The San Francisco Giants are World Series Champions — multiple times world champions in fact — in a very short amount of time. They currently occupy the ambiguous area where fans are tossing out the word “dynasty”, while everyone south of Santa Barbara and a pretty large portion of the rest of the nation is collectively screaming, “NOOOOOOOOOOO!”
The Giants have managed to cause this volatile debate with a nucleus of repeat offenders. In order to make that possible, a team has to keep their important pieces on the board, and away from the AL East. One player who meets this criteria is Pablo Sandoval, AKA “The Kung Fu Panda”, AKA “Hurricane Sandy” (I JUST made one of those up FYI.)
S.F. tried to avoid Pablo’s impending free agency with a reported offer of three years in the range of $40-50 million, erring on the side of caution because of Pablo’s weight and inconsistency. Meanwhile, Pablo wanted to use Hunter Pence’s five year and $90 million contract as the negotiation “spring board” that landed him in Scrooge McDuck’s money pit, and kept him in the Orange and Black. But both sides balked, a World Series was won, Pablo played a huge part in it, and here we are. The Giants have pried the wallet open, only now, Pablo has found some deep pocketed potential suitors because of his play. Pablo’s gamble to wait is going to pay off, but will it be Brian Sabean and the Giants signing the check? Is Pablo even worth the reported six years and nine figures he covets? What do the Giants do with the “hot corner” if Pablo decides to sell his soul to The Green Monster in Fenway?
To figure out what The Giants would be keeping or losing, we need to figure out just how “valuable” Pablo is, and not in Panda hat sales, strictly on the field. ONE of the best indicators of future statistics is to take a large sample size of past production. Pablo has been with the big league club for seven years now, and has had some productive regular seasons offensively. We can quantify Panda’s offensive production using “wRC+”, which stands for “Weighted Runs Created”, and is one of the premiere ways to display a player’s offensive value in actual runs — it even takes into account ballpark factors and the era in which the player was a contemporary (here’s looking at you, Mile High Stadium and Dante Bichette). The league average is set at 100.
Pablo was called up in 2008 straight from AA and put the league on notice with a wRC+ of 118. He backed that up in 2009 with a wRC+ of 146. For context, once you approach 160 you are in the elite-of-elite space (think: Mike Trout). From 2010-2014 he posted seasons of 96, 149, 118, and 116, and 111, respectively. These were also the seasons in which the Giants brass took note of his weight and injury struggles. In all of those seasons but one, he was producing runs near, at, or beyond all star levels when playing. In other words, even in seasons that Pablo was believed to struggle, he was producing runs at a rate most of the league drools over. But that’s only one side of the coin, and in order to find Pablo’s true overall value we need to look at his defense.
We will attempt to quantify a value for Sandoval’s defense using the “UZR” stat. UZR stands for “Ultimate Zone Rating”, and it puts a value in the form of runs that a player saved his team, or gave away, due to his defense based on league average. The league median is set directly at “0”, and anything at a “-5” or worse is below average — the “+15 range” is Gold Glove caliber (The kind Juan Lagares just won, not the Derek Jeter kind). We will only look at seasons in which Pablo spent a large amount of time playing third base, which is one of the more premier defensive positions. If we looked at smaller sample sizes the results may be skewed into a misleading direction. From 2009 to this past season, Pablo posted UZR totals of -3.9, -.5, 13.2, 1.0, -4.7, and 3.5. As you may have concluded, Pablo’s defensive value is a little harder to gauge because it is very inconsistent, with full and injury shortened seasons, one season in which he posted Gold Glove level run production in only 106 games, so take that with a grain of salt. But if we digress to an objective stance, and average his UZR production over a 150 game average, or a “UZR/150”, Pablo averages 2.2 runs saved above average per 150 games for his career. Not exactly setting the world on fire, but he produces defensively above average.
When looking at a player’s total value across the board the most common tool used to start building a case is the “WAR” stat, which stands for “Wins Above Replacement”. Just as it sounds, it gives a value to how many wins a player is worth against a “replacement level player”. Before we dive in to Pablo’s WAR value, and decide if it would be in the Giants best interest to sign him, we should acknowledge the fact that in this past season every 1.0 WAR a player produced, the league paid on average about 6.5 million dollars, (while most educated people around the game believe the value should be closer to $5 million per 1 WAR.) This is at least partially based off of market inefficiencies, or in other words, some of it is due to bad contracts. In either case, that is where the value was set in 2014. Pablo has produced WAR seasons of 1.0, 5.1, 1.4, 5.5, 2.6, 2.3, and 3.0.
As the rest of our stats reflected, Pablo produces inconsistently, but he absolutely is producing. He has a career average of almost 3.5 WAR if you exclude his 41 game rookie season, which is approaching all star production, and he has two seasons in which he is almost MVP caliber, and then he has a couple seasons in which he is just a solid, starting caliber MLB player. This is where the health issues and inconsistency stalled negotiations between SF and Pablo. Are The Giants getting the superstar, or are they just getting a productive player with assumed risk and overpaying him as he approaches the decline ages in the middle part of his deal? After another title run, and Pablo showing once again he has a superstar in him in the post season, the Giants have expanded their self imposed value of Sandoval, but after our research I have come to the same conclusion I believe we started with. Pablo is very good at baseball, but is EXTREMELY hard to project season to season. If the two sides cannot find common ground, what is the Giants plan B?
The Giants general manager, Brian Sabean, made it as clear as can be how the team felt when he said “We do not have a replacement in-house”. Which is true, the Giants cannot lose Pablo and replace him with any infielder they currently possess and have a strong chance to compete. If you replace Pablo’s WAR with even a high end role player, who would theoretically produce at most 2 WAR, The Giants would have missed the playoffs in 2014 and don’t even sniff a World Series. There is another option gaining steam, one that merits at least a hard look if Sandoval leaves town. That option is moving another position player to third base. This player is even more productive at his current position than Pablo has been. Yes, we are talking about former MVP Buster Posey.
Posey came through the high school and college ranks as a middle infielder, and decided to move behind the dish to best serve a quick route through the minor leagues, so he has the range. If you’ve ever seen him throw out a runner from the crouch, he easily has the arm strength. Buster has even shown to produce more offensively when playing away from the catcher’s position, producing a wRC+ of 160 playing first base, instead of a still excellent 142 as a catcher. This sounds like the perfect move at first glance, but is it?
In reality The Giants would be replacing what they lost, with something they already have. Moving Buster’s bat away from the catcher position hurts his value because he is already such an elite offensive talent at his position. Simply put, not a lot of catchers hit, and almost none of them hit at an MVP level. Buster also produces defensively at far above average levels in runs. Buster also proved his value throwing out runners at above league average rates despite his pitching staff having some of the slowest unload times in the game, not to mention Posey also helps “produce strikes” at an elite level through his ability to frame pitches. Once Buster’s elite level of play is removed from the position, The Giants would essentially have to replace his level of play with a replacement level player. The main reason the Giants are considering that option is because they actually have a young catcher named Andrew Susac they think has a chance to produce at this level.
What does all of this tell us? In short, it tells us The Giants have some tough decisions, they need to make sooner than later because they have told all other free agents they are on hold until Pablo’s deal is addressed. They could possibly lose some guys they intended to keep and then end up losing Pablo in the process. San Francisco has a wealth of value they need to figure out ASAP if they want to remain in a class of their own. I guess P. Diddy was right, “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems.”
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