When the Giants Come to Town, It's Bye-Bye Baby

11.14.2007
The Story of O

Since there’s little else concrete to ponder Giant-wise right now except for the umpteen permutations of an A-Rod-less lineup or the trade package necessary to snag Miguel Cabrera, I’ve been thinking some more about the Omar Vizquel deal.

One thing in the comments last week kept nagging me: the bitterness that Omar got a raise. For the record it was from $4 million to $5 million, a paltry sum by current standards. And $5 million — for a starting shortstop with good-to-great defensive skills and the possibility of a pretty good on-base percentage and excellent base-running — is reasonable these days. So if you think it was right to sign Omar but took issue with the raise, sorry. No dice.

If you take issue with him being on the team at all, I’ll let Christina Kahrl of Baseball Prospectus make the counterargument:

While some might decry the expense, given a generally young rotation and sufficient statistical evidence that Vizquel's value on defense remains unimpaired by age, keeping Little O makes sense. If having a reliable shortstop in 200[8] and 200[9] helps Matt Cain, Tim Lincecum, and Jonathan Sanchez blossom into full-fledged acedom, you can sort of squint and see the outline of a plan not too unlike the Atlanta's turnaround in the early '90s, back when the Braves put a very similar faith in the powers of Rafael Belliard. However, even in his decrepitude as a hitter, Vizquel's still more of an asset than the Belliards—or Adam Everett, or John McDonald, or the Tony Pena Jr. types some GMs are turning to.

I’ll leave out the next part of her blurb which describes the rest of the Giants’ situation as “flat-out bad.” Graveyard? What graveyard? Whistle whistle la la la. Hum di dum di dum.
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[November 14, 2007 2:27 PM]  |  link  |  reply
Jim e said

yes, now all we need is dave justice, ron gant, terry pendleton and lonnie smith and we have a division winner.

the closest the giants may get to those braves is that it wouldn't surprise me if they resign 40 year old Mike Stanton who pitched for the Reds last year. humm baby.

[November 14, 2007 8:39 PM]  |  link  |  reply
obsessivegiantscompulsive said

Sorry Lefty, no dice to you.

Omar is 40 years old. From all the 40 year olds I've seen, I think Ted Williams is the only 40 year old who was able to have a clearly down year (1959) and then come back with a year remniscent of his better years (1960). Barry's injury year don't count, basically he declined and has stayed on that plateau.

Omar hasn't had an OPS as low as this for 15 years, so I think it's safe to say this is the downside of his career now we are looking at. He hit .255/.322/.339/.661 AFTER his horrible first two months, and was pretty steady around that mean, and the average for the league average SS according to baseball-reference.com is .273/.342/.436/.778. So he is much worse than the average SS.

The main good thing about his bad 2007 is that his BABIP was abnormally low, leaving the hope that he rebounds to .300 again, and have his OBP return to average levels. But it is my understanding that BABIP goes below normal when your skills and abilities go.

[November 15, 2007 11:12 AM]  |  link  |  reply
Sinister Dick said

Is Omar the first of several free agent signings of old players like Sean Casey, Geoff Jenkins and Mark Loretta?

Or is he just as the Baseball Prospectus gal posited?

If it's the latter, cool.

Why do I suspect Sabean will load up on the oldies again?

I want to believe. I really do.

[November 15, 2007 11:18 AM]  |  link  |  reply
BawLa said

Sabean must be a firm believer in the whole "40 is the new 30" BS that is flying around this deluded country.