End of an Era: Giants decline arbitration to Snow (also Tomko)

Here's the Chron's take on the news. Not too surprising. Snow was the fall-back option if the Giants couldn't find someone to fit their needs for a 1B/OF but they came to an agreement with Sweeney, which is not official, but reported by a newspaper already plus noted in the Chron's take.

Thanks Snow, it's an end of an era, I appreciate all he has done for us, I think he was underrated, particularly ironic in this era of sabers, as he had a pretty good OBP. But people were always fixated on his lack of power for a 1B. I still think defense is very important at 1B and we had one of the best of his era.

And Tomko should have seen the writing on the wall based on the total lack of communication with Sabean. Apparently he spoke with Colletti once during the off-season, but perhaps Ned was priming the pump just in case he gained employment as GM somewhere - let's see if he ends up in LA after this. Thanks but don't let the door hit ya on the way out.

Some may say why not offer arbitration to Tomko, but if the Giants really wanted to pay Tomko $7-8M per season, don't you think they would have done so already? After all, he's been beating the drum for that figure since last off-season when he pointed out how cheap he was and noted Kris Benson's contract. But if they offer arbitration, they risk him accepting it if the offers are not good (and apparently, there has been a strong lack of interest in him and in offering more than a year or two) and having the arbitration board award him a $7.5-8.0M contract because similar players were getting that this off-season. I am sure teams are spooked by his inconsistency.

Other interesting news in the Chron include that Morris was offered 2 years, $8M+ by the Giants and that while the Giants have backed off after A.J. signed with Toronto, freeing up St. Louis to pursue Morris, St. Louis said that the money the Giants offered is too rich for their blood. So maybe the Giants are getting cold feet?

After seeing the possibilities for non-tenders, I think I would rather wait for the names to pop up there and have money to pick up a couple of starting pitchers on the cheap or who needs to prove something, than to pay such a high salary for "proven" starters. The only proven ones to me were Morris and AJ Burnett but AJ was getting too rich, and risk-wise both, to me, are about equal, where you pick your poison, so Morris was more appealing because he would get less money.

I'll be still happy if we sign Morris but I won't be upset if we end up not signing him. I'm not really comfortable with paying so much money for uncertainty, for the hope that he'll perform. But that's where we are in this crazy market, paying a lot of money and hoping you made the right choice. I think I would rather go for what's behind curtain number 2 and see which pitchers get non-tendered. Like the Chicago White Sox benefited from our non-tendering Pierzynski, maybe we can allow our budget towards a couple of non-tendered starters and leave Hennessey and Correia as backup options in AAA.

Also, the Cards offered him arbitration so signing him will cost us another draft pick. But it would only be a third round choice, if I remember right how much it would cost us for Morris.

Also interesting, it was noted that Boras approached Sabean and asked for an audience, not the other way around, which most accounts I've seen had it, that Sabean initiated it. That's good, I don't want Sabean to help Boras drive the bidding up for his greedy players-clients.