The Giants have re-signed infielder Marco Scutaro to a Major League contract and immediately placed him on the 60-day DL, according to Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle (Twitter links). The move is a symbolic gesture that will allow Scutaro to retire as a member of the Giants organization. The 39-year-old will continue to rehab, Schulman says, but only to improve the quality of life he can have in his post-playing days.
It’s a classy move from the organization that released Scutaro this past January in order to free up a spot on the team’s 40-man roster. Scutaro’s final seasons with the Giants were slowed by a number of back injuries that limited him to 127 games in 2013 and just five games in 2014. As the Chronicle’s John Shea tweets, the Giants made this move as a gesture because they didn’t want a playoff hero’s career to end with a release.
“Playoff hero” is certainly an apt description for Scutaro, but it may actually undersell his importance to the 2012 Giants. Acquired from the division-rival Rockies in exchange for Charlie Culberson, Scutaro took San Francisco by storm in the second half of the 2012 season. He batted a Herculean .362/.385/.473 in 61 contests for the Giants down the stretch before hitting .500 (14-for-28) and taking home NLCS MVP honors. The Giants, of course, would go on to win the World Series in decisive fashion, sweeping the Tigers to take home their second championship in three years.
Scutaro’s brilliant performance led the team to re-sign him to a three-year, $20MM contract that offseason. Though the aforementioned injuries did limit his playing time in 2013, Scutaro still batted a very solid .297/.357/.369 in the 127 games he was healthy, combining that above-average production with sound defense and plus baserunning to produce more than two wins above replacement.
Originally signed by the Indians in 1994, Scutaro is a personification of the “late bloomer” in sports. He debuted with the Mets in 2002 at the age of 26 but didn’t total more than 91 plate appearances in either of his two years with New York. The A’s gave Scutaro his first semi-regular action in 2004, but he never even reached 500 plate appearances in a single season until 2008 with the Blue Jays — his age-32 season. Until that point, Scutaro had looked the part of a solid utility player rather than a starter.
Sound work with the Blue Jays in 2008-09 led the Red Sox to sign him to a two-year, $12.5MM contract with a club option for a third season. Scutaro was again very good in two seasons with Boston (.284/.343/.401), who traded him to the Rockies prior to 2012 in exchange for right-hander Clayton Mortensen.
All told, Scutaro will finish his career with a .277/.341/.388 batting line, 77 homers, 55 steals, 22.2 rWAR and 18.6 fWAR. He earned nearly $49MM, according to Baseball-Reference.com — an incredible sum for someone who had essentially been a light-hitting utility infielder through his age-31 season in the mid-2000s. We at MLBTR wish Marco the best of luck as well as health and happiness in his post-playing career.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
wasnt his final contract with the Giants anyways?
Yes it was but now he will get MLB healthcare coverage and the Giants were going to pay him for the rest of 2015 either way.
Yes, but they released him from it. This way his career technically ends at the end of his contract, and he gets benefits, medical care, etc. from the team while on their 60-day DL.
Before today, technically, while he has continued to rehab at the Giants facilities, he was not a Giants player, and had he retired, he would have retired as a free agent, because he was DFAed during the off-season to open up a 40-man roster spot.
Now that he has signed back with the team, and placed on the 60-day DL (there might also be language in the CBA regarding the number of days on his days on the 40-man roster tied to how much pension benefits that he gets in the future, as well), when he retires at the end of the season, it will be as a Giants player, which apparently was his wish.
And why not, his greatest success, winning the championship, and being a huge contributor to winning that trophy, was with the Giants. It’s symbolic, but as the article notes, he accomplished a lot in his 30’s, and he felt it would be an honor to retire as a Giants player. Seems like it is not that huge a deal to give a player who did so much for a franchise, even if in such a short timeframe, such a favor.
The Giants should have know guarantying him $6,666,666.66 in 2015 was a bad idea.
It was worth the risk. As the article noted, even in a short season, he produced more than 2 WAR in 2013 (2.2 bWAR), so if he had any health at all in 2014-15, he should have easily reached the 3 or so WAR necessary to justify the contract, he only needed roughly 0.75 more WAR.
It looks like Holliday’s dirty slide took its toll on his back and made him susceptible to further injury, which ended his season in 2013, and ultimately, his career. It was the Card’s offer of $16-18M over 2 years that pushed to Giants to offer $20M over 3 years.
It would have been karma to stick them with that, but I like that the Giants reward players who contributed greatly to their success, and Scutaro almost did pay off the whole contract in his first season. I’m happy he retires a Giants, he was a huge part of the 2012 Championship team, and he got rewarded for that, I have no issue with that.
Or if you want to view it another way, he produced 4.0 bWAR for the Giants and got paid $22M by the Giants for that (assuming the Giants covered $2M in 2012), for an average of $5.5M/WAR, which is about average.
Why? He played superbly for them, even after he was wiped out by Holiday in the ’12 playoffs. Despite this, he was the Giants’ best hitter in 2013. No one could have anticipated his condition would worsen rather than improve.
Marco Scutaro. The absolute BEST name over a stadium PA system.
Congrats, Marco Scutaro, or as my favorite baseball video game of all time, MLB Power Pros, pronounces it, Marco Scoot-ah-ro.
My team is a class organization. Scutaro was a big part of the 2012 championship run. Thanks, Marco.