The Other Barry

The Giants signed Barry Zito yesterday for 7 years at $126 million, the richest contract for a pitcher ever. Any fantasy player will tell you that the Giants have chosen the riskiest way to build a team, betting a lot of chips on a pitcher.

Yes, Zito has been durable. And yes, he’s relatively young. But he’s likely to miss big parts of a couple of years of this contract. And because he’s been so durable, he has already pitched a lot of innings.

How did they end up here? Two months ago it was clear the Giants planned to rebuild the hitting part of the ballclub and go forward with their young pitching staff. Today they have most of the usual suspects in their lineups, and they have a brand new ace.

My theory is that it all goes back to the 2002 post-season, and the almost simultaneous signing of two free agents: Edgardo Alfonso and Ray Durham.

The Giants had just lost (blown) that 7 game World Series, and their second best hitter, Jeff Kent, took off for Houston. Their manager, Dusty Baker, was shunted off to the Windy City. They had some free agent money to spend, and they committed about $60 million of it to Alfonso and Durham over 4 years.

That didn’t work out too well.

Alfonso was a bust. He hit a total of 26 homers and drove in a total of 206 runs during the term of that 4 year contract, not counting however many he had in the minors. Nice guy, good fielder. Huge bust.

We think of Ray Durham as not terribly durable. His hammys are always giving him trouble. But he’s actually never had less than 410 at bats with the Giants, never hit less than .282, never had an on base % less than .356.

On the other hand, he’s never had appreciably more than any of these numbers either. He stole way less bases than we expected - he had 23 or more steals in each of the 7 seasons prior to joining the Giants, but no more than 10 since. He had a sudden power surge this last season with 26, but had only 8, 17 and 12 in the first 3 years here. He has never had 150 hits in a season in San Francisco, but never had less than that previously, other than his shortened rookie season.

To say that most Giants fans were disappointed that they re-upped Ray Ray this season is more than a modest understatement.

Sixty million bucks over 4 years, fifteen million a year. Had the Giants waited one season, that money could have bought them….Vlad Guerrero.

In 2003, Vlad entered the last year of his contract. The entire baseball world knew that he was going to be a free agent in 2004. Barry was coming to the end of his career, and the Giants KNOW that they must always have a marquee player on their roster for marketing purposes. When the Giants signed Alfonso and Durham, they doomed their interest in Guerrero. He signed in 2004 with the Angels for $70 million over five years plus a club option for the sixth year at $15 million. Suddenly that sounds dirt cheap.

I’m not going to mention that the last two years might have been quite different for the Giants had Guerrero been in their outfield instead of any of those old guys. Well, I guess I just did mention it. The point is as we prepare for 2007, if Vlad were in the fold, this team would be mighty different, and the Giants would not have felt the enormous pressure to make a big splash with the last big name out there, Barry Zito. Instead, we’re also stuck for one more year with the other Barry, and with Ray Ray and Peter Happy and the newly versatile Rich Aurilia.

Ah, what might have been.