Giants Trade Alderson for Freddie Sanchez: Color Me Meh!

Giants did the near unimaginable by trading Tim Alderson to the Pirates for Freddie Sanchez. As I've been noting all over, I'm not happy about this, as I don't think that Sanchez is worth obtaining and especially not for someone as highly ranked as Alderson, as I noted in my post on Garko.

I'm shaken but not stirred by the trade. I'm looking at the bigger picture and the team is still in very good shape. Clearly, Sabean is being evaluated when the season ends, as Neukom has been saying, and he has to earn it with these moves.

However, I disagree with the thought that Alderson alone could have brought a middle of lineup bat. He's not that good. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a bit deluded by Giants fanaticism. He's been at best rated as a middle of rotation pitcher, at best, and many still thought that he's at best a reliever, which was a prevailing thought when he was first drafted.

Look at his stats. He's had a lot of troubles striking batters out, at all levels, which is a key sign that he's not going to be that great a pitcher in the majors. That's going to lead to a lot of hits being given up. Even with his low walk rate, which is excellent, his WHIP will be high in the minors, as the MLE is even higher.

The trade however, is a bust to me. Sanchez is worth Alderson if he were hitting like he was in April and May. But he has not hit well enough in 10 out his last 16 months. He's been good for about 2 good months of every year the past three seasons and he's already had them this season. If he can hit well while playing as a Giant, then he would be worth it, but I don't expect it. Maybe he will perk up playing for a contender, we'll see, but I doubt it.

Still, the Giants are still set up nicely for the future, which is the big picture. We'll have a rotation of Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez, Zito and the 5th starter, who will eventually be Bumgarner. The bullpen looks good with Wilson, Affeldt, Romo, Valdez, plus perhaps Henry Sosa, Waldis Joaquin, and others coming up. We'll have Posey catching, Sandoval at 3B, Garko also in the middle of the lineup, and Rowand, Schierholtz, and Ishikawa, and now Sanchez hitting in other parts of the lineup. We also have good upcoming prospects in Villalona, Crawford, Kieschnick, Neal, and others.

If you want to throw out the baby with the bath water, as many have wanted to for the past 3 years, so be it, but I've been happy for the most part with what Sabean has been doing the past few years. Many were against Sabean's two year extension the last time and I would say that many on the other hand have been happy with the Giants progress the past two seasons.

It will be interesting times the next two months. If Sanchez sinks like Hillenbrand did - and Sanchez has been hitting .250/.287/.363/.649 since June began, covering 38 games, plus has been injured and missing games - I think Sabean is sunk, and I'll regret that because I like how the team has been built for the most part. Still, a .649 OPS is better than we were getting from 2B until Uribe took over. And I suspect that the Giants is worried that Renteria will be either out or ineffective the rest of this season, and thus want Uribe to be ready to start at SS.

So those are the silver linings to this trade. I hate this trade, as I don't think Sanchez is going to be that good for us, especially at the money we are paying for him, and because I think we should be able to get more for Alderson in trade, and I wonder what we could have gotten for Alderson and Barnes. But I don't think it's the end of the world as some seem to feel.

Go Giants!

Giants Trade for Garko, Loses Barnes

As the saying goes, to get talent, you have to give up talent. Ryan Garko is a talented power-hitting 1B who can play the OF in a pinch, and probably could catch in a pinch as well, he played C when he first started professionally but obviously it was decided that he wasn't that good there. Scott Barnes was an 8th round revelation who was having a great season for us in San Jose.

Giants Thoughts

Garko's plus is his power and he's a right-handed bat, but his defense is pretty bad at 1B and probably bad in LF too. He isn't hitting much better than Ishikawa has been since May 10th, who has been much over .800 OPS since then. I see this as a bad trade, because Barnes is a good lefty dominating in Class A, and we didn't get much of an upgrade at 1B plus force a hitter who has been hitting well onto the bench. That's assuming the obvious, that Garko's playing 1B.

He's also putting in time in LF, and that's where the Giants could benefit, because we have so many lefties in the OF, and he could play 1B and LF, giving Ishikawa more time at 1B against LHP still. Garko could be in LF a lot with Rowand banged up and nobody taking LF by the horn.

He's also a tradeable chip that could be moved to another team for someone the Giants like more, combined with other prospects.

Overall, if this is it, it depends on how the Giants use him. If they platoon him with Ishikawa at 1B plus play him in LF against RHP, then I think that's valuable and an improvement over the offense we had before. If it cuts into Ishikawa's time, then it's a poor trade. If it is a springboard to another move that nets a better hitter (like maybe Garko in a package to the Nats for Willingham), then that could be good for us too.

But I'm underwhelmed for now.

ADDENDUM since for some reason I cannot comment:

I also realized that I should look at Barnes and Garko's stats more indepth. This tempers my feelings, though if Garko cuts into Ishikawa's time at 1B beyond a platoon, it's a bad deal.

Garko really mashes against LHP and does OK against RHP. If he plays 1B against LHP and LF when Lewis and Schierholtz don't match up well in Bochy's gut against the RHP, then he'll be well utilized on our team. He has plus home stats so he might decline some with us.

Scott Barnes is doing really well, but there are some caveats. First of all, it's only Advanced A and he wasn't that dominating, though good. Plus, he benefitted from the strikeout factor at home due to the poor hitting background there:

Home: 2.55 W/9, 9.99 K/9
Away: 3.45 W/9, 8.16 K/9

So he's not that dominating away, FIP of 4.22 and that's not even the MLE.

What that means is that while he is good in Advanced A, he wasn't so good that he still needs to develop more to make the majors. Don't mean that he won't just that this is a requirement and pitchers like that peter out in AA or AAA if they are not able to develop that extra pitch. And the Giants typically do not trade prospects unless they are on their Available list (as opposed to their Don't Trade list).

However, he had a slow start to the season and really turned it on in June and July, so perhaps he has already figured it out, but most likely not, as his FIP was still 3.07 in July. As contrast, Pucetas, Alderson, and Bumgarner easily outdid Barnes in San Jose, even his great July.

So getting an average major league hitter for him is good value, to me, since he may never develop enough to pitch in the majors.

The main problem I have with the deal is that it most probably cuts into Ishikawa's playing time, particularly against LHP, where we need to see if he can handle or not, though it won't be the worse thing to have them platoon together the next three years.

In addition, it costs us a tradeable chip that could be used to get a player we really need, like a better hitting 2B or consistent LF, though if Garko is tradeable, then that's not as much of a factor.

I am still underwhelmed, but not by as much as before now. And it still depends on how he is used and his impact on Ishikawa.

But with Jesus Guzman up, it could be that Garko is strictly a LF for now, plus occassional 1B. And Guzman had played 2B before (not well, but still) so he could be utilized there as well, so that is the mix we are facing in playing time.

The 2009 Giants are 51-44: Rock D'Rox!

The Giants will fly into Colorado licking their wounds but proud of avoiding what would have been a horrendous sweep by slapping together 4 runs in the 8th and actually giving their starter (particularly Zito, who has not gotten much run support, despite contributing another good start) a break for once. It was a tough series heading in, and it turned out to be so: the Braves have a damn good rotation, kind of scary really. Thank goodness we are not in the East playing them more the rest of the season. And the good news is that they face the D-gers 7 times in the next 2 weeks (roughly).

Unfortunately, we face a tough rotation in Colorado as well, though arguably the bottom of their rotation. Hammel, De La Rosa, and Cook have the worse ERA's of the rotation but still they are pretty darn good overall, better than the Giants rotation overall, but with no one comparable to Lincecum and Cain, thus far.

Game 1: Matt Cain vs. Jason Hammel

Giants should win. Cain has about a 4 ERA in Colorado, but Hammel has a 7.62 ERA this season in Coors with 7 HR in 8 starts and 1 relief, .379 BAA, and 1.97 WHIP. He has one good start out of the eight. He has mostly been putrid and a batting ball pitcher in Coors this season. Meanwhile, Cain has had a number of good outings in Coors, including his May 7th start.

But this is Coors, so really, I have to put all the games as mostly coin flips, as it depends on what type of balls come out of the humidor. But with such a big differential, I have to give the Giants the edge here, though I wouldn't be surprised if we lose either.

Game 2: Jonathan Sanchez vs. Jorge De La Rosa

Two flakey pitchers with high 4 ERA's facing each other. But all is not as it seems. De La Rosa has been OK to very good in his last 4 starts and 6 of his last 8. Sanchez has not, but has a no-hitter and a nice outing last time. This is probably the best pitched game of the series for the pair of starters.

The caveat on De La Rosa is that while his last three home starts have been OK to very good (actually two very goods out of three), his overall ERA at home is 5.81 compared to his 3.88 ERA on the road. So the bad De La Rosa lurks somewhere within him, and his ERA at home for his career is 5.05.

However, Sanchez has a 7.06 ERA in Coors, though oddly, no homers in 21.2 IP. And in three starts in Colorado last year, he had two good starts and one bad one, and even in that one, he wasn't that bad, just unlucky with 9 hits in 5.0 IP (and 3 walks, which was bad). He appears to have been bad as a reliever there, but mostly good as a starter last year.

So, basically, yee ol' coin toss.

Game 3: Ryan Sadowski vs. Aaron Cook

Like most pitchers, Cook is not as good a pitcher at home as on the road, but he's not that bad either. Career 4.70 ERA at Coors, 4.58 ERA this year, so he's pretty consistent at home. However, he has had three consecutive bad starts at home, four out of five. He had some nice starts early on to balance things out, but in his last three starts: 5.82 ERA, 1.76 WHIP, 26 hits, 4 walks, 9 K's in 17.0 IP, only 1 HR. Also, against SF at home: 5.61 ERA, 1.67 WHIP, 86 hits, 27 walks, only 22 K's in 67.1 IP and 13 games, 11 starts, 5 HR.

Sadowski, being a ground ball pitcher, could do well here, depending on how much the thin air in Colorado allows him to pinpoint control his pitches. Though, according to Sadowski, he hasn't really had good command yet, even though he did well in his first three starts. Perhaps he has been too jacked up from being up in the majors, plus the pressure of knowing that a poor start could put him back down and Pucetas comes up. Hopefully he would be getting over that a bit, but after his poor outing last time, he is probably feeling some pressure.

So if Sadowski can't get it together and the humidor is in a giving mood, this is probably the highest scoring game of the series, as it looks like the Giants got Cook's number at home (and at AT&T, really). Too much to account for, have to call it a toss-up, a flip of the coin.

Giants Thoughts

This series doesn't look at bad as I thought coming in blind. The Giants typically do poorly in series in Colorado. But with Cain in the mix, we have a good chance of winning the series, since the other two games could, probably should, yield a win. And there is even a glimmer of hope that we might sweep them and bring the road trip to a great conclusion, if achieved.

And the Giants bats should come alive, as it is Coors Field, but I must note that their bats were quiet this season in Coors, and while above average in Coors in 2008, not the mashing one might see in Coors. Plus, as we saw in Atlanta, the bats were not that alive then either.

Still, I have to wonder how much Sue Burns death hung a pall over the team during this trip. In addition, the Braves rotation was pretty good - all the starters were basically low 4 ERA or better - and we lucked out in missing Vazquez. Sometimes you have to tip your hat to them.

Still, Sandoval was pretty much shut down this trip so far. Some might say that it is because the league finally adjusted to him. But he was so dominant for such a long time - 6 weeks - that I find that odd. So, he will be a key to the Colorado series, if he can awaken his bat once more, we should have a good chance to do some good stuff here. The good news is that, unlike against the Pirates and the Braves, we get to face bad pitchers (relatively and at home), so perhaps Sandoval will not be as challenged as he has been thus far on this road trip.

Hopefully Rowand will heal his various bumps and bruises and return to the hitting fool he had been previously when we get to Colorado. He had been so cold so suddenly that I wonder if he was playing injured again. We need him to heat up again because Bowker and Downs have not been hitting much thus far, plus Sandoval wasn't hitting either, which puts a big hole between Winn and Molina, two of our hottest hitters.

Other good news from today's game was Schierholtz's 3 hits. With that, he has hits in 7 of his last 9 games where he had 2+ plate appearances, hitting .333/.351/.417/.768. He had been extremely cold before that and hit .167/.212/.200/.412 in 9 games, 8 starts. That probably caused the Giants to decide to bring up Bowker. His better hitting with Bowker's struggles will probably lead the Giants to drop Bowker back to the minors at the end of the month when Aurilia comes off the DL.

They say Bowker has shown something, but that's hard to see when he's hitting .179/.226/.286/.512 with pretty regular play. However, this shows how a few games can change a players batting line when he is just brought up. In the five games leading up to the decision to keep him up and DL Aurilia instead, he hit .267/.250/.467/.717, which is not that bad compared to what we had been getting out of LF and 1B. And he hit .255/.300/.408/.708 last season.

And Ishikawa has started to heat up at the right time with 3 hits today, coming into a homer haven like Coors. Hopefully he can blast some out there. Other than Sandoval, he has been the big homerun hitter since June started. He had 6 in that period while Sandoval has blasted 12 homers (doing my fantasy team a world of good). Molina had 3 in that period, Rowand 4, Schierholtz 3, and Uribe 4. Ishikawa is now 4th on the team overall in homers.

Not that he was ever that cold. After a couple of Oh-fers, he now has a 3 game hitting streak, 5 for 13. And before that he had a 10 game hitting streak, .351/.351/.568/.919, 2 HR in 37 AB. And before that, he hit in 8 of 10 games. The last time he had more than 2 straight Oh-Fer games while starting was in May 20-24. Since that time, in 34 games and 29 starts, he has had only 6 games where he had 2+ plate appearances but no hits. And in 27 games with 3+ plate appearances, only 5 games with no hits.

And since he was kicked in the butt by Bochy on May 9th, he has hit .308/.357/.497/.854, 7 HR in 143 AB, and pretty consistently hit that high since then, despite one benching due to Sandoval and one semi-benching due to Bowker being in the mix at 1B.

That is probably why the Giants passed on Adam LaRoche, he is not hitting as well as that right now, and the Pirates probably wanted someone the Giants wanted to keep (remember, they have a keeper list of their prospects; probably the Red Sox gave up players who were not on their keeper list, they lucked out that the Pirates were willing to accept those players, they were not that highly rated, they should have traded LaRoche late last season, during his usual hot streak at the end of the season, or during the off-season).

The Sky is Falling: Again for Your 2009 Giants

Amazing how calm (relatively) everyone is when the Giants are winning and how the sky is falling when they are losing. Same thing happened when the team lost all those close games in May. Chillax and enjoy the games.

Sure, the offense has sucked since the All-Star break. But no team is good all the time, let's see how it unfolds before we decide to storm the castle with pitchforks. It has only been 6 games.

The team is fine, the management is fine. I hope Neukom signs Sabean up for another two years plus an option. He rebuilt this team and the farm system, and yet no one seems to want to acknowledge it.

Well, I will: Sabean has done a great job and deserves to get a new contract now, based on the results thus far. Even if the team does collapse now and fall flat on their face, I really like the team he has put together in 2009, without panic and taking on judicious salaries and veterans during the offseason, particularly Johnson and Affeldt.

People like to carp on mistakes made in the past, but that's being too anal and living too much in the past: just look at what the Giants are today, and think about whether you are happy with the team and farm system, without consideration for any alledged mistakes made. I do, I like the team, I like what Sabean has done.

And I think 2010 should be even better. Lincecum and Cain would have another year under their belts. Sanchez should finally start to consistently doing everything he needs to do in order to keep the team in the game consistently. I think Zito should be fine in the #4 spot in 2010. And either Johnson returns and do well enough, or one of the guys in the minors among Martinez, Pucetas, Sadowski, Sosa, Snyder, will be taking the #5 spot.

Sure, we could use more offense. But we should have Posey catching and hitting in the middle with Sandoval. I think that will be a good combination, leading to more offense, plus we would have Schierholtz, Bowker, and Ishikawa being adequate, along with Rowand, and I think that will be an improvement over 2009 because Schierholtz should be able to do better than Winn in RF offensively plus hold his own defensively, Bowker should be better than the .660 OPS from LF this season, he was better than that last year while he struggled and had less experience, and Posey should be better than the low .700 OPS Molina has been delivering, and at minimum be no worse.

Some don't think much about the Giants, then rush to say that they would keep Lincecum, Cain, Sandoval. Well, Sabean was the one guiding the organization when we acquired all those players. Plus we have four other plus prospects rising through the system in Bumgarner, Posey, Alderson, and Villalona. And I really like the bullpen and Sanchez. All GMed by Sabean.

And he is doing it the right way. BP and THT research says teams do better in the playoffs with pitching and defense and a great closer. Sabean has built all that already.

Now it is a matter of adding on offensive pieces that will allow that combination of pitching and defense to win enough games to make the playoffs. He has found a good hitter in Sandoval and Posey looks to be good too. They could be a two-headed monster in the lineup for years to come. Then we don't need good hitters in the rest of the lineup, heck, based on what they have been doing this year, they don't even need average hitters in the rest of the lineup to be successful.

Go Giants!

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.

Batting Lineup Fun: 2009 Giants

Baseball Musing has a Lineup Analysis website based on the research of Cyril Morong, Ken Arneson, and Ryan Armbrust, that I use to study how the Giants lineup might produce given pre-season projections. The lineup has produced about what it was expected to do, somewhere in the low 4's.

I decided to input the stats from today for the lineup of roughly what we have been seeing the past two months:

• Rowand
• Winn
• Sandoval
• Molina
• Schierholtz
• Ishikawa
• Renteria
• Uribe
• Pitcher/PH

Those are basically the hitters that would be in the lineup, and roughly lineup position. According the application, the above lineup would average 4.27 runs per game, and that is roughly what it has averaged the past two months; it has actually been higher because players like Ishikawa, Schierholtz, Rowand, Uribe were hitting much better during that stretch than their overall numbers today. That shows how important it is to look at both the players overall numbers and their numbers for the past month or two weeks even, to catch when a player is scuffling or doing much better.

The Lineup Analysis takes the OBP and SLG of each hitter and calculates the best lineup based on the stats.

Here is the best lineup according to the application:

1. Rowand
2. Sandoval
3. Winn
4. Uribe
5. Schierholtz
6. Molina
7. Ishikawa
8. Pitcher
9. Renteria

This lineup would produce about 4.49 runs per game. Most of the top lineups were roughly the above, with one player or another swapped. A good number had Schierholtz and Ishikawa batting 3rd. Many also swapped Schierholtz and Ishikawa in the 5th and 7th position. The changes only cost the Giants maybe 0.05 to 0.1 runs per game, so changes don't really affect the overall number much. Mainly it was Rowand leading off, Sandoval 2nd, Winn 3rd, Uribe 4th, Molina 6th, Pitcher 8th, Renteria 9th.

So maybe Bochy knew a little something about lineup construction. Rowand was selected to be leadoff. Sandoval and Winn are swapped 2/3. Schierholtz and Ishikawa basically bats 5/6/7. It basically swaps Molina and Uribe. And hitting Molina 4th and Uribe 6th instead of the suggested reversed in this idealized lineup? It costs the Giants 0.01 runs per game. What is really costing the Giants runs is moving Renteria from 8th to 6th while dropping Uribe to 8th.

Downs Up, Sadowski too; Frandsen down and Aurilia DLed

Frandsen must have really pissed off management by mouthing off this spring. He's been sent down while Downs was brought up to start regularly at 2B. Bochy noted that Uribe is starting to slow down, so they are moving him back to the 2B/SS/3B role he had before while giving Downs a chance to start. But Downs is hitting basically what Frandsen is hitting, both in AAA and majors, and Frandsen is better defensively. Meanwhile, Uribe has actually been on a good hitting streak, .378/.439/.676/1.115 over the past 11 games.

Sadowski coming up was no surprise, but Aurilia getting DLed with a sore toe was. He reportedly was not happy about doing this, but if he does have a sore toe, he should welcome the chance to rest and let it heal. What they probably said was that they were going to release him if he didn't DL him. And there is the chance he might not come back to the majors and get released once he is healthy, if Bowker is hitting or Downs is hitting.

I suspect Aurilia's time with the Giants is drawing near. Many have had a problem with him, but he's been much better lately, after his early struggles which I attribute to dealing with his mother's failing health. He has been OK since then, but Bowker's hot hitting makes him a key prospect to check out because he's not only hitting for power but also getting on base. If he can translate that to the majors, he's the middle of lineup bat that would finally push Molina out of the cleanup spot.

The 2009 Giants are 50-41: Will Need to be Brave

After the disappointing series against the Pirates, the Giants play four games in Atlanta. The Giants will need to bust out to even break even this series, we are facing some good starters and the Braves have been hot over the past two weeks.

Game 1: Sanchez vs. Tommy Hanson

Hanson has been pretty good in the majors except for his first start and his latest start, though that one was in Colorado, so that is probably the problem. Otherwise, in 5 starts, he has given up, in consecutive starts, 2 runs, 0, 0, 0, and 1. He has been a bit wild, walking a lot of guys, but for the most part, he has not given up many hits, limiting that damage.

Sanchez had his no-hitter but other than that has not been terribly good this season, in fact, has been pretty terrible. If he can build on what he did in his last start, the no-hitter, then we have an even chance of winning, else we don't have much of a chance.

Game 2: Sadowski vs. Derek Lowe

Lowe is the Braves ace of the staff, even though his stats this season has been OK, not great. But that was because of some bad starts he had in mid-June, otherwise he has been the ace that the Braves needed when they signed him. We cannot expect The Big Sadowski to come out and shut down teams like he as, though that would be great if he can continue to beat expections borne of unimpressive minor league stats. We should be losing this game.

Game 3: Lincecum vs. Jair Jurrjens

Jurrjens has been outstanding this season, what a steal he was for Edgar Renteria (and they got Gorkys Hernandez too). It is going to be a battle for Lincecum, we have probably an even chance of winning. Still, the Kid keeps on pulling great starts out of his knit cap, so we have some hope here.

Game 4: Zito vs. Kenshin Kawakami

Kawakami has been pretty good this season, and particularly so over the past two months. He doesn't last that many innings though, so we would get to the bullpen quickly with him but the Braves bullpen is actually pretty good. Zito has been up and down all season long, so who knows who will show up in this start. However, he has usually been much better in the second half than the first, so there is hope that he will be equal to the job of matching Kawakami, or perhaps bettering.

Giants Thoughts

It does not look good for the Giants this series. It looks like it will be a battle just to split the series, let alone win it. That's why we needed to win the series against the Pirates. But spliting is not the end of the world, the Giants would still be 3-4 for the trip, not great but doable, except that we then face Colorado, where the Giants have usually had problems there.

But there are a lot of widely varying variables that could change things positively for the Giants. Sanchez, Sadowski, and Zito could prove to be able to continue their nice starts. Hanson could prove to be exposed in his last start, that it was not just all Coors. Lowe could revert to his bad starts a month ago. Kawakami could reverts to his early season struggles. We will see.

Go Giants!

Thank You Sue Burns, Largest Giants Shareholder: RIP

Sue Burns, the Giants largest shareholder (TV news report noted in the 40% range), passed away from late-stage lung cancer. She was only 58 and survived by two daughters and grandchildren, plus her mother, son-in-law, and brothers.

According to Baggarly, this was a kick in the gut to the Giants organization because of the quickness. Just on July 8th, she hosted a team party at her home and appeared well, but from what I heard on the radio, she got the diagnosis soon afterward and slipped away quickly. It as a bad coincidence that she received her diagnosis on July 10th, resulting in her missing the game that night, which happened to be the first Giants no-hitter in 33 years thrown by Jonathan Sanchez and thus first ever in AT&T Park. She held Sanchez's autographed game ball during her last days.

She was a devoted fan who wore orange all the time, apparently. It was she and her husband who were among the original investors who helped saved the Giants from moving in 1992. Her husband, Harmon Burns, was a vice president of the Franklin Templeton investment group in San Mateo, and he made his money there as that firm grew leaps and bounds (for those who are in the know, that's the Templeton of John Templeton fame who famously invested $10,000 at the depths of the Depression in low-priced stocks and who made a fortune when stocks rebounded). They bought up shares as many of the original founders sold out their shares until they were the largest shareholders (much like how Neukom built up his ownership). She inherited the full stake in the club when her husband passed away in November 2006.

Giants Thoughts

Just wanted to say Thank You to Sue and to give my deepest condolences to her family and friends. From what I gathered from the KNTV report and Baggarley's report, she was loved by all who passed through the Giants organization. She reportedly influenced the Giants to sign Bonds one more time in 2007 and he reportedly flew up to be with her one last time in the past week. Dusty Baker gave a quote and altered his flight in order to pass through SF and give a visit, though I don't recall if that was before or after she passed. But she treated everyone equally and she is being mourned by the Giants organization, top to bottom, from the management to the players to the ushers and security guards.

Just also wanted to say that all Giants fans, near and far, owe deep gratitude to the Burns family for their substantial help in keeping the Giants here. Without their financial support, the team first would have moved to Tampa Bay, and second, the ownership team could have been on shaky grounds again when other founders sold out if they did not buy up additional shares, and third, without a solid ownership team, the Giants might not have been able to get the loans necessary to finance the beautiful stadium they built in China Basin.

According to Larry Baer, in an interview on KNTV (plus reported on by Baggarley here and here), her two daughters will retain the ownership (Baggarly reports as between 30% and 40%)and nothing will change as her daughters and her son-in-law are big Giants fans too. So, in death, as in life, she keeps the Giants safe once more. May she rest in peace.

The 2009 Giants are 49-39: Robbing the Pirates

The Giants need to get off to a good start on this long road trip. Facing the Pirates could help greatly with that. The Giants have a losing record on the road this season but was one game above .500 in June and July on the road.

If they can win at least two games, that would be great because we then face the Braves and the D-Rox. And we don't play Colorado that well at their home, so it is important that they at least win the series against the Pirates, and hopefully at least split against the Braves, and end up one game above .500 before going to Colorado. Winning 2 or more from the Pirates would make it likely we at least break even before facing Colorado.

But it will be tough as the Giants have been 5-14 against the Pirates in the past few seasons at Pittsburgh. The Pirates have been just as bad as we have been and yet they have been beating us easily. Changing that around would do a lot towards continuing the good play in the season thus far.

Game 1: Tim Lincecum vs. Paul Maholm

Maholm is a good pitcher, but Lincecum is a great one. As long as Lincecum does not have any left over jitters from his poor All-Star outing or feel the need to overthrow because of that poor outing, the Giants should win this game. Still, Maholm has been much better at home than on the road, so it won't be a cakewalk and there is a strong chance we could lose. But with Lincecum on the mound, I like our chances.

Game 2: Barry Zito vs. Charlie Morton

Who? Morton, he of career 5.74 ERA in 20 starts and 4.29 ERA this season, was not that well regarded coming up as a prospect. He has not been that bad this season (though bad last season), but like Zito, don't strikeout that much but walks a little too many for the strikeouts he does get. He also gives up more hits than one would want. Not sure why he ended up being the #2 starter out of the All-Star break, but whatever, that at least gives the Giants an even chance of beating them as he faces Zito.

Zito only has had one start against the Pirates on the road and did OK in that start, 4 PQS start, but only 5 IP. He obviously had the best of worlds and worse of worlds in his last two starts. But he historically turns it up a notch in the second half. Here are his "half" season stats since he joined the Giants:

2007-Pre ASG: 4.90 ERA, 1.45 WHIP, .251 BAA, 5.7 K/9, 1.3 K/BB
2007-PostASG: 4.11 ERA, 1.23 WHIP, .235 BAA, 6.4 K/9, 2.1 K/BB
2008-Pre ASG: 5.62 ERA, 1.79 WHIP, .299 BAA, 5.7 K/9, 1.0 K/BB
2008-PostASG: 4.59 ERA, 1.37 WHIP, .232 BAA, 6.3 K/9, 1.4 K/BB
2009-Pre ASG: 5.01 ERA, 1.41 WHIP, .258 BAA, 6.8 K/9, 1.8 K/BB

As one can see he has done better by almost one full run, meaning he continued this performance, his ERA in the second half of 2009 would be close to 4.00, WHIP around 1.2 to 1.3, BAA around mid-.230, K/9 around mid-7, and K/BB in the low 2's. And before that good last start against Florida and bad last start against San Diego, Zito's stats were slightly better:

2009-Pre last 2: 4.82 ERA, 1.44 WHIP, .255 BAA, 7.0 K/9, 1.7 K/BB

With Zito's elevated strikeout rate and better K/BB this season, he has been suffering from a bit of bad luck with his results thus far. If he can continue to throw well, he should be able to do much better in the second half of 2009 than he had for us previously.

Game 3: Matt Cain vs. Zach Duke

Bruce Bochy said in his pre-game show that Matt Cain threw OK and appears to be healthy. And he will need to be because he is facing Zach Duke, who has a 3.29 ERA this season and probably should been in the #2 in the rotation if not first. Dukes is also much better at home than on the road, so Cain will be battling that as well.

While Cain has been worse on the road, it is not much worse, 2.26 ERA at home, 2.53 ERA on the road. So the Giants have an even chance of beating the Pirates.

Giants Thoughts

The Giants look like they can win this series and probably should. But it will be tough with Zito vs. Morton and Cain vs. Duke. Still, the Giants look like they can pick off two games this series, as the Pirates have an offense as good (that is, bad) as the Giants (4.25 R/G vs. Giants 4.18 R/G) but a pitching staff that is not as good, not by a long shot.

And that will set us up for the Braves series, which would a tough 4 game series, but we would have Sanchez, Sadowski, Lincecum, and Zito starting against the Braves. That would leave Cain, Sanchez, Sadowski against the D-Rox, with the possibility of Randy Johnson replacing Sadowski in Colorado if he really only takes 3 weeks to get healthy, as he says he can. I think that would be a good setup for breaking even in Atlanta, and possibly winning in Colorado, if Sanchez is back to his good pitching performance mode.

Evaluating Zito Plus Wanting More

Yet another column comes out extolling the virtues of just dumping Zito's nearly $100M in contract value, in the belief that it would help out the rotation (I just got done praising him and he done gone and annoyed me again...). Let's examine that issue, but without all the emotional baggage that his contract brings.

First off, if you look through his game log, sure, there are a lot of games where he is not that good. He has not been that dominating this season, and had a large number of disaster starts. As my study of PQS shows, pitchers high ERA is often the result of a large number of disaster starts and even good pitchers need to minimize their disaster starts (check my labels for PQS for more explanation of this concept) to keep their ERA relatively low.

However, more importantly, you need to look at his gamelog for how many games where he gave up 3 runs or less as the starter, as those are the starts we have the most chance of winning. By that measure, he had 10 starts where he allowed 3 runs or less, so the team should have been 10-8 in his 18 starts. Not worth $18M, but it is still a pretty good record for the 4th starter of the rotation. That the Giants have gone 8-10 in his starts is not entirely his fault: the team is only averaging 3.26 runs scored per game in support of Zito.

The problem is that many people just look at Zito and his salary and then compare him with what top pitchers should be doing. We should not do that because that is not his role on our team, even at his career better seasons, he would not be more than our third or fourth starter, and if Sanchez can consistently pitch well, he could be our fifth starter.

Even when they compare him properly with other #4 starters, the point is not what other team's #4 starters can do, but what our starter options can do.

One complaint was that Zito was "nightmarish" against the 'Dres and Nationals, going 0-4 with a 5.75 ERA. But when you look at those starts, he had two horrible starts, April 10th, 4 runs in 4 IP, and his last, 9 runs in 4.1 IP; one so-so start on May 13th against the Nats, 4 runs in 6.1 IP; and two gems, April 22nd, 0 runs in 7.0 IP, and May 19th, 2 runs in 8.0 IP. I don't think it is Zito's fault that he got a no-decision on one and a loss in the other, of the two gems.

And it all goes to show my common complaint this season about people who are complaining about players: they don't say much while he is doing OK, but jump on the bandwagon when things go south. As late as June 10th, Zito still had a 4.09 ERA, and after his gem on June 7th, his ERA was a respectable 4.43. But he has one bad game and he is jumped upon for his 5.01 ERA, which now does not compare favorably with other #4 starters, but was really good comparatively just a month ago.

Which brings me back to the complaint about his record against the two worst teams, San Diego and Washington. Before that bad last start, he had two good games, one so-so, and one bad game, and he should have been 2-1, maybe 2-2. Really, the complaint is about the 'Dres because only one of the five starts were against Washington, and Zito gave up 4 runs in 6.1 IP, which is not nightmarish, as the Nats are actually an average offensive team.

So let's take a look at the starts, one by one:

1. April 10th, 4 ER in 4.0 IP, Overall 9.00 ERA.
2. April 22nd, 0 ER in 7.0 IP, Overall 3.27 ERA.
3. May 19th, 2 ER in 8.0 IP, Overall 2.84 ERA.
4. July 12th, 9 ER in 4.1 IP, Overall 5.79 ERA.

So yeah, there were two nightmarish starts but he was damn good in his two other starts. His bad ERA overall does not mean he was just beat up all over the place, you have to look at his individual starts to get a better sense of what is going on.

Looking at Zito's stats, he has mainly been in the 4 ERA range, and for #4 starter, that is pretty good. Other team's middle of rotation starters are normally in the 4 ERA range. And as nicely as Sadowski has done so far, I would not walk so far out on a limb and say that Sadowski can deliver that reliably year in year out, which would be the only reason I would be for pushing Zito out of the rotation.

Zito has been much improved overall this season. He is striking out a lot more batters and walking less batters as well. That is because he has been able to regain the effectiveness of the separation in speed between his fastball and his curveball by gaining a key 2-3 MPH on his fastball. Maybe he is not worth his contract, but for what he does as a pitcher, he fits in nicely with our rotation this season where he was, as the #4 starter. That is all that really matters, how he fits on our team.

This might be different next year, when Bumgarner and maybe Alderson will be ready for the majors, but for now, he is fine where he is and is a useful contributor to the team's success. And if he can continue his past pattern of pitching well in the second half, his overall ERA for 2009 will look very nice, and if he can continue it into 2010, then he could be tradeable as soon as mid-year 2010.

Wanting More

I was listening to KNBR while driving and someone was passionately dissing Giants management, saying that they don't want to win it all, that he didn't have any confidence that Giants management will keep the nucleus of the team together, so why not trade off some of their four Top 50 prospects and get Halladay now, to win it this year.

This was so wrong in so many ways that I had to respond.

First, Sabean was the one who kept the nucleus of this team, the one we have right now, together. He could have traded off any or many of them previously in order to help Bonds win the World Series once during his career. But he didn't, for the most part.

If they didn't want to win it all, they wouldn't have bothered to spend $6.1M on Posey last year, they could have gotten away with drafting someone else and paying at least half as much. They wouldn't have bothered to spend over $4M together to sign Villalona and Rodriguez. They wouldn't have bothered to go over slot to sign Lincecum. Or Bumgarner.

And trading away our Top 50 prospects today would kill our next few seasons, particularly if Posey was traded away. He's our future catcher. If he's traded, then Sandoval's our catcher, but now we have no 3B. In addition, playing catcher would definitely take away from his offense, both because he won't be playing as many games as he would at 3B, plus there is a physical toll as well. Our rotation is good now, but with Bumgarner and Alderson (plus Sanchez), it could be marvelous.

In addition, most of our high salary contracts will be gone by the time Lincecum is arbitration eligible and really pulling in the money. We will have a lot of budget to pay him. I expect a long term contract but even if not, we will still be signing him to less than market value out to 2013. And we have Cain signed to a cheap contract to 2011. Both things he didn't know but still he felt he knew much more how to better run the Giants.

Halladay is good but Bumgarner could be as good as he is for the next 6 seasons, plus Posey will be a middle of lineup hitter for us as well. But he would rather mortgage our future to try to win this year. I think that's idiotic, particularly since another team could get red hot (like Colorado did after Tracy took over) and pass us up like nothing. Then we would have mortgaged the future but don't even get the present.

Be patient, look like you've supported a winning team before, and enjoy the next 6-8 seasons as our young players rise and add to the mix. It looks like it's going to be good.

Buster to Move to Fresno

Do you know the way to Fresno, CA? Buster Posey has been promoted to AAA Fresno, as announced on sfgiants.com and Henry Schulman's blog. Henry noted that Brian Sabean said last month that this was likely to happen. Posey will make his debut in AAA on Thursday in the Grizzlies return from their All-Star Break (Bowker was suppose to be in that game).

For San Jose, he hit .322/.421/.536/.957 with 13 HR in 289 AB (roughly 22 AB/HR or a 25+ HR season) with 60 runs and 57 RBI in 79 games. His ISO was an excellent 215 and his BABIP was .346: only time will tell if that is normal or high.

Walking 44 times and striking out 45 times, his contact rate was just a hair below the desired rate of 85% - he was at 84.4% - but his BB/K was an excellent 0.98 - the best hitters can get it over 1.00 while keeping their contact rate above 85% (that is, K-rate under 15%).

He clobbered LHP and did OK against RHP:

vs. LH: .446/.539/.819/1.358 with 8 HR in 83 AB (11 AB/HR)
vs. RH: .279/.381/.428/.809 with 5 HR in 208 AB (42 AB/HR)

He has also benefited from hitting at home, which is odd because San Jose is a pitchers park in the hitter's league that is the California League:

Home: .378/.483/.608/1.091 with 7 HR in 148 AB (21 AB/HR)
Away: .273/.369/.469/.838 with 6 HR in 143 AB (24 AB/HR)

Perhaps that bad patch he had in May was on the road, pulling down those stats:

APR: .366/.447/.646/1.093 with 5 HR in 82 AB and 11 walks and 13 K's
MAY: .245/.319/.382/.701 with 3 HR in 102 AB and 8 walks and 18 K's (elevated K-rate)
JUN: .385/.529/.631/1.160 with 3 HR in 65 AB and 18 walks and 8 K's
JUL: .357/.462/.571/1.033 with 2 HR in 42 AB and 8 walks and 6 K's

As one can see, he greatly improved his walk rate and kept his K-rate (contact rate) around where it is suppose to be if you are good (much like how Pablo Sandoval did while in the minors). Even the pitch to his head in late June did not slow him down much once he got back in June. I noticed that after a couple of oh-fers, he just started hitting again.

He spent most of his time in San Jose batting fourth, clean-up, and he did best there, obviously, since his overall numbers are so good. He did not bat well in the 3 hole however, his OPS there was .754, not close to as good as he has done overall.

Amazingly, he hit this well with a high ground ball rate of 52% and a low FB rate of 30%. His HR/FB rate is about double what it normally is for the majors in general, which is roughly 10%, though each batter has his own HR/FB rate. He could just be that good or it could just be a fluke to be aware of, but at 16%, that is usually the stratified region where sluggers reside, and Buster is a slight looking guy. It was his great hitting with fly balls and particularly line drives that made up for his greatly elevated ground ball rate that normally would kill a hitters overall batting line. I don't have the splits for this, but I would hazard a guess that he hit a lot of ground balls in May, when he scuffled for a bit. I would love to see his splits for ground balls, fly balls, and line drives by month.

Giants Thoughts

He is El Machino, grinding up Advanced A and jumping to AAA. By age, he was actually young for the league: the average hitter was 22.7 years old and the average pitcher was 23.0 years old. But he hit like he was many years older, because experience conveys a significant advantage relative to the league. For a comparison, look at what Sandoval did at age 21 repeating Advanced A last season, with roughly the same amount of AB:

Pablo: .359/.412/.597/1.009 with 12 HR in 301 AB (roughly 25 AB/HR), 23 BB, 39 K
Posey: .322/.421/.536/.957 with 13 HR in 289 AB (roughly 22 AB/HR ), 44 BB, 45 K

They were very similar, though Posey did walk much more and Pablo was one year younger than Posey, though he was also repeating the level.

Clearly, Buster is on the fast track to the majors now, jumping to AAA. Buster now has 80 games under his belt in the minors, plus another roughly 15-20 games in the final Hawaii Winter League, helping the Beach Boys win their first championship, plus, as reported, his being brought back to instructional league for direct tutoring on the nuances of catching professionally. He should get roughly another 50 games in the minors and whatever else he gets in the majors if he is called up in September. If there is a pennant race going on, I would bet on it.

Now, from what I have read, catchers need roughly 200-250 games played to be ready for the majors. He'll have 150 plus whatever he plays in the majors in September, plus I would expect that he would be put in the AFL this year if we are allowed to place a catcher, which should get him another 20-40 games, depending on how they use him (the HWL used him only once every three games, one reason why he got pulled). Weiters basically followed this path and thus the games he played in the minors this season put him into that experience range that experts think is needed to be ready for the majors. Posey would be short that experience at the start of next season, based on what I tallied above.

However, Weiters, at best, is considered a competent catcher ultimately. Posey has been rated as an above average receiver, with arm strength, receiving skills, and a quick release, plus he rates high on baseball acumen. Baseball America says that he profiles as a catcher in the mold of Joe Mauer, who is considered one of the best defensive catchers today, adding half a win to one win per season, according to Baseball Prospectus. He's also very athletic, which is not surprisingly since he once played all 9 positions in a game in college.

Thus, to me, it would seem that he should be able to make the jump to the majors next season, both offensively and defensively. He will probably struggle initially, but if we sign an experienced catcher who is good defensively, both as mentor and as backup in case Buster struggles too much, we should be covered at the catching position in 2010. Plus, Sandoval could catch a few games himself. In addition, should Posey struggle at catcher, he could at least be a utility player and give other position players a rest while getting to hit.

Experienced free agent catchers this off-season, with some defensive street-cred, includes Brad Ausmus (age - 41), Rod Barajas (34), Jason Kendall (36), Jose Molina (35), I-Rod (38), and maybe Gregg Zaun (39; club option). If the Giants want to make Bengie feel OK at some level with moving on, they could sign his brother, Jose Molina. And it won't be a pitty signing. According to the Fielding Bible, Jose Molina is a very good catcher.

Despite not being a full-time player like his brothers, according to the Adjusted Earned Runs Saved (AERS) stat that is being developed for catchers by the author of the Fielding Bible, Jose has saved about as many runs as his brothers over the past 3 and 6 years. In a 3 year period, Jose is 7th overall with 6 AERS, while Yadier is 8th with 5 AERS and Bengie is 12th with 4. In a 6 year period, Yadier is 8th with 9, Jose is 10th with 8, and Bengie is 15th with 4.

But remember, Yadier and Bengie are starting catchers. Jose, at best, has been Mike Mussina's and Andy Pettitte's personal catcher on the Yankees. However, for every pitcher Jose handled on the Yankees, the pitcher pitched better with Jose catching than any other catcher, according to the Fielding Bible research. According to the raw Earned Runs Saved data, Jose was better than Ivan Rodriguez, who is considered one of the best catchers of his generation.

Based on the last six years, the top five catchers by AERS are Jason Kendall, Paul Lo Duca, I-Rod, Chris Snyder, and Gregg Zaun; based on the last three, they are Kendall, Ronny Paulino, Brian McCann, I-Rod, and Brad Ausmus. Kendall, I-Rod, Ausmus, and perhaps Zaun will be free agents this off-season. But these are not adjusted for playing time and I would guess that had it been, Jose would have easily jumped into the top five for both lists, though probably not at the top, somewhere below that but definitely top five.

Great defense, should be cheap because he's not looking for starting money, Jose looks like he would be the best to sign. He did make $2M per year the past two years, so he won't be totally cheap. But that appears to be the going rate, with a King George bump-up because he can.

Zaun is making $2M himself, so perhaps that is the going rate for great defensive backup catchers, though he was actually the starter until Wieters was brought up; I have to assume he knew that was going to happen and signed accordingly. Ausmus is only making $1M with the D-gers as their backup, and signing him would give us inside information on how the D-gers work internally, as well as how Torre does things. He probably got much less both because he's much older and because Russell Martin should get the vast majority of the catching starts for the D-gers.

Kendall, who is still a starter and probably wouldn't sign with us because he's looking to start, got $5.0M based on the 2009 option vesting. Bengie Molina is getting $6M from us this year plus performance bonuses based on games started that should net him another $0.5M probably, plus his 2009 salary increases by 50% of performance bonuses earned in 2007-08, which probably adds another $0.5M. I-Rod, while a starter, only got $1.5M for 2009 plus up to $1.5M in performance bonuses based on PA and games played and he looks like he will earn all that for a total of $3.0M. He got a lesser contract because he basically signed near the end of spring training. I don't think we can sign any of these to partner with Posey.

To sum up, Jose Molina looks like the best choice for the money, skill, and age. Great defense, great handling of pitchers, and I assume he would be willing to teach Posey his tricks of the trade and that Posey will absorb everything like a sponge. We probably can sign him for a long-term contract (2-3 years) at $1.0-1.5M and thus pair him up with Posey. He won't have Posey's offense, but his defense would be so good that it would make up some for that loss in offense.

I think Ausmus would be a good second choice, but on a year by year basis since he's already 41, because he is strong defensively and would be able to give us good information regarding the D-gers operations, particularly since he is an aspiring manager, and would be viewing the entire D-gers operations like a manager. We could give him the carrot that the Giants have already hired a number of former catchers as managers - Decker, Skeels, Trebelhorn, Bochy - and would be open to him starting his managerial career in our minors.

And Zaun would be a close third choice, as he has already done the caddy/support act with the Orioles and is apparently OK with it. He's also younger than Ausmus and better offensively and defensively, and thus might have more to share with Posey as a tutor. And he hasn't been that far removed from being a full-time starter, only since a month or so ago, while Ausmus was last a full-time starter in 2006, though he did get into the majority of the games in 2007.

This helps cover us at the catching position no matter the scenario. Obviously, if Posey transitions smoothly, our backup would be just that plus provide tips much like Randy Johnson has been greatly influencing our starters, particularly Sanchez and Cain, though also Lincecum, as the Kid wants to learn how to strike out a lot while also lasting deep into games.

If Posey struggles but is OK enough to stay up, he and the backup can share the position, plus Sandoval can take some of the starts with Posey starting at 3B - one scenario I like for the future is that Posey can be the starting catcher and Sandoval the starting 3B, but when Posey needs a rest, he starts at 3B and Sandoval starts at C, thus giving him a bit of a rest but we don't lose his bat from the lineup either. Again, the backup would share his knowledge with Posey.

If Posey struggles so badly that he needs to be sent down to AAA, the backup catcher would be good enough to catch a significant number of games and the Giants would also start Sandoval a good number of games, more than a backup would normally get, though that would screw us up at 3B. Uribe has been pretty good starting part-time at 3B this season but perhaps this could be a way to give Frandsen some regular starts, putting him at 3B, assuming he is not already starting at 2B. In this scenario, Frandsen could be the uber-utility guy that some suggests is his role, a Chone Figgins type who gets a lot of starts around the field and thus playing a lot, but is not the full-time starter at a particular position.

Your 2009 Giants: All-Star Break Analysis

What a great first half! I was going to do a separate analysis but just realized that my previous post contains a lot of analysis that I could have done here. Still, I will see what else I can add to an understanding of this season thus far.

Best since 2003

I saw a table on the Giants cable TV station that I thought I would duplicate here, but extend to include all the years since AT&T/SBC/PBP opened:



2009 is the first half season over .500 since 2006, is the best start to a season since 2004, when they were 49-40, and is the best start to a season since the great 2003 first season with Felipe Alou as manager. Among seasonal starts, 2009 is the third best start in the 10 seasons in this park, just behind the 2002 season (a Zito win would have put it above) and much behind, of course, the 2003 season.

As one can see, the Giants have generally had a better second half than first half. Only 2006 and 2007 eneded up worse than the first half, and 2007 marginally so. If you average all the differences from 2000-2008 and assume that 2009 would improve by that average, then the Giants would finish this season 44-30 and a 93-69 record.

Love Them Home Cooking With A Big Slice of Panda

The success of this season has been built upon their dominance at home, where they were 31-15; they were only 18-24 on the road. Had they been even .500 on the road, they would only be 4.0 games behind the D-gers right now, instead of 7.0 games. This, unfortunately, is also a result of the D-gers being just about as hot as the Giants have been. Since June 6, when the Giants hit the low of being 9 games back, the Giants have gone 21-13 but only gained two games.

The Giants started out at .500 in April (10-10), nudged slightly over by one game in May (15-14), soared in June (17-10) instead of swooned, and is above .500 again in July (7-5). The surge coincides with a confluence of positive factors, but mostly, I believe, is the result of the Kung Fu Panda, Pablo Sandoval, suddenly finding his power stroke.

Since June 5th, when Sandoval hit his first homer of this streak, he has hit 12 HR in 35 games (roughly 55 HR seasonal pace), with 33 RBI (roughly 155 RBI seasonal pace) and hitting .377/.442/.738/1.181 in 130 AB and an amazing 16 walks, or roughly 11% of his plate appearances vs. 24 strikeouts, producing 43 runs. Prior to that, in 47 games, 45 starts, he only hit 3 HR (roughly 10 HR seasonal pace) with 22 RBI (roughly 80 RBI seasonal pace) and hitting .301/.340/.460/.801, with 8 walks, or roughly 4-5% of his PA vs. 24 strikeouts, producing 38 runs. His strikeout rate was actually better previously, but somehow he was able to make it work, going from producing roughly 0.8 runs per game to 1.2 runs per game, which covers most of the leap in team scoring from roughly 4.0 early in the season to the roughly 4.5 since June began.

Team Opponents Play

Looking at the Giants head to head records, their excellent season thus far was built upon 5 teams:

• Going 6-3 vs. Arizona (38-51)
• Going 3-0 vs. Atlanta (43-45)
• Going 5-1 vs. Oakland (37-49)
• Going 3-0 vs. Texas (48-39)
• Going 4-2 vs. Washington (26-61)

Thus, the Giants beat up the teams that they are suppose to, in Arizona, Oakland, and Washington, but also better teams, like Atlanta and Texas. How many times have we seen the Giants not even do that, beating the teams that they should? And their interleague play was the best in years, as they went 9-6.

But it was not all flukey wins either. While they were able to stay around .500 (+/- 1 game) with most teams, they lost big to these teams:

• Going 0-3 vs. the LA Angles (49-37)
• Going 1-3 vs. the NY Mets (42-45)
• Going 5-7 vs. the 'Dres (36-52)

Playing poorly against LA, join the club, but they lost big to the Mets, which has been a 5 games under .500 team otherwise, and particularly to the 'Dres, as San Diego delivered a beatdown to the Giants, as they have relatively been pushovers for the most part this season.

So nothing seems really out of place, they have simply been beating the teams that they are suppose to beat.

Team Offensive Stats

The Giants are currently average 4.18 runs scored per game. The average NL team is scoring 4.44 runs and there are now 3 teams with worse average: Cubs, Reds, and 'Dres. Houston is also tied at 4.18, which makes them tied for 11th in the NL. The other teams below the league average are the Braves at 4.24, Pirates at 4.25, Mets at 4.31, Nats at 4.38, and Cards at 4.43. As I had noted in my previous post, the Giants have averaged 4.5 runs per game since Bochy started kicking some butts on May 10th, so the Giants have been slightly above the NL average since May 10th.

They still have the third worse total in homers, with 63, but have hit 37 of them since June began. Despite having a number of young position players, the Giants are vet-centric, with the batting age of 29.3, which is among the highest among NL teams, 6th among the 16 teams. Unsurprisingly, they are last in walks and 12th in strikeouts. They are collectively hitting .262/.312/.393/.705, 5th in batting average, 15th in OBP (only 'Dres worse), 13th in SLG, 15th in OPS. Speed was suppose to be one element of the team, but they are 10th in stolen bases. Fred Lewis and Emmanuel Burriss flopping as badly as they did (and Velez secondarily) hurt this aspect of the offense greatly.

Team Pitching Stats

Obviously, pitching is what drives this team. The Giants lead the league by a significant margin, allowing only 3.68 runs per game, whereas the second place team, the D-gers are allowing 3.84 runs per game. Even they are pretty good, as the third place team, the Cubs, are allowing 4.10 runs per game, followed by the Cards at 4.12. The NL average is 4.54 runs per game.

The Giants also lead in ERA but the margin is not as great, which shows how good the defense has been for the Giants, not leading to many unearned runs. The team ERA is 3.51 and the closest teams are LA at 3.58, St. Louis at 3.76, Chicago at 3.84, and Atlanta at 3.88; these are the only teams under 4.00 or even close to 4.00, as the next team is Houston at 4.22. The NL average ERA is 4.24.

The Giants has a 1.29 WHIP, tied with the Cards for second behind the D-gers. In fourth place is the Braves at 1.34, the Cubs at 1.35, the D-Rox at 1.392, the D-backs at 1.393, and the Astros at 1.397, the 'Dres at 1.398, and the Brewers at 1.399. The NL average is 1.385

With Lincecum leading the way, plus Johnson and Sanchez, the Giants lead in strikeouts with 694. Second is the D-gers with 669, Marlins with 667, Cubs with 662, and Braves with 652. Unfortunately, and as expected, the Giants are only 7th in the league in walks. And I should note that some of these teams have 10 or more innings pitched than the Giants, such as the D-gers and Marlins.

The Giants is averaging a stout 8.0 K/9, which leads the NL. The Cubs are second with 7.7 K/9, the D-gers are third with 7.5 K/9, and the Braves are fourth with 7.4 K/9. NL average is 6.9 K/9. This makes up for their poor BB/9, at a high 3.6 BB/9, which is the league average.

And these result in a league best K/BB of 2.22, beating out the D-backs with 2.17, Cards with 2.14, and Marlins with 2.14, and Braves and D'Rox at 2.10. League average is 1.92 and ideally you want your starting pitchers over 2.0 and your relievers over 2.4.

As I like to note, the best way to maximize your chances in the playoffs and World Series - and really, any short series - is to have at least two aces in your rotation, more if you can swing that. Lincecum and Cain are our two aces, both are 10-2 and have ERAs of 2.33 and 2.38 respectively. As noted by Baggarly in his article today, they are the first pair of Giants pitchers to reach double-digit wins before the All-Star Game since John Burkett and Bill Swift did it in 1993. They were also the last Giants to reach the 20-win mark since.

Lincecum joked, when asked what his plans were for the All-Star Game, that he's "going to have Cain put a leash around my neck and keep me in my room. He missed last year's game after getting so dehydrated that he had to be hospitalized overnight. "Being the starter is going to make up completely for the fact I didn't make it last year. I'm just happy enough to be in the game, let alone be the starter."

Team Defensive Stats

Not really a lot of great stats, but the Giants show OK here, as expected given the runs allowed stats above. The Giants Defensive Efficiency Rating, or DER, is .701, which is third in the NL, but by a slim margin (this is basically the inverse of BABIP). The D-gers are first with a DER of .716, and Pirates are second with .702, but tied for fourth are three teams, the Cubs, Reds, and Brewers. The NL average DER is .692

With 47 errors, the Giants are alone in fifth in the NL, but in fielding percentage, they are tied with three other teams for fifth.

The Giants catching (and pitching) has been bad with stolen bases. The Giants have the third worse in SB given up, leading to a tied for 2nd worse caught stealing percentage.

Giants Thoughts

As noted above, the Giants have been great at home, poor on the road. That is because they are just better at home. Their ERA at home is only 3.17 while on the road it is 3.92, with a WHIP of 1.18 at home and 1.42 on the road, and much more walks given up, as the K/9 is 8.0 both at home and road, but K/BB is 2.91 at home and 1.74 on the road. Their BABIP is the same, though, home and road, at .288, which is pretty good, suggesting a regression to the mean in the second half, particularly for Cain at .276 and Johnson at .283, though it should be noted that Cain has had a .276 BABIP for his career, which suggest that he's looking like one of those pitchers capable of keeping their BABIP lower than the .290 or .300 mean that most pitchers regress to.

Meanwhile, the offense is likewise hampered. They are averaging 4.7 runs per game at home but only 3.6 runs per game on the road. They are hitting .274/.328/.420/.748 at home and .250/.294/.365/.659 on the road. And HR power is better too, they average only 43 AB/HR at home but 52 AB/HR on the road. That's roughly the difference between a 14 HR season and a 11-12 HR season, not huge but still better.

There were significant improvement in June/July vs. April/May. The offense's OPS went from .695 to .677 to .732 to .722 in July. Pitching likewise, with OPS dropping from .737 to .712 to .686 to .567 in July (helped greatly by Sanchez's no-hitter). Also, the ERA dropped by month too: from 3.90 to 3.75 to 3.22 to 2.94. K/BB rose too: from 1.93 in April to 2.01 to 2.38 to 3.36 in July (no-hitter).

The Giants are clearly on a upswing as they head into the All-Star break. Their hitting and pitching has been improving as the season progressed. They currently have the second best record in the NL, slightly ahead of the Cards and D-Rox and the Phillies, and the fifth best record in the MLB.

The only hitter seemingly hitting over his head would be Pablo Sandoval, but given that we don't know what he is capable of doing, this could be the real deal for him. Particularly significant is his HR surge since June began. While one can't expect so many HR from him the rest of the season (doubtful he can sustain a 50+ HR pace), he should be hitting for much more than earlier in the season. Uribe is also above but not significantly so.

If anything, a number of hitters are hitting below what they have been capable of before. Molina, Renteria, and Winn are all hitting much below what they had done before. While Winn look to be on the decline because of the sharp increase in strike out rate, both Molina and Renteria look like they might be suffering some bad luck of the bounced balls, as their strikeout rates is still good. And Burriss et al were all horrible at 2B, even a career Uribe would be a huge upgrade over what they did.

Meanwhile, the same goes for the pitching. Only Cain is pitching above what he was doing before, but Johnson, Zito, Sanchez all pitched below. After early jitters, Johnson has been good since his April 19th start, third start of season, as he compiled a 3.97 ERA, 2.4 K/BB, 7.5 K/9. Hopefully he can recover from his shoulder injury and return to that form and Sadowski can be a shadow of that in his starts in Johnson's stead. And as Sanchez showed in his no-hitter, he is capable of much much more than he did before the no-hitter. Him pitching to that potential would more than make up for Cain falling back to his career norms. Just named All-Star Starting Pitcher Tim Lincecum looks to just continue what he's been doing since mid-2007: dominating the majors.

Of course, the major worries heading into the second half are regarding the health of Matt Cain and Randy Johnson. Will Cain be OK after getting plunked by the batted ball? It seems like he will be, but only time will tell. In Johnson's case, you never know which injury might do him in. Luckily Sadowski has been an able replacement, but you never know when the league might catch up with him, given his lack of "stuff".

And the major question, really, is whether the Kung Fu Panda, Pablo Sandoval, can continue to create Panda-monium everywhere he goes. While other players have come and gone with their hot and cold streaks, the one constant for much of the time since early June is Sandoval and his hot hitting. If he cools off greatly, our momentum will cool off greatly. But if he continues to hit like he has, he will be the offensive leader who takes over the mantle from Barry Bonds for the Giants team, and be that great middle of lineup hitter we have been searching for since parting with Bonds.

I don't see how Bochy can hold off much longer from using Sandoval in the clean-up spot, not with his hot hitting and Molina's cool hitting. But then who bats third? One possibility would be to go with a lineup similar to late May, early June, but adjusted to the new realities: Rowand, Renteria, Winn, Sandoval, Ishikawa, Molina, LF (Bowker, Schierholtz, Lewis), Uribe.

For the pitching staff, things look to be settled for the most part, except for Johnson being out and hopefully returning soon enough. The rotation has been mentioned as Lincecum, Zito, Cain, Sanchez, Sadowski. I've seen some complain about Zito vs. Sanchez, but Zito at least has shown many good flashes of good pitching during the first half and he's known for his second half flourishes. Sanchez had been pretty bad until his no-hitter, so while I would like to think that this turned him around, we don't know that for certain.

Plus, as I've noted in research before, the 4th starter for the Giants in recently years had been getting more run support than the other spots in the rotation, though that hasn't worked for Zito or Sanchez thus far this season. Run Support stats:

Lincecum: 5.46 runs average support per 27 outs
Johnson: 4.02 runs average support per 27 outs
Matt Cain: 4.76 runs average support per 27 outs
Barry Zito: 3.26 runs average support per 27 outs
Sanchez: 3.17 runs average support per 27 outs
Sadowski: 6.92 runs average support per 27 outs (only 3 starts, but in Sanchez's spot)
5th Starter: 3.73 runs average support per 27 outs

I still think it is good to place Sanchez in the back of the rotation. Even if the matchups changes eventually, at least initially, Sanchez should be facing the other team's 4th best starter, and that will put him on an even footing, relatively. No use putting him up against other team's #2 starters.

As well as the rotation has done in the first half, I think the second half can be even better, as Cain and Zito typically have late season surges, Lincecum just keeps on keeping on, and Sanchez looks to regain what he had done in the first half of 2008, and from the looks of the no-hitter, he might even be better, as he didn't walk one batter. He's never done that in a start over 7 IP, though he did walk only 1 in his great 8 IP start on April 25, 2008, which showed the potential for his no-hitter happening, as he only gave up 4 hits in that game and he did have a 7 inning start on September 7, 2007 with 0 walks and 5 strikeouts.

And the bullpen has been superb and nothing is really over the top relative to their career except for Affeldt. But he had been on an upward trend the past couple of years, and I saw many articles saying that he had the stuff to be an economical closer-to-be if a team would jump on him and move him into the closer spot should their closer falters. However, the Giants beat other teams to the punch, signing him quickly, and I like having him set up for Wilson because, frankly, more of the critical runners on base situations happen in the 7th and 8th inning, where we use Affeldt often. He has been a key producer there.

Yet, he didn't really get to take off there in terms of bullpen value for us until Romo returned to the bullpen and continued pitching like he did last season. That allowed Bochy to use Affeldt earlier as needed, knowing that Romo can handle the 8th between Affeldt and Wilson. Particularly since Howry, who was suppose to take that role, was shaky early on. And Romo helped complete the bullpen that improved greatly once Justin Miller and Brandon Medders were added. Overall, our bullpen has been aces, and look to continue to be so in the second half.

The Giants, while in a good position for playoff action, leading for the wild card spot by 2 games over Colorado, a lot can happen in the second half. But their hold on it is stronger because of their great homestand that just finished, as they went 7-3, winning each series, and leading Florida and Milwaukee by 4 games, Houston and Chicago by 5 games, Atlanta by 6 games, and NY and Cincinnati by 6.5 games. Not an insurmountable lead, but a signicant one, except for Colorado, which has been on an absolute hot streak since Jim Tracy took over. D-Rox was 18-28 under Hurdle but has been 29-13 under Tracy.

As the second half starts, this will be a very important stretch for the Giants any way you measure it. they will play on the road 13 of the next 20 games, 24 of the next 37 games, and 43 games in 45 days. As I noted above, they have not been very good on the road, though better recently, 11-9 since June started.

The good news is that they will be facing a lot of poor to average teams during that stretch. Only Colorado, Philadelphia, LA will be tough games, representing 14 of the 37 games and 17 of 43. They play 6 games against Pittsburgh and 3 games against Arizona, for easier series. And they play 4 against Atlanta (in Atlanta), 3 against Houston (in Houston), 4 against NY (in NY), 6 against Cincinnati (3 in Cincy). Plus, for the tough series, the Giants play 10 of the 14 at home (though 4 tough ones in Colorado).

With 10 games against Colorado, how they play could end the wild card chase for one or the other team. With 3 games against LA, the Giants could pull themselves close to the NL title or fall too far away. Same with Houston, Atlanta, NY, and Cincinnati.

The great news is that the Giants are not only in the race for the playoffs, but is leading for the wild card slot, and look to stay hot in the second half of 2009, which would put them in good position to take the wild card spot, and perhaps even steal the NL West title from under the D-gers blue noses.

The D-gers have built their huge lead on the backs of the NL West and on being really good at winning in extra innings and in one-run games, both of which are flukey. Reduce both of those to average for LA and they would be tied with the Giants right now. However, they are in better shape than the Giants are for advancing in the playoffs, they are 33-23 against teams over .500 while the Giants are only 25-23.

Of course, if the young players should falter in the second half, then they could revert to playing .500 ball, which they have mainly played for the most part since 2008, when viewed on a monthly basis, and which they did in April and May when the young players who could falter were faltering, Ishikawa, Burriss, Sanchez, even Sandoval. That would still put the Giants at 86-76, which would still be a huge improvement over 2008 and put them on good grounds for looking to compete for the title in 2010.

Lastly, I would like to note that the Giants are exactly where they should be: their Pythagorian W/L is 49-39, their exact record. So their record is not flukey relative to what they had done in the first half. It remains to be seen if their performance in the first half was flukey itself, and thus their record was an over performance. Still, as I noted, not a lot of outliers in terms of performances, and if anything, a lot of areas where the team could improve, particularly Sanchez and Zito. I look forward to a great second half and I think that there is a good chance that they Giants can make the playoffs this year.

I don't expect any trade except for one where we give up a middling prospect to get a high-priced veteran who is an upgrade at 2B. We have too many good-enough prospects in the OF and at 1B to get a vet who would take ABs away from there. But as nicely as Uribe has played, we know what he is capable of, and thus getting an upgrade there would be nice, plus Frandsen hasn't done anything to earn more playing time yet. I can also see a trade shuffle with another team where we give up failed or faltering prospects like EME, Sadler, Lewis, and Frandsen up for another team's versions, just to mix it up and change things up, but mainly to pick up a high risk, high value prospect for some OK prospects on our end.

Using the "M" Word: Finally It's Our Time Now

I've taken Tim Kawakami to task over the years for a number of articles he has written and ideas espoused, but I think he's a smart guy and his recent column about this being a Magical season for the Giants was spot on.

Jonathan Sanchez's no-hitter is "just the latest sign of Giants magic", Kawakami's headline noted:

Maybe this is just going to be one of those miracle, unexplainable, unfathomable seasons for the Giants.

What else is there to think after watching Jonathan Sanchez, of all people, throw the Giants' first no-hitter in 33 years?

I totally agree. I did not actively or consciously think that before reading Tim's great column, but I think that is correct, this has been a magical season for the Giants. Who could imagine that the Giants would be 49-39, with one of the best records in the NL West, NL, and majors? I thought that the Giants were capable of being better than .500, but not this good, and certainly not given all the problems they have faced this season.

Some of it makes sense - Cain finally being the great ace he had shown glimpses of, Sandoval being the real deal, Sandoval starting to hit for power, Rowand hitting like he can, Ishikawa finally showing what his minor stats showed - but some of it is inexplicable - like how are we 49-39 when Randy Johnson has a 4.81 ERA, Zito has a 5.01 ERA, and Sanchez has been lost this whole season until the no-hitter, when Molina is hitting so poorly overall, when Buriss, Downs, and Frandsen at 2B duplicated the horrible stats that Giants shortstops did last season, when Renteria had another poor hitting first half, when Fred Lewis suddenly reverted back to little league Freddie Lewis and couldn't hit to save his life, when Randy Winn has clearly started his career decline phase, striking out too many times from April to June and having his worse season since the beginning of his career, when Aurilia was MIA for a couple of months offensively, when Jesus Guzman couldn't save his MLB tryout? These are all items that a Giants fan could point to as problem or worry areas but inexplicably, we are 10 games above .500 and in the lead for the Wild Card spot.

Maybe it is magic, maybe it is a miracle, as Kawakami astutely wrote. It is also a lot of good hitting and pitching:

• Sandoval has a hit in 8 of his last 9 games, hitting .382/.432/.824/1.256 with 4 HR in 34 AB, and since June 4th, has hit .376/.440/.737/1.177 with 12 HR and 35 RBI in 133 AB and 37 games.
• Ishikawa just ended a 10 game hitting streak, where he batted .351/.351/.568/.919 with 2 HR in 37 AB, and since his May 10th "demotion" has hit .312/.368/.528/.896 with 7 HR and 20 RBI in 125 AB and 36 starts (41 games).
• Winn has started hitting like his old self in late June and we can use that production the rest of the season: .339/.371/.458/.829 since June 27.
• Molina since June 29th has hit .342/.317/.526/.843 with 8 RBI in 38 AB and 10 games - maybe his wife being pregnant has been weighing on his mind.
• Rowand since May 16th has been hitting .321/.367/.515/.882 with 7 HR and 27 RBI in 196 AB and 48 starts (50 games), and from June 19th to July 11th, .291/.349/.481/.830 with 3 HR in 79 AB.
• Renteria since June 23 has hit .322/.354/.407/.761 with 11 RBI in 59 AB and only 8 K's.
• Uribe since he started starting regularly on May 23, has hit .308/.336/.515/.851, with 4 HR and 18 RBI in 130 AB, 35 starts (38 games).
• Schierholtz, since he started starting regularly on June 11th, has hit .323/.363/.473/.836 with 3 HR and 13 RBI in 93 AB and 23 starts (30 games).
• And, of course, all the great pitching! Particularly Cain, Lincecum, and the bullpen, plus now the no-hitter.

They have averaged 4.8 runs per game in July, 4.5 runs per game since Bochy started kicking some butts on May 10th. They have hit 47 HR in the 59 games since May 10th, a 129 HR season pace. Since the start of June, when Pablo and others (Ishikawa, Schierholtz, Rowand)started hitting more HR, they hit 37 HR in 39 games, or 154 HR season pace.

The pitching staff has been likewise great. Since May 10th, they have allowed 3.5 runs per game, with a 3.31 ERA and 7.9 K/9 and 2.5 K/BB with 1.24 WHIP. We have been 34-25 since then. Since June began, they have allowed 3.3 runs per games, with a 3.13 ERA and 8.0 K/9 and 2.6 K/BB with 1.16 WHIP, with a 24-15 record. That accounts for most of our record over .500. Though Johnson is out, if Sanchez is back to his early 2008 season form, our starting pitching should be improved, as that would be better than what Johnson was doing plus Sadowski looks like he can easily beat what Sanchez had done for us up to the no-hitter.

Not that any of this means that we will even make the playoffs, let alone win it all. But it has been a great season for those of us who enjoy such things, not so much for those clinging to the past or expecting the other shoe to fall next. I think it is better to enjoy the moment, however long it lasts.

And as Ray Ratto noted this weekend, the Giants just should say "screw it" and give renewal contracts to both Sabean and Bochy. Now.

Go Giants! Congrats on the great first half, keep up the good work! As Scott Ostler aptly noted, cautious optimism is the codeword for the Giants second half.

Giants Signature Song

In this vein, I would propose that the Giants use the song, "It's Our Time Now" by the Plain White T's as the their signature song in the 7th inning. Joan Ryan has written about this in her blog here and here about how the Giants need a signature song but the D-gers stole Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" as ironically Journey's Steve Perry is a huge Giants fan. She asked for fan's suggestions and this is what I suggested there and now bringing it to the attention of readers of my blog.

I think this song is the perfect song and band for the Giants signature song, at least for this season, if not for this generation of Giants, almost akin to the "You Gotta Like These Kids" slogan that defined the Will Clark era. If you listen to the song and the lyrics, it is very peppy, very up-beat, very appropriate to some of the feelings we have about our next generation Giants. Following are some lyrics, not all of them, but some I think are appropriate regarding the Giants:

"There will be no rules tonight...
Nothing's gonna stop us now...
Nervous hands and anxious smiles...
I can feel the butterflies...
This is right where we belong...
These are the times that we'll remember,
Breaking the city's sight together,
Finally, it's our time now!"

And the lead singer looks a little like the Kid, Timmy Lincecum (Lincecum is better looking, though), so the Giants could do something like copy the band's music video and have Lincecum lip sync the song and do a dance for the video. Or if he don't want to do that, perhaps the Giants could commission a special video with the band and Lincecum together doing something, or, even better, perhaps change some of the lyrics to make it Giants specific, just shell out some of that money they were thinking of spending on Manny. They could even have them come in after a game for a concert, extra for the fans.

Here are two YouTube vids of the band, for your viewing pleasure:
Video One shows lyrics
Video Two shows lyrics
Official Music Video inspired by "The Graduate" with its iconic ending

Buyer Beware: Matt Holliday

With the Giants offense still chugging along like the little engine that could, many fans have been crying for more offense, of course, not thinking of the consequences of that, which is the number of top prospects we would have to give up to get said stud hitter.

Matt Holliday has been one of the names thrown out, and I was listening to 860, the A's radio station, where they were extolling how good he was previously, and thus teams would ignore what he has done this season, and remember how good he was before joining the A's, how being in a good lineup would cure his ills, plus maybe returning to the NL.

Not Really

I am going to dispell that specious logic and hopefully discourage people from overpaying for Holliday now:

Career-road: .280/.351/.449/.800, with 48 HR in 1467 AB, 31 AB/HR
2009-road: .280/.374/.402/.776, with 4 HR in 164 AB, 41 AB/HR
2009-home: .262/.370/.426/.795, with 4 HR in 141 AB, 35 AB/HR

Those all look pretty similar, no? His numbers in 2009, whether road or home, look like they are within range of what he has produced during his career on the road. Here is his career home (and that includes that bit above in Oakland):

Career-home: .348/.417/.624/1.042, with 88 HR in 1494 AB, 17 AB/HR

Which only goes to show how strong the Coors Stadium effect is on hitters (and negatively so on pitchers). Holliday is a very average hitter who is probably going to earn $15-20M per season with the contract Boras will get him but should only be getting $10-12M per season.

Player Analysis Tip: Look to the Road

This is what I've been advocating here on my site (and everywhere I post) regarding the better way to evaluate hitters and pitchers. This is why I've been putting the kibosh on every talk I see about trading for the Rangers' Hank Blalock, because he's crap outside of their home stadium. Holliday, while not crap, is at best an average hitting corner outfielder outside of Coors Stadium, with his .800 OPS lifetime in the majors outside of Coors. To give you some perspective, Fred Lewis has hit approximately that the past two seasons in SF, which is a neutral stadium that favors flyball pitchers and disadvantages left-handed hitters (though oddly, Lewis, Pablo, and Ishikawa have been much better at home so far and Schierholtz slightly better at home; that would explain our great home record and poor road record).

The thing is, a players career stats over emphasizes their home stats relative to their road stats. It would be like taking a poll of 100 people, where over half of them are Americans, and saying that the survey results represents the feelings worldwide, when Americans represent maybe 5% of the world's population. Yet I have seen some sabers not get this and argue that it is real data and must be included.

Ideally, yes, for better analysis, you would include his home stats with his road stats, using a portion of his home numbers, so that his career numbers is not overweighted with his home stats. But that is complicated to do and not easily obtainable from looking at his career splits stats.

This is like the case of OPS vs. OBPxSLG. Ideally, OBPxSLG is the number you compare hitters with, but OPS, by simply adding OBP to SLG, is an easy way to visually obtain a comparable measure for comparison. That same concept, I believe, applies to using a players road stats to compare with other players, for a rough idea of their comparability. This works for both hitters stadiums like Coors, and severe pitchers stadiums like Dodger Stadium and Petco. Then one can see that Blalock and Holliday are not really as good a hitter as they appear via their career stats and Chan Ho Park and Jeff Weaver are not really as good a pitcher as they appear via their career stats.

And you can verify this by looking at the players home/road splits for every season. Some players are all over the place, but for the most part, a players road stats don't vary much from what they perform when they move to a more neutral home park. Just check out players who have moved a number of places, like Park and Weaver, and you will see that their road numbers are pretty consistent, and that when they play at a more neutral park, their home numbers will be consistent with their road numbers.

Giants Thoughts

Don't overpay for average players like Holliday who benefited from home parks that boosted their overall career stats greatly. Preferably, I would rather the Giants just play with the cards that they have and not look outside, unless it is one of those trades that Sabean prefers to do, which is to get a player they want with prospects that they don't think are worth keeping. It has worked for the most part over the years.

I think we have prospects we can give opportunities to for all our positions. At 1B, Ishikawa, Bowker, and Guzman are good ones to check out, and if McPherson can ever get off the DL. At 2B, we have Frandsen and Burriss, plus Downs. In the OF, Schierholtz, Bowker, and Lewis, in about that order, plus maybe EME.

The only position I would be OK with the Giants going outside to get a high priced vet for minimal prospects is 2B, if I'm forced to accept one, where, while I would love to give Frandsen a chance, I will understand trying to upgrade there. There is alway 2010 to give Frandsen another chance, it is not like he was the best hitter ever in AAA or the minors, just that he has performed at every level coming up, and that deserves the opportunity to try to do that at the major league level.

2B is the most obvious upgrade, Ishikawa has shown some at 1B, Schierholtz and Bowker some in the OF.

Injury Reports (Cain's Arm Not Broken!) and Other News

Catching up on a number of news reports, the most important are injury reports, starting with...

Matt Cain's Arm is Not Broken

That's the most important bit of news, that his arm was not broken when a line drive off of, of all people, the opposing pitcher hit him just below the elbow of his throwing arm. That's the first step towards a good injury report and perhaps we should be thankful that it was a pitcher doing it and not a regular player. Right now Cain is diagnosed with a contussion and listed as doubtful for the All-Star game, though he will attend and participate otherwise. He's still hopeful, but taking it day to day.

That's two Giants pitchers hit by a batted ball in about one half a season when I couldn't remember the last time a Giants pitcher was hit and injured by a pitch. So that should hopefully cover us for a long long time.

Late breaking new from Laurence Miedma: Cain officially off roster, replaced by Pirates Zach Duke. That's good, no use risking the dummy Manuel (really, skipping over Sandoval for the All-Star team; though the bonus is that Sandoval has hit a homer in each game after that snub) possibly tempted to use Cain in the All-Star game. Our star pitcher should be resting his arm and getting the bruise healed. Hopefully, though, he can do that AND get to participate in the All-Star game, hanging with The Kid.

Angel Villalona Out with Quad Strain

As reported first by Chris Haft, Angel Villalona will be out at least four weeks with a strained left quadriceps. This will cost him his spot in this year's Futures Game, which he had also participated in last season. He's only hitting .269/.308/.400/.708, with 9 HR in 290 AB. He had started out the season well in April and May with OPS over 800, but has been totally lost June and July, so perhaps he's been hiding this injury and not treating it. Hopefully he will get it healed up well and start hitting again.

Buster Posey Just Fine

Buster Posey the other week was hit in the head with a pitch - sorry, should have reported that big bit of news - but he was fine, just held out for about a week to make sure his head and brain are fine, and after two games of no-hits, the hitting machine turned on again and started slugging again. He should be in AAA pretty soon, I would think.

Dallas McPherson Just Not Fine

Anticlimactically, the slugging 3B Dallas McPherson, he of 41 HR last season in the minors, whom we signed this year after the Marlins inexplicably gave up on him and never even gave him a chance, has still not taken one AB for us yet. He had just been placed on the 7-day DL (minor leagues) the other week, but as far as I know, he's never put in any time with any of our minor league affiliates, though perhaps he's been participating in instruction league or maybe a rookie league.

Too bad he decided he would rather be with the Marlins last season - I think he grew up in the area - because had he signed with us, he would have been starting at 3B for us much of the year instead of Castillo and perhaps prevented Panda-monium from reaching us last season until September. Now with Sandoval entrenched at 3B, maybe he can grab 1B next season, if he ever gets any ABs.

Sanchez and Righetti

Andy Baggerly kindly provided a great interview with Righetti in his blog, plus a wonderful article on Sanchez and Righetti. I totally recommend reading both, they are excellent, as usual. I always see a lot of fans rag on Rags as our pitching coach, but I think the latter article shows a great example of how Righetti helped out Sanchez, and undoubtedly all our other pitchers too at some point. Hopefully they will remember this article the next time they think they know better than the Giants brass about how good Rags is as a pitching coach.

It also explains why Sanchez was so lousy to start the season. It was the damn WBC, as suspected, but not for what one might think. Apparently Sanchez saw Johan Santana do something and wanted to copy him, which screwed him up because he's tall and Santana is shorter. He resisted changing back until now.

Woo Hoo! Sanchez No-No Yes! Just Saying...

To paraphrase Will The Thrill Clark: I've been waiting (almost) my whole fricking life for this!!! Congratulations to Jonathan Sanchez for the seventh no-hitter (as reported on KNBR) in San Francisco Giants history, the first since The Count's no-no in 1976, the first in SF since Halicki's in 1975. Being early in my love affair with the Giants, I didn't imagine that it would take this long, nearly 33 years, to experience another one. Now Sanchez has thrown, obviously, the first Giants no-hitter in AT&T.

With all the great pitchers we got, no one would have expected that Jonathan Sanchez would be the one to finally end so many years of futility for the Giants franchise. Both Cain and Lincecum would have been more obvious choices, plus Lincecum was perfect for 6 innings himself yesterday. We have had many close calls before, Atlee Hammacker, Scott Garrelts, who was just a couple of outs away against the Reds, if I recall correctly. Instead, it was Sanchez.

I've been fortunate enough to listen to each of the no-hitters that a Giants pitcher has thrown since I've become a fan, first Ed Halicki, then John "The Count" Montefusco, and now Jonathan Sanchez. I expect to experience another one in the next decade with Lincecum, Cain, then Bumgarner, in the rotation, and who knows, maybe Sanchez too now. I guess he'll be getting another start, eh?

Jonathan Sanchez went 9 innings, no hits, more amazing, no walks, and 11 strikeouts, with an error preventing a perfect game in the 8th, but I think that was ultimately a blessing because if Uribe didn't make the clear error, that could have been scored a hit because it was a tough grounder. He had 110 pitches, 77 of them for strikes. He was dealing.

As noted in the post-game interview on KNBR, the amazing thing is that his father had never seen him pitch in the majors before, and flew out to attend this game to support his son, because they knew of his struggles. A great belated Father's Day present for his dad, "Freddy"! Maybe his father should attend more games! How great is that!

Sanchez has not even had a complete game yet in the majors and this is his first. However, this is not his first experience with a no-hitter: he had 4 of them in college. Now he has one in the majors and no one can take that away from him.

Why I've Been Saying We Should Not Trade Sanchez

This is now exhibit A why I've been advocating that the Giants not trade Sanchez unless we get a lot back for him. This is why I've preferred that the Giants not trade Sanchez away, that we make do with who we have in our system for offense. As I've been saying for a while now, BP noted that it is a pitching staff that gets a lot of strikeouts that is a key contributor to teams that go deep into the playoffs. Sanchez, if he can consistently pitch like this, would give us three starters with Cain and Lincecum, four if Johnson can return to health.

This is also part of my theory about how a dominant rotation can change a short series in your favor. I have noted how the tandem of Johnson and Schilling did it for the D-backs in their World Series, the tandem of Koufax and Drysdale in the 60's. But instead of two, the more the merrier it is for us.

As I've been documenting with PQS, both Cain and Lincecum have been among the best in DOM%, but Sanchez was in that stratospheric level last year as well, before he tired. If he can harness that for the rest of the season, we would be sitting pretty in the playoffs, should we make it.

To be clear, this does not mean that Sanchez will ever meet his awesome potential. But I think this shows what we could have if we would just be patient with him. I would rather roll the dice with this rotation than risk getting an offensive player for him (assuming we are not talking about an elite hitter in exchange and not simply an upgrade over what we got now).

This has got to wear on the 'Dres too, they might have been mentally into the All-Star break already, but now being no-hit and nearly no-hit twice, it should shove them directly there and give us a great chance for a sweep, particularly with Cain tomorrow, then Zito the next day, after coming within 2 outs of a complete game shutout in his last start.

Unfortunately, the D-gers scored 6 runs in the 12th inning, so they won again and we did not gain on them. However, the silver lining is that we added another game to our lead over the Brewers, who lost to the D-gers.

But the D-gers amazing feat can't take anything away from this great win! Congrats to Jonathan Sanchez once again!!!

Go Giants!!!

The 2009 Giants are 46-38: Dropping the 'Dres

While it would have been nice to sweep the Marlins and really sink them in the Wild Card chase, the more important thing is that we won the series, and we have been winning series for a long while now, which puts us at 46-38, 8 games above .500.

That sets us up nicely against the struggling 'Dres, who have lost 4 straight games and 11 of their past 14 and has the second worse road record in the NL, behind only the Nats. Their 10 game win streak is now in the recesses of their brains, staring at a 12-29 record on the road.

Game 1: Lincecum vs. Josh Greer

Just it being Lincecum makes it likely we win, but Greer is 1-3 with a 5.46 ERA, making it that much more likely the Giants win, barring any miracle starts. I think the Kid knows the importance of starting the series with a win too. We should win this game.

Game 2: Sanchez vs. Josh Banks

This is up in the air. If Sanchez has turned the corner, it should be a walk for the Giants because Banks has a 5.60 ERA. If he's what he was before, it's a coin flip.

Game 3: Cain vs. TBA

The mighty TBA is most likely to be either a washed up major leaguer given another chance or an unproven minor leaguer. Either way, Matt Cain should mop him up nicely in preparation for his pitching in the All-Star game next week. It will be a coming out party for the Giants, particularly if Sandoval is added to the team by Manuel (Victorino won the vote but some current All-Stars are injured so the manager could add Pablo to the team; I'll bet he does the wrong thing and select additional Phillies onto the team).

Game 4: Zito vs. Kevin Correia

I guess the 'Dres didn't want to subject Correia (5-7, 4.58 ERA) to facing Cain, so they kept him going against Zito where he should have a better chance to win. But Zito finally put everthing together in his last start, and appears ready to start his usual second half surge. Even with the Giants, this continued, he was pretty bad in the first half then much better in the second half:

2007-H1: 4.90 ERA, 1.45 WHIP, 5.7 K/9, 1.27 K/BB, .274 BABIP
2007-H2: 4.11 ERA, 1.23 WHIP, 6.4 K/9, 2.10 K/BB, .255 BABIP
2008-H1: 5.62 ERA, 1.79 WHIP, 5.7 K/9, 1.03 K/BB, .329 BABIP
2008-H2: 4.59 ERA, 1.37 WHIP, 6.3 K/9, 1.38 K/BB, .260 BABIP
2009-H1: 4.43 ERA, 1.37 WHIP, 7.0 K/9, 1.80 K/BB, .285 BABIP (with one start to go)

So he reduced his ERA by 0.79 his first Giants season, 1.03 in his second, or roughly 0.9. If he did that again, his ERA in the second half would be roughly 3.50, which would be excellent. Another good sign is that his K/9 is much much higher this season. High 5/Low 6 K/9 is marginal for a starting pitcher, he would need to be at his best to pitch well in spite of the low K/9. He has not reached 7.0 K/9 in a half season since the second half of 2005 when he had a 7.3 K/9 and 3.81 ERA with a 2.10 K/BB.

Still, Correia has been doing well recently and Zito is not that far away from getting knocked around in a start, so this outcome is a coin flip too, though with good hope that Zito has perhaps turned the corner after coming within 2 outs of a complete game, the first time since his start on August 25, 2006 that he reached that deep into the game (8.2 IP that game) and the first time since his start on April 18, 2003, that he reached that deep into the game with a shutout. His last complete game was on August 30, 2005 and his last complete game shutout on April 18, 2003.

Giants Thoughts

We should not lose the series, probably can win the series, and slight chance of sweeping. How well Sanchez pitches will set a tone for this series. If we can win both those first two games, then the 'Dres are facing the All-Star break on a bad losing streak, possibly getting swept, and looking forward to licking their wounds back home during the All-Star break. They might take a mental break and the Giants could walk over them.

The series will also be interesting regarding how well the Giants do against basically 3 rookies and a relative rookie as as starter in Correia, the former Giants farm hand. It would be nice if the team can do a nice beat-down on this sorry bunch of starters and head into the All-Star break with some momentum going plus blowing away San Diego.

That should keep us in the lead for the wild card spot, plus perhaps extend the lead. Also, with the D-gers playing one game aginst the Mets and 3 against the Brewers, on the road, that could get us within 5-6 games of the NL West lead by the All-Star break, which would be good (it is currently 7 games).

Furthermore, this series will be interesting because Bowker is up and presumably will play in every game of this series. Can he hold onto the LF position (he starts there tonight)? Both Lewis and Schierholtz had hot starts that was amazing but then was so stone cold, that the Giants started using other prospects. Bowker with another hot start could give us a boost, and perhaps win him LF position for the rest of the season.

As expected, Sadowski was optioned down to the minors to make space. However, instead of AAA, he will go to San Jose instead and start the game next Monday to stay on his schedule and be ready to be recalled July 21, when the Giants again need a fifth starter again.

Rowand will sit and the outfield will be Bowker, Winn, Schierholtz today. Rowand is just off, not hurt, according to Baggerley. I wouldn't mind giving him more rest after that crash in the fence, particularly leading into the break, maybe give him Sunday off too. Today, Bowker will bat 5th and protect Big Money who, once again, is batting clean-up. No pressure. :^)

Wowsers! Bowker Comin' Up

As first reported by Hank Schulman of the Chronicle (who got the tip from a writer from the Fresno Bee), and reported as confirmed through sources by NBC's Raj Mathai during the 11PM news, John Bowker is joining the Giants for the start of the San Diego series on Thursday. It was noted that he was pulled after hitting a double in his first AB; some wondered why if they knew he was coming up, but why not get in an AB before taking off, Fresno is not that far away.

The speculation - which makes sense - is that Ryan Sadowski will be optioned back down to AAA to open up space. That works because he just had his last start pre-All Star break and then the rotation will be juggled after the break, and there is a break day for the Giants on Thursday, when most other teams start their second half of the season. Thus the mandatory 10 days would have elapsed by the time his next start, which Schulman thinks would be July 20th in Atlanta, assuming they want him back in the rotation.

Perhaps the New and Better Option

As nice as the young guys have been hitting, and the team been racking up high scoring games, both Schierholtz and Ishikawa has been colder in July, with Schierholtz hitting .192/.241/.231/.472 with no HR in 26 AB since June 30th and Ishikawa hitting .240/.269/.380/.659 with 2 HR in 50 AB since June 23rd.

Obviously, with Schierholtz making a face plant, it looks like Bowker will be taking away ABs in the OF first, though things might open up depending on how affected Rowand was by crashing into the fence to catch a fly ball in Wednesday's game. Rowand might need to miss a game or two (or have Bochy force him to rest). In addition, Ishikawa is still not hitting LHP, and thus the Giants might start Bowker in place of him against any LHP starting for San Diego.

Unlike Frandsen, who was brought up apparently to be MI backup, Bowker has been white-hot in AAA, hitting .345/.446/.609/1.055 with 17 HR in 289 AB, which translates to an MLE of .292/.373/.477/.850, which would be great at any of the corner fielding positions (I would note here that Ishikawa hit for a higher OPS last year in AAA than Bowker, and hit a lot better for HR).

There was no compelling reason to bring him up other than he has been white-hot, so I have to think that Bowker will get to start at least 3 of the 4 games against San Diego, and hopefully all four games, then get to play most of the games after the break until they need Sadowski again, and then will have to make a decision on who to remove off the 25 man roster. Else why bring him up when there was no urgent need to, other than to give us another power bat in the lineup and create competition for Schierholtz, Lewis, and Ishikawa.

I don't see the Giants carrying so many OF, so I have to think that the Giants would designate either Andres Torres or Fred Lewis for assignment, either releasing Torres or trading Lewis for a prospect of some sort. I think trading Lewis would be a mistake, he has shown some goodness while up in the majors, but I don't see how they can carry so many OF on the roster, unless they demote Whiteside to the minors again and make Sandoval the backup catcher again, as Frandsen also has caught a little so that he can be the third catcher.

Thinking more of that option, I can see that happening as Molina would not need a break until near the end of July 2009. Meanwhile, drop Whiteside out, and have Franden ready to catch at any time.

2009 Giants: June PQS

This post has the Giants Pure Quality Start scores for the month of June 2009, PQS as defined in Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster annual book and they published the details here. I wrote on this first in 2006 and have compiled their stats on a regular basis, so I'm continuing it this season for continuity and historical comparison (there is the "PQS" label that you can click to see the old posts on this). Regular readers can skip to the next section.

This is the Quality Start with a sabermetric DIPS twist, and it gets really easy to calculate once you get used to it. I don't think it's the end all or be all, but then nothing really is that. It is, as I like to say, another piece of the puzzle. A dominating start is scored a 4 or 5 and a disaster start is scored a 0 or 1. DOM% is the percentage of starts that are dominating, DIS% is the percentage of starts that are disasters (any start under 5.0 IP is automatically a 0, or disaster).

Basically, you want to see a pitcher's DOM% to be over 40% and ideally over 50%, and you want their DIS to be under 20% and ideally under 10%. For example, Johan Santana has a 76% DOM and 3% DIS in 2006 (2.77 ERA), whereas Orlando Hernandez had a 52% DOM and 28% DIS (4.66 ERA), and Adam Eaton had a 31% DOM and 31% DIS (5.12 ERA). See my explanation down below on methodology plus read the link, there's a nice chart there showing the combination of high DOM% and low DIS%, and particularly how low DIS% is so important.

I wholeheartedly recommend buying Baseball Forecaster and learning more about their methods of analyzing baseball. It has been greatly illuminating for me, and if you want to get a taste for it without paying full price, they used to sell their old editions of their annuals on their website for half price or less (plus shipping); but that was before he sold the company off, and I haven't checked recently.

Giants Starters' PQS for 2009 Season

Matt Cain - (67% DOM, 7% DIS; 10:1/15): 5, 2, 4, 4, 1, 4, 3, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 5, 5, 5

Randy "The Big Unit" Johnson- (31% DOM, 31% DIS; 5:5/16): 3, 0, 5, 0, 5, 0, 2, 0, 3, 5, 3, 2, 4, 3, 5, 1

Tim "The Kid" Lincecum - (81% DOM, 6% DIS; 8:1/10): 0, 2, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 4, 5, 5, 4, 3, 5, 5, 5, 5

Ryan Sadowski - (0% DOM, 0% DIS; 0:0/1): 3

Jonathan Sanchez - (15% DOM, 38% DIS; 2:5/13): 0, 3, 3, 0, 2, 2, 4, 4, 0, 0, 3, 0, 2

Barry Zito - (33% DOM, 13% DIS; 5:2/15): 0, 3, 5, 3, 4, 4, 3, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, 0, 5, 2

Giants season overall - 46% DOM, 18% DIS out of 76 games counted (35:14/76)

Giants Month of April - 40% DOM, 25% DIS out of 20 games counted (8:5/20)

Giants Month of May - 52% DOM, 17% DIS out of 29 games counted (15:5/29)

Giants Month of June - 44% DOM, 15% DIS out of 27 games counted (12:4/27)

Lincecum kept rolling into June and had another 5 DOM starts. Cain added 4 DOM himself. Each alone had more DOM than the rest of the rotation, which totalled only 3 among themselves. However, more importantly, while there was not DOM starts, they did a good job of avoiding DIS starts, reducing the number to only 4 in June.

Johnson has not been able to give a DOM performance every time out, he can muster one up every other start or so. Sanchez had a bad string of DIS starts after his first two DOM starts - very odd - that resulted in him being put in the bullpen to straighten things out. He has put in two good relief appearances since then, and with Johnson's injury and time on the DL (initial talk was 2-3 weeks, but the TV news noted that it could be 6-8 weeks; will need to confirm this), Sanchez will take his spot. Let's see what he can do now that he cleared his head.

Meanwhile The Big Sadowski had his first major league start on June 28th (and first major league hit and first major league victory) and the only blemish was that he didn't strike out enough batters. And his next start was a DOM start that netted him his second victory. Two starts, two victories, 0.00 ERA, the world at his feet. Johnson, out with his injury, hopes to return quickly but if Sadowski can keep this up, we could be OK in his absense.

Plus, Sanchez will be taking Johnson's spot in the rotation while he is out, and he has been good in the two bullpen appearances he has made, in fact, striking out the side in his first one. And he was not that far away in his last start before he was removed from the rotation - two more outs and either one less walk or two more strikeouts, and he would have had a DOM start, his first in 5 starts. If he has turned the corner, that would also help ease the loss of Johnson.

Not that Johnson has been that great with us this season. With a low DOM% and a high DIS%, he is lucky to have such a good record and ERA (relatively). His ERA should be much higher given the high DIS%. But he had improved things lately, getting 3 DOM starts out of 6 total starts, and, more importantly, avoiding the DIS start until his last two starts.

Zito has been on and off all season long. The difference is that recently he has been starting to strike out more hitters per inning pitched and that should help him get more DOM starts. He now has two in his last four starts, and could have had three if he would have lasted just two outs longer on one start. In addition, since June started, he has a 4-2 record.

Overall, the rotation performed pretty much like it did in May, a little worse but overall very good. The DOM% went down a little but was still a very respectable 44%. More importantly, they kept the DIS% low and even got it a little lower. That is important for keeping the overall ERA lower, generally.

What's Good and What's Not

A DOM at or above the 40% mark is indicative of good pitching; above 50% is great; above 70% is elite. A low DIS is also indicative of good pitching, just look at the table in the link above showing DOM% and DIS% on the axes.

If you had to chose a high DOM% or a low DIS%, pitchers tend to have a lower ERA when you have a low DIS% vs. a high DOM% (obviously if you combine both, you have a much better chance of having an elite pitcher).

June 2009 Comments

As I noted last month, we were not that far behind in the wild card race, and with a 17-10 June, the Giants took the lead. More young players were either producing regularly or becoming white-hot or both. Sandoval in particular, pushed himself into All-Star berth consideration with his hot hitting in June (8 HR in 94 AB, .394/.459/.745/1.203 batting line). Schierholtz was also hot once he started regularly, hitting .375/.406/.578/.984 with 3 HR in 64 AB. They were joined by Ishikawa, who hit .250/.283/.591/.874 in June with 4 HR in 44 AB. They plus Rowand (hit .320/.383/.495/.878 with 3 HR in 97 AB in June) helped drive the offense in June.

The vets recently started hitting as well, helping out as the younger players have started to fade in July. Winn and Molina in particular have started hitting in July. And Uribe had been hitting nicely in June and July, now that he's been getting regularly playing time, first at 3B when Sandoval had to play 1B, and now 2B when neither Burriss nor Downs could hold the position. That has helped the Giants win two series so far in July and four in the last five games, a very nice homestand thus far.

However, while it is nice that Uribe is contributing, Bochy should really start Frandsen at 2B now that he is up - he has been on the bench for the two games since he has been up here. As nice as it would be that we get into the playoffs this season, this season should really be more about finding out more about whether we have position players who can start for us going forward. Frandsen has shown flashes in the past, and needs the opportunity to show whether he can hold the job down or if we need to find a vet who can play 2B for us in 2010.

Plus, why bother bringing him up if he's not going to start? If he's sitting on the bench anyhow, then why not bring up Bowker instead and start him at 1B and LF occassionally to take advantage of his hot bat. That would push both Schierholtz and Ishikawa, both of whom has cooled off in July so far (though small samples).

Meanwhile, there are talks of the Giants looking to add a player to help this team reach the playoffs. With the Wild Card lead, Sabean is trying to weigh development and keeping prospects for the future and improving the team to try to get into the playoffs this season. I think that it would take a deal like the one he did in 1997, where he traded a bundle of prospects to get a starting pitcher, closer, and utility pitcher (starter/reliever).

The loss of Johnson complicates things as now the team needs to hold onto Sanchez, though we do have Pucetas waiting in AAA and Martinez should be ready to play soon too, as he works his way through rehab. Being in such a good position, the Giants will probably not be focused so much on development as on making the playoffs.

I think it would be great to make the playoffs, because then Lincecum and Cain can get that off their To-Do list of first experiences, and hopefully not be so amped up the next time we make the playoffs, hopefully next season. But I hope the Giants continue to try to balance that with developing players.

I don't want to see any of our top prospects traded away. I am OK with mid-tier prospects going in a package deal to take salary off another team. But right now, I don't see any team looking to do that other than the Padres and they won't dump salary on a fellow NL West team and help us out. The Pirates will want a good package in return for Sanchez, and trading for him now will hurt our farm system. Hopefully the Giants were just kicking the tires for him or that the Pirates don't want that much in return for us taking his salary off the books while giving them a good replacement in return, though Burriss's broken foot makes including him in such a trade unlikely.

Lastly, just wanted to note that if the Giants can complete the sweep of the Marlins, that would push one of our wild card competitors 5 games behind us. And with four games against the weak 'Dres (3-7 in their last 10) before the All-Star break, they need to win that series in order to pull away from the other contenders, D'Rox (2 games back), Brew Crew (3 games back), Cubs (4 games back), Marlins (4 games back), and Reds (4.5 games back).

Pulling off a sweep of the 'Dres would put us in a nice position going into the break, and we throw Lincecum, Sanchez, Cain, and Zito at them, while we face, I believe, Geer (5.46 ERA but 1.30 WHIP), Banks (5.60 ERA but 1.36 WHIP), Silva (8.76 ERA with 1.99 WHIP) and Correia (4.58 ERA but 1.28 WHIP), respectively. Both Peavy and Young are on the DL, and that has hurt them greatly.

Lincecum and Cain should win, but Sanchez vs. Silva is still iffy, and Correia has been pitching better of late and should give Zito good competition. A sweep does not look likely, though possible. The Giants have beaten two great starters in the past week, Carpenter with the Cards and now Johnson with the Marlins, so they are capable of taking on the other team's top starters, but the 'Dres starters don't look anything like any team's top starters, so hopefully our offense can beat up on them.

Panda-monium!

Somehow the Phillies manager did not notice Pablo Sandoval's .332/.386/.572/.958 batting line or his 13 HR and 48 RBI, which basically is a pace for roughly 25 HR and 100 RBI, and doesn't even account for the fact that he didn't do much in the month of April, he has done most of this in May and June, particularly June for HR.

So Kung Fu Panda is left to beg for an All-Star spot via the MLB Final Spot voting, against 4 other worth players, but obviously I don't think are as worthy as Pablo: Shane Victorino, the Flying Hawaiian, Matt Kemp, Mark Reynolds, and Cristian Guzman. He currently has a slim lead after a day of voting and the voting ends on Thursday. Vote for Pablo here. I have been putting in about 25 votes per day. There does not appear to be a limit on the site to the number of times you vote, but it gets a bit monotonous after a while, so 25-30 votes appear to be my physical/mental limit.

Hot Streak/Cold Streak

One of my favorite toys, er, tool has been Baseball-Reference.com, and one thing I like to play with recently is their game logs stats, where I can add up stats over a stretch of games pretty easily. A new feature or post I'm thinking of doing is a "Hot Streak/Cold Streak" where for certain players I will present their current hottest streak and coldest streak. I don't know how many times I go through a Giants comment area and there would be people saying that a player is lousy because his overall numbers weren't that good, but if they looked closer, they would have seen that he has actually been pretty hot recently, but was just weighed down (or buoyed up) by that first month of greatness/suckness.

And this is all relative to how good or bad he is doing. Their hot might not be that hot, or their cold could be someone else's hunka-hunka burning inferno.

Here is Panda's current Hot Streak/Cold Streak:

Hot: since June 4th, .382/.452/.755/1.207 with 10 HR in 110 AB, 15 BB, 20 SO, 19 runs, 27 RBI
Cold: since June 29th, .259/.344/.556/.899 with 2 HR in 27 AB, 4 BB, 6 SO, 5 runs, 10 RBI

Even when he's cold he's hot. He has been striking out more then what he usually did during this professional career, but not outrageously so. 15% is the key limit, a batter wants to keep it below that, as most players who hit well can limit the number of strikeouts he gets. He is at 18% for the hot streak, 22% for the cold streak. And he has started taking walks, he used to not get that much, but now he is piling them up, relatively, it is vastly improved to being where good hitters are, in terms of BB/SO ratio.

The 2009 GIants are 44-37: Reeling in the Marlins

The Giants just took another series, taking down the Houston Astro's pretty decisively, winning first 13-0 then 9-0, behind the Big Sadowski and the Kid, before losing to Roy Oswalt (no shame there, he's a pretty good pitcher). More importantly, Randy Johnson injured himself swinging the bat in the loss and he is probably out indefinitely. He got an MRI today to check things out, and while the results were not released, he has been put on the DL and Frandsen has been called up.

Even if he had gotten a healthy bill of health, I would think the Giants would still just skip his next start, which is the last one before the All-Star game and just have him rest until the rotation is rejiggered after the All-Star break. This will give his old body a long extended rest, which is good. Also, it would give the Giants the chance to start Jonathan Sanchez and see how his time off has fixed him up (or not, as the case may be).

And with a stretch of 20 straight days of games to August 6th after the break, the Giants could feasible run a 6 man rotation during that period so that all the pitchers would pitch on the same number of days of rest as they would when there is a day off in there. That would be three starts for each before we would need to take the 6th man out. That would give Sadowski and Sanchez a good number of starts to see how good they are with the league scouting them and trying to figure them out. It would also give all of our starters, both young and old, less starts during the season and thus less wear and tear.

And if that works, then starting August 14th is another 17 straight days of games, or about another 3 starts for each of the 6 starters, if the Giants decide that they should continue that. Heck, if it is working, they could just keep the 6 man rotation going through the stretch between August 7th and 12th.

The only thing I would advise is setting up and/or revising the rotation to make sure it is our three best starters facing the D-gers from August 10th to 12th and ideally against the Rockies from July 24th to 26th and during the games in late August. Plus, adjustment of the rotation should have our best starters facing the D-gers in September for those two series, sacrificing the D-Rox series in-between, if necessary.

The Giants are now leading the race for the wild card playoff spot by 1.5 games over the Brewers, 2.0 games over the Rockies and Marlins (who happen to be our next opponents), and 3.0 games ahead of the Cubs. In addition, they have currently 7.5 back, which is getting close to striking distance, but still pretty far back. I think there will be hope if we are at within 6 games by the All-Star break.

Coin Flip - Almost - Giants Making Playoffs

In any case, according to AccuScore, which projects current stats and situations and similates that for the rest of the season, the Giants improved their chances this past week to 42.5% of making the playoffs. They still have a 8.2% chance of winning the division (D-gers according to AccuScore, is a lock at 89.2% chance of winning the NL West) but have a pretty good chance of winning the wild-card spot, though still not likely to do that, approximately a third of a chance.

Marlins

The Giants could pull a bit farther away from a competitor for the wild card with a series victory, or push them away one arm's length with a series sweep. However, a sweep is not likely and even a series victory will take some doing, we would have to outperform to do that.

Game 1: Cain vs. Sean West

Sean West beat the Giants for his first major league win about a month ago, but since then has a 6.30 ERA, allowing 5 runs twice in his last three starts. Cain, meanwhile, has been one of the best pitchers in the majors, earning his first All-Star berth, along with Tim Lincecum who earned his second, but will be making his first (hopefully) because last year he was hospitalized with flu symptoms before the game. The Giants should win unless West is a Giants killer.

Game 2: Zito vs. Josh Johnson

Josh Johnson is the Marlin's ace, 7-1 with 2.76 ERA, 1.13 WHIP. The Giants missed him the last time around, but Johnson has been pretty good for the most part, except for a blip last week against the Nationals, so he should be tough against us, he hasn't been carrying forward bad performances.

Zito, meanwhile, has been able to strike out more than one per inning and yet has been hit like pinata for those games too. He hasn't had a well-pitched game since late May, early June. This should be a loss unless Zito is able to take advantage of his extra stuff that he has shown lately. Over his last 7 starts, in 37.1 innings he has struck out 36 and walked 19, but given up 41 hits and 5 HR. Both are bad luck figures, as his BABIP is .336 during that period and during his career it has been more in the .260-.280 range, and his HR/9 is 1.21 when it is 0.94 for his career. He's also a bit over on walks, but his increase in strikeouts should have covered that. It was the extra hits and homers that have hurt his ERA, which was over 6 for those seven starts.

Game 3: The Big Sadowski vs. Chris Volstad

In a season of nice stories, Sadowski is the nicest. Hardly ever used in college, his mother contacted all 30 major league teams to get them to send their Miami area scout to check out her son in a private session. Only 2 did so, the Giants being one of them. However, soon all the teams wanted to check him out, and the Giants ended up selecting him in the 12th round of the draft, even though he had not played much college ball.

Then, once he started playing for us, he started having headaches and got so sick that he couldn't pitch in the playoffs. After the season, while at home, his doctors diagnosed that he had a subdural hematoma (basically bleeding in the brain cavity) that he speculates happened when he fell in a shower earlier in the season (but he doesn't believe that was it), which the doctors had no idea how that got there. After emergency brain surgery to remove the blood and two days of intensive care, he was OK, but needed protection for his head where the surgery was, so he constructed his own plastic protection device that wasn't so bulky.

Then a couple of years ago, he had a more conventional injury (shoulder injury) that nonetheless kept him out. But he kept on working hard and learning, and then finally had some good luck (for him) in that the pitcher more likely to be called up was Kevin Pucetas, but he had just started and thus would be starting on two days rest, so Sadowski got the call and now has racked up two straight shutout performances. Not bad for a pitcher who, when his AAA manager called him in, thought he had been sold to a Japanese team as per the rumors he had heard.

His background and his limited "stuff" suggests that major league hitters will catch up with him sooner or later. At minimum, clearly he won't end his career with a 0.00 ERA, but he has shown that he knows how to pitch, so he at least should be effective for at least a little while longer.

Meanwhile, he faces Chris Volstad, a prospect with a lot more hype than Sadowski ever had, but who, after a nice 6-4 season last year with a 2.88 ERA and 1.33 WHIP, has a 5-8 record thus far with a 4.85 ERA but nicer 1.28 WHIP. Unfortunately for him, batters have been homer happy against him, with 17 HR in 98.1 IP and 17 games, which is pretty bad. And he has shown no recent trend that suggests that this might end, other than facing the heretofore punchless Giants lineup that blasted out 30 HR in their last 33 games, and 23 HR in their last 20 games. And he is a RHP and our powers are from the left. Still, he has had a nice start in 2 of his last three starts, plus pitched well against the Giants a month ago, so I would have to put this game as up in the air.

Giants Thoughts

This series can go either way. It will take some more good pitching from Sadowski and/or good hitting from the lineup to win the series, as we should win the first but lose the second. And the Marlins have been hot in recent games too. But as long as we are not swept, I would be OK with the results.

With Johnson on the DL, we get to see how Sanchez has improved (or not) with his time off to set himself straight while also rewarding Sadowski for his great performance thus far. This will give both a chance to shine or not. And that's what we need this season, see how our young prospects can perform, or not, for us.

While Frandsen is not starting today, I have to hope that Bochy would start Frandsen more times than not while Johnson is on the DL. Again, we need to see how Frandsen could do, not allow a washed up infielder like Uribe a lot of ABs when we have a valid prospect who could be something. Frandsen has earned that chance.

This series is a critical one for the Giants lineup. Schierholtz and Ishikawa is starting to cool off from their hot hitting since they started getting regular starts. Rowland too. However, Molina and Winn has started getting hot lately, which helped with the explosion of run scoring in recent games. The Giants have scored 6 or more runs 7 times in the past 11 games. In addition, they scored 9 plus runs in 3 of the past 7 games, while also scoring 2 runs or less 3 times also.

As noted, Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain were named to the All Star game. Pablo Sandoval can be voted in, so I suggest you go out and vote for Kung Fu Panda, like I did. He really deserves to be named, but every year there is always someone who deserves to go but is snubbed.

Giants Sniffing Pirates: Sanchez and 1B LaRoche

As a long-time reader, Matt Mongiello, commented, the Giants are kicking the tires with the Pirates regarding 2B Freddy Sanchez and 1B Adam LaRoche, though more seriously for the former than the latter. I then read an account from a Pittsburgh newspaper.

LaRoche is not such a high priority, with Ishikawa showing some recent bat life - .303/.373/.525/.898 since May 10th. But if there is a good upgrade to be had on the cheap, the Giants will at least entertain talks. According to the Pittsburgh site, the Giants prefer a righthander, however: LaRoche is a lefty. Plus, LaRoche is a free agent after the season and will be 30 next season. I doubt anything will come of these talks, the Giants would not be willing to give up much in prospect talent for a rental, and the Pirates will want to have some sort of decent prospect in return, I would think (at least I would). I don't think they are worrying about his salary that much, it is only $7.05M, or about $3.5M left. I can see them dumping his salary at the deadline, but right now: no.

Sanchez would be the clearer upgrade for us, with Uribe the current starter, Burriss in AAA trying to figure out how to hit, and Frandsen apparently in some sort of doghouse. He is owed about $3M for this season with an $8M club option next season. His value is on an upswing with his second best season ever, after 2006, but he's 31 years old and not really so good (about average) the other seasons, and particularly bad in 2008.

I would think that an middle infielder would be what the Pirates would want from us. One who would be ready to play for them in 1-3 years, when their recent young draft picks should be arriving on the major league scene. I think the Pirates would be most interested in Burriss right now than Crawford. As nicely as Crawford did in San Jose, he's been struggling in Connecticut, even on the road, and he's still striking out a heck of a lot. I think Burriss's minor league performance bodes better than Crawford's for a major league career. And that doesn't even include Burriss's major league performance, which I would also rate positively, long-term.

They would also want another prospect or two in addition, probably some of our mid-tier pitching prospects who are doing well in AA and Advanced A, like English, Pucetas, Tanner, etc. We have a number of promising pitchers and I think they would like to get their hands on some to stock their system.

And I would not trade Jonathan Sanchez for Freddy Sanchez, I think Sanchez can still be a superior top of rotation starter, and pitchers like that should get value in return. I don't think that this is enough value in return. And with Randy Johnson's injury today putting his availability into question, I think the Giants, even if they were seriously considering trading Sanchez, would pull him off the market to take Johnson's last start before the All-Star break and reassess afterward.

Renteria vs. Cabrera: You Get What You Pay For, and Sometimes Less

I have no love lost with the A's. Frankly, it won't matter much to me either way if the A's stayed in the SF Bay Area or if they left. My quality of life would not be affected either way. However, the thought of the nasty A's fans who have given me grief over the years would do my heart good.

While I do love my Giants, I have never worn rose-colored glasses regarding them vs. the A's. I know that the A's have been better than the Giants for the most part during the time I have followed the Giants. But, for me, that's OK, I can accept that, just like I accepted long ago that there were geniuses who were graduating from college when they were 12 years old and thinking about graduate school, while I was happy playing, and following baseball, like any other kid. Plus, I understand that the team is not me, I can separate that.

What I don't like is when people praise Billy Beane to high heavens while Brian Sabean gets the sharp end of the stick. Billy had been arguably better for a number of years now, but then again, it is a bit comparing apples with oranges, because the Giants have been re-building for a couple of years now and the A's were trying hard to win, or at least said that they were.

And that bring me to the topic today: Edgar Renteria and Orlando Cabrera. Sabean is tarred and feathered for that one while Beane is put on an even higher pedestal. So I thought I would examine the issue and see what the situation is.

Fangraphs Says Renteria the Better Buy

OK, they don't say that, but I'm interpreting from their data. Renteria is making $9.5M this season, while Cabrera is getting $3M. Based on his stats so far, Fangraphs has Renteria at around $1.9M value so far this season, about half way in, because he has contributed about half a win thus far. That means that at this rate, he would have contributed about $4M in value and about one win in a full season.

Meanwhile, Fangraphs has Cabrera at around -$3.9M value so far this season, and that he has costed the A's about one win thus far this season, based on his very poor play at bat and on the field, defensively. At this rate, he would have costed the A's about $8M in value and about 2 wins in a full season.

Now, either way, both players are not worth the money the teams are paying them. But many fans have been crediting the A's for getting Cabrera while deriding the Giants for signing Renteria. But while Renteria has at least been contributing some value to the Giants, Cabrera has been costing the A's big time. And relatively, the Giants got a big bargain in Renteria over Cabrera because while the Giants are paying about $6.5M more for Renteria, they have already gotten, in a half a season of play, almost that whole $6.5M in value from Renteria. And by the end of the season, assuming that the players play at about the same rate, Renteria would have contributed about $12M more in value than Cabrera would have while only paying $6.5M more.

Thus, Renteria was the better acquisition than Cabrera, by a mile, based on Fangraph's stats. And thus it should be Beane who should be derided for waiting for Cabrera instead of pursuing Renteria.

While I'm at it, Furcal thus far has contributed about 0.7 wins above replacement, or $3.2M worth of value, which works out to about 1.5 wins for the season and $7M in value; he is getting about $12M this season, which is about $3M more than Renteria, both in value and by salary, so the two are relatively even, though both are still being paid more than what Fangraphs think they should be.

However, last year we paid $5M to Vizquel and got a -$1.9M/-0.4 win season out of him. Thus, for $4.5M more for Renteria, we are getting $6M more in value from Renteria, plus he is contributing positive value. And, extrapolating Bocock's value out (very iffy, I know, but still), he was worth -$10-12M or -2.0 to -2.5 wins above replacement. Relative to Bocock, Renteria is a much better deal, paid about $9M more than Bocock, but providing $14-16M in value. Again, using Fangraphs Value calculations.

Sabean Better than Beane

What is even more amazing to me is that there is almost no talk about how Beane has failed this season, badly. He signed on a number of old players - Cabrera, Giambi, Garciaparra - plus picked up Holliday, put all his young studs in the starting rotation, and Voila, they have one of the worse records in the majors, as only 3 teams in the majors have a worse record. And imagine how bad it would be if they didn't go on that 7 game win streak.

Meanwhile, Sabean has put together the second best record in the NL and what I hear about is how dumb he was to sign Renteria and not wait until Cabrera was available on the cheap. I think the key phrase there is that "you get what you pay for," generally.

Still, does Sabean get credit for a good team? No, he gets raked over the coals for the lack of a power hitter, but these people don't realize the irony that the Giants are doing just fine without a "true" power hitter up to now, though in June, Sandoval, Schierholtz, and Ishikawa have been hitting like true power hitters. Meanwhile, Beane had his fans expectations set for going to the playoffs and doing something with Holliday as their marquee player, and yet I don't see any columnist raking Beane over the coals.

Sabean Better Than Thought

I think that a lot of Sabean-haters just like to focus on the negatives. And their memories extend as far as "what have you done for me lately". Sabean did a lot of good stuff to create a pennant winner in 1997 from a badly losing team in 1996 and then keeping it winning until 2005, when Bonds was out the whole season. I would like to see most teams recover from losing their Hall of Fame level production player for a full season; most don't.

They also pile on about the free agents. They don't realize that Sabean was executing the strategy that centered around winning with Barry Bonds that Magowan set in place. In spite of all the complaints, Sabean generally went out and got the best free agent out on the market. It was either that or accepting defeat by playing a scrub or unproven player at that position.

What people like to focus on as well are the Pierzitski trade and the Hillenbrand trades. The former was bad all around, but you can't expect perfection in trading, and if A.J. wasn't such an ass, he would have provided us good value as a catcher instead of costing us even more by forcing us to sign Matheny. I think that getting Kent and Schmidt in trades more than makes up for that mistake.

I still like the Hillenbrand trade. It was a calculated risk that was hedged nicedly. He was a league average hitter and such a hitter at 1B would have made a huge difference; however, he flatlined in our lineup and shrink under the pressure, it appears. Chulk, meanwhile, was a very useful pitcher for us that season (better than Accardo) and next, a good hedge against the losss of Accardo. And while Accardo went on to close in 2007, he was injured most of the 2008 season and been out for most of this season until recently. Since the trade, Accardo has thrown 114.1 innings, 3.62 ERA, and Chulk threw 107 innings for us (he's with Cleveland now), 4.29 ERA.

Now, Accardo will most likely surpass whatever we got from Chulk, but there is the huge time value issue. We needed a better 1B. We traded a pitcher with potential (but who wasn't doing it yet) for a similar performing pitcher (or close enough) plus get a league average hitting 1B, which was way better than what we had at that time. It just didn't work out, it happens. It was a calcuated risk that was hedged so that we got some value.

And while Accardo is nice, I don't know where he would fit in our bullpen right now. People see his shiny 2007 season, but don't realize that there was a lot of luck involved, his FIP that year was almost a full run and a half higher than the 2.14 ERA he had that season, at 3.48. And guess what Chulk's FIP was in 2007? 3.33 FIP. Yes, Chulk outpitched Accardo in 2007.

Plus, while the Giants would never admit that they think a player is headed for the injury bin, I have to wonder if they were thinking that Accardo was headed for a big injury like he had in 2008.

Lastly, the end result is this: for the vast majority, and more importantly, in terms of top players, Sabean has kept all the prospects that he deemed worth keeping. Even Liriano, as nicely as he started, is still struggling to stay healthy (and I think the Twins are killing any chance of a long career by trotting him out there as a starter, he should have become a reliever after his first big injury as a major leaguer because he's had so many in the minors), so what loss was he, really, ultimately? Lincecum, Cain, Wilson, Sandoval, Romo, all the young players on this 25-man roster, all the prospects we have in the farm system, he hasn't really traded or released many worth crying over, he has keep the keepers.

As my daughter's favorite singer sings, "Everybody makes mistakes." The true mistake is to keep all the past trespasses and to hold it against that person when circumstances have changed. How anyone can look at this team and farm system and not be excited about the team's future, I don't know. I feel sorry for them.

People have complained about the past few years, but it's like all the bad dates and significant others you went through before you found the one: it is a process you have to go through sometimes to learn what you need to learn to get where you are today.

I enjoyed the past few season. I knew that it was building up to this, just not this soon. Getting Randy Johnson, I think, helped accelerate the process a bit. I know that there might be some setbacks from where we are now, but that's OK, it's part of the learning process. As I've been saying since 2003, a team needs to put in some losing seasons to accelerate the re-building process, and we have picked up Posey and Wheeler, two potential top line players. So I was OK with losing.

Some people have complained that the Giants didn't rebuild sooner. Fair complaint but really, if you are paying Barry Bonds $20M to play baseball, you have to go all in and buy the best team you can get, so that Barry is satisfied that the Giants are doing their best to win with him. They owed him that much.

These same people talk about how the Giants went to a youth movement finally this season, while noting that the rebuild should have been sooner. Where have they been the past three seasons? The entire pitching staff went young while they were complaining about the old team. Where we weren't young, we got vets so that we didn't have a AAA-team playing the field. Because our young position prospects didn't really deserve many chances in the recent past. Still, the Giants were patient enough to allow starting opportunities for those who showed something in the minors and then the majors.

Tim Kawakami is one of those. He lambasted the Giants today for playing Jose Castillo last season, lumping him with the old vets that he hates so much. What he don't realize is that he advocated for the Giants to trade for Alexis Rios (by trading Matt Cain or Tim Lincecum - thank goodness that didn't happen! That would be 1,000 times worse than anything Sabean has done.) who is the same age of Castillo.

But what would he have the Giants do? It's easy to criticize but when you look at the full circumstances, the Giants did as best as they could do. They had saved 3B as a position that Frandsen could play at, while planning on playing Durham at 2B. (Kawakami also complained about Durham, but Durham hit .293/.385/.414/.799 for us, and I don't see what there is to complain about that number.) It would not have been fair to another player if the Giants signed someone who could play 3B, but would sit on the bench behind Frandsen, as backup. They tried to sign McPherson, but as it turned out, he wanted to play for Florida.

Then Frandsen fell to a season ending injury near the end of spring training leaving us no alternative other than to play Castillo because a trade to get a 3B then or even into the season would have been costly. Would he rather we traded away Sandoval then to get a middling 3B, just so that we don't have to play the "old" 27 year old Castillo? People sometimes don't think through all the circumstances involved and just gloss over the surface facts: ineffective veteran, must be old, ergo blast Sabean.

Castillo was a body, plain and simple to anyone who has watched baseball for a while. The Giants knew that he wasn't much but we needed a 3B, there is no rule that allows us to not field a position, and we were already starting Brian Bocock at SS, another player who should not have been up there. But Vizquel was injured, we needed a body there too. So Castillo got a chance to add to his major league pension while filling a position, and once we had someone ready to take over in Sandoval, they moved him out, took at look at him at 2B, then let him go. What is so wrong with that?

And by that logic, the Giants don't sign Jeremy Affeldt, who is 29 years old. Or Justin Miller or Brandon Medders. Where would our bullpen, where would out team, be right now without them? We'd be stuck near the cellar again. And don't forget Randy Johnson. Under that logic, he would rather we be starting Pat Misch, who was our 6th starter the past few years, as he's young.

He talks about how the youth movement should have started in the 2007 season, but again, we had Bonds, if he has a problem with hitters who hit .276/.480/.565/1.045 with 28 HR (and I'm tired about all the media piling on about steroids - had they been doing their job back when McGwire was caught with Andro, maybe much of this would have been over already) then I don't know what to say. There is no full-on youth movement happening with Bonds unless those youth deserved it, like Matt Cain and Noah Lowry. Unless he was advocating that we should have been playing Lance Niekro or Dan Ortmeier at 1B that season, just because they were young.

And who says that a youth movement has to be 100% youth or you're lying? That is something a child might think, but we're all adults here. Nothing is 100%. And he states that as if that is something that must be done to re-build. Well, the Braves never did that while re-building in the late 1980's, they always had vets in the lineup, they signed some older players too, but they had a pretty nice run from the early 1990's to mid-2000's. Detroit did the same too in the mid-2000's, signing vets to fill holes on their team until they got good again. The Rockies didn't get rid of Helton but somehow made the World Series the other year.

Youth is not good. Talent is good. Young talent is better. But if you don't have young talent, you get what you can get off the free agent market.

As I've been saying since 2003, I like that Sabean has been focusing on marshalling his scarce resource, the draft picks, by concentrating on drafting the best pitchers that he could get, then filling in with position players along the way too. I liked it even more once Baseball Prospectus came out with a study that showed that it is pitching that is crucial to winning in the playoffs, and not hitting. Hitting is hygiene, something you have to have, but not a requirement for winning in the playoffs. Even more importantly, he has kept most of that talent and the fruits of that is blooming now.

I accept that Sabean has made mistakes along the way. But to continue to hold on to past mistakes in the face of how well the team is looking right now? Explain the logic of that to me, I don't get it. What is wrong with the team now? And if you are expecting perfection, then say so, then I know that you are not being realistic. Our farm system is stocked. The lineup has been OK - playing .500 for the first two months - and have been better this month. The pitching staff has been outstanding. We have a number of outstanding prospects who should be ready to come up in a year or two in Posey, Bumgarner, Alderson, Crawford, then maybe Villalona, Noonan, Wheeler, Dominguez, Gillaspie, Kieschnick, Neal. Why can't people just enjoy?

I'm loving it! Go Giants!

Good Pitching vs. Hitting: Why I've Been Touting Pitching

I've been talking about the benefits of having an excellent rotation for a while now, but I don't think that people in general get it yet, why it's better to have dominant pitchers vs. dominant hitters, on your team. And I'm talking to all you people out there who ever advocated we trade Cain or Lincecum for a good hitter. I am also talking to all you people out there talking about trading Bumgarner for a good hitter.

The last two games give a good microcosm of what I'm talking about.

When Pitchers Dominate

The other day, Lincecum was absolutely dominant. Not only did he 2-hit the Cards, he struck out 8 and walked none, while only throwing 95 pitches. He's becoming what I've been hoping that he become, a Big Daddy Rick Rueschel-type pitcher, who can strike out a lot if need be, but keeps the pitch count low by getting hitters to swing early in the count at lousy pitches.

And it's not just for one game, as I've been showing in my PQS study, Lincecum can dominate 70-80% of the time, when merely good starters dominate around 40% of the time. And Cain is an elite pitcher in that he dominates 50%+ of the time. Only Lincecum can make him look ordinary. But Cain has raised things a notch this season, reducing his number of disaster starts, and it showed with his record between losses: he was 7-0 with a 1.87 ERA in nine starts between losses. If you have a rotation of them, then a team like the Giants can dominate any short series.

When Hitters Dominate

Albert Pujols was dominating yesterday. Two homers, three RBI, a walk, 2-for-3. However, Johnson was able to dominate the rest of the batters - 5 for 28, no HR - and came away with the win, despite sub-par pitching (luckily his relief, particularly Jeremey Affeldt, the star acquisition of the off-season, was sterling, again).

We saw this over and over again during the Barry Bonds era. Bonds would be totally on in a game, but many others were not, and we would end up losing, games, series, seasons. Having a dominant hitter is no panacea for an offense. And, frankly, for all the talk about how hitters contribute in every game, they only truly dominate in a game much, much less, probably on par with the number of times a starting pitcher contributes a dominant starting performance.

Improving the Odds

What people don't always get is the series sensitivity to the outcome of the first game of the series. If you have a pitcher like Lincecum who can dominate almost every game he pitches, you can almost put a W in your pocket for the first game. Suddenly it goes from a winning 3 out of 5 series to a winning 2 out of 4 series. Might not seem a lot, but that is huge. Assuming that the two teams are roughly equal (and most are in the playoffs), you go from 50% chance of winning a series to 60%.

If you have two strong pitchers in your rotation (which I have been advocating for a while now, in the mode of Johnson and Schilling for the D-backs in their World Series), if you win the first two games, now you have 75% chance of winning the series. And I didn't even account for Lincecum pitching again in the 5th game, which increases the odds to roughly 86%.

A similar process happens for a 7 game series. Clearly, having a dominating pitcher greatly increases the odds of winning any series and having two of them in the rotation, that much more so.

Add in a third one (Johnson when he is on for us) and again, the odds increase greatly.

Bullpen is Key Too

As Tom Tippett's studies at Diamond Mind in the early to mid-2000's showed, having a strong bullpen is key to being a playoff team. In today's environment of almost no starters completing games, that makes a strong bullpen key to improving your odds in short series. Because, no matter how dominating a starter can be, unless he can finish what he starts, the bullpen will have to consistently be strong enough to save the game, either the win in relief for the starter or keep the score close so that the offense can hopefully battle back and come from behind.

I think that is what will be an ace in the hole for the Giants should they make the World Series, most likely Lincecum will start games 1 and 4 and thus probably not pitch game 7 (if necessary). However, given his arm, he can probably come in, just like Randy Johnson did in his World Series and give some good innings in relief.

Here I advocate, much like the Twin Ace at the top of the rotation strategy, a Twin Closer in the bullpen, though one would be the closer and the other his regular set-up guy. I think we have one with Wilson as the closer and Affeldt as the set-up man. Often, the critical batter is not coming up in the 9th inning, but earlier, in the 7th and 8th, with men on base after the starter (or another reliever) falters and put men on base, threatening to score. If you have two closers, you have one to take care of the early fires, one to shut down the last inning fires.

In fact, we might even have more because both Romo and Valdez has been lights out for us in relief so far. This is what has been helping us win games, having a relief corp that can shut down the other team for 3-4 innings at the end of the game. The D-gers had a strong bullpen like this last season (and this one thus far, amazingly, given their minor league performances) and it helped them greatly.

Pre-Season Worries Overblown

And most Giants fans were worried in the pre-season about the Giants lack of offense. They are still just averaging only around 4 runs per game (4.09 to be exact), but with their superlative pitching, they have been winning. With the nice bump up in offense in June - they averaged 4.37 runs scored per game, which is about what was predicted for them in the pre-season based on the individual players' projections - they have been winning hand over fist, 17-10 in June, the best winning month since September 2004, their last winning season. At 7 wins above .500, it is the best for the period since September 2004, and not only that, the second best was only 2 wins above .500, achieved in four different months; mostly the Giants were at .500 or much below .500 during that roughly 5 year period since then.

And I'm not saying that the offense can't be improved. It can. What I've been more importantly saying is that with our good pitching, even our poor offense can win a good number of games. And that's the most important stat of all, not your runs scored per game, not the poor number of HR you have hit, it is the W's that you put in the win column. In that regard, the Giants offense has been good enough.

Effect on Series

Since I'm talking about series, I thought I would look at each starter.

The Giants, in series where Lincecum started one game, has been 9-4-2, and is in good shape to win an 10th, against the Cards.

Johnson: 10-3-2
Cain: 10-4-1
Zito: 7-6-2
Sanchez: 7-4-2

Sanchez benefitted from having Lincecum following him, I think.

International Free Agency: Giants Strike Out on Wagner

With the period opening to sign international free agents, the name the Giants were most associated with was OF Wagner Mateo. Unfortunately, according to reports from ESPN.com's Jorge Arangure (as reported by MLBTradeRumors.com), it looks like the Cardinals will beat out the Giants to Wagner Mateo. They reportedly will sign him to a $3.1M bonus; the Giants apparently nearly offered him $3.5M but backed off at the last minute. (Why they couldn't offer $3.2M, I'm not sure).

With Mateo off the plate, the name I'm hearing the Giants pursuing is catcher Jacob Beltre. Jorge, in his Twitter account, noted that BA speculated this and that this makes sense since he is the biggest hitter left, aside from Miguel Angel Sano.

Of course, last year the Giants signed Rafael Rodriguez and before that signed Angel Villalona.