Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Unpredictable Huff Lands Back in the Bay

Aubrey Huff resigned with the Giants yesterday, signing for $20M over 2 years, with a 3rd year club option tossed in at $10M with a $2M buyout. Huff was worth +5.7 Fangraphs' WAR last season, which makes one believe he'd easily warrant being worth $10M per. The problem is that Huff has had a crazy fluctuation in win production over, well, his entire career practically. Dating back to 2001 (he only had 129 plate appearances in 2000 so I'll just throw that out), these are his WAR totals, to give you a good perspective of how wild and unpredictable Huff is/was:

2001: -1.0
2002: +2.0
2003: +3.5
2004: +4.6
2005: +0.1
2006: +1.3
2007: +0.7
2008: +4.0
2009: -1.4
2010: +5.7

I think those figures speak for themselves, so to put it bluntly, it's quite difficult to assess what Huff will be worth over the next couple of seasons. Using a $4M per 1 WAR marker, his contract asks him to be worth +2.5 wins each of the next 2 seasons, or +5.0 wins in total. Huff was worth slightly more than that total in 2010 alone. Can he do that again? I'd highly bet against it. Can he at least live up to the contract? With the value of a win looking as if its trending upward, I'd cautiously say yes, or at least believe he'll come close.

Brian Sabean has been hammered for some of his disastrous contract decisions in the past, and rightfully so, but I don't think this one is that bad. It could totally backfire, but the commitment (2 years) would save it from being a total disaster. Or it could flourish. I don't know. Huff is an unpredictable player, and pretty much always has been, but I don't hate this risk taken by San Francisco.

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