Team-Friendly Deals: Pablo Sandoval

Hi, I’m Stuart. Ok, enough with introductions. Let’s talk Panda.

On Tuesday Pablo Sandoval signed a 3-year deal worth $17.15MM (with some incentives) effectively buying out his arbitration years and Brian wrote about it here if you haven’t seen it already. We even got a friendly little tweet giving us the breakdown of it:

Some of you might have heard people saying, “Well this here’s a good deal,” or “I can’t believe they did this — I’m so happy!,” or you probably heard the occasional fat joke about nachos and Krispy Kremes (really who gave him the nickname “Fat Ichiro?”). Whatever. Maybe you also heard people complaining, “He didn’t even make 7 figures last year!” to which you could put your hand on their shoulder (if they don’t like that though, don’t do it) and say, “MLB Trade Rumors predicted he’d get $3.2MM in arbitration anyway, so if anything we’re probably breaking even for 2012 on the Martial Arts Panda!”

When you look at Panda’s stats from 2009 and 2011 it makes you realize we could have someone pretty good on our team, which is kind of what made 2010 a little disappointing. His career stats:

Ugh, 2010 26 GIDP. Yea I remember that. But that’s not the point of this article. Take a look at that 23 HR in 466 PAs. Imagine what he would’ve had if he had say, 633 PAs. I guarantee you it would’ve been more than the 25 he hit in 2009. Also that OPS+ in 2011? (“OPS+” by the way, is like OPS which adds your On Base Percentage plus Slugging Percentage. The big difference is that OPS+ has a “ballpark factor in it” and averages everyone’s numbers so that an “average” OPS+ would be 100) Tied for 10th in the league with Matt Holliday. Here were the other guys:

Let me tell you what those guys made in 2011: Bautista ($8MM), Cabrera ($20MM), Kemp ($6.95MM), Berkman ($8MM), Braun ($4MM), Fielder ($15.5MM), Votto ($5.5MM), Gonzalez ($5.5MM), Ortiz ($12.5MM), and Holliday ($17MM). Pablo made $500,000. The company he’s in is not cheap. In fact, most of these guys get raises next year and to have a Powerful Panda Packing some Punch into the Pond in PMcCovey PCove at $3.2MM and an average annual salary of around $5.7MM for the next three years? You can just hear Mike Krukow in your head now saying, “That’s awesome!”

So, be happy, Giants fans. Management really did a good job locking Pablo down and don’t think management isn’t thinking of having Pablo stay for longer in the dojo known as AT&T Park for years to come. Because as Bobby Evans said, they have faith in KFP and: