San Francisco Giants Overpay To Bring Back Aubrey Huff

Only in professional sports can an established employee receive a 267 percent increase in salary.

Last offseason, Aubrey Huff signed a bargain basement one-year, $3 million deal with the San Francisco Giants. That deal turned out to be one of the best deals of the offseason as Huff produced a .290/.385/.506 hitting line with 26 HR’s in 157 games.

Huff got paid big time on Tuesday

Huff was a big reason why the Giants won the World Series. As a reward, the Giants inked Huff to a two-year, $22 million contract with a $10 million club option for 2013 on Tuesday. That’s a lot of boxes of ziti and a 267 percent increase in salary for a guy that nobody wanted last offseason.

I have no problem with the Giants bringing Huff back, but at $11 million a year? Really?

Now according to Andrew Baggarly of the San Jose Mercury News, Giant GM Brian Sabean got permission to match the contract another team had offered Huff. I am sorry, but I am calling tomfoolery on this one.

Unless it was Ed Wade of the Houston Astros, there isn’t a team out there that would offer Huff this deal. It doesn’t seem possible to me. I know the baseball economy has picked up, but it’s not the late-90′s all over again.

I would have been fine with Sabean giving Huff a two-year, $13-$14 million deal, but at $22 million, it seems Sabean is paying Huff for what he did last year as opposed to what he thinks he can do over the next two years. I have a hard time believing Huff is going to match is 2010 season in 2011 and 2012.

Perhaps the hardest decisions a GM has to make in any sport is after a team wins their sport’s respective championship. There is a fine line between keeping a team together too long and breaking up a team too quickly.

I understand Sabean wanted Huff back, but if that is true that another team wanted Huff at $22 million, then he should have let him walk.

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