The Giants and the 22-year-old left-hander have reached agreement on a one-year deal, The Chronicle has learned. I don’t have the exact figure yet, but I’m told it’s close to the $575,000 that Buster Posey earned last year when his service time was close to what Bumgarner’s is now.
The Giants have until Sunday to reach contract agreements with all of their players not yet eligible for salary arbitration. Bumgarner and Posey are the two biggest names in that category.
Bumgarner earned $450,000 last year.
For those of you unfamiliar with baseball’s salary structure wondering how in the name of Cotton Tierney can Bumgarner earn so little, that’s just the way it is. For the first three years of your big-league career, you basically play for the minimum (now $480,000) or slightly above. Then you become eligible for salary arbitration and your paychecks rise exponentially until you reach six years of service time, when you can cut your own deal with anybody as a free agent.
Bumgarner might become arbitration-eligible next season as a “Super Two” player, and the Giants could work out a deal to buy out some of his arbitration years as they’ve done with Matt Cain, Tim Lincecum, Brian Wilson and now Pablo Sandoval. There is no urgency to do so, but if Bumgarner has a monster year the Giants will have to pony up more dough in arbitration.
Negotiations for a long-term deal with Matt Cain continue, but there is no hard deadline. Cain just wants negotiations done by the end of spring training.
