Giants sign Edgar Renteria for two years, $18.5MM.
Analysis: Law, Szymborski, Watson.

San Francisco's shortstops hit .228/.295/.281 last year, so there's certainly a lot of room for improvement here.

Renteria has been absurdly inconsistent over the last five years, and has famously fared much better in the NL. It'd be silly to expect the 33-year old Renteria to return to his 2007 form, when he hit .332/.390/.470 with the Braves, but his Marcel projection is a solid .285/.345/.417. That would represent about a 35 run upgrade over the offensive production the Giants got from SS last year.

He will give some of that back on defense, as he was -9 in +/- last year, and was 7th out of 8 qualifying AL shortstops in RZR. Overall he's probably 20-25 runs above replacement on offense and a -5 to -10 on D; about 1.5 wins above replacement is right in line with $9.25MM/year (if a bit on the expensive side).

Also worth noting, and considering in the rating below, is that the Tigers didn't offer Renteria arbitration, so Stan Francisco won't lose any draft picks. Sabean is learning, at least. Now let's just hope, for his sake, that this isn't true.

How would you rate the Giants' signing of Edgar Renteria?
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The Ellis signing's average rating ended up at 6.7.

Original Story: http://vegaswatch.net/2008/12/giants-...