$126 Million!

Don’t get me wrong: I’m sure that nobody is more pissed off and depressed about Barry Zito’s performance with the Giants than Barry Zito. He’s a competitor, he’s a nice guy – he did not join the club to collect an oversized paycheck and lean back. But that doesn’t change the fact that the $500k/game pitcher that the Giants signed in an irrational “OMG Schmidt is leaving!” frenzy has gone 0-5 this season (after a less than stellar 2007 season), while the young pitching that San Francisco has been known for for several years is kicking ass while making a fraction of that salary. And that sucks.

In 4 years, Giants management has:

• Kept signing Barry Bonds mostly for the money that his homerun pursuit was generating, never getting close to winning a championship
• Traded away promising pitching for hitters that everybody had doubts about (and who left after 1/2 season)
• Spent ridiculous amounts of money on unnecessary pitching while not signing a single big hitter

And that sucks, no matter how well this young team will do this season. I actually believe in the team and think that they can pull off some amazing upsets! But that doesn’t excuse obvious piss-poor management.

Something that a radio host said last season, when Zito was also struggling and everybody kept bringing up his price tag, stuck with me: “Do you want to know what Barry Zito is?”, he asked with a dramatic pause. “A good pitcher.” And that summed it up perfectly. Zito isn’t some miracle wonder weapon. Nobody is really worth the $126m price tag. Barry Zito is a good pitcher trying to do his job.
The problem is, currently Zito isn’t even a good pitcher. He’s bad. Worse than the rest of the rotation that he is heading up. And I really gotta wonder what happens when Noah Lowry returns from the disabled list. Because if we looked at this objectively, Lowry should replace Zito in the Giants’ starting lineup. That would be rational and fair coaching. I doubt this is ever gonna happen, there’s too much money and pride involved. But goddammit – it woud be the first step towards the effective coaching/management that the Giants organization has been missing for several years.