Changing Faces

One good contract season used to mean a contract for a few good years for an MLB pitcher. With the abundance of cash baseball has brought in the post-steroids era coupled with the revenue sharing plans, teams have had deeper pockets and an even stronger drive to edge the competition.

Following the 2005 campaign, Giants pitcher Jason Schmidt expressed regret when the San Francisco elected to pick up his 10.5 million dollar option for 2006. Back in 2001, he had signed a 4 year 31 million dollar contract with the 2006 option. Given his age, the same deal would have been closer to 50 million today.

It is most appropriately called the Steinbrenner effect. It's an acknowledgement that losing dollars is part of the process of winning. With a huge influx of dollars each season, the team can afford to take on long contracts and still guess wrong on a few. What does this type of competition breed? The over-appreciation of players.

A.J. Burnett, Kevin Millwood, and Jarrod Washburn were players with good years, but never dominant in their own right. Collectively they signed contracts last offseason for 140 million dollars over 13 years. Spending Cy Young candidate dollars, each player came up well short:

2006 Season
A.J. Burnett 21 GS, 10-8, 3.98 ERA
Jarrod Washburn 31 GS, 8-14, 4.67 ERA
Kevin Millwood 34 GS, 16-12, 4.52 ERA

With Toronto, Boston, Angels and more recently the NY Mets spending more dollars to keep up, the competition alone will continue to raise the value of pitching this offseason. What most don't realize however is that this is just the beginning.

Signing a new collective bargaining agreement just last month, both the owners and players association have agreed that the profit sharing system is working. It is allowing lower market teams to retain bigger market dollars. Certainly the Kansas City Royals will never be able to bid like New York, but they at the very least have the opportunity to sign a few long term deals. The affect is likely to be seen most amongst mid-market teams. Seven years with seven different World Series champions is unseen in any other market.

With any trend in spending, newer practices are being seen in retaining their younger players. Mets GM Omar Minaya was quick to act this season, signing both David Wright and Jose Reyes to multi-year deals to keep from losing them to free agency. Minaya knew first hand how prices could sore in the free agent market, signing both Carlos and Pedro Martinez to long term deals in 2005 and 2006 respectively.

Contracts are getting longer, less players are filing for free agency and all the while, one has to wonder how Billy Beane gets his team to the playoffs every year with a 62 million dollar payroll.

Perhaps the answer is in the draft, which is precisely where Giants GM Brian Sabean needs to start in his rebuilding process. Their farm system is known for producing great pitching but poor offensive players. They made a splash however signing 16 year old prospect Angel Villalona out of the Dominican Republic with a $2.1 million signing bonus.

The idea? Develop young talent and utilize their production in the years before the qualify for free agency. Billy Beane has been using this theory for years. Every free agent player is assigned a class, A, B or C. If a team signs a Class A player, his former team receives a compensation first round pick from the players new team in the upcoming draft.

Beane may have lost great players, however he was able to replace them better than any GM in the league. Losing up to 4 class A free agents this offseason, the next draft will pivotal in determining Sabean's future in San Francisco.

Bidding wars are going to continue and the free agent market is going to get worse. If the Giants are planning to get young, they need to start now. The question is whether the fans can be patient enough to see that it will take a few years. Going for quick gold the past two seasons, Sabean is already a few too many behind.

I think I speak for every Giants fan in saying, now it's time to catch up.