Let's Go, Geezers

The San Francisco Geezers — I mean Giants — just re-signed 2Bman Freddie Sanchez for two years at a reported total of $12 million.  Well, the price isn’t bad, but it sure looks like Sanchez is already well into the decline phase of his career.

Freddie had his career year (I’ll give 10-to-1 odds on it) in 2006 at age 28, when he hit .344 and had a .851 OPS.  His OPS numbers the last three years have been .785, .669 and .742.  His games-played since 2006 have been 157, 147, 145 and 111.  He’s 32 in 2010.

The long and the short of it is that the odds of Freddie’s having two consecutive seasons in 2010 and 2011 in which he is a better than average (or even an average) NL starting 2Bman are extremely slim.  In fact, the odds are probably between 25% and 40% that the Giants will have the worst double-play combination (SS and 2B), dollar-for-dollar, of any team in the NL in 2010.  In a 16 team league, that’s not good.

One thing’s for certain.  The Sanchez signing does nothing to improve the Giants’ two biggest weaknesses on offense: the inability to get on base and the inability to hit for power.  In his five seasons as a major league regular, Sanchez has averaged fewer than 27 walks and 8 HRs in 533 ABs per season.  Yeesh!

Since the Giants are now set with Sanchez at 2B in 2010 and 2011, I fully expect Brian Sabean to make a run at being the General Manager who gets the honor of overpaying Jason Bay on a five-year contract.  At least Bay would provide some punch for the Gints in 2010 and 2011.