San Francisco Giants ink Brandon Belt to contract extension

The San Francisco Giants are locking in their roster, signing Brandon Belt to a long term deal.

The San Francisco Giants have signed another core player to a long term deal. The club reportedly has signed first baseman Brandon Belt to a new five-year contract that will keep him with the club till the 2021 season. The deal will be for 5 years, $79 million. The contract will keep Belt’s salary at $6.2 million this year and bump up to $8.8 million in 2017. The last four years of the deal will pay Belt $16 million each season. The agreement is fairly close to the 5 year, $75 million contract extension that the Giants recently gave to shortstop Brandon Crawford.

With this extension, San Francisco keeps another core homegrown player around for the long term. The Giants have invested a lot of money in building their team recently, coming off of an offseason that saw them spend about $251 million in deals for free agents Johnny Cueto, Jeff Samardzija and Denard Span.

The Giants newfound strategy of spending money signals a belief that the club could continue it’s dynasty for the next few years. The Giants now have seven position starters locked up through at least the 2019 season, which could mean that if the players they have continue to perform like they have in the past couple seasons, then the team will have a couple more chances to add to the three World Series they’ve won since 2010.

As for the Belt contract extension in particular, the deal seems like it could be a good one for San Francisco. The 27 year-old has a career batting average of .271 and hit a season-high 18 home runs last season. Belt was drafted in the 5th round of the 2009 amateur draft and was ranked as the organization’s top prospect (#23 overall) by Baseball America before he made his major league debut in 2011. While, his numbers so far aren’t as great as some people expected, Belt has been a solid contributor for many good Giants teams.

His best year came in 2013 when he ended the season with a strong batting average and on-base percentage with a .289 and .360, respectively. Belt possesses a little bit of an upper cut swing which helps to add a little more power to his game, but it also leads to a high number of strikeouts, with Belt finishing the 2015 season with 147 K’s, which ranked 21st in the MLB. However, Belt has been a durable player for the Giants, playing at least 137 games in three of the past four seasons. He did miss a lot of time in 2014 because of a broken thumb, but that shouldn’t cause much of an issue for him in future seasons.

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Paying $75 million for a solid, but not elite first baseman may seem like a bit of an overpay, but San Francisco is probably investing money with the hopes that Belt will improve throughout the course of his deal. He is firmly in his prime being 27 years old and the Giants should be getting Belt during the best years of his career. The extension is also not out of line with many of the other first baseman contracts that have been given out in the past couple of years. Ryan Zimmerman is making $14 million a year since he got his deal a couple of years ago. Jose Abreu is receiving close to $12 million a year as well. Other first baseman, who have produced better numbers over their careers like Chris Davis and Joey Votto each are getting over $20 million a season. The salaries for solid starting players in this league is at an all-time high and the Giants made a good decision to get this deal done and not wait two years to get into a bidding war when Belt would have become a free agent.

Overall, Brandon Belt is a good starting option to have at first base and by locking him up long-term, the Giants continue to keep their team together and are in a better position to make a couple more runs at another World Series title.

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