tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post7859971015648399886..comments2024-02-23T20:49:09.057-08:00Comments on obsessivegiantscompulsive: From the Mouths of Mediots, Case Number 680obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-9965462755492501392009-09-11T16:22:48.616-07:002009-09-11T16:22:48.616-07:00The offense is what it is. It was bad last year a...The offense is what it is. It was bad last year and you are not going to change it around quickly in one year. <br /><br />Renteria, as poorly as he has played, is still an improvement over the offense we got last season. If healthy, he should take another jump up in 2010. Sanchez will be an upgrade over 2B in 2009's composite. Sandoval should be improved as he was relatively ordinary his first two months and doing poorly now in September, and if he can put together a full season in 2010, that would be an improvement there. Schierholtz should be an improvement over Winn's very poor play this season. And Molina has done so poorly at C that Posey should be equal to that in 2010, if not better by mid-season.<br /><br />Given their past behavior, I expect them to sign a power hitting OF to play LF, and let Lewis, Bowker, and Schierholtz battle for RF. I expect Schierholtz to win, but Bowker might win it like Burriss did this season at 2B over Frandsen.<br /><br />Incremental improvement is all you can expect until Posey joins the team and establishes himself in the majors. That is why I prefer to have him start for us in 2010 and figure out things at the major league level. The sooner that comes, the sooner the plus hitter that Posey can be will come.<br /><br />I think 2010 will be much like 2009, staying around .500 for a while before the young hitters figure things out and start hitting in May and June. The difference is that with Posey in the lineup, we will have two plus hitters in Sandoval and Posey, and that was enough to generate wins in June and afterward.<br /><br />As I've been saying since last season, the Giants are very close and yet people cry for Sabean's head when he is the person who put this team together. He should be given another two years to see what he can do with what he has created, to earn his next two years.obsessivegiantscompulsivehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-84816579272460644392009-09-11T16:16:00.867-07:002009-09-11T16:16:00.867-07:00I wholeheartedly disagree. You can't get bloo...I wholeheartedly disagree. You can't get blood from a stone. And that stone is the lack of quality prospects when you devote the vast majority of your top picks towards picking up pitchers.<br /><br />The Giants clearly understand OBP, they talk enough about it in the media. Heck, having Bonds around drove that point home, I'm sure.<br /><br />The problem is that players who are good doing that in the draft are the best hitting prospects and you can't pick up those players if you are busy picking up the best pitching prospects.<br /><br />Once you get past the first 5-10 picks overall, every guy you pick up is basically a crapshoot. They will be missing one skill or another, and it is useless to know how to take a walk if you cannot hit the ball, as Bocock clearly demonstrated in his time in the majors with us.<br /><br />I think the success of the team this year shows the efficacy of a pitching focused draft and organization. Look at the 2004 Giants. They averaged 5.2 runs per game, second in the league in scoring average, but because their pitching was not that good (4.8 runs allowed per game), they could not win the division, they probably wouldn't even win the 2009 division with 91 wins.<br /><br />That is a major point that I made in my "Hey Neukom" series where I presented my business plan for creating a baseball team that would be successful in the long run. The worse your pitching is, the better your hitting has to be in order to be a winning team. That comes right out of the Pythagorean W/L formula.<br /><br />However, when you have great pitching, you can generate a winning record capable of winning a division even if you have one of the worst offenses in the league. I showed that in my piece on that: http://obsessivegiantscompulsive.blogspot.com/2008/06/hey-neukom-my-giants-business-plan_27.htmlobsessivegiantscompulsivehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-20013559294011934482009-09-11T15:41:49.823-07:002009-09-11T15:41:49.823-07:00The problem with this optimism is that it is unwar...The problem with this optimism is that it is unwarranted. Its clear to the average fan that the Giants don't care about modern stats, like OPS. The Giants are as bad as the Royals at walking, and this is a "veteran team". All the guys you mention are below league average, including Sanchez, when you take walks into account.<br /><br />This is not one year of bringing in poor hitters, it is the clear and ever-present talent of Sabean to look for guys he can sign for "less than market". It wasn't such a bad idea in the steroids era, for a period of 10 years, players aged much less slowly than normal, making his strategy work. Today, however, on base percentage is a metric Sabean should be paying attention to, and is not. That is why Sabean needs to go, ASAP.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com