"It's not my money"

Chris Quick at Bay City Ball has a sharp analysis of the Scutaro signing --

• Yes, the third year is kind of scary, but I’m not sure how many times I can write “this is the market now” before I get sick of writing it. So, I’ll just move on to the next point.
• Since 2008, Scutaro has posted the following fWAR scores: 2.9, 4.5, 2.4, 2.8, and 2.5. If you do a quick and simple 5/4/3 weighting of his past three years you come up with 2.2 2.6 WAR. He’s been an above-average player.
• You figure that Scutaro, as long as he stays healthy, should be a league average player for most of this contract. You never really know how players will age, but I can’t see anything in Scutaro’s profile that indicates that he’s ready to collapse.
• When it comes to getting the bat on the ball, no one is better than Scutaro — since 2010 he leads the majors in contact percentage at 95-percent. For the Giants and their “put the ball in play” offense, he’s a pretty good piece to have.
• It’s not exactly like the 2014 middle infield free agent class is brimming with talent. Sure there’s guys like Robinson Cano and Chase Utley that should be available, but it’s hard to say if they’ll make it to market. Who’s left? Aaron Hill? Skip Schumaker? Jhonny Peralta? Ick.

This really is the price of doing business right now. In short: baseball’s lost its damned mind but what the hell, it’s not my money.

Lefty Malo notes that the Giants are now likely to start the 2013 season with the same lineup as they did in the World Series.

CF Pagan
2B Scutaro
3B Sandoval
C Posey
RF Pence
1B Belt
LF Blanco
SS Crawford