Posted by Jeff Lubbers on Wednesday, December 30, 2009 at 6:22 am

Partially lost among the news of the Jason Bay signing was that of Mark DeRosa inking a two year deal with the San Francisco Giants.  For a team desperately in need of a big bat to join the upper echelon of major league teams, this was a signing that will not exactly arouse the fan base.

There is likely not a single reporting of the DeRosa signing that does not almost immediately mention the ‘versatility’ DeRosa will bring to the team.  This is certainly true and is part of DeRosa’s appeal.  Conventional wisdom states that he will become the Giants’ starting third baseman which will shift the emerging Pablo Sandoval to first base.  In addition to third base DeRosa has in the last couple of years spent time at the corner outfield positions as well as second base, with a few games at first base sprinkled in for good measure.

However, just because he can be slotted into a multitude of positions does not mean that he necessarily should be.  He has never scored particularly well in any of the modern defensive metrics throughout his career at all of his positions.  Because of his positional movement he has rarely spent enough time at a single position over consecutive years (or even a single year) to obtain a sample size large enough for the metrics to tell a particularly reliable story of his actual defensive performance.  However, his overall body of work in the field on the whole suggests that while his defensive versatility may be a plus his defensive ability may be not as appealing.

Offensively DeRosa will likely bring the Giants a few more runs than they would have scored otherwise in 2010.  A bit of a late bloomer, he had a semi-breakout year with the Cubs in 2008 and in 2009 hit a career high 23 home runs despite a mid-season wrist injury.  A quick glance at his home run chart in 2008 (courtesy of HitTracker) shows decent opposite field power, although most if not all of his right field home runs in 2009 would be doubles or outs at AT&T Park.

DeRosa is a satisfactory offensive addition but by itself won’t change the overall outlook for the Giants in 2010.  With the apparently imminent resigning of Juan Uribe the Giants will have multiple utility-like players on their 2010 roster.  Such players are particularly useful if their platoon splits are particularly advantageous, however the right-handed DeRosa’s career OPS split is .731 vs. RHP and .859 vs. LHP, which is not a big enough difference in order to be a true asset.

All in all the Giants added a decent bat on reasonable terms (his contract still expires two years before Barry Zito’s) though for the team to truly compete this would need to be a stepping stone to a larger, more significant signing.  Every fan wants their team to go after the best free agents (it’s not their money, after all) but the Giants are in a position where a few near-guaranteed wins resulting from signing a virtual superstar would likely catapult them to the top of the standings.  In other words, neither the Yankees nor the Royals (one team would still make the playoffs and another would miss them with or without him) would benefit nearly as much from signing Matt Holliday as would the Giants.

Given that the Giants have the ninth highest overall team value (according to Forbes’ 2009 rankings) fans might actually find themselves more in agreement with Scott Boras’s assessment of the team that the team needs to fork over a bit more money on player salaries.  Furthermore, in looking at the team’s 2009 attendance figures the Giants saw a drop in attendance from 2008 to 2009 of less than one tenth of one percent, in contrast to the league as a whole which saw an overall drop of 6.6%.

In other words, the DeRosa signing may have been a smart signing that will allow the Giants to pursue additional free agents at multiple positions.  But while both high and low revenue teams need to make smart signings in order to compete, the high revenue teams are expected to make big signings as well.