Giants’ GM Bobby Evans on the Value of Flexibility
Earlier this offseason, the Giants decided to let two veterans go who’ve been valued parts of the team. Both Nori Aoki and Yusmeiro Petit were on reasonable contracts, too. But, as general Bobby Evans explained at the Winter Meetings Monday night, keeping them on the roster may have impeded the team in their efforts to improve. Timing is important.
Petit is projected to produce about half a win as a reliever, and that’s in 65 innings. He’s more of a swing man, so three-quarters of a win, a win, those kinds of projections are reasonable. He was worth almost three wins between 2013 and 2014. And he’s projected to make just over $2 million in arbitration, so he would still be a value.
The Giants had an option on Aoki for this year. They could have had the quirky left fielder for $5.5 million, and he’s been worth at least a win and a half per season in all four seasons of his career. He’s projected for a win. The Mariners signed him for exactly the same contract he had with the Giants.
The team could have easily kept both and been praised for holding on to valuable depth pieces. But they want to improve their left field and starting pitcher production, and holding the two would have made doing those things harder.
“Here we are at the Winter Meetings and we haven’t locked in a left field option,” admitted Evans, even while explaining the decision to let Aoki go. “It can land-lock you if you make the commitment early.”
Owning a four-win player on a deal that pays him like a four-win player is one thing. But owning a below-average player on a cheap deal isn’t the same asset. “His value on the market was probably very comparable to his deal,” admitted Evans of his former left fielder, “but that doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to trade him without taking some of the money.” If they were going to have to eat money to let him go later, it was easier to spend the $700,000 buyout and free up the spot now.
It could have easily been a $5.5 million decision later. While Evans is trying to upgrade his left field situation, other clubs are filling their outfield needs. “It could get to a point where by the time we say we don’t need Nori, we’ve missed out on his market,” said Evans. “It was easier to give him a chance to look around.”
“We leave ourselves open to options,” is how Evans described the situation, while also suggesting that “some of that could be internal.” Outfielder Mac Williamson was 58% better than his colleagues in the Arizona Fall League, and both he and teammate Jarrett Parker are projected to be about league average with the bat next season. The team could get similar production to Aoki for $5 million less, and not have to try to eat money to convert their older outfielder into a low-level prospect.
The internal options factored in strongly in the Petit decision, too. “The bullpen is an area of strength for us in the system,” said Evans. In Hunter Strickland, Ray Black, Josh Osich, Cory Gearrin, and perhaps Derek Law and Kyle Crick, the Giants possess hard-throwing relievers with quality stuff from both sides of the mound. “Petit for us has been an important part of our bullpen, but as you saw last year, the dependence on him grew more and more when we were behind,” Evans said.
Roster flexibility was also an issue with the reliever. “There could be a scenario where we look at a second starter and then move Chris Heston into a long man role,” Evans pointed out. “We don’t know that yet. To tender Yusmeiro at that point would have pre-determining who our long man is, and we weren’t quite ready to do that.”
The Winter Meetings are a heady time for a baseball executive. “You have to juggle all of it,” Evans smiled. “You never know which part of the needs are going to get satisfied — we’re dependent on a response from players and agents and teams.” And it’s that juggling that was made easier by two tough decisions earlier this offseason.
By cutting Nori Aoki and Yusmeiro Petit — two good pieces on reasonable contracts — the Giants have allowed themselves the flexibility to make deals with bigger upgrades at their position without having to figure out what to do with incumbents there. The way things shake down quickly, they may have found themselves with two veterans who possess little trade value. It may have cost them an additional $7 million dollars to cut that pair if San Francisco had tendered the two contracts.
And let’s not forget the value to the players of having this decision made early in the process. Instead of wondering what might happen to them, the Giants allowed the players, and their representatives, to use the winter meetings to drum up a roster spot and a new contract.
Sometimes even valuable players on small deals aren’t the right fit for every roster. Those roster spots and the dexterity they provide the team in an important part of the offseason are worth something, too.
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
I’m sorry, but this is a load of nonsense from Evans.
The Giants have a ton of money available, they don’t need to scrimp pennies the way Tampa or Oakland does. If SF strikes out on getting an LF option, they could have stuck Aoki there for another year and he’d be decent. If he was to be supplanted by one of SF’s internal options, great, make him a reserve OF and then bid him adieu next year or deal him. If the Giants land a big-name LF, trade Aoki. But I think there’s a chance, maybe a good chance, that they whiff on big-name OF. The worst outcome for SF is Mac Williamson starting in LF for the Giants on opening day. Or having to turn to a middle reliever that could be in AAA that you’ve rushed to the majors.
That same flexibility that he’s referring to can be gained by simply trading away players if SF is able to sign better players. I won’t even get into how odd it was that SF confined Petit to low-leverage/mop-up work, and that they apparently think he’s only capable of being a long guy. He had a rough start to the year, but closed pretty strong in the second half and didn’t see much in terms of competitive aciton. And his peripherals are pretty solid!
its not an issue of how much money SFG has. theres a difference between simply spending and spending responsibly, which also allows for flexible spending pst ASB.
Luxury tax begins at $189M.
SFG stands at $142.9M estimating Belt & Kontos arbitration deals. Jeff Samardzija will make $9M in his first season but its his AVV that counts towards luxury tax; Jeff’s AVV = $18M.
that leaves SFG at est. $160M, a difference of $30M.
signing a 2nd FA pitcher will estimate a cost at $16-18/year. someone like cespedes or gordon means another $16-18/year. not much room to avoid the tax unless you get creative and deal prospects for a starting pitcher thats under control.
so again, its not that SFG has a “ton of money”. Given their payroll & taxes, $30M is not really a “ton” when trying to sign high quality FA’s.
And in response to the above post, “flexibility …. gained (by) simply trading away player” is not an obvious solution. what players are considered tradeable that can provide payroll relief? All the players that other teams want are pre-arbitration (Panik, Susac, Duffy).
The Giants are at $148.5 AFTER Shark.
http://www.mccoveychronicles.com/2015/12/5/9854700/sf-giants-jeff-samardzija-payroll
Good post. To me having an off-season warchest of ~$50mm is a lot, or a ton, or however you want to characterize it. I suppose it’s all relative, it’s not a lot relative to the other teams in the high-payroll sandbox, but there are a lot of MLB teams that can’t even begin to think about signing Samardjiza responsibly, much less Shark + another big FA.
I think Aoki and Petit are peculiar ways of cutting costs at this point of the off-season, and I agree there aren’t many other options, but Casilla and Romo both seem like logical guys I’d move. They’re projected for a combined whopping 0.9 WAR, and together will take home $16mm. That could get you like ~80% of the way to an Alex Gordon.
yeah, but you cant really use WAR to calculate a relief pitchers value…
Teams don’t have infinite roster spots…
Who’s this Evans guy? What happened to Sabean?
Title inflation. Sabean was “promoted” to VP of Baseball Operations
It seems a little different from the other title inflations that have been so prevalent, I think there was a story recently that in this case it was more of an actual shifting of day to day responsibilities.
Hard to say. Evans did an interview after the promotion and said that his actual duties hadn’t changed. If there is a shift in FO responsibilities it’s a been a gradual one.
I think there is little to no trade value for sub win guys, as Evans says when he talks about having to eat cash to move Nori. If you want to improve those roster spots and would have to eat money to do so later, why not choose not to eat the money? Seven million to a luxury tax team is not chump change.
Perhaps that’s what the Giants thought, but it clearly isn’t true. Nori received the same salary from the Mariners as he would have received from the Giants, so it is clear that the Mariners would have taken him in a salary dump with no money involved.
Here’s a good breakdown of SF’s money situation, which pegged them at having 30-35mm to spend, pre-Shark.
http://www.mccoveychronicles.com/2015/11/13/9731652/sf-giants-free-agency-payroll-rumors
Shark eats up a little more than half that. It’s easy to see why they might be interested in Zobrist, as he’s a LF option (with versatility, obv) that’s going to be a better payroll fit than an Upton or Cespedes. But Zobrist wants to play 2B, reportedly.
So if Zobrist signs elsewhere…can SF even be competitive for a Gordon/Cespedes/Upton, who are all likely to be $20mm+? Does that leave with Parra? And if SF’s really intent on creating flexibility, why not deal Casilla or Romo?
It’s $30-$35M after Shark. They’re $41M under the projected tax as of today, per the following reporting: http://www.mccoveychronicles.com/2015/12/5/9854700/sf-giants-jeff-samardzija-payroll
Except that the Mariners would have had to send *something* to the Giants in that scenario, so we can’t say they would have.
But if Seattle was willing to sign Aoki for $5.5mm, isn’t it fairly reasonable to conclude that they would do some sort of trade where they swapped a non-prospect depth guy for Aoki and maybe a little bit of money?
A baby salary dump, if you will. And the very concept of a “baby salary dump” is a little strange on its own, but that’s a different matter.
@The UFO From Fargo –
The time and focus of the GM and the rest of the front office is also a scarce resource that has value, especially at this time of the year. Below some threshold of likely return, it’s just not worth screwing around spending the time trying to shop him after picking up his option.
40 man roster spots also can be a limited resource. Going to the Giants website, I count 38 players on the 40 man after getting rid of both Aoki and Petit. So the 40 man roster is nearly full even after these moves, and having Aoki take up a 40 man roster spot also has a clear downside to it.
Which means he had basically no surplus value.
Isn’t that what Asst. GM’s are for? DiPoto seemingly hasn’t slept since he got the Mariners job!
The Cubs seemed to be able to move Castro pretty quickly once they got Zobrist today. Surely they have an idea of who’s interested in Aoki. It shouldn’t take much to quickly move a player on a one-year deal, it doesn’t seem like a complicated transaction.
I’ll also venture that Nori Aoki, even at 5.5mm, is more worthy of a 40-man spot than Mike Broadway or Ian Gardeck.
Teams tend to allot more roster spots to pitchers than LFs anyway because *gasp* pitchers get hurt more frequently. Keeping a $5.5 million LF that the team doesn’t need on the 40 man, rather than an extra pitcher, is a great way for Evans to get fired.
As of right now, SF has 5 OF on their 40-man (they actually have only 39 on their 40-man as of right now). Three of them have significant MLB experience, and only two of them are any good.
For comparison’s sake, here are how many OF the other teams in the NLW have:
LA: 9
ARI: 6
COL: 6
SD: 8
My whole point remains that Aoki’s not nothing: He’s not ideal, but we’ve all had fantasy auctions, I’m sure, where you just end up whiffing on all your targets at a given position, and end up with a cheap option. And that’s a plausible outcome for SF here, I think. Aoki’s that cheap option, except you get him before the auction starts, and he’s fungible. Find someone better, and I think it’s evident from Seattle’s contract that he could be unloaded pretty easily.
I think Evans misjudged the value of both players here.
Obviously this guy is doing something right since he and the rest of the FO is brining home the hardware regularly. Best coach, best players, best chemistry = a dynasty.
Oh brother. The three rings are nice – doesn’t absolve them from boneheaded moves from time to time.
arguable
Without those rings Sabean, Bochy, Evans and the entire front office are probably working elsewhere right now and they’d be drawing 20,000 fans a game. I’d say all of their bonehead moves have been absolved quite nicely in their minds, as we’ll as in the mind of the guy who’s writing their checks, which is really all that matters.
It’s tough to see Petit go after what he did in the 2014 postseason, he was awesome (aside from setting a record for most consecutive batters retired in the regular season). He’s a really weird pitcher and it’s very tough to figure out how to use him, when he’s good he does it on control and an incredibly deceptive delivery. He just doesn’t have the stuff to be a short man but he loses his effectiveness the second time through the order, so long relief is his natural role, and you can’t very well build around that the way the game is structured now.
I fully concede that their might be something going on with Petit that we don’t know about, they certainly have more insight into him than we do.
But after a pretty crummy 1H, he had a very nice second half out of the pen, with a 22.5 K-BB%. You’re right that his deception is tremendous and he doesn’t have great stuff, but can’t deception be considered “stuff”, to some degree? I mean fundamentally, you’re still getting a hitter to swing and miss, whether that’s via how hard you’re throwing or how much you’re shortening the time that the hitter sees the ball, the outcome’s the same, no? I don’t see why a guy like Petit can’t slot in as a medium/high-leverage reliever, even though he’s not your fireballing middle relief archetype.
I agree that Petit could have been used differently but right or wrong it was apparent that Bochy only wanted to use him for long relief and to eat innings late in games when the team is behind (the same way he liked to use Mota at the end). While there’s value in that too, I tend to agree with Evans that there’s no need to spend any money on that when you have a number of arms in the organization who could fill the same role at league minimum.
They also declined Marlon Byrd’s 8MM option after it nearly vested (Evans saying he would play until the Giants were eliminated from contention) and they didn’t tender backup catcher Hector Sanchez. Neither of those players will most likely meet market rates (Sanchez had a 1MM estimation on arbitration).
The Giants have gone an extra step with players to try and find them a landing spot when they’ve DFA’d. They took Casey McG on a road trip to Florida for example. They also didn’t offer a QO to Pagan, it didn’t make sense at the time, but what happened was they didn’t want to hurt his value during his one big shot at FA, and he was able to come back to them for a chance to match. They have this type of rep in the game, its a bit different from other front offices. They also have long had the rep of loving veterans, but that isn’t always true, they’ve got the youngest (and only home grown) infield in the game.
Their outfield has always been in flux, and there haven’t been any home growns since Chili Davis. That’s a long time. But Sabean (and Evans) always go for the CF, and then build out. Of course they had Barry Bonds for a long time, but since that departure its been new OFs most the time, every year.