of the sixth guaranteed year, so it seems like they preferred to avoid paying a significant salary to a pitcher in his late-30s. They did guarantee the sixth year to Cueto, but he’s two years younger, so it’s a slightly different calculation. So for an apples to apples comparison, we need to look at the long-term expected performances for both sets of pitchers.
And this is where the Greinke path might have a real advantage. Jeff Zimmermann’s work with aging curves suggests that Greinke, Cueto, and Samardzija are all in the part of their careers where they should be expected to lose about half a win per season of value, while Heston is young enough to still have a flat aging curve for another few years. So, the Greinke/Heston combination would only be expected to decline by about half a win per season for the next few years, while Cueto/Samardzija would lose a win per year. In table-form, the overall future projections would look something like this.
| Years | Johnny Shark | Chrack Greston |
| 2016 | 6.5 | 6.0 |
| 2017 | 5.5 | 5.5 |
| 2018 | 4.5 | 5.0 |
| 2019 | 3.5 | 4.0 |
| 2020 | 2.5 | 3.0 |
| 2021 | 0.5 | 2.0 |
| Total | 23.0 | 25.5 |
Longer-term, the spread-the-risk option actually performs worse, since both Cueto and Samardzija are already in their decline phases, while Heston might be able to hold onto more of his current value for a bit longer. And, of course, going with Greinke offers the flexibility to pivot away from Heston in case he performs poorly, as the team isn’t locked in to just his performances like they are with a guy on a guaranteed deal. The flexibility to mix-and-match in the second rotation spot would have given the Giants more options, but now they’re more locked in to betting on two specific pitchers.
Now, there are a million assumptions and oversimplifications in this analysis, and reasonable people could disagree with any number of them. Samardzija clearly was paid a premium for the quality of his stuff, and if the Giants believe that they can unlock a higher level of performance by putting him with Buster Posey and Dave Righetti, then there’s upside with the Johnny Shark duo that Greinke and Heston probably don’t offer. But, on the other hand, this also doesn’t factor in Cueto’s opt-out clause; the scenario where the Giants end up paying the whole $220 million likely returns less than the +23 combined WAR shown above, since Cueto probably only opts into the final four years of his deal if he gets hurt or struggles the next two years.
I don’t think it’s entirely clear that one path was definitively better for the Giants than the other, especially since Heston now gives them a quality #6 starter, and depending on the health of Jake Peavy and Matt Cain, he might not throw that many fewer innings than he would have had he entered the year as the team’s #5 starter. There are positives and negatives to both paths, and in the end, the Giants chose to diversify their assets rather than putting in a big bet on one premium player. Bets like that have paid off plenty of times in MLB, since star players aren’t that much more valuable than regular good players in baseball.
But despite getting two arms instead of one, I’m not so sure the Giants actually ended up with less risk. Cueto’s opt-out means that they’re only paying $220 million when his deal looks like a mistake, while they could have spent $210 million on Greinke — giving the other $10 million to Heston during his arb years — and reaped the entirety of the rewards if he aged well. With no opt-out for Greinke, plus the fact that he was willing to defer a significant amount of the money he received from Arizona, I think it’s possible that the Giants may have been better off just rolling the money they paid for Cueto and Samardzija into a single big contract for Greinke. Yeah, six years for a 32 year old coming off a season where his ERA was unsustainably low was a risky proposition, but Samardzija and Cueto aren’t the safest of bets either, and by giving Cueto an opt-out, they’ve limited the upside they’ll get from spreading the wealth.
In the end, the wisdom of this decision probably comes down to whether or not Samardzija’s 2014 performance represented a real level of potential that the Giants can unlock. If they can get him back to close to a +4 WAR pitcher, then this decision will work out just fine, even if Cueto struggles or opts-out after the second year. If Samardzija continues to tease more than perform, though, the Giants may end up looking back and wishing they would have just given Greinke the sixth year instead.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
its there an benefit for injuries. if you lose greinke you’re screwed but if you lose Cueto or Shark, you may be able to still contend.
Exactly what I came in to reply. Though I would guess part of the argument is that risk is always factored into the contract amounts, but it does seem like there would be a significant benefit to paying for similar production but hedging that in the case of an injury, only half the value is lost.
The odds of losing 6 WAR go down significantly but the odds of losing 3 WAR go up.
I wanted to do more than ‘+’ this. Hence this ‘Yay!’ repost.
Yes, understood, though if we look at this in haphazard numbers:
If Cueto is a 20% risk for serious injury in 2016 and Shark and Greinke are 10% (just loose numbers based on recent history), then certainly your chance of a moderate (3+ WAR) loss is increased two-fold, but your chance of a more catastrophic loss (6 WAR) is reduced by five times (10% vs. 2%). Still think that has to be worth something in the calculation, especially when the projections show a fairly close output.
By your own loose estimates, the chance of a 3+ WAR loss goes up from 10% to 28%, while that of a 6 WAR loss goes from 10% to 2%.
Yes, sorry, it would be 28% vs. 10% … so it does even out some vs. the 6 WAR loss. Still imagine it is a small consideration.
The value of a single win doesn’t go up linearly either, which plays a role in addressing the question of whether it is better to put all (or most) your WARs in one basket or two.
Good analysis, though I’d add the protection against injury that the Giants have procured here. An injury to Greinke makes that entire deal a loser, but here the Giants have a second UCL of defense. The downside of losing 1/2 of Johnny Shark is 3 WAR at 220M; the downside of losing 1/2 of Chrack Greston could be 1 WAR at 220M. Which is, of course, always the matter when talking stars/scrubs v. a more balanced team, and the inverse is that concentrating value in Greinke allows them to put someone better than Heston in that 5th slot if the possibility arises. But when dealing with 30+ year old pitchers, the injury concern is especially acute.
Actually, they have a third UCL of defense, in Chris Heston. It’s not like he’s going anywhere (unless they trade him), so in reality Heston is the new replacement player in SF if there’s an injury, which I suspect is a pretty sharp upgrade over whoever they’ve got as their Ryan Vogelson/Yusmeiro Petit swing starter dude.
Greinke is not the best hitting pitcher in baseball, how does someone write that on an article about the Giants, no less. The best hitting pitcher would be Madison Bumgarner. That being said, I’ll take Johnny Shark over Greinke any day. As long as Cueto is healthy he is almost just as good if not as good as Greinke.
False. Over the last 3 years, Grienke has an 87 wRC+ to Bumgarner’s 73. Bumgarner hits more HRs but also has a 37.7% K% and a .250 OBP compared to 16.1% and .300 for Grienke.
They are clearly the top two, however.
I love that Greinke has a better than league average K%
I love how you declare something to be false be cherry picking stats to back your point.
Sure, Greinke’s been better over three years. That’s partially because Bumgarner wasn’t a good hitter until two years ago.
If you look just at the past two years, Bumgarner’s clearly better. Or if you want to look at three years, then you should at least weight the more recent years more heavily.
Beyond that, Greinke seems to be in decline as a hitter, not surprising since he’s in his 30s.
So using the last two years isn’t cherry picking but using the last three years is?
The only reason Bumgarner has been “good” the last two years is because of his nine homeruns. He still rocked a 33% K% last year and had a HR/FB% over 26% each of the last two years. Not good indicators of future success.
Actually Sean, Bumgarner’s HR/FB rate was 16.7% in 2014 and 23.8% last year. That 20% combined over the past 2 seasons might still seem unsustainable but it’s not really out of line with the likes of Chris Davis or other all-or-nothing sluggers of the past. Which is exactly what Bumgarner is as a hitter. Forget he’s a pitcher for a minute and just remember that he’s 6’5″, 240, carries a log to the plate and swings for the fences every time. Are you really trying to suggest that it’s only luck when a hitter like that has more of his fly balls leave the park?
Also 3 year stats windows are fine as long as you remember that 3 years ago Bumgarner was only 23. So, sure it’s possible that he’s outperformed his true talent as a hitter these past 2 seasons. But it’s also possible it just took him a little longer to get his timing and confidence at the plate than it did on the mound and there’s nothing fluky about it. My guess is that most teams around baseball think it’s the latter and you’re going to see that more and more in the way he’s pitched going forward.
I love me some El Jimador (the tequila).
But is there a reason why you’re using BREF’s HR/FB%? But I’ll use BREF’s stats here.
And to put Madison Bumgarner in the same category as sluggers like Chris Davis is laughable. But to answer your question: yes, there is a lot of luck for Bumgarner’s HR/FB%. The league average for HR/FB% last year was 6.9% (per BREF). Giancarlo Stanton led qualified hitters last year with 20% and Bumgarner was still higher. This is not sustainable and needs to be regressed heavily.
It’s pretty clear that Bumgarner has shifted to trying to hit a dinger every at bat – his pull% has gone from 26.5% to 58.8% over the past three years. But that doesn’t necessarily make him a good hitter. Regress his HR/FB% to something closer to average and suddenly he’s lost 3 HRs last year. Without those two homeruns, his offensively value drops quickly (he only had 19 hits last year). We’re dealing with small sample sizes, but there is not a lot to like for Bumgarner going forward.
Any good analysis looks at the data numbers from a variety of different angles. Looking at just one angle (3 years) and then drawing a conclusion from that single angle is cherry picking. I was simply pointing out a few alternative angles that could be considered if one were interested in being more thorough and not cherry picking.
Just wanted to say this article missed out on a golden opportunity to use the nickname “Sharkcueto.”
And “Mr. Heinke” for the other combo
It’s the love child of Heinie Manush and Tom Henke!
But the Giants still have Heston, so the a fairer comparison would be at worst Grienke + Heston as starters versus Cueto and Shark as starters with Heston as a reliever.
But realistically, Heston was the teams second best starter last year. Looking at the leaderboard of Giants starters, only Bumgarner, Heston and Peavy had a WAR over 1.0 (or even 0.3). The combination of Lincecum, Hudson, Petit, Leake, Vogelsong and Cain combined for 80 starts. These pitchers combined for a WAR of -0.4. It seems that signing 2 pitchers instead of 1 is unlikely to anything other than displace replacement level (or even sub-replacement level) starts.
This. Especially as time goes on. Peavy and Cain will be gone after years 1 and 2 or 3 of these deals, respectively, likely pushing Heston into a start roll full time.
And if Heston is better than replacement value, the Giants will get him substancial innings somehow no matter what.
Isn’t this the reason we use replacement level? What’s the point of keeping a 1-2 WAR pitcher in AAA? Even if that’s what the Giants would do, then they should trade him for something else they will actually use.
Sorry, but I think Dave swung and missed on this one.
I feel certain that Chris Heston will not be starting for the Giants in three years. Some combination of Tyler Beede, Phil Bickford, Clayton Blackburn, Chase Johnson, Adalberto Mejia, and Sam Coonrod will have pushed him out of the way.
Excellent article. Other than that what really happened was, “crap, we lost out on Plan A; now we better make really sure we get Plan B!!” And so the (rather mild) overpay.
Something the article kind of glossed over, and I think is one of the more important aspects in comparing Cueto + Sharky vs Greinke + Heston, is that the Giants depth is much better with C+S. They still have Heston as an at least capable #5 if anyone goes down with injury. In the Greinke scenario, Heston is assumed to be locked into the rotation and an injury to any starter would likely be much more damaging to the Giants chance of making the postseason. And as was already mentioned, losing Greinke specifically would be devastating.
Also in the “Long Term Projections” table, why do we assume that Heston no longer exists on the Cueto+Sharky side? If those 2 are only combining for a grand total of 3 WAR over their final 2 seasons, Heston might actually be a better option, no? In any case he might be a better option than whoever else it is assumed that the Giants have slotted into their #5 spot.
Anyway the points is, with the Cueto/Sharky signings its not like Heston just disappears and is no longer allowed to contribute any value in the future.
Or more to the point, if they are only contributing a combined 3 WAR over the final 2 years its likely due to injury in which case we have to assume Heston would be providing more value (since in teh greinke scenario we assume he is still in the rotation.)
basically the tables should show:
Cueto + Sharky + Heston (projected relief+ starter fill in innings)
and
Greinke + Heston (full time starter innings)
The other consideration here is that SF doesn’t really have many good options for LF: Sign another FA and blow through the luxury tax threshold, use Blanco and one of Parker/Williamson, trade from a fairly thin farm system for someone?
I beat this drum in the comments section of Sarris’ earlier article on Evans dumping Aoki and Petit. Putting Petit aside, it was a real head-scratcher as to why they let Aoki go. Even moreso now, given that they’re seemingly out of the running for a FA LF.
I don’t think you use Heston as the replacement level. You use replacement level as replacement level. If Heston’s healthy and reasonably effective, he will get his innings in.
Seriously, the man is projected to be worth .7 WAR over 81 IP now with Shark and Cueto on the roster. Why does that disappear in the analysis above?
If ifs and buts were candy and nuts we would all have a merry Christmas!
I’m sorry, but this article is an embarrassment to FanGraphs. The writer assumes that Chris Heston magically disappeared after Cueto was signed. This is not the case, and Heston is still going to be a valuable commodity for the Giants.
This is by far the most egregious error of the article, as the writer does not take into account Cain or Peavy and their injury histories. Cain has missed a few years now, and he has not been good since 2012; similarly, Peavy also missed substantial time, and he is in the last year of his contract. Peavy is 34.
Basically, there is a good chance that the Giants will use Heston as a fifth starter. This writer seems to think that Peavy and Cain will start 64 games this year and will be serviceable players. This is an unwarranted assumption after looking up basic biographical information.
Better would have been if the writer had evaluated the free agent market next year and made assumptions on what to do after Peavy left or Cain’s bone chips started chirping again. But the writer also missed the ball on this, as well.
If you want to talk about Cueto’s peripherals, you have to bring up the tunnel-vision of this article. It does not address the fact that a starting rotation is made up of five players. And if you want to dip deeper to vindicate the article, you will also be at a loss, as the Giants’ farm system is mostly comprised of starters masquerading as relievers. The Giants also love to collect pitchers with injury problems, so some of those starters will not pan out at all.
So while the article mentions diversification, it fails to take into account Cain’s injuries, Peavy’s age, and Heston’s existence.
You: A lot of words complaining about how Cain and Peavy are unreliable and Cameron forgot about Heston.
Article: “…especially since Heston now gives them a quality #6 starter, and depending on the health of Jake Peavy and Matt Cain, he might not throw that many fewer innings than he would have had he entered the year as the team’s #5 starter.”
I will thank you for at least using paragraphs.
Where can I find the defensive metrics for pitchers? I feel like this should be on the same page as any pitcher in the search settings
Heston really shouldn’t have been paired with Greinke as the “other” option, because after Peavy finishes his final year in SF, Heston will be joining the rotation in his place. So the Giants rotation for all but 1 of these future 6 seasons will include Heston anyways.
The odds might be slightly better for Greinke/Heston over Cueto/Samardzija, but beating the Diamondbacks offer could have taken much more than 206 mil. CA income tax is over 13%, while AZ is a just 4.5%. Greinke might have required SF to go 9% higher to counter the extra taxes, which would have made the deal utterly outrageous, and financially irresponsible.
I think the Giants bought low on a couple of talented pitchers who didnt leave the 2015 season with a great last impression. A couple of wicked right handers moving to a lefty hitters graveyard in AT&T Park, coupled with Dave Righetti magic could boost any normal age related regression.
After AZ income taxes, Greinke will make about 197 million of that 206. If the Giants had been willing to offer the same 206 million, he would only make about 178 million. Thats a 19 million dollar deduction, even IF the Giants were willing to jump up to match AZ.
Its very possible that Greinke told the Giants that they would need to make up the 19 million dollar gap and give him 225 mil, which is miles apart from the Giants original top offer. That would place him at 195 mil. after taxes. So technically the Giants would have had to pay Greinke 227 million to match Arizona’s net pay.
That puts Greinke’s yearly average salary at 38.7 mil. through his age 38 season. The Giants just couldn’t have responsibly made that offer.
All this is just an estimation obviously. You only get taxed on the rate for the state you play each game in. But im just basing it on the majority.
Greinke had a career year, both Cueto and Shark had sub par years. I expect Greinke to get worse, now that he is the key to that staff and both Cueto and Shark to get better. If Cain and Peavey produce at all, this pitching staff will be great.
Exactly, why is everyone going go apes**t over Grienke? And why can’t anyone spell Peavy?
The amp company ruined it for him.