Ned Flanders is a crafty lefty.

It should surprise no one familiar with this site when I say that we haven’t been blogging much; not counting writing done for other sites, I haven’t written an original article for over seven months. To break my blogging fast, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to recap the offseason, or analyze the contracts to Jeremy Affeldt and Javier Lopez.

I started to do the latter, but five minutes in, I realized they were pretty much the same because, really, there wasn’t much else. A few trades, minor hopeful improvements to the offense, some weight loss, nothing big. What was more surprising were the contracts to lefty relievers Affeldt ($5 million) and Lopez (2 years, $8.5 million).

After the Giants front office had publicly claimed poverty when it came to bolstering the offense, the contracts to the two certainly seemed excessive. But assuming that Brian Sabean doesn’t act completely randomly in a drug-induced vacuum, it’s worth taking a look at the factors that went into this decision.

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