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

11.24.2008
¿Adiós, Torpedero Furcal?

Spanish-language paper El Caribe spoke to Rafael Furcal, who said the A’s have offered four years, $48 M, with a couple more million in incentives. Furcal told the paper he’s coming back to the U.S. this week to sign a contract but was careful not to commit himself to a specific team. He also name-dropped the Mets, who apparently would play Furcal at second base. (An English interpretation of the Caribe story is here. Thanks to MLB Trade Rumors — who else?? — for the tip.)

If this is an attempt to smoke out competing offers, it’s interesting that the player, not his agent, is doing it. The inclusion of the Mets here makes me think it is posturing. Why the hell would Furcal, still a prime defensive shortstop, sign a long-term contract to play second base? (Unless the Mets have told him they would move Jose Reyes — not likely.)

If it’s true, though, it means the Giants are likely to turn to Edgar Renteria or Orlando Cabrera. I am nervous.

If it’s not true, it raises several questions. Did Furcal really say what the paper reported, or was he wildly misquoted? If he really said it, does he really believe it? Did someone feed him bad information? If he outright lied to the paper, what does that say about his character, and will it knock his value down a couple pegs? I’m very eager to see what his agent Paul Kinzler has to say about all this — ah, here’s his first riposte. I imagine Kinzler is reaching for the Maalox with one hand as he speed-dials reporters and GMs with the other.

Also of note: Furcal is described as a “torpedero.” A torpedo boat? I thought at first it was overly enthusiastic poetic license, something akin to describing Furcal as a human torpedo. Turns out torpedero is common Spanish baseball slang for shortstop. I never thought of this before, but shortstop has no equivalent English jargon. Catcher has “backstop” and “receiver,” pitcher has “hurler,” “southpaw,” “fireballer” and so on, third base is “the hot corner.” Short is a specialized position, you’d think there would be slang for it. Am I missing anything?  
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18 Comments

| Leave a comment
bigO | November 24, 2008 2:32 PM | Reply

I DO NOT want Renteria, sustantivo.

obsessivegiantscompulsive | November 24, 2008 4:00 PM | Reply

According to MLB Trade Rumors, the agent has said that the report is bogus.

obsessivegiantscompulsive replied to comment from Chris | November 24, 2008 5:30 PM | Reply

I finally looked at Renteria's career stats and am not sure what the big deal is.

He appears to have one of those glitch of a year where a hitter could not figure things out for a while. He batted over .800 OPS in the second half of the year, once he figured things out.

Meanwhile, his strikeout rate was very good, as usual, and his walk rate was OK, above half his strikeouts. And that is both when he was doing poorly as well as when he was hitting, suggesting that the first half was a fluke.

The only question is his durability, not sure why he missed so many games the last two seasons. In 2008, he appeared to miss a few games in May, which is when his decline came, then he was poor in June and July before hitting .296/.343/.469/.812 after the ASB. But with Burriss around, that's not a huge problem as he could play there as well.

2 years at $18M, while I'm still getting used to such salaries, that is not bad for an average shortstop, and if we get the healthy Renteria, we would most definitely have a plus SS.

He doesn't appear to have hit his decline yet, as his strikeout rate is very good and walk still OK. He also hit well in 2007. He's just not consistent, like Winn is, year to year, but appears to be consistently OK over his career, even in 2008 he was above the average AL SS, and slightly below the average MLB SS.

Don't know how he is defensively, I've seen someone say he was, like, 7 plays worse than the average SS, which is not good, but not that bad either. I assume that was the Plus/Minus system. However, according to PMT, http://www.baseballmusings.com/archives/030070.php, he was one of the worse in the majors in 2008.

Still, if he can hit in the mid to high 700 OPS, I would think that he would easily make up for the poor defense over the under 600 OPS that the Giants SS put up in 2008.

obsessivegiantscompulsive | November 24, 2008 4:12 PM | Reply

Yeah, there are interesting Spanish names for baseball terms that don't exist otherwise. I learned that in translating an article talking about Vlad and Felipe Alou back when he was going to become a free agent.

Good question about SS. Not sure about a nickname for that position. Though I guess technically you could say that "shortstop" is the specialized term for it, wasn't it derived from something else?

Paul R. | November 24, 2008 4:21 PM | Reply

Shoot me now.

Dan | November 24, 2008 4:48 PM | Reply

Sabes got a fresh start and blew it. Renteria makes ZERO sense.

reeky | November 24, 2008 5:04 PM | Reply

Some comments from the MLBTradeRumors link above say it all...

Dude, why. If anyone at all giants should have signed Furcal. Lose a draft pick? How could that be a good idea when rebuilding

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It's the Giants dude. They are destined to fail.

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So the Giants decide the best way to rebuild is... by signing a terrible 33 year old SS.

Brian Sabean is a complete and utter moron.

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What a ridiculous move by the Giants. Just when you thought Sabean was getting it together, he goes out and does what he's always done... throw too much money at a declining vet in order to add to a very poor ballclub.

50andstillfly replied to comment from reeky | November 24, 2008 6:16 PM | Reply

+1

obsessivegiantscompulsive | November 24, 2008 6:27 PM | Reply

A second round pick has about a 2-4% chance of becoming a good player. Otherwise, the vast majority of the time, he has basically zero value, putting in less (much less in most cases) than the three years you have to put in to reach arbitration.

Worrying about this pick is even less productive than skewering a GM over the 25th man on the roster.

The Giants are almost done rebuilding. No rebuild is done without signing up free agent complementary players to fill gaps in your farm system production, the Braves did it, the Tigers did it, the Marlins did it, look at most teams who made the climb from rebuilding to the playoffs, see who they added, and free agents are valuable additions, even if they didn't quite make sense at the time, and particularly just before the team is ready to move from re-building to contending.

Which the Giants are almost ready to do, 2009 should be the final rebuilding year and 2010 should be the year we start trying to win with all ernest again.

He appears to be a low risk/high reward acquisition, his peripherals looked good in 2008 even with the decline, and he's not getting anything more than the market price for an average player when (when he is healthy) he can be a much above average hitter at SS if he .

I would prefer to see Burriss play SS, but the Giants have promised that they will be competitive in 2009 and adding Renteria (or another suitably offense-oriented MI) would help them accomplish this. And he would be a lower risk for injury than Furcal, in my opinion.

At minimal cost to the Giants, both in terms of draft pick and salary and years committed, I have no problem with this move, should the Giants do this at this type of contract, as long as they allow Giants prospects to fight for the right to start at 1B, 2B, and 3B, plus hopefully open up RF for Schierholtz.

Most teams will not commit to so many positions for rookies, and a move like this would create depth behind 2B and 3B, to cover should a prospect falter, which many do. Plus, we have no depth or viable prospects coming up at SS except for Ehire Adrianza and he hasn't even played full season ball yet.

obsessivegiantscompulsive replied to comment from obsessivegiantscompulsive | November 24, 2008 6:34 PM | Reply

"if he...": is healthy and producing again.

Even if he is injured or non-productive, we would have Burriss in reserve as a safety net. But he doesn't appear to have any serious injuries previously (not like Furcal's back), and so should not be any worse than what we got out of Durham all these years, relative to the average player at their positions, both offensively and defensively.

Essentially, I guess he replaces Durham's role on the team in recent years.

Pato | November 24, 2008 6:38 PM | Reply

I just checked my Spanish/English dictionary for a 33 year old past his prime shortstop and the translation is: Basura, Mierda, Tonto, Idiota, and nueve millones perdido por tener un gerente general sin cerebro.

Coincidentally there was a translation for Sabean as well: un comemierda desgraciado que no sirve pa nada menos cagar a los gigantes.

I have no idea what those translations mean but I seem to remember similar translations when I looked up Bochy, Felipe Alou, and "The Giants over the last 5 years".

Pato | November 24, 2008 6:43 PM | Reply

Signing Renteria is a great move for a franchise that is looking to create a few more vacancies in the stadium from pissed off fans deciding they don't want to show up to see a bunch of old crappy vets play bad defense and hit singles to right field every fifth at bat. Do obsessivegiantscompulsive and sabean still think we have Bonds batting fourth and just need to "fill gaps"??? Done rebuilding... don't you need at least one guy who can bat 3,4,or 5 before you can even whisper the words "done rebuilding"???

stevebtokyo replied to comment from Pato | November 25, 2008 9:08 AM | Reply

Great first sentence!

Peter | November 24, 2008 7:50 PM | Reply

I have a nickname for Shortstop..let's call it the LeMaster...hah!

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