Barry Zito's (Not So) Long-Awaited Return

By Grant Brisbee - Editor

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Jun 28, 2011 - Barry Zito is overpaid. I could link and/or insert some pie charts or statistical studies to support my claim, but I hope that you'll take that one at face value. Zito made more than the combined salaries of the four Giants starters who actually pitched in the playoffs in 2010. There's a small, small chance that the Giants regret giving him a guaranteed $126 million, but I'm not a mind-reader or anything.

But those dollars were already committed. The toothpaste is out of the tube. Also, the tube was resting on top of a Van Gogh. Now there's toothpaste all over the Van Gogh. No one thinks it's as valuable any more. But if you're at a garage sale, and you had the option of getting some boring old painting to replace the Van Gogh smeared with toothpaste, you'd prefer the Van Gogh. Because, hey, it used to be a Van Gogh. And it's still better than most of the paintings you can get for nothing.

Now you're probably grumbling that Barry Zito was never the pitching equivalent of a Van Gogh painting, but maybe there's an unknown Van Gogh where he painted a dog's butt or something.

Which is to say, by way of tortured analogy, that Barry Zito still has value. Rumors of his demise have been slightly exaggerated. There are famous big-money flameouts like Dontrelle Willis or Mike Hampton, but Zito doesn't belong in that group. He's more substantial disappointment than train wreck. Yet he still had value last season -- the difference between Zito and someone like Rodrigo Lopez last year was about two wins, which was exactly the Giants' margin of victory in the NL West.

So when Zito went down with the first injury of his professional career, it's not like Giants fans were thrilled that he was finally out of the rotation. Not at all. Why, the only pitcher the Giants had in the high minors to replace him who was some ne'r-do-well who couldn't pitch his way out of Triple-A last season, and who ...

... has pitched like an All-Star in the first half of 2011. Ryan Vogelsong totally wallypipped Barry Zito, pitching so well that there wasn't even a discussion of him losing his spot when Zito returned. Zito made at least one more rehab start in the minors than he probably needed, mostly because the Giants didn't have any idea what to do with him.

As it happens, though, there's always a rotation spot open. It's baseball. Pitchers flame out, and pitchers get hurt. Jonathan Sanchez was so awful in June (25 walks in 25 innings) that he was put on the DL with a mystery injury. And here is Zito, again, just waiting for his chance to be moderately useful. He's starting on Tuesday against the Cubs in the second game of a day-night doubleheader, his first start in the majors since leaving with a foot injury on April 16.

He's not the ace he's paid to be. He's not even a mid-rotation guy. He's Barry Zito: moderately useful fallback plan. And when you think about how the contract could have turned out -- think Denny Neagle, Mike Hampton, and even Carlos Silva -- that's not a truly awful thing.

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