Simply FAABulous

The Pecklers finally spent some of our FAAB budget, shelling out $32 for the Giants’ Closer du Jour, Tyler Walker. Like every move we’ve ever made, the Doc and I analyzed it inside and out all week.

I’ve had a long standing rule that when I see a player excel with my own eyes, it gets special weight over seeing something in a box score. I remember two years ago seeing Brian Fuentes strike out Barry Bonds with 3 hellacious pitches, and the sirens in my head went off saying that this guy is going to be a closer some day. I saw Walker pitch at SBC on Wednesday, and frankly, he stunk. At that moment I complained (again) that I could not believe the Giants kept him and sent down Foppert.

But there he was, on TV the next night, closing it out against the Astros. And again on Friday. Two clean innings in two days and two saves. The clincher was on Sunday, with the Giants being blown out, and everyone in the bullpen except Walker pitched. Felipe has been hinting he’s his guy. Clearly in a league in which the saves category is so tight, if you can get a guy who will get even 15 saves without giving up a player, you’ve got to take a chance. So the question was not if, but how much?

It’s early in the season, so a track record on values is not clear. The most interesting previous bid was when we did not get Todd Jones, the Marlins closer for 3 weeks, despite bidding $21. The Rips bid $24 and Hobo also bid $21. This was for a temporary guy. Walker could be THE guy. All of the other bids on Giant closers were purely speculative. Felipe has been really closed mouthed on the subject, though in today’s paper there a note that Walker is the guy for now. With his horrible numbers, I still don’t know why Felipe has chosen him, but it does appear he has. Will he fail? Maybe. But with a sub-1.2 ratio, we can afford a few ugly innings as long as he gets a few saves.

So we started in the mid 20’s, and simply kept raising our number until we were happy that if someone else got him, we could live with it. We picked 32 because we thought someone might bid 31 (a buck over the round number) and since we lose all ties, we threw in an extra buck. We figured the league would not be happy with us getting him (hey, you might not like our team, but we’re in first and we still had the full FAAB to spend), so that might cause teams to bid extra. I would not have been shocked if someone bid $60 on him, and it was exciting to check and see if we got him. First I checked the successful bids and there we were.

Then I checked the unsuccessful bids. How much did we waste? Among the losing bids was the Pounders 25 bid. Not bad, not bad at all, and a good team to keep him away from. Of course the Cartel had a bid of 17, as did the Old Rips (10) and Any 9 (9). I’m surprised there were only 5 bids. He’s local and he’s semi-annointed. Everyone in the league saw him. Of course, maybe I wasn’t the only one to see him last Wednesday afternoon.

Duaner Sanchez, best name in the NL, is now gone from our roster. I’m not a fan of lefty middle-relievers no matter how good their stuff is. They don’t get to close. If anyone is interested in a $1 Ray King, though we’re not going to waive him, he could be very available. And the clincher on Duaner – the Doc saw a note that the Dodgers might have him start. Ouch. No thanks. We thank him for his efforts while with the team and wish him well for the future.

Meanwhile, don't we all wish the Giants simply signed Dustin Hermanson (8 saves, 0.00 ERA) for this year? We sure do: we had him with a $2-06 contract. Coulda saved $32 in FAAB money.