The team is filming its 2010 promo ads today at Mays Field. More pix at the sfgiants.com twitter page.  

My take: Lincecum's agent no doubt sees the King Felix Hernandez and Justin Verlander contracts (both about 5 years, $80 M) and wants the same or more for his client. But with Lincecum set to make at least $8 M and more likely $13 M in 2010, the Giants can wait a year, knowing their ace will have a record-breaking contract in his back pocket, no matter what. There's no rush to work out an extension, no matter how loud Lincecum's agent bangs the drum for one.

Even better, do as I did when I was a kid. I'd put the game on the radio, lie on my bedroom floor and toss a baseball into the air, catching it just inches above my nose. With each Giants pitch, I'd toss the ball up. My eyes were open, but my body was not in my room. It's amazing what a good radio description will do for your imagination. Let your mind's eye run free, and let Jon Miller's voice draw you through the door.

Swing...and there it goes! A soaring majestic drive, deep into the San Francisco night! That one's headed for Berkeley....! ¡Adios, pelota!  

And as we get ready to play ball yet again, look for a new ELM design. Fancy stuff, I promise. Meanwhile, I'll post intermittently in the next couple weeks, with a guest column or two to spice things up.

I also apologize to those who've sent requests to get on the blogroll. I've now updated the list. Welcome to the Dodger Hater, Paapfly, and Croix de Candlestick.

Also noted in the small print: Brian Wilson's 2010 salary of $4.4 M. He and the Giants split the difference between their filed arbitration figures.

His detractors say he should hit for more power, not be so passive at the plate. He certainly has the power; he's hit moonshots into the deepest parts of the Mays Field arcade. In fact the Giants' plan last year was to move him into the third slot and take a few more whacks. His supporters say he is what he is, a high-OBP guy whose talent should be put in the best context for it to blossom.

Stats confirm a couple conceptions about Freddie. He takes a lot of pitches, about 81% of all pitches he saw the past two years, compared to the league average of 75%. He also strikes out more than average. No surprise. But contrary to popular belief, he doesn't let a lot of strikes go by. The league average the past two years was about 65.6%, which is Lewis's career average. And last year, he swung at nearly 70% of pitches in the strike zone, or 4% higher than the league average.

Problem is, the past two years Freddie also swung and missed at pitches in the strike zone more than the average player. He's reading pitches as strikes, swinging at them, but not hitting them. This was most evident in his stone-cold leadoff streak in April, when he looked completely out of whack (more on this in a second).  

Defense is a similar game. His detractors see him as iron-gloved and ill-routed in the outfield. His supporters point to his UZR numbers and note they're quite good in left field given his reputation. He's fast enough to recover from whatever bad reads he makes, they explain; as for the clanks, well, all outfielders muff a ball once in a while, and unfortunately with Fred, each mistake reinforces a preconceived notion that his detractors have already formed.

So what is Fred? A decent leadoff option who plays above-average D in left field, or a shaky defender who can't pull the trigger at the plate? The debate is compounded by a question about his attitude.

Backstory: the Giants opened camp with Fred penciled into the #3 slot, but with Freddie getting on base at a .545 clip, Bochy moved him to leadoff on April 19. Ten days later, he was 4-for-31 with 15 strikeouts from the leadoff spot and he told Hank Schulman, "I don't know why. I'm just not comfortable right now. I haven't done it all spring. This is the first time. It's something (where) I guess I've got to start all over and get used to it."

That comment has been interpreted as a sulk, as begging out of the assignment. Did he beg out, or was he given no slack? He got thirty-one measly at-bats at leadoff after being told to prep for the #3 lineup slot all winter. How you feel about Freddie probably reflects on your attitude toward Giant management in general. Think of him as a tall, lean, Southern Rorschach test.

When the talk came to leadoff hitters a couple months ago, Velez/Torres were the official candidates in question, not Lewis. He's deep in the doghouse. Then again, there have been three DFAs this winter -- Bocock, Valdez and Guzman -- so if the team were ready to cut ties, they might have done it already.

I'm guessing his prospects of making the team are dim. If the Giants break camp with 12 pitchers and two catchers, they'll have room for 11 position players. Sandoval, Huff, Uribe, Renteria, DeRosa, F. Sanchez and Rowand are locks. Schierholtz probably has the nod in right because of his D. Velez will probably get a spot as superutility guy who doesn't do anything particularly well. Torres will get consideration for his work against LHP and his late-inning D. That makes 10. Ishikawa, Bowker, and Lewis will probably fight for the 11th spot. Fred's best chance to squeeze in might be for F. Sanchez to miss the first few weeks of the season because of his surgery.    

Sabean and Groeschner defended the due diligence of the medical department, saying they'd taken four MRIs of Sanchez's shoulder prior to the club signing the second baseman to a two-year, $12 million extension early in the offseason. Groeschner said much of diagnostic medicine is interpretation. "It's sports medicine. It's not black and white all the time." Sanchez hadn't tested the shoulder until mid-December because he was rehabbing from knee surgery. But when he began swinging a bat, the discomfort recurred. In an exploratory scope, the damage was discovered and repaired. Sabean said he doesn't have "any doubt (Sanchez) will be back on the field in due order and be the guy who we traded for."

Hank adds a bit more color:

Sabean was asked if he would have done anything different with the contract.

"Not at all," he said. "The degree of due diligence was done on the medical side. It shows the medical profession isn't perfect. . . . Nothing more could've been done. We checked out every medical question."

If Sanchez is late out of the gate, Bochy says Juan Uribe will be the starting 2B, though there's another option: Put DeRosa at second. That could free up another outfield slot, which could benefit John Bowker if he's on the bubble. Or Ishikawa could play first against right-handers, and Huff can play LF.

Final tidbit for today: Jesus Guzman is odd man out. If he'd shown a bit more prowess on defense, they might have kept him around longer to see if his bat was MLB caliber. still young and should get another shot, probably in the AL.  

---------------- 

I just caught this. More surgery for Freddy Sanchez. Don't be surprised if the "might miss Opening Day" turns into "hopes to return by All-Star Break."

I said my piece here about the Giants' evaluation of damaged goods (Renteria and Sanchez), and that was before the Giants signed Sanchez to a two-year contract extension:

Then in July, the docs signed off on Freddy Sanchez, who admitted recently he knew before the trade he would need off-season knee surgery. And he didn't even have a rubber mallet and stethoscope. Presumably the Giant medical staff had all this, and more -- they even had Sanchez in town while the deal was going down -- and they still gave Sabes the green light. Or maybe not. We dwell in speculation land here. Perhaps they gave Sabes the flashing yellow, and Sabes floored it anyway. If the docs said Sanchez was good to go, they were embarrassingly wrong, and if they said proceed with caution, Sabean showed no signs of doing so when he probably could have at least extracted some cash from the Pirates to help defray the costs of Sanchez's contract. 

Whatever the case, the Giants bought high twice on damaged goods, and it would serve Bill Neukom well to figure out who knew what and when before his general manager, whoever it might be, starts wheeling and dealing as the hot stove heats up.

Let's hope the beat writers ask some of those questions at the press conference this afternoon.

SMALL PRINT UPDATE: Molina officially back on the 40-man roster, but no word yet who's getting the boot. As of 1:30pm the Giants were sporting a 41-man roster.

It feeds back to my point a couple posts ago that unless the new ownership group has suddenly decided to buy a long-term membership in the hundred-million club, the situation won't last long. Either Zito or Rowand goes, or the Giants trade one or more of the young guys. Perhaps not this season, but let's look ahead at what happens post-2010.

Barring exercised options, five guys likely become free agents: Molina, Huff, Renteria, Affeldt, and Uribe. They represent $25.5 million in payroll. Best-case scenario, the Giants replace them with low-cost players that average half a mil in salary. That's a net gain of $23 million. But the best-case scenario is highly unlikely. Perhaps Brandon Crawford or Manny Burriss can become the starting SS, or Runzler can become the top bullpen lefty with another youngster taking the empty spot. But knowing this team, at least a couple of these slots will be filled with higher-priced vets. (For example, Pablo Sandoval slides to 1B, Mark DeRosa moves to 3B, and the Giants sign a new outfielder. In case you're wondering, Sandoval and Nate Schierholtz each have just over a year of MLB service, which means I think they don't hit arb until post-2011.)

Then add big raises again for Tim Lincecum, Brian Wilson and Jonathan Sanchez -- another $10 M to $15 M for the three of them -- and it'll take either very creative math or subtraction of a multi-million dollar contract or two to get the payroll under $100 M. 

Not that I want it to be so. If more payroll equals more wins equal more happy playoff fun time, then by all means. Perhaps Bill Neukom is willing to cash out his Microsoft shares to turn the Giants into Red Sox West (or Angels North), ie, a well-heeled ballclub that actually has a clue. Windows? Office? X-Box? Gotta get 'em all. I hear the Zune is the perfect stocking stuffer.   

Whether the Giants brass sees $100 M as a magic threshold or not, it's wiser to assume that pennies sooner or later will be pinched. And, barring a Sabeanic miracle that finds a new home for The Contracts That Shall Not be Named, the pinching will come at the expense of the young talented guys who are getting kind of expensive.

I mentioned Matt Cain as prime suspect #1 -- he's due to earn $6.25 M in 2011 and a ton more in free agency after that -- but Brian Wilson's first arb year, in which he'll be making somewhere in the four-mil range, snuck up on me. One more good year, and he's prime suspect #1a, especially if Dan Runzler or Waldis Joaquin or both have breakout years in 2010.

So instead of a Zune for my birthday, I'm asking for a rejuvenated Aaron Rowand who suddenly becomes the perfect trading chip. Look, Kenny Williams, it's a shiny shiny Rowand!  

Bengie's back, and he's going to be the 2010 opening day catcher barring a miracle. In my previous post I went over some pros and cons, but I omitted one good thing about Posey starting the year in AAA, as reader giantsrainman pointed out: The Giants can delay Posey's arbitration status if they slow down his MLB clock. As we've seen with Lincecum, Super-Two arb status can be costly. (If the Giants left him in the minors a few more days, Lincecum would have had to wait until the end of 2010 to hit arbitration.)

Speaking of arb, the Giants could end up spending $15 M - $20 M extra this year. Jonathan Sanchez will make $2.1 million. Lincecum will get either $8 M or $13 M -- no way he loses if it actually goes to arbitration. Brian Wilson submitted $4.75 M, the Giants $4 M, which surprised me. I thought he'd be more in Sanchez's range.

Now add Bengie Molina's $4.5 million. Unless he hits sudden decline -- a distinct possibility for any 35-year-old, let alone a well-used catcher -- the Giants know what they're getting: a sub-.300 OBP, a decent power hitter (for a catcher) whose SLG would be better if he didn't turn so many doubles into singles. FanGraphs likes to put a dollar value on performance, and believe it or not the Giants got more than their money's worth the past three years. They paid Bengie $16.5 million, and he gave back more than $29 million. Can he do it again?

Of four projection systems, the best prediction puts Bengie around his career average, which would be better than his offensive performance last year. I'm tempted to say that with more rest, Bengie might be a more effective hitter, but that assumes one of two stupid things: 1) the Giants keep Posey in the bigs as a backup, which makes no sense. 2) Eli Whiteside or some other banjo-hittin' backup gets a lot more PT, which would probably counterweigh any improvements in Bengie's game.

There's another factor that might shift Bengie's approach at the plate. He'll no longer be the cleanup hitter. So reports Hank Schulman: Molina will "probably hit sixth, probably will hit sixth in the order, where his lack of speed will not be as harmful to long rallies."

And where his sub-.300 on-base percentage and extreme double-play threat doesn't clog up the bases.  

As I wrote earlier today, I reckon Bruch Bochy is already looking for excuses to slide him up the order. But let's say Molina hits sixth, even seventh. Will less pressure to be the big bat make him swing at fewer bad pitches?

Am I grasping at straws?

Yes I am. Here. Have a straw.

Bottom line: If we could see into the future and know Buster Posey absolutely positively needs another year in the minors, I wouldn't mind this deal so much. Except for the price tag: Did the Giants really need to spend $4.5 M? Why not a little less and save a bit for a bullpen arm or a cheap fifth starter to add depth? Why?

Question of the day: Why? Discuss.   

- Lincecum filed for $13 M, the Giants for $8 M.

- The Giants have re-signed Bengie Molina.

- The....wait a second. The what just re-signed the who? It's from our local CBS sports guy who has broken other news this winter, so there's no reason right now to doubt it. It's a one-year, $4.5 M contract.

If it's true, here's the good news:

- There weren't any unsigned catchers out there any better than Molina with the bat. Sentimental favorite Yorvit Torrealba always seems to kill the Giants, but against everyone else he's been an embarrassing hitter, especially for a guy who plays half his games in Denver. Defense is a different question, and a lot harder to answer, but you'd think Torrealba and Ausmus would be better behind the plate than Molina.

- If Buster Posey isn't ready to start on Opening Day, at least Molina won't be asked to hit cleanup. He'll probably be the 7th-place hitter in this lineup, which makes the holes in his offensive game a little more tolerable. Then again, if Aubrey Huff stumbles out of the gate, and Mark DeRosa is hurt, and....Good God, Bengie Molina could be the Giants' cleanup hitter.

Here's the bad news:

- $4.5 million is a lot to pay a backup catcher. Which of course means Buster Posey won't be given much chance, if any, to prove he can start the year running the show in The Show. Which means, more likely than not, Molina won't be the backup catcher. Which of course means that Bruce Bochy will insert him as the cleanup hitter because of his proven track record of being the cleanup hitter.

Good God, Bengie Molina will be the Giants' cleanup hitter. 

Here's the best-case scenario: the Giants give Posey plenty of room to do his thing this spring, he grabs the starting job by the cojones and never lets go. Bengie Molina teaches the kid many secrets, starts on Sundays and against tough lefties, and hits several pinch-hit home runs to win a few key games. It's the best $4.5 million ever spent on a backup catcher. 

----------------

Sorry, I hab a cold.

So far, at 11am PST, we know this:

- Jonathan Sanchez has settled for a $2.1 million plus incentives, according to a Jon Heyman tweet. Chris Haft at sfgiants.com confirms the Sanchez deal.

- Another tweetmeister guesses Lincecum will submit a number between $12 million and $13 million, well below the $20 M-plus figure that's been chattered about.

- Still waiting for rumor, speculation, or god forbid, facts about Brian Wilson. He'll probably get something similar to Sanchez.

A larger point to keep in mind about payroll. Lincecum has three more years of arbitration after this. Sanchez and Wilson have two more. Aaron Rowand is on the books through 2012, Barry Zito through 2014. Matt Cain has a reasonable team option for 2011 then hits free agency. Unless the Giants decide to join the league's top spenders, something's got to give. I would say by this time next year, if the team hasn't somehow shed either the Zito or the Rowand contract, one or more of these young guys will be gone. My guess is Matt Cain. He's the right combination of talent and affordability that a team looking to boost its rotation will covet. He'll fetch in trade more than Jonathan Sanchez would.

It'll be an emotional moment, not unlike the Matt Williams trade. If you're not old enough to remember the Matt Williams trade, keep it to yourself. My arthritis will flare up and I'll be forced to make "get off my lawn" jokes. Neither of us want that.    

Like the guy who runs the abandoned puppy shelter, we need to prepare. Don't get too attached. First and foremost, it's a business. I also suggest getting a headstart on the bitterness that comes from knowing the Giants had to trade Matt Cain (or Jonathan Sanchez, or...) because of the unmovable Rowand and Zito contracts.   

"Not to bash (the Giants) at all, I just had to weigh it. Was it worth going there for a couple of years or just riding it out and seeing what kind of options were available? They kind of started dwindling fast. When (the Diamondbacks' offer) came out, when I first heard about it, I remember telling my agent, 'Let's try to get this done.' This is a chance that I didn't want to waste."

Regarding his multiple two-year offers, LaRoche said, "They just happened to be in places I wasn't excited about."

When I floated the idea a few days ago of LaRoche taking less money to play anywhere but S.F., some commenters said it was just an excuse Sabean & Co. have used to get themselves off the hook for not signing free agent hitters. LaRoche's comments prove that, yes indeed, some hitters would rather swallow rusty nails than don the orange and french vanilla. Too bad for them, we say, but I don't think we can automatically assume it's a shortcoming of the Giant front office anymore. Thank you, Adam LaRoche, for shining your little light of truth on the situation.

Here's a little more from BP's John Perotto:

"As a hitter, for whatever reason, when you're in a ballpark where you know you can drive the ball out from foul pole to foul pole, it just does something to your confidence," LaRoche said. "I felt that a little bit playing in Atlanta. I enjoyed hitting there. It was very fair. But the fact is, when you go into a place like Cincinnati or Philadelphia, some of these smaller ballparks where the ball travels well, your confidence is up. That definitely weighs on your decision."

If LaRoche rejected the Giants' offer thinking he could do better or even similar elsewhere, he badly miscalculated. Or his agent did. But for an agent to misread the market that badly would be shocking. Anyone who reads MLB Trade Rumors -- which means practically everyone -- knew that LaRoche had very few suitors: Giants, Orioles, Mariners...and Seattle was off the list once it traded for Casey Kotchman.

So unless LaRoche has in his employ the thickest agent in all of Baseball Land, I suspect other reasons. To wit: LaRoche didn't want to play in San Francisco. It's already happened this winter. Peter Gammons reported before the new year that Jason Bay unequivocally wouldn't come to S.F. Perhaps LaRoche hates S.F. for its weather, its location, its culture, its ballpark, whatever, so much that he was willing to risk losing a big chunk of change.

His ultimate landing in Arizona at the low guaranteed price around $5 million also shows that Brian Sabean either misjudged the market or knew he had to overspend to get his man. I can imagine Sabean making his first offer somewhere around $12 to $14 million, which is what LaRoche could end up making in Arizona if his reported $7.5 million option kicks in. LaRoche said, ha, you have to pay me a lot more to get me to come to your left-handed power suck of a bayside fog machine. So Sabes went to his max, and when LaRoche said no again, the Giants leaked it to let everyone know what LaRoche could have made.

This is pure speculation on my part, but it makes more sense than a massive bungle by LaRoche's agent. Who gets the last laugh? He still has to play here nine times a year.   

And lookee here: as soon as Huff signed, Adam LaRoche agrees to a deal with Arizona for a sliver of what the Giants offered.

Quick hit tonight: A few days ago, when Juan Uribe officially came back, I used the Pintonian Lineup Analyzer to project an extremely rough offensive performance of nearly 4.5 runs per game. Let's do it again now that Aubrey Huff is a Giant. I was going to present two different lineups, one against lefties, one against righties because of Aubrey Huff's left-handedness, but Bruce Bochy says Huff will play nearly every day and bat cleanup, a questionable strategy. With Huff's subpar career numbers against lefties, the Giants would be better served with Sandoval at first, DeRosa at third and Torres in left against the tougher lefties.

Oh well. Here's a possible opening day lineup against Houston (and probably Roy Oswalt):

CF Rowand
2B Sanchez
3B Sandoval
1B Huff
LF DeRosa
RF Schierholtz
SS Renteria
C Posey
P Lincecum

Using the Bill James 2010 projections for OBP and SLG, swapping Huff for Uribe would produce 4.5 runs a game over a full season, basically no change. Swap Posey for Yorvit Torrealba and it drops to 4.45 runs. That's still more than they scored last year, but it's unfair to assume the Giants pitching and defense will keep pace with last year.

From the Huff press conference comments, it seems unlikely the Giants will sign a free-agent fifth starter, which makes it more unlikely they'll trade Jonathan Sanchez, which makes it more unlikely they'll have the wherewithal to trade for a real hitter. It feels like 2005, except it's Pablo Sandoval instead of Barry Bonds surrounded by fungible parts.

For all the warm, fuzzy, cult-status love for Juan Uribe 'round these parts, let's face it, there's a real danger he'll regress to his past form of being one of the worst hackers in baseball. It's like his avatar is a non-blue, non-sexy Pedro Feliz. I haven't seen the movie, but all the kids are talking about it, so I figure a hip reference would go a long way to win over some new readers.

Back to Uribe: Last year's .329 OBP was his career high. Perhaps he's turned a corner, and he'll just get older, wiser, and more plate-disciplined! Would you like to share my magic sprinkles?

Most people in baseball were not tempted by the warm fuzzies or the magic sprinkles, and Uribe came back to S.F. for a one-year deal that pays $3.25 M despite giving the Giants $13 M worth of feel-goodness in 2009. I don't think this is akin to Adrian Beltre going all counter-intuitive on us. My guess is that everyone saw Uribe's '09 as a fluke, and the Giants probably did, too. Drip some truth serum into his ear, and Brian Sabean likely would admit he'd be thrilled if Uribe gives S.F. 50% to 75% of what he gave them last year.

So all this talk about Uribe starting every day at third base, don't expect that to be the final say, full-stop, period. Everything the Giants brass says this winter should end with an ellipsis...

Yes, Uribe was the starting 3B for much of the second half last year. But surely the Giants know about BABIP (surely! surely?!?) -- you know, a player's batting average on balls in play, which gives a rough showing of a player's luck -- and Uribe's '09 BABIP was .330, by far the highest of his career not counting his abbreviated rookie year. He's hit more line drives the past two years than he has since leaving Colorado, which might indicate the higher BABIP isn't just luck, but chances are Uribe will need a lot of continued good luck to repeat or come close to his '09 season. If you dig such things, two different projections systems, CHONE and Bill James, predict Nate Schierholtz will outhit Uribe next year by a wide margin.

With Mark DeRosa, Pablo Sandoval, even Freddie Sanchez able to play third base, don't expect Bochy to keep Uribe in the starting lineup there day in, day out if he reverts back to the slop hacker of the mid-aughts.  

That's not to say the Giants shouldn't have re-signed him. His defensive flexibility is valuable. His ability to hit with power is something most utility infielders completely lack. He's not an obvious lefty-masher -- in fact his splits in '09 were bizarro-world --  so exploiting Uribe's strengths is not a simple proposition.

With yesterday's press conference behind us, how about a little lineup fun (and feel free to put ironic quotemarks around the word "fun"):

CF Rowand
SS Renteria
2B Sanchez
1B Sandoval
LF DeRosa
RF Schierholtz
3B Uribe
C Posey
P Lincecum

Using this lineup analysis tool and the Bill James set of 2010 OBP and SLG predictions, the above lineup would score just under 4.5 runs a game, for what it's worth. In 2009 they averaged 4.05 runs a game. Also figure pinch-hitters and double-switches will boost the numbers from the #9 slot and give a tick more offense. I don't put tons of stock in the analysis tool, not to mention accurate stastical projections, but at least it's a conversation starter next time you walk into a bar:

"Did you know it's possible the Giants lineup is already half a run per game better than last year?"

I highly recommend this as a pick-up line, by the way. But I don't recommend using the phrase "slop hacking." Big turn-off.