Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Huff to San Francisco

The signing of free agent Aubrey Huff by the Giants further complicates the situation we mentioned here the day they signed another free agent, Mark DeRosa.  The apparent plan to move Pablo Sandoval to first base will be aborted and with this signing, Sandoval now stays at third base (meaning we'll be bumping his errors forecast back up to be more appropriate), Huff takes over at first base from the non-tendered free agent Ryan Garko and the newly-signed DeRosa goes to left field.

Huff should be able to hit well in this environment and his previously-published .265 average will likely get the slightest of upgrades, even with a minor drop in projected power.  AT&T Park has been a good park for batting average but a lousy park for home runs, particularly for left-handed hitters, and our new forecast will take that into account.

One area we're not likely to upgrade is Huff's projection for around 135 games played.  He has played over 150 games the past three years but he's now thirty-three and the injury risk will rise sharply in the coming years and our projection has to reflect that.  Also, even with Sandoval and DeRosa getting shuffled around position-wise, neither's forecasted playing time will be impacted as we already saw and still do see both as players the Giants will try to get into the lineup as often as possible, no matter what their position.