Giants sign Tommy LaStella

  The San Francisco Giants attempted to fill an infield hole with the signing of veteran second baseman Tommy LaStella to a three-year contract worth 18.75 million.

The severely backloaded contract (two million this year, 5.2 million in 2022, and 11.5 for 2023) gives the Giants more payroll space currently with big contracts on the ledger and will pay LaStella more in the future when theoretically San Francisco will have fewer big contracts to dole money to.

The thirty-two-year-old LaStella hit .281 with five homers and twenty-five RBI in the shortened 2020 campaign that he split between the Angels and Athletics.

LaStella has never made more than the 360 plate appearances than in his rookie season of 2014 with the Braves and was a utilityman with the Cubs from 2015-18 before his breakout season with the Angels in 2019.

LaStella hit .295 with sixteen homers in eighty games and made the All-Star team in 2019 and his solid season last year could tab him as a late-bloomer, but there is a risk as the Giants could be playing eleven million-plus for a 35-year-old utilityman.

LaStella can play first or third and the Giants were noted in the Athletic as thinking that they could shift him to one of those two positions in the final season of his contract, should he be unable to handle second defensively.

The Giants also love the walk rate for LaStella, who walked twenty-seven times and only struck out twelve last season.

LaStella was the only player to have twice as many walks as strikeouts in the entire league in 2020, which the Giants and many other teams value almost as highly as extra-base hits and was specifically mentioned by Farhan Zaidi when announcing the signing of LaStella.

I'm not entirely sold on this one.

Three years seems a bit long for LaStella's track record and I'm not thrilled with the reasoning of the weight of the contract on the back end of the deal.

Using the Giants' reasoning because their commitments for 2022 and 2023 are lower than they are for the 2021 season, it makes sense for the team to pay the contract in this way.

And yes, there are several hefty contracts that will expire between now and then.

However, doesn't it make sense that the Giants will have other large contracts that are needed to fill holes and improve the team for those seasons and that paying a thirty-five-year-old player that may not be able to play a full-time position defensively is an albatross to carry?

And I would counter one thing with the walk/ low strikeout percentage- Yes, LaStella may be one of the best in the league at putting the ball in play, but couldn't his numbers fluctuate from year to year as players catch the ball?

That may be simplistic, but the numbers can vary severely in how often a player's contact to out ratio from year to year and a contact hitter, as LaStella has been other than in 2019, is at the mercy of the defenders surrounding him.

I don't think this is an awful signing, but I do think that this could be a bad signing.

I would have preferred a two-year deal or in the best choice, a one year deal and a team option, 

even if that would have been a bit more than they are paying per year now.

Say along the lines of ten million for 2021 and a ten million team option instead of that awful 2013 number would be a better signing in my opinion.

It'll be interesting to follow and see how this plays out.