tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-237352452024-03-18T22:26:08.600-07:00obsessivegiantscompulsiveThese are just my opinions. I cannot promise that I will be perfect, but I can promise that I will seek to understand and illuminate whatever moves that the Giants make (my obsession and compulsion). I will share my love of baseball and my passion for the Giants. And I will try to teach, best that I can. Often, I tackle the prevailing mood among Giants fans and see if that is a correct stance, good or bad.obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.comBlogger1652125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-52944400134690869112024-03-16T10:40:00.000-07:002024-03-16T10:40:08.165-07:00Your 2024 Giants: The Modern MLB Rotation Chaos Portfolio Theory<p>The Modern MLB Rotation Chaos Portfolio Theory is the name I've given Farhan Zaidi's management style for modern MLB rotations, which is basically, letting chaos reign, but ending up with a good starting pitching success.</p><p>I've derived the name from my finance training, cribbing from the Modern Portfolio Theory. From <a href="https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/career-map/sell-side/capital-markets/modern-portfolio-theory-mpt/#:~:text=The%20Modern%20Portfolio%20Theory%20(MPT)%20refers%20to%20an%20investment%20theory,prefer%20the%20less%20risky%20portfolio.">Corporate Finance Institute</a>: The Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) refers to an investment theory that allows investors to assemble an asset portfolio that maximizes expected return for a given level of risk. The theory assumes that investors are risk-averse; for a given level of expected return, investors will always prefer the less risky portfolio." </p><p>The idea behind this theory is that one can create a portfolio of assets that are high risk, but with sufficiently independent industries and market factors, the overall risk of the portfolio is much lower, because, under this theory, one industry going down is just as likely as another going up, and thus the risks cancel each other out, reducing the risk of the overall portfolio.</p><p>The idea for the Modern MLB Rotation Chaos Portfolio Theory is similar in concept, in that the risk of any particular pitcher being injured or not very good may be high, but when you have enough pitchers on your team who are projected to be good (in this case, better than the NL SP average ERA of 4.56) when healthy, your 162 starts per season is covered by your portfolio of potentially injured, but usually good, starting pitchers. </p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><b>ogc thoughts</b></p><p>I didn't like the strategy at all when I first saw the Dodgers attempt this rotation chaos, which I so named because, to me, relying on injured pitchers or young pitching prospects results in chaos for your rotation, and that's why I don't like this strategy, because then it is random who is available to pitch for you during your most important portion of the season, October, the playoffs. I would proffer the Dodgers lack of success in winning it all during this historic run of NL West dominance as evidence of that. </p><p>Still, it has been a great strategy for building a powerful set of 162 Games Starting Rotation vs. the traditional attempts for a 5-man Rotation (where most teams have only 2-3 good starters, qualified starters who are above average ERA is a very lacking commodity in the MLB, for example).</p><p><b>The Proof is in the Results</b></p><p>In 2015, Zaidi's first year as GM, he signed two pitchers known more for their injuries resulting in them not pitching full seasons, than for them being good, which they are when healthy: Brandon McCarthy and Brett Anderson. McCarthy ended up injured, but Anderson pitched the full year and well. And LA's starting rotation ended up 2nd in the NL.</p><p>This continued year to year, with pitchers like Kent Maeda, Hyun Jin Ryu, Julio Urias, Rich Hill, Ross Stripling, Walker Buehler, even Clayton Kershaw was an injured player more often later in his career. Young, old, journeyman, and the Dodgers finished 2nd, 5th, 1st, 1st with Zaidi as their GM (Giants were 8th and 10th just before Zaidi become the Giants PoBOps) in terms of ranking in the NL for Starting Pitching. </p><p>Since Zaidi has left, the Dodgers have been 1st, 1st*, 1st, 1st, 9th, while the Giants have been 13th, 11th*, 3rd, 3rd, 4th. (* 2020 Exhibition season). Zaidi has improved the Giants ranking starting with very little talent, cobbling together a better rotation over time, anchored by Logan Webb. He has found starters off the trash heap who contributed each season, and even with the 2023 Giants having a 1.5 man rotation (Webb plus whenever Cobb was healthy enough to pitch) and utilizing a ton of openers, the team still ended up 4th in ERA for Starting Pitching. </p><p>I don't like it, but I can't argue with the results. And it appears that going forward, the Giants goal is to build a rotation of aces who can handle most of the load of a full season, so I'm okay with this strategy while our young pitching prospects develop, mature, and gain experience, especially Kyle Harrison, Carson Whisenhunt, and Hayden Birdsong, who all have reached AA by or before age 22. Doing that is an accomplishment, and thus put them on my radar.</p><p><b>Sidenote: Openers</b></p><p>While I'm on the topic, I thought I would go over the logic of Openers and share what I've learned. I've never bothered to learn the intricacies of Openers, because I didn't see the value of it, but because the Giants used it so much in 2023, I finally sat down and thought it through. It's an ingenious way of manipulating the lineup order to your team's advantage.</p><p>One well publicized fact that has been promulgated in recent years is the idea of pitchers getting beat up the third time facing the lineup. While there are still good pitchers who can still pitch deep into games like Webb, what teams are realizing is that many pitchers are good enough for the majors, but not good enough to beat the top of the lineup. This creates a big underbelly of pitchers who are borderline in the majors, forced to be short relievers or considered AAAA pitchers. Enter the opener to unlock this value.</p><p>While these pitchers have trouble with the top of the lineup (in the 2023 NL, the OPS by lineup position was .801 leadoff, .769, .778, .789 for the cleanup hitter), they could better handle the bottom of the order .751 for fifth, .716, .701, .664, .661 for ninth). So the beauty of the Opener is that you find a good reliever who can handle the top of the order (that's why Tampa Bay Rays used Sergio Romo so much as an opener, this is basically the description of a good set-up man) and he should take care of the first 3 to 5 hitters, then the bulk/featured reliever (the borderline MLB pitcher, of which there are many) comes in and start facing the lineup, but at the bottom of the lineup, which is the key fact here.</p><p>Normally, this starting pitcher would face the top of the lineup after 18 batters, and end up facing 18-20 batters (look at the Dodger's usage of Rich Hill, he almost always stopped there, even if he's pitching great) and be taken out, at roughly 4 innings pitched. However, the bulk reliever on the third time through the lineup, faces the bottom of the line for the third time, and there's a reason the bottom of the order has an average OPS of roughly .700, they aren't that good at hitting. </p><p>So the team can get an extra inning out of this heretofore useless 4 innings starting pitcher, and get 5 innings from the bulk reliever, and between the opener/bulk combo, eat up 6 innings or more, like a good starter would. </p><p><b>Modern MLB Rotation Chaos Portfolio Theory: 2024 Giants</b></p><p>The Giants appear to be using this theory for building their rotation that handles starting 162 games. Giants fans are getting crazed demanding that Zaidi sign Snell, Montgomery, or both, but right now, after injuries to Teng and Hjelle, plus the aneurysm that Beck required surgery for, along with Cobb not available for Opening Day and Ray looking like he'll be returning after the All Star Break, the Giants appear to be leaning on their roster of still healthy pitchers, most of whom are not only unproven MLB pitchers, but have not even pitched in the majors or much in the upper minors. So fans are desperate.</p><p>The idea appears to be this: if you have enough pitchers who combined, have the expectations of being okay or better MLB pitchers for N% of the season, and the sum of these add up to at least 162 games, then your rotation will be covered for most of the season with good pitching, and end up near the top rotations. But as we saw in 2023, there is a downside to this, with all the openers.</p><p>But some Giants fans are funny. The Opener objectively gave the Giants the ability to compete for the playoffs last season. Unfortunately, the offense failed them at the end. If the Giants didn't go with the Opener strategy, which delivered a .500 record (most 4-5-6 starters for teams deliver really bad records) they likely would have been a much worse team.</p><p>Let's look at the Angels, who dealt a lot with their worse starters, because they had to alter their rotation for Ohtani. They had to use pitchers like Anderson, Suarez, Giolito, Barria, who all had bad ERA's. Altogether, they got 44 starts and their collective record was 19-25, 5.98 ERA. The Giants were 18-17 with their openers, so if they had similar results as the Angels, they would have instead been 15-20 instead, and would have been 76-86 instead (or 73-89, since the Giants were 3 wins above expected). So they would rather have a worse team than deal with Openers?</p><p><b>Countdown to 162 Starts</b></p><p>So let's go through the likeliest starting pitchers and estimate how many starts each will contribute to the season's 162 games. I'll start with the three starters likely to pitch most of the season.</p><p><b>Logan Webb: 31 Starts</b></p><p>Logan has become an ace level starter the past two years, putting up 32 and 33 starts in the past two seasons. I don't see any reason why, in his age 27 season, to expect any less, the ace usually gets an extra start or two in the second half, when the rotations restart after the All Star break. He's also been healthy since his TJS, and pitching a ton of innings. I see 33 starts at 95% probability, or 31 starts.</p><p><b>Kyle Harrison: 27 Starts</b></p><p>Harrison is the logical second starter as that's his pole postion in the spring starts. He's a whole lot trickier because he's still only 22 YO and only pitched 102 innings in 2023 (28 starts), 113 inning in 2022 (25 starts). In Cain's, Sanchez's and Lincecum's first full season, they each had a start skipped at some point to course correct something that they needed to fix, but Bumgarner never had such an adjustment period. Another clue is his usage by the Giants in the majors, where he averaged 87 pitches per start after his first start, with 4 of those 6 starts in the 90-94 range, facing 20-24 batters, and averaging 5.22 innings pitched.</p><p>To say he was handled with kid gloves would be an understatement. The front office seemed to know what they had with him from the beginning and has inched him upward in IP very deliberately. If not for his injury, he likely would have gotten in another month's worth of starts in the majors, roughly 5 starts 25 IP, which would have had him at 127-ish IP total. So I could see the Giants pushing him to 130-150 IP for the season, maybe skipping a start for a instruction break, and by the All-Star break, when the rotation reconfigures, he'll be pushed more to the back of the rotation, especially if Cobb and Ray are in the rotation by that point, and lose one or two starts that way. </p><p>It is also possible that he might be shut down like Strasburg was for the Nationals, but it is my feeling that the Giants would try to massage his IP during the season in order to be able to use him in some capacity during any potential playoffs. But I think 30 is a good target, and I believe the total will be more than enough that he might be used less than 30. I would say odds is 90%, or 27 expected starts.</p><p><b>Jordan Hicks: 24 Starts</b></p><p>He's not in the age danger zone like Harrison, as he's in his 27 YO season, but as a reliever, there has to be some concern about stretching him out. One key thing is that he's likely prepped to start this offseason and is being prepped by the Giants to start. And the Giants were able to keep Rodon injury free in his one season here, and hopefully can do the same for Hicks. He's also reportedly fully healthy now, which wasn't true when he was haphazardly thrown into the starting rotation by the Cards in his only (and poor) try at starting before, as they had him relieving in the spring then suddenly threw him into the rotation.</p><p>The good news is that there are recent examples of successful relievers converted to starting when they had been pitching relief for most of their MLB career. One is Seth Lugo, whose transition was handled by Melvin and Price last season with the Padres, the other is Gary Littell, whose transiton was handled by the Rays. Then there is Giants Legend Russ Ortiz, career reliever through college and minors and converted to starting.</p><p>Littell not only was a reliever, but he was used as a reliever (and a poor one at that) at the beginning of the 2023 season, before being used as a starter at midseason. Lugo was a very good reliever but then was converted, appears to have been able to prepare in the spring as starter. Ortiz was switched and presumably started prepping as starter during off season.</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Lugo: last started most of season in 2017, averaged 5.6 IP; then five years as 3.25 ERA RP</li><ul><li>2023: started 26 games (most ever in MLB season; 18 in 2017), averaged 5.63 IP and 91 pitches per start, with 3.57 ERA</li></ul><li>Littell: five seasons way up and way down (4.08 ERA)</li><ul><li>2023: first relieved (poorly), then 14 starts, with 3.41 ERA averaging 5.1 IP and 67 pitches per start</li></ul><li>Ortiz: was reliever in college and minors for two pro seasons</li><ul><li>1997: switched to SP, started 26 games averaging 5.4 IP per start (141.2 IP)</li><li>1998: began season in AAA, 10 starts, 5.0 IP per start, then majors, relief then started 13 games, averaging 5.8 IP per start (100 pitches per start, but different era of handling pitchers)</li></ul></ul><p></p><p>If he was younger, I would expect the Giants to baby him more, but at 27, his body should be mature enough to handle the additional work, much like the pitcher examples above. 30 starts at 5 IP average seems like a good enough target, but given the examples above not reaching more than 26, 80% odds or 24 starts.</p><p>Now, altogether the Top 3 is at expected 82 starts for the season, or half the season, roughly. That means the Giants need to get another 80 starts. Many fans are worried about the disaster scenario of both Cobb and Ray being unable to come back and provide any starts, so it would be informative to next go over what the Giants pitching prospects might provide in 2024.</p><p><b>Base 2023 Stats for Comparing Giants Prospects </b></p><p>To understand how the Giants are seriously considering using a whole bunch of young prospects as possible rotation options in 2024, one needs to understand some basic facts. </p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Average NL ERA = 4.38, Average NL SP ERA = 4.56</li><li>Average Giants ERA 4.02, Average Giants SP ERA = 4.12</li></ul><p></p><p>The Giants have already removed pitchers who were around and above the Average NL SP ERA in Wood, Stripling, Manama, and DeSclafani. <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=ALL&teamid=30"> Fangraphs</a> has the Giants SP projected for many of the possible prospects expected to be part of the solution of contributing to 162 starts:</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg8Rewd0UuQrokn_P6BmpAny2s9hgmERQfpuuyuOt8HrmWj2uUHSv0aFtQrxBCU6JA-xZDGJEcZauVFjSfNiLkTAf7ERHA2cp2813JqRBX8-qxb9YcarN9Vq4Eo5l171FdEXRZaNBxWTz7vwP-JZBpRm3BnPq68m6tuUEQJgc2FO8bnuemAI4qj2w" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="778" data-original-width="1341" height="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg8Rewd0UuQrokn_P6BmpAny2s9hgmERQfpuuyuOt8HrmWj2uUHSv0aFtQrxBCU6JA-xZDGJEcZauVFjSfNiLkTAf7ERHA2cp2813JqRBX8-qxb9YcarN9Vq4Eo5l171FdEXRZaNBxWTz7vwP-JZBpRm3BnPq68m6tuUEQJgc2FO8bnuemAI4qj2w" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><div>As we can see above, all starting pitchers are expected to be better than NL average ERA, and mainly in the low to mid 4's, all better than the SP's above who were let go:</div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Webb: 3.41 ERA</li><li>Cobb: 3.75 ERA</li><li>Ray: 4.06 ERA</li><li>Harrison: 4.15 ERA</li><li>Hicks: 3.90 ERA</li><li>Winn: 4.20 ERA</li><li>Black: 4.23 ERA</li><li>Beck: 4.46 ERA</li><li>Teng: 4.51 ERA</li><li>Hjelle: 4.50 ERA</li><li>Roupp: 4.11 ERA</li><li>Whisenhunt: 4.25 ERA</li><li><a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/players/hayden-birdsong/sa3020409/stats?position=P">Birdsong</a>: 4.78 ERA</li><li><a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/players/carson-seymour/sa3017868/stats?position=P">Seymour</a>: 4.64 ERA </li></ul><p>All of them are considered starters and the way these ZiPS projections work, about half will do better than projected, and the others will do worse. One can see this in the <a href="https://twitter.com/DSzymborski/status/1730270466726883773">chart</a> below, 49% of the pitchers projected beat their 50th Percentile projection for ERA+ and 51% of the hitter projected beat their 50th Percentile projection for OPS+.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjwCN7RPZ8xAwLC_a5Oe-jy7RUzeUv9JIHcWWjezaud5hHjWfLkQpuRTlsbdDtC2Kok8HmjfPG6DVhlFwUGkkd-idLaesyXyVzml07FJvQ8BX-qDytwSP8k8JPO6n6SxMk606VzKAN3O6N4Z02mnWdQMuZBs_wVUeCsSWZYG87de5cgzdBQ2461og" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img data-original-height="696" data-original-width="607" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjwCN7RPZ8xAwLC_a5Oe-jy7RUzeUv9JIHcWWjezaud5hHjWfLkQpuRTlsbdDtC2Kok8HmjfPG6DVhlFwUGkkd-idLaesyXyVzml07FJvQ8BX-qDytwSP8k8JPO6n6SxMk606VzKAN3O6N4Z02mnWdQMuZBs_wVUeCsSWZYG87de5cgzdBQ2461og=w557-h640" width="557" /></a></div><p></p><p>So one can expect 50% of projections to be at least as good as projected. Not a big deal when you are looking at one or two projections, but when you are dealing with a dozen, you get the normal distribution happening. You don't know which 50% will be as good or better, hence the chaos in who is in your rotation at any time, but you can count on the fact that a good number of them will be as good or better.</p><p>I didn't include IP because that's part projection, part guess as usage in the season, not a projection of what they can throw in the majors in 2024. I'm going to cover each pitcher's possible IP usage based on recent usage and reasonable increases in usage. We have 14 potential starters above (plus any surprises who rise up quickly from the 2023 draft and other surprises from prior drafts, as there are some like Murphy and Ragsdale). </p><p>Remember, these young inexperienced guys aren't expected to be top or even middle rotation starting pitchers. They are expected to fill in the back of the rotation, where most teams have replacement level players or worse (like the Angels with their 5.98 ERA in 44 starts). The MLB has had this problem at least since I noticed this during the Dynasty Era (2009-2016), and it has only gotten worse.</p><p><b>MLB is Lacking Qualified Starting Pitching</b></p><p>To show that Zito had some value during his tenure with the Giants, I would often show Fangraphs Qualified Pitchers Leaders list. With 30 teams, dividing that into this number gives you an idea of how many good enough starters are in the majors. Doing this shows how rare a commodity it is to have a starting pitcher who can pitch enough innings to qualify for postseason awards.</p><p>For example, in <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?pos=all&stats=pit&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&month=0&ind=0&pageitems=100&startdate=&enddate=&season1=2010&season=2010">2010, Fangraphs</a> listed 92 pitchers (Zito was 62nd in ERA), meaning that there was only enough qualified starters for 3 on average per team. And with a 4.15 average ERA for MLB starting pitchers, only 62 SP were at least the average ERA (yes, Zito was average). Thus, qualified pitchers were scarce, but ones with above average ERA were even more so.</p><p>Of course, there were some pitchers (like Bumgarner) who pitched well but didn't qualify, but not all of them continue to be good either. These qualified pitchers were good enough that their teams put them out there for enough innings to qualify. FYI, the Giants had four of these starters in 2010 (Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez, Zito) and they were all above average except for Zito.</p><p>It is now much worse. In 2023, only 44 pitchers qualified, roughly 1.5 per team. Teams are scrambling to fill out the rest of their rotation, with the more advanced ones utilizing Openers to maximize the value of the pitchers who are borderline. The Giants, however, have a multitude of pitchers who are not only projected around average (4.56 ERA in 2023 for NL SP), but is projected to be significantly better.</p><p><b>ZiPS Projection System 50th Percentile Meaning Explained</b></p><p>Now the way Dan Szymborski tests his ZiPS projections accuracy, is that he has Percentile Ratings for each player that he projects. Here is the one he developed for <a href="https://blogs.fangraphs.com/giants-finally-make-a-free-agent-splash-with-jung-hoo-lee-signing/">Jung Hoo Lee</a> (FYI, these percentiles are not available for every player in Fangraphs, this was released in an article on Lee; I would guess that he makes it available for the writers on Fangraphs, and for paying customers, that is, teams): </p><div class="table-title" style="background-color: #50ae26; border: 1px solid rgb(80, 174, 38); box-sizing: border-box; color: white; font-family: Lato, Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 7px 50px; text-align: center;">2024 ZiPS Projection Percentiles – Jung Hoo Lee</div><div class="table-wrapper" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Lato, Arial; font-size: 12px; overflow-x: auto;"><table class="" style="border-collapse: collapse; border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: inherit; padding: 10px; text-align: center; width: 500px;"><tbody style="box-sizing: border-box;"><tr style="box-sizing: border-box;"><th style="background-color: grey; border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; color: white; font-weight: 400; padding: 3px 5px;">Percentile</th><th style="background-color: grey; border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; color: white; font-weight: 400; padding: 3px 5px;">2B</th><th style="background-color: grey; border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; color: white; font-weight: 400; padding: 3px 5px;">HR</th><th style="background-color: grey; border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; color: white; font-weight: 400; padding: 3px 5px;">BA</th><th style="background-color: grey; border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; color: white; font-weight: 400; padding: 3px 5px;">OBP</th><th style="background-color: grey; border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; color: white; font-weight: 400; padding: 3px 5px;">SLG</th><th style="background-color: grey; border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; color: white; font-weight: 400; padding: 3px 5px;">OPS+</th><th style="background-color: grey; border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; color: white; font-weight: 400; padding: 3px 5px;">WAR</th></tr><tr style="box-sizing: border-box;"><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">95%</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">44</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">14</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.339</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.396</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.496</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">147</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">4.8</td></tr><tr style="box-sizing: border-box;"><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">90%</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">40</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">12</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.325</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.386</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.476</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">137</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">4.3</td></tr><tr style="box-sizing: border-box;"><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">80%</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">36</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">11</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.314</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.373</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.456</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">128</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">3.6</td></tr><tr style="box-sizing: border-box;"><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">70%</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">33</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">10</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.304</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.364</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.439</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">122</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">3.2</td></tr><tr style="box-sizing: border-box;"><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">60%</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">31</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">9</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.295</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.356</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.427</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">117</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">2.9</td></tr><tr style="box-sizing: border-box;"><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">50%</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">29</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">8</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.288</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.346</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.416</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">111</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">2.5</td></tr><tr style="box-sizing: border-box;"><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">40%</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">27</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">7</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.280</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.339</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.398</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">105</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">2.1</td></tr><tr style="box-sizing: border-box;"><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">30%</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">26</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">7</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.270</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.330</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.385</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">99</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">1.7</td></tr><tr style="box-sizing: border-box;"><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">20%</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">24</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">6</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.258</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.323</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.371</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">93</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">1.3</td></tr><tr style="box-sizing: border-box;"><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">10%</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">21</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">5</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.242</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.305</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.351</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">84</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">0.7</td></tr><tr style="box-sizing: border-box;"><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">5%</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">19</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">4</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.230</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.291</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">.332</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">75</td><td style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 3px 5px;">0.2</td></tr></tbody></table></div><p>The goal of his forecasting projection system is to find the numbers where each player is likely to surpass, at that percentile rating. Thus, the 50% Percentile forecast is the stats any player would beat 50% of the time, and the 90% Percentile forecast is the stats that any player would beat 10% of the time (thus falling into the 90% percentile of players).</p><p>Applying this to Jung Hoo Lee, 38% of players beat or achieve their 60th Percentile forecast, and if he does that Lee is hitting at least .783 OPS with a great .356 OBP, generating 2.9 WAR, which is an above average player. And 72% of players beat their 30th Percentile forecast, which for Lee is .715 OPS and 1.7 WAR, which means basically average player. So it appears pretty likely that he'll be at least average, and a good chance that he could be above average.</p><p>Thus, the projections for all the pitchers above, it can be expected that around half of them will beat their projections and half won't, 50/50. I'll be using those odds in the following sections on the prospects.</p><p><b>Mason Black: 15 Starts</b></p><p>Mason is the next man up right now, given Teng's, Beck's, and Winn's unavailability right now. This is probably why so many Giants fans are up in arms and arguing that the Giants must sign Snell or Montgomery (recent rumor is that he wants 7 years at his age...). But it's not like Black isn't ready for the spotlight.</p><p>In 2023, Black started in AA, and had 16 starts, 3.57 ERA, 3.9 IP per start, then was promoted to AAA, and had 13 starts, 3.86 ERA, 4.7 IP per start. So he started 29 games, and likely could have averaged 5 IP per start, had the Giants been more aggressive with his usage early in the season, but still ended up with 123.2 IP. Adding 30 IP to that (roughly adding 1 IP per start), would get him to 150+ IP in 2024, which is roughly 30 starts at an average of 5 IP, which at 50% is 15 starts towards the 79 starts we need to fill. He's projected at 4.23 ERA (NL SP ERA of 4.56, Giants SP 4.12)</p><p><b>Keaton Winn: 14 Starts</b></p><p>Reportedly he'll be ready by OD, so I'm slotting him to be the 5th starter when the season starts, and usually the team don't need the 5th starter immediately, so that should buy him some more time to prepare himself for the season. Projected at 4.20 ERA, he's similar to Black in terms of projected talent for 2024. </p><p>In 2022, when he mostly started, he had 25 starts and 108.0 IP (4.32 IP/Start), and in 2023 he had 19 starts and 100.1 IP (roughly 5 IP per start, but there were some relief appearances). He can give roughly 140 IP in 2024, perhaps more, since he'll be 26 YO and past the pitching danger zone of 25 and under, they could decide to use him for more. At 140 IP, that's 28 starts (at 5 IP/start), and at 50% that works out to 14 starts, giving us 29 starts, which means we need 51 more starts. </p><p><b>Landen Roupp: 13 Starts</b></p><p>Based on the reporting, I would say that Roupp is the next pitcher to consider for starts. However, that possibility is more in the later part of the season, as the talk is that he might make the team as essentially the tandem starter who would help fill innings in the middle of games, as Harrison, Hicks, Black, and Winn might be on a short leash in terms of innings pitched, depending on how well they do in pitching efficiently (which historically, Harrison and Hicks had periods of bad control, though their recent MLB efforts have been good, about 3.0 BB/9).</p><p>He also missed a large part of the 2023 season due to back injury, ending up pitching only 10 starts and 31.0 IP, after 14 starts, 107.1 IP in 2022, which essentially appears to equivalent to 26 starts, as, in spite of 12 relief appearances in A ball, he still averaged 3.5 IP per appearance. Assuming he's healthy enough, and likely starting the season as a tandem reliever, he can get to 26 starts (or equivalent) during the season, and at 50%, 13 starts, bringing us to 42 starts and 38 more to fill out. With a projected 4.10 ERA, he's likely to be the next man up if Black or Winn should experience any problems (falling into the lower percentile results), but being 25 YO, they might decide to treat him with kid gloves.</p><p><b>Alex Cobb: 25 Starts and What If</b></p><p>The above covers for the month of April, easily, and we haven't gotten to the others being considered for roles, like Ethan Small and Daulton Jefferies, but Alex Cobb's return keeps on being moved up. First it was something in April/May, then got conservative and it was late May, but news from spring training has been streaming constantly for him, and now he's possible for April, so I thought with 37 starts to fill, this would be a good spot to cover him.</p><p>If he should return by the beginning of May, he's likely to be able to start at least 25 games (roughly 5 starts per month, for 5 months). If he's so healthy that they are moving him up in terms of returning, presumably he's doing well with his pitches, and look to be healthy and productive, and he pitched well last season finding his hip issues, so he's also capable of pitching well when not fully healthy. And if he can start 25 games, then there's only 13 more starts to fill, and there are plenty of pitchers who could fill in: Teng, Beck in late season, Hjelle, plus Ray will be back latte in the season too, problem filling out the 162 starts is done.</p><p>So let's suppose that Cobb and Ray have the disaster scenario that some fans have and doesn't given us many starts. Then who are the pitchers who might contribute to filling out the final 38 starts?</p><p><b>Tristan Beck: 5 Starts</b></p><p>He had a great chance to show off how good a starting pitcher he could be and ended up getting operated on for an aneurysm in his arm. He is expected to be back in August, which would make him available for 10 starts, so that's another 5 starts possible. 4.46 ERA puts him as viable as a back of the rotation guy, and still better than the average NL SP, which averaged 4.56 ERA. </p><p><b>Kai-Wai Teng: 16 Starts</b></p><p>Teng did well in the minors and has gotten some notice. He is projected to be about as good as Beck, with an ERA of 4.51, so he's also very viable as a back of the rotation guy. He's averaged 28 starts and 131.1 IP the past two seasons, and at age 25, should be able to extend that up to the 160 IP range, so he's capable of 32 starts, which at 50% is 16 starts expected. </p><p>That's 21 starts out of 38 starts needed, leaving 17 starts to account for. </p><p><b>Carson Whisenhunt: 6 Starts</b> </p><p>Whisenhunt prospect stock sky rocketed in 2023, putting him on Top 100 prospect lists. MLB Pipeline had his among their top LHP prospects, and rated his changeup the best among prospects. All of which is not surprising given that he made AA by age 22, which only the better prospects do, and he did well in AA. He's really young this season at 23, but if he can pitch well in AAA this season (likely given that he's projected at 4.25 ERA, which is pretty good for back of the rotation, with the Giants SP ERA at 4.12 and NL SP ERA at 4.56. </p><p>He only pitched 16 starts in 2023, for 58.2 IP, when an injury ended his season at the end of July, so he's probably limited as to how many innings he can accumulate in 2024. I can see the Giants advancing him like they did with Harrison in AAA in 2023, then the majors by mid-season, he had 7 MLB starts and likely would have had 12 starts had he not been injured right when they were about to promote him. At 50%, that's 6 starts and leaves us at eleven starts.</p><p><b>Other Potential Starters</b></p><p>Most likely, we won't be getting down to these other names. Cobb and Ray should be able to provide at least 6 starts each, which covers the eleven. Still, I wanted to name them, because the depth in the Giants system is startling to me, once I started naming and checking on them. Here, I'll name them and their projected ERA, plus most starts in a season and most IP in a season 9keep in mind, average NL SP ERA is 4.56):</p><ul><li>Sean Hjelle: 4.50 ERA, 22 starts 122.0 IP</li><li>Ethan Small: 4.55 ERA, 21 starts, 103.0 IP</li><li>Daulton Jefferies: 4.55 ERA, 16 starts, 92.0 IP</li><li>Trevor McDonald: 4.98 ERA, 13 starts, 101.1 IP</li><li>Spencer Howard: 4.52 ERA, 15 starts, 49.2 IP</li><li><a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/players/hayden-birdsong/sa3020409/stats?position=P">Hayden Birdsong</a>: 4.78 ERA, 25 starts, 100.2 IP</li><li><a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/players/carson-seymour/sa3017868/stats?position=P">Carson Seymour</a>: 4.64 ERA, 23 starts, 112.2 IP</li><li><a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/players/ryan-murphy/sa3014871/stats?position=P">Ryan Murphy</a>: 4.72 ERA, 27 starts, 107.1 IP (2)</li><li>Carson Ragsdale: 5.13 ERA, 24 starts, 113.2 IP</li></ul><p>At two starts each, that covers the rest of the starts in the disaster scenario of Cobb and Ray not providing any starts. They would not provide equivalent type of performances, obviously but no team can replace ace level starting pitching from their farm system. </p><p>Speaking of replacing ace performance, some Giants fans are using the possibility of Webb not being available as a reason to get Snell, but these people don't seem to know his history, nor how good Webb has been. Webb has a 3.07 ERA over his past three seasons. Snell has achieved that ERA in only 2 of his 8 seasons in the majors, even he hasn't been a Webb replacement for the vast majority of his career. His peak is two great Cy Young seasons, but he's been worse than Webb for the other six seasons.</p><p><b>Rotation Chaos</b></p><p>Ideally, you have at least four starters you can count on for good to great starts and ERA's. That was the basic formula during the Dynasty Era. The Giants are trying to move into that direction with their collection of starters this season, but with two major surgeries forcing two of the best starters to the sidelines on Opening Day, we can expect nothing but Rotation Chaos, especially given that we will be introducing potentially up to a handful, and perhaps more, of prospects to the majors. But I'm excited about this potent mix of rotation chaos, it's perfectly okay for a team rebuilding itself, which many Giants fans are forgetting, and demanding playoffs or bust. </p><p>We obviously have one ace to count on for the next few years in Logan Webb. He has been a horse, and is becoming a great example and Yoda already with the waves of new pitchers coming to the majors, starting with Kyle Harrison, who is hopefully his co-ace for the next five or more seasons. </p><p>Harrison is hopefully either Lincecum 2007 or Lincecum 2008 (not Cy Young, but knowing how to pitch well in the majors). Lincecum needed to figure out his stuff in the majors in 2007, and he was still about average over the season, but busted out in 2008. Harrison will likely be still figuring things out, or if we are lucky, busting out with a good to great season (like Bumgarner did in his first season; Cy Young is the potential future, but he probably has a lot of things to learn before that happens, and it may never happen). If he can stay healthy, he should reach co-ace status with Webb sooner than later.</p><p>Meanwhile, we have Ronnie Ray, former Cy Young winner not that long ago, in 2021, who is recovering from his TJS. Most pitchers recovering from TJS tend to come back as good as ever, which is what the Giants are hoping for. Whether he fully recovers this season or not is the bigger question, some pitchers need extra time to regain their stuff. And this matters in his case because he has an opt out clause which he can use after this season, else he opts into a two-year, $50M contract with the Giants. Ideally, he does well enough but not great, and he opts into the contract, and then become an ace for the Giants the next two years, unless an extension is worked out after the 2025 season. </p><p>Also, there's Jordan Hicks, fireballing converted reliever to starting pitcher. A 3-digit starting pitcher would be great to mix in there with Webb's groundball-sinker ways and Harrision's lefty strikeout dominating ways. He's entering his prime years for baseball, and we've seen examples of good (and bad) relievers who ended up doing well as a starting pitcher over a full season. Upper end of the spectrum, maybe he can become a young ace (hey, the Giants helped Gausman become one) to go with Webb and Harrison.</p><p>Lastly, Alex Cobb, who brings up the rear mainly because he's an oldie but goodie. He's been able to pitch well while handicapped with hip pains, and now he's freed of that pain, but likely still pitching well. But at his age, each year is a mystery. Still, he's at least likely to pitch as well as he did last season, given that he feels healthy and not affected by his hips.</p><p>So we have this great chaos, just with our top 5 starters. We can have anywhere from one to five ace level starting pitchers by the end of the season. Meanwhile, with Ray out for most of the season, and both Harrison and Hicks unproven as to pitching a full MLB season as a starter, we will likely be using rookies and inexperienced major leaguers to pick up starts, maybe here or there, maybe constantly, if there are a lot of issues. Chaos. </p><p>After that, the Giants have 15 pitching prospects and minor free agents on hand to pick up starts for the team. I listed them and the vast majority of them are projected to be in the mid-4's ERA. Which is an okay ERA to have in the back of the rotation (see again above my discussion of the value of Barry Zito in the back of the rotation, and the issues teams have with filling starts at the back, with even average starters), and the Giants can chose from 15 different pitchers over the season, starting with Winn and Black, and then progressing through these options (of course, 40-man space will be a limit, so the Giants might need to determine who to DFA before promoting another pitcher). More chaos.</p><p>This is not a great strategy for when a team is consistently a playoff contender, because then you will have a random rotation available when it is time for the playoffs, and not necessarily a great rotation that will power you through and deep into the playoffs. But it is great for a team that is rebuilding itself into a regularly contending team. </p><p>I see 2024 as a transitional year as the team figures out which young players are the core for the future, and then can sign free agents or trade their young excess talent to fill their gaps in their team and core. 2025 should be the year the Giants are out of rebuilding and into hard core competing, especially if Harrison, Lee and Hicks are able to prove themselves this season as good MLB players. </p><p><br /></p>obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-64384624444997316142024-03-07T10:29:00.000-08:002024-03-07T10:29:41.059-08:00Your 2024 Giants: Signed Matt Chapman to. 1-year, 2-year, 3-year or 4-year Contract<p>I just realized I should post on the signing of Matt Chapman (sorry, been busy dealing with leaking pipes ruining walls and engine mounts failing on my car...). Per <a href="https://www.nbcsportsbayarea.com/mlb/san-francisco-giants/matt-chapman-giants-contract-official/1708764/">NBC Sports</a>,</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>2024: $16 million salary, plus $2 million signing bonus</p><p>2025: $17 million player option or a $2 million buyout</p><p>2026: $18 million player option or a $3 million buyout</p><p>2027: $20 million mutual option or $1 million buyout</p></blockquote><p> So, here are the scenarios as far as I can tell:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>It's $20M if he opts out after one year ($18M plus $2M buyout)</li><li>It's $38M if he opts out after two years ($18M /$17M plus $3M buyout)</li><li>It's $54M if he opts out after three years ($18M/$17M/$18$ plus $1M buyout) or if the Giants buy him out to void the fourth year</li><li>It's $73M if he stays the full four years</li></ul><div>Whew! It can cover his 31-34 YO seasons, depending on the opt out/ins. Based on $8M/WAR, that's 2.5 WAR in 2024, 2.25 WAR in 2025, 2.0 WAR in 2026, and 2.4 WAR in 2027, for a total of 9.15 WAR to be produced in the four seasons.</div><div><br /></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div><b>ogc thoughts</b></div><div><br /></div><div>At last, the Giants rumored pursuit of Chapman is over and they got their man! It's an odd contract, but it's a better contract than the projected 5 years/$90M by The Athletic and way better than the rumored 5-6 years/$150-175M contract he was reported wanting, as we are only committed to him for 3 years if he starts regressing at any point, which was a fear that many fans had, calling him Longoria 2.0. It's also not an unreasonable fear, given that 3B is known for grinding away even the best athletes, and that's the reasoning I read about for why there are less 3B in the HoF.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Defense Never Rests</b></div><div><br /></div><div>The main thing the Giants want him for is his Gold Glove level of defense. which he has won 4 times, including 2023. Per Fielding Percentage, UZR, and DRS, he's a significantly better defender at third than JD Davis, but per OAA, Davis had 6 and Chapman had 5. I also checked on ground balls per team, and the Giants had 25% more PA with grounders than Toronto, so Chapman could produce even more value because the advanced metrics can only give credit when there is a fielding play for the player.</div><div><br /></div><div>Offensively, his OPS was about the same as Davis, hence why many preferred not to sign him (basically because they didn't think his defense was worth it; again, I'll note the 25% more grounders the Giants had over Toronto). They were also worried about his poor hitting, as his batting line was a very low .659 OPS over the last five months of the seasaon. But when I examined the underlying data, just seems to be bad BABIP luck, which probably was just regression to the mean.</div><div><br /></div><div>Over the last two years, he's hit .234/.327/.429/.756 with .298 BABIP, 69% contact rate, and 39% eye (BB/K), which is in line with his career .295 BABIP, 68% contact rate, and 39% eye. In the last five months, he hit.205/.298/.361/.659 with .276 BABIP, 66% contact rate, and 35% eye, which is .022 BABIP less than the two year period and .019 BABIP less then for his career.</div><div><br /></div><div>Another way to look at it is to see what <a href="https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/matt-chapman-656305?stats=statcast-r-hitting-mlb">StatCast estimated</a> his Expected BA and Expected SLG to be, based on the contact he was making. His xBA is .236 and xSLG is .456 for the 2023 season. He also added on .093 to his BA to get his OBP. This is his expected batting line, vs. his 2023 batting line:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Expected: .236/.329/.456/.785</li><li>Actual : .240/.330/.424/.755</li></ul></div><div>So, based on his expected hitting, it looks like he suffered from some severe bad luck most of the season (it happens!) with his hard hit balls, which should have led to an elite .785 OPS, but instead he was down 30 points.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Net Gain with Chapman Over Davis</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Overall, I expect him to be pretty close to matching up to his contract. He produced 4.4 bWAR/3.5 fWAR in 2023, and ZiPS projects him at 3.7 zWAR in 2024, 3.0 zWAR in 2025, 2.4 zWAR in 2026, at which point, if he's still with the team, the Giants should buy him out because that last season jumps production back up to 2.4 WAR to equal the contract. If ZiPS is correct, that's 9.1 fWAR for 6.75 WAR production paid for by contract. And by my analysis above, his hitting appears to be relatively stable for the past two seasons, that the down period was more regression to the mean to compensate for how hot he was in April.</div><div><br /></div><div>In addition, he has averaged roughly 4.0 bWAR the past three seasons, so it seems reasonable to believe he can be in that ball park in 2024 (3.7 zWAR is the projection). Plus, he missed 10% of the games last season due to a non-playing injury (hurt his hand working out), which would have boosted him in 2023 to around 4.8 bWAR/3.8 fWAR. Furthermore, most free agent analysis I've seen assumes future drops of 0.5 WAR per year from the prior year, which would put him at 3.9/3.4/2.9/2.4 based on bWAR, 3.0/2.5/2.0/1.5 based on fWAR, and averaging the two yields 3.45 WAR. With most of the projections in the 3.5 WAR range, that seems to be a reasonable estimate of his 2024 production. </div><div><br /></div><div>Meanwhile, JD Davis is projected to be around 1-2 WAR production, but adjusting for playing most of the season, most have him in the 1.5-2.0 WAR range of production. So it seems reasonable to expect a boost of about 2 wins having Chapman in the lineup vs. Davis, especially since Chapman can expect a boost in his defensive rate stats since the Giants are more of a ground ball team than the Blue Jays.</div><div><br /></div><div>I think that his defense will pay off more because the Giants focus on ground balls, and because it is likely that Luciano will be playing a significant amount of time at SS. For, as nicely as Nick Ahmed has been hitting in spring training, perhaps due to the adrenaline of playing for another team, his batting line was not league average either, and the Giants lineup cannot afford to have a black hole in the lineup, whereas Luciano is projected to be roughly league average for a SS. Having Chapman manning the hot corner will enable the Giants to play Luciano as the starting SS, as his Gold Glove range will help cover Luciano's lack of talent for playing SS as well as the average SS.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Roster Dominoes</b></div><div><br /></div><div>His signing has consequences for the 26-man roster, likely triggering a trade of JD Davis. Obviously, Davis was slotted to be the starting 3B before Chapman signed. The bench is currently full with Murphy as the backup catcher, Flores as the platoon buddy with Wade at 1B (two of the best hitters on the team in 2023, Slater as the platoon buddy with Yaz in RF (two more good hitters, better than Davis), and the MI utility guy, which looks to be Fitzgerald right now, though they might decide to utilize Luciano and Ahmed in this role, as well, depending on who wins the starting SS role. </div><div><br /></div><div>That leaves Davis as odd man out. Flores would be the closest in role who he might replace, since both are RHH corner infielders, but Flores hit .863 OPS, tops on the team by far. And Davis also had a bad second half of 2023, with the steep plunge happening with the June 18 game, perhaps due to his injuring his ankle sliding into third in the June 13th game. He actually hit really well in the first game back from the injury, but it was downhill from there for the rest of the season, until the last month of the season, where he reverted back to early form. That could be a selling point for the Giants, along with his improved 3B defense.</div><div><br /></div><div>The most obvious trading partner should be the Toronto Blue Jays, Chapman's former employer. They are left in the dust now, having a journeyman 3B now. Davis would be a huge boost, and a position of need, for a low salary. Unfortunately, they are not also in need of a backup catcher who is defensive oriented, their starter is defensive oriented, plus a budding good hitter and younger to boot, and they have a couple of offensive catchers as backup last season. They could use a good hitter like Conforto, though, for the OF or DH or both (Matos is hitting really well, showing off his new power, to build off his good contact skills, so the Giants could decide to trade Conforto to save money for another free agent signing).</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><p></p>obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-36269337401096492302024-02-13T22:36:00.000-08:002024-02-13T22:36:37.044-08:00Your 2024 Giants are now Soler Powered<p>Per tweet last night by Susan Slusser, Jorge Soler will sign with the Giants. Per reporting from The Athletic, it will be for 3 years, $42M, no word on any other contract terms, but there does not appear to be any opt outs. The rumor mill had it that Soler wanted three years, and the Giants eventually gave him that, though perhaps less per season.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><b>ogc thoughts</b></p><p>The Giants needed to improve their 4th place hitting. They got .228/.304/.376/.680 out of their clean-up hitters (mainly Davis, Pederson, and Conforto ruining that lineup position), where the average NL 4th place hitter had .257/.330/.459/.789. Also, the Giants DH last year hit .248/.341/.448/.788, which was significantly better than the average NL DH, .245/.327/.426/.753</p><p>I averaged all six projections on Fangraphs and got .242/.333/.475/.807, which would be slightly above average for 4th place, and, more importantly, 19% better than what the Giants got out of their 4th hitter last season. And while he kills LHP (.248/.348/.517/.865), he is still about average vs. RHP (.241/.324/.451/.774). He totally plays at DH, being a vast improvement over our 4th hitter last season, and better than the Giants DH and average NL 4th hitter last season, and significantly better than the average NL DH.</p><p><b>Why Soler Wasn't Signed Until Now</b></p><p>However, this is a riskier deal than I had thought. Hearing how many homers he had, I thought he was at least an average hitter most years, but he's like the hitter version of Blake Snell, superstar for two seasons, average or worse the rest of his career seasons (and he's a 10 year veteran). He only had 1.9 fWAR and 1.8 bWAR in 2023, even though he hit 36 homers last season. At $14M per season, we are paying for around 1.5 WAR per season, and he's only had two seasons like that. </p><p>In addition, apparently he's been an injury machine, and has only had one full season (2019 when he was in 162 games and hit 48 homers) then his next most played season was last season, when he was in 137 games. In his other eight seasons, he only has one above 100 games (2015, his second season, when he was 23 YO, and got into 101 games).</p><p><b>Silver Linings</b></p><p>The good news for the Giants is that hopefully as a full time DH, he won't get all those niggling and worse injuries that kept him out of the lineup previously. And this idea has merit, as no team previously has dedicated him mostly to DH, as the Giants plan on doing. Moreover, his two most healthiest seasons were in 2019 and 2023, the seasons he hit 48 homer and 36 homers, respectively, and played in the most games in his career, first and second most games, respectively. </p><p>The Giants should also try their best to leave him off the field, as his defensive skills are horrible in the outfield, negating most of the value he brings with his bat, which, when healthy, is very healthy, his career batting line is .243/.330/.467/.797. And plugging his projection into the lineup calculator, he's a 30 run improvement (roughly 3 wins) over what we had in 2023 in cleanup (based on 150 games played; I know, based on history, not likely, so dropping it to 130 games, that's still a 25 run improvement, or 2.5 wins).</p><p>And that's what I would could his addition to the lineup as. If you look at it as replacing the Giants DH, there's little improvement, though clearly his power is different from anyone else in the lineup. But projections assume standard values, standard everything. What has changed for the Giants is that now they have a steady DH in Soler (vs. a variety of hitters), who they can slot into the cleanup spot, where they suffered from poor everything last season, and that improvement adds more than standard (most projections has him at just under 2 WAR, or about one win less than this lineup calculation). </p><p>Risky deal, but one the Giants needed to make in order to make a better case to fans that they are playoff contenders in 2024. They still need to sign someone (Matt Chapman, maybe a starting pitcher), and they should be very competitive for getting into the playoffs.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-14191284897453341072024-02-10T22:30:00.000-08:002024-02-10T22:30:00.553-08:00Zaidi Success Streak in Finding a Valuable Player: 2022 and 2023<p>As I captured in my first <a href="https://obsessivegiantscompulsive.blogspot.com/2019/12/zaidis-history-of-talent-acquisition.html" target="_blank">post</a> and second <a href="https://obsessivegiantscompulsive.blogspot.com/2021/10/your-2021-giants-post-mortem-zaidi.html">post</a> about his finding young contributors, Zaidi as Dodger GM had a streak of adding prospects or young veterans at low cost (either in money or prospects or both), and still in their 20's, but wasn't established yet, who contributed at least 1.0 bWAR at some point during Zaidi's time there, and he was able to continue that into 2019, whereas the Dodger's streak ended in 2019, and he continued in 2020 and 2021 with the Giants. This post will look at his record in 2022 and 2023.</p><p><b>ogc thoughts</b></p><p>In 2022, the streak continued, with the addition of Jacob Junis, and Yaz led the way again. These players, who were all originally acquired when they were in their 20's, and were not all that good before acquisition, added at least 1.0 bWAR in 2022 for the Giants:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Mike Yastrzemski (31 YO): 1.9 bWAR; he continues to deliver value, after being acquired for the 2019 season.</li><li>Thairo Estrada (26 YO): 1.6 bWAR; he got into 140 games, starting 129 of them, and played across most of the diamond.</li><li>Jacob Junis (29 YO): 1.6 bWAR; he was a nice surprise, and continued Zaidi's streak of adding a new player producing at least 1.0 bWAR</li><li>Tyler Rogers (30 YO): 1.0 bWAR; as I noted in the post link above, Rogers was added because the prior GM never gave him a chance.</li><li>J.D. Davis (29 YO): 0.9 bWAR; great contribution in 49 games, 32 starts, would prorate above 1 WAR</li><li>Wilmer Flores (30 YO): 0.7 bWAR; I include him because it was a relatively small contract.</li><li>Alex Young (28 YO): 0.6 bWAR</li><li>Jarlin Garcia (29 YO): 0.4 bWAR</li><li>Luis Ortiz (26 YO): 0.3 bWAR</li><li>Mauricio Dubon (27 YO): 0.2 bWAR</li><li>LaMonte Wade Jr (28 YO): 0.0 bWAR</li><li>Zack Littell (26 YO): 0.1 bWAR</li></ul><p>There were a number of negatives as well, but nobody is perfect. The point is that he added players who produced well, at least at a 1.0 bWAR production rate and together produced 9.3 bWAR to the 2022 team. This was a sharp drop from the prior two seasons, which were boosted greatly by the Gausman addition, as well as declines by past contributors. The 2022 team was mainly boosted by Estrada playing a full season, and the additions of Junis and Davis.</p><p>There were improvements and new additions in 2023, and his streak continued with the final push by Tristan Beck to reach the benchmark 1.0 bWAR:</p><ul><li>LaMonte Wade Jr (29 YO): 2.7 bWAR; great comeback season, was finally healthy</li><li>Wilmer Flores (31 YO): 2.6 bWAR; I include him because it was a relatively small contract and added in his 20's.</li><li>Mike Yastrzemski (32 YO): 2.4 bWAR; continued to produce in his early 30's (has added 12.0 bWAR while with the Giants) </li><li>Thairo Estrada (27 YO): 2.3 bWAR; continued to produce and improve as a starter, great young find</li><li>Tyler Rogers (31 YO): 1.7 bWAR; Rogers was originally added because the prior GM never gave him a chance and he was added in his 20's.</li><li>Tristan Beck (27 YO): 1.1 bWAR; acquired in trade of Mark Melancon. I'm stretching my definition a bit to include him, as he was acquired in Melancon trade, because the idea is for low cost acquisitions. But I'm including him because it was a good trade, to dump money, where prospects is of lesser concern. A trade like getting Jeff Kent for Matt Williams would not count for this since the idea of the trade was to get value for value.</li><li>J.D. Davis (29 YO): 0.9 bWAR; wasn't as good in a starting role, unfortunately, but still added some</li><li>Jacob Junis (30 YO): 0.8 bWAR; wasn't used as much, despite all the holes in the rotation</li><li>Blake Sobol (25 YO): 0.2 bWAR; Rule 5 Draft pick, had to be kept on the roster all season for the Giants to keep him on the team past this season, I view this as a success of Zaidi's processes for acquiring young talent at low cost, though it is not that high a WAR, but when I first started this up at the end of the season, he was actually at 0.6 bWAR.</li></ul><p>Overall, including others with positive and other with negative, these players, all acquired by Zaidi when they were under 30 YO, and not for much money or assets used to acquire, produced 13.9 bWAR in 2023, which is nearly what was produced in 2020-21, and both were about 3 times as much as produced in 2019, as prior acquisitions continue to contribute while adding in new producers.</p><p><b>Farm System Producing</b></p><p>Because the young players were a more prominent part of the season, I thought I would start addressing the homegrown portion of the roster. These players produced 10.6 bWAR in 2023 (there are some repeats here, from above), with the vast majority produced by the three veterans, and below are all the positive contributors, I'm skipping over the ones below zero:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Logan Webb: 5.5 bWAR</li><li>Tyler Rogers: 1.7 bWAR</li><li>Camilo Doval: 1.5 bWAR</li><li>Tristan Beck: 1.1 bWAR, Beck did well as a bulk reliever</li><li>Ryan Walker: 1.0 bWAR, Walker excelled as an opener, could be future set up man, if he can continue doing well</li><li>Patrick Bailey: 0.8 bWAR, Patty excelled as a catcher, but unfortunately the long season appear to have caught up to him, he will need to build on his stamina. Still, he was a Gold Glove finalist (one of 3), and although only promoted in mid-May, led the NL in a number of catching stats. Also, baseball-reference doesn't include framing value, but Fangraphs does and he had 2.6 fWAR, which should be more representative of his value.</li><li>Austin Slater: 0.7 bWAR</li><li>Keaton Winn: 0.3 bWAR, Winn did really well as a bulk reliever, but got hit hard at home, ending up with a huge ERA despite great peripherals (8.9 K/9; 2.30 K/BB). Most projection systems see a better performance from Winn than Beck</li><li>Kyle Harrison: 0.2 bWAR, Harrison is the top ranked LHP in most Top 100 rankings for 2023 and 2024 seasons, he made the leap to the majors, with some ups and downs (so did Cain and Lincecum), especially that great early start. The seasonal rate for this is 1.0 bWAR, so as a 21 YO rookie, he was almost an average pitcher. The future is bright for this one!</li><li>Tyler Fitzgerald: 0.2 bWAR, this rookie was a nice last minute surprise, producing a lot of power in just 10 games started. Not sure why he wasn't promoted earlier, as it appears that for 2023, it was fish or cut bait time, so they finally gave him a shot, and he did well. Since he can play almost every position on the field, except catch and pitch, he will likely start the season as a utility player, but will get starts across the diamond, both to give him experience, as well as rest players. </li></ul><p></p><p>Now, among the ones who were below zero, I thought I would discuss two of them, Luis Matos and Heliot Ramos.</p><p><b>Thoughts on Luis Matos</b></p><p>Matos had an up and down season. He was especially bad at defense, considering defense was supposed to be part of his package. His hitting was actually okay, about average, as his offense prorated to a full season was close to 2 wins, but his defense prorated to -3 wins, it was that bad. He was only 21 YO, and the Giants have already signed Jung Hoo Lee to be the starting CF, and Zaidi in a recent interview, noted that Matos is now the starting LF, which means Conforto is the main DH.</p><p>Since he was so bad fielding CF, moving him to LF should help to minimize him as a defensive liability, especially since Lee is considered a plus defender in CF, which should also help to cover for Matos' lack of natural fielding instincts, which I saw noted in a variety of reports on him.</p><p>As I noted in my last post (where I analyzed Heliot Ramos), part of my prospect analysis covers the prospect's age in relationship to the league average, as I've noticed that performances, at least in the minors, follow the pattern of excelling when in the same relative age range as before, when he excelled previously. </p><p>In 2023, he was 21 and -5.6 years younger than the players in AAA, and hit .353/.404/.626/1.030, with a .336 BABIP. That compares with his .304/.399/.444/.842 in AA, with a .320 BABIP, where he was -2.7 years younger. That's similar to his 2021 season, where he was 19 YO (-2.1 years) and hit .313/.359/.495/.853 in A-ball, with a .332 BABIP. He did not hit that well in 2022, where he was 20 YO, -2.6 years, hitting only .211/.275/.344/.619, with a .226 BABIP, showing how low he can go. And in 2023 in the majors, he hit .250/.319/.342/.661, with a .285 BABIP, and was -7.2 years younger than the league.</p><p>For Matos, a 22 YO in 2025, he'll be -6.2 years younger than the league. He is roughly the age behind the league as he was in 2023 in AAA, where he was -5.6 years younger, and he hit well, albeit in small samples, but his BABIP was basically near what he has hit before when he hit well, so it does not seem that far out of the question that this batting line was real. </p><p>Here's why I believe in Luis Matos: his contact rate and eye are great for hitters. He had good contact rates (85% and higher is good) and eye (100% and higher is elite): </p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>A-ball: 86% contact rate (AB-K/AB), 46% eye (walks/strikeouts), .853 OPS, .332 BABIP (-2.1 years)</li><li>Advanced A-ball, A+: 82% contact rate, 42% eye, .619 OPS, .226 BABIP (-2.6 years)</li><li>AA: 90% contact rate, 142% eye (ultra-elite), .842 OPS, .320 BABIP (-2.7 years)</li><li>AAA: 92% contact rate, 100% eye (still elite), 1.030 OPS, .336 BABIP (-5.6 years)</li><li>Majors: 86% contact rate, 61% eye (good hitters are above 50%), .661 OPS, .285 BABIP (-7.2 years)</li></ul><p></p><p>This reminds me of how well Pablo Sandoval (the Panda) did in the minors before he made the majors. He had really good contact rates as he rose in the minors (lacked the patience that Matos showed). Then his power kicked in when he turned 22. Panda averaged a homer every 22 AB in AA when he was promoted to the majors, where he averaged a homer every 48 AB. Matos averaged a homer every 30 AB in A-ball, every 34 AB in A+ball, every 38 AB in AA, and every 16 AB in AAA (obvious outlier), and then every 114 AB in the majors. Hopefully the power he showed in the minors will translate to the majors soon enough, 30-38 AB roughly is equivalent to 15-20 homers in a season.</p><p>With a contact rate of 86% and eye of 61% in the majors in 253 plate appearances, that demonstrates his ability to correctly gauge the strike zone and make contact better than most major leaguers, so the next step in his development is for him to do more damage with his bat when he makes contact. He reportedly has worked out this offseason to bring his power into play in the majors, and there is a picture of him circulating around showing off the extra body weight he has gained. </p><p>At this point, I have greater hope that he can produce as a major leaguer than any other Giants OF prospects, simply because he's shown that he can be good judging the strike zone in the majors and making contact. Add in his production in the minors when challenged by being one of the most youngest in that level, the ability to keep on making good contact, then with him taking a leap in ability in 2023, gaining more walks at every level, including the majors, vs. his ability before at lower levels, and thus I can see why Zaidi announced recently that they are starting Matos in LF in 2024. He has the potential to break out if given the opportunity, and at worse, if he struggles again, Conforto can slide back into LF from DH, or perhaps another OF will get the opportunity to play (Meckler, Ramos, Fitzgerald, Sabol, McCray, basically in that order).</p><p><b>Thoughts on Heliot Ramos</b></p><p>I still believe in Heliot Ramos. Ramos finally broke through and had a good season in AAA. His best seasons were in 2019 and 2023, when he was 3.5 and 3.6 years younger than the league. Unfortunately, he was 5.2 years younger than the majors in 2023, would puts him at 4.2 years in 2024, and 3.2 years in 2025, when he would be 25 YO. He should be out of options that year, and hopefully ready to break out, and he might break out late in the 2024 season, if he follows his age vs league pattern. And with all the OF on the roster, and Lee signed to be the starting CF, I don't think he will see much action in the majors in 2024, unless there is a lot of problems with the outfielders.</p><p>I covered this in greater detail in the <a href="https://obsessivegiantscompulsive.blogspot.com/2024/01/your-2023-giants-to-zaidi-or-not-series_31.html">last post I published</a>. As noted above, Zaidi recently noted in an interview that Matos is the starting LF in the current configuration of the starting lineup, with Jung Hoo Lee in CF, and Yaz and Slater platooning in RF, which presumably means Conforto is the DH (though a recent rumor is that the Giants are pursuing Jorge Soler to be their DH, so stay tuned for more changes). So I'm pasting the last three paragraphs, with changes to account for Matos in LF:</p><p>However, given how poorly he hit in the majors in 2023, I would be cautious and look at 2025 being the season he breaks out (when he's 25 YO), with 2024 being perhaps in the .700-ish OPS range in the majors, where he doesn't play much unless he can keep his OPS above .700 consistently, instead of going hot and cold all the time. I would not bet on him breaking out, but I wouldn't bet against him either, depends on how he does the first half of 2024. </p><p>His main problem, as with most prospects who struggle, they just strike out too much. Some fans complain he hasn't gotten a chance, but in his chances so far, he's been striking out a ton in the majors while not getting much walks or hits. It's one thing if he's blasting homers while striking out, like he did in Sacramento last season, but one homer in 82 plate appearances, with a weak ISO of 92, speaks to an overmatched hitter. I think he will get more opportunities in 2024 (of course, that's a low bar, some critics would note), and will break out sooner than later.</p><p>And he probably will get opportunities to play in the majors in any case in 2024. I doubt there will be another starting OF signed, so as noted above, it'll be Matos in LF, Lee in CF (where he's expected to be plus defensively, and can help Matos out in left center), and Yaz/Slater in RF (where they have been good defenders before), with Wade as a backup OF, but mainly platooning at 1B. Hopefully we don't see much of Ramos in 2024 because that means issues for someone in the OF, but since Yaz and Slater seems to be injury prone, I expect Ramos to get occasional opportunities to show his progress vis-a-vis the majors.</p><p><b>2024-25 Could End the Complainers' Comments on Developing OF</b></p><p>Based on the above, the starting lineup by 2025 could be Matos in LF, Lee in CF, and Ramos in RF, and the three of them could end the complaints that the Giants haven't developed a starting OF since Chili Davis, if they produce well.</p><p>Speaking of Lee, I haven't decided if Lee should qualify for extetnding this streak in 2024. Technically, he would, as he has had no MLB experience, and essentially is a good minor leaguer. However, he was paid over $100M, so it's not like the Giants didn't think that he wasn't talented. I'm open to being convinced either way, if anyone would like to chime in. </p>obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-5546153880673996942024-01-31T21:49:00.000-08:002024-01-31T21:49:59.243-08:00Your 2023 Giants: To Zaidi or Not Series - Realists vs. Rationalizing Fans<p>There was only going to be seven in my series. But I decided to add a bonus additional one because of my recent interaction with a troll (he/she called themselves that).</p><p>He/she said that he/she is a realist and that I'm just rationalizing my thoughts on why I think the Giants can be competitive in 2024. Thinking through this, I realized that much of what the downcast Giants fans are doing are rationalizations of their unhappiness with the team. <br /></p><p><b><span></span></b></p><a name='more'></a><b>ogc thoughts</b><p></p><p>This troll clearly didn't understand what rationalizing meant. He/she thought that because I had reasons backing up my logic, I was rationalizing. But that's what being realist means, you take the good and the bad, and you use facts and logic to come to a conclusion. Argue with the facts, but the conclusion is the same as long as the facts are the same. But as I've learned, many bullies tend to project their weaknesses onto others, accusing them of it when they are the one with that weakness. </p><p>Given this, and given that I was working on this series, my brain made the connection and saw that much of the complaints are rationalizations by the Zaidi Haters. </p><p><b>Other Teams Are Better!</b></p><p>I thought I would start with this one, since my last post in this series talked about this. Giants fans have been rationalizing their disdain for the 2024 Giant because they look at other teams successes, like the Dodgers, Padres, Braves, and Rangers. Look how great they are today! Why didn't Zaidi do similarly with the Giants?</p><p>As I outlined in my <a href="https://obsessivegiantscompulsive.blogspot.com/2024/01/your-2023-giants-to-zaidi-or-not-series.html">last post of the series</a>, these fans are only looking at the results today, without looking at the actual situation faced by the BOps Leaders of those teams when they took over, or looking at the pain some of those teams had to go through before reaching the shiny success these fans covet so badly. The reality is that these teams went through a similar period of transition like what the Giants are going through right now, but these fans act as if their great results now just magically happened without any pain for their fans. Many of these leaders would have been fired by these Giants fans before they became successful with their plans, as most plans take time and pain before they pay off. </p><p><b>Giants are a .500 club</b></p><p>One rationalization fans have been doing is about the Giants being a .500 club throughout Zaidi's tenure, and not making any progress, and thus they think <a href="https://obsessivegiantscompulsive.blogspot.com/2023/11/your-2023-giants-to-zaidi-or-not-series.html">he has no plan</a>. Seems to be realist enough, that's objectively true. But that's missing the bigger picture.</p><p>From 2018-2019, the Giants were 9th or 10th in Runs Allowed, 7th to 9th in ERA, and 13th to 14th in Runs Scored. From 2021-23, the Giants were 2nd, 7th, and 3rd in ERA, and 2nd, 7th, 14th in Runs Scored. The Giants had nothing particularly good when Zaidi started. He has rebuilt the pitching staff so that it has ranked 2nd and 3rd in the past three seasons. So while the team is still around .500, one important (one could argue most important, and I do) segment of the team is producing elite results, and that's progress.</p><p>And he continues to try to improve the staff, trading out DeSclafani and grabbing for the gold ring in Ronnie Ray. And even more recently, signed Hicks to be a starter but on a good setup reliever priced deal. Moreover, in a recent interview with Tim Kawakami, Zaidi said that Harrison isn't being traded, that he's what all teams want, and that he'll be leaning on the young prospects in the system more than on veterans, in the coming seasons. And even more recently, committed to giving the young pitching prospects the opportunity to win 26-man roster spots.</p><p><b>Free Agents Avoiding SF</b></p><p>How's this for rationalization: free agents are avoiding the Giants because of S.F.'s reputation? Many like to point out the crime and homeless situation. These people expose their political bias with their commentary on this, more so than their knowledge of the situation.</p><p>The reality is that every free agent has a preference for where they want to go, and nobody can control that. Given that we don't know exactly why top free agents have avoided the Giants up to now, any reason given is rationalization biased by what that person thinks is the problem. And throwing up crime and homelessness is a sign of their bias, because LA has even worse issues with these societal ills than SF, as well as many other cities.</p><p>What we do know is that 1B Sabean pursued hard, Carlos Lee, chose Houston because he had a huge ranch there, and wanted to live near it. The Giants were willing to offer even more money, but the player via the agent said that he got what he wanted from the Astros, don't bother. </p><p>We also know that the Giants outbid the Cubs for Greg Maddux, and he was going to chose the Giants, but the Giants were vetoed by his wife, for whatever reasons she may have had. </p><p>More recently, Yamamoto noted <a href="https://www.nbcsportsbayarea.com/mlb/san-francisco-giants/yoshinobu-yamamoto-san-francisco-beautiful/1685374/">in his signing press conference</a> that "If the Dodgers had not been pursuing him, there was a good chance San Francisco could have been his destination."</p><p>And we pretty much know now that Judge, Ohtani, and Yamamoto signed with the club they wanted to sign with (unfortunately, the Dodgers were the team Yamamoto liked when he was younger, not the Giants). </p><p><b>We Could Have Signed Gausman!</b></p><p>Zaidi Hater Club members bring this up all the time. They list a variety of reasons why he should have been signed by the Giants: he learned new pitches with the Giant, he wasn't used as much earlier in his career, he's not that old, etc. The only reason Gausman gets brought up all the time is because he's the rare free agent that worked out great. </p><p>All the reasons I see people saying that he was a good bet is just rationalization, because we could have listed all the same rationalizations about Ray Durham, but he instead was an injury magnet his whole time with the Giants. And for all the complaints about not signing free agents, especially mid-range ones like Gausman, they seem to have forgotten Cueto, Samardzija, Melancon, Benitez, Rowand, Renteria, even Hunter Pence, his was ugly by the end too (and, really, Cain, Lincecum, Belt, and Crawford, as well).</p><p>And the problem is that these people are narrowly focused on winning in 2022 and 2023. Gausman would have made the Giants a better team, but these people would still be complaining because they would still only be a couple of games above .500, and still would not have gotten the last wild card spot had they signed Gausman. And hindsight drives this stance, for if he had sucked, they would have moved on to their next rationalization. But because he has done well, they can point to him, as if they have a magically crystal ball that tells them which free agents will stay healthy and perform well.</p><p>All signing Gausman would have done is spend money the Giants didn't need to spend yet, as the team has been preparing itself to contend when Kyle Harrison was ready. That's why they went out and signed Correa last offseason, to prepare the team to compete once Harrison was ready. That's why they are spending all this money this offseason on younger players like Lee and Hicks, so that they are acclimated to the team in 2024 and ready to join Harrison as he (hopefully) takes the ace mantle in 2025. And getting a potential ace starter to juice the rotation in 2025, with Webb and Harrison (Cobb is old already, and with his surgery, even his 2024 isn't assured, although the surgery appears to be a success). </p><p>Meanwhile, had Gausman been signed, the Giants likely wouldn't have made the playoffs in 2022 or 2023, and these people would still be complaining about Zaidi, only they would have one less thing to point out.</p><p><b>Five Years!</b></p><p>Another rationalization for fans is that <a href="https://obsessivegiantscompulsive.blogspot.com/2023/11/your-2023-giants-to-zaidi-or-not-series_16.html">Zaidi has had five years</a> to fix the farm system, and there has been no progress. That also seems to be realist enough, it's objectively true that in his five seasons, only Bailey has produced much from his picks, and will his hitting hold up, as some critics note?</p><p>First off, you can't get young signing free agents, generally, most offseasons, you get younger (and hopefully better) via the draft. Zaidi's first draft was in 2019, which means it has only been four years since his first try at improving things. And 2019 has not gone well at all. And based on the probabilities that I found with the draft study I did, 75% of the time, teams picking the same picks would have ended up with nobody good.</p><p>But 2020 has already been a smashing success! They have their next catcher for the rest of the decade in Patrick Bailey! He was so good in roughly three quarters of a season, that he still led the majors in a number of key catching metrics, or was close to the lead, and was a finalist for the Gold Glove award. </p><p>On top of that, Kyle Harrison has been doing spectacularly well at every level, even though he was always 3 to 6 years younger, then he was good in almost everything in the majors (unfortunately poor at one of the most important things, giving up homers, but most pitchers can and have figured it out enough that there is a rule about homers for pitchers, one every ten fly balls) while 8 years younger. If he proves to be a future ace, it will be a draft for the ages. </p><p>Then there's also Casey Schmitt, who looks good enough defensively at 3B and other positions that he can be a good utility guy, and perhaps a starter if he can get his bat going. So the 2020 draft is looking to be one of the better ones in Giants history.</p><p>The draft in 2021, 2022, 2023 all have interesting prospects, but it has only been two years, at most, since they were drafted, which is not enough time to evaluate whether they are successes or not. None of the haters acknowledge this fact, showing their lack of knowledge of the reality of prospects in the baseball draft: Prospects can take up to 4 to 6 years to figure out how to be good in the majors. </p><p>So the reality is that it hasn't been five years yet, and, more importantly, Zaidi and his FO looks more like a success than failure, thus far, with a Gold Glove caliber starting catcher for the next decade, and potentially an young ace who would head the rotation for five to ten years, once he gets going. </p><p><b>Giants Don't Draft Well</b></p><p>Speaking of the draft, rationalization of the Giants history of drafting comes up with the mention that the Giants hasn't drafted a starting OF forever, or that the Giants haven't drafted a starting player in over a decade, blaming the Giants FO. </p><p>The reality is that drafting is very hard. Over 50% of the #1 overall picks have failed to reach 18.0 bWAR in the 50 years I studied. If a team is playoff competitive, then the odds drop to 11% and 5%, depending if you are a good playoff club or not. </p><p>So, for example, just based on the odds I found in my draft study, for Zaidi's 2019 picks, just based on history, 75% of teams with those picks would end up without finding a good player. Here are all the odds of not finding a good player for Zaidi's drafts:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>2019: 75%</li><li>2020: 67%</li><li>2021: 75%</li><li>2022: 84%</li><li>2023: 75%</li></ul><p></p><p>So, clearly, for any individual draft, the odds are highly against a team finding a good player. With the above, basically Zaidi will find a good player about every four drafts.</p><p>On top of that, as noted above, it takes most prospects 4 to 6 years to become a good player in the majors. So, even if Zaidi had hit in his first draft, it might not be until 2023-25 before he becomes good. If he instead finds the guy in 2022, his fourth draft, then that good player might not produce until 2026 to 2028.</p><p>So, if you want to be sure about Zaidi's draft acumen, you have to wait until 2026 to 2028 to see who has produced well enough to be considered good. Thus, you have to try to read the tea leaves with every season. </p><p>The biggest tea leaves is Kyle Harrison. He has impressed with every season he's been with the Giants. His strikeout rates are so elite that his high walk rate is actually okay, he can win with that ratio in the majors. Moreover, he produced well enough in the majors in his first try. </p><p>But he might still need time, both Lincecum and Cain needed a full season to put it all together. Bumgarner, however, was good from the get go, so it varies. And, of course, Foppert, Williams, Ainsworth, Lowry all flamed out for one reason or another, despite good stats rising up the minors. So you have to straddle between the good and the bad that might happen.</p><p>Hence why I give Zaidi a good score so far in drafting, even though it's still too early to fully say. </p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>2019: so far, he has struck out, nobody really looks viable yet, but there are some possibilities in Tyler Fitzgerald, Grant McCray, and Trevor McDonald (again, only 25% chance of finding a good player)</li><li>2020: Patrick Bailey and Kyle Harrison looks like hits, and we'll see if they are extra baggers. Harrison looks like a future good player, Bailey looks to be at least a useful player, and very possibly a good player (he's only 25 YO next season, projected at 2.4 and 2.8 WAR by ZiPS and Steamer, two best known projection systems, and with some growth, should be close to the threshold I use for Good players, which is 18.0 WAR, when he reaches free agency, though I expect the Giants to sign him to a long term contract before that happens, perhaps even as soon as this spring). Casey Schmitt looks like he can be serviceable as a great defensive utility player, and potentially a starter if he can figure out hitting. The rest have some good and bad points, and are all still possibilities, like RJ Dabovich and Ryan Murphy.</li><li>2021: Highlights include Mason Black, Vaun Brown, and Landen Roupp. Black did really well in AA last season as 23 YO, and rose to AAA and did okay there, good ERA but too wild, and most importantly, continued to strike out a ton of hitters at every level he was at, double digits as a pro, and good walk rates until he reached AAA. He should be reaching the majors in 2024 or 2025, likely due to too many injuries if 2024, but I can see him forcing his way up in 2025, he's been a force in striking out guys.</li><li>2022: Carson Whisenhunt is one to watch here, MLB Pipeline ranked him 70th overall. He was only 22 YO in his first full pro season and rose from A-ball to AA, registering a 3.20 ERA in AA, along with a 12.4 K/9 and 2.45 K/BB (high 5.0 BB/9 in AA, but low 2.6 and 2.8 in A-ball and Advanced A, before that), and an overall 2.45 ERA in 2023. Prospects making AA or higher by 22 are one to watch, generally. And Wade Meckler has already made the majors. Reggie Crawford and Hayden Birdsong are ones to watch as well. Birdsong also made AA, and he was only 21 YO, but didn't do particularly well (7.04 ERA), but struck out a ton (12.9 K/9) and while walking too many, a 2.54 K/BB ratio is good. Crawford is a two way, but more likely to be a pitcher.</li><li>2023: It's very early to say for certain, but Bryce Eldridge had a good pro start (already ranked for one of the top prospects in EV last season, and he just got out of high school), and Walker Martin got a huge bonus, so he'll be interesting to follow as well.</li><li>IFA: I'm including this although it is not a draft, he did sign International Free Agents. Rayner Arias is one very interesting prospect who massively produced in his first season as a Giant. There are others like Aeverson Arteaga, Diego Velasquez and Adrian Sugastrey.</li></ul><p></p><p>Another reality is that while the Giants haven't drafted a starting OF since Chili Davis, these people are ignoring Will Clark, Robbie Thompson, Matt Williams, John Burkett, Matt Cain, Noah Lowry, Tim Lincecum, Madison Bumgarner, Buster Posey, Brandon Belt, Brandon Crawford, Joe Panik, and Logan Webb. And especially ignoring 3 in 5, you don't have that without some excellent drafting.</p><p>It's getting so bad with their rationalization that they are now retconing the great drafts that Sabean had and crediting it to luck!!! As I've shown in my posts on the draft, Sabean has beaten the odds over a long period of time, as well as hundreds of drafted personnel. If anything, understanding how bad the odds are in drafting good players, it is much easier for me to point out and prove that these bad drafts are just the odds facing teams. </p><p>Let's take Zaidi's drafts as I outlined above the odds were very likely that each individually would end up with no good players selected. The odds of these five drafts ending up with no good players is still 23.7%!!! That's one quarter of the time that teams would end up with nothing over five drafts! And it can take up to his 11th season to see for certain that he didn't find and develop a good player.</p><p>And as I noted, Harrison, from just his second draft, looks good enough to be his first good player drafted. Eldridge, although just out of high school and little pro experience, he still was <a href="https://twitter.com/GoCubs49/status/1749136376879014064">on the leaderboard for EV</a>, even higher than Marco Luciano, who was also in the top 10 (Eldridge was 5th, Luciano was 8th). Whisenhunt only has one full pro season, and already is in the Top 70, and was <a href="https://www.mlb.com/giants/news/top-left-handed-pitching-prospects-for-2024">ranked 6th among LHP by MLB Pipeline</a>, and was noted as having the best changeup in the minors (the article also noted that Harrison has the highest ceiling among the LHP, and he has the best fastball), so he's another one to highlight as a potential good player. And Birdsong reached AA at age 21 YO, and Black wasn't that far behind our top prospects, reaching AA at age 23, then AAA also at age 23, and producing good ERA's in both leagues.</p><p>Sure, prospects need to prove themselves, but at the same time, you have to give him credit for finding, targeting, signing, and developing Harrison to get to this point where he has succeeded in showing ace level performances all through the minors, and had a nice start to his major league career. And Whisenhunt played at three different minor league levels, reaching AA in his first season, and still did well at that level, so he could be reaching the majors in 2024, and should reach by 2025. And Eldridge at only 18 YO, was on the leader board that covers all of the minors, beating out college draftees and experienced minor league hitters who presumably has much more experience and expertise, being 3-10 years older. </p><p>So, while it's too early to say that Zaidi's drafts are bad, there's plenty of reasons to think that he's found at least one good player already, and perhaps as many as three, if Eldridge and Whisenhunt continues to perform well and rise up the minors to the majors. Then there's Birdsong and Black to consider as possibles as well.</p><p><b>Realist, Not Rationalist</b></p><p>Being a realist, which I've tried to be for all of my over 50 years as a Giants fan, I try to take account of all the good AND the bad when evaluating the Giants chances. Even when my friends in elementary school was sure the Giants were going to win, I told them that they weren't (the 70's was a sad period to be a Giants fan, but I loved every minute I stayed up late at night, even on school nights - sorry Mom! - listening to the game with my transistor radio under my pillow, then the Jerry Gordon Golden Age of Comedy would come on afterward, and I would stay up even later), just as when fans were down on Sabean and the Giants, I said that they would be the Team of the 2010 Decade. An analyst can't just look at just the bad or just the good, they have to see both sides, and make their best judgement using the latest theories.</p><p>My wife says I have to be right all the time, but my more nuanced take on myself is that I want to be right (or put another way, perfect) all the time, but realized the futility of that when I was in college, and that's when one of my Mom's advice came to the fore: "Whatever choices you make at any time, you did the best you could do." And then my corollary that I added to that was "If you don't like the results, learn from it so that you can do the right choice in the future." </p><p>So I won't make a big deal if I can be proven wrong, I happily learn, change my opinion, and move on, and that is partly why I even bother to use social media, to see if I'm totally off or if my position can be hardened through social discourse. Hopefully I'm getting better over the years of analyzing baseball and the Giants, and I know I'm not always right, but hopefully I'm learning and improving with any unit of time you want to measure.</p><p>For example, I dipped into the past to read a few posts I have written on Zaidi. I think <a href="https://obsessivegiantscompulsive.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-zaidi-fallacy.html">this early one about what Giants fans aren't understanding about Zaidi</a> is a good one to show what I mean. I think it was a very realistic take on Zaidi, one that still mostly holds today. I think that it captured Zaidi's MO very well and he's still executing on that today, to the consternation of many. </p><p>Only thing I would add is that for long term deals, he's looking more for difference makers who are still ideally in their 20's, such as Correa would have been had he been diagnosed as healthy long term. If he was able to produce to that $360M contract, he would have produced 5-8 WAR in 2023, and that would have put the Giants into playoff range, 84-87 wins, especially given that it likely would have meant that Crawford, who was horrible at SS in 2023, likely would not have gotten so much playing time in 2023 (he was -1.3 bWAR, so that might be another win). Of course, he didn't produce to that level for the Twins, unfortunately for them. That also applies to Lee and Hicks, lesser deals, but with hopes of them producing at good to great levels if given the right circumstances and opportunities.</p><p><b>Wasn't Realistic about Bart and Ramos, Though</b></p><p>I was wrong about the next wave being in a couple of years with Bart and Ramos. It was a case of prospects being hard to project when there are a lot of question marks about them, especially as far down the minors as they were, as well as a case of they unfortunately were the only two worth touting at that time, as two first round drafts who initially did well. I clearly screwed up here. </p><p>That's also a case of my relying on my older stats on the draft, in the first study I did (where I thought it was still good odds for Top 5 overall picks, 43% success rate=57% failure rate to be good), whereas my latest study showed that even #2 overall picks fail to be good over 70% of the time, so I have been much more circumspect in my projections since I released that study, as well as wanting to see more from the prospect before relying on Top 100 rankings (Bart ranked pretty high, in my fantasy baseball league play, I learned that even Top 40 prospects were very iffy, that things only got more certain in the Top 20, which is where Bart was back then, but was still iffy, which I should have known, seeing many #1 overall Top 100 prospects flame out badly). </p><p>I feel surer about Harrison's case as the anointed prospect upon which they plan to rebuild with. Unlike Bart or Ramos, he has performed very well in his peripherals (particularly K/9 and K/BB) at every level of the minors he's been at, and has performed well in the majors, for a 21 YO rookie. And not just performed, but he has been elite, for example, he has the second most strikeouts in the minors over the past three seasons (and likely would have been first if he didn't get promoted to the majors in 2023, or if his innings usage wasn't suppressed), and he's been the top ranked LHP for two years running now, and rated as having the best fastball in this class.</p><p>2024 was his first season without a great ERA, but it was still a season of growth. In his first six starts, he was very wild, in 15.2 IP, he had 21 (!) walks vs. 27 strikeouts (12.1 BB/9, 15.5 K/9, 1.29 K/BB, which is a very poor ratio). From his 7th start to the majors, he had 11 starts, 40.2 IP, 23 BB, 65 K (5.1 BB/9, 14.4 K/9, 2.83 K/BB, which is a good ratio). Then he reached the majors and in 7 starts, he had stellar peripherals of 2.9 BB/9, 9.1 K/9, and 3.18 K/BB (average for NL is 2.57), and he did this as a 21 YO rookie with minimal (84.0 IP in AA and 66.1 IP in AAA before reaching majors) experience in upper minors. I mean, he dominated MLB hitters to the tune of 9.1 K/9 (better than average) while he was 8.2 years younger on average.</p><p>Bart I gave too much credit to his making the Top 100 rankings. I forgot that these rankings typically give too much credit to where they were drafted. He's likely to be traded away near the end of spring training, as he doesn't have any options left, and should be held throughout spring training before unloading him for another team's project, in case there's an injury to Bailey or Murphy. He still have potential value because he was showing improved defensive value, but the Giants don't have the time or need to work on improving him, and other teams who are rebuilding could use a prospect like him to give opportunity to, in order to see if he can blossom with them. He does have decent power, if he could ever tap into it.</p><p>Ramos, I fell in love with him too fast (it happens!), when he did so well in his first full season in Augustus, then did well again in San Jose, without accounting for his age difference, which is important in evaluating prospects. When I wrote that, it was still early, and he was projecting well, plus 2020 probably set him back at least one season. Sometimes things out of your control happens.</p><p>You never know what obstacles that might fall in front of your lead guys (Foppert, Williams, Lowry), and then you hopefully can pivot to other players, like Harrison and Luciano (Cain, Lincecum, Bumgarner, Posey), and then suddenly a Bailey appears (Sandoval and Belt). Plans are made to be broken, because no plan ever goes as planned, that's why being agile has been the mantra for the past decade or two, so if a prospect falters (Ramos), hopefully a prospect rises to take his place (Luciano), without losing too many seasons.</p><p><b>Thoughts on Heliot Ramos for 2024</b></p><p>I still believe that Ramos can be a nice starter, but how good is the question. I still believe he can be a good starter, though, based on how well he hit in AAA in 2023. Here's what I would analyze now based on Ramos' performances:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>2018: he was -3.4 years younger than the league average (roughly 3-4 years younger than most players), and hit .709 OPS as an 18 YO player. That's not a high OPS, but if you look at prior seasons, 18 YO's who can hit at least .700 OPS in A-ball often did well in the majors. I was basing most of my thoughts on this, but should have tempered my opinion since he did struggle with striking out, as well as not performing that well relative to the league.</li><li>2019: he killed in San Jose, .885 OPS, where he was only -3.5 years younger, but struggled at .742 OPS in AA, where he was -5.1 years younger</li><li>2020: lost a season of development, as well as enough practice to maintain skills, I would suggest</li><li>2021: hit okay .756 OPS in AA (-2.9 years; average NL LF/RF hit .770 OPS; I think missing 2020 required him made him inconsistent, he would hit well then be cold, he's been good when this close in age to the league average) but only .722 OPS in AAA (-5.7 years younger; here's where another of my errors kicks in, I forgot about how much older AAA and the majors are)</li><li>2022: hit only .654 OPS in AAA (-4.7 years), he's still only 22 YO though, and the best prospect typically make AA by age 22, so he's ahead of development schedule by that metric</li><li>2023: hit a great .928 OPS in AAA (-3.6 years), he's only 23 YO but still -5.2 years in the majors, where he hit poorly again.</li></ul><div>So, during his career, when he's -3.6 years or less relative to the league, he hit well in the league for his age, and especially when older, he hit really well in 2023. When he was over -3.6 years younger relative to the league (2021, 2022, 2023), he did not hit all that well for the league. The best news is he reached a peak of .928 OPS in AAA in 2023 at age 23, which is young to dominate in AAA, and what the better prospects do.</div><div><br /></div><div>For 2024, he'll be roughly -4 to -4.5 years in the majors. He could struggle like he did in AAA in 2022 (closest age difference at -4.7 years), or perhaps he does well, there's no other example where he's in this age range, unfortunately, and he's older relative being closer to -4 than to -4.7, and thus could do better). </div><div><br /></div><div>However, given how poorly he hit in the majors in 2023, I would be cautious and look at 2025 being the season he breaks out (when he's 25 YO), with 2024 being perhaps in the .700-ish OPS range in the majors, where he doesn't play much unless he can keep his OPS above .700 consistently, instead of going hot and cold all the time. I would not bet on him breaking out, but I wouldn't bet against him either, depends on how he does the first half of 2024. </div><div><br /></div><div>His main problem, as with most prospects who struggle, they just strike out too much. Some fans complain he hasn't gotten a chance, but in his chances so far, he's been striking out at 30%+ while not getting much walks or hits. It's one thing if he's blasting homers while striking out, like he did in Sacramento last season, but one homer in 82 plate appearances, with a sad ISO of 92, speaks to an overmatched hitter. I think he will get more opportunities in 2024 (of course, that's a low bar, some critics would note), and will break out sooner than later.</div><div><br /></div><div>And he probably will get opportunities to play in the majors in any case in 2024. I doubt there will be another starting OF signed, so it looks like Conforto in LF (back to the position where he fields well; he played mostly RF in 2023, where he plays poorly), Lee in CF (where he's expected to be plus defensively), and Yaz/Slater in RF (where they have been good defenders before), with Wade as a backup OF, but mainly platooning at 1B. This leaves the last OF position for Ramos, Matos, Meckler, and probably Fitzgerald battling for that one spot. </div><div><br /></div><div>I expect Meckler or Fitzgerald to get the spot, with Ramos getting the daily starts in AAA he needs to continue to develop further, and gain experience, as I believe he has one more player option to be used to be put in the minors. But Conforto, Yaz, and Slater are all over 30 and in the injury age range, so if he's raking in the minors, I would expect him to get opportunities in the majors when injuries open a spot, as well as if one of the other young prospects are in the majors and struggling, and he's raking, he will get a chance to show what he can do if the coaches approve, because they all have options too.</div><p></p>obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-16106237722726926002024-01-14T21:57:00.000-08:002024-01-14T21:57:49.819-08:00Your 2024 Giants: Where the Roster Stands Today<p>I posted this comment, and given all the work I put into it, I'm posting it here. I, of course, added some more content (I tinker constantly) and added headings. Also, the Giants signed Jordan Hicks in the meantime, so I added some thoughts on that, but didn't add to existing projections to give more buffer for the projection I'm making.</p><p>I analyzed where I think the Giants are improved in 2024 vs. 2023, and how many wins that should translate into, and whether they can make the playoffs.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><b>ogc thoughts</b></p><p><b>The Giants Plan To Be Pitching Dominant</b></p><p>The Giants are trying to win by Runs Allowed excellence, led by pitching excellence, much like the Sabean Dynasty era. The team he inherited was ranked 7th, 9th, and 8th in ERA from 2018-2020, middle of the league (FIP was worse, reaching low of 11th in 2019) but in 2023 was ranked 3rd in the NL despite all the problems they had with the starting pitching where they made almost everyone a featured reliever. They were also ranked 2nd in 2021, so twice in the past three seasons, they have been among the best in ERA.</p><p>Now for 2024, they have already moved on from DeSclafani (4.88 ERA), Alexander (4.66), Manaea (4.44) and Wood (4.33). Only Stripling (5.36 ERA/5.21 FIP) is left, and while he was ranked as the #2 starter [by the article I commented on], it's much like when Zito was ranked as the top starter, it was solely because of contract and experience, we all knew that Cain was the ace of the staff. That removed 25% of our IP, and I know that Stripling isn't going to get much rope if he's as bad as he was in 2024, especially with Cobb looking like he can return in June. If he's not effective and let go, that's 30% of 2023's least productive IP jettisoned.</p><p>Now, I get that surgery isn't easy peasy and that not all players recover from surgery and be the guy he was before. We saw that with Lincecum, and his hips, and Lowry with his Thoracic issues. But we also saw Posey and his hips, as well, he got better. And that's where we are in sports today, most surgeries work and the player is back to his prior health. If they are afraid that Stripling, Cobb, and Ray won't be as good coming back, I would think the Giants would be more aggressive getting SP. So they appear to be expecting at least one of them to be productive, if not both.</p><p>And we have young pitchers coming up and producing, in Harrison, Beck, and Webb. While I get that not all young pitchers will do as well as they did in their initial introduction (like Cain had a low 2 ERA in short September call-up, then 4+ ERA his first full season), or as well as they did in the minors, Beck had 85 IP, Winn had 5 starts and 42 IP and Harrison had 7 starts and 35 IP, which at least establishes their walk and strikeout rates, which are key skills that demonstrates significance quickly, and from which projections of talent can be made.</p><p>And they had good rates and ratios, ratios that studies have shown that good pitchers achieve and attain good ERA's. Harrison had 2.9 BB/9, 9.1 K/9, 3.18 K/BB; Beck had 2.2 BB/9, 7.2 K/9, and 3.24 K/BB; Winn had 1.7 BB/9, 7.4 K/9, and 4.38. All are good rates of peripherals, and ideally you want the ratio to be over 3, and all 3 are over. So while I get that young pitchers disappoint, we have three young pitchers who in extended performances produced peripherals that are good to excellent to elite, so I would expect some success among this group.</p><p>So we have Webb, Harrison, Beck, and Winn to lead off the rotation, and Stripling likely to get #2 due to experience, but poor performances in spring training or early parts of the season will likely get him DFAed, and Black, Whisenhunt, and Birdsong will be next man up. And now, perhaps Hicks will be a starter/opener, the Giants have not been very hardcore as to what those are defined as. Then Cobb returning sometime in June and Ray returning after July. </p><p>On the bullpen side, the Giants currently has Doval, the Rogers twins, Walker, and now Hicks in the bullpen (most likely case is Hicks is in the bullpen, either as an extended opener or in the set up man role he has done well in for years), plus Luke Jackson, who did well too. </p><p>In all, that's six relievers and five starters, leaving two pitching spots (assuming 13 pitchers on the roster), which suggests that the Giants should be looking to sign one more starter, to create a bit more depth at the start of the season, then one of the young pitchers who presumably loses out on a starting position, could then take one of the two open bullpen positions. Some have thought that Eric Miller should have gotten an opportunity to show off what he can do, and maybe he'll get that last spot. I also expect Zaidi to give out a number of minor league contracts where the pitcher can try to win a spot on the roster in Spring Training.</p><p><b>Defense is Greatly Improved via Addition by Subtraction</b></p><p>What we are currently missing in Runs Allowed (i.e. run prevention) is the fielding defense. Per DRS, the five biggest offenders were Crawford, Matos in CF, Pederson, Davis, and Sabol. None of them, except Davis will be getting any playing time this season (Sabol's problems likely was as catcher). And Davis has a mixed profilie, his Outs Above Average was good at 4 in 2023, so he wasn't all bad. </p><p>Removing the four would change the 2023 Giants from -15 DRS, a poor overall performance, -1.5 wins, to +21 DRS, a good overall performance, +2.1 wins. Moving Davis to DH, if Chapman is signed, Davis was -9 DRS, pushing us to +30 DRS as a team, plus whatever Chapman provides, or 3 wins. But from -1.5 to +2.1, that adds 3.6 wins to last year's team, shifting a 79 win team to 82-83 wins.</p><p>Of course, there's changes. But Bailey's increased playing time at elite defensive levels will be countered by Murphy's likely below average defense (given how good his hitting is). 2B is improved by no Villar, but we'll call it even. At SS, Luciano will likely be below average, but in total, all the SS aside from him cost the team 2 wins per DRS, so even if he's -10 DRS (which is roughly his seasonal average last season), that's another win there, which will be balanced out at 3B if Davis plays there, at worse. Pederson made LF below average, but he's gone, and Conforto was positive, so there should be some overall improvement there. And Yaz and Slater were positive defensively in RF, where they were average last season, and so that should be improvement as well. And we already removed Matos in CF, so calling Lee simply average (0 DRS), means overall the OF is greatly improved defensively, let's call that extra half win, putting us at 83 wins.</p><p><b>Offensive Improvements</b></p><p>Now let's look at improvements positionally. Lee is now the starting CF, and ZiPS projects him at 2.5 wins. Giants were at -0.5 wins in CF last season, per baseball-reference.com, so that's 3 wins improvement, putting us at 86 wins. </p><p>At SS, the Giants were -3 wins in 2023, so if defense costs us 2 wins, that's -1 win offense. Now, Fangraphs projects Luciano at 0.6-1.0 Wins in 2024 (and if he plays the full season, that prorates higher, but I won't include it here). Let's just say he's 0 Wins, replacement level, since he could falter and the guy Zaidi acquires to back him up is at least replacement level. That adds 1 wins there, putting us at 87 wins. </p><p>Conforto in LF, where the Giants were -1.7 bWAR overall, even if he is 0 (he was 0.7 bWAR overall and projected at 1.1 by ZiPS) this season, that adds roughly 2 wins, putting us at 89 wins. I'll call the rest of the position players a push (but Murphy is projected at 1.1 WAR and Bart/Sobol together was 0 WAR roughly).</p><p><b>Pitching Improvements</b></p><p>There's likely to be pitching improvement, given the pitchers let go, and how well the young pitchers did (Beck in particular, +1.1 bWAR, or roughly 2 bWAR season; Harrison +0.2 bWAR or roughly 1 bWAR; Winn +0.3 bWAR or roughly 1 bWAR), but lets call it even, in case the young guys falter. So that leaves us at 89 wins. Hicks probably produces around 1 WAR, as reliever or opener/starter, if he pitches like he has done before. But let's leave him out as a buffer for errors in projections.</p><p><b>Playoffs is a Good Possibility for the Giants</b></p><p>Now, do I believe that this is an 89 win team? Only if Harrison has a great first full season and becomes the ace that all his performances up to now suggests that he can. But I think my logic above is sound, reasonable, and conservative, especially losing all the defensive holes and replacing most of them with better defensive players.</p><p>Do I believe we have a good offense? Not even close. I was happy to see ZiPS project Jung Hoo Lee to be so good, and he would be a nice addition to the top of the lineup. ZiPS projects him at .762 OPS. With him atop the lineup, we were already about league average from 1-6 except for the important 4th cleanup, so now we are league average 1-6. We were also weak in LF (.609 OPS) and Conforto is projected at .742 OPS (he was one of the holes at 4th last season, but he projects to be better). That should get us to league average 1-7. Before you scoff at league average, they were league worse almost (14th of 15) in Runs Scored, just getting us to 9 or 10 is a huge improvement (that's additional 50 runs in a season, right there, or five wins).</p><p>Given that an 84 win team made the playoffs last season, and 87 wins the season before, I think the Giants currently is very likely to fall into that 84-87 wins range, and thus be competitive for one of the Wild Card positions, with some good chance of getting to 90 wins, if players just play to their projected improvements or just to what they produced last season, for the players still on the roster, given how conservative I was in not counting every little addition of possible wins. I think that allows a lot of room for errors (i.e. poor performances), while there are areas where they can out produce.</p><p>Especially Harrison, he could be anywhere between 1 win (ZiPS project 1.4 WAR), 2 wins (if he's closer to Cobb's projection), or 3+ wins (if he's in Webb's territory). For reference, Cain had 4.15 ERA in his first full season (2.3 bWAR) and Lincecum had 4.00 ERA (2.1 bWAR), and Harrison had 4.15 ERA in 2023 in 7 starts. And while Harrison had 2.9 BB/9 and 9.0 K/9, with 3.1 K/BB ratio, Lincecum had 4.0 BB/9 and 9.2 K/9, with 2.3 K/BB ratio and Cain had 4.1 BB/9 and 8.4 K/9, with 2.1 K/BB ratio. </p><p><b>Top Ranked Runs Allowed Teams Usually Makes the Playoffs</b></p><p>And with good pitching (via reduced bad pitching) and good defense (via reduced bad defense, plus Lee), that #3 ranking in ERA should be reflected in their Runs Allowed ranking, where they were 6th. Historically in the Wild Card era, if there were N playoff teams (4, 5 or 6 teams), out of the Top 4-5 RA Leaders (which the Giants should be within in 2024), 75% of teams reaching that ranking made the playoffs. So, while no guarantee, I also think that there's a good chance that the Giants will make the playoffs as is, without adding any other players.</p><p>Of course injuries have ruined projections before (like Bumgarner getting hit on the hand in the last ST game, or Kent hurting himself "washing his truck"), so we need to get through spring training first, and that's why I would not mind the Giants signing another position player, starting pitcher, or both, to make the playoffs more of a reality than a possibility. Signing Hicks is a great quality addition to the pitching staff, but another starting pitcher or position player would be best.</p>obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-6434510930447939472024-01-13T22:53:00.000-08:002024-01-13T22:53:52.311-08:00Your 2024 Giants: Crossing Jordan Hicks - Signed for 4 years, $44M<p>The Giants signed reliever Jordan Hicks for 4 years, $44M, and he will be given the opportunity to become a starter with the Giants. </p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><b>ogc thoughts</b><p></p><p>Hicks is a good reliever, having a career 3.65 ERA, but has been horrible as a starter, 8 total starts, 5.47 ERA. So what's the deal? It's about a win-win deal.</p><p>The Giants bullpen can use another strong arm in the bullpen, Hicks throws 3-digit heat. He had an excellent 3.29 ERA with 2.53 K/BB ratio in 2023 as a reliever, and he would pair up nicely with the setup men of the Rogers twins, providing a third look before the Giants go with Doval as the closer.</p><p>Details are not fully out yet, but I would think that he will get a shot in spring training, when all pitchers are airing out their arms and getting ready for the regular season. So here's the scenarios I see.</p><p>If he's as bad in Spring Training as he was before as a starter, he would get placed in the bullpen, which is a win for the Giants bullpen.</p><p>If he's good in Spring Training, but not as good as Beck, Winn, or Stripling (Harrison would have to fall flat on his face to not be in the starting rotation), he would get placed in the bullpen, which is a win for the Giants bullpen.</p><p>If he's better in Spring Training than one of Beck, Winn, or Stripling, he would get to start, and that's a win for the Giants starting, plus whoever lost will likely be the tandem starter or featured reliever in Hicks starts, as he's probably only capable of 1-3 IP initially anyway (he would need to build up his stamina, as well as prepare his body for starting, which the Giants team of specialists should be helping him survive a full season, given his injury history, much like they helped Rodon survive a full season healthy), and that should then be a strong combo. If he can provide starts in the low 3's ERA, that's a good starter, and presumably they will build him up carefully.</p><p>4 years at $11M per season is a good price for a good reliever as Hicks, and he'll be only 27 next season, so we got his 27-30 YO seasons under contract. If he proves to be a good starter instead, it is a huge bargain to have him as a starter. Even if they determine that he's only good enough for 3 IP (given his injury history), that's a great opener, eating up a lot of innings in great performances, much like Hader. </p><p>Even if this repeats each season, we have similar win scenarios as outlined above, just repeated for the next season. This is a great imaginative deal made to secure a great reliever, and perhaps a good starter. Either way, the Giants added a great pitcher to the pitching staff.</p><p>Of course, the risk is that he injures himself and we have some dead money. Well, that's a risk with most players anyway that we could sign. Most likely, we have a great reliever and perhaps a great starter, I like taking risks for upside. </p><p><br /></p>obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-30756651687999527152024-01-08T21:36:00.000-08:002024-01-08T21:36:47.244-08:00Your 2023 Giants: To Zaidi or Not Series - Giants Not as Good as [fill in team blank]<p>The Giants fanbase, from the view of The Athletic's comment pages for the Giants, are in an uproar about Farhan Zaidi's stewardship of the Good Championship Giants. The Zaidi Haters complaints include but are not limited to:</p><p></p><ul><li>Five years is enough to rebuild a farm system and the team</li><li>2023 season was a disaster</li><li>The farm system has not made any progress</li><li>They are not as good as Texas, LAD, Atlanta, etc.</li><li>Zaidi is in love with platoons and openers</li><li>Zaidi can't sign the best free agents; there's no stars</li><li>What's the plan?</li></ul><div>This is the seventh and last in a series examining each complaint.</div><p></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><b>ogc thoughts</b></p><p>Okay, I'm going to tackle the complaint about the Giants not being as good as the Rangers, D-backs, Dodgers, Padres, Braves.</p><p><b>Texas Rangers</b></p><p>Jon Daniels was the GM, and after the team suffered their sixth losing season in 2022, he was fired even before the season ended, as many Rangers fans would have wanted and demanded. However, Chris Young, who was their GM during all that time, and also someone fan would think is strongly associated with that bad record, took over. Which means that it was a planned succession and not a change in management.</p><p>The Rangers, meanwhile, went through a wrenching six year period, after their prior competitive cycle ended in 2016, much like the Giants did. Whereas Zaidi keep the Giants at roughly .500, plus the glorious 2021 season, after the transition year of 2019, where we said good bye to Bochy, in those six seasons, the Rangers had a .429 winning percentage, which works out to averaging 69 wins and 93 losses over that period. Meaning that they really sucked, especially compared to what the Giants went through.</p><p>But in their seventh season, the team broke through and won the World Series, which is why the Giants fans are now pointing at their success. While ignoring the six seasons of averaging 93 losses that they had to go through, in order to finally have their success. It's fun to revel in the success that they had, but it wasn't fun being their fan from 2017 to 2022, watching a really bad team and never really having many good moments, like a pennant chase.</p><p><b>Arizona Diamondbacks</b></p><p>Giants fans love Corbin Carroll, he's the bomb! Especially compared to Hunter Bishop, the prospect the Giants picked before Arizona got Carroll. Five years and nobody good in the majors yet!!! But it takes time to bear the fruit of the harvest.</p><p>Mike Horner took over in 2016, and had his first draft in 2017. Carroll didn't blossom until 2022, and had his first great season in 2023. But after five years, that is, end of 2021 season, Horner didn't have any great player drafted yet! The best they got was Daulton Varsho, who played okay in 2021, about the same as Patrick Bailey, but to Giants fans' logic, they got nothing good from their farm system. Fire Horner now (at the end of 2021)!!! Ooops, he was fired, but Carroll blossomed in late 2022, and blew the doors off in 2022.</p><p>Giants fans love the beauty of a Corbin Carroll, but it took him 3 years to reach the majors (which is actually pretty fast, especially for an 18 YO draft pick) and 4 years to become the great player Giants fans are clamoring for. It took Bailey, Schmitt and Harrison 3 years to reach the majors. And maybe they don't blast off in 2024, their fourth year, but that doesn't mean they are busts, as long as they improve season by season. Developing good players take time, we were very lucky with Cain, Lincecum, Posey, Bumgarner, Belt, and Crawford. Sandoval took five years to reach the majors, six to become the Panda. </p><p><b>Loss Angeles Dodgers</b></p><p>There is a lot of SoCal envy going through a huge swath of Giants fans, changing them from orange to green, and I won't (can't) argue that they haven't been successful in winning the division almost every season he's been the VPBOps. Which is fine is you want to relieve Giants fans agony during the 60's, always falling short of winning the World Series, which they mostly did except for 2020.</p><p>And while they won in 2020, I consider any season that is not the full 154/162 game seasons to be nothing more than an exhibition. That's because none of the teams went through the gauntlet of grinding down their players to nubs by the end of the long, playing 6-7 games a week for 26 weeks, horse race. And the Dodgers, like the Giants, depend on a lot of good players who tend to get injured (heck, they have a history of it when they signed!) at some point of the long season. Instead, in 2020, only 60 games, two months.</p><p>I feel that the Dodgers' strategy is great for winning in the regular season, not so much in the playoffs or going all the way to the trophy. I believe in great pitching, and the Dodgers (and the Giants) rely too much on the "finding guys to get to 162 starts" tactic, which risks your playoffs because you can't control which of your pitchers will be healthy enough to pitch when the playoffs roll around. </p><p>That's why I want the Giants to sign Sonny Gray, as soon as possible, then they can concentrate on one of the young aces, Yamamoto, Snell, Montgomery, and securing one of them. That's a rotation of FA Ace, Webb, Gray, Harrison (who might be an ace or ace adjacent in 2024, he has pitched that well in the minors), plus Cobb at some point, with DeSclafini, Stripling, Winn, Beck (this would also enable the Giants to trade Winn, Beck, or other young pitching prospects, for a good young player) as depth.</p><p><b>San Diego Padres</b></p><p>I haven't really like Preller since he traded for Matt Kemp and his albatross contract, and then had the idiocy of also throwing in good players back to the Dodgers. They won the trade both ways!!! </p><p>Hired in 2014, in nine seasons, he has had only 3 seasons at .500 or higher. Giants fans were fed up with Zaidi after five seasons, where the Giants were mostly at or above .500 from 2020-2023, but Preller started with five losing seasons, and six out of seven, averaging roughly 91 losses in those 7 seasons. Had Giants fans been in charge, Preller wouldn't have made it to his first winning seasons in 2020.</p><p><b>Atlanta Braves</b></p><p>Alex Anthopoulos took over as President, Baseball Ops and GM for the 2018 season. While his predecessor left him with a four year losing streak, it's my understanding that it was a planned succession, and he did leave him with some nice prospects in Ronald Acuna Jr, Michael Soroka and Austin Riley, as well as good (in 2018) players in Freddie Freeman, Ronald Acuna Jr. Mike Foltynevicz, Julio Teheran, Sean Newcomb, AJ Minter, and Arody Vizcaino. AA started with a freakingly good team that did not play that well in the prior four years, but had Acuno blasting off in 2018, making for a great season for them. </p><p>Zaidi had nobody on par with Freeman or Acuna Jr. for the 2019 season, let alone all the other players listed above. He had to made do with what he had, and changed a really bad 2017-18 team into a nearly .500 team in 2019. Of course AA did a lot better, he was handed a team that was ready to take off with a super prospect who was ready to take off, and they did.</p><p>They were also similar in drafts. Like AA, Zaidi had a very bad first draft. AA found nobody in 2018, FZ found nobody in 2019. AA in the following year found Michael Harris II; whereas FZ drafted Patrick Bailey, Kyle Harrison, and Casey Schmitt, which is arguably better right now, and a clear win for Zaidi, if Harrison develops as expected. AA found Spencer Strider in his third draft, as well as Bryce Elder, FZ, so far, Mason Black, Vaun Brown, and Landen Roupp, so AA is clearly ahead now with Strider.</p><p>However, Harrison looks to become on par with Strider. Strider did great, reaching the majors when he was 22 YO and playing a great first full season as 23 YO, then a Cy Young level as 24 YO. Harrison reached the majors at age 21 YO, and will have his first full season in 2024. </p><p>I get scoffing at the comparison at first and last glance, given what Strider has accomplished. Guess whose stats are whose between these two AA seasons (Strider barely played in AAA):</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>22 YO: AA league, 4.86 ERA, 14 games, 4.1 BB/9, 13.4 K/9, 3.24</li><li>20 YO: AA league, 3.11 ERA, 18 games, 4.2 BB/9, 13.6 K/9, 3.26</li></ul><p></p><p>I'm sure you surmised that Strider had the first row of stats, Harrison had the second. So Harrison performed very similarly in terms of peripherals as Strider did, but did it as a 2 years younger player, as well as doing much better in ERA. Giants fans seem to be ignoring Harrison's potential while complaining hard about this season, but he has done everything one would expect an ace potential starting pitcher should be doing in the minors, and he also did very well in his short stint in the majors. I'm excited to see what he does in 2024.</p>obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-48282145613851735622024-01-06T22:27:00.000-08:002024-01-06T22:27:10.731-08:00Your 2024 Giants: Trade for Ronnie Ray<p>The Giants traded for former Cy Young winner LHP Ronnie Ray, getting him from the Mariners for Mitch Haniger, DeSclafani, and cash considerations, which makes the deal net zero dollar trade. Ray is rehabbing from TJS, and is expected to return in July 2024, plus whatever rehab time he needs. Ray has a player option after the 2024 season, where he can opt into a two year @ $25M per season deal, or make himself a free agent.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><b>ogc thoughts</b></p><p>This is a great trade by Zaidi. It takes two players in areas (OF, depth SP) where they have too many players for next season, and obtains the chance of holding an ace starting pitcher, all for the same amount of payroll for 2024. This also opens up a 40-man roster spot, should they sign or trade for other players for their 40-man. </p><p>The major risk is taking on Ray's two years at $25M per season for 2025-26 (which is slightly mitigated by the $15.5M we would have owed Haniger in 2025). He has a player's option, so he can get out of his contract after the 2024 season, and pursue a bigger contract as a free agent, if he does as well as he had before the operations. But if he doesn't have a great season with the Giants, we are stuck with him for 2 years, $50M. So Zaidi hopefully feels that his team of doctors can help him get back to some level of goodness by 2025-26. </p><p>But in the overall big picture, that's not when the team will be strongly competitive. 2024-25 is waiting out Harrison becoming an ace, because our rebuild will stall a lot if he falters. So 2026 is the first year I would mark on my calendar as the target for when the Giants can seriously compete with the Dodgers for the Division title. So while the money could be wasted, it would only be wasted in 2026, and hopefully we have 5-10 years of competing after that.</p><p><b>OF Excess Reduced to Manageable</b></p><p>With one less OF, the Giants can play Conforto in LF, Lee in CF, and platoon Yaz and Slater in RF, where they should be good defensively. This also opens up DH, which was viewed as an outlet to utilize one of the OF, to Davis and Flores, full time, should the Giants be able to sign a 3B this offseason (Matt Chapman per rumors, but who knows?)</p><p>Then there is nice depth in the system with Wade Meckler and Heliot Ramos as first men up should there be injuries in the OF (like Yaz and Slater seem to have every season). Ramos had a nice AAA season in 2023, as he reached the age vs league where he is able to take advantage of the hitting. Of course, it's a huge step to the majors, and he might not be able to figure out breaking pitches. Meckler is more likely to be called up first because of his ability to avoid strikeouts, that's one skill that seems to translate well into the majors, I noticed that with Panda long ago, and with other prospects coming up to the majors. Tyler Fitzgerald could jump ahead of those two, since he can play both IF and OF, plus hit better than both in the majors, but have to think he's lower on the depth chart.</p><p><b>Starting Pitching Depth Shaping Up Nicely</b></p><p>With Disco gone and Ray needing to at least July to get ready for the majors, plus Cobb out until June, that leaves the starting rotation currently at Webb, Harrison, Beck, Winn, and Stripling, with depth of Sean Hjelle, Carson Whisenhunt, Mason Black, Hayden Birdsong, Kai-Wei Tang, Jack Chote, and Landen Roupp. I don't think Zaidi will want Hjelle as the first man up for long relief, so I expect some sort of minor league invite to spring training, who would compete with Beck, Winn, Stripling for a starting spot, with the loser becoming the long man/featured relief role.</p><p>This gives Beck, Winn and Stripling about two months to establish themselves, before Cobb returns. Some fans hate Stripling, but most forget that most teams have crap at the end of their rotations (and some have crap up to the middle of their rotation). I think he'll be okay battling against the back end of rotations, and if not, he can always be DFAed if he's bad, but he was decent as a featured reliever last season, and could hold the long relief job, should he falter as a starting pitcher again.</p><p>When Cobb returns, whoever isn't pitching as well will likely be removed from the rotation, though Stripling will get the call to start if he's close enough to the others. This is because Zaidi should be hoping he does well enough that we can trade him for an interesting prospect (and money savings) when Ray returns to the rotation. </p><p>Reportedly, the Giants are still pursuing a higher end starter, and have been tied to Snell, Montgomery, and Imanaga. After getting Ray, I'm happy to roll the dice to see how he turns out, with what we got right now. We only need to get into the Wild Card, and it's highly unlikely we can beat out the Dodgers for the division title. If we were to get one, at this point, I think Imanaga is the best choice because he's the cheapest one and because we need to establish cred in the Japanese market.</p><p><b>Further Moves</b></p><p>While I believe that the moves made so far would allow the Giants to compete for a Wild Card spot, it is like a 50-50 proposition right now, very easy to see how the Giants might fall out of the race. The Giants have the money, I want to see them get the roster to the point where it should make the playoffs. To accomplish that, I believe the most important free agent signing left to do is getting Matt Chapman. </p><p>Some compare him with Longoria, but he produced 4+ WAR the past two seasons, and should be in the 3+ range for the next 2-3 seasons. Longoria was already below average when we got him. Adding Chapman would be adding 2-3 wins over what we got from 3B in 2023. Getting him would get me feeling like we should make the wild card.</p><p>I also wouldn't mind getting another good reliever to slot in the 6-7-8 innings, like Affeldt. Not sure who would fit that or how much it would cost (FA or trade). I like Doval as the closer, and the Rogers Twins are good as the set-up men, but I would like to see the bullpen be a shutdown one. Walker looks promising for that role, long term, but I would love to get another good setup reliever.</p><p>And another starting pitcher like Imanaga would be nice as well, but not as high a priority as the above, for me. I want to see our young hurlers get the chance to show what they can do. But getting Imanaga should improve our chances, so I don't mind either. </p><p><b>Fans Don't Understand the Realities of Rebuilds</b></p><p>Fans are upset, but rebuild are generally upsetting because they take longer than fans would like to see them. Fans generally don't understand that finding and developing prospects take many years, as well as many iterations, and each missed opportunity (which fans view negatively) is much like hitting in baseball: hitters failing 70% of the time are good hitters. </p><p>Also, the media doesn't help because they keep on touting first round picks as if they were magic beans that will magically make your team good again immediately. But draft picks have horrible odds that just gets worse and worse. Only the first overall pick has a good success rate, almost 50% of them become good players, then the odds fall to around 25% for the next two picks, then 20% for the next three, 15% for 7-14, 10% for 15-23, and 5% for the rest of round 1, and into rounds 2 and 3. Fans don't understand bad odds like that in real life, other than gambling on the lottery.</p><p>Fans also like things to be black or white, yes or no, on or off. However, a rebuild is full of two steps forward, one step back, sometimes a fall back to zero (Foppert getting injured, Williams and Ainsworth failing, Lowry injured), before putting enough forward steps (Cain, Lincecum, Wilson, Romo, Sandoval, Posey, Bumgarner, Belt, Crawford) to reach the top. </p>obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-50819769656925018262024-01-06T18:00:00.000-08:002024-01-06T18:00:00.133-08:00My Giants Business Plan: Keeping Pitchers on 5 Day Rest Rotation Cycle<p>One of my pet theories for over a decade now is that once the Giants get to the dog days of August, they should go to keeping the rotation on a five day rest rotation, even when there is no rest day during a week, usually happens at least twice in August, and sometimes more, because rain outs are sometimes scheduled in August to make up that game. Now there is a study that validates that theory and suggests keeping to it all season long.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><b>ogc thoughts</b></p><p>Josh Parasar published on his website, <b><a href="https://www.paraballnotes.com/blog/the-55-man-pitching-rotation" target="_blank">Paraball Notes</a>, </b>his study of pitching starts, classifying most of them as 4-day, 5-day, and 6-day rest starts. Here is his methodology:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span face="itc-avant-garde-gothic-pro" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: #8dd9bf; font-size: 17.416px; letter-spacing: 0.34832px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Throughout the 2023 season, there were a total of 4860 starts. Among these, 3877 starts involved the starting pitcher taking the mound with four, five, or six days of rest. I collected data on these starts and computed the Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) for each one. Additionally, I adjusted the FIP for each start by factoring in the opposing team's offensive capabilities, based on their 2023 weighted On-Base Average (wOBA). </span></p><p><span face="itc-avant-garde-gothic-pro" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: #8dd9bf; font-size: 17.416px; letter-spacing: 0.34832px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Every 10-point deviation in wOBA that the opponent generated above or below the league's average wOBA of 0.316, resulted in a corresponding 0.32767 decrease or increase in FIP, thereby establishing the "Modified FIP." I compared each starting pitcher's Modified FIP in a particular game against his season-average FIP, thereby generating the final "Modified FIP premium." I then grouped league-wide Modified FIP premiums based on the number of rest days before a start. </span></p><p><span face="itc-avant-garde-gothic-pro"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: #8dd9bf; font-size: 17.416px; letter-spacing: 0.34832px; white-space: pre-wrap;">…</span></span></p><p><span face="itc-avant-garde-gothic-pro" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: #8dd9bf; font-size: 17.416px; letter-spacing: 0.34832px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Judging by the Modified FIP premiums, we can clearly see that pitching on five days rest is optimal. In fact, teams across the league benefitted from their 1886 starts on a five-day rotation, collectively saving 102 runs and increasing their combined win count by 10 compared to utilizing four days of rest exclusively. Conversely, the 406 starts made on a six-day rest cycle resulted in a cost of 12 runs and a reduction of 1 win in total compared to the four-day rest scenario*.</span></p><p><span face="itc-avant-garde-gothic-pro" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: #8dd9bf; font-size: 17.416px; letter-spacing: 0.34832px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The intuition as to why five days of rest is better than four days of rest is that the starters are able to gain a small amount of freshness and stamina without losing connection with their release point and the strike zone. However, having six days of rest makes the starters even more fresh, but comes with the cost of disrupting their pitching rhythm. </span></p></blockquote><p>That’s basically the rotation I’ve been suggesting the Giants employ during August, when there are weeks where there is no rest day: SP goes every five days, and if there is a game instead of a rest day, either go with an opener or bring in a SP from bullpen or AAA to be the 6th starter. And as Josh recommends in his blog post, ideally this 6th starter is coming in on 5 days rest. </p><p>It’s not a huge difference: for a 162 game season, that’s roughly 8.6% of 1886 starts in the study, which saves 8.8 runs, or roughly one win per season. Still, there have been many seasons where one win can make the difference for getting into the playoffs. And this should help the health of the starters. Josh noted when I asked if the conclusions I came to was accurate:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; font-family: itc-avant-garde-gothic-pro; font-size: 17.416px; letter-spacing: 0.34832px; line-height: var(--body-font-line-height); margin: 1rem 0px;">Pros: +1 win per season on average, top starters are more rested for the playoffs, and better overall rotation health can be expected.</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; font-family: itc-avant-garde-gothic-pro; font-size: 17.416px; letter-spacing: 0.34832px; line-height: var(--body-font-line-height); margin: 1rem 0px;">Cons: Requires 1-2 bullpen pitchers with close to starter-like stamina and pitch mix (at least three pitches) or strong AAA starting pitching depth, and a bonafide ace would get a couple fewer starts over the course of the season.</p></blockquote><p>On that last point, that really depends on the number of weeks that has zero days of rest in it. The ace won’t be rotated out until there is five weeks with no day off in it. Also, the rotation is usually restarted from the top of the rotation at the all star break, which usually gives the ace another extra start, which would help mitigate any losses through this strategy of rotation management. The ace might still get their normal number of starts, while the back of the rotation will be the ones to lose a start.</p><p><b>Giants Implications</b></p><p>The Giants were basically already doing that with Logan Webb, going every five days. Of course, for this to work, they need to have five good starting pitchers. At the moment, it’s likely Webb, Cobb, Harrison, Beck, and one of Winn, Stripling, DeSclafani, and perhaps someone in the farm system. So this strategy probably won’t work if the back end starters are not that reliable, which is a key component of this strategy, I would think.</p><p>Zaidi said in multiple interviews that he’s not looking for more depth starting pitchers, only ace level, and the only ones that could be considered that are Snell, Montgomery, and perhaps Imanaga, hard to say if he’s ace level or not since he’s never pitched in the majors. So there is the possibility that there might be a pitcher or two added to the rotation. With Cobb out for the beginning of the season, that opens up a spot for someone to step up and force the issue.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-58870741266204751482023-12-16T22:44:00.000-08:002023-12-16T22:44:23.506-08:00Your 2024 Giants: Jung Hoo Lee is the Giants new CF<p>As announced and formally presented in the Friday press conference (seems prudent after last year to wait), Jung Hoo Lee has been signed to a six year deal for $113M with a player opt-out after four seasons. Per <a href="https://theathletic.com/5139416/2023/12/15/giants-jung-hoo-lee-contract-korea/">Andy Baggarly of The Athletic</a> (subscription required):</p><blockquote><p>Lee will receive a $5 million signing bonus and receive salaries of $7 million in 2024, $16 million in 2025, $22 million in 2026, $22 million in 2027, $20.5 million in 2028, and $20.5 million in 2029. He also has the right to opt out of his contract after the 2027 season.</p></blockquote><p>They will also pay nearly $19M in Posting Fee to Lee's former team, the Kiwoom Heroes. Thus, they are paying out $132M for him, over the life of the contract. And the $19M does not get reduced if he should opt out after 2027.</p><p>There are a few other good article on Jung Hoo:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><a href="https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2024-top-50-mlb-free-agents/">Fangraphs: 2024 Top 50 MLB Free Agents</a></li><ul><li>Lee has been evaluated as a Top 100-quality prospect at FanGraphs since the 2020 KBO season. <b>He is an incredibly skilled contact and defense-oriented outfielder</b> with an important baseball lineage.</li><li><b>Jung-Hoo’s career began in precocious fashion, as he was the first player in KBO history to go straight from high school to their top level of play; he won Rookie of the Year as an 18-year-old in 2017. Since arriving in the league, Lee has a career .340/.407/.491 line, has made elite rates of contact (roughly 5.5% K% and 11% BB% combined the last two seasons), and has had a couple of years in which he also hit for meaningful power. </b></li><li>Lee’s carrying tool is his Jedi-esque bat control, which he uses to deflect pitches all over the strike zone to all fields. His swing is incredibly cool and fun to watch, as Lee’s open stance comes closed very early before he takes a huge stride back toward the pitcher and unwinds from the ground up... His hand-eye coordination and ability to manipulate the barrel is amazing, however. </li><li>Hitters in Asian pro leagues tend to face premium velocity less often than upper-level domestic prospects and it creates a wide error bar in projecting whether or not their hit tools will translate. Using Synergy to isolate Lee’s performance against fastballs at or above the MLB average (93 mph and up) yields just 154 pitches combined throughout the last two seasons; he slashed .268/.348/.415 against them. Bump the bottom boundary up to 94 mph and he slashed .276/.300/.379 across 96 pitches. </li><li>If Lee doesn’t end up hitting for power, <b>his center field defense will help buoy his overall contribution to a team. He’s a plus runner with above-average range and ball skills, and a plus arm</b>. ... The most likely forecast is somewhere in the middle, and here Lee <b>projects as a table-setting center fielder without much pop</b>, though whatever the case, teams should be prepared to make a multi-year project out of Lee so he has time to adjust in the same ways Ha-Seong Kim has.</li></ul><li><a href="https://blogs.fangraphs.com/board-update-international-professional-players/">Fangraphs: International Professional Players</a></li><ul><li>Current Superstars includes Jung Hoo Lee</li></ul><li><a href="https://blogs.fangraphs.com/giants-finally-make-a-free-agent-splash-with-jung-hoo-lee-signing/">Fangraphs: Giants Finally Make a Free Agent Splash with Jung Hoo Lee Signing</a></li><ul><li><b>Lee immediately becomes the best defensive center fielder in a crowded Giants outfield group that was toward the bottom of the league in production last year. He’s a plus runner with above-average range and ball skills, and a plus arm. </b></li><li>The scouting and data-oriented projections for Lee are both quite strong, befitting a player who just signed a nine-figure deal. Here are Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections for Lee:</li><li>ZiPS Projection – Jung Hoo Lee</li><li>Year<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> BA OBP SLG AB<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>R<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>H<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>2B<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3B<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>HR<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>RBI<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>BB<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>SO<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>SB OPS+ DR<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>WAR</li><li>2024<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.288<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.346<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.416<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>476<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>56<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>137<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>29<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>8<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>62<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>39<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>38<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>2<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>111<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>2.5</li><li>2025<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.288<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.348<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.422<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>486<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>58<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>140<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>30<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>9<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>63<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>41<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>38<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>2<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>113<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>2.6</li><li>2026<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.287<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.348<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.420<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>488<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>58<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>140<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>30<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>9<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>63<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>42<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>38<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>112<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>0<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>2.6</li><li>2027<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.281<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.343<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.409<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>487<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>58<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>137<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>29<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>9<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>62<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>42<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>37<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>108<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>0<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>2.3</li><li>2028<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.282<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.345<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.412<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>478<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>57<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>135<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>29<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>9<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>61<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>42<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>36<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>109<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>0<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>2.3</li><li>2029<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.281<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.344<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.406<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>463<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>54<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>130<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>28<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>3<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>8<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>58<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>41<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>35<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>108<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>0<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>2.2</li><li><b>Those are the numbers of an above-average everyday center fielder.</b> With this level of production, per Dan, ZiPS would recommend $132 million for a straight-up six-year deal. </li><li>ZiPS evaluates $113 million with an opt-out after four years as having the same value relative to projections as a six-year, $134 million contract.</li><li><b>Readers should consider him a contact-only threat at the moment, but he has rare hitting talent, and it’s plausible that with added strength, a swing adjustment, or some other developmental intervention, the Giants could coax more power out of him over time.</b> Here you can see what ZiPS thinks the high-end outcomes look like if that happens:</li><li>2024 ZiPS Projection Percentiles – Jung Hoo Lee</li><li>Percentile<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>2B<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>HR<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>BA OBP SLG OPS+ WAR</li><li>95%<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 44<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>14<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.339<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.396<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.496<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>147<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 4.8</li><li>90%<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 40<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>12<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.325<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.386<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.476<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>137<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 4.3</li><li>80%<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 36<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>11<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.314<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.373<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.456<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>128<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 3.6</li><li>70%<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 33<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>10<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.304<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.364<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.439<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>122<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 3.2</li><li>60%<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 31<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>9<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.295<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.356<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.427<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>117<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 2.9</li><li>50%<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 29<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>8<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.288<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.346<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.416<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>111<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 2.5</li><li>40%<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 27<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>7<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.280<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.339<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.398<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>105<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 2.1</li><li>30%<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 26<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>7<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.270<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.330<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.385<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>99<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 1.7</li><li>20%<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 24<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>6<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.258<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.323<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.371<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>93<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 1.3</li><li>10%<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 21<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>5<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.242<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.305<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.351<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>84<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 0.7</li><li>5%<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 19<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>4<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.230<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.291<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>.332<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>75<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 0.2</li><li><b>It may take a little time for Lee to adjust to the quality of big league stuff, but his glove will play right away. His signing brings an element of youth and excitement to the team that the Giants have lacked for the last few seasons.</b></li></ul></ul><p></p><p><br /></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><b>ogc thoughts</b></p><p>Jung Hoo Lee was wonderful in his introductory press conference. He had quite the outgoing personality, and very cock sure of his abilities. It was funny that he roasted his father, who was sitting right in front of him! </p><p>I’ll be buying his Lee #51 shirts and merch from the Giants Dugout once they come in, but was shocked to see that the Giants closed the one in Palo Alto, as well as the one in the Embarcadero, only two are listed in maps, at the ball park and Valley Fair. I guess I’m going to Valley Fair. </p><p>Was shocked to hear nobody from the Giants met him, but it’s not the first time the Giants have done that, there have been top draft picks that expressed surprise that the Giants selected him because they hadn’t ever contacted him. Also, there’s the humongous fact that Pacific Ocean is pretty wide, and traveling there just to meet him would probably take up three days of a busy executive’s time during a crucial period of free agent pursuit, where he’s needed to attend the GM meetings last week, given Lee only was posted, I think last week, so very recent. </p><p><b>Why I'm High On This Signing</b></p><p>It’s a huge gamble for an unproven MLB hitter, so there goes the complaints about Zaidi being too conservative and risk adverse in free agency. For all the talk about Korea being only a AA level league, I recall a certain good bat to ball hitter being promoted from AA to the majors, and the Panda hit great in the majors, then his power kicked in when he turned 22, much like Jung Hoo Lee hitting for more power in his 23 YO season. For some hitters, the ability to hit well appears to be evident from scouting alone. </p><p>Furthermore, there’s a concept of MLB equivalency where the hitter’s AA batting line can be translated to an equivalent MLB batting line, invented by Bill James and some analysts still do that. I can’t do that, but from studying a decade or two of minor league stats, I’ve learned that it is a great sign of MLB ability to not only be a batting leader at the minor league level, but even better, doing it at a younger age than the league. So I feel good about his ability to hit MLB pitching, since he has dominated pitchers since he was 19 YO, which must be a much younger age than the league. </p><p>Have no idea how old their league is, but I’ve seen people denigrate his abilities because there are journeymen MLB and AAAA hitters who go to Korea and hit well too. This is like AAA in that there is a mix of very young and very old in the league, and, of course the older players hit well, they have experience and physical maturity that enable them to now play well against lesser pitching. They are men among kids, relatively. </p><p>Yet, just like in AAA, there are young guys in their early 20’s who are also dominating their league, and that’s a strong sign that they have the ability to hit MLB pitching. And Lee has not only hit well since he was 19 YO in the league, but has done it at historically high levels for the league, not just dominating currently, another good sign he’s MLB material. </p><p>Still risky as hell betting $132M on an unproven MLB player. Much like the first wave of Japanese ball players coming over, and teams spent similar amounts of money on them too. And not unlike teams offering hundreds of millions of dollars on pitchers whose arms literally could be injured on the next pitch they take, and yet teams take that risk all the time. You have to have some conjones to make decisions like that in a billion dollar business like the MLB. </p><p>So I like the acquisition. He should be a good enough hitter to improve on what we had last season, as well as better defensively, and be an overall improvement over last season. He likely lengthens the lineup as well. Per Keith Law's evaluation, he thought the contract was for a 2-2.5 WAR player, so he was okay with it, and that aligns with Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections above. </p><p><b>Giants Are Moving Into Wild Card Range</b></p><p>So the Giants are incrementally improving. Given that the Giants were roughly around 1.0 bWAR for CF last season, Lee should be adding 1-2 wins to the team in 2024, pushing the 79 win team to 80-81 wins. Plus Steamer currently has Marco Luciano at 1.1 fWAR, at roughly 2/3rd of a season, so if he plays the full season, he'll roughly be at 2.0, or average, which would be about 3 wins improvement, which would push us to 83-84 wins. Steamer also has Kyle Harrison at a 2.0 fWAR pace (only 2/3 season projected, but he should be pitching the full season), which is 1-2 wins better than whoever you want to count as the third starter. DeSclafani probably was the third starter and only produced 0.2 bWAR, so that would be 2 wins, moving the Giants to 85-86 win range. So we are roughly in wild card range at the moment, depending on how Melvin manages the team relative to Kapler.</p><p>But we need at least that top of rotation starting pitcher that Zaidi said he is pursuing, in order to ensure that the team can reach the playoffs somehow, and hopefully it is Yoshinobu Yamamoto, though apparently there is also Roki Sasaki, both of whom where on the International Leader Board as Superstars, like Lee. Shota Imanaga is another name I'm seeing in rumors, as well as Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery.</p><p>That’s another reason to close this deal quickly for Lee, Yamamoto (and other pitchers) will likely want to see progress and improvements if he’s to decide on the Giants. That’s a reason why I think another deal should be closed soon, and why I’ve been pushing for Chapman, as that hopefully attracts Yamamoto or another top pitcher, and at minimum, improves things for our current pitching staff. Plus, Chapman would add another 2-3 wins to the Giants, on top of the above, pushing the team to the upper 80's in wins.</p><p>
<br /></p><p><br /></p>obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-83808669189917847572023-12-09T22:42:00.000-08:002023-12-09T22:42:23.175-08:00Your 2024 Giants: Ohtani to LAD, Giants Potential Next Moves<p>I read the news today, oh boy, about a lucky lad who made the grade: The Dodgers signed Shohei Ohtani to the biggest MLB contract ever, 10 years at $700M. Saw some comments that some of it is deferred, but for payroll tax penalties, the only thing that matters is AAV, and that's $70M AAV.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><b>ogc thoughts</b></p><p>Initial thoughts is that while I would have loved to have Ohtani in the lineup, that $70M AAV would take up over a third of the payroll. That reminded me of the problems the Giants had in the mid-1990's, while they had two stars in Barry Bonds and Matt Williams, they took up so much of the payroll that they had to skimp on the rest of the roster. I would rather spend the money on getting an ace pitcher(s).</p><p>And the Dodgers have big holes in their pitching rotation, which Yamamoto would have fixed nicely, but I would think that they have to be pushing up against whatever envelope for losing draft picks is. So I'm hoping they continue with their tendency to sign injured SP (like Giolitto) with the idea of finding starters for 162 games, and not 5 32-game starters. That gives me hope that the Giants can surpass them in the coming years, as they need more good pitching, not another good hitter in their lineup.</p><p><b>What This Means For the 2024 Giants</b></p><div>I just did a study, which I hope to publish soon, but basically the main gist is that the vast majority of teams that made the NL playoffs were the leaders in run prevention (that is, the Runs Allowed Leader teams). And very few teams that were only good at offense made the NL playoffs. In other words, if you are going to focus on hitting or pitching/fielding, it is over twice as good in making the playoffs by focusing on leading in pitching/fielding than on hitting alone.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Giants in 2023 should have been among the leaders in run prevention if not for the poor defense, but still ended up a decent 6th. And the Giants should have been higher, because they had poor fielding in 2023, which hurt their run prevention: removing the fielding factor from their pitching stats, which xFIP does, would have placed them 2nd in the majors in 2023. </div><div><br /></div><div>I see a lot of commentary that the Giants are no better under Zaidi. However, these fans have been missing the fact that the Giants under Zaidi has improved greatly in their RA and pitching performances (ranks are NL rankings), rising from near the bottom to near the top:</div><div><br /></div><div><google-sheets-html-origin><table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" data-sheets-root="1" dir="ltr" style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; table-layout: fixed; width: 0px;" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><colgroup><col width="56"></col><col width="47"></col><col width="39"></col><col width="44"></col><col width="48"></col><col width="48"></col><col width="48"></col><col width="49"></col><col width="39"></col></colgroup><tbody><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Giants Under Zaidi"}" style="background-color: #ff9900; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); font-weight: bold; overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">Giants Under Zaidi</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"RA Rank"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">RA Rank</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="{"1":2,"2":"0.00","3":1}" data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"RA"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">RA</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="{"1":2,"2":"0.00","3":1}" data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"ML Avg"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">ML Avg</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"ERA"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">ERA</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"ERA Rank"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">ERA Rank</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"ERA+"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">ERA+</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"FIP Rank"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">FIP Rank</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"FIP"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">FIP</td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":2019}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">2019</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"10th"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">10th</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="{"1":2,"2":"0.00","3":1}" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":4.77}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">4.77</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="{"1":2,"2":"0.00","3":1}" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":4.71}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">4.71</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":4.38}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">4.38</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"9th"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">9th</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":96}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">96</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"11th"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">11th</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":4.55}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">4.55</td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":2020}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">2020</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"9th"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">9th</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="{"1":2,"2":"0.00","3":1}" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":4.95}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">4.95</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="{"1":2,"2":"0.00","3":1}" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":4.66}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">4.66</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":4.64}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">4.64</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"8th"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">8th</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":93}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">93</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"8th"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">8th</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":4.45}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">4.45</td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":2021}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">2021</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"2nd"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">2nd</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="{"1":2,"2":"0.00","3":1}" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":3.67}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">3.67</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="{"1":2,"2":"0.00","3":1}" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":4.48}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">4.48</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":3.24}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">3.24</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"2nd"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">2nd</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":128}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">128</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"2nd"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">2nd</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":3.55}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">3.55</td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":2022}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">2022</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"9th"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">9th</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="{"1":2,"2":"0.00","3":1}" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":4.3}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">4.30</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="{"1":2,"2":"0.00","3":1}" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":4.36}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">4.36</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":3.85}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">3.85</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"7th"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">7th</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":103}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">103</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"1st"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">1st</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":3.43}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">3.43</td></tr><tr style="height: 21px;"><td data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":2023}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">2023</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"6th"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">6th</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="{"1":2,"2":"0.00","3":1}" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":4.44}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">4.44</td><td data-sheets-numberformat="{"1":2,"2":"0.00","3":1}" data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":4.66}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">4.66</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":4.02}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">4.02</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"3rd"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">3rd</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":105}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">105</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"1st"}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">1st</td><td data-sheets-value="{"1":3,"3":3.92}" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 3px; text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;">3.92</td></tr></tbody></table></google-sheets-html-origin></div><div><br /></div><div>As one can see, the Giants, as the pre-Zaidi roster left the roster, he has been filling it with better pitchers, resulting in better RA, ERA, ERA+ and FIP, as well as rankings. So while fans are focused on the fact that the Giants have played around .500 the past two seasons, they have actually been a great pitching team, but have been hurt by a variety of factor, including poor hitting and poor fielding. And the great pitching should even be better in 2024, with Webb, Harrison, Beck, Winn, and Walker likely improving with experience and physical maturity.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Fix the Giants Fielding Defense</b></div><div><br /></div><div>And one of the biggest difference between their ranking in ERA (which is their pitching) and RA, is the relatively poorer fielding that has been happening the past few seasons. Their RA only ranked 6th in 2023, but was 3rd in ERA and 1st in FIP. And that would have put them into the RA Leader ranks the past three seasons, if not for the errors causing unearned runs that boosted their RA above other teams, moving their rank from 3rd in ERA to 6th in RA. </div><div><br /></div><div>That's why I've been advocating for the signing of Matt Chapman. He improves 3B overall because he provides similar offense to what JD Davis was providing there, while providing similar defense to what Casey Schmitt was providing there. It also buys time for Schmitt to work on this bat in AAA, while improving his defense at other positions, making him a more valuable utility player if the bat never develops, but supplying plus defense at multiple positions. He likely needs more than one year, given how poorly he hit, so hopefully he'll be ready to start around the time Chapman starts his decline. </div><div><br /></div><div>That's probably also why Zaidi is clearly prioritizing CF defense in this offseason. They are clearly in on Jung Hoo Lee of Korea, who is known for his strong CF defense, which should translate with no problem, while hopefully he can be a good enough bat (or better), depending on how he adjusts to MLB pitching. There has also been rumors tying the Giants to Harrison Bader, who is known for his strong CF defense. I also like Kevin Keirmaier, though he's probably not being targeted by the Giants because of his age. Still, he's still very good defensively in CF.</div><div><br /></div><div>And obtaining a good defensive CF improves the corners because Yaz and Slater would be playing there more, improving the defense there, which is already improved with the loss of Joc Pederson, who was very bad. Removing his, Matos, Davis, and Crawford's double digit negative DRS would push the Giants into the overall positive for the team, even if the new CF and 3B did not add any defensive value. Adding two good defenders there should push the Giants into the good defense category.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Your 2024 Giants Are Ready For Their Close Up</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Overall, the Giants look to be in good position to be a RA Leader in 2024. Especially if they can seal the deal and sign an ace starting pitcher, like Yamamoto or Snell. And, if I'm being honest, I would prefer that they sign Jordan Montgomery over Blake Snell, as he could cost $5-10M less in AAV, while providing about the same WAR value produced, for although Snell pitches better overall, he also pitches much less innings. </div><div><br /></div><div>But my ideal offseason is to sign Yoshinori Yamamoto (only 25 YO) to be our new ace starter and co-ace with Logan Webb. That would give us a rotation of Yamamoto, Webb, Harrison, and two of Stripling, DeSclafini, Beck, and Winn until Cobb is ready to pitch. That depth, and the need to let Stripling and/or DeSclafini show that they still have something so that we can trade them for a nice prospect once Cobb is ready, means the Giants can take their time making sure Cobb is ready to come in, fresh and ready to do well again, which would give us three aces in the rotation. That should keep our pitching staff elite.</div><div><br /></div><div>With the starting rotation strong and with depth, we make it easier for them by improving the overall defense through signing Matt Chapman (so that our offense does not suffer from the change from Davis, while improving defense two wins from the change) and a good defensive CF, preferably Jung Hoo Lee, since he's only 25 YO (which should also add about two wins defensively, while keeping the offense about the same; plus improve defense in the corners since Yaz and Slater are that much better there). </div><div><br /></div><div>I think that's a doable set of signings, and would probably cost less than the $70M being paid to Ohtani in AAV (The Athletic's estimates Yamamoto at 7 years/$203M or $29M AAV, Chapman at 5 years/$95M or $19M AAV, and Lee at 4 years/$56M or $14M AAV, for total of $62M AAV), unless the bidding goes crazy for Yamamoto, like it did for Ohtani, as most estimates were in the $500-600M range. </div><div><br /></div><div>And these changes, even without adding a good bat, should be good enough to push the Giants into the mid-80's win range, which was good enough to make the playoffs in 2023, and likely 2024. Especially adding a staff ace like Yamamoto, he would just round out the rotation at the top, but if not him, then adding someone like Bellinger to improve the lineup should do the same for the team wins. </div><div><br /></div><div>Improvements in pitching and fielding should push the team into the playoffs or close to it, much like the Giants in 2009, and if Harrison figures it out, more like the Giants in 2010. It's getting better all the time!</div>obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-71144983823270036372023-11-23T21:00:00.000-08:002023-11-23T21:00:00.140-08:00Your 2023 Giants: Harrison's Comparisons<p>I’m giving thanks for Kyle Harrison. Kyle Harrison was the premier prospect for the Giants in 2023, and he did not disappoint, getting over early struggles to force his way into the majors. While his MLB ERA and long-ball weakness was not good at all, his overall stats - hits, strikeouts, walks - were excellent for a new prospect, and reducing the long ball to normal standards would mean he's at least an average starting pitcher. </p><p>He is hopefully the ace we need to lead us during this decade. His stats in the minors remind me of Lincecum, particularly his dominance of hitters. And he came in not knowing hitters, but striking them out at elite levels, while not walking many. With him and Webb atop our rotation, we’ll be competitive for a long while, health permitting.</p><p>In this post, I want to see how similar aged pitchers with similar MiLB pitching line stats did in prior seasons, to see how these pitchers with similar results did in the majors subsequently.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><b>ogc thoughts</b></p><p>Kyle was a fast learner. He reached AA by age 20 (typically the best prospects - college, high school, or IFA - reach AA by age 22), and he did really well there, with 3.11 ERA, 1.18 WHIP, 4.2 BB/9 (only really bad), but 13.6 K/9, which is really good, making his K/W ratio 3.26, which is good. </p><p>He wasn’t as good in AAA, but those stats were affected by the use of robo-umps calling the strike zone in AAA, which threw a lot of pitchers off. A good sign of this was his performance in the majors. Here was his key pitching stats in AA and MLB:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>AA: 3.11 ERA, 1.18 WHIP, 4.2 BB/9, 13.6 K/9, 3.26 K/W</li><li>MLB: 4.15 ERA, 1.15 WHIP, 2.9 BB/9, 9.1 K/9, 3.18 K/W</li></ul><p></p><p>A high walk rate is not ideal (his minors suggest problems; but 2.9 BB/9 in the majors is good), but does not diminish a prospect’s potential as long as they strike out enough to keep his K/W ratio at 3+, which Kyle does. </p><p>It’s actually better relative to a pitcher with less walks and thus less strikeouts, keeping the K/W ratio the same. Think of it this way: adding a walk per 9 means adding 3 strikeouts (assuming 3+ K/W ratio), which means roughly one less hit because BABIP is .300 mean, which altogether means that this pitcher replaces a hit with a walk, by increasing walks and strikeouts at a 3:1 ratio or above. I figured this out long ago analyzing how it might work for Jonathan Sanchez, given his high strikeouts and high walks rates.</p><p><b>Comparables</b></p><p>Because the pandemic killed the 2020 minor league season, I had to go back to 2019 to find pitchers who are comparable and had MLB experience.</p><p>In AA Eastern League 2019, there was no 20 YO among the league leaders in ERA. There was only two really young pitchers who had similar walk, strikeout and K/W ratio:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Matt Manning: 21 YO, 2.56 ERA, 0.98 WHIP, 2.6 BB/9, 10.0 K/9, 3.89 K/W</li><li>Tarik Skubal: 22 YO, 2.13 ERA, 1.016 WHIP, 3.8 BB/9, 17.4 K/9, 4.56 K/W</li></ul><div>Both were good in the majors at 3 years of their AA performance:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Manning reached the majors, took some time to figure things out, then was good ages 24-25, with 3.51 ERA, 2.6 BB/9, 6.3 K/9, 2.45 K/W</li><li>Skubal reached the majors, took some time to figure things out, then was good at age 25 and great at age 26, overall 3.87 ERA, 2.5 BB/9, 10.0 K/9, 4.04 K/W</li></ul><div>There was another prospect who did well in AA, 2018-19: Logan Webb. Between the two seasons (21-22 YO seasons), he had a 2.88 ERA, 1.306 WHIP, 2.9 BB/9, 9.1 K/9, 3.17 K/W. He had some initial issues in the majors, but has been great ages 24-26, as we know.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Of course, every prospect is different, and the success of others is no guarantee that Harrison will likewise succeed. Still, they exhibited similar talents at a same level/league, and was able to develop into good pitchers (so far), after some growing pains. </div><div><br /></div><div>Plus, Harrison did it at a younger age than any of these, as he was only 20 YO in AA. And only 22 YO next season, and thus only 2 years past AA, when the players above blossomed 3 seasons after AA success, so he might not blossom until 2025. Hopefully he’s a quick learner.</div>obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-24820549348837264112023-11-23T09:00:00.000-08:002023-11-23T09:00:00.145-08:00Hey Zaidi! My Baseball Business Plan: Pitchers Produce more WAR than Position Players<p>Happy Thanksgiving! What people don't really realize about WAR is how much is contributed by the good to great pitchers vs. the position players on a per game basis.</p><p><b><span></span></b></p><a name='more'></a><b>ogc thoughts</b><p></p><p>To look into this, we need to look into the WAR/game rates for position players and pitchers and not overall seasonal totals. Position players look like they are much more valuable than pitchers because of the usage difference (150 starts vs. 30 starts), but within each game, the value of a pitcher becomes much clearer. </p><p>To illustrate, I'll use some Giants stats. In 2022, Rodon and Webb averaged 0.17 and 0.15 bWAR per start (roughly 5.0 bWAR in a 30-32 start season, which was roughly what Harrison produced in his first start after being called up again; I happened to notice that he was at -0.3 bWAR before his start, -0.1 bWAR after, which works out to 0.15-0.25 bWAR produced in the start). Lincecum in his Cy Young years, about 0.25 bWAR, gives a good range between good and great pitching from a Giants history perspective. </p><p>In 2001-2, Bonds averaged roughly 0.08 bWAR, and that's close to the best all time, if not the best (close enough, not going to research). However, most of the rest of the line up is roughly 1.5-2.0 bWAR, average, if not less for the bottom of the order. That works out to about 0.01 bWAR (or 1.62 bWAR in 162 games) per game. So Bonds plus 7 average hitters work out to 0.15 bWAR, which is roughly what our good starting pitchers, like Rodon and Webb, did last season. </p><p>Now look at a regular lineup. If there's 4 good hitters (say, 3.24 bWAR each = 0.02 bWAR per game), plus two average (0.01 bWAR) and two replacement level (0.00 bWAR), that adds up to 0.10 bWAR per game, which is less contribution, on average, than a good pitcher. Webb and Rodon, in this example, would represent 60% of the WAR production, the lineup of 8, 40%.</p><p>And as we see in baseball, the variance for lineups is huge, 0 to 10 runs per game, but for the better to good pitchers, they have a consistent generation of quality starts (as seen in my studies of PQS over the years), and that leads to more influence on each game, as well as less variance, game to game. Also, as my PQS studies showed, bad ERA generally related to avoiding disaster starts, even middling pitchers, if they can avoid the disaster starts, find that their ERA are still okay to good (like Brad Hennessey in 2005-6).</p><p>This demonstrates how much influence a pitcher actually has on any start, a much more outsized influence, the best are double and triple the influence Bonds had on any one game, and 5-10 times the influence that regular players have. And when the pitcher is one of the good pitchers, their quality starts are much more regular contributors to winning in any particular game than the home runs for most hitters.</p><p><b>Pitching Should be the Focus</b></p><p>This is why it is a better baseball strategy to focus on pitching in drafting and development. Studies have shown that it is defense (pitching and fielding) that results in winning in the playoffs. This post shows a reason why good to great pitching can have an outsized effect in any game, but especially in the playoffs. Even one of the best hitters in baseball history like Bonds has a much smaller affect on a game than a good starting pitcher, and much smaller when the pitcher is elite like Cy Young Lincecum.</p><p>As discussed in this business plan (and shown in my PQS studies), the best pitchers can deliver quality starts very frequently, at least 50% of the time, and up to 80% for the best pitchers in the league. That leads to less variance in defense (i.e. runs allowed) during short series, whereas the other team, generally having lesser starting pitchers, find that the high variance happens more often, leading to more losses against a quality start. </p><p>Quality starts are not fool proof. This is because it depends on the good pitcher to continue being good in the playoffs, which is not a guarantee. Just look at how well Peavy did during his SF seasons, and how poorly he did in the playoffs, you also need the mental strength to do well no matter the circumstances. In addition, it is not like the other team doesn't get quality starts in the playoffs.</p><p>Still, it is the only advantage I've found in baseball that can deliver a high win rate (QS vs. a regular start, generally won 80% of the time). Over four seasons of playoffs (2008-2011):</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The expected team (based on the PQS for each starting pitcher) to win went 67-15 (.817 winning percentage)</li><li>The team having a DOM start went 81-37 (.686 winning percentage), and 56-12 (.824 winning percentage) when you take out the ties (that is, when both teams get a DOM start). </li><li>Teams with DIS starts had a 25-57 record (.305 winning percentage), 11-43 (.204 winning percentage) without ties (when there is two DIS starts). </li></ul><p></p><p>Thus, to maximize your chances in the playoffs, you need to have at least three good or better starters in your rotation. This is because many teams go with four starters in the playoffs, and only having two good starters means you are relegating half of your games to much more poorer starters. And sometimes you use up your two best starters to win a series, which means you need to start your third best (i.e. not good) starter for the next playoff series. If you have three good starters, the third can step in, then the other two can follow the third (or fourth if you got it). That's how the Giants won in 2012, Lincecum stopped being a good starter, so we were down to Cain and Bumgarner, but then Zito stepped up and became our third.</p><p>And focusing on pitching means you increase your expertise in identifying and developing good pitching, and there is minimal waste of talent, because each good pitcher improves the major league roster (up to 13 spots), whereas position players suffer a drop in value when they are forced to change positions due to an over abundance at any position, or worse, the team is forced to trade off one, because most trades generally include players who are lacking enough that their team has deemed them tradeable. </p><p>Girls (and fans) dig the long ball, but it's pitching that yields the wins and championships, as <a href="https://obsessivegiantscompulsive.blogspot.com/2018/11/hey-zaidi-my-giants-business-plan.html">my business plan</a> shows. </p>obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-46909307704209903932023-11-19T21:39:00.000-08:002023-11-19T21:39:55.902-08:00Your 2023 Giants: To Zaidi or Not Series - Zaidi is in love with Platoons and Openers<p>The Giants fanbase, from the view of The Athletic's comment pages for the Giants, are in an uproar about Farhan Zaidi's stewardship of the Good Championship Giants. The Zaidi Haters complaints include but are not limited to:</p><p></p><ul><li>Five years is enough to rebuild a farm system and the team</li><li>2023 season was a disaster</li><li>The farm system has not made any progress</li><li>They are not as good as Texas, LAD, Atlanta, etc.</li><li>Zaidi is in love with platoons and openers</li><li>Zaidi can't sign the best free agents; there's no stars</li><li>What's the plan?</li></ul><div>This is the sixth in a series examining each complaint.</div><p></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><b>ogc thoughts</b></p><p>Okay, I'm going to tackle the complaint about Zaidi being in love with platoons and openers.</p><p><b>Lacking Talent</b></p><p>Zaidi inherited a team that was lacking in talent, as well as lacking in good prospects. Bart, Ramos, and Luciano were the best prospects, and we know now how Bart turned out and how Ramos has struggled. Before the 2019 season, Bart was on the Top 100 list for Baseball America (29), MLB.com (22), and Baseball Prospectus (41), and Ramos was on the Top 100 list for MLB.com (92) and BP (87). Bart was the only prospect valued highly, but in my experience, it's the Top 20 who are the most likely to fulfill their potential, 21-50, not as much, and 51-100, pretty long shots.</p><p>It was a team that struggled to a 77-85 record, but had an expected Pythagorean of 71-91, and Bochy managed the hell out of the team for a career high 22 games above .500 of 38-16. Moving that 22 game swing by converting 11 of those wins to losses, would have pushed their record to 66-96. 2019 would have been a hell of a sh!t show if not for Bochy’s managerial brilliance. And shows how little talent was on the team that Zaidi inherited, as without his improvement via one-run games, 66-96 is basically a repeat of the record the Giants had in 2017. </p><p><b>Platooning Is a Great Way to Improve Offense</b></p><p>Platooning has likely been around for most of baseball history. One of its most famous practitioners is HOF manager Earl Weaver. It allows a team that has hitters who are great against the opposite hand, but just too poor against their own hand pitcher, to get good hitting out of a position, get value out of that hitter. </p><p>This is especially important when your team is talent poor. This allows you to pick up players who get dumped by other teams because they can't hit against the same hand, pair them together, and, Frank Viola, you now have good hitting in one spot in your lineup. It also allows you to find value in prospects like Austin Slater, who otherwise would not get much playing time, since he is not good enough to start full time. </p><p><b>Openers Is a Modern Way of Platooning Pitchers</b></p><p>Openers became a recent tactic for teams when teams realized that, much like how platooning hitters enable teams to field a more productive lineup, openers enable teams to get more batter faced from pitcher who are not good enough to be starters who can push past the lineup twice.</p><p>Openers work best with a few key factors. The opener ideally is good enough to be set up guy, and especially good against same handed hitters. That's why the Rays used Sergio Romo in that role a lot when they first started using this tactic, as he was still good in set up, and especially good against RHH. So they would use the Romo to open games when the other team has a lineup of mostly or all RHH atop their lineup.</p><p>The bulk/feature reliever are those starters who cannot figure out how to get out hitters a third time through the lineup, after 18 batters faced. Studies have shown that some pitchers have that difficulty, for they just were lacking the repertoire to enable them to last deep into games. That's why Rich Hill would last 18-19-20 batters when Dave Roberts come out and take him out, even when he has a shutout going on. Which is why I was against openers for a long time, I was aghast that a pitcher doing well was just taken out when he could have gotten a few more outs.</p><p>But I see the value now. If you have a good set-up type pitcher come in and take out the first 5-6 hitters, then when the former starter, now feature reliever, comes in, he starts facing the bottom of the order. And after getting through the 18 batters to reach the third time around, he is now facing the bottom of the order for the third time first. Depending on how well he pitches, and how much of rope the manager gives him, the pitcher can now pitch to at least 3 more hitters (assuming he can get outs from them) and perhaps add another inning pitched or more. Thus, starting pitchers who could not reach 5 IP (20-25 batter, depending), and would end up around 3-4 inning pitched, become featured relievers who could get that up to 4-6 inning pitched, depending on how well he performs. </p><p><b>Zaidi Had to Do This For the Giants to Win</b></p><p>Farhan Zaidi is not stupid, as many seem to think. He would LOVE to have a set lineup, full of hitting stars who he wouldn't have to platoon. Funny enough, it is very hard to cobble together such a lineup, whether through the draft, trades, waiver wire pick ups, and free agent. Harder still when both good free agent hitters, Haniger and Conforto, were mostly busts most of the season. They were supposed to be full time starters.</p><p>Also, fans seem to need a big margin of offense to feel safe and confident about their team, more than is necessary. For example, as bad as this lineup performed in 2023, as I demonstrated in my post on Ohtani, I found that adding a version of Ohtani from the past three year would have gotten the Giants into playoff range or into the playoffs. So the team does not need to have the best hitter in the planet to have a chance for the playoffs next season, but they do need at least a couple more average and above hitters to lengthen out the lineup, and make it that much more productive. </p><p>I don't think the Giants necessarily need an Ohtani or Bellinger to be competitive, though that would be ideal. Meaning it's not the end of hope for 2024 if we don't sign one of them. I think Luciano should be able to improve SS offense, and that's why I'm hoping that they sign Matt Chapman quickly, to ensure some improvement to the team defensively and offensively on the left side of the infield. Then adding another okay hitter who is good defensively in CF, like Jung Hoo Lee or Kevin Kiermaier, that lengthens the lineup, and then Haniger, Conforto, Yastrzemski, and Slater can rotate/share LF, RF, and DH, depending on the situation.</p><p>Similarly for the starting rotation, he would love a rotation full of Webb's but that's hard to do, period. If he was so in love with openers, he could have used that tactic a lot more extensively from 2020-2022. But he didn't need to because his portfolio theory management style of the starting rotation, which was developed and honed when he was with the Dodgers, worked during that period but failed him spectacularly in 2023, when all of his options beyond Webb and Cobb either got injured (which is how he was able to sign some of them, knowing that they will be out 5-15 starts per season) or had a horrible start to the season. </p><p>It was a total perfect storm. Wood, Stripling, DeSclafini, and Manaea all had one issue or another relegating them to the IL or to Featured Reliever role. Even Kyle Harrison fell to this bad luck, he had been healthy during his career, but basically right when the Giants were about to call him up mid-season, he pulled a hamstring, which required an IL stint, then he needed to get rehab to get ready to start in MLB games. Plus the other pitching prospects weren't ready either. And Cobb was battling hip problems, which pushed back some of his starts, until he had his no-hitter going, and the team allowed him to go for it, but pushing him to that many pitches finally did in his hip, and he was soon ILed for the rest of the season (much like Cain' Perfecto effectively ended his ability to pitch well regularly). </p><p>I think 2024 looks like it can be good again. The pitching staff was 2nd/3rd in xFIP and SIERA, showing their overall skill. That's why I want the Giants to focus on getting Sonny Gray signed quickly, then can focus on signing one of Yamamoto or Snell or Montgomery to be the ace. A rotation of FA ace, Webb, Gray, Harrison, plus guys rotating in and out depending on performance and using a five or six man rotation (DeSclafini, Stripling, Winn, Beck) is pretty good to start with, then Cobb will probably join the team between mid-May to mid-June, and hopefully the vets pitched well enough that they are tradeable for a low end prospect or better, by mid-season.</p><p>Zaidi and the Giants could have just thrown in the towel in 2023, and just played someone who really should be platooned or opened for, and blow up a lot of games, and look like one of the worse teams in the majors, but he didn't. And his moves worked early on, when they were six games under .500, and they got up to and stayed around ten games above .500 until they hit August. Without platoons or openers, the Giants probably would have had another horrendous season. Instead, they still have some plausibility in pitching their team to the top free agents as a team needing that one key free agent to be playoff contenders regularly. Adding Chapman and Gray quickly would only add greatly to that plausibility.</p>obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-47025006011959246152023-11-16T21:54:00.000-08:002023-11-16T21:54:51.389-08:00Your 2023 Giants: To Zaidi or Not Series - Farm System<p>The Giants fanbase, from the view of The Athletic's comment pages for the Giants, are in an uproar about Farhan Zaidi's stewardship of the Good Championship Giants. The Zaidi Haters complaints include but are not limited to:</p><p></p><ul><li>Five years is enough to rebuild a farm system and the team</li><li>2023 season was a disaster</li><li>The farm system has not made any progress</li><li>They are not as good as Texas, LAD, Atlanta, etc.</li><li>Zaidi is in love with platoons and openers</li><li>Zaidi can't sign the best free agents; there's no stars</li><li>What's the plan?</li></ul><div>This is the fifth in a series examining each complaint.</div><p></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><b>ogc thoughts</b></p><p>Okay, I'm going to tackle the complaint about the Giants farm system not making any progress.</p><p><b>What is Kyle Harrison, Chopped Liver?</b></p><p>Much of the outrage is about how the Giants don't have any premier prospects. Yet, here was Kyle Harrison, the top ranked LHP in most Top 100 prospect rankings that I saw, that's about as premier as you can get. In addition, the stats he put up in the minors are elite in terms of strikeouts per 9 IP and K/BB ratio. While he didn't excel in the majors immediately, that's to be expected, even Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum struggled in the majors before they became the great pitchers we think of today.</p><p>In my mind, just having an elite pitching prospect like Harrison is already a great improvement over what the Giants farm system had when Zaidi took over. As any regular reader knows (or new reader who reads my <a href="https://obsessivegiantscompulsive.blogspot.com/2018/11/hey-zaidi-my-giants-business-plan.html" target="_blank">business plan series</a>), I believe in the power of great dominant starting pitching. And we have a crop of young good prospects rising behind him: Carson Whisenhunt, Mason Black, Hayden Birdsong, Landen Roupp, Trevor McDonald. And Tristan Beck and Keaton Winn did well in the majors already, and look to be good back of rotation or featured relievers in the coming seasons. </p><p>Meanwhile, back in 2019, Bart was the only good prospect drafted (Luciano was clearly good, Ramos was always viewed as a lower tier). But with his issues with strikeouts, while he had a lot of potential, that was a huge obstacle that was clearly inherent, even then, and as we have seen, has hurt his ability to hit MLB pitching. The farm system is clearly better in terms of high end, high potential prospects, just by having Harrison over Bart.</p><p><b>2019 vs. 2023</b></p><p>One way of comparing how good the farm system was when Zaidi was hired is to compare what contributions the Giants got from rookies in 2019 vs. 2023.</p><p>2019:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Tyler Rogers (0.8 bWAR)</li><li>Austin Slater (0.6 bWAR)</li><li>Sam Coonrod (0.4 bWAR)</li></ul><p></p><p>Total of 1.8 bWAR contributions in 2019 from the prospects who were above zero WAR.</p><p>2023:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Tristan Beck (1.1 bWAR)</li><li>Ryan Walker (1.0 bWAR)</li><li>Patrick Bailey (0.8 bWAR)</li><li>Keaton Winn (0.3 bWAR)</li><li>Kyle Harrison (0.2 bWAR)</li><li>Tyler Fitzgerald (0.2 bWAR)</li></ul><p>Total of 3.5 bWAR contributions in 2023 from the prospects who were above zero WAR. I've included Beck because he became part of Zaidi's farm system when he was acquired, but didn't include Yaz or Dubon in 2019, because we are trying to compare what the farm system was producing before Zaidi took over.</p><p>Wasn't a lot, either way, but the amount was doubled, as were the number of positive contributors. There were also a tripling of prospects who produced at least 0.8 bWAR, and from zero to 2, the number of rookies who produced at least 1.0 bWAR.</p><p><b>Other Farm System Contributions</b></p><p>Another difference is that in 2023, we had four other homegrown players who are long-time veterans: Webb, Tyler Rogers, Camilo Doval, and Austin Slater. Including them would add 9.4 bWAR. While Zaidi didn't acquire them, they developed significantly after he took over, and wasn't traded away, like Preller trading away Trea Turner before knowing what he had. And the thing is also that in 2019, we didn't have any young players who were significant contributors, unless you want to count established veterans like Madison Bumgarner and Will Smith, who were 29 YO, though we could include Reyes Moronta, but it was already his 3rd season.</p><p>In addition, if you include Yaz as part of Zaidi's farm system contributions, he produced 2.3 bWAR. If you also count his acquisitions of Estrada, Junis, and Wade, who didn't have much experience, they produced 5.5 bWAR. If you include all of these to the above six players as Zaidi farm system production, that's 20.7 bWAR produced by the Giants farm system in 2023, vs. if you add Moronta's 1.5 bWAR, 3.3 bWAR contributed by the Giants Farm System in 2019, looking only at players with 6 years or less in the majors.</p><p>The differences might be considered minor, for rookies, but looking at all of Zaidi's contributions to the farm system, we have made a ton of progress from looking at the Giants roster, with more to come, in particular, Kyle Harrison.</p><p><b>Speaking of Farm System Production...</b></p><p>A commenter on TA noted something to the effect, "wake me up when the Giants have another Posey and Lincecum". I replied that they already have them, Patrick Bailey and Kyle Harrison. And we got them in the same draft!</p><p>Bailey in his rookie season was a Gold Glove finalist and came in first in a number of key catching statistics, like DRS and framing. While his bat needs a lot of work still, he is not going to be as good as Posey, as there are few rookies who can come in and show that they are Hall of Fame worthy, not even Posey did, but that doesn't mean he's not the Posey for the next competitive Giants team.</p><p>He should be our catcher for the next decade or so, and should have a handful of Gold Glove trophies along the way, given how he led the majors in a number of catching categories in his rookie season while only playing only roughly 75 percent of the season, then was a finalist for Gold Glove. Per Baseball-Reference.com, he only produced 0.8 bWAR, but Fangraphs had him at 2.8 fWAR (they include framing value, of which he provided a lot), which is above average and good starter WAR contribution. </p><p>Harrison has been dominant from basically Day One as a pro, much like Lincecum. He has also struck out a ton of hitters, much like Timmy, as well as walk too many, much like Big Time Jimmy Tim, but the key is that he strikes out so many that his K/BB ratio is great most of the time. AAA was his worse, but even then, after a tough intro to the league, he settled down, figured out some stuff, and from his 8th start on, where he had zero walks finally, he got his ratio back up to nearly 3, which is great, and then continued that in the majors, while also showing less wildness, with only a 2.9 BB/9 rate. </p><p>He has dominated at every level he's been at, even the majors with over 9 K/9, and he did this as a rookie, and thus should only get better as he and Bailey learns hitters. His 2024 majors stats were almost uniformly impressive except for the unfortunate problem giving up too many homers, which hurt his ERA greatly. Still, he got his ERA down to 4.15 by season's end, which is above average and great for a rookie.</p><p><b>Sabean Would Have Been Fired By Giants Fans Today</b></p><p>That brought this thought that I've had recently, about Sabean, to mind while writing this. I'm totally a Sabean supporter, always been, but nobody is perfect and Giants fans forget that his draft record wasn't that great, which is why I did all my draft studies, because I wanted to show how bad he was, but then learned that most good, and even mediocre, teams don't draft well, good players are very hard to find. Fans seem to focus on the good (3 in 5 Dynasty; other teams good results like Texas), focusing on the results which occurred only because of the pain of the down periods, with the fans ignoring the pain that went with it.</p><p>Well, the first good player that Sabean drafted was all the way back in his fifth draft, when he drafted Matt Cain. So by the complainers I see in TA, using their logic and structuring, after six years, Sabean hadn't drafted anyone good, the farm system is not improved. </p><p>Cain wasn't even universally considered good. He had arm problems his first pro season, and fell behind a fellow pitcher draftee from the same draft. He was always rated below the current flavor of Dodger pitching prospect that analysts loved. And Cain didn't make the majors until 2005, 9 years after Sabean took over (though to be fair to him, he reached the majors in 3 years, at age 21). </p><p>Moreover, Cain didn't have a second great season until 2008 (Jerome Williams had that great first season), so it was 12 years after Sabean took over that one of his draftees had a good season after another. Of course, then he had his epic streak of selecting Lincecum, Bumgarner, Posey, and Wheeler, plus Wilson, Romo, Sanchez, Crawford, and Belt along the way as well. </p><p><b>Zaidi Outdoing Sabean Already In Draft</b></p><p>Meanwhile, Zaidi found the next Posey and Lincecum in his second draft, which was truncated because of the pandemic shutdowns, plus they also selected Casey Schmitt, who is already an elite MLB 3B defender with some pop in his bat, and a few other interesting prospects still percolating. Three prospects who look like long term major league starters, from one draft. Sabean hit on a lot of draftees, but usually only one per draft, who started regularly for the Giants, that I can recall.</p><p>So the irony is that fans want Zaidi to be more like Sabean, but Sabean was not that productive for most of his early tenure, and only produced the players everyone remembers about a dozen years after he took over the Giants, and only drafted the first of those six years after he was promoted. Meanwhile, Zaidi is looking good for finding three, at least average, major league quality starters, with his second draft. Still, most is still unproven, much like the Giants in 2007-8 was mostly unproven, things can turn quickly sometimes (perhaps Luciano is the Pablo Sandoval of this era...).</p>obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-56201285280679571492023-11-14T21:38:00.000-08:002023-11-14T21:38:57.881-08:00Your 2023 Giants: To Zaidi or Not Series - 2023 Success<p>The Giants fanbase, from the view of The Athletic's comment pages for the Giants, are in an uproar about Farhan Zaidi's stewardship of the Good Championship Giants. The Zaidi Haters complaints include but are not limited to:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Five years is enough to rebuild a farm system and the team</li><li>2023 season was a disaster</li><li>The farm system has not made any progress</li><li>They are not as good as Texas, LAD, Atlanta, etc.</li><li>Zaidi is in love with platoons and openers</li><li>Zaidi can't sign the best free agents; there's no stars</li><li>What's the plan?</li></ul><div>This is the fourth in a series examining each complaint.</div><p></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><b>ogc thoughts</b></p><p>Okay, I'm going to tackle the complaint about 2023 season being a disaster. True, it ended disastrously, but I consider the season a success.</p><p><b>If I Told You Before 2023 Season began...</b></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>That after a .500 2022 season</li><li>That we lost Rodon in free agent, who was worth around 5 wins to that .500 team (pushing us from 81-81 to 76-86 caliber team)</li><li>That all the free agents we signed to make up that lost production would not produce much of anything, due to injury and/or poor performance</li><li>That the team then started out to a 17-23 record at one quarter of the season (which works out to a 69-93 season) with poor vet performances also from retained vets as well as the free agents</li><li>That we had to call up our top prospects, after a poor 2022 prospect season knocked our ranking in the majors down significantly</li><li>That most of our prospects did not perform all that well, except for one, who did well until fading at the end of the season, and another, who didn't pitch a lot of games or innings</li><li>That our rotation was Webb, Cobb, and then the dreaded 3 letters (TBD), meaning openers, for most of the season after that 17-23 start</li><li>That our lineup was basically almost all platooned players</li><li>That our manager got fired with 3 games left in the season because the team collapsed so badly in the last two months of the season</li></ul><p></p><p>I would bet most Giants fans would have predicted a horrendous 100+ loss season. We ended up at 79-83, basically where we would have been with the loss of Rodon, and would have been at .500+ if not for the collapse. I consider it a success that the team didn't sink to impossible depths of losses given all of the above factoids about how the season went bad.</p><p><b>Saber Tricks Worked!</b></p><p>Many fans complain about them, but part of that was platooning, part of that was openers. Each allowed a talent lacking team to perform better than the individual pieces, by utilizing them in optimal ways. </p><p>Platooning has been done forever, so I won't discuss much about that. Hall of Famer Earl Weaver utilized platooning regularly, as that is a good way to make up for not having a hitter who can adequately hit both lefties and righties, relatively equally. Of course, few teams, if ever, basically platooned the whole lineup, and that's because three veterans who were expected to play every day - Crawford, Haniger, and Conforto - all had poor seasons.</p><p>The Opener I honestly didn't understand it until this season. But then I realized that it has more to do with giving the Featured/Bulk Pitcher the opportunity to pitch at least one more inning. It's about changing the hitters he faces when he gets to the third time through the lineup. </p><p>By having the opener, ideally someone good enough to be a setup reliever (i.e. a good pitcher), take on the top 4-6 hitters in the lineup, and then the next pitcher starts his appearance facing the bottom of the order. Normally, as a starter, he would face the lineup twice (18 batters), then face the top of the lineup again, that is, the best hitters again. Instead, in the third time around the lineup, the Bulk pitcher faces the bottom of the order again, which he presumably can handle better, and thus the team gets another handful of hitters out of the way that this pitcher faces, hopefully at least an extra inning. </p><p>This strategy stretches his usage from 18 batters to 22-24 batters. And if he's going good that day, and the manager isn't just a robot manager, pulling predesignated levers, they can stretch him further and let him face the best hitters again. That's what I feel Bochy excelled in, knowing when to get another hitter or two out of the way, or determining that the current pitcher don't have it, and go with someone else. Many a time, Bochy would bring in the closer in the 8th to get out of a key situation, and not just wait for the 9th, like many robo-managers do.</p><p><b>Giant Leap for Pitchers</b></p><p>One reason the team did not tank was because of their pitching staff. Even though the Giants lost Rodon's elite contributions from 2022, as well as suffered from poor performances from Desclafini, Manaea, and Stripling, the Giants pitching staff jumped from 4th to 2nd in xFIP and from 8th to 3rd in SIERA, per <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?pos=all&stats=pit&lg=all&qual=0&type=1&season=2022&month=0&season1=2022&ind=0&team=0%2Cts&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sortcol=19&sortdir=asc&pagenum=1" target="_blank">Fangraphs</a>. They did not have many pitchers who had xFIP greater than the average ERA of 4.33 in the majors. </p><p>The Giants were very successful in handling their pitchers, and especially with manipulating the pitching rotation to accommodate individual pitchers' needs (Webb wanting to stick to starting every 5 games; Cobb needing to push his starts off a day because of his hip issues that eventually led to the surgery). And that should be what Ohtani is looking for, and it could be a selling point with Yamamoto, who might want to start his MLB career starting like he did in NPB, every six games, before stretching out at some point to take a regular turn every five games.</p><p><b>Giant's Ohtani Advantage</b></p><p>Basically Ohtani wants the ability to control when he starts and if he needs an extra day, he's going to take it. That's what he has been doing with the Angels, and that's a major reason, in my opinion, that the Angels have been losing all these seasons even with probably the two best players of this era, Mike Trout and Ohtani. Because this requires the Angels to have a starter or bulk reliever available to pitch that game, should Ohtani decides that he needs another day. </p><p>Most teams have a hard enough time finding four good starters to rely on (take any season, parse by SP with enough IP to qualify for Cy Young - 1 IP per games in season - see how many qualifies; there is never enough for four - at least the times I've tried - starters per MLB team, and in 2023, only 44 pitchers qualified, and I had to get down to 120 IP to pull up 102 pitchers, or 3.4 per team), let alone five (most teams churn through 5-10 starters for that 5th spot, even the Giants during the Dynasty era) and now you need to account for Ohtani taking a day off, so you either do a bullpen game that tires out your whole bullpen, or you throw your next starter up a day early (less rest is usually not good for performance), or you carry a 6th starter (remember, not every team has a qualified 4th starter, let alone 6th).</p><p>But the Giants dealt with a similar problem this season, with two regular starters and three openers, at one point. But they had mostly a regular rotation up until about the third month of the season. Looking at the undulations of the rotation, Webb was the only consistent starter going every five games or so, Cobb was moved back sometimes because the hip problem disclosed near the end of the season probably flared up (which basically is what Ohtani should want from his next team), so the Giants usage of Cobb illustrates how they handled him, and how they might handle Ohtani or Yamamoto. At minimum, it's an option that Yamamoto can chose if he decides he needs to take his turn like he did in Japan, no pressure.</p>obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-75078328479591682432023-11-14T10:09:00.000-08:002023-11-14T10:09:03.943-08:00Your 2023 Giants: To Zaidi or Not Series - Lacking Free Agents and Stars<p>The Giants fanbase, from the view of The Athletic's comment pages for the Giants, are in an uproar about Farhan Zaidi's stewardship of the Good Championship Giants. The Zaidi Haters complaints include but are not limited to:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Five years is enough to rebuild a farm system and the team</li><li>2023 season was a disaster</li><li>The farm system has not made any progress</li><li>They are not as good as Texas, LAD, Atlanta, etc.</li><li>Zaidi is in love with platoons and openers</li><li>Zaidi can't sign the best free agents; there's no stars</li><li>What's the plan?</li></ul><div>This is the third in a series examining each complaint.</div><p></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><b>ogc thoughts</b></p><p>Okay, I'm going to tackle the complaint about Zaidi being unable to sign the best free agents, and that there are no stars.</p><p><b>Carlos' Were Stars</b></p><p>People like to conveniently forget, or deny by semantics, but the Giants had Carlos Correa signed sealed and delivered, IF they would have overlooked the fact that his health report showed that you might be better off setting $300M on fire to generate energy and get a better return than committing to Correa. </p><p>Also, Carlos Rodon was signed to a $21M contract, so I'll lean on semantics as well, if that's not a star salary, I don't know what is. He also had a low 2 ERA the season before the Giants signed him, which is what stars do.</p><p><b>Stars Are Coming</b></p><p>Stars also being developed in Kyle Harrison and Marco Luciano, but development takes time. People like to ignore them, but it's like the 2007-2010 period, people ignored Cain, Lincecum, Bumgarner, Posey, until they became Giants stars, but prior to becoming stars for the Giants, they were highly ranked prospects, especially Lincecum, Bumgarner, and Posey, I recall them being in the Top 20-40 rank area. </p><p>Both Harrison and Luciano were not only ranked highly, but also did well this season. Harrison, moreover, was the top ranked LHP for most lists. If that's not a star in the making, I don't know what is.</p><p>Sure, the proof is in the pudding, so I get the worry about prospect failure, but too many Giants fans compare failures by prospects who were Giants Top 10 (or 30) prospects (like Ortmeier, Bowker, and Freddie Lewis), which happens a lot, with prospects who were ranked in the Top 40 overall rankings, and fewer of those fail (though Angel Villalona did), and many succeed if they were able to continue being a good player in AA and AAA. </p><p>At minimum, instead of saying that there's nothing, at least acknowledge that Harrison and Luciano are star material, which they most certainly are, and are very close to producing. Harrison should be an ace within the next two seasons, based on the stats he compiled rising up the minors. I think only injury is his only obstacle, given he's just 21 YO, and his body is still maturing. </p><p>Luciano, also 21, is probably 2-4 years away from being a good star player, but he has a big bat (with limited opportunities, he was still among the hardest hit balls in multiple places), and Sandoval's power kicked in when he turned 22, so I think Luciano can at least be an average player based on his ability to get walks and the occasional long ball, as shortstops have a lower hitting threshold to be roughly average, where the average OPS is .713, but the median is .700 (he hit .641 in SSS, which is in line with his ZIPS projection of .652; ZIPS projects .668 for 2024, .702 for 2025). Zaidi has said that Marco is likely the starter for 2024 team (though he still needs to produce in spring training).</p><p><b>Many MLB Stars Aren't Necessary to Winning</b></p><p>Think back to the 2009-2014 period, who were our stars? We mainly had two MLB stars, Lincecum and Posey. And Lincecum was on the downside of his career already, but we didn't know it, in 2010, so we really only had one, Posey. And while he won the MVP trophy, as well as Rookie of the Year, his stats were not all that eye popping most of the time, he piled up his WAR production through his great defense.</p><p>Cain and Bumgarner were more Giants stars than MLB stars. Both were good but not great pitchers, so they didn't get a lot of national media love, at least until Bumgarner did his 2014 run and Game 7 triumph. The Giants never had an abundance of MLB stars.</p><p><b>Free Agents Aren't Always the Best Investments</b></p><p>Also, people are forgetting the lessons of Benitez, Zito, Rowand, Renteria, Cueto, Samardzija, and Melancon: they don't always produce as expected. </p><p>Many Giants fans are pointing out Marcus Semien and Corey Seager as examples to follow. The Rangers got really lucky: both had peak seasons in 2023. Semien, at least, had produced seasons of 8.5 bWAR and 7.1 bWAR before producing 7.4 bWAR in 2023, after only producing 5.7 bWAR the season before. Still, it was his highest produced since his 2019 8.5 bWAR. Seager had a career best 6.9 bWAR, his highest since his 2017 5.3 bWAR. And he more than doubled his production in Texas, from the year before, 3.9 bWAR in 663 PA to 6.9 bWAR in 536 PA (0.59 bWAR/100 PA to 1.29 bWAR/100 PA). </p><p>The Ranger's 2024 is like the Giant 2011, when they had Huff produce so well in 2010 that they had to keep him, although it was likely that he would regress some. I would not expect the two of them to produce at least 15.6 bWAR in 2024, which means a decline for them in those two positions. They will need their young players to progress and make up for expected declines.</p><p><b>Giants Are in Pursuit of Stars, In Any Case</b></p><p>Still, the only way to improve a team is to take chances on free agents, and the Giants seem to understand that, landing Correa last season, before it blew up because of his hidden health problems, and announcing pursuits of Yamamoto and Jung Hoo Lee. </p><p>I'm hoping the Giants can sign a star hitter (at minimum) this off-season. My target is Cody Bellinger, who hits well while playing multiple positions at a high level. He'll initially be the CF, but will play other positions to keep up his skills, and he can move to another position if he's blocking any prospects, like Matos, from taking CF; CF is a tough position anyway, and I would like to see him transition to a less demanding position in order to preserve his bat. It's a big risk, but they need to improve on their clean-up hitter spot, where they only got .680 OPS last season. If it pleases the doubters, his situation is similar to Seager</p><p>In the likely case that we cannot sign him, I'm hoping the Giants will at least sign Matt Chapman to start at 3B in 2024 and beyond. He hits well, at .750+ OPS last two seasons (he's been up and down all his career, month to month, so the complaint that he didn't hit well at the end of the season doesn't seem to be a sign of the end; I would give him more rest early in the season, maybe that will help his bat later in the season, also it's hotter in the east late in the season, and mild in SF, so that might help too). Moreover, he's great defensively, whereas Davis was one of the worse DRS on the team, and is good enough defensively that it should help Luciano out when he's playing SS.</p><p>We need an upgrade all around in CF, and the CF from Korea, Lee, is someone the Giants are pursuing seriously as well, sending their GM Putila, to attend his last game in Korea. Bellinger can play a corner OF position or 1B, and could rotate around, so that others can play, should they be able to sign both. But Lee or Kiermaier would be good backup signings assuming Bellinger ends up elsewhere. </p><p>And we need ace starters, at least one more. The more the better for our pitching rotation and pitching staff. They appear to be pursuing Yamamoto seriously, having Zaidi show up for Yamamoto's start in the NPB championship series. If not him, there is Snell, Montgomery, and Nola, as well. I hope they look into Sonny Gray as well, who being on the older side, we won't have to commit to longer than 3 seasons. </p><p>The Giant have the money, plus have built up a nest egg over the past few years, based on the profits estimates that Forbes said that they made. Money should not be an obstacle, the team was ready in 2023, but unfortunately Correa's ankle injury was hidden, else the Giants could have pursued another free agent hitter instead. </p><p>I hope that they at least are trying to entice Ohtani, but the odds has to be so low, that I thought about what about the Giants might appeal to him, if those are factors he highly rank, and wrote a <a href="https://obsessivegiantscompulsive.blogspot.com/2023/10/your-2023-giants-ohtani-white-whale.html" target="_blank">post on that</a> (and ruminated on what the Giants need to try doing, in order for him to decide on the Giants). </p><p><b>Ideal Free Agent Targets</b></p><p>If it was just dream signing, obviously we sign Ohtani to DH and hopefully nurse back to ace level for 2025. Per <a href="https://theathletic.com/5015772/2023/11/02/mlb-free-agency-position-player-projections/" target="_blank">estimate on The Athletic for hitters</a>, it would take 12 years, $520M ($43.3M/season). Just him alone should put us back into playoff range, since we were around .500 last season, and 84 wins got a team to the World Series. But clearly we need more.</p><p>We also need to greatly improve CF, and if we sign Ohtani, who is rumored to sign early (and that makes sense, he wants historic contract, and once there are free agent signings, less teams can afford him), we don't need a Bellinger type as much, so we pick up Jung Hoo Lee to play CF for 4 years, $56M ($14M/season). </p><p>Matt Chapman at 3B is a clear upgrade (he has averaged 4 bWAR the past couple of seasons) and would only require a 5 year/$95M contract ($19M/season). He would also cover for Luciano who is slotted to start for us, putting less need on defense from him.</p><p>On the pitching side, ideally we pick up two starters. First, of course, would be Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who The Athletic estimates will need 7 years/$203M ($29M/season). Once we get him, then I would add Sonny Gray, for only 3 years/$72M ($24M/season).</p><p>Altogether, that's roughly $129.3M additional salary in 2024. And that can be reduced some by backloading contracts, as well as giving a signing bonus, which then spreads the amount over the length of the contract. So it should be easy enough to get that number under $100M, which the Giants should be able to afford.</p><p><b>Free Agent Probabilities</b></p><p>Of course, we won't get everyone on our wish list. But I think we can get improvements.</p><p>First of all, I believe Yamamoto is gettable, because it should only take money. The Giants clearly is a pitching focused organization, and all the positives the Giants would appeal to Ohtani, especially their ability to accommodate Yamamoto's likely preference to stick to his normal routine in Japan of pitching every six games, as well as his being THE Japanese star in Giants history, plus proximity of Asian communities and a Japanese native as a coach on the team.</p><p>Second, I think Gray is gettable and hopefully we sign him first quickly, which should be encouraging to Yamamoto and other free agents. He's also familiar with Melvin. With him and Yamamoto, our rotation would be Yamamoto, Gray, Webb, Harrison, with Cobb joining mid-season, now there is no need to rush him back, plus Stripling, Winn, Beck in the wings, either back of rotation or featured reliever with a closer, to allow Yamamoto to stick with his usual 6 game rotation, or whatever it is he needs, and everyone will adjust. Though presumably Gray and Webb will continue on five game or so rotation, the Giants demonstrated their willingness and ability to adjust the rotation in 2023 so that Webb was happy, while accommodating Cobb's health situation. Moreover, getting Gray is imperative, in case Yamamoto ends up signing elsewhere, as the Giants need another ace level starter, so he's probably the highest priority signing, in terms of timing, the way I see it, while Yamamoto is the highest priority overall, only because Ohtani is so likely to go elsewhere.</p><p>Third, I would sign Chapman for 3B. Again, the earlier the better, because then it's clearer to the top free agents that the Giants mean business about improving. Davis was just bad defensively there, and Schmitt was just bad offensively, and Chapman would be a huge improvement offensively and defensively, thus, overall. He is another good bat and lengthens the lineup. And his great defense there will help to protect Luciano at SS, and allow him to concentrate on hitting. Chapman played for Melvin not that long ago, as well. </p><p>Fourth, the Giants should be able to get Jung Hoo Lee for CF, the money is not that bad, and they clearly are strongly interested in him. But they should keep Kiermaier in mind if Lee signs elsewhere, as they need to greatly improve CF. </p><p>And that's basically what I saw as ideal above, without Ohtani. That's only $86M added, so they could then pursue perhaps another bullpen arm (though they could possibly trade outfielders to get one) and perhaps another improvement in a position player (Gurriel?) but nobody seems to stick out for me right now, so I'm open to ideas. I didn't think of Chapman until Andy Baggarly wrote about him, and he just makes sense.</p>obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-33332753394029954672023-11-12T21:35:00.000-08:002023-11-12T21:35:06.477-08:00Your 2023 Giants: To Zaidi or Not Series - What's the Plan?<p>The Giants fanbase, from the view of The Athletic's comment pages for the Giants, are in an uproar about Farhan Zaidi's stewardship of the Good Championship Giants. The Zaidi Haters complaints include but are not limited to:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Five years is enough to rebuild a farm system and the team</li><li>2023 season was a disaster</li><li>The farm system has not made any progress</li><li>They are not as good as Texas, LAD, Atlanta, etc.</li><li>Zaidi is in love with platoons and openers</li><li>Zaidi can't sign the best free agents; there's no stars</li><li>What's the plan?</li></ul><div>This is the second in a series examining each complaint.</div><p></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><b>ogc thoughts</b></p><p>Okay, I'm going to tackle the complaint about what the Giant's plan is.</p><p><b>Media Outrage Echo Chamber</b></p><p>The media often echoes the outrage of Giants fans, and it's true now as it was true then, <a href="https://obsessivegiantscompulsive.blogspot.com/2007/12/giants-plan.html" target="_blank">back in 2007</a>, when a local columnist questioned the Giants plans after Bonds, and today, when another local beat writer, asked what exactly is the Giants plans, questioning it in the wake of Gabe Kapler's firing.</p><p><b>The Plan is Simple: Pitching, Pitching, More Pitching</b></p><p>It is clearly pitching, again, much like the complaint back in 2007. It is as plain as my nose on my face. And couldn't be more obvious.</p><p>Let's start with where the pitching staff is today. The Giants Runs Allowed is above average, ranked 12th overall in MLB (out of 30 teams), with an average of 4.44 vs. MLB average of 4.62, and 4th overall in NL (out of 15), with an average of 4.44 vs. NL average of 4.66. That's actual results.</p><p>However, looking at the underlying talent, based on removing the randomness of base hits and home runs, the Giants were ranked much higher. The Giants were 2nd in xFIP, with 3.86 (1st was the Rays with 3.84, so they were edged out, 3rd was Twins with 3.94; median was 4.24) and 3rd in SIERA, with 3.88 (1st was Twins with 3.77, 2nd was Rays with 3.78, 4th was Mariners with 3.88 as well; median was 4.16). There were a lot of bad luck homers, like for Harrison and Stripling. </p><p>And it should get even better in 2024, even without accounting for the possibility that the Giants might add an ace level starter like Yamamoto to the rotation. First and most of all, Kyle Harrison should be starting for the Giants all season. I'm not sure how many innings they will allow him to throw, he only threw 67.2 IP in 2023, 113.0 IP in 2022, so I would guess anywhere from 138.0 IP to 160.0 IP. And I'm not sure how great his ERA will be, though ZiPS forecasted 3.65 ERA for 2024. But given how good he has been in the minors, which was elite, he at worse won't be so bad that they will have to remove him from the rotation, like the three spots with openers in 2023.</p><p>Also, Tristan Beck and Keaton Winn will be available as starters during the season, which will set a high base of 4.00 ERA, which both were around (ERA/FIP). Then there are prospects who are looking very good at the moment in Carson Whisenhunt, Mason Black, and Hayden Birdsong.</p><p><b>The Plan Revolves Around Harrison</b></p><p>And it all started with Harrison.</p><p>The 2020 Draft was all about getting Kyle Harrison. Because he wanted a certain number (apparently $2.5M) but teams today, especially analytical teams, don’t like drafting high school pitchers (draft studies have found that to be the worse return), especially in the first round. So Farhan had to plan on finding players that his scouts liked, but was expecting to get much less money than the amount slotted for the pick that the Giants had, in order to save up bonus money for drafting and then paying Harrison his bonus. </p><p>Making his job even harder, this was the infamous Covid draft, which was reduced to only five rounds. Normally teams would save a little on picks up to the 10th round, especially drafting college seniors who usually signed for maybe $5-10 thousand, but the Giants had to save money only on the four rounds available. And picks in the third round only was slotted for $710,700, and who the Giants needed to save up another $1,786,800, in order to reach the $2.5M that Harrison was demanding for his bonus. </p><p>Astonishingly, the Giants not only managed to save enough money to sign Harrison, they needed up drafting a Gold Glove finalist as a rookie, who was only promoted in May, but still led the majors in a number of key catching statistics, as well as drafting a third baseman who looks like he’ll be a Gold Gloev caliber 3B, once he figures out hitting well enough to start.</p><p>Once the Giants had Harrison, they switched their draft strategy from including college position players to "pitching, pitching, and more pitching", drafting pitchers with their first 9 picks in 2021 (Vaun Brown, normally a throw-away senior signed just to save money, was the first position player, in the 10th round) and drafting pitchers with first 6 picks (though first pick was a two-way player) and 8 of 10 in the 2022 draft. </p><p>Those drafts yielded interesting prospects: Mason Black, Vaun Brown, Landon Roupp, Carson Whisenhunt, Hayden Birdsong, Wade Meckler, John Choate, and it is too soon to write off Reggie Crawford, Will Bednar, Eric Silva. These prospects are currently <a href="https://www.mlb.com/prospects/giants/" target="_blank">ranked by MLB Pipeline</a> as the Giants Top Prospects: 3, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 21, 26</p><p>As I explained in my <a href="https://obsessivegiantscompulsive.blogspot.com/2018/11/hey-zaidi-my-giants-business-plan.html" target="_blank">baseball business plan</a>, which was originally addressed to Bill Neukom then updated to Zaidi, there are a lot of good reasons to focus on pitching as the team's core competency, which one can read all about in that business plan. Some highlights:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>First, and most importantly, studies by Baseball Prospectus and Fangraphs found that it is pitching and fielding that wins in the playoffs and thus lead to deep playoff runs. BP's study specifically noted pitching staff strikeout dominance, closer performance, and strong fielding defense. BP also noted that having three aces was a statistically significant factor as well. </li><li>Second, because prospects become good randomly, pitching is good to focus on because the more good pitchers you have, you can just slot them in without needing to trade them off and risking not only that the pitcher becomes better with the other team, but also that the hitter you receive won't play up to the levels he had before (which is especially possible since their home park is a pitcher's park). And the more you focus on pitching, the more likely you are to develop at least two aces, and hopefully three.</li><li>Third, pitching prospect failures can have a powerful second chance life as a major leaguer if they can become a good reliever. Met's and A's famously had four ace prospects about 30 year ago, and all of them failed to even make it as starting pitchers, but one became a great closer, another was a good reliever. Failed position players only find bench value by being good pinch hitter or utility player.</li><li>Fourth, building a good set of aces improves your chances in the playoffs because the best pitchers are able to consistently throw quality starts, and that greatly improve your chance of winning in the playoffs. It's no guarantee, as the 2011 Phillies team showed, but in the <a href="https://obsessivegiantscompulsive.blogspot.com/2012/01/pqs-in-playoffs-second-in-series.html" target="_blank">playoffs I've studied</a>, starters who had a DOM quality start won 82% of the time when the other team didn't have a DOM start (68 games out of 93, 73% of the games). Even more importantly, aces avoid a lot of disaster starts (68 in total, and when the other team had a higher PQS, they lost 70% of the time. </li></ul>obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-42460214531787974012023-10-31T16:36:00.001-07:002023-10-31T16:36:54.287-07:00Playoff PQS: Texas Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks Path to World Series<p>After Merrill Kelly's great start and reading about his long and winding road from the U.S. to Korea and back to the U.S., I thought I would investigate the two teams battling it out for the World Series championship and see how their starting pitching's PQS results have contributed to their reaching the World Series.</p><p>As I've shown in prior posts about the playoffs, having pitchers who threw DOM PQS starts was a significant success factor in winning games and moving to the next series. Since all that analysis was done with the original PQS, I'm going to continue to use that methodology here. If I can ever figure out how to automate pulling all the playoff starts and automate the calculations of PQS, I will investigate creating my own PQS, and building research on that.</p><p><b><span></span></b></p><a name='more'></a><b>ogc thoughts</b><p></p><p>Both were wild card teams, and marched all the way to the World Series. Texas ran over the Rays and Orioles, before squeaking by the Astros to earn their spot in the World Series. Arizona </p><p><b>Texas Rangers</b></p><p>They played 12 games to win the 9 necessary to reach the World Series:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Rays: </li><ul><li>G1: Montgomery 5 PQS-DOM (W); Glasnow 2 PQS-MID (L)</li><li>G2: Eovaldi 5 PQS-DOM (W); Efflin 1 PQS-DIS (L)</li></ul><li>Orioles: </li><ul><li>G1: Heaney 0 PQS-DIS (W; 2 PQS if not auto 0 for < 5 IP); Bradish 0 PQS-DIS (L; 3 PQS if not auto 0)</li><li>G2: Montgomery 0 PQS-DIS (W; 2 PQS if not auto 0); Rodriquez 0 PQS-DIS (L; just bad start, 1 PQS)</li><li>G3: Eovaldi 5 PQS-DOM (W); Kremer 0 PQS-DIS (L; 1 PQS)</li></ul><li>Astros: </li><ul><li>G1: Montgomery 5 PQS-DOM (W); Verlander 5 PQS-DOM (L; he must hate Bochy by now...)</li><li>G2: Eovaldi 4 PQS-DOM (W); Valdez 0 PQS-DIS (L; 3 PQS otherwise)</li><li>G3: Scherzer 0 PQS-DIS (L; 3 PQS otherwise); Javier 3 PQS-MID (W)</li><li>G4: Heaney 0 PQS-DIS (L; 1 PQS otherwise); Urquidy 0 PQS-DIS (W; 0 PQS otherwise)</li><li>G5: Montgomery 2 PQS-MID (L); Verlander 1 PQS-DIS (W)</li><li>G6: Eovaldi 3 PQS-MID (W); Valdez 3 PQS-MID (L)</li><li>G7: Scherzer 0 PQS-DIS (W); Javier 0 PQS-DIS (L)</li></ul></ul><p></p><p>In the 12 playoff games, Texas had 5 DOM starts, 2 MID starts, and 5 DIS starts:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>DOM: They were 5-0 in these starts, and 4-0 in starts where their PQS was higher than the other team, and 1-0 where the PQS were the same (I view these as coin tosses)</li><li>MID: They were 1-1 in these start, and 0-1 in starts where their PQS was higher, and 1-0 where the PQS was the same. </li><li>DIS: They were 3-2 in these starts, 0-1 in starts where their PQS was lower than the other teams, 3-1 where the PQS were the same.</li></ul><p></p><p>That works out to 42% DOM/42% DIS, which is not good at all. They have been lucky that the other teams also were horrible (they had 5 0-PQS starts) when they were horrible, allowing them to break even in the ties, and losing the only one where they were less. The 42% DOM is okay, passably good, but no matter what, you want to keep your DIS(aster) starts to the minimum, because generally they are automatic losses, unless the other team happens to throw a clunker too.</p><p>The Rangers run illustrates how important getting the best PQS. Any one knows that it's better to have a high PQS and to have a higher PQS. The Rangers were only beat in PQS in one game, all the rest were the same or they had the higher PQS. The Rangers lost the only game they had the smaller PQS. </p><p>The performances of the Ranger's starters:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Montgomery: 2 DOM/1 MID/1 DIS = 50% DOM/25% DIS, team was 3-1</li><li>Eovaldi: 3 DOM/1 MID/0 DIS = 75% DOM/0% DIS (this is what you want from your elite starters), team was 4-0</li><li>Heaney: 0 DOM/0 MID/2 DIS = 0% DOM/100% DIS, team was 0-2</li><li>Scherzer: 0 DOM/0 MID/2 DIS = 0% DOM/100% DIS, team was 1-1 </li></ul><p></p><p><b>Arizona Diamondbacks</b></p><p></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: Times; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"></ul><p></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: Times; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">They played 12 games to win the 9 necessary to reach the World Series:</p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: Times; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Brewers:</li><ul><li>G1: Pfaadt 0 PQS-DIS (W; 3 PQS otherwise); Burnes 0 PQS-DIS (L; 2 PQS otherwise)</li><li>G2: Gallen 4 PQS-DOM (W); Peralta 4 PQS-DOM (L)</li></ul><li>Dodgers:</li><ul><li>G1: Kelly 5 PQS-DOM (W); Kershaw 0 PQS-DIS (L; 0 PQS)</li><li>G2: Gallen 4 PQS-DOM (W); Miller 0 PQS-DIS (L; 1 PQS otherwise)</li><li>G3: Pfaadt 0 PQS-DIS (W; 3 PQS otherwise); Lynn 0 PQS-DIS (L; 0 PQS)</li></ul><li>Phillies:</li><ul><li>G1: Gallen 2 PQS-DOM (L); Wheeler 5 PQS-DOM (W)</li><li>G2: Kelly 3 PQS-DOM (L); Nola 5 PQS-DOM (W)</li><li>G3: Pfaadt 4 PQS-DOM (W); Suarez 4 PQS-DOM (L)</li><li>G4: Opener (W) vs. Opener (L)</li><li>G5: Gallen 2 PQS-MID (L); Wheeler 5 PQS-DOM (W)</li><li>G6: Kelly 4 PQS-DOM(W); Nola 2 PQS-MID (L)</li><li>G7: Pfaadt 0 PQS-DIS (W; 4 PQS otherwise); Suarez 0 PQS-DIS (L; 3 PQS otherwise)</li></ul></ul><p></p><p>In the 12 playoff games, Arizona had 5 DOM starts, 3 MID starts, and 3 DIS starts (one start opener):</p><p></p><ul><li>DOM: They were 5-0 in these starts, and 3-0 in starts where their PQS was higher than the other team, and 2-0 where the PQS were the same (I view these as coin tosses, so they were lucky here)</li><li>MID: They were 0-3 in these start, and 0-3 in starts where their PQS was lower. </li><li>DIS: They were 3-0 in these starts, 3-0 where the PQS were the same (all 3 were 0-0). This usually don't happen, and as we'll see below, this stat was skewed by their usage of Pfaadt.</li></ul><p></p><p>That works out to 45% DOM/27% DIS, which is not good at all, but better than the Rangers. They have been lucky that the other teams also were unlucky when both teams had the same PQS: they were 5-0 in ties, which normally I view as coin tosses. 45% DOM is good (where 50% is great), but 27% is still too high. </p><p>The performances of the D-backs starters:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Pfaadt: 1 DOM/0 MID/3 DIS = 25% DOM/75% DIS, team was 4-0. His usage, however, appears to be like a feature/bulk reliever, except as a starter, because if the IP requirement wasn't automatically making his starts a 0 PQS, he would have had 2/2/0 = 50% DOM/0% DIS, which is why his team was 4-0 with him starting, as he pitched well in his starts, only they were all cut short of the minimum 5 IP in the PQS rules (which is why I document how well they did otherwise; the new PQS rules don't automatically make starts 0, but they have been harder to generate DOM starts, I noticed, which is why I would like to research a better measurement, once I figure out a free way to download every starting pitcher's start, and using the computer to calc each pitcher's PQS data)</li><li>Gallen: 2 DOM/2 MID/0 DIS = 50% DOM/0% DIS, team was 2-2. His line shows the value of DOM starts towards winning, while MID starts can vary greatly, where he lost both games, but generally I find MID to be more 50/50 in win/loss</li><li>Kelly: 2 DOM/1 MID/0 DIS = 67% DOM/0% DIS, team was 2-1</li><li>Opener: team was 1-0</li></ul><p></p><div>Because of the usage of Pfaadt, the DIS stats are greatly skewed. I re-did the stats above to recognize Pfaadt's PQS if not for the 5 IP rule, 6 DOM starts and 5 MID starts (55% DOM/0% DIS, which is great):</div><div><ul><li>DOM: They were 6-0 in these starts, and 4-0 in starts where their PQS was higher than the other team, and 2-0 where the PQS were the same (I view these as coin tosses, so they were lucky here)</li><li>MID: They were 2-3 in these start, and 2-0 in starts where their PQS was higher, and 0-3 in starts where their PQS was lower. </li><li>DIS: They did not have any disaster starts, which is how a team can maximize their chances in the playoffs, without having dominating pitchers.</li></ul></div><p>Arizona's starters illustrate the power of PQS analysis. DOM starts are nearly always wins (my prior playoff success analysis had it in the 80% range). Meanwhile MID starts generally end up coin tosses, 50/50. </p><p>The Phillies series demonstrates the luck involved. The Phillies had four DOM starts and came out of it 3-1, but unfortunately a DIS, MID and Opener cost them, 0-3. Still, it also demonstrates how powerful it is to have DOM starts. </p><p><b>Total PQS Stats</b></p><p>Here are the combined data from the stats collected just from the Rangers and D-backs.</p><p>First are the PQS levels for all the playoff teams recorded above:</p><div><ul><li>DOM: In total these teams were 14-3 in DOM starts.</li><li>MID: The team were 5-6 in MID starts. </li><li>DIS: Disaster starts are a disaster for most teams, 5-13, unless the other team happens to have a disaster start.</li></ul></div><p>Then there is the PQS success for just the Rangers and D-backs (because the other teams would have mirror images of records):</p><div><ul><li>PQS Greater Than: 10-1 record</li><li>PQS Equal: 7-1 record</li><li>PQS Less Than: 0-4 record</li></ul></div><p>This shows the power of having a better PQS, the Rangers and D-backs had a .909 winning percentage when they had the better PQS, and .000 winning percentage when they had a lower PQS. The PQS Equal record of 7-1 showed how the two teams were very lucky (especially Rangers, 5-1) when there is an equal PQS, though sometimes that luck is made when the team has a good bullpen.</p><p>This illustrate why I harp on finding and developing high PQS starters for the Giant. However, the problem is that you don't really know the heart of the pitcher when you acquire them, you can make guesses, but you never really know for certain. Thus you have pitchers like Lincecum, Cain, and Bumgarner who rose to the challenge and was able to pitch like they are capable, and pitchers like Peavy, Hudson, and Kershaw, who become human, even in the same season, when they pitch in the playoffs. But first, you need to develop them first, that's the important first step.</p><p>I believe Webb did enough in his two starts to show that he can rise to the occasion I'm hoping that Harrison can, as well, as he had a target on his back since his first season, as well as the pressure of not only being the Giants top prospect, but was also the top LHP prospect in the majors, this season. </p><p><b>Thoughts on World Series</b></p><p>PQS stats vary greatly for pitchers. Small Sample Size effects galore. Also, there are pitchers who melt in the heat of the playoffs. Both Peavy and Hudson had poor histories in the playoffs, Peavy especially, and that was mirrored in their performances in 2014. But as Zaidi has been preaching, you look for pitchers who can get you through the bulk innings (like a Zito), without them giving up too many runs to put the game out of reach. </p><p>And on top of all that, there is the randomness of games. There are no automatic wins, and sometimes your DOM start is matched against another DOM start, which ends up randomly which team wins. And your DIS start, which is normally an automatic out given even a MID performance by the other team, ends up matched against another DIS start, and again, randomness wins again.</p><p>Still, based on the performances so far in the playoffs leading up to the World Series, it appears that the D-backs have the advantage. The teams are evenly matched in DOM starts, almost, but the D-backs have been great at avoiding DIS starts so far in the playoffs, which helped them out greatly. In addition, the Rangers have been lucky in PQS Equal games.</p><p>However, the D-backs are now down 1-2 in the World Series. But that's not the starter's fault. </p><p>Gallen pitched well enough to win Game 1, and Eovaldi, the Ranger's one great pitcher so far in the playoffs, had a DIS start, but the D-backs bullpen lost the game for them, giving up 3 runs, while the Ranger's bullpen shut the D-backs down, not allowing another run. </p><p>Even the Game 3 loss wasn't totally Pfaadt's fault, he 4 PQS start, gave up only 3 runs (which was okay, not good), but the Rangers had an opener type of game, similar to the tandem starts in the minors, where Scherzer went 3 innings, then Jon Gray went another 3 innings, and both shut out the D-backs. </p><p>However, the D-backs look like they will be going with an opener in Game 4, as that is what they did in the NLCS. The Rangers look like they will go with Heaney, who has had two DIS starts so far (but one MID and one DIS, if not for zero rule). So, we'll see if the D-backs (who won their opener start) can get back to 2-2, as Heaney has not been reliable in the playoffs.</p><p>Then it looks like the same three matchups again: Gallen-Eovaldi, Kelly-Montgomery, Pfaadt-Sherzer/Gray. If Eovaldi and Montgomery have DIS starts again, the Rangers are sunk, likely, even if they win game 4. The 3 D-back starters have been pretty reliable during the playoffs (but, of course, randomness can hurt them). But perhaps Eovaldi and Montgomery had the jitters from pitching in the World Series (like Lincecum and Lee did, then did great in their second start), as it was their first World Series starts. </p><p>On top of that, Sherzer is having back spasms, and might be removed from the roster, and Gray would take his spot. Either way, both haven't pitched much recently due to injury, so it is a huge question mark what the Rangers can get from either starter in a crucial game 7. And given the shortness of both teams, they don't have a pitcher (like Bumgarner or Rueter) to rely on if Pfaadt or Sherzer/Gray is hit hard, only Heaney will be available, though if somehow Sherzer is able to start, then the Rangers have Gray to turn to as backup if Sherzer is hit hard.</p>obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-45483533736227898712023-10-31T11:24:00.002-07:002023-10-31T11:24:23.718-07:00Your 2024 Giants: Alex Cobb Surgery<p>It was recently announced that Cobb will get hip surgery to fix the problem he had all season. The Giants have a buy-out option with Cobb for the 2024 season, they can buy him out for $2M or sign him to a $10M deal. Normally this would be obvious, given his performances the past two years, to sign him, but it is complicated by the fact that he likely will need six months to recover, which should take him out to at least the start of May, if not longer.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><b>ogc thoughts</b></p><p>First off, it is still pretty obvious, at least to me, the Giants will pick up his option. He has been great the past two seasons for the Giants, another great pickup for Zaidi to keep the Giants team afloat while the team does a rebuild quietly. $10M is a bargain still, even if he can only pitch four months in the season, if he can repeat what he did before for the Giants. It is worth it for the possibility he returns and strengthens the rotation further.</p><p>Of course, he was only one of two reliable options at starting pitching in 2023, so normally this would be horrendous news. This is great for two huge reasons.</p><p>First of all, and most of all, it should mean he would be pitching with good health when he returns. And he has pitched above average (106 and 109 ERA+) for the past two seasons with this physical problem. The great thing about pitching staffs is that you can always add someone good, as there are always holes and weaknesses.</p><p>Second, the Giants have two pitchers DeSclafani and Stripling, who had bad seasons for us last year, and need the opportunity to show that they can pitch. Without Cobb, that opens up a rotation spot for the two to battle for next season. Not that there wasn't before Cobb's surgery, but it still means additional chances for them to pitch, that perhaps they won't.</p><p>Because the Giants have a good number of young pitchers who will be battling for starting rotation spots. First, barring injury or horrendous spring numbers (Brian Wilson had a sure spot once, and pitched his way back to the minors in Spring), Kyle Harrison should have a spot in the rotation, alongside Logan Webb, the only sure starter. ZiPS projected him for a mid-3's ERA for 2024, so not only should he be a regular starter, but he should be a good starter. Unfortunately, he hasn't put up a lot of IP in his seasons, so he likely will be kept on a short leash for the first half of 2024, much like 2023, build up his pitch count and IP.</p><p>Second, there are a number of prospects who could battle for a spot. In the majors, both Beck and Winn pitched well enough to be considered strong contenders for starting spots. Both had ERA and/or FIP that were around 4 ERA, which is about average for the majors. They should be strong contenders for starting rotation spots. Less likely, but still in the mix, are pitching prospects like Whisenhunt, Roupp, Black, and Birdsong. </p><p>On top of that, the Giants have already said that they are looking to add to the top of their rotation. And Yamamoto is on the top of their list. And there are others like Blake Snell, Sonny Gray, Jordan Montgomery, Aaron Nola, and others, who the Giant could potentially pursue.</p><p>That's a lot of competitors for the starting rotation, though many of the prospects are hindered by the lack of IP stamina, right now, and, of course, it is easier said than done that the Giants even sign any of the free agents (though the Giants are reportedly not going to be outbid for Yamamoto). Cobb would have automatically been part of the rotation and gotten starts in spring training, but with him likely out and recovering, that opens up starts for the other contenders to use, like DeSclafani and Stripling.</p><p>And why I'm keying on them is two-fold. Both can possibly rebound to be as good as they were when the Giants signed them. Hopefully, last season was just an aberration. Either way, with so many possible viable competitors for the rotation, having Cobb out of the way gives one or both of them more opportunities to show that they have returned to their prior goodness. And that would make them tradeable assets.</p><p>Thus, the silver lining of Cobb being out of the rotation early on. That gives the two opportunities to join the rotation and maybe even do well enough that they hold the fort until Cobb returns. At which point, roughly mid-season, prime for trades, hopefully Zaidi can offload one or both of them. And given the young pitchers probable need to be limited on IP for the season, the Giants could keep them simmering in the minors early on, let these two prove to be trade worthy, and trade them mid season, there will always be teams looking for good arms for their rotation.</p><p>And who knows, maybe the Giants will still need the two of them even at the trade deadline. Young prospects don't always keep performing well. Injuries happen. </p><p>But still, more likely, Cobb returns healthy. And hopefully enough of the young pitchers prove good enough to hold rotation spots, especially if the Giants get another ace via free agency, as that would be free agent ace, Webb, Cobb, Harrison, plus the 4th and maybe 5th starters. I think it's pretty likely that one can hold a spot, meaning 4th, reliably (I'm thinking Beck), and then the Giants can either go with openers for the 5th or try out the young starters until one sticks. The goal is simply to get into the playoffs, they aren't ready yet to compete regularly or deep yet. Then the Giants could trade those two for prospects. That's how we got Beck.</p>obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-71331001722050817222023-10-29T19:35:00.002-07:002023-10-29T19:35:34.422-07:00Your 2023 Giants: Ohtani, the White Whale<p>As with any superstar free agent, Ohtani is likely to not sign with the Giants. But I don't think it would be out of the realm either. Here are some of my thoughts on what it would take to sign him.</p><p>Also, as many of my posts goes, this went long: it is also a discussion of the positives that I see with the Giants roster and future. While the past couple of years have been disappointing, the Giants appear to me to be on the cusp of breaking out and being a serious contender for the intermediate term, if they can acquire at least one key component (a good cleanup hitter) and ideally two (another ace starter).</p><p>Lastly, I started this post thinking I needed to finish by the end of the World Series, as that was when I expected the Giants to announce their next manager. Because Bob Melvin was named manager, I finished it up and published it now, adding a note where I left the content unchanged and noting the hiring.</p><p><b><span></span></b></p><a name='more'></a><b>ogc thoughts</b><p></p><p>Obviously, big negatives right away is that:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The Giants only have one winning and playoff team in Zaidi's five seasons</li><li>Their manager was just fired</li><li>Their GM has a one-year team option that the team has already announced would be picked up, and is viewed as a lame duck leader</li></ul><p></p><p><b>First: Sign Zaidi to Two-Year Extension</b></p><p><i><span style="color: #ffa400;">[Note: This was written before Bob Melvin was hired and Zaidi was announced to have a similar length contract; both now have contracts for the next three years. I left this paragraph unchanged]</span></i></p><p>First thing the Giants should do after the World Series ends is to announced a new two-year extension for Zaidi, much like how they did that for Sabean during the late 2000's. Even better would be a three-year. This would remove the stigma of 2024 being a lame duck season, and show a longer term view of his tenure, hence why three years would be better.</p><p><b>Second: Illustrate How Ohtani's Need for Control Caused Angel's Issues with Losing</b></p><p>Next, they should analyze (I assume Giants have a ton of grunt interns to do this) exactly what the effects of Angels having to adjust their starting pitcher on the fly because of Ohtani. And I would bet that they were forced to use a below average starting pitcher or didn’t handle the opener well, resulting in losses. </p><p>Then they should show how the Giants juggled that all season and the pitching held up strong, but unfortunately they need hitters, and that’s where Ohtani comes in at DH. They should also use the lineup calculator to show how much of an improvement there is with the Giants run scoring with Ohtani as DH, and how many wins that would add to a strong pitching team like the Giants in 2024, and then how much better they would be with Ohtani as SP in 2025. </p><p>The Giants were 12th in Runs Allowed in 2023, and I expect it to improve in 2024 because Harrison, Beck, and Winn will pitch more innings, plus the poor performing vets either are gone or not getting as many innings. And especially with Ohtani in 2025, should be top 5 at least. And especially if they can sign either Snell or Yamamoto, that’s a rotation of aces.
I think this is the Giants best path to contention right now. </p><p>They need to prove to him why the Angels lost even with Trout and him, and why there’s no other team that has handled such a situation and still have a good pitching staff, else wherever he goes, that issue will dog that team as well. </p><p><b>How Much Ohtani Improves Offense</b></p><p>I’ve used Pythagorean and the lineup calculator extensively over the years, and it has always been in the ballpark of the actual stats, so it should be simple to demonstrate that to him, then get into the theoretics of him in the Giants lineup and rotation. </p><p>Of course, that presumes he can even come back from a second TJS and be effective. It hasn’t been declared as such yet, but the history is that a second TJS is the end of the pitching career. But they have been coy about what is wrong and hasn't announced what his procedure was, only that he had one, so we’ll see.<br /></p><p>But he can hit while recovering from his pitching arm procedure. To get a range of expectations on what the Giants might get from Ohtani, let's take a look at how he hit, from high, to average, to low, over the past three seasons:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>2023: .304/.412/.654/1.066</li><li>2021-23: .277/.379/.585/.964</li><li>2022: .273/.356/.519/.875</li></ul><p></p><p>Here is the difference his batting lines above would improve the Giants over their 4th place hitter in 2023, who collectively hit a paltry .228/.304/.376/.680 (about as good a reason they fell out of contention:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Giants 4th place 2023: 1.07 RS</li><li>Ohtani 2023: 1.67 RS (+0.60 RS; adds 90 runs over 150 game season for Ohtani)</li><li>Ohtani 3-yr: 1.51 RS (+0.54 RS; adds 81 runs)</li><li>Ohtani 2022: 1.38 RS (+0.31 RS; adds 47 runs)</li></ul><div>Based on an RA of 4.44 that the Giants had in 2023, adding the above runs to the 2023 team would result in (based on Pythagorean expected wins of 76 in 2023 and actual of 79):</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Ohtani 2023: 85 wins (+9 wins over expected; + 6 wins over actual)</li><li>Ohtani 3-yr: 82 wins (+6 wins; +3 wins)</li><li>Ohtani 2022: 80 wins (+4 wins; +1 win)</li></ul></div><p></p><p>So, based on high, average and low of the past three seasons, Ohtani would add anywhere from 4 to 9 wins over expected based solely on his hitting. </p><p><b>Giants Improved Pitching in 2024, Which Was Already Good in 2023</b></p><p>The good news for Ohtani is that the Giants already had a good pitching staff in 2023. He should be looking for this because it is unknown whether he's even capable of coming back as a good pitcher, so he should want to sign with a team who is very talented. While they were ranked 12th in Runs Allowed in the majors, the pitching staff was <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?pos=all&stats=pit&lg=all&type=1&season=2023&month=0&season1=2023&ind=0&qual=0&sortcol=18&sortdir=default&team=0%2Cts&pagenum=1" target="_blank">ranked second in xFIP with 3.86</a> and third in SIERA with 3.88, which is a sign that bad luck affected their results, and indicative of the good talent already on the team. Put some good (or just better) defenders out there and that RA can drop down a lot. </p><p>In addition, the Giants should also have an improved pitching staff in 2024. Webb and Cobb were good, and look to continue to be good, plus Harrison took the next step in development and pitched in the majors in 2023, and he was roughly where ZiPS projected him to be in 2023, roughly 4 ERA/FIP, and project him to be around 3.65 ERA in 2024. If he can figure out his homer problems, he could be good his first full season, like Bumgarner was. </p><p>There are other potential starters. Tristan Beck also pitched well, and would be a decent 5th starter first option, with Winn, Stripling, DeSclafani filling out SP depth, and Whisenhunt, Black, Birdsong as prospects percolating and developing. </p><p>Altogether, the 10 pitchers who were actually starting pitchers, had a collective 4.12 ERA and 4.49 RA, which is slightly worse than the 4.44 RA for the Giants. </p><div>Based on an RA of 4.19 that the Giants would have with a rotation of Webb, Cobb, Harrison, Beck Winn, and using ZiPS 2024 projections (plus assuming the bullpen would also improve by removing the poorer performers and free agent pickup), and using the above expected RS with Ohtani:</div><div><ul><li>Ohtani 2023: 88 wins (+12 wins over expected; + 9 wins over actual)</li><li>Ohtani 3-yr: 86 wins (+10 wins; +7 wins)</li><li>Ohtani 2022: 84 wins (+8 wins; +5 win)</li></ul><div>With Ohtani, the Giants would be in playoff range in 2024 (since 84 wins got a team into the playoffs in 2023), just assuming the same production from the existing players, plus projected ERA for the expected pitching rotation (which also assumes that the bullpen is similarly improved too, through free agency). And this should be a good base prediction, as the Giants will still have Desclafani and Stripling (and perhaps Manaea) still available, and if any can return to prior expectations, they can provide better ERA than Beck or Winn, at the back of the rotation. Even better if they can sign free agents like Yamamoto or Snell or Sonny Gray to greatly improve the rotation.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Other 2024 Improvements</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Those projections does not include expected improvements:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>One is that in his second year, Gold Glove finalist Patrick Bailey would likely improve, both offensively and defensively, as well as playing an additional six weeks. That's 1-2 wins. </li><li>Second, Marco Luciano would be the starting shortstop, where he's projected to be near 2.0 zWAR, which is better than what Crawford and Schmitt produced there, roughly zero, so adding a win or two. </li><li>Third, not as likely but Harrison has the tools to be an ace starting pitcher. If he can figure it out in 2024, he would add 3-4 wins. Even if he just meets projected production of 1.5 zWAR, that should be at least an extra two wins because the starters weren't even good enough to go three deep for a significant part of the season (i.e. they weren't even replacement level, which is considered to be zero WAR produced). </li></ul></div><div>Just among these three, we can expect anywhere from 4 wins to 8 wins extra. With Ohtani's additions above, that should put the Giants in the 90+ wins range. 90 wins should get the Giants into the playoffs in 2024.</div><p><b>2025 Pitching with Ohtani</b></p><p>I think here is where the Giants might be able to win over Ohtani, integrating him back into the rotation. Pitchers who have second TJS usually signals the end of their pitching career. That's probably why Ohtani has not announced that its TJS surgery. He is probably looking at every alternative.</p><p>What is known is that while it is an UCL tear in his pitching elbow, apparently the original TJS ligament placed in there is healthy and fine, it was another ligament that tore. And they are exploring a variety of options for repairing it, as Ohtani wants to return to pitching. One includes a brace, which is what Brock Purdy got to fix his injury. But it still might be a TJS for this ligament, his agent did not deny that, he only would say that they are looking at many options. He has had the procedure, but nothing is publicly known about it yet.</p><p>Thus, he will need a team willing to go the extra mile in accommodating his need to push a start back, as necessary, much like how the Giants operated this season. Webb was the only starter to take the mound every five or six starts. Cobb often had to shift his start, because of his hip issues, which is similar to how a team would handle Ohtani. And, of course, for a significant portion of the season, the other three rotation spots were TBD, and they were actually .500 in those games, which other teams would struggle with, throwing out their 6th, 7th, 8th starters out there, and losing aa lot of games (as we'll see below when I look at the Angel's rotation)..</p><p>More importantly, I think to Ohtani, the team he signs with needs to already have a good pitching staff without him (which the Giants already do, with a Top 3 staff in xFIP and SIERA; and could be better with Harrison, and perhaps Yamamoto, if they sign him), and ideally one on the rise (which the Giants do with Harrison, Beck, Winn, and the other prospects), just in case his arm does not respond to whatever treatment he gets. Only LA is even in the top 10 (10th in SIERA; 13th in xFIP), though Seattle is just behind SF (4th in both xFIP and SIERA). But Seattle seems like a huge negative as a destination because Ohtani, one would think, would want to be the top dog with the team he signs with, and Ichiro casts a huge shadow in Seattle. And they did not utilize the opener much in 2023.</p><p><b>Angel's Rotation Problems</b></p><p>Also, as I noted before, I would bet that the Angels was always forced to use replacement level starters. So I went through their starters throughout the season (which the Giants could have their analysts do, as I suggested above). I found a team that had rotation problems after Ohtani's starts.</p><p>They had to go with Tyler Anderson for 25 starts, only skipping two starts at the end. He had a 5.43 ERA, and while they went 12-13 with him as the starter, that's a horrendous ERA. They also traded for Lucas Giolito, who had 6 starts with a 6.89 ERA, and the team went 1-5 with him as the starter, that's what helped tank their pennant run. They also had to give seven starts to Jose Suarez, who had a 9.35 ERA as a starter. And Jaime Barria had 6 starts at 4.94 ERA. That's 44 starts with a collective 6.11 ERA. All the Giants starters had an ERA 4.99 or lower, except for 20 starts and 8 openers. </p><p>On top of that, the Angels only had one other starting pitcher who was good, Patrick Sandoval, and he had a good ERA of 4.11 (109 ERA+), but the team went 8-20 behind him. This was the result of a lot of games where the bullpen gave up enough runs after he left that the team lost despite Sandoval's effort.</p><p>Overall, the Angels had to mix and match all through the season, shifting to four man rotation at one point, then running a 6-man rotation from roughly May 15 to June 18 (with 7 different starters from 5/15-5/20, then an 8th on 5/22, with Ohtani pitching twice). They only had one starter with over 20 starts besides Ohtani who had ERA+ at least 109, and the only other starter over 110 ERA+ only had 8 starts. </p><p>Meanwhile the Giants had two starting pitchers at 109 or above (Webb and Cobb), and this was in the NL, where the average ERA used to calculate ERA+ was 4.22 (vs. the AL ERA+ base of 4.48, roughly). Webb was near Ohtani's ERA of 3.14, with a 3.25 ERA, and Cobb had a 3.87 ERA. They varied their rotation to both keep Webb on a five day pitching pattern, mostly, and allow Cobb extra time for his hip to be well enough for him to pitch. </p><p>When the Giants had problems with the starting pitching, they were able to pivot before too much damage was done and their pitching was good enough to prop up the weak offense until the last two months of the season. That was good enough to get them above .500 by roughly 10 games for most of the summer before things fell apart. Their openers collectively had an 18-17 record in their "starts", which allowed the bulk feature pitcher the ability to face more of the bottom of the order. Meanwhile, all the Angels starters with ERA+ of 100 or less, had a collective 31-41 team record.</p><p>Thus, if Ohtani is back in the rotation in 2025, they likely have Webb as co-ace of the rotation, and Harrison will hopefully make the jump to ace status by that season, as well. Cobb will likely be aging out, so he's probably gone by then (age 37 season) or at best, a middle rotation guy, but Beck, Winn, Whisenhunt, Black, Birdsong, along with any future speculative free agent pickup like Gausman or Rodon, will fill out a good to great rotation. Even better if they are able to sign Yamamoto or Snell.</p><p><b>To Return to Contention: Giants Offense Need a Good Clean-Up hitter</b></p><p>The Giant's problem was mostly not pitching, it was hitting, especially the clean up hitter, who collectively had a .680 OPS, which isn't even good enough for the bottom of the lineup. And getting a good to great clean-up hitter, whether Ohtani or another bopper, like Bellinger, would boost the team into playoff contention, when combined with expected improvements in the starting pitching. </p><p>This can be seen with the addition of Ohtani, from good to elite, into the clean up spot, as shown by the lineup calculator. Fans when they are down on a team suddenly need all-stars at every position or else it's all a failure, but as I showed above, the Giants weren't all that far from being playoff competitive, had they an average to elite clean up hitter.</p><p><b>Addition by Subtraction</b></p><p>Another area of improvement needed is fielding. Errors pushed the Giants ERA of 4.02 to an RA of 4.44. This should be solved via the old addition by subtraction. Two of the Top 5 players with the worse DRS will be gone, Brandon Crawford and Joc Pederson (combined -19 DRS, or roughly two wins lost). </p><p>JD Davis was responsible for -10 DRS himself, and I expect Casey Schmitt to replace him as the starting 3B, as Davis' horrible 3B defense is a career long issue, costing 1.5-2.0 wins on a seasonal basis. Schmitt started off badly at 3B, but ended up looking great defensively there, per DRS. His bat also looked better. Luciano should not be as bad at SS (collectively -21 DRS; he had a -11 DRS/Yr rate), which is roughly 1 win improvement on defense there, though he's not likely to be average there, as most scouts have him moving to 3B or a corner OF position. He's still an overall improvement defensively if he's the starter. </p><p>There is also media talk (Baggarly of The Athletic) about signing Matt Chapman to start at 3B. I think that would be a better solution for 3B than starting Schmitt, who still have a lot of question marks about his bat. Chapman would greatly improve 3B, by around two wins over Davis just on defense, plus his bat is more than okay for 3B and an improvement over Davis as well (overall, he has produced roughly 4.0 bWAR annually the past three seasons). In addition, his great defense there would help to cover up any range issues Luciano might have playing SS, and help to hide his weaknesses fielding SS. </p><p>The other Top 5 are Luis Matos (-10 DRS) and Blake Sabol (-7 DRS). Matos might not even be the CF, if the Giants sign the Korean CF Jung-Hoo Lee, who has usually been a Gold Glove winner in KBO. If they strike out with him, Kiermeier is a free agent and would add around 20 DRS, if they can sign him. In any case, Matos' not going to get much playing time with that type of fielding even if they don't sign Lee or Kiermeier. </p><p>Sabol likely will be spending much of the season in AAA learning how to catch, as well as playing other positions, as they prepare him to be their utility player of the near future. I expect the Giants to use Bart as backup catcher, given his abilities there, at the beginning of the season, and possibly trade him before the trade deadline, once Sabol is average-ish defensively. </p><p>Bart still has some value, and would be a nice part of a bundle of players in a trade. I still think he can be a capable starting catcher if given the opportunity and experience. I would prefer keeping him as the back up catcher, to see if he can still develop his bat further, as his defense is considered good. As much as I like Bailey and think he's the long term solution, catcher is an injury prone position, so it wouldn't hurt to keep Bart around, just in case.</p><p>Altogether, that's -46 DRS, or roughly 5 wins added by subtracting them. And should lead to an overall improvement in defense, which was -17 DRS for the season. Subtracting them would push the team to +29 DRS. </p><p>And it should even be better.Adding Schmitt or Chapman should add another +10 DRS or so, pushing to roughly +40. If they can sign Lee to man CF (he's been a gold glove winner in KBO), that's likely another +10, pushing to +50 DRS. +29 would have been 10th in the majors, +39-40 would have been 6th, +49-50 would have been 4th. Kiermeier would push it up even higher.</p><p>Thus, the Giants could greatly turn around their overall fielding simply by replacing their top 5 offenders with average (+0 DRS) defenders. That alone would push them to 10th overall. And Schmitt (or Chapman) at 3B should push them to 6th. That should all be doable.</p><p><b>To Compete While Accommodating Ohtani's varying need for rest, from 5 to 7 days</b></p><p>In addition, Ohtani only started 23-28 starts the past three seasons. He needs a team that plans around the missing starts. The Giants need to demonstrate that Ohtani will run into the same issue with any other team, having to manage that uncertainty. </p><p>The Dodgers have experience managing pitchers who miss games, but have not had to juggle starts as a starter (like Cobb with the Giants this season) who needs another day of rest to make his start. I'm not sure about how SD, Seattle, Texas, Cubs, clubs that were allowed to talk with him back then, but haven't heard of them doing stuff like that. And the Mets, Yankees, and Red Sox have the money, but like these other clubs, isn't know for doing stuff like juggling their rotation with openers.</p><p>The Giant have that experience, as well as the success, as their pitching was good (and should be better next season with Harrison, Beck, Winn, and Walker on the staff all season, as well as subtraction of the laggards via less IP or DFA), and what they need is hitting to take advantage of the good pitching.</p><p><b>Contract Nuances</b></p><p>I also expect teams to structure the contract because of the uncertainty regarding his return to pitching. I expect that Ohtani will ask for player options after his second and third seasons, much like Cueto's contract. Ohtani will want the option of upgrading his contract if he can return successfully to the mound.</p><p>This might make him more amenable to a deal with the Giants. Nobody is going to doubt his abilities to hit, but this second pitching arm injury will be a huge question mark. The Giants not only have an organization focused on pitching, their park is a pitcher's park, and they already have a great pitching staff to build off of, by adding elite starters like Yamamoto and Ohtani to the rotation. </p><p>I also expect teams to work in a bonus structure tied to the number of starts made. The Giants have done that before with contracts for pitchers, and Zaidi did a very complicated one for Maeda in LA, because of his potential injury issues. I expect much the same with Ohtani negotiations.</p><p>As noted, I expect a player option for at least after the third year, perhaps also one after his second. Ohtani will have to accept a lower priced deal because of the uncertainty about him pitching. But whatever procedure he ended up doing to his arm (he has reportedly had it, but no news on what), he'll likely be not pitching in 2024, and might not even pitch a full season in 2025, depending on how things go, so there is a possibility that if things go well, 2026 would be the season he can pitch the full season, prove his worth, then opt out and get a bigger contract.</p><p>Given Zaidi's experience with injured pitchers contracts, one way to differentiate the Giants bid from others is to break down the Giants bid into one for his bat and one for his pitching. I would guess most teams are not willing to pay for his ability to pitch, given his uncertainty, and would price it via a game appearances bonus. If they can commit to at least $10M base plus appearances bonus, that would be more than other teams would offer, I believe. </p><p><b>SF Should be a Desirable Team</b></p><p>All of this makes the Giants a better destination. They need hitting, not pitching. They are desperate enough to accommodate whatever contract nuances he wants, especially over paying for his pitching. Everyone knows he can hit, so playing in SF won't hurt his value, but the park has been a pitcher's park for most of its existence, which would boost up his pitching performance if he's able to complete his comeback. The Giants have a pitching department, and has been aggressive in limiting their young pitching's usage in order to extend their careers, as well as facilities that presumably can help him recover better.</p><p>Hiring Melvin to be the manager helps as well. He's well known and well liked by players. He's won a number of awards as manager, showing how good he has been before. He's also associated with a number of the Japanese elite players like Ichiro, Nomo, Darvish, and thus viewed as a plus in pursuit of any Japanese free agents. </p><p>He would also be the marque Japanese player in Giants history, should he sign. They had the first Japanese player, plus had Shinjo in the 2000's, but neither of them were stars of Ohtani's magnitude. He would be the biggest Asian star, in a region where there is a significant proportion of Asian people.</p><p>Other potential positives include the Giants bullpen catcher coach who is a Japanese native, who would give Ohtani someone on the staff who he could communicate easily with in his native language. And if they are able to sign Yamamoto, that would give him a second native speaker.</p><p>He could sign here, hopefully recover to pitch well again, and more hopefully, win enough games in spite of the need to accommodate his needs and game readiness, to make the playoffs. That has to be key factor that the Giants pitch to Ohtani, demonstrating how the Angels didn't handle it well, and the need for expertise in handling his need to skip starts as he deems necessary, like what the Giants did this season. And as the above calculations show, the Giants would easily get into the playoffs with his hitting and with the expected improvements in the pitching rotation, and any free agent signings for 3B and CF would just improve the team's chances to get into the playoffs.</p><p><b>Other Giants Thoughts</b></p><p>I think it would help greatly if the Giants could first sign an ace pitcher to the rotation. Signing Lee to man CF would be nice as well, or Matt Chapman for 3B, to bolster the lineup. That would give them a stronger position to then go to Ohtani and engage in serious negotiations.</p><p>Also, as demonstrated above, the Giants really need a cleanup hitter who they can just automatically put in the lineup, so whether it's Ohtani (unfortunately, LA Dodgers look ideal for him, location, great team, constant playoffs, and wouldn't even have to move), or another slugger (like Bellinger), that is the number one priority for the off-season, as long as they can accomplish this without trading Kyle Harrison. </p><p><b>Just Say No to Trading Kyle Harrison</b></p><p>My fear right now is that signing Yamamoto would lead to the Giants trading Harrison. Harrison should reach ace level within one or two seasons, and that would really give the Giants a great core ace situation for the rest of the decade with him and Webb atop the rotation. And even better if they sign Yamamoto. I would be okay trading away the rest of the Giants bounty of young pitchers to trade for the cleanup hitter, but I would rather keep Harrison and try our luck next off-season for that clean-up hitter. And who knows, perhaps Luciano could be that cleanup hitter for us, his bat has that potential. </p><p>But Harrison being traded would not make me happy at all, I don't care if it is prime Trout we receive (and he's no longer in his prime). I would think seriously about wanting Zaidi removed if this happens. As I've discussed here often, it is elite pitching that enables teams to win championships. I've detailed this in my business plan link to the right side. Zaidi has been holding strong to keeping that type of focus, and as i've noted before, you can never have too much great pitching, the more the merrier is best for the pitching staff. </p><p>Sabean didn't listen to fans back then, he needed a cleanup hitter too, but kept Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez, Bumgarner, Wilson, Romo, and we needed every one of them contributing to get our first championship. Giants fans are crying now about the offense, forgetting that the dynasty teams weren't star driven lineups either. We had a star driven pitching staff.</p>obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-77942015352920371042023-10-14T21:52:00.001-07:002023-10-14T21:52:22.885-07:00Your 2023 Giants: It's Deja Vu All Over Again with Ann Killion<p>I generally love reading Ann Killion, but sometimes, she is way off. I once <a href="https://obsessivegiantscompulsive.blogspot.com/2007/12/giants-plan.html">responded in my blog</a> when she questioned the future plans of the Giants under Sabean. Here she goes again, <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/annkillion/article/farhan-zaidi-belabors-brand-giants-fans-18404624.php">this time in the Chronicle</a>, questioning Zaidi. </p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><b>ogc thoughts</b></p><p>Ann Killion wrote in her first paragraph, "They have to figure out who they want to be."</p><div><b>The Giants Know What They Want to Be: Pitching Powered</b></div><div><br /></div><div>The Giants Have a Plan: Pitching, Pitching, and more Pitching. This was obviously the focus of the Dynasty team that Sabean put together. And after over 20 seasons, it is pretty clear that the Giants ballpark is a pitcher's park. And this is what Farhan Zaidi has been building. Just look at how one of his first moves was creating a department for Pitching, and hiring Matt Daniels to teach pitching to Giants players. I cover in greater details in <a href="https://obsessivegiantscompulsive.blogspot.com/2018/11/hey-zaidi-my-giants-business-plan.html">my baseball business plan</a> why pitching is a good position to focus on, but will touch on some key areas below.</div><div><br /></div><div>And based on what I've seen with his actions, he has been implementing a year by year plan to build out the Giants next competitive core.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Pitching, Pitching, and More Pitching</b></div><div><p>There is an art to drafts, as well as a need to adjust yearly to the rhythm of pitcher development. College hitters tend to provide more likely value, and sooner, and that was the focus of Zaidi's first draft. Which, unfortunately, didn't work out, none of them are really much of a prospect today. Ironically, the one with the most potential is their high school pick, Grant McCray, who strikes out way too much, and the best and most likely to produce some value is Tyler Fitzgerald, but the odds are still long for him because he has little draft pedigree (4th round draftee) and was still striking out too much in AAA. </p><p>Zaidi's second draft was a mix of pitching and hitting, but is the one where he hit the jackpot. He targeted and arranged his picks to enable him to cobble together enough bonus money to offer Kyle Harrison first round money, while picking him in the third round. Harrison is the key prospect around which the NextGen Giants will be built.</p><p><b>The NextGen Giants Will be Led by Kyle Harrison, Hopefully</b></p><p>This is similar in timing to 2007, where Webb is Cain, a good to great pitcher who pitches more to contact, but can strike out hitters too, and Harrison is Lincecum, an electric pitcher who strikes out a ton of hitters while also walking a bit too much. Harrison's MLB debut was obviously mixed, but the future looks bright for him because he has pitches that MLB hitters already swing and miss a lot, and if he can limit the mistake pitches that becomes homers, he's already a good pitcher in his other peripherals.</p><p>The Giants must have realized what they got with Harrison and Webb, so in their third and fourth drafts, Zaidi drafted almost entirely pitchers with their picks down to Round 10, with the only position players being seniors whose bonuses are almost zero, allowing the Giants to spend more on pitchers in the earlier rounds. And instead of throw away seniors, the Giants have drafted seniors who exhibit skills that they desire, in Vaun Brown and Wade Meckler, getting value there as well.</p><p>As I've written about the draft before, it is a mix of luck and talent. Humans can only go so far and so often in identifying good players, it is like being a hitter where .300 (or 30%) is a good percentage for success. Except the level of success is closer to .050-.100. So I view the volume draft method as a key ingredient of Sabean's tenure: even though pitchers made up less than 50% of the 25-man roster back then, he always drafted more pitchers than hitters, and almost always used his first round draft pick on a pitcher, spending a huge amount of his draft bullets (which can be measured crudely by summing up bonus money). And Zaidi went with the volume method even more so than Sabean, drafting, from what I recall, 17 pitchers out of the 20 picks they had from round 1 to 10 in 2021 and 2022.</p><p><b>Focusing Drafts on Pitching</b></p><p>It just makes sense, especially with a pitching emphasis. If you are going to get lucky, be lucky with pitchers because the more you have of good pitching, the better your team will be. It also builds a backlog to cover for the fact that pitchers tend to be injured and flame out quicker than good position players.</p><p>Moreover, if you find three good pitchers, you have a great rotation. Even talented pitchers who flame out as starters can create value as a good reliever, as the stress of starting is what breaks down their body. But if you find three good position players, if any are playing the same position (think McCovey and Cepeda both being firstbasemen), you either lose value by pushing him to another position (if possible; which invites injury, see McCovey playing the OF) or by having to trade him to fill a gap elsewhere (and studies have shown that, in general, trades involved getting the prospects and players the other team finds lacking in some way, and if you have to trade a good player, you end up taking a shave in value received).</p><p><b>Player Development Takes Time</b></p><p>And while Giants fans moan about giving Zaidi five years to find prospects (actually, only four drafts, can't rebuild otherwise), prospects take time to develop into major leaguers. Let's look at Kyle Harrison. </p><p>He was drafted out of High School in 2020 draft, and because of the pandemic year, he couldn't even start his pro career in any way. Still, he progressed quickly, and reached the majors only 3 years after he was drafted. Which only very good prospects do! Especially high school prospects. Now he needs time to mature and develop into a good player. </p><p>So, Zaidi has already found a very good prospect, who reached the majors in a very short span, especially since he missed his first pro season, and yet the vast majority of fans on social media is crying about how he hasn't find a prospect. Zaidi did his job, which is find a good prospect (heck, very good prospect, top ranked LHP in most Top 100 rankings), and the prospect reached the majors in 3 years in spite of missing his first pro season, which most prospects do not do. </p><p>And that's from only his second draft, which also includes Patrick Bailey, who had a good start to his MLB career this season, and Casey Schmitt, who clearly needs to improve his hitting, but shows some potential to be a valuable complementary player. That's three players who reached the majors in three seasons, which, if compared with other teams, is better than what other teams got.</p><p>Most good players take 4-6 seasons from when they are signed as prospects to become good players. They might take 2-3 seasons to reach the majors, but generally, expect 4-6 years between signing a prospect and seeing him produce a good season (and that's IF he ever becomes good, as my draft studies show, the vast majority of draft picks, including first rounders, don't even make the majors, let alone become useful like Joe Panik, let alone become a good player like Cain, Lincecum, and Bumgarner, or a HOF-level player like Posey.</p><p>Thus, five years is way to early to judge his improvement of the farm system solely by who is contributing at the major league level. You have to be more nuanced in your estimation and projection. You have to consider what was successful in the past, too.</p><p>For example, Bobby Cox the GM tanked the Braves for an excruciating six years of 90+ losses (first season was by his predecessor), to find his NextGen player, Chipper Jones, in his fifth draft. After which, he named himself manager and waited for Jones to mature and reach the majors. Based on Giants fans outcry over Zaidi, Cox would have been fired by the fans after four drafts/five seasons, before he drafted Chipper Jones and became the manager and model for many fans of how to manage a baseball team.</p><p>And as I noted in a recent post, Sabean was in similar straits as Cox, he took over the 1997 team, and it wasn't until his 6th draft that he selected his first good player in the first round, Matt Cain in 2002. Giants fans then and today (hey, I was one of them) wanted to fire Sabean for not developing any players, back in that day. </p><p>It took my first research of the draft to discover how extremely hard it is to find a good player upon which to build a competitive team, and drove me to support Sabean for both of his two year extensions, in the face of almost universal disdain for Sabean from 2005-2010. Understanding how hard it is to draft made me focus more on his ability to identify and obtain good talent, as demonstrated in trades for Reuter, Kent, Burk, Nen, Schmidt, and others, while rarely giving up much of anything in trade (one great reliever, one great closer, one up and down ace starter). My draft, pitching, and playoff success research and readings drove me to the conclusion of how teams win regularly in the playoffs: great pitching (which boiled down to the ability to strike out a lot of batters) is the key ingredient.</p><p><b>The Giants Know Where Their Competitive Advantage Lies</b></p><p>The Giants have figured out what their competitive advantage is: build a team around pitching. Their park favors pitchers, and really hurt left-handed power hitters not named Barry Lamar Bonds (hence why the only reason Ohtani would come here is because he wants to pitch again). There are also all the benefits that derive from a focus on being great at pitching, as I've detailed in <a href="https://obsessivegiantscompulsive.blogspot.com/2018/11/hey-zaidi-my-giants-business-plan.html">my baseball business plan</a>.</p><p>Thus I expect the Giants to solve the lame duck issue with Zaidi by giving him at least another year, if not two, as an extension, around the same time they name their new manager. That was how the Giants operated back in the dark Sabean era where the fans wanted Beane instead, at the end of the season, they announced two year extensions for him. Since Zaidi has a team option for next season, I expect the team to announce a two year (or even three, considering how key it is for the team to sign elite free agents this season) extension for him, based on the improvements in the farm system and baseball operations. That will be a show of support, as well as eliminate the lame duck aspect for him as he tries to convince the premier free agents to join the Giants from 2024 on.</p><p>The caveat is that this is similar to the 2007 season, where the Giants brass decided that signing Barry Zito to a record contract was the way to go. It is encouraging to me that instead, Zaidi has said that he is eyeing Ohtani (of course, but not likely), Yamamoto (more possible, given pitcher's park, Giants history, Giants Japanese coach, and gobs of money available, plus West Coast location), and hopefully players like Snell and Bellinger. The main problem is that LA and NY teams also have gobs of money, and might go all in as well. But the thing is, the Giants need to sign at least one of them, and I hope they focus on the ace pitchers. Snell hasn't been mentioned in rumors, however, so, for me, the only hope I see is signing Yamamoto. But given Bellinger's checkered past, they might be able to sign him as well. We'll see.</p></div>obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-63770935088279498282023-10-04T21:19:00.000-07:002023-10-04T21:19:50.660-07:00Your 2023 Giants: To Zaidi or Not Series - Five Years!!!<p>The Giants fanbase, from the view of The Athletic's comment pages for the Giants, are in an uproar about Farhan Zaidi's stewardship of the Good Championship Giants. The Zaidi Haters complaints include but are not limited to:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Five years is enough to rebuild a farm system and the team</li><li>2023 season was a disaster</li><li>The farm system has not made any progress</li><li>They are not as good as Texas, LAD, Atlanta, etc.</li><li>Zaidi is in love with platoons and openers</li><li>Zaidi can't sign the best free agents; there's no stars</li><li>What's the plan?</li></ul><div>This is the first in a series examining each complaint.</div><p></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><b>ogc thoughts</b></p><p>Okay, I'm going to tackle the first complaint about Zaidi having five years already, which they believe is enough years to rebuild a farm system and team.</p><p><b>Five Years!!!</b></p><p>This is one of the most adamant declaration among the Zaidi Haters. Unfortunately, this exposes their lack of knowledge about how baseball players develop into good players. It also exposes their lack of knowledge about how hard it is to even draft a good player, as well as develop him to become good. </p><p>Let's start with the draft. As my studies have shown, it is extremely hard to find and develop and keep healthy a good player, even with first round draft picks. My last study found that a little less than half of the #1 overall draft picks end up a good player (which I had defined as 18.0 bWAR). The #2 overall pick (like Joey Bart) was just short of 30% success rate. </p><p>By the middle of the first round, it's around 16%, which means that on average it takes up to six drafts to find one, then you need to spend the time developing him, and then the time he needs to become good (roughly 3+ bWAR). And if the team is a strong division leader contender, the odds are roughly 5%, meaning it could take up to 20 years of the draft to find that one to stay on average. </p><p>Thus, competitive teams could take from six to 20 years and it wouldn't be far from average. And that's just the time of drafting him. Obviously, no one has any firm idea at the time of the draft or during development whether that prospect will become good. Talent can only take you so far, health as well. You won't know until way after the fact.</p><p>And it could take years. Chase Utley, who many consider a really good player (he actually ended just short of the 18.0, but still a good illustration of the length of time to develop), was drafted in 2000 by the Phillies at age 21. He reached the majors at age 24, taking three years to reach the majors. He didn't have a full season with great stats until age 26, six years after he was drafted. It takes most players 4 to 6 years to develop after they are drafted.</p><p>How about an example closer to home: Brian Sabean. He took over for the 1997 season, and his first real draft success with the Giants was Matt Cain. Cain was drafted in 2002, five years later, so much like Zaidi, fans today would be after Sabean's head to be fired since he hadn't found a good player yet. And Cain didn't have a good season indicative of how good he would be, until 2007, a good ten years later. </p><p>And in reality, Giants fans were angry with Sabean, as well as the media, with the pinnacle being Baseball Prospectus spending the annual chapter for the Giants describing all the ways Sabean sucks and why he should be fired before the 2010 season (ooops...). He made up for lost time by drafting Lincecum, Bumgarner, Wilson, Romo, Posey, Wheeler, Crawford, Belt and Panik over the next five seasons or so.</p><p>Therefore, between the 6 to 20 years to find the player, and 4 to 6 years to develop, it could be many many years past the fifth year, and that GM/leader could be average still. Or better, in Sabean's case.</p><p>So how does a regular fan like us identify progress by the new front office, without waiting 5-10 years? You have to look for progress among the prospects, not just players who are elite and jump to the majors in 2-3 years and do well. In Sabean's case, you needed to see that he was finding good players, like Williams, Ainsworth and Foppert, players who look like they would be good, but something got in their way. Eventually they led to Cain and the dynasty players.</p><p>In Zaidi's case, I'll bring up one of the early discoveries when I went down the draft research rabbit hole. Most fans don't know, but Bobby Cox was the GM of the Braves before he named himself the manager of the Braves. And he tanked the team for six horrendous seasons, they averaged about 95-100 losses during that period. He picked up Chipper Jones in their 1990 draft, and Cox got his farm and team improvements, and literally took over as manager soon after the draft.</p><p><b>Harrison the Ace Superstar to Be</b></p><p>So the way I see it is you got to find those diamonds in the draft, and for Zaidi, the clear diamond from the moment he started accumulating stats as a pro, was Kyle Harrison. He has been elitely dominant, striking out far beyond what almost every other pitcher could do at every level he was promoted to. He may have struggled some with each level, but with time, he conquered each one and moved on to the next. </p><p>Now Harrison has made the majors, and he has only continued to strikeout batters at an elite level, as well as showing strong command, walking few. In fact, the only thing he had a weakness for is the long ball, which hopefully his short return to AAA helped fix, whatever the problem was. The main questions for me is when he can be an ace and if he can stay healthy.</p><p>Health isn't anything one can predict very well. Matt Pryor had a pitcher's body and great mechanics, and his body failed him. Harrison has a pitcher's body, much like Cainer. He's an electric dynamic pitcher, much like Lincecum, striking out a lot, but good control and command, much like MadBum. And he has the bulldog mentality that MadBum had. Fortunately, he also seems to have the maturity that Cainer had too, unlike Lincecum and MadBum, so I don't expect him to burn out like those two. </p><p>Pitcher injury has been found to be predicted by prior injury. And Cain had elbow problems almost from the moment he was drafted - it was so bad that another prospect rose above him after their first pro season - and, really, seems to be a miracle that he had as long a career as he did. Harrison's only health issue was his hamstring this summer, and the Giant have brought him along slowly, building up pitch count and innings, so they have not put a lot of wear and tear on his body. So health appears to not be an issue, yet.</p><p>As to when he can be an ace, Bumgarner was good from the get go, but both Cain and Lincecum needed a full season to figure things out. It depends on what Harrison has to give up in order to limit the homers, and we won't know too much how much he's succeeded with just a couple of starts. But ZIPS predicts a 3.78 ERA for 2024, and that would be good as a middle starter behind Webb and Cobb, both of whom are top of rotation starters for the Giants, and if he can make his jump by mid-2024, he could clean up wins facing middle rotation guys for half the season. </p><p>An ace, as I see it, has to be above 9.0 K/9, as well as have a K/BB ratio at least 3, but ideally 4+. Kyle is at 9.1 K/9 and 3.2 K/BB, so he's pretty good already in small samples. And he's doing this as a total rookie, only 21 YO, not knowing the batters in the league at all, so he's just challenging hitters willy-nilly, likely. So he'll dial it back some, maybe learn some pitch sequencing, and whether 2024 or 2025, he's likely their ace for the next decade, give or take, health permitting. He and Webb should make a formidable duo atop the rotation for the rest of this decade.</p><p><b>Zaidi Magic</b></p><p>Then there's Zaidi's pickup magic over the years. He found Gausman, Rodon, and Cobb, and the team helped them figure out how to utilize their abilities, as well as stay healthy enough to last a season. Obviously, can't rely on that every season, but once every two or three seasons is roughly the rate he's been finding them, and that would make the rotation that season elite, having three aces (or more).</p><p>He won't be able to take on as many fliers, but as the team roster solidifies and there's not as many moving (platoon) parts, there would also be less need for platoons, openers, and waiver wire roulette. </p><p>It's much like Sabean's M.O. during his reign. Players like Uribe, Casilla, Torres, Blanco, Petit, and Strickland, who he picked up for basically nothing, but got a good complementary player who made the team a bit better. Zaidi seems to have a knack for this type of pickups, and I expect it to continue. </p><p><b>Fire Sabean! Five Years!</b></p><p>The irony has not escaped me that these people would have fired Brian Sabean anywhere between 2001 and 2006, before any of the good stuff happened. Sabean was appointed the Giants GM officially after the 1996 season. He had been poached from the Yankees when the team was bought, for Bob Quinn to teach him the business. </p><p>Now, it was different in that Sabean had more to work with on the team, so he was able to turn them around immediately to win the division. But by the end of 2001, it was five years and none of the Giants drafts were delivering players to the team, let alone a good player. Based on their statements about Zaidi - "It has been five years, and he doesn't even have one good player developed" - Sabean would have been fired for incompetence in developing the farm system. </p><p>And that's what changed my opinion about Sabean, because I was one of those worried about his lack of success in the draft, but excited about his ability to find great players in trade. So I decided to research how good teams like the A's, Yankees, Braves, and I think Dodgers, did and I was going to compare Sabean with them to prove his incompetence. Instead, I discovered that other teams with good reputations for drafting actually got those players when they were not all that good, netting them good draft position, but once they became competitive regularly, their draft success ended. </p><p>Because of that discovery, I decided to research the draft, pulling the data on the first 100 picks overall, from The Baseball Cube, which was the only source back then. I set up some parameters for what constituted a good player, and my research showed that it is extremely hard to draft and develop a good player, even with first round draft picks, even with the top picks overall. I recreated the research using Baseball-Reference.com's draft data, utilizing bWAR this time (before, batting average and ERA, tweaking for who I thought was good). </p><p>And both times, the draft is a crapshoot, every seemingly successful pick appeared random. Using my percentages, I calculated the odds of finding good players, and Sabean has been above average, from what I recall, with Bart and Ramos still on the clock for producing under his era. Bart probably is not getting there, but Ramos is still young enough and good enough that he could still become a good player.</p><p><br /></p>obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-38460423044653693062023-09-25T21:31:00.000-07:002023-09-25T21:31:24.218-07:00Troubling News: Brian Bannister Left the Giants<p>As reported by various media (MLB.com for example), Brian Bannister left the Giants Director of Pitching position for the White Sox's Pitching Advisor position. </p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><b>ogc thoughts</b></p><p>I was actually gut punched by this one. I viewed Bannister as Zaidi's pitching guru, much like Dick Tidrow was Brian Sabean's pitching guru. And now he's gone.</p><p>Here are some quotes (<a href="https://www.mlb.com/giants/news/giants-making-adjustments-to-coaching-staff">MLB.com</a>) that align with my perception:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li></li><li>[Bannister] emerged as a <b>valuable resource for pitchers</b> across all levels of the organization, <b>offering feedback on everything from mechanical tweaks to analytics to pitch design</b>. Along with pitching coaches Andrew Bailey and J.P. Martinez, Bannister helped turn San Francisco into an attractive destination for pitchers who were looking to rebound, with Kevin Gausman, Carlos Rodón and Alex Cobb among the team’s recent success stories.</li><li>“He’s the think tank behind it all,” Cobb said. “<b>I think a lot of the success that you guys have seen, all the reclamation projects that have happened, myself included -- he’s seen diamonds in the rough and understood how to incorporate what he saw in the dude. … It’s a huge loss.</b>”</li><li>“It’s a tough one,” added left-hander Kyle Harrison. “<b>He’s a smart dude. He knows his stuff. He’s going to help them out in Chicago. Definitely a tough guy to lose. He definitely helped me out in my Minor League career.</b>”</li><li>“We’ll miss Banny,” Kapler said. “Such a great contributor for us for several years. <b>One of the things that stands out about Banny and his skill set is he can diagnose problems very well. He thinks critically about how to fix those problems. He was a great resource to our Major League pitching staff, but also to our Minor League system.</b> I’m happy for him, though.”</li></ul><p></p><p>Also, Handy Andy Baggarly of <b><a href="https://theathletic.com/4896664/2023/09/24/giants-pitching-free-agency/" target="_blank">The Athletic</a> (subscription needed),</b> as per usual, shared good and additional information as well:</p><ul><li></li><li></li><li></li><li>The Giants will have to keep <b>developing pitchers without Bannister, whose innovations particularly in the areas of pitch mix and seam-shifted movement helped the Giants establish an organizational strength</b>.</li><li>Why did the Giants permit such a lauded member of their coaching staff to depart for a job that isn’t a clear promotion? Someone so important that they accommodated to work remotely all last season because he was not in compliance with Major League Baseball’s COVID-19 vaccine requirements?</li><li>Zaidi said Bannister’s contract was expiring and so he informed the 42-year-old former right-handed pitcher that the Giants would grant permission to anyone who called. <b>Bannister, who operates a private coaching and consulting business on the side, told Zaidi that the White Sox opportunity offered greater work/life balance</b>. </li><li></li><li>“Nothing nefarious,” Zaidi said. “I told him we wanted to keep him, but we weren’t going to stand in the way if there was an opportunity he preferred for whatever reason.”</li><li>Several Giants pitchers including [Alex] Wood and John Brebbia cited their work with Bannister and called his departure a significant loss.</li><li>“<b>He’s one of the smartest pitching guys I’ve been around and he has a lot to do with a lot of guys signing here</b>,” Wood said. “<b>Banny had a knack for identifying things you could do to be better, and also how to accomplish those things. He was really good at coming up with solutions you could try to propel yourself forward. But so are (pitching coaches) J.P. (Martinez) and Andrew Bailey. He’ll be tough to replace but they have good people here.</b>”</li><li>“That’s why I came here to begin with,” Brebbia said. “Looking around the league, seeing the pitchers who had come in and come out, there’s a distinct advantage to being a Giants pitcher. There are definitely other teams that are good at it. But it was pretty clear the Giants were in the elite level of teams.</li><li>“There’s no question Banny is elite at what he does. Up and down, our staff on the pitching side — and that’s all I know because they haven’t worked with me on hitting, which in fairness, probably would be a waste of time — is incredible at what they do. It stinks to lose a guy like that. <b>But anything Banny added to the organization, our current coaching staff can do.</b>”</li><li></li><li>[Andrew] Bailey added one more thought: <b>Bannister might be leaving, but everything that pitchers and fellow coaches learned from him is still in the bank</b>.</li><li>“We can carry on his thoughts and perspectives and the ways he was able to educate myself and others in the organization,” Bailey said. “<b>One of his strong suits is working with pitchers in the moment and understanding data points from a higher point of view. I’m very confident moving forward with the staff we have here and throughout the organization to continue to develop pitchers both at the major-league level and minor-league levels. … Hopefully we’ll bring someone in who will broaden our knowledge and make us even better.</b>”</li></ul><p>Here are some <a href="https://www.si.com/mlb/giants/news/white-sox-hire-away-sf-giants-coach-brian-bannister">key Giants pitching stats</a> since Bannister was hired:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><p>sixth-lowest ERA (3.81)</p></li><li><p>lowest FIP (3.72)</p></li><li><p>fourth-lowest xFIP (3.90)</p></li><li><p>third-lowest BB/9 (2.75)</p></li><li><p>third-lowest K/9 (3.15)</p></li><li><p>lowest HR/9 (0.97).</p></li></ul><p>I don't know the stats before, but given how poorly the Giants performed previously, I'm pretty sure it wasn't this good. In any case, this type of pitching excellence is great for building a strong annual contender. Thus, losing Bannister was quite the gut punch news for me. </p><p>Furthermore, this is followed by Matt Daniels leaving last off-season for another job (find news about where he landed), as well as the Giants blocking Andrew Bailey, the third pitching guru that the team had, from joining another team, and the shock of Brian Sabean leaving the Giants to basically take a similar position with the New York Yankees last off-season.</p><p><b>Problems in the Front Office</b></p><p>The key question for me is this: why didn't the Giants try to retain him with a similar front office job? And the new position isn't that much different from the one he did for the Giants, so at best, this is a lateral move, which also suggests that Bannister just wanted to get away from the Giants. </p><p>Life/work balance makes sense when you have to travel around teaching the pitchers, but the Giants were willing to let him zoom into training sessions before, and how is that not good life/work balance if he's working from home? Perhaps he really enjoyed that freedom and closeness in 2022, but that was taken away in 2023 by having to travel again. Still, if he really wanted to stay, and if the Giant really wanted him to stay, you would think they could figure something out, like in 2022. Thus, I sense some upset on Bannister's part, as well as the Giants, and a parting of the ways was the best solution.</p><p>Still, all this churning of key personnel who were all helping Zaidi with scouting and advice on pitching does not speak well for his management style. Sabean had hardly any churn among his lieutenants during his tenure as GM, they only left for better positions (and Ned Colletti is the only one who comes to mind, aside from all the various International Directors over the years; well, the other is Pat Dobson, but he passed away at a young age, he didn't leave voluntarily). Though, this is a new generation, and employee turnover is not as big a deal in the new millenium as it was last century, so maybe I'm just being an old dinosaur.</p><p>Also, the quote from Baggarly assuage some of my upset that I had when I started writing this post. It looks like the Giants at minimum have people in place who can do what Bannister did, and that they might be looking for his replacement. It will be interesting to see who (assuming they replace him) they find.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0