Well, there are days lead me right up to the edge of giving up on hope for humanity.
I mean, seriously. How could the Giants resign Benjie Molina? I know, I was the one who was all in favor of offering him arbitration, and what we have now is something close to what we would have had if we did offer him arbitration and he accepted, which was my worst case scenario. But we declined arbitration, which meant that we were unwilling to take the risk of paying Benjie Molina six million dollars for one year, against a benefit of getting a draft pick. Instead, we have no draft pick, and we have signed Benjie Molina for four and a half million—with a million and a half extra if he starts a bunch of games (which he will, if he is healthy and Brian Bochy remains manager). Whoo. Hoo.
Now, it has become one of my Rules of Baseball Griping that a team essentially cannot be hurt by a one-year contract. And the Giants are not, at the moment, in a position where a one-year contract could hurt them much. They are a fairly good team, probably an 82-win team, maybe not that good. They may get lucky (either actual luck or the players-are-better-than-they-look kind of luck that isn’t actually luck) and get into the playoffs, but they aren’t a team that should be looking to Win It All this year. The difference between having Benjie Molina and Buster Posey (or Yorvit Torrealba) would be maybe a game or two over the course of the year. There is nobody they would be spending that six mil on that would improve the team all that much more, so for the most part it seems to be taking money out of the pockets of the owners and into Benjie Molina’s pockets, and that is that. And, of course, it’s taking from me the fun of watching a young phenom, but they have made their judgment that the young phenom is too young to be a phenom, and as much as I would rather watch the kids, that’s a baseball judgment that makes sense. And if they don’t want to rush Buster Posey, they have to get somebody, and for all that Benjie Molina is a fucking out machine on flat tires not a very good hitter any more, this won’t hurt them much for this year, and won’t hurt them at all in 2010.
But… but…; but… what were they thinking? This whole offseason has been an accumulation of slight improvements that won’t hurt much, can’t help much, and add up to the same amount of money they might have spent on a star. And the way they did it&#—give up a prospect in trade for Garko, and then dump Garko, and then sign Huff? What did we get for the prospect? Give up the potential of a draft pick to avoid being stuck with Molina, and then sign Molina? What did we get for that draft pick? These people have no idea what to do with their resources. They have no plan. They are flailing around in the dark, and they are going to flail themselves right out of their window of opportunity, because having the greatest young pitcher in a generation means you have a responsibility to use the rest of your resources to support him.
But year after year, we do this shit. It is disheartening and depressing, and the GM has two more years on his contract, and an ownership that believes he is worth keeping.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.