A little over a month ago, right after the Giants won the World Series, I sent an email to ESPN's Baseball Today podcast. The question I asked: Did Barry Zito's performance this past postseason validate the 7-year, $126 million contract he signed in 2007?
The podcast's hosts, Eric Karabell and Keith Law, read my email on the show (very humblebraggy, I know). Karabell didn't completely dismiss this question but Law did, saying that two games could never make up for six years of a player who's only been worth seven wins.
I mostly agree with Law's sentiment if we're solely talking about value. Zito obviously hasn't been worth the astronomically high contract he was given and even a Cy Young-caliber performance next season wouldn't change this fact. But the Giants have won two World Series during Zito's career in San Francisco. Even though Zito hasn't been a key player in either 2010 or 2012 (his two great playoff starts notwithstanding), what more could Giants fans have asked for when Zito joined the team six years ago?
Let's say the Giants didn't sign Zito and spent that $126 million on a bunch of other players who all performed at a level that justified their contracts. If you told Giants fans that their team would win one World Series, much less two, in the the time period from 2007-2012, every one of them would sacrifice multiple other seasons for a chance to be champs just once. Sure, spending the $126 million on a larger number of players who each provided more value than Zito would have probably netted more regular season wins and maybe one or more postseason births, but two titles is more than even the deepest, most talented teams would expect in a three-year span (just ask the Rangers).
I haven't even mentioned Aaron Rowand yet, another head on the Mount Rushmore of Awful Giants Contracts. The Giants payed him $13.6 million to be a bench player on the 2010 team and payed him the same amount in 2012 even though he wasn't on the team. Zito made $18.5 million in 2010 while not even pitching in the playoffs. If you're scoring at home, that's $45.7 million paid to two players who were basically non-factors during the Giants' two championship years.
Rowand and Zito haven't been the only two Giants players with bad contracts during these last three seasons, either. This shows that A) the rest of your team needs to be smartly, efficiently crafted, B) being rich helps, and C) you need a lot of luck to win a World Series.
For every Rowand and Zito there's an Andres Torres, Marco Scutaro, Buster Posey, Madison Bumgarner, etc. who have performed incredibly well while costing a criminally low amount of money. GM Brian Sabean and the rest of the Giants' front office deserve as much credit for their drafting, signing of free agents, and trading as they deserve blame for their, well, drafting, signing of free agents, and trading. They've drafted players who never contributed a thing to the Giants, signed free agents like Zito, and made awful trades that have or might come back to haunt them. But they've also drafted a slew of great pitchers, signed undervalued players like Aubrey Huff (2010 version), and stolen trades like the ones that landed Scutaro and Melky Cabrera.
It also helps when you have a top-10 MLB payroll, as the Giants have had each of the last three seasons. Poor teams like the Rays and A's have to be extra smart about who they spend their money on if they want to contend, but the Giants can make huge mistakes and still sign the Bumgarners and Matt Cains of the world to large extensions.
All this being said, the Giants wouldn't have won either of these past two titles without a fair amount of luck. The on-field luck involved in baseball might be higher than in any other team sport, especially when you get into the small sample size that is the MLB playoffs. But think about how lucky Sabean has been in his "shrewd" signings and trades. Without players like Scutaro, Huff, Cody Ross, and Javier Lopez, the Giants might still be searching for their first title in San Francisco. Scutaro and Ross, especially, got hot at the most opportune times and will forever be know as heroes to Giants fans. I do think Sabean deserves credit for finding these guys, but I don't think there's any way he could have foreseen the impact they would have on his team.
To win a title, you need to be lucky and good.
So, to answer my Barry Zito question at the beginning: no, his contract is irredeemable, but it didn't prevent the Giants from achieving their goal. His two great performances in this past postseason certainly provided some value but didn't make up for the 150+ mediocre starts he made since 2007. If you're a Giants fan, you're happy about the titles but you hope Sabean doesn't make too many mistakes like this again because spending a ton of money on bad players isn't a winning strategy. Ned Colletti knows what I'm talking about.
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