Giants, Playoffs, Scoring, Pitching

I left a comment on Extra Baggs,that I felt encapsulated a lot of the thoughts that I have about winning in the playoffs with a subpar offense. I'm linking to Baggarly's blog here, as well as posting my comment here:

And, ultimately, it don't matter which of our hitters can hit for another team, it only matters whether they can score enough to win with our team. And thus far, they have.

And Baseball Prospectus and The Hardball Times have shown that teams that do well in the playoffs do so with premier pitching and defense. When they tried to analyze what offensive traits leads to an advantage in the playoffs, they found that even the top HR hitting teams, the teams that lead the league in scoring, gain no statistically significant advantage in the playoffs. None. Zero. Nada. Zilch.

Why? None really explained why, they just studied the what, but I think I have the answer. Hitters can be shut down in short series. Even Barry Bonds failed to produce in the playoffs until 2002. That's why there is all the hoopla when a bench player suddenly becomes Babe Ruth during the playoffs, the incongruity of that is punctuated by the fact that hitters don't have a lot of control over how they do in a short series.

However, starting pitchers do have a lot of control, and so do closers, and both are aided greatly by defense. The Giants pitching staff this year has an ERA that is pretty close to the other leaders. However the Giants as a team lead by a lot in terms of runs allowed, because they have great team defense.

And pitchers, particularly the best pitchers, can consistently do well, pitchers like Lincecum and Cain and put up dominating starts 50, 60, 70% of the time. Randy Johnson was once that type of pitcher. The best closers can do that as well. That keeps you in games more often and gives your offense the chance to catch up and beat the other team.

The Giants as a team has allowed the other team to score 4 or less runs in 59 out of their 93 games played, a record of 46-13. That is about 2/3rds of their games played.

They have scored 4 or more runs in 47 games, with a record of 36-11. And the Giants have been .500 in games where they scored 2 and 3 runs . Their deficit in losses have been in games where they scored 0 or 1 runs, where they are 2-20. 22 games where they scored 0 or 1 runs, but their pitchers have been even better, keeping the opponents to 0 or 1 runs 24 games.

So the Giants have been 48-23 in games where they score at least 2 runs. So while they might be one of the lowest scoring teams in the NL, they still score at least 2 runs in 76% of their games, where they have been 48-23.

Giants Thoughts

I know I'm beating a dead horse a bit, but I liked how I explained it so I duplicated it here.

As I've shown with my study of PQS here, the best pitchers can be consistently dominating. The best pitchers, like Lincecum, or Randy Johnson before, can be dominating 70-80% of the time, pretty much almost guaranteeing that your team will be in the game almost every time they pitch. And the best of the best can avoid disaster starts in the remaining starts: disaster starts are the ones that make it impossible for a team to come back from. Minimizing it by being dominant, or at least not having a disaster start (that is, PQS of 2 or 3), puts your team in good position to win almost every game.

If you have two dominating starters, that just improved your chances of success in a short series multi-fold. Cain has taken a giant step this season, moving from his good 50% range to the upper 60% range of the best, joining Lincecum. Sanchez was very dominant when he was going good in 2008, and I have to believe that the no-hitter will help his confidence level going forward. He often cracked before when anything went wrong in his start, but I think the no-hitter will be the equivalent of the Scarecrow getting his diploma or the Cowardly Lion getting his medal for bravery in the Wizard of Oz: they and Sanchez always had it there within them, but sometimes it takes something to convince you that you got it all the time.

As I showed with the stats above on the Giants record when they score a certain amount of runs, clearly they do much better when there is at least some modicum of offense. We all know that they need a power hitter in the middle of their lineup to go with Sandoval, but I never realized that we are so close to a tipping point. One good power hitter added to our offense could tip us over.

And that makes a lot of sense based on what I've reported on this season. In June, the Giants team had a lot more homeruns hit. In addition to Sandoval suddenly becoming a 40+ HR type of guy, Ishikawa and Schierholtz were hitting a lot of homers too. Rowand contributed some too. But in July, particularly after the break, the homers have failed to come as often. And the Giants record has suffered with the power drop.