obsessivegiantscompulsive

Villalona's Nearly Here: Got Work Visa

2012-02-11T11:14:00.000-08:00

Andy Baggarly of the Merc reported here that Villalona got his work visa and will be able to return to the U.S. to play ball for the Giants. Here are some key excerpts, the URL is usually shut down after a certain period of time:

The Giants expect him to be at Scottsdale Stadium when position players report Feb. 23.

Major League Baseball removed Villalona from its restricted list late last year, and the Giants added him to their 40-man roster to prevent another club from plucking him away in the Rule 5 draft. All players on the 40-man roster receive automatic invitations to big league camp in the spring.

Villalona already has a flight booked to the U.S., Evans said. But the club hasn't yet received confirmation that Villalona has gone through the final step in the process to take possession of the visa. That process involves a face-to-face interview, an identity check and proof of travel documents.

He's considered a premier, power-hitting first baseman and has been working out at the Giants' complex in the Dominican. According to scouting reports, he still has plenty of the bat speed that made him a standout talent as a teenager.

Villalona is not a candidate to make the Giants' opening-day roster, but there's a good chance he will be assigned to Single-A San Jose at some point this season.

Giants Thoughts

There has not been a lot of news about his condition or anything so this is pure nuggets of information. First, it is not like he is totally rusty, he has been working out at the Giants Dominican complex, and presumably facing live pitching there, as they note that his bat speed is still there. Which was what I expected, that is why I've been excited about his return to the Giants farm system. Basically, a top 40 level prospect has been dropped back into our farm system, a 5 star prospect, boosting our overall farm system talent level.

San Jose sounds about right, that was the level he was at before his career detour, and he was doing OK there, not great, and at age 21 now, he is age appropriate for top prospect level at the Advanced A level. Though most probably the Giants would start him off in instructional league, then when they think he is ready, either Augusta or even Salem-Keizer, then finally San Jose, maybe for the second half. That should be more than enough to get his feet back on the ground, hopefully.

Also, hopefully he has worked off a lot of his baby fat and is more compact and muscular now, though he should always be a big boi. From what I recall, he was really big, making Sandoval look like a Twiggy in comparison. With all that time off, I hope he worked every day at getting himself into better shape.

If he can get back up to speed, he can still possibly be a good young prospect when he makes the majors, assuming he can get his career back on track. I figured if he had great bat speed when he was 13 YO, there should be no way he would lose it while out of organized baseball. At worse, he can take swings off a tee or other batting equipment, and with his money, he can at least have a pitching machine setup built at his home so that he can bat off of it. That would help keep his reaction speed good enough for when he returned to organized baseball.

With Sandoval and Belt, though, the Giants should be set at those two positions - 1B and 3B - for years, so unless he learns to play the OF (unlikely at his size) or Belt gets pushed out to LF again, Villalona could be just a big trading chip the Giants can use to obtain more pitching or whatever else that they need, when the time comes.

Prospecting the 2012 Giants Prospects: Checking the Lists

2012-02-10T20:40:00.000-08:00

Being of sound mind and cheap genes, I wanted to point out some free analysis from name sources on the Giants top prospects, plus run through the Minor League Baseball Analyst book's list, which comes from Ron Shandler's fine group of analysts, and which I just received in the mail yesterday. I will provide comments as they percolate up in my foggy mind, still can't shake the cough or recover fully yet.

Baseball Prospectus Future Shock Giants Top 11

You can access their free content here. They don't usually make it free, but randomly chose a few teams to be free. Plus, they have now opened up their archives and anything over a year old is now available for free, so you can get his lists from prior years, though 2011's is still embargoed for another few days. Here is Kevin Goldstein's list:

System in 20 Words or Less: They have just one elite prospect, but the 2011 draft created the potential for more of them.

Five-Star Prospects

1. Gary Brown, OF
Three-Star Prospects
2. Joe Panik, SS
3. Heath Hembree, RHP
4. Tommy Joseph, C/1B
5. Kyle Crick, RHP
6. Andrew Susac, C
7. Eric Surkamp, LHP
8. Francisco Peguero, OF
Two-Star Prospects
9. Mike Kickham, LHP
10. Josh Osich, LHP
11. Charlie Culberson, SS

Nine More
12. Hector Sanchez, C: He’s a plus defender, but he possesses few secondary skills at the plate.
13. Ehire Adrianza, SS: This defensive wizard has had injury problems, and questions about his bat remain.
14. Jesus Galindo, OF: He’s an absolute burner without power, but could compete for minor-league stolen-base titles.
15. Joan Gregorio, RHP: A raw Dominican arm, he’s also 6-foot-7 with power stuff.
16. Brett Pill, UT: His ability to hit and play multiple positions could make him an ideal backup.
17. Ricky Oropesa, 1B: This 2011 third-round pick has massive raw power, but is a one-dimensional slugger.
18. Jarrett Parker, OF: Though he's athletic and toolsy, Parker's showing in the Cal League last year disappointed.
19. Hector Correa, RHP: This reliever has an outside shot at reaching the big leagues this year, but he has a seventh-inning ceiling.
20. Conor Gillaspie, 3B: His improved approach in 2011 raised his stock, but he lacks the power of a corner infielder.

Go there to read, he has a full description of the Top 11 there.

ogc Thoughts

I think this list is a typical list one would see for the 2012 Giants. The first name to jump out to me was Mike Kickham, at #9. He did not show up on either of the other lists. It was noted that he made "impressive progress during the year", as "he pitched well and improved as the season wore on." "Kickham has plus low-90s velocity and became more comfortable with adding sink to the pitch and generating ground balls in the second half." However, "Kickham's secondary pitches lag behind."

He also had Osich #10. It was noted that he was first round talent until his elbow problems dropped him, where the Giants selected him in the sixth round. "Osich has big-time velocity for a southpaw; he sits at 92-95 mph and touches 98. He has a plus changeup with plenty of depth and fade, and a fast-paced, aggressive style of pitching." Could be a power reliever or a third starter if his health holds up.

He's the only one of the three to mention Brett Pill, who he had at 16th (he gave 9 extra for a total of 20, but only short sentence blurbs). He noted Pill's "ability to hit and play multiple positions could make him an ideal backup."

Lastly, I thought for sure that Panik and Hembree would be 4 Star prospects, so that was disappointing to me.

MLB.com Prospects Giants Top 20

You can access the article here and the descriptions of each prospect here.

GIANTS' TOP PROSPECTS
1 Gary Brown OF 2013
2 Francisco Peguero OF 2012
3 Heath Hembree RHP 2012
4 Eric Surkamp LHP 2012
5 Tommy Joseph C 2014
6 Charlie Culberson 2B 2013
7 Joe Panik 2B 2013
8 Ehire Adrianza SS 2014
9 Chris Dominguez 3B 2013
10 Conor Gillaspie 3B 2012
11 Clayton Blackburn RHP 2015
12 Joan GregorioRHP 2015
13 Hector Sanchez C 2012
14 Jesus Galindo OF 2015
15 Andrew Susac C 2014
16 Kyle Crick RHP 2015
17 Ricky Oropesa 1B 2014
18 Adam Duvall 3B 2014
19 Josh Osich LHP 2014
20 Jarrett Parker OF 2014

ogc Thoughts

Again, most of the list looks like it makes sense, but, wow, Panik is ranked 7th on their list (though he was placed 3rd in the article, but I'll go with the full ranking list). He noted that many didn't see him as a first rounder, so I assume that he was one of those (FYI, Perfect Games thought he had risen enough to be the first MI selected, and John Sickels, while he had him lower, thought that it was not a stretch for the Giants to do that). And there are a number of names that dropped down lower than I would think: Andrew Susac was ranked #15 (he was #6 and #4 in the other two rankings examined here) and Kyle Crick #16 (#5 and #8).

On positives, Mayo says don't be surprised if Brown gets to SF sometime this season. And he notes that #2 Peguero has "tools galore". His description of #3 Heath Hembree reminds me of Wilson: "Hembree has the power arsenal to continue in the closing role he's been filling, with an overpowering fastball that will reach the upper 90's on the radar gun." And he has Clayton Blackburn #11 (BP did not even mention him): "He's polished, especially for a high schooler, and has four pitches, highlighted by a good sinking fastball, all of which he can throw for strikes."

Minor League Baseball Analyst Top 15

While not free, I have to put in a plug for my favorite prospect book (real cheap on Amazon). I like that they consider age relative to level when doing their analysis, I am strongly in that camp.

Gary Brown, OF
Francisco Peguero, OF
Joe Panik, 2B
Andrew Susac, C
Heath Hembree, RHP
Ehire Adrianza, SS
Eric Surkamp, LHP
Kyle Crick, RHP
Tommy Joseph, C
Charlie Culberson, 2B
Hector Sanchez, C
Jesus Galindo, OF
Clayton Blackburn, RHP
Jarrett Parker, OF
Joan Gregorio, RHP

ogc Thoughts

Again, no real big surprises, for the most part, every list has the same core group of prospects but the order changes depending on what they value more as well as their opinion of that particular prospect. For me, reading the description of each is the value add, as I get their opinion on each player's strengths and weaknesses. Nothing that really catches my eye here.

Other than that most ranks have Peguero higher than I would put him.

If I have time and inclination, I will put together my Big 6 Prospect List during spring training, after my mind has had time to ruminate on all the info and let it all mesh together. I go with 6 because, to me, prospect watching is more about the guys who look like they are going to make it sooner or later. I will again quote El Lefty Malo, who was quoting, if I recall right, Kevin Goldstein of BP: most systems at any time have on average two who will become starters and two who will become bench/bullpen players.

I think that illuminates how hard it really is for any prospect to make the majors, plus put the lie to the idea that a team should be able to put together a team solely from the farm system. Remember, often the two starters are on the prospect list for at least a couple of years, if not up to 4-6 years. Even if a team is really able to generate 2 starters and 2 bench players each and every season, a team has 14 starters - 8 position, 5 starting pitchers, 1 closer - and that would take a minimum of 7 seasons for any team to fill up their 25 man roster with farm players. Minimum.

Thus all the commentary and complaints about how the Giants don't know how to produce position players misses the fact that it is almost impossible for a team to build within, and thus a team should focus on building its core competencies first, which as I've been saying, is having a strong dominating starting rotation (as shown by PQS) and a good to great closer. Once that is done, then you can switch focus to filling position players, though along the way, if a position player is the BPA (like Posey), you go for him too.

And that is basically what has happened, the Giants focused all their first round picks on mostly pitching, particularly since Tidrow joined the staff, until they had enough, then they started picking up a lot of position players, particularly with their early round picks and particularly prospects who were once first round worthy but for one reason or another fell when the draft arrived. But it has worked out for Giants fans like Brandon Crawford and Andrew Susac, who got selected by their boyhood team. And it has worked out for the Giants, as they have a boatload of good position players, some already up in Posey, Sandoval, Belt, some arriving soon, in Brown, Panik, Peguero, Joseph, and maybe Crawford and/or Adrianza, plus still possibly Culberson, Parker, and Noonan.

As DrB has been going through on his site, covering his Giants Top 50, this is exciting times for Giants prospect hounds. Not that long ago, guys who are ranked in the teens and 20's or lower would have been among the Giants top 10 lists. For example, I think Bochy the Younger would have been a Top 10 Giants prospect back in the fallow days. John Barr took a good scouting system and put turbos in, seemingly overnight, I hope we can keep him around, he and Tidrow make a good pair working under Sabean.

Filling out the Roster: Giants Sign Henley and The Riot

2012-01-27T17:56:00.000-08:00

The Giants in the past two days have signed two more players, Clay Hensley and Ryan "The Riot" Theriot, both to non-guaranteed major league contracts (Baggs: both will go on the 40-man once they pass their physicals, says that there are two openings; obviously, non-guaranteed means they can be DFAed for much less than their contracts; Schulman added that Fontenot's contract is also non-guaranteed, meaning if he's odd man out, he can be let go too without paying the full contract).

So these are basically "pay to play" contracts, if they can perform well enough in spring training to win a job, they get paid for 2012. And Clay basically needs to show Bochy that he's still close to the same guy who did so well for him in SD and not the guy who did not do well in Florida last season.

Clay Hensley (Hank) is a former Giants farm hand who was traded to the Padres for Matt Herges, probably one of the few trades that has ended up with the Giants net losing, though Herges was very helpful in his time with the Giants when they needed relief help, so there is that. Bochy loved using him in SD too, he did very well for them.

The right-hander reliever will apparently battle for the final spot in the bullpen that was opened by the trade of Ramirez (and Torres) for Angel Pagan. He will get $750K for 2012 if he makes the team, plus $300K in incentives and awards (mostly probably based on games pitched in). It was noted that Mota still hasn't officially signed "pending contract language", so perhaps that is an additional factor for doing this signing, not just the opening of Ramirez. Mota, once signed, will probably be on a minor league contract so that he won't take up a spot on the 40 man yet and it does still seems like it is a fait accompli and not something that may or may not happen.

Ryan Theriot (Baggs, Hank) won a World Series ring with the Cards last season, which makes up for the one he could have gotten had he been traded to the Giants instead of Mike Fontenot in 2010. Forgot what got in the way of that one, other than I think the Cubs got more from the D-gers for Theriot than the Giants gave up to get Fontenot, DeWitt is not someone the Giants could have matched, I don't think.

A right-handed hitter who hits better against LHP, but doesn't mash them, makes him a perfect platoon partner with Fontenot, who is an old buddy of his from their Chicago Cubs days, though that is a little surprising as they were essentially competing for the same starting role. But their ties were forged, from what I understand, in college for LSU so those friendship ties have lasted a long time. If he makes the team, he gets $1.25M with $750K in potential bonuses, probably mostly based on playing time in terms of PA.

Schulman:

Theriot’s deal is pending a physical and not guaranteed, which means the Giants could cut Theriot by March 18 and pay him $208,333, or $312,500 between March 18 and the start of the season.

For those worrying (crying) more Schulman about The Riot deal:

So here’s the upshot, as it was explained to me. Crawford, entering his second year in the bigs, is going into camp as the starting shortstop, as the Giants said he would. Fontenot, Theriot and Emmanuel Burriss provide the depth in the middle infield and will compete in spring training for reserve roles. Thus, Fontenot and Theriot, old friends from their LSU days and former keystone mates with the Cubs, likely will compete for the same job.

Schulman has been hot lately with his inside info lately, Baggerly had been better in seasons' past, but I would rate them about equal this off-season, at worse.

Giants Thoughts

It is like I thought, Crawford is the incumbent starting shortstop, with Theriot and Fontenot as the probable backups, and not as many feared, that Theriot is here to take the job away. Barring a huge meltdown on Crawford's part, as long as he's flashing the leather and still taking walks while avoiding strikeouts, the Giants should be relatively patient with him and make him the starter. He would have to cede the job for Theriot/Fontenot to take over. More on that later.

Barring some big injury or huge decrease in ability to hit or field, I think they will beat out Burriss for the two MI spots, as he has not really shown much in recent trials in the majors, and if he does lose, we would have to DFA him. But I would bet we would likely retain him, much like Ishikawa, because he would probably be cut at the end of spring training, at which point other teams would have their 25-man pretty much set and I doubt any team would risk losing that 25th man in order to take a flier on Burriss. I assume the Giants will try to retain him after he passes through waivers, but the Nats might want to sign him since he's a local guy, they might like the history of that. Not sure on the rules, but I think that is the right sequence of potential events. I have to think if the Nats come calling, he will give them a shot and take a fresh start with them.

Schulman: Theriot (.271/.321/.342 with St. Louis last year) is not going to set the world on fire with his bat, but that’s not why the Giants wanted him. They want to ensure they have a proper alternative to Crawford against left-handed pitching. And, I’m sure, have another shortstop option, period, if Crawford has a really bad spring and the brass feels he should go to Triple-A.

That is one of the things I like about how Sabean has been constructing the roster in the past few years, how he practices risk mitigation in his roster construction. He generally tries to have a viable backup should plans do not work out the way that they envisioned (and nobody's plans go perfectly). Unless Brandon Crawford totally sucks in spring training (much like Brian Wilson did his first spring training when he had the job in his pocket to lose and he just didn't do well), he most likely will be the full-time starter. Bochy will give him a chance to show what he can do against both LHP and RHP.

But should he falter, I can see Bochy basically moving to a platoon situation by mid-to-late May. Plus, in any case, in key batting situations late in the game, Bochy could substitute for Crawford with Theriot if a LHP is inserted to face Crawford. I think the Giants will test Crawford periodically still against LHP, depending on the situation, partly because his defense is THAT good, partly because Theriot is THAT bad defensively, partly because Theriot does have problems with certain LHP.

Another reason for keeping Theriot and Fontenot is that they make good platoon buddies, Theriot hits well against LHP, Fontenot hits well against RHP, plus Fontenot was very good defensively at SS last season. And that works for either SS, should Crawford flame out for any reason, or 2B, should any body part of Freddy Sanchez flame out for any reason.

Lastly, another good reason to keep Theriot is that Burriss has not shown much ability in the majors in recent years. No walks, no power, his only ability is to avoid the strikeout and that does give him a better batting average, but not enough to make up for few walks and few extra-base hits. He apparently is the hitter who drove Carney Lansford away, as he reportedly have strong arms, strong forearms, that with improve batting technique, he could start driving balls with authority. However, he has refused to change, preferring to stick with the "slap the pitch" technique that he was taught to take advantage of his speed.

Burriss is basically around the same stage as Andres Torres was a few years back. Andres stubbornly stuck to the slap until he realized that unless he changed, he'll never stick in the majors. That's when he sought out someone to teach him to swing the bat like Pujols. Basically, he was taught the principles that Ted Williams taught in his book, the Science of Hitting, and you saw what happened in 2009 and 2010 with his change.

Too bad Torres never tried to inspire Burriss to try his way, I think the transformation could be just a stark, and that Burriss could be a starter if he ever learned to hit properly and truly take advantage of his speed, because he has show a good eye all his career, it is just his lack of power that kills his chances of making the majors regularly. As he probably could bat near .300 each year, and with even a modicum of power, would make a good starting option at 2B.

That changes the dynamics of the bench as well. One spot is taken by the reserve catcher, Stewart or Hanchez. Two spots are probably TheRiot and Fontenot. Schierholtz has the fourth spot, assuming Belt wins the position in spring training. That would mean that Brett Pill and Burriss would be battling for the last spot on the roster. And given that Theriot provides some speed, Pill most probably gets that last spot as the only power off the bench (though Schierholtz provides some as well).

Looking at Hensley's stats, I realize that I had a more positive view of his career than warranted. He did have a nice season starting for the 'Dres in 2006, but he didn't do well at all in 2007, moved to the bullpen in 2008, where he didn't do well either, but that might be because he had some sort of injury (he had injury reports for a strained right shoulder for 68 games in 2009, strained left neck muscle for 20 games in 2010), didn't pitch at all in the majors in 2009, but then did great for Florida in 2010 (perhaps he didn't make the mental transition, Todd Worrell when he was with the Giants said that he didn't start doing well as a reliever until he gave up thoughts of being a starter and accepted being a reliever), before having a bad year in 2011.

However, in 2011, his bad season was due solely to his poor stats as a starter, as the Marlins pushed him back into the rotation. He had a 6.21 ERA as a starter, but a pretty good 3.51 ERA as a reliever, with 20 K's in 25.2 IP (7.0 K/9) and K/BB of 1.67, which is not great, just OK, and he held hitters down to a .226/.331/.333/.645 batting line as a reliever. Schulman also noted some arm problems, so that contributed to his down season most probably, as well. And he had a great 2.16 ERA in 2010 in 68 games, finishing 23 games and saving 7 games. He kept his walks down and had a great strikeout rate, resulting in a great 2.66 K/BB (good closers have K/BB > 2.4 according to Shandler).

And with a career .279 BABIP and with one season out of 6 (but not all full seasons) of BABIP under .300, that suggest that he is possibly capable of keeping his BABIP down, which mitigates the issue about too many walks and resulting low K/BB. Bringing up his BABIP to .300 results in 0.56 more H/9, which if you then drop his career BB/9 to 3.44 for a 1.85 K/BB, which is close to being the good 2.0 we want to see from pitchers and much better than the 1.57 mark he has for his career. And a walk is worth less than the extra hits that would have been given up, which would edge that ratio up even higher.

So it looks like he has accepted the reliever role, but because the Marlins did not use him properly in 2011, many teams passed on checking him out, so the Giants could pick him up on the cheap. He is also in his second year of arbitration, had the Marlins kept him, so that is another reason for them to drop him. Should the Giants keep him past this season, he would be arbitration eligible for 2013 before becoming a free agent for the 2014 season. He will be 32 for the 2012 season and won't reach free agency until he is 34, assuming he can hold a job for the next two seasons (which should not be hard if he pitches like he did as a reliever in 2010 and 2011).

I like the move. As nicely as Mota has performed for us, he wasn't that good when he pitched for us plus he's very old now, so Hensley could end up replacing Ramirez, while a prospect replaces Mota, taking the long spot. Heath Hembree was great last season in AA, so he potentially could win a spot in the bullpen. In addition, Dan Otero has done very well in the minors with one projection saying he could deliver an ERA below 3 in 2012, which would be great.

So most likely Hensley, Mota, Hembree, and Otero are battling for two spots in the rotation, barring any injury to Romo. Dan Runzler is probably in the mix for one of the two open spots as well, else I would guess that he would go back to AAA and start in order to be an option for the Giants should they need to replace any starter, due to the sparcity of MLB capable starting pitching in AAA.

Both moves were good moves, filling areas of potential weakness for the Giants in terms of depth in 2012, with two major league vets who should win a job in spring training by doing as well as they had done in prior seasons. They probably cost two minor leaguers a chance at the majors, Burriss most probably, but maybe Pill instead, and one of the right-handers I listed above as battling for a job. It was much more likely the Giants would have filled Ramirez's position internally had they not signed Hensley. Good risk mitigation moves on the part of Sabean, on the cheap too, and it keeps the Giants under the $130M cap figure. I don't envision any other move than a starting pitcher getting a minor league invite to battle for a spot.

I'm not sure if he is still available, but the D-backs non-tendered Micah Owings and he appears to be a free agent. And while he has been a so-so pitcher, he has been a pretty good hitter. At 29 YO for the 2012 season, he might be ready to accept a reliever role, heck, he might have already accepted it, as he was mostly a reliever last season and did well in that role.

Furthermore, he has also been OK as a reliever, 4.40 ERA in two home hitter's parks in AZ and Cincy, so he's probably close to 4 overall otherwise. And he was good relieving last season. Maybe bring him in as competition with Mota for the long-relief spot, and if he wins it, he also becomes our #1 option in case we need a MLB arm for the rotation, plus he would become a great pinch-hitter option for us off the bench, much like Brooks Kieschnick (Giants prospect Roger Kieschnick's uncle). That is a much better option than having Mota. Who knows, maybe he can be competition for the #5 starting spot with Zito as well.

The D-backs apparently non-tendered him in order to not pay him $1M in arbitration. How cheap of the team, particularly since he did well for them last season. Much unlike the Arizona of the past: when a player lost to the team in arbitration, they ripped up the contract and signed him to more money. The non-tender just to save maybe $250-500K won't sit well with him nor any buddies he may have on the team, it is like a slap in the face given what he did for them in helping them win the pennant last season. Even any vets have to be perturbed by this strange move. Hopefully it will place a seed of dissension and unrest in their clubhouse and lead to lesser performances in 2012 for them under Gibson.

Lincecum Signs: Two Years, $40.5M

2012-01-24T22:44:00.000-08:00

Tim Lincecum has signed a two year, $40.5M contract with a limited no-trade clause (Baggarly). $18M for 2012, $22M for 2013, $500K bonus (I still wonder what the accounting benefit to the Giants or Lincecum or both is, for having a bonus versus salary; does that go straight to Lincecum, avoiding the agent fee?) The Giants had offered $40M and Lincecum's side asked for $44M, so the final contract figure ended up basically just over the Giants offer, which was very close to the arbitration submissions by the two sides ($17M and $21.5M).

The Giants reportedly had offered 5 years, $100M, but Lincecum's side turned that down, which I understand, because that basically values each year like the two year deal, at $20M AAV. He is probably looking to get CC type money in his free agent years. Lincecum had said in an interview late in the 2011 season that he preferred shorter deals because there's less pressure involved, but then when his agent asked for an 8 year contract, that statement just rings false.

Baggarly and Schulman followed up on the news with more focused posts.

Baggarly focused more on Lincecum's agent (and the Giants) saying that this deal does not preclude a longer term deal later. He astutely notes that with the arbitration clock ticking, the impetus now is to get a deal done that stops that clock within that timespan, and the two sides were more in sync on a two year contract, and thus they got that done first. He noted the example of Wilson signing to avoid arbitration, then signing a longer deal in the spring. Lastly, he said that the payroll ended up a little less than the $130M announced cap.

Schulman had a nice post covering a lot of different things, I recommend checking it out for all the details, the link is above. He noted two critical points: 1) that this does not mean that Lincecum does not want to be here long-term, and 2) Lincecum is taking the risk by accepting the two year deal instead of the five year.

Schulman also noted some interesting things about Cain:

If reports are true, Matt Cain is taking the opposite tack. He’s willing to accept a below-market, long-term deal in exchange for that security and stability. I’m told no deal is imminent with Cain.

Giants Thoughts

I like the deal but wish Lincecum had took the five year deal, though I understand why he didn't, the Giants probably should have offered something in the $110-120M range to get that deal done. I like knowing that we have him for a long time, so this is disappointing in that it is only two years.

But the Baggarly post about Lincecum's agent's comments that this does not preclude a longer deal signed later was heartening, as that suggests that they and the Giants are planning on continuing to discuss the parameters of a longer term deal somewhere down the line, that the interest is there on both sides.

I was disappointed that there was no deal imminent with Cain, but also understand since the Giants were probably focused on all the arbitration deals. Now perhaps they will work more diligently on it. I didn't really think that a deal would be done until spring training anyway, I think both of his long-term deals were announced in spring training before, so why would this one be different.

So I'm happy but not ecstatically happy, but that's OK too, a $100M+ contract is just a lot of risk to take on. If Lincecum is OK with 2 year contracts going forward, I'll be OK with that too. But I would be just as happy to have Cain signed to a 5 year, $80-90M deal as well. He's a Hoss.

Giants 2012 Arbitration Cases: Dust Clearing

2012-01-17T17:18:00.000-08:00

Thought I would run down the Giants arbitration cases, using MLB Trade Rumor's estimates as guidelines (but not absolutes) and reports on recent signings.

Tim Lincecum: the only news up to now had been that the Giants proposed a 4 year extension and Lincecum's camp suggesting a 1-2 year deal or an 8 year deal. It was announced today that Lincecum asked for $21.5M and the Giants offered $17M. The Giants offer set a record and Lincecum's asking price was just short of Clemen's $22M asking salary a while back. MLBTR sez $19.2M estimated, and the mid-point for the two is $19.25M. DrB suggested on his blog that Tim would do as last time and sign a two year deal for $17M in 2012 and $21.5M in 2013, and that sounds right. I wonder if the Giants might use the mid-point for 2012 (so around $19M) and then around $21.5M ($21M? $22M?) for 2013. I still expect the Giants to sign him to a 5 year deal in the $120M range, maybe $127M to be symbolic as the largest contract ever by Giants, though that would probably mean a team option for year 6 plus, say, a big buyout for the 6th year: $19M, $21M, $23M, $25M, $27M plus $12M buy out (for $127M) or $30M salary.
Angel Pagan: MLBTR estimated $4.7M and he signed for $4.85M plus up to $150K in PA incentives.
Melky Cabrera: MLBTR estimated $4.4M and he signed for $6.0M. The salary works out to $7.5M level of production (the saber-assumption that 3rd year arb cases earn roughly 80% of the going rate of production). Plus that amount is roughly what Cody Ross got in arbitration last season, and what he produced in his career, mid-to-high 700 OPS, is what Melky has produced over his last three seasons, .282/.332/.420/.752, roughly, just slightly less. Ross got $6.3M, Melky slightly less. By that standard, Cabrera looks like he got roughly what he should have gotten, that estimate seems off by a lot, perhaps including his 2010 stats in the calculations.
Pablo Sandoval: MLBTR estimated $3.2M, but luckily, in the series of posts explaining the methodology, it noted that Pablo's estimate was based on his 2011 PA, which as we all know was reduced significantly by his hamate bone breakage. Using a full season 650 PA, they stated that his estimated salary would have been $4.7M. I would also point out that the methodology noted that the system was within $320K of the actual about 50% of the time for their test data, so it is not like the estimate is the final word, nor a sign of over/under paying, just a good guidepost to compare against. That $4.7M works out to a $11.25M free market salary, and applying the 40%/60%/80% rule, that adds up to $21.15M for the three years. Maybe sign him to a $18M contract for 3 years ($4M, $6M, $8M) plus a 4th year team option at $10M (Giants get a slight discount for guaranteeing him all that money and committing to him) If they went to a 5th year option, maybe $12M. Oops, just got news that the Giants just signed him to a 3 year contract (Schulman), Shankbone noted on DrB the dollar values: $3.2 million this year, $5.7 million in 2013, $8.25 million in 2014, or 3 years, $17.15M. If Sandoval has another good season in 2012, I wouldn't be surprised if they extend him another couple of seasons on top of that contract.
Ryan Vogelsong: MLBTR estimated $2.5M and the Giants signed him to a two year, $8.3M contract, I believe $3M for the first year and $5M for the second, and $300K buyout if the Giants don't pick up the team option for a third year. I don't recall seeing what that third year salary was for.
Santiago Casilla: MLBTR estimated $1.9M and he signed for $2.2M, with $200K in incentives.
Sergio Romo: MLBTR estimated $1.3M.
Mike Fontenot: MLBTR estimated $1.3M and he signed for $1.05M, which I think was his salary from last season too.
Nate Schierholtz: MLBTR estimated $1.2M, and I would remind that this is based on part time play, he should get more if he were a starter based on their methodology, so he might have big escalators put in place in case he does become a full-time starter in 2012. Schulman in the blog link above noted that Nate signed for $1.3M.
Emmanuel Burriss: MLBTR estimated $600K. He is signed but no reported figure has been released. The minimum salary in the new CBA is $480K, so I think he'll be closer to that than the $600K.

Giants Thoughts

The Giants, as per their M.O., tries to avoid arbitration like the plague. They have settled almost all the above arbitration cases, except for the tough ones, Lincecum and Romo (I had Sandoval here too but his signing was announced while I was writing).

I expect the Giants to try to sign Lincecum to multi-year contracts, per my speculation above.

I assume Romo's agent is playing hardball because of how historically great Romo's season was last season. Or maybe he's also hoping to cash in on a multi-year deal as well, though given Romo's arm problems, that would be risky on the Giants part unless he signs a 3 year deal for around $4M. Based on the MLBTR estimate, Romo's 3 year should be around $5.85M, +/- $1M. So maybe as high as $5M for the 3 years of arbitration.

And looking at the signings the Giants did with Affeldt and Lopez, that $1.3M looks low for Romo, I think $1.6M is closer to what he should be looking for 2012. Still, $5M for 3 years seems pretty good to offer, that's roughly one year worth of good relief, so he could be injured and out for two years and still pay off with one good season.

PQS in the Playoffs (second in series)

2012-01-11T21:04:00.000-08:00

I published the first in the series last month here. The PQS stats there looked OK, but not too conclusive with just two year's worth of data. I'm covering 2009 and 2008 in this post.

2009

In 2009, the team with the higher PQS wins won 4 of the 5 times (with two ties). The team with the higher PQS average won 5 of 5 series (two ties). Higher DOM does appear to correlate with winning series in 2009.

In games where the pitcher was expected to win, the higher DOM pitcher's team had a 13-3 record (.813 win percentage). There were 14 ties. Where pitchers had a DOM start, their teams went 18-10 (.650 win pct), but there were 8 games where both pitchers had a DOM start, so removing those games leaves the games where one pitcher had a DOM and the other didn't, and those teams with the DOM went 10-2 (.867).

There was good but not great pitching with 47% DOM and 25% DIS starts overall. Pitching was pretty good, as indicated by the 47% DOM, but not great (DOM over 50%) or elite (DOM over 70%). In addition, there was a fair amount of bad pitching with 25% DIS (under 20% is good, under 10% great, under 5% elite).

2008

In 2008, the DOM's had it. The team with the most PQS wins, as well as best average PQS score, won all seven series. The expected team to win went 19-1 and teams where their pitcher had a DOM start went 20-7, or 14-1 when you remove all games where both starters had a DOM start. Teams where their starters had a DIS start went 3-18, or 1-16 when you remove all games where both starters had a DIS start.

2008-2011

The results appear very conclusive already. So I might not even continue going back to older series. Over the four seasons of playoffs, the expected team to win went 67-15, the team having a DOM start went 81-37, and 56-12 when you take out the ties. Teams with DIS starts had a 25-57 record, 11-43 without ties.

As I have been writing about for a number of years now, to maximize your team's chances of winning in the playoffs, you want to have a rotation of starters who have high DOM percentages The Giants have that with Lincecum, Cain, Bumgarner, and Vogelsong. And Sanchez was good too.

As the 2011 Phillies showed, you can get DOM starts from all your starters in a series and still lose the series to a lesser team. Getting DOM starts is no guarantee. But as the results of the past four seasons studied here shows, it is better than the alternative (DIS starts in particular).

One valid reaction to this is "so what, what's new about getting good starts means you win a lot?" First, this is the first study I know of that studied PQS advantage in the playoffs. Of course, it's better, but by what degree. And that is the second thing, it quantifies the advantage of getting a DOM start and the disadvantage of a DIS start. Teams with a DOM start went 81-37, those with DIS went 25-57, and more crucially, 11-43 when against better pitching.

Click title to read more

Giants Thoughts

Sabermetrics have not done pitching much favors. From DIPS to the denigrating of the value of pitchers because they only play 1 game out of 5, I think the masses of sabers don't appreciate the true value and power of pitching, particularly starting pitching.

This conundrum has been haunting me for years now. As I've documented in my business plan series, pitching is a huge component of building not only a team, but a team that is capable of going deeper into the playoffs than other teams. Mainly because such good pitching is such a rare commodity. But I think I'm ready to expose the fallacy of some common sabermetric thinking that is wrong.

First off, the question of a player's relative contribution to a game. The wrong metric, in my opinion, has been used by most sabers: games. The common rule is that a starter is in only one game of four, while a position player plays every game.

I think plate appearances is a better metric. By that measure, most position players accumulate no more than 4-5 plate appearances per game, which usually have around 35-40 PA in total, or about 10-13% of the total PA in a game. Over a 5 game period, that is roughly 50-65% of a game for any position player. A good pitcher, however, normally have about 70% (roughly over 6 innings) of the PA in any game they start.

Counting the defensive side for position players while contrasting with the offensive side (which is essentially nothing for pitchers) probably brings things closer, in terms of PA, but should not put them over, except for maybe shortstop or 1B.

But then that gets to my second point, for as the PQS data shows, pitchers can have a strong effect on how a games turns out: again, not something that nobody knows, but the PQS methodology gives us a way of quantifying the advantages of having a staff of great to elite pitchers, as the Giants have, in the playoffs.

As I have shown, certain pitchers are able to keep their DOM% at 70% and higher, others between 50-70%, but the vast majority of starting pitchers are not able to get their DOM% consistently above 50% every season. The Giants achieved a 67% DOM in the 2010 playoffs. During the season, I recorded 52% DOM (which included the poorer starts of Zito) for the Giants.

Compare this to the data so far: over the four seasons of playoffs studied, 45% DOM was achieved. As the data showed, teams with a pitcher with a DOM start won almost 69% of those starts. And when paired against a non-DOM start (55% of the starts, 68 starts in all), won over 82% of those starts. That's as close to a slam dunk in baseball. In 2011, Lincecum had 73% DOM, Cain 73%, Bumgarner 70%, and Vogelsong 61%. Not only that, but their DIS% was lose too, 6%, 3%, 15%, and 7%, respectively.

Pitchers Have More Control And Influence Than Thought

Pitchers can control an entire game, contrary to current sabermetric thinking and tendencies. With a good starter followed by good relievers, an entire game can be controlled by pitching, from first pitch to last. That is why you see no-hitters regularly in the majors, while hitters who hit 4 homers in a game are usually once in a generation or two.

Hitters do not control much at all in any particular game or series, though they can clearly impact it. Cody Ross is the latest example, but the one I thought of long ago was Gene Tenace of the A's. But Ross's heroics would have been for naught if the pitching and fielding didn't shut down the opponents enough so that he could win it for us, much like that game in the 2002 World Series where the Giants scored 10 runs but lost the game.

Good hitters can take advantage of lesser pitchers but against the best pitchers they are effeetively neutralized in the playoffs: .824 winning percentage for DOM starts against a non-DOM start suggests that when a team like the Giants can throw a rotation that has roughly 70% DOM at other teams, they have an advantage over other teams (that's 3-4 games out of 5, where you only need 3 to win, and 5 games out of 7, when you only need 4 games).

For example, for all other teams, they had 45% DOM over the four playoffs. That means at minimum, 25% of the games the Giants are expected to win the game against those baseball teams. Working out the matrix of probabilities, on average, the Giants are expected to win 38.5% of the games (and remember, in these games, the team expecting to win had a .817 winning percentage). They were expected to lose 21.0% of the time. And they would be tied 40.5% of the time.

Assuming ties are .500, the Giants expect to win 58.75% of the lose and lose 41.25%. In a 5 game series, the Giants are expected to win 66% of the time, and in a 7 game series, they expect to win 69% of the series. So even with a 70% DOM staff vs. 45% DOM, random luck would still result in the Giants losing a series over 30% of the time. That the expected team to win does not always win (but almost at .817) brings these series win percentage down even lower.

So the fact is that luck can play a large role for any team that wins a championship. However, one should never forget the role of the human spirit in sporting endeavors. The will to win can be powerful at times. And as the saying goes, "That's why they play the games." And the research and this data also clearly says that pitching is a key to winning too.

Unfortunately, such probablistic tendencies are never good enough for the average fan. They need the biggest, the best, and more importantly, MORE, before they presumably are satiated. But as one can see with Yankees fans, fans level of satiation can't be ever met, even with the Yankee's revenue largesse.

Now some may point to the Phillies loss in last season's playoffs where they had 5 DOM starts and yet lost their series as an example of why pitching dominance is no panacea. That obscures the fact that there is NO panacea in baseball, only improved probabilities of winning. And that the two major studies on playoff success - that is, going deep into the playoffs - is tied to good pitching and defense, but has no ties to anything related to offense.

So the focus by many fans on the offense is misguided at best, ruinous if it leads to trading our great pitching for hitting, as long as the lineup is projected to do well enough offensively to win 90+ games with our defense. And at the moment, it is.

Pitching is the Way to Control Games, Not Offense

What I have tried to show is that in baseball, there is not a lot of control. A hitter may get hot but that does nothing if the other 7 position players don't hit much in support. Having a Barry Bonds may help you score 10 runs, but that don't matter when the other team scores 11. In baseball, offense is a team sport, you need all the cylinders running to score regularly.

But pitchers are in control of the defense. That is why great pitchers like Lincecum and Cain can churn out consecutive seasons of 50%, 60%, 70% DOM starts, where the vast majority of pitchers are in the 40% range or lower. Fielding defense helps, and that is where Sabean's focus on fielding defense has helped: the Giants have been among leaders in defensive runs saved the past 3 seasons according to the Fielding Bible Plus/Minus system. Fielding has been contributing on average over 4 wins per season to the Giants the past three seasons (and remember, that equals to over 8 games over .500, for it is a loss converted into a win).

That is why the Giants were right in not trading any of their top four starters previously, when many fans and the media, who thought they knew better, wanted to trade them for hitting, not realizing that, at best, that is a zero sum game, and at worse, well, suppose we had traded Lincecum for Rios as MANY fans wanted to, including one prominent media figure.

In addition, trading good pitching for hitting, research has shown (and as I noted above), results in REDUCING your chances of winning in the playoffs, as pitching contributes to success in the playoffs, while offense does not.

Riddle me this: if a team trades a 5 WAR pitcher for a 5 WAR hitter, how has that improved the team? Or do people really expect the other team to trade a better player to your team just because it is a pitcher? Theoretically any trade should add nothing to your team, if perfect, you are just trading one thing for another. Typically, a team would do the trade because it has a similar player ready to take the place of the traded player, and thus is trading to get value in another part of the team. But most trades I've seen suggested does nothing more than shuffle the deck of cards, it does nothing for making sure you have a great hand.

Some have also wanted to make the trade to improve the offense, and ostensibly win more games (not realizing that with no pitchers ready in the minors, we do not replace the pitching production we just traded away) and, in their minds, improve the Giants chances of making the playoffs. But what is more important, what good is improving your chances of the playoffs if you just reduced your chances of winning it all?

Teams with High DOM% Regularly Do Well In The Playoffs

My study so far of DOM and DIS in the playoffs shows that generally teams with higher DOM wins most series and games. It is no guarantee, but is as close to one that you can get in baseball, honestly, it is a very clear advantage, most of the time. And having a staff capable of high DOM%, like the Giants do, maximizes the team's chances of going deep into the playoffs and thus its chances of winning it all. That is why I've been saying for the past few years that the 2010's will be known as the Decade of the Giants when all is said and done.

A's Fire Sale Exposes Beane's Incompetence

2012-01-04T21:38:00.000-08:00

A recent column by Monte Poole of the San Jose Mercury (sorry, no link, they only provide a 7 day window of access to their articles) boldly proclaiming that the A's "Fire sale exposes baseball's talk about integrity as fraudulent." I have an alternative, more accurate view: it exposes Billy Beane's mismanagement of the talent on the A's and A's ownership's pocketing of over $100M in EBITDA in the past six seasons.

Click title to read more

As a recent Ask BA column notes, the A's before the trades had a bottom five farm system. It was just that bad. Again. The last time it was like this was when the A's held their last fire sale and sold off Dan Haren and Nick Swisher. Because they had nothing coming up and could not therefore progress with the talent they had then.

He had to make these deals this offseason because, unlike the Giants in recent years, their high picks have not been developing even into average ballplayers. That is partly the structure and process of the baseball draft, as the odds are very low even for top picks, but I place the blame solely on Beane's mismanagement of the A's strategy, as well as ownership's pocketing of over $100M in EBITDA (cash flow) over the past 6 seasons.

The A's have suffered from Beane's yo-yo-ing strategy guiding the team, as he flopped from rebuilding to competing to rebuilding in a few years. That has costed them talents such as Andre Ethier and Carlos Gonzalez over the years. Both could have been in the A's lineup in 2010 and 2011, and they would have been a very competitive team had he not swung the team back and forth in strategy.

A rebuild ideally lasts 3-6, depending on your luck in selecting prospects, as well as commitment to the rebuilding process. You don't trade away Dan Haren then a couple of years later trade away one of the good prospects from that trade to get Matt Holliday. Or sign Ben Sheets to a $10M contract at the same time.

And it is not like the A's could not afford the players they got. They wasted $10M signing Sheets in 2010. That could have went towards signing some of the young players long term. Moreover, since 2005, the A's have totaled over $100M in EBITDA (cash flow from operations; probably over $120M with 2011, Forbes has not released their estimates yet). That money could have signed a lot of young international talent, as well as funded over-slot prospects in the June draft, plus signed their young talent to long-term cost-controlled contracts, and still have over $50M left over.

Giants Thoughts

The Mercury has been on a campaign boosting the A's chances of landing in San Jose. I have no problem with that, as long as they are transparent about their bias, but to call baseball "fraudulent" is too over the top.

What has been fraudulent is Beane's magic (moneyball) beans that he has been feeding the media. It is his mismanagement of the rebuilding process that set the team back, in terms of talent, resulting in his need to rebuild again today by trading off many of his valuable players.

First, it was his poor choices made with the teams that made his name. He signed Eric Chavez to a big long-term contract that became an anchor on the payroll because he not only didn't produce, he was rarely healthy enough to even man his position. He let both Jason Giambi and Miguel Tejada go without trading them for young talent. He also traded away Tim Hudson for nothing, none of those prospects ever amounted to anything. He traded away Andre Ethier for the volatile Milton Bradley, and Ethier ended up playing more games and hitting better than Bradley for the D-gers. Only his Matt Mulder trade netted him anything, otherwise, he would have been in even bigger problems.

Second, now, he at least learned from those mistakes. He made sure to trade away Dan Haren and Nick Swisher for a boatload of talent. Though he was forced to do that because all those winning seasons made it suddenly very hard for him to pull off his moneyball magic in the draft (because the draft becomes exponentially hard when you are winning and in the last third of the first round) plus because he had foolishly traded away Ethier for an older but lesser player (the gift that keeps on giving)..

But then he screwed the Haren trade up by then trading Carlos Gonzalez (and Huston Street!) for Matt Holliday in 2009. Then signing Ben Sheets for $10M in 2010. When that money could have probably been used to sign Car-Gon to a much more team friendly deal before he broke out big.

He then compounds that bad Holliday trade by making two subsequent trades and ending up with a prospect who is struggling to hit in AAA. At age 26 next season, he's about to become a non-prospect soon unless he suddenly figures things out. But his stats (and injuries) don't seem to portend anything even MLB in him, let alone a good player. If he would have at least kept Brett Wallace, who he got in the Holliday trade, Wallace at least is hitting some in the majors, though not good at all, but better than what the AAA player is doing.

Beane should have committed to the rebuild that begun when the Haren trade was made. He had a lot of good young players, I was pretty impressed with the haul he got in trade. It was the Haren trade that I was hoping that we could duplicate with Jonathan Sanchez, until he came up lame in 2011 - had Dirty repeated 2010, we could have gotten a huge haul too for him, though I'm happy with Melky Cabrera.

But then he suddenly switched strategy and started trying to compete again, by trading for Holliday, then signing Sheets to his big contract. That cut the talent out of the team quickly, with less spending on the draft plus the loss of Car-Gon. And the Ethier trade again haunts this move, for if he still had Ethier perhaps neither move would have been done.

It is not the Giants or baseballs' fault for the A's predicament. Beane shot himself in the foot, and like a great Keystone Cops routine, kept on compounding the mistakes, over and over again. Furthermore, had Wolff given Beane an extra $10M per season to spend, who knows what he could have done: sign young players long-term, sign a lot of prospects, both international and June draft signability drops, sign Japanese players. And still, even in this scenario, Wolff would have had roughly $60M left in cash flow to line his pocket.

And where do the Giants come in here? What I'm hoping is that the $100M+ that Wolff has been squirreling away, which basically is the revenue sharing money that the Giants have paid into the program, will be part of the money that the A's will pay the Giants in return for them moving down to San Jose.

Given that the Giants have made the point that they need the revenues from attendance in order to pay off their load payments, I think it would be a fair for the A's to pay $15-20M per season for the next 8 seasons, at which point the loan would be paid off in 2019 (which is when I understand the loan to be done; load payment is $20M from what I recall). That is basically the money they have been getting from revenue sharing each year (from the Giants) and which they pulled in as cash flow from their operations. That is more than what the Nationals had to pay the Orioles, but the SF Bay Area is a larger population as well, and that much more valuable.

This is also a debt long overdue. The A's paid the Giants nothing to move into their area. The South Bay would have been clearly the Giants territory had the A's never carpetbagged themselves into Oakland on the back of Charlie O. The handover of the rights should have been symbolic because the Giants should have owned it in the first place. Now it is time to pay the piper and the Giants the money they have long been due, with interest.

PQS in the Playoffs (first in a series)

2012-01-01T23:38:00.000-08:00

I've been trying to think of a way to analytically examine the playoffs using PQS. I first tried looking at a pitcher's PQS for the season and then looking at what they did in the playoffs, and realized that the randomness of PQS would not yield anything in short series like the MLB's playoffs. Then I hit upon what I think is a good way of examining the power of PQS in the playoffs, and I got that from the game of chess.

In chess, when players play each other for their championship, they either win, lose, or stalemate, which is a tie for those not into chess. And points are awarded (much like hockey too, I just realized) thusly: +1 for a win, +0.5 for a stalemate, and 0 for a loss. I will do that for each playoff series and see how each series ends in terms of who won vs. who won on PQS, and cover all the playoff series in a season.

It is pretty simple. There are three types of starts: DOM, DIS or other, which never got a name but I'm going to call it MID. And DOM beats MID and MID beats DIS, and if they are the same, then it is a draw, a stalemate. The rationale here is that each type of start is mostly random, thus leading to a draw, a coin-flip on who wins, but it is pretty clear that the majority of the time, the relationships of DOM > MID > DIS will hold. Summing up the points per the matrix, each team will get what I will call their PQS Score, with the idea of looking to see if teams that have the winning PQS Score typically wins, and once I get enough data, I can do a correlation between winning a series and winning the PQS Score.

Here is the table:

I have no idea what I will find, though obviously, I hope to find that PQS does rule in the playoffs as I've been postulating for a while. What I hope to see is that teams with the better PQS score, per my matrix above, What I am more hoping is that it will be interesting in some way.

I don't have the time to dig through every series first and then write on it, so this is intended to be a series of posts, depending on time, inclination, and what I find. I am covering 2011 and 2010 in this post.

2011 Playoffs

In the seven series the team with the highest PQS Wins won once and lost 3 times; there were 3 ties. So that is not a good start for this metric I am testing out. In terms of average PQS for the series, the team with the highest average PQS won 3 times, lost 4 times; for teams averaging at least 1 PQS higher than the other team, only 1 of the higher teams won, out of 4. By these two metrics, high PQS is a poor indicator of success in the playoffs.

However, on a game by game basis, a clearer advantage appears. In games where one pitcher is expected to win (per the matrix I devised above), the team expected to win (or e-win) had a record of 18-6. When there were ties, the teams were obviously .500 overall, and there were 14 ties.

Furthermore, in games where the pitchers had a DOM start, they were 21-8 (.724 winning percentage). And four of those losses were guaranteed because both pitchers had a DOM start. Taking out those tie games leaves the overall record at 17-4 (.810 winning percentage) when a DOM start was countered with a non-DOM start.

Given the overall 38% DOM and 38% DIS starts, there were a whole lot of mediocre to bad starts in the 2011 playoffs. Dominance was no guarantee, either: the Phillies had 5 DOM starts and yet lost to the Cards. And the Tigers had 4 DOM starts while the Rangers had none, yet the Rangers won their series.

I think what lessons to be gleaned are these:

DOM starts are no panacea, but,
DOM rules to the tune of around .750 winning percentage for this playoff, and
In any case, the bullpen can help a team win a lot of games you have no business winning, based on the PQS starts performance, as evidenced by the Cards and Rangers making the World Series despite bad starting pitching.

2010 Playoffs

In the seven series, the team with the highest PQS won 5 times and lost once. Ironically, that one loss was by the Rangers in the World Series, to the Giants. There was one tie. That was much better overall than in 2011. The team with the highest average PQS won in 5 series out of 6, with 1 tie. When PQS was at least 1.0 higher, all three teams won their series.

On a game by game basis, the dominance continued. Where the starting pitcher had a high PQS score, his team went 17-3 (.773 winning percentage). Pitchers with a DOM start went 22-12 (.647) but there were 7 ties, so when a DOM start was matched with a non-DOM start, the team went 15-5 (.750).

The playoffs were much more pitching oriented in 2010 but there was still a lot of poor pitching. The overall DOM/DIS was 53% DOM/27% DIS. That 53% DOM is very good, but the 27% DIS is pretty bad. Reflecting the higher quality of starts, DIS starts did not do as well, 6-11, but that was still good considering it was a disaster start. MID starts (PQS of 2 or 3) were 4-9, again, like 2011, a very poor record overall.

The Giants had 10 DOM starts and 4 DIS starts in 15 starts: 67% DOM/27% DIS. Tim Lincecum had 4 DOM starts in 5, with 1 DIS. Matt Cain had 2 DOM starts in 3, no DIS. Jonathan Sanchez had 2 DOM and 2 DIS starts, the most on the team. Madison Bumgarner had 2 DOM starts and 1 DIS start. The Giants were 7-3 in DOM starts, but 3-1 in DIS starts. That accounted for the 2 wins of 3 in expected loss games (e-loss). In addition, the Giants like the Rangers and Cards in 2011, won the ties, with a 6-2 record.

I think this good record overall is a result of three things:

a manager willing to pull the starter out before the game got away, and yet keep the starters happy enough to still pitch well for the manager,
a bullpen good enough to both shut down the opposition, as well as do that for 6-9 innings, plus a manager who can mix and match relievers to enable that long stretch of a shutdown, and
an offense capable enough to catch up and take the lead.

My next post will cover 2009 and 2008 playoffs, which looks like more of the same as 2010.

2011 Giants: September PQS and Final Stats

2011-12-24T16:55:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the delay, but this slipped my mind. Then I wrote it and didn't find time to post it until now. Happy Holidays!

This post has the Giants Pure Quality Start scores for the month of September 2011, PQS as defined in Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster annual book and they published the details here. I wrote on this first in 2006 and have compiled their stats on a regular basis, so I'm continuing it this season for continuity and historical comparison (there is the "PQS" label that you can click to see the old posts on this, which I've provided a link to). Plus, I think it has a lot to offer for understanding our pitching and how that translate into competitive advantage for the Giants. Regular readers can skip to the next orange titled section.

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

Click on title to get full post

What's Good and What's Not

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

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

If you had to chose a high DOM% or a low DIS%, pitchers tend to have a lower ERA when you have a low DIS% vs. a high DOM% (obviously if you combine both, you have a much better chance of having an elite pitcher). But I think when the DOM% is high enough, you win more by choosing a high DOM% over a low DIS%, as there are more high quality games pitched overall.

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

Giants Starters' PQS for 2011 Season

Madison Bumgarner- (70% DOM, 15% DIS; 23:5/33): 0, 2, 3, 0, 5, 5, 5, 5, 3, 4, 5, 5, 4, 4, 0, 5, 5, 4, 4, 5, 5, 0, 4, 5, 4, 3, 3, 5, 5, 4, 4, 0, 5

Matt Cain- (76% DOM, 3% DIS; 25:1/33): 4, 4, 3, 0, 5, 3, 4, 5, 5, 4, 4, 4, 5, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 4, 5, 3, 3, 2, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 3, 5, 5, 3, 5

Tim "The Kid" Lincecum - (73% DOM, 6% DIS; 24:2/33): 4, 5, 3, 5, 4, 5, 5, 5, 0, 4, 4, 4, 3, 0, 4, 5, 5, 3, 4, 5, 4, 4, 5, 4, 5, 5, 4, 3, 3, 5, 5, 3, 2

Dan Runzler - (0% DOM, 100% DIS; 0:1/1): 0

Jonathan Sanchez - (44% DOM, 28% DIS; 8:5/18): 3, 4, 4, 3, 3, 4, 3, 5, 5, 5, 5, 2, 3, 4, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0

Eric Surkamp - (17% DOM, 67% DIS; 1:4/6): 4, 3, 1, 0, 0, 0

Ryan Vogelsong - (61% DOM, 7% DIS; 17:2/28): 4, 0, 4, 4, 5, 4, 2, 5, 4, 5, 4, 1, 4, 3, 4, 2, 2, 5, 3, 5, 3, 3, 2, 5, 4, 4, 3, 4, 5, 4, 4, 3, 4

Barry Zito - (25% DOM, 25% DIS; 2:2/8): 5, 1, X, 3, 3, 5, 0, 3, 3

X = start Zito was injured in and had to leave the game. I don't include these in my analysis.

Giants season overall - 62% DOM, 14% DIS out of 136 games counted (100:22/161)
Giants Month of March/April - 56% DOM, 20% DIS out of 25 games counted (14:5/25)
Giants Month of May - 79% DOM, 7% DIS out of 28 games counted (22:2/28)
Giants Month of June - 68% DOM, 18% DIS out of 28 games counted (19:5/28)
Giants Month of July - 62% DOM, 8% DIS out of 26 games counted (16:2/26)
Giants Month of August - 55% DOM, 14% DIS out of 29 games counted (16:4/29)
Giants Month of September - 52% DOM, 20% DIS out of 25 games counted (13:5/25)

August was up there with April in terms of dominant starts, so it was very good in that way, and better in terms of disaster starts. The overall record for the month fell, though, from 13-12 in April to 11-18 in August, as the offense just could not get over all the injuries hitting it, starting with losing Carlos Beltran right when he started hitting for the Giants.

Still: amazing month. A pitcher with 55% DOM/14% DIS would be among the best pitchers in the league. They will kick butt. But as can be seen in the math, there are less DOM starts than the past two months, and thus a lowered chance of winning as many games. But not enough to account for so many losses, though, that's on the offense, which only averaged 2.69 runs scored, a truly horrible display of offense ever.

Lincecum and Cain were the leaders in August with 5 DOM starts each, and Bumgarner, after leading last month, still had 4 DOM starts, with a two start hiccup there later in the month, but at least they were not disaster starts. The starting rotation continues to be a great unit.

However, the other starters were even worse than struggling. Starting first with Vogelsong, he only had 2 DOM starts out of 6 starts, but at least he did not have a disaster start. Both Runzler and Sanchez were responsible for the relatively poor results in disaster starts, with 1 and 3 disaster starts, respectively (out of 1 and 3 starts, respectively). Only Eric Surkamp was able to get a DOM start out of the other starters. He is now their fifth starter, with both Sanchez and Zito on the DL, but they are skipping his start tomorrow so that they can start Cain, Lincecum, and Vogelsong against them this weekend.

Had there only been one disaster start and two dominant starts out of those four starts, that could have changed our record in the month from 11-18 to 13-16 or even 14-15. So while the offense was putrid, had the Giants a good #5 starter, as they had had all season long, they would currently only be 3-4 games out instead of 6 games out, a recurrent theme, in a month that went as bad as the 2010 end of season went well.

Sept 2011 Comments

September continued the downtrend since May. However, what September demonstrated was the frailty of a major league rotation when there are injuries. While there has been a downtrend, a 52%DOM/20%DIS for any particular pitcher would be considered pretty good, still.

It was a month of four haves and one have not. Vogelsong led the way with 4 DOM starts and 0 DIS. Bumgarner was up there with 4 DOM and 1 DIS. Both Cain and Lincecum disappointed, only by their already lofty standards, with 3 DOM and 0 DIS each, which would be good for almost any other pitcher in the MLB. However, the Giants 7th best starter, Surkamp, after a good first career start, just hit the skids after that, with 4 DIS starts and no DOM.

Without him, the Giants rotation had 14 DOM vs. 1 IDS in 20 starts, good for 70% DOM and 5% DIS. Meaning, together, as a group, the four pitchers were as good as any elite pitcher of recent years, but not just one pitcher, but four of them. Collectively for the season they had 90 DOM and 10 DIS out of 127 starts, good for 71% DOM and 8% DIS.

That is as good a reason to trade Jonathan Sanchez now, a rotation like that don't need a Dirty level starter as the 5th starter, better to trade to improve the offense, even if we might get less than if Dirty pitched well in spring, as waiting brings great risk if he has another slow start or if he is not 100% ready for the season. Also, by then, teams are set with who they want to go with, generally, so it would be hard to pry a Melky Cabrera type player away from someone, only prospects would be available.

This was basically a repeat of August, where had the Giants had a better 5th starter, they probably would have won 2-3 more games than they had. But that is life for any MLB tam down to their 7th starter. I wonder if the Giants would have been better off trading Wheeler for a better starter but at that time there was no need for a starter, as Sanchez was just starting his bad stretch and Zito was due to come off the DL, if I recall right.

As I covered in my Vogelsong post, I think that there are a lot of positive signs that Vogelsong, while not likely to be as great as he was in 2011, one, he should be good enough for the Giants pitching rotation to do well again, and his peripherals support that, as well as his late season run of DOM starts, and two, I wouldn't be surprised if he did even better (in terms of peripherals and PQS, not necessarily ERA, which benefited a lot early by a very low BABIP and low HR/9 rate). Then again, he threw nearly 100 more IP than he had averaged in recent seasons, so one can wonder if that will have any deleterious effect going forward. However, as noted, his excellent September would suggest that he is fine.

I'm going to dispense with my usual recap of the month for the team. We all saw what happened. Instead I'll share some thoughts on 2012.

Again, I think the Giants should be a contender for the NL West crown. They have the pitching. As maligned as Zito has been, he has been OK as a starter for us, only 2008 was truly horrible and 2011 was marred by injuries (including the pre-season car accident that I think might have caused him to adjust physically to pitch, but which then caused his mechanics to go out of whack and cause himself injury), so I give him a pass on that. His main problem is that people can't let go of the fact that he is being paid like an ace, not a good starter. Good starters get around $10M per season, not twice that.

The offense will be helped out by the return of hitters and improvement by young players. The Giants only need average hitters to be a big winner with their pitching staff, as I've shown with Pythagorean (in my business plan, link to right).

Pablo Sandoval and presumably Buster Posey (so far, so good) will be above average in the middle of the order. Melky Cabrera, Angel Pagan, and Freddy Sanchez should be at least average up top our lineup, though possibly better, particularly Melky, who was at the right age for a breakout season. Huff will hopefully get into shape - remember that he first got into shape prior to the 2010 season because he realized that he was too old not to, as related by a coach interviewed about Huff - and have at least his projected mid-700 OPS and hopefully closer to his career .808 OPS. But all we need is his projection to get our offense going again, as he projects to only be the 6th hitter, based on the expected starters we have now. And I would say that it is likely he will out hit his projection, providing some downside protection in case other hitters don't perform to projections.

I also think that Posey and the Brandons (Brandon Belt and Brandon Crawford) will do better in their second season around the majors, Posey because he is just a good hitter who should be hitting his stride soon (scary good, right?) and the Brandons showed encouraging signs at season's end that they might have figured out some things about hitting in the majors.

Of course, Brandon Belt will be the wild card in 2012. I think things are set up nicely for him, despite the fears of the Naysayers. Sabean has been pretty good about giving his good hitting prospects (note the distinction there, good vs. best, because many Naysayers confuse the two meanings; for example, Fred Lewis and John Bowker may have been our best hitting prospects, once upon a time, but they were not good hitting prospects) an opportunity to win a position. Looks like he will be facing off with Nate Schierholtz this spring.

Right now, the lineup looks something like this: Pagan, Franchez, Melky, Posey, Sandoval, Huff, Scherholtz, Crawford. Belt or Schierholtz (that is, the loser of the battle for RF) will be the insurance should 1) Huff turn out to have hit the wall like Rowand, 2) Melky turns back into his 2010 pumpkin, 3) Pagan turn out to have hit the wall like Rowand, 3) the winner of the RF competition Bowkers out of it in April. That is a good situation to be in, Sabean has been trying in recent seasons to create this multi-positional flexibility (agile operations in business-speak) so that should one piece of the puzzle don't fit, he can bring in another piece and hopefully not miss a step. Most teams do not survive losing their four top hitters as the Giants did in 2011 - that is a testament to Bochy's managerial prowess - and still end up with a good winning record, no matter how much money they have.

I was originally going to write a lot about the rest of the NL, but I think I'll hold off until spring, to let the rosters shake out. Suffice it to say that I am not really afraid of the moves that most of the teams have made. To that, I say that they had to make big moves, they were still many, many games behind the Giants, let alone the D-backs, they have to swing for the fences just to get to .500, let alone to catch the top two.

The D-backs have made big moves, and I applaud them for that, but like the Giants, they had a lucky year with their 1-run win-loss record, but while Bochy has a long history and record of doing that basically every other season, Gibson did it in his first as a manager. Given that no manager other than Bochy over the past nearly 20 years that Bochy has been managing has been able to do that consistently, Gibson and the D-backs will presumably fall back to the mean in that regard, dropping them to roughly the same wins as the Giants had in 2011. They have to make big moves to move to a legit 90+ win potential. The Giants already have that with their lineup assuming that Posey can just match his projections, he is the key tipping point for the Giants offense in 2012 (and was for 2010 and 2011 as well).

Go Giants!

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas!

Bill James Handbook: 2011 Giants Baserunning

2011-12-21T23:06:00.000-08:00

I should note that I wholeheartedly recommend getting Bill James Handbook. I get it every year, lots of good data, and usually some new data each year. Like one year: baserunning.

I wrote about the Giants defense the other day, and now today I'm covering baserunning.

The Giants were 12th in the majors in Net Bases Gained, with 38 bases gained, which includes bases taken while a baserunner, as well as net bases from base stealing. So they are above average but nearer the middle than the top. The Rangers were the top with 112 total bases gained. It would take an additional 12 bases to get into the top 10, to give some perspective on how much more they would have to do to get up there.

However, there are a couple of amazing facts contained in that number and ranking. First off, the Giants are the highest ranked team in Net Bases Gained for a team with negative SB gained. The next highest are the Reds, in 17th place with +20 Net Bases Gained. All the other teams did it with guys who are natually good at stealing bases, which makes up a large portion of the baserunning gains that the teams ahead of the Giants got. Remember, the Giants were negative (-17, FYI).

Moreover, the Giants are among the leaders in BaseRunning Gained, which are extra bases taken while on the basepaths as a runner, except when stealing bases. Of course, as any Giants fan knows, Bochy likes to have his runners in motion with the pitch, so that accounts for a lot of the caught stealing and I would say for a lot of the bases gained while running.

And that apparently pays off greatly, as the Giants were 2nd in the majors with +55 baserunning gain. Texas was first with +60, and Tampa Bay was third with +54, followed by Toronto with +50. Mariners were fifth with +42, but then sixth is all the way down to Philadelphia with only +26. So the Giants were an elite baserunning team in 2011, even though they don't really have many horses on their team, other than Torres and Burriss.

Obviously, Andres was first on the team in 2011 with +24 Net and +17 baserunning and +7 SB gain. Burriss, despite not spending that much time in the majors was second with +16 (+11; +5). FYI, Melky Cabrera had +13 with the Royals in 2011 (+13; 0) and Pagan had +27 with the Mets (+9; +18). It appears that while Cabrera is a good baserunner, he's not so good at stealing bases, while Pagan is good at stealing bases while he's not so good as a baserunner. They would have been 1st and 3rd on the Giants with those totals.

The next guys are the surprises. Rowand was third with +12 (+16; -4) and Fontenot was fourth with +10 (+7; +3). Unsurprisingly, because he was among the Giants top guys in baserunning in previous years despite not playing full-time, Nate Schierholtz was fifth with +9 (+10; -1). I mention Beltran with +8 (+8; 0), though I have no idea how much was with the Giants. But since it does not look like he'll be back, it probably don't matter now.

Among the remaining players who added value on the bases are Freddy Sanchez with +5 (+7; -2), Brandon Belt with +4 (+5; -1), which is not surprising because it was mentioned that he's a sharp base runner (as well as a base stealer in the minors), Buster Posey had a surprising +4 (+1; +3) in the short amount of time he played, so he could have ended up among the leaders at this pace, even Chris Stewart was a net gain with +3 (+3; 0), which is also surprising, and lastly Crawford was +2 (+7; -5), meaning that if he could just avoid getting caught stealing, he could be quite the baserunner given his lack of playing time, coupled with his lack of on-base ability, yet he still ended up +7 for the season in base running.

The bad baserunners you knew: Burrell, Huff (-12: -11; -1), Keppinger (-8; not sure how much SF), Sandoval (-11: -5; -6), Tejada, Whiteside. Ross was at 0 (-1; +1).

So, apparently Bochy's aggressiveness on the basepaths work for the most part. They were 12th in the league overall, though most of that was Torres and we don't know if he will even be around in 2012, but at least Cabrera will make up a lot of that. Still, the Giants were 2nd in the league in baserunning bases gained, and they would have still been in the top 5 in 2011 if we swap out Torres for Cabrera.

I wonder if this helps account for the Giants record in 1-run games with Bochy in 2011. Heck, for his career, he has been the best manager in beating the odds in 1-run games and being a leader in about half his seasons as manager in games above .500 (the saber rule on that is that a team's record in 1-run games regresses to .500 over time and from my research, there are few NL managers since Bochy became manager, who could do that regularly, Cox though not in a while, Baker to a lesser extent, Dave Johnson when he managed the Mets. Bochy is the best and to a statistically significant degree too).

Looking at the team stats, the Giants gained a few bases first to third, but wasn't league average in going home from first or second. Where they made their gains was in bases taken (like on wild pitches; tied for 4th in majors), running into an out while advancing (tied for 2nd), getting doubled off (lowest in majors), and baserunning outs (1st in majors too). I guess that is another characteristic of Bochy's teams, they don't cost you any runs while on the basepaths with stupid mistakes, while also being aggresive (as seen by the bases taken, 4th there), which adds up to runs and wins eventually. That also fits in with his philosophy not to give up any outs via a sacrifice, as outs are precious.

If you count 4 bases as a run, the Giants added roughly 9-10 runs or roughly one additional win for the Giants in 2011 because of their baserunning.

Giants Thoughts

I should note, however, that the Giants were pretty lousy in 2010, was great in 2009, but again not so good, heck, lousy again, in 2008. So they have not been consistently good with Bochy. It appears that sometimes his philosophy works very well, or it doesn't.

It will be interesting to see how they do in 2012 now that they have some better wheels on the basepaths with Cabrera and Pagan added, along with Schierholtz being pretty good, as well as Crawford being OK in limited play. Even Posey was pretty good, probably would have been in double digits at the rate he was doing it, though I don't really see him stealing double digit bases. And even better if/when Belt rejoins the team.

Happy Holidays: Catching up

2011-12-18T01:03:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays to everyone!

I've been busy (which is good for me, but not for a blog) so I wanted to point out some good posts for those looking for good Giants stuff to read:

BA recently released their Top 10 for the Giants. DrB has his take here at his website. Crazy Crabbers shares some of the BA discussion at his site, which I read regularly. Lots of good info and discussions at each, that's about all the time I have nowadays, commenting here and there (it's tough, Shankbone!).
McCovey Chronicles has a nice take on the recent Barry Bonds sentencing.

Giants Thoughts

The prospect list, I think DrB has a great description of it. 2-8 can be in a different order depending on what values the ranker assigns to certain factors, between talent, potential, performance, and the intangibles. I mentioned there that I think Joseph and Hembree are above Panik solely for potential, but Panik is probably close to being a regular in the majors, and I think that is where some disagreement over the rankings is probably occurring. I don't see why Ehire Adrianza is above Hector Sanchez. While I love BA, I find that they tend to underestimate prospects who knows how to avoid the strikeout, like when they whiffed totally on Pablo Sandoval. But it is a nice Top 10.

Just remember the old rubric about Top 10 prospect lists, out of any farm system, only around 2 will ever become regulars in the majors, 2 be significant bench/relievers, and that extends far beyond the Top 10, often. Top 10 lists are not infallible, neither is BA. But I will say that when I used BA's Top 10 list a few years back to guide my keeper league draft, more often than not, I was directed to good prospects.

From Crabbers kind sharing of the discussion, here are my thoughts. I am not really too surprised by the Villalona 40 man rostering. A guy who sues a team to get them to take him back usually is not a guy willing to rest on his laurels (or $2.2M). That to me meant that he did his best to stay in baseball shape while he was not in professional baseball. That's not ideal, but it also means that he has a lot of time (like a prisoner) to work on getting into shape while he's "locked up", that is locked out of major league baseball in the U.S. I would also think such an experience will either toughen up the guy or he would just take his money and go cry in his drink at his"chair/table" at his favorite bar. The lawsuit, to me, suggested that he got toughened up.

Of course, just my speculation, take it or leave it. But remember, he was a Top 40 prospect in ALL of baseball before he got shut down. Unless he ate himself out of baseball, like Jerome did, that talent is still there. He's still young, I think 22, plenty of time for him to still figure things out, though obviously the 8 ball is against him in terms of experience. But that talent and potential has got to be still there if he's in any semblance of a good shape. We will see.

I disagree about Belt. You give him a shot and see where he was at. Letting him get shown up at the major league level will do nothing for his development, confidence or ego. If he's like Heyward, then that's a nice problem to have, but it is not like when Pedroia was doing horribly, Pedroia was just having bad BABIP problems, he was actually taking walks and avoiding strikeouts. Belt was clearly being shown up by major league pitching. Don't take a scout or someone seeing him swing the bat, the numbers shouted that out clearly.

Lastly, Barry Bonds. If you want to convict him of not speaking clearly or rambling, then you may as well convict me too, and millions of other people. Grand Juries are intimidating, I would have been terribly nervous, talk about other things as well as the question at hand.

I'm still not convinced beyond a doubt that Bonds did anything illegally on his own. Ted Robinson thinks that there is no way Bonds would take anything, that he is careful, but I disagree, people let their guard down when it comes to their buddies. What do you know about what people put in the food you eat when you go to a potluck? You trust them not to screw you by putting hashish or any other illegal substances in there that might affect you.

Maybe Bonds put a lot of trust in his buddy. Maybe his buddy, being poor because Bonds is a skinflint, saw a way to make money by using his connection to sell steroids to those not as gifted as his buddy, suggesting that he was helping Barry do it. Nobody is going to talk to Bonds to verify that this was so. Maybe he didn't want to testify because it would make him look like the biggest traitor in the world, selling out his buddy (or worse, poisoning him with illegals drugs) to make money.

I don't doubt that Bonds probably took. I just have a doubt that he knew about it.

Plus, according to research by Boskage House, steroids might not even have any positive effects on performance, so all this could be much ado about nothing.

Giants trade for CF Angel Pagan for Torres and Ramirez

2011-12-06T22:52:00.000-08:00

The Giants have traded Andres Torres and Ramon Ramirez to the Mets for CF Angel Pagan. Reports from Baggerly and Shea. The deal is not officially announced yet, there are physicals to do, and so it probably won't become official until later this week.

The Giants appear to be close to another deal with an AL club, possibly involving Jeff Keppinger, which makes sense since his value is really as a hitter, not a defensive fielder.

Giants Thoughts

First off, thank you to Andres Torres and Ramon Ramirez for their roles in helping us win our 2010 World Championship.

That said, Torres wasn't much use to us last season after May, he was pretty messed up because of he needed an adjustment of his medicine and they couldn't apparently get it right. Meanwhile, Ramirez was of pretty good use to us, and is the value in this trade from the Mets perspective, because Pagan had a down year as well.

Thinking of this from a statistical standpoint, each team traded one type of risk for another, in order to lessen the risk of another kind. Basically the standard deviation of what one can expect offensively is better for Pagan, I think, while for defense, Torres is better.

The Mets wanted a better defensive player, which Torres is, much better than Pagan, who was -1 Defensive Runs Saved in 2011 (Torres was +4 overall, +3 in CF in about 30% less innings than Pagan), plus there is the potential that Torres might return to his 2010 form, getting them a double boost, as then he would be a similar offensive player as Pagan plus provides good defense. Plus they add a great reliever to boot. Risk but reward too.

The Giants did not get that great a defensive player (but I think their defensive schemes that they do apparently help players at least a bit as Burrell somehow was a valuable defensive LF for the Giants in 2010) in Pagan, and offensively he is not as good as Torres was in 2010, but he is more likely to be a better hitter, having a better history plus his one down year, last year, was plagued by injuries from beginning to end, starting with oblique problems in the first month of the season, to back spasms mid-season, to a head injury that kept him out at the end of the season. Plus he is two years younger than Torres. And he is also a switch-hitter like Torres, and hits better against RHP and only OK against LHP.

Looks like they got another mix and match player in Pagan, who has played a lot of games at all three OF positions, and is especially valuable batting against RHP, and is about average defensively in CF (at least he was in 2011, and he was injured during parts of the season). They save money in the deal, it is believed, plus can expect a certain level of offense from Pagan, whereas Torres, who knows when he'll be OK with his ADHD medicine dosage.

Pagan's main problem in 2011 appears to be two fold. First his BABIP fell 50 points from the prior 3 seasons and was 30 points below his career average. Second was his drop in ISO, about 30 points below average. Together that took about 60-90 points off his OPS, which would have put him in the mid-to-high 700 OPS range. Presuming that it was the injuries that caused a lot of that, plus I read a note somewhere that he's working hard on his conditioning during this off-season because he don't want a repeat of 2011, he looks like a good bet to rebound, especially since his contact rate is pretty good and his walk rate is OK, suggesting that 2011 was just a case of the BABIP ball bouncing into mitts more often than usual for Pagan.

It certainly solidifies our OF, now Bochy can mix and match Melky and Angel in CF, plus they will probably see time in the corner sometimes too, depending on who is hot or not, giving us insurance if Schierholtz does not perform as hoped in RF or if Belt or Huff does not perform as hoped in LF. Speaking of Belt, this still keeps the door open for him to take LF or 1B starting if he comes out blazing, as then Melky, Angel, and Nate would probably be mixing and matching CF and RF, plus Belt will probably sit some games against LHP anyway, both to avoid since he has not figured them out plus to get other guys into games too.

This is a good move offensively, plus opens a spot in the bullpen to either acquire someone, as perhaps the Giants see another reclamation project out there (oh, this opens up a 40 man spot), like they did Santiago Casilla a couple of years ago, or maybe there is some prospects they want to look at in spring, not sure how guys did in AFL, or even one of the other winter leagues. And there is the savings of probably $1-2M, and getting a younger player to boot. All in all a nice move, which becomes great if Pagan is like he was in 2009-2010, and given that he's healthy and getting himself into shape, that's a good bet.

Media Bias Warps Fans Views

2011-12-06T21:45:00.000-08:00

I love reporters - I read the newspaper almost every day - and the Giants are blessed to have good reporters covering them in Andy Baggarly, Hank Schulman, and Chris Haft (plus John Shea Hey often fills in for Hank). They add immeasurably to our enjoyment of our favorite team by bringing us the news regularly and also busting scoops, like Neukom getting replaced. But their bias against the Giants (and if it is just misunderstanding on their part, well, the result is still bias) has colored the fan base against Sabean and Bochy.

The latest writings to get my dander up are by Baggarly and Haft (Shea has often gotten be riled up as well, and I assume Schulman has at some point, but not that I can recall at the moment). And Haft got me riled up with another post he had.

Baggarly

I love Baggs and he brings the most and best news about the Giants to us fans. So I feel a tinge of guilt to pointing him out, but somebody needs to point out the Emperor's new clothes.

First is a minor quibble, but still, his is a widely known, well-respected source of Giants information. He noted that "Sandoval batted .379 from his (natural) right side". Only, his natural side is his left side, as he was born left-handed, but learned (and pretty well) how to throw right-handed. The story is that Sandoval's hero at some point was Omar Vizquel, so he wanted to play SS to emulate his hero, but, obviously, left-handers can't play SS, so he learned to throw right-handed in order to play SS, and from then on he was right-handed, for all intents and purposes. (that's actually a common thing, my mom was left-handed but did a lot of things right-handed)

The other I was more perturbed by, which is when he said that Bochy "preferred Orlando Cabrera to Crawford later in the summer."  Because he has inside information, the way it is written, he makes it looks like Bochy preferred Cabrera. What I want to make clear is that any manager should know that having a younger player is better than having an older player, if they are equal in performance.

So that is the conundrum, was Crawford better than Cabrera. At that point, Crawford hadn't played much above the A-level, so all we really had to judge him was his results at the major league level.  At the time of the trade, he was batting .190/.275/.261/.536, but if you took away his first two good weeks of hitting, over the next seven weeks (June 9-July 30, when trade for Cabrera), he hit .161/.242/.196/.438 in 29 games started and 37 games played.

So sure, Cabrera was not doing that well, but Crawford at the time of the trade had been hitting poorly over the prior 7 weeks (almost 2 full months of starting, putting the lie to people complaining that Giants management don't play young players), but his hitting was plummeting, as his last three weeks he was hitting .100/.l62/.100/.282, which does not take a sabermetric degree to figure out isn't really good. Really, do people need to make it personal that Bochy and Sabean hates young players or prefer Cabrera over Crawford?

The point was not that Cabrera wasn't any good anymore, nor that the Giants preferred Cabrera over Crawford, but that Crawford had cratered offensively and the Giants felt that he needed to back off, take some time in the minors to fix some things they saw, plus hopefully Cabrera could put in a finishing kick (unfortunately he didn't). Ultimately, the Giants prefer production and Crawford wasn't giving it to them, so they rolled the dice with Cabrera. I have no problem with that, particularly if they thought that Crawford could use the lesser pressure and learn some new batting techniques.

And you know what, the Giants did figure out something. Crawford when he came back was an improved hitter, he hit .225/.295/.325/.620, 12 starts in September plus some other games he got into. If he can hit that over a full season, it would be great to go with his stellar defense at SS.   I preferred Cabrera over Crawford given how poorly Crawford was doing for a long time (almost 2 months) plus was doing nothing offensively for almost a month. And it had nothing to do with "preferring Cabrera over Crawford", at least from the numbers perspective. And now I hope the Giants give Crawford the chance to start, but with someone backing up who could keep the seat warm if Crawford still needs some tweaking down in the minors.

That short stretch and his nice showing in the AFL (though he tailed off at the end, but that could have been because he was distracted by his upcoming nuptials) plus, more importantly, his OK contact rate in the majors, he had a 84% contract rate overall (good hitters are at 85% and higher), plus improved by month, 80.5% in June, 84.4% in July, 86.0% in September. I understand small samples and all, but I think that the 84% overall bodes well for the future, plus he improved over time.

In another recent post, (I had intended this to go out on Saturday but somehow screwed that up) he also opined that "you could argue that Sabean should have a larger budget than $130M, after the Giants sold out every game last season. You might be right." Then again, maybe you won't.

OK, I wrote something I wanted to bring over here at Extra Baggs but apparently my comment got removed by his moderator (his ears must have been burning with this sitting waiting to post :^). There are a lot of factors involved with the revenues that prevents them from spending more. Sure, selling out makes a lot of revenues but it also means that you pay a lot more in revenue sharing. The Giants are basically paying into that what the A's get, and the A's have just been pocketing that money instead of making the team good enough to compete and draw bigger crowds in Oakland, they are the team fans should be badgering about increasing their payroll.

In addition, their revenue sharing went up because they accounted for the stadium cost over a 10 year period, per the revenue sharing rules, and thus they started paying even more into revenue sharing starting in 2011.

Plus, they have a host of stadium related expenses which the Giants fans were unwilling to vote to give to the team so they had to build their own park. First and most of all is the $20M mortgage payment, which is mostly principal by now, so they have less interest to write off, taking away more income that they could add to payroll. There is also the stadium upkeep that they have to do because they do own the park. The events they hold there when baseball is not playing helps offset that, but I doubt it covers the entire bill for a full year worth.

I would also point out that a sell-out at SF is not a huge park, it can only hold 42,000 fans, which about average among the top teams.  And they averaged $26 per ticket in 2010, the lowest among the top seven teams in valuation. The Red Sox, for example, averaged $53 per ticket in 2010, the Yankees $63. The other were at or just above $30 per ticket. So while they are selling out, apparently that has more to do with their fancy dynamic ticket pricing to ensure sell-outs.

Their payroll in 2010 was in line with their revenues. Player expenses was $114M in 2010 vs. gate receipts of $107M. The Yankees had $236M vs. $300M in gate. Red Sox, $187M vs. $176M in gate. D-gers, $118M vs. $107M in gate. Cubs, $157M vs. $146M in gate. Mets, $139M vs. $123M in gate. And Phillies with $150M in revenues and $124M in gate. And they bumped up their payroll for 2011 to the $120M range.

So, no, I don't think an argument could be made for the Giants spending much more than $130M on payroll in 2012, not unless Larry Ellison bought the team and put all his billions into the team. Until that happens, or until the prices catches up with the top teams and top $30 per ticket, which would add around $15M to the gate (and maybe that happened in 2011, but still that only bumps player expenses to around $122M per the Forbes numbers).

Haft

Now, he wasn't as bad as I had initially thought. Still, he makes the case that adding Melky Cabrera is not "enough to correct the vast imbalance between their skilled pitching and somnolent hitting." Well, as I showed in the Posey post, yeah, it does, because he is forgetting that Posey is part of the new mix in the offense in 2012. Why do people not get that losing one of your best hitters, particularly your clean-up batter, does not cripple the offense?

Then in the article about the extensions for Sabean and Bochy, he noted some other things. In response to Baer, he retorts:

"I strongly believe that Brian and Bruce are the best at their crafts in the game," Baer said.

Other current GMs have assembled more winning teams than Sabean, who has built five postseason qualifiers (1997, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2010). A handful of active managers have tasted triumph more consistently than Bochy, whose teams have finished 1,360-1,376, including 409-401 by the Giants since 2007.

That just totally ignores the fact that there was a rebuilding in the middle of all that, a rebuilding and losing that was necessary to restoring competitiveness. Plus, he didn't really name anyone with more winning teams, probably because there are FEW who have, as Sabean is the longest tenured GM, some GMs out there have not even GMed as many seasons as Sabean has had winning seasons (11 winning teams, by the way).

And Bochy was hampered first by the tight-fisted Padres' owners, who dismantled his World Series team right after they made it in, causing him to suffer through 5 losing seasons before the team was rebuilt to win again, plus he took over the Giants during their rebuilding phase, but if you are keeping track, he has three winning seasons with the Giants versus two losing, and does not look like he'll be losing any in the coming seasons either.

Giants Thoughts

These inaccuracies are what are coloring many of the Giants fans thoughts regarding the team. They are teaching this fan base, which are not obsessive enough to dig deeper and thus rely on the beat writers to guide them, to spout the same inaccuracies when they go on-line or talk with their Giants fan friends.

I also just realized that beat writers have a vested interest in having a riled up fan base. I'm not accusing any of them of doing this on purpose or knowingly, but it would make logical sense for them to mislead the fan base in order to keep them disgruntled.

That is something I realized about KNBR night-time hosts, they must have realized at some intellectual level that they need to push the buttons and be controversial and hard on the Giants to keep the callers coming in and goading the callers to call in to complain about the Giants, mainly because a contented fan base do not have much interest in calling in and complimenting the Giants. In fact, all that would be necessary is one call praising the Giants and that would be it. Crickets chirping the rest of the 3-4 hours of the show. So it behooves them to get the fan base riled up and calling in, by pointing out everything and anything, paticularly by biasing the audience towards a touchy-feely position (he loves vets, he signed bad contracts) that really doesn't hold up when the facts are piled on top of each other, but when talking off the cuff, can be easily defended for people who are not really that into the Giants and where facts are not as readily discovered and presented.

Basically, if the fanbase were happy, there probably would not be as much people talking about the Giants and complaining about them in particular. It is just human nature not to have the impetus to say or do anything when things are going well. Less people talking equals less people buying newspapers to see what is happening, less people visiting their websites to see what is happening, less people following his twitters to see what is happening. less people calling into shows, less people listening to shows. This makes economic (survival) sense to keep the fans at least a little hungry and angry, as that stirs up interest in your product, which is news.

It is like the story about the guy who started eBay because his girlfriend at the time wanted to sell her collection of Pez dispensers. Which wasn't true, but the eBay publicist gave that out on a lark, apparently, and that story got legs like you wouldn't know it, as one columnist after another, assuming that the original story was true (it was told by an eBay employee afterall), passed it along. I thought it was true until I read an article exposing that lie.

It is also similar to the Barry Bonds "I'm better than Babe Ruth" comment a few (OK, many) years back. He clearly (to the reporters who knew him) was joking about that, but one reporter who was there didn't know him, so he just reported that verbatim without the context that Bonds was clearly joking, and that blew into a media storm, as one writer after another assumed that the story was true, which culminated with the head of the Babe Ruth Museum taking a pot shot at Bonds.

Another Bonds incident that got blown up and passed around like a joint was when he angrily addressed the throng of writers crowding up to speak to him after the Giants lost the 2002 World Series. Most of them presented him as a surly angry person in their articles regarding that interview, but the ones up front made it clear that when he told everyone to back off in a loud voice, it was because the idiots in the back were pushing forward and the reporters up front threatened to crush Bonds' son, who was with him.

In neither Bonds case, once the truth was known, none of the writers would write a follow-up article noting, "Ooops, I got that one wrong, sorry". But it sure generated a lot of columns and a lot of interest (lots of comments bashing Bonds).

But while I understand that this is the nature of the beast, it does not mean I have to be happy about it either. I hate inaccuracies in the news with a passion, because that will color people's imprressions for a long time, whether true or false. And particularly in the case of the Giants, as I am afraid that the ownership might decide to appease the angry willagers with their pitchforks and torches asking for the heads of Sabean and Bochy.

I will join them and lead the way with my pitchfork when I think Sabean and Bochy are doing anything to endanger the Giants present and future. But as I've been writing for over 4 years now, Sabean has the Giants on the right track and in a good situation. We can be the team of the 2010's decade if the ownership is willing to make it so with their payroll, dipping into the rainy day fund as necessary, freeing Sabean to make baseball moves. I was more encouraged when Neukom was in charge, but will allow Baer time to show his true colors. And as I've written and research on Bochy as well, I've realized that he's a special one too. I am happy for their extensions, they were well deserved.

Posey Power Activated!

2011-12-02T08:30:00.000-08:00

Clearly I have to write this post first. People still think that the offense is not good enough to win with. Notice the difference in my language, "good enough to win" versus "good offense". It is a natural fan inclination to think "more, better, best" for anything regarding their favorite team, that is why it is helpful to fight that inclination and think through some obvious changes to the offense, even as it exists now, and realize that your internal panic alarm going off is going off for naught.

One of the clearly big differences is that Buster Posey is returning to the lineup. Sure, people are glad about that but they don't really understand the magnitude of that change from Posey as starter versus Chris Stewart and Eli Whiteside as co-starters (with a sprinkling of Hector Sanchez). I will try to make that clearer with some analysis.

In 2011, the four catchers, by Bill James Runs Created methodology, created a total of 49 Runs Created (RC). Also, collectively, by Defensive Runs Saved (DRS), they saved a total of 7 runs. However, in 2012, it should just be Posey and, for now, probably Stewart, at the catching position.

Bill James projections has Posey creating 91 RC in 2012. Unfortunately, there is no Stewart forecast there, but they have projected Whiteside at .609 OPS and 16 RC. ZiPS projections just came out, and while there is no Whiteside projection, there is a Stewart projection for .640 OPS. Assuming Stewart produces at least as much as Whiteside projects, that's 107 RC from the catching position in 2012 per Bill James projections. That is a +58 RC improvement over 2011.

Defensively, assuming Posey plays as well as he did in 2011 and projecting out the innings he caught, he had 2 DRS in 361.0 innings in 2011, and triple that is roughly what the top catchers caught in 2011, so let's call that 6 DRS. That leaves about 396.0 innings for the backup. Stewart in 2011 had 9 DRS in 460.1 innings. Assuming some drop, as that is high, I think +6 is reasonable, but even if he did only 1 DRS, the defense would still be the same as in 2011. But going with the more realistic scenario, that works out to +12 DRS which is 5 runs better than the +7 DRS the Giants catchers had in 2011 (Whiteside was -3 DRS and Sanchez -1 DRS).

Looking at their baserunning, it appears that they were roughly equal, though there should be some improvement there because Posey and Stewart added bases via their baserunning whereas Whiteside subtracted. But as there is no run equivalency provided, it is hard to estimate the effect on run production, other than it would add to it. Still even at 4 bases to a run, the numbers involved is so small that there is a negligible increase in run production. Call it even.

Assuming a base RA of 580 or 3.58 RA/game (basically the average of the past two seasons), that +58 RC results in an additional 6.55 wins and that +5 DRS results in an additional 0.60 wins. Together, that adds up to 7.15 wins.

Thus, losing Posey cost the Giants approximately 7 wins in 2011, roughly 6.5 wins on offense and 0.5 wins on defense. They won 86 games in 2011, so had Posey not been taken out by a rogue runner with no conscience (or at least was acting like one, which is the same effect), the Giants probably would have won somewhere in the 93 game range. With the Cards at 90 wins, even if this is off a little, most probably the Giants would have won the Wild Card slot, and not the Cards, who eventually won the World Championships (so they probably should send a full share of the championship money to Cousins, because they might not have made the playoffs had he not took Posey out).

Looking to 2012, the Giants 2011 offense was roughly even with the defense, which works out to a roughly .500 record per Pythagorean. Adding 7 wins to that puts the Giants at 88 wins for 2012 currently.

The addition of Melky Cabrera, according to Bill James added 70 RC to 2012, by his projections. Torres, Rowand, and Ross collectively had around 60 RC. By DRS, Melky was -3 DRS but collectively the Giants CF were 0 DRS (while Torres is good, Ross and Rowand were not). So that is a roughly 7 run improvement, which is roughly a one win improvement. That puts us at 89 wins. And ZiPS projects him to hit .284/.330/.435/.765, which is higher than the .745 OPS that Bill James has him hitting.

However, I would note that any projections assume that Cabrera did not break out in 2011. Projection methodologies are not savvy enough yet to figure out when a batter or pitcher broke out, for sure. If he repeats his 2011 season - and that is possible, as the Bill James park factors for LHB and RHB is almost the same between KC and SF, and the given reason for his improvement was a dedication to conditioning and getting into shape - that would add 22 RC, or about 2.5 wins.

Now that assumes that there is no improvement anywhere else. But there was a lot of underperformance in 2011 across the whole team.

Giants 1B only hit .258/.318/.414/.732. Between Huff and Belt, there has to be an improvement there in 2012 offensively. Pablo's replacements at 3B didn't quite match him (obviously), and Giants 3B "only" hit .294/.339/.478/.817. Sandoval is projected by Bill James to hit .311/.363/.525/.888, by ZiPS to hit .299/.347/.497/.844, and he hit .315/.357/.552/.909 in 2011 (again, hard for systems to judge whether 2010 was an aberration, so that damps down forecasts, though James is pretty close).

Giants SS only hit .210/.265/.299/.564 in 2011. For Crawford, Bill James projects .232/.297/.340/.637, ZiPS .225/.291/.336/.627. Giants LF only hit .222/.310/.374/.684, while Bill James projects .266/.358/.482/.840 for Brandon Belt, ZiPS .268/.365/.452/.817 (right now I think Belt is the starting LF, given the personnel we have now).

So basically, the Giants look like a 89 win team, or thereabouts. 90 wins was necessary to get into the playoffs in 2011. They should already have it via Sandoval at 3B, as he should hit much better than what 3B hit collectively, as long as he is healthy, heck, together the 3B had roughly 90 RC (and that is ignoring the great defense Pablo played) and Bill James projects Sandoval at 102 RC for 2012, which is roughly a 1.5 win improvement.

The Giants should also get improvement at 1B, SS, LF, or CF, as it is unlikely whoever plays there in 2012 could be any worse. The possible improvements at the other four positions are buffers against declines at RF (since Beltran is not around and Schierholtz is the starter there) and in the pitching staff. Shoot, Huff could add around 5 wins by returning anywhere close to what he did in 2010, by himself. And if Belt could actually reach his projections, that would probably add another 5 wins in LF.

Thus, that is why I see the Giants offense being no worse than a 90 win team in 2012. And there are a lot of areas of improvement where we could push that up, potentially a lot, depending on who delivers and who don't. But conservatively, I don't see why the Giants are not competitive in 2012, as is, and could be another blockbuster team, like 2003, if the cards fall right for them, particularly Huff and Belt, though Vogelsong repeating would also greatly improve things as well.

Sabean and Bochy get contracts extended thru 2013

2011-11-30T13:30:00.000-08:00

As reported (Baggarly, Shea, Haft), the Giants extended Sabean's and Bochy's contracts in lock-step again. Their contracts were due to expire in 2012, but got extended to 2013 plus there is a team option year for 2014, like there was for their prior contract, which was picked up for the 2012 season last year by Neukom. Basically, the Giants upper management had to wait for Baer to be annointed "person of control" by the MLB, before he could finalize negotiations with Sabean and Bochy, else this deal might have been finished earlier.

In the press conference that announced the deal, they made a number of comments about the Giants future course (Baggarly, Shea, Haft):

The plan is to earmark most of their money for their pitching staff, then use the remainder to improve the offense. People rag on the offense, but as I'll show soon, a large part of that decline was the loss of Posey, but people conveniently forget about abnormal, unlikely to repeat events like that. "There won't be any big splash. Our pitching is our gold standard. We have to make sure we take care of that commodity first," said Sabean.
Evans noted in the meeting that he has just started talking with Lincecum's and Cain's agents, exchanging ideas and some numbers, mostly talking broadly, so they are not very far into the process yet (due to "so many other things").
They also have a large number of arbitration-eligible players: Ryan Vogelsong, Ramon Ramirez, Sergio Romo, Santiago Casilla, Nate Schierholtz, Pablo Sandoval.
Once they take care of the pitching, then they will see how much money is left in the payroll and see which free agents will fit in that. But they don't anticipate a household name, per se, no sticker shock type of play.
The payroll has been bumped up to $130M (I believe it was around $125M last season, plus there is always the mythical rainy day fund).
What they are looking for is better balance and flexibility. Depth is important and thus flexibility with the roster is important. (ogc note: rumors are that the Giants are kicking the tires on Jerry Hairston, Jr., who can play MI as well as COF. I view him as the successor to the role envisioned for Mark DeRosa, though I'm not sure how good he is defensively; DeRosa was great defensively and good offensively).
Appears that re-signing Carlos Beltran is a longshot. He was asked and agreed that an AL club (with the ability to DH regularly) could probably offer Beltran a longer-term contract than the Giants were comfortable with offering to a player with bad knees in his mid-30's. Still, Sabean noted, "He is a consideration but term will be an issue with anybody we pursue, whether it's him or anybody else. We have a game plan with what we consider a reasonable length." (ogc note: I would note here that they were comfortable with giving Franchez a 3-year contract, which, fortunately for us, he turned down for a two-year, and he's been even more injured prone than Beltran. People need to remember that as business-people, you don't want to negotiate publicly nor give away your hand. The Giants might be willing to give 3 years, but you don't give that away, particulalry in public, it is better if you play poor, act like it is possible that you will pass on signing, show some reticience in re-signing, as negotiations will always be one where each side has to give on something. You can't make a fair offer publicly and not have it bite you in the ass later in private negotiations).
Baggarly: "Sabean made it clear that the extensions will not be his focus when he arrives at the winter meetings in Dallas on Sunday. He is looking to improve the offense via trade or free agency, with the outfield being the area most in need."
About SS, Sabean was impressed with the strides Brandon Crawford made in the AFL. He could possibly be annointed the starter, though it was noted that they could carry his questionable bat if the offense improves elsewhere, and it was noted that he did what was asked to do in AFL, getting high marks regarding the strides he has made (ogc: everyone has a questionable bat, that is why in the NL the 8th place hitter don't hit for much, so he has a low bar to make. Plus the pitching makes the bar lower. I think the offense is good enough as is to handle his bat, particularly because he was actually pretty good at avoiding strikeouts last season, so I think it is just a matter of adjustments and experience before he starts hitting. May as well start in 2012 as the starter).
About Belt, Sabean praised his work in the Dominican Winter League, noting Belt's adjustments and his willingness to go there, accept their challenge (he was not intending to go to Winter League, Giants asked him to, partly to make up for development he missed in 2011 because of injury and sitting on the bench). Moises Alou (GM of the team Belt played on) gave positive reports on Belt. They noted that he was playable in the OF, though they realize that 1B is his best position.
About Ross, he is still up in the air, Sabean noted, "not sure" when asked about him. (ogc: that is consistent with before, Sabean noted that Ross could come back to the team later, if available.)
Sabean, according to Baggarly, left the general impression that he might not make another move to help the offense. Sabean: “I think we have developed enough choices including our young players in the mix and our arbitration eligible players as far as the price point that’s suitable. I think we’ve created enough food for thought and flexibility... Health is always an issue. We hope the guys who were banged up last year come back to form and do their part and pull their weight.” (ogc: I agree that another move is not necessary to help the offense, it should be good enough to win right now, but obviously any additional buffer to risk mitigate another hitter failing to perform would be great.)

And that is roughly it for the press conference, though there were a few other items that came up (read the accounts for that).

Giants Thoughts

This is what I thought should happen, though I am sure that there are legions of Giants fans crying into their garlic fries right now. I am very happy right now that Sabean and Bochy got extended another season plus a team option for another season.

Sabean deserves to continue being the GM, both for putting together the team that we have today and for guiding the team well in the rebuilding phase during the losing. Bochy, as I noted in prior research, is a unique manager, capable of bringing up his team by anywhere from 6 to 10 wins, every other season, that is a WAR of about 3-4 a season, which some sabers price at $4M (and higher) per win, or $12-l6M per season. That's a bargain, as I assume Bochy probably don't make anywhere near that per season.

I was disappointed by Haft's dig at both Sabean and Bochy when he noted that others have done more than either over their tenure than they have. First, sure, there are those who have done more, but that ignores the cycles that Baer talked about in the press conference when praising the two of them. You have to accept that there will be times when a team is losing and rebuilding. It also ignores that Bochy was handicapped by the Padres poor payroll problems that regularly rolled around and decimate the good team he had, then was hurt by the Giants rebuilding period at the tail end of the Barry Bonds era, where the teams weren't good enough to win yet. Every team has a life-cycle of rebuild/compete/repeat that has to play out, nobody is going to be a winner all the time, that is rarely done in the majors, if ever.

Second, and more importantly, Sabean has the team set to win throughout the 2010's and be the team of the decade that I've been predicting for the past 3 years. The pitching is all pretty set up, they only have to lock up Lincecum and Cain right now to set the team up nicely to do well over the next 4-5 years or so. The middle of the lineup looks to be great with Sandoval, Posey, and Belt, and the top of the lineup will hopefully be great with Brown and Panik up top in a year or two.

And with our great pitching and defense (just got the latest THT annual and it has the Giants team defensive runs saved figures there for the past few years and they have been one of the best defensive teams in the majors), what a lot of people don't realize is that it creates a low run environment in almost every game the Giants play in, thus making even a poor offense a good enough offense to win a lot of games with. But people are stuck in the mindset that you can't win with a poor offense and thus think that Sabean is lame for not doing more.

He is doing what he should be doing, securing our future dominance by getting Lincecum and Cain signed longer term. The whole team structure for winning falls apart without Lincecum and Cain up top (and with Bumgarner). I have no doubt that we can get Cain signed to a 5 year contract that might even have a slight home discount. I expect Lincecum to want fair value (i.e. no discount) but given the talk about liking shorter deals, I would be OK with a two year deal with an option year, then focus on getting him signed to a longer term deal next off-season.

There has been no mention about Bumgarner, but given the animosity that probably was engendered when the Giants summarily renewed his contract at their price for the 2011 season, I would hope the Giants look into making Bumgarner happy, it don't have to be a contract to buy out the rest of his pre-free agent years, though I would like something like that, but I think they should show him a little love in the contract negotiations this off-season. And I've mentioned Posey and Sandoval getting signed up long-term as well.

All in all, a well deserved extension for both Sabean and Bochy. Bochy in particular for bringing up the team and making it competitive for the playoffs, when by Pythagorean, by all rights they should have been scuffling around .500 during the 2011 season. But Sabean too, deserves credit for trying to keep the team together in 2011 for another run, but when things got bad, made the big move to trade for Beltran, plus jettisoned both Tejada and Rowand, when they proved to be detrimental to winning. Plus, by keeping the pitching staff together, that enabled the team to survive poor hitting and numerous injuries, and still be competitive enough for .500, by Pythagorean, when most teams losing a key player like Posey for the season would be sunk the moment he went down.

Money Paves the Way to San Jose

2011-11-21T21:03:00.000-08:00

Sorry, no links, but the news is that Selig is suddenly moving forward with the A's desire to move to San Jose, and will meet with the Giants about this.

I guess the other news is that San Jose has sold an option to Wolff to purchase the parcel of land that they are hoping to build the stadium on. Sold for $50,000, the city spent something over $25M to buy those pieces but has agreed to sell it to Wolff for just under $7M. Hope that is contingent on a stadium deal, else he just made a lot of money off the backs of San Jose citizens.

The catch there is that the city has not finished buying all the parcels of land, that is why they are selling him those parcels, in hopes that he can finish up that process, as the city is tapped dry apparently by the fiscal crisis that has hit most state and local governments since the Great Recession.
Giants Thoughts

I think the only way this is resolved is through a lot of money being paid by the A's to the Giants. That, historically, is the right thing to happen (I've written on this before, latest post is here).

I see A's fans and newspaper columnists moaning about how the Giants don't really own the South Bay rights, that it was given to them only because of a proposed move by the Giants to Santa Clara, and thus owe the Giants nothing and should just move to the South Bay unhindered. Some magnanimously will give back the Oakland/East Bay region back to the Giants.

Baloney.

The Giants owned the rights to the region the moment they landed in San Francisco in 1958. The A's should have paid them a lot of money to enter the region in the first place, the evidence is clear with the huge drop in attendence and support in the decade after the A's came into the region and siphoned off a lot of fans. Giving the South Bay rights to the Giants was only the MLB correcting the wrong that was done when the A's moved into the region without compensating the Giants for that move.

Or more simply and bottom line, as Giantsrainman noted in my post I linked to (I also have a label on the San Jose Relocation topic), when the current Giants owners bought this team, that purchase included the value of the rights to the South Bay whlie when the current A's owners bought their team, that purchase did not include the rights to the South Bay. If they want the rights today, they need to pay for it.

There is also the real danger that by allowing the move to San Jose by the A's, the MLB might damage the Giants. The A's have royally screwed up their fan base in the East Bay and Oakland. Who is to say that they don't do the same in the South Bay too? The Giants depend on the South Bay for a large percentage of their fan base. The rhetoric by the supporters is that those fans will still support the Giants, as well as the new San Jose A's.

Baloney.

Economic logic suggests that this is a zero sum game, fans won't suddenly open up their pockets more to support both teams, they will made a decision on where to split their current spending between the two teams. Then, should the A's screw up the South Bay fan base, then these fans just simply stop spending money on MLB baseball, whether A's or Giants, much like most of the Oakland A's fan base no longer support the Giants and, as lovely as the offer to give Oakland back to the Giants is, they are not likely to suddenly become Giants fans again. Remember, these are the same fans who pined for their Raiders while they were off in LA, travelling 1,000 miles round trip to see them, when the 49ers were just across the Bay. They should pay for this as well.

Pay Like Other Teams and How For Rainy Day

So if the A's want to relocate to the South Bay, they should pay the Giants a lot of money. Historical precedence supports this. The Washington Nat's paid someething like $60-75M to the Baltimore Orioles to compensate them for moving into their territory. And that was almost a decade ago now, 2003-2004, something like that, so with how team values have rocketed in the years since, the A's should be looking at paying the Giants at least $100M in order to move down there.

That would help cover the roughly $150-200M left in mortgage payments that the Giants still owe. That would also help with the economic damage the A's would create by moving into the South Bay and siphoning off a portion of the Giants fanbase. And this could easily be financed, the A's, according to Forbes, has sucked out $132M in EBITDA since Wolff bought the team, so they should have a huge cash balance (unless they drain it dry every year) sitting around somewhere which they can spend on paying the Giants. And I would note that Forbes reports that their owners are worth $1.4B (and it might just be Fisher, I'm not absolutely sure), so they have a lot of net worth that they can tap into to pay off the Giants.

FYI, the team value of $307M does not include any of the cash in the business that they have accrued, that is, none of the $132M in EBITDA that they have earned out of the business since taking over (prior to that, the former A's owners only had EBITDA in the $5-10M range approximately, for comparison) is included in the valuation of the team.

Given that huge amount of money that he has collected, one could speculate that the A's had forseen this day coming where they would have to pay the Giants a lot of money. Perhaps they even asked Selig to officially stall on any decision so that the A's could pick up more coin, while officially wondering why Selig is taking so long. In fact, it was four seasons ago that the A's ramped up the money they were making, going from mid-teens to lower-middle 20's (average $23.8M in 2008-2010 timeperiod) plus whatever they make in 2011, the numbers above does not include any cash flow he made in 2011, which I would guess is in the $20-25M range again. During the time that Selig has stalled on a decision, the A's have probably made $70-75M in profits that went straight to their cash balance. It could be that they have been saving for a rainy day like paying off the Giants all along.

Revenue Sharing

And based on revenue sharing figures I could locate (from early-2000's), basically what the Giants paid into the revenue-sharing pot, the A's got roughly the same amount (2001-2003, Giants paid $28.9M, while A's got $31.5M).

Also, I would note that Forbes in their latest valuation, noted this about the Giants:

One area of concern for the Giants beginning in 2011 is revenue-sharing. Because the team decided to amortize its stadium costs over 10 years in calculating its local revenue for the league sharing pool, the Giants contribution to lower-revenue teams is going to increase significantly in 2011.

So the Giants should be paying even more into the pot, which further hampers their ability to spend the money that many fans thinks they are getting but are not because these fans were not aware of the impact this is having on the Giants finances. And making their need for a big settlement with the A's paramount.

Private Business Negotiations

The Giants, however you want to describe it, has been doing exactly, at least publicly, what they should do in a business negotiation. If everyone played "fair" and just say what they are willing to do, then there would be no need for negotiations. But neither side is going to budge off their positions of the A's not wanting to pay anything (naturally) and the Giants not willing to give up their rights to the South Bay (naturally). That will force the mediator (which will be Selig at some point, like it was in the Oriole's-Nat's case) to work between those two points and find a medium point. If either side started with a "fair" amount, then the negotations would have started between the fair point and the extreme point, resulting in an "unfair" (at least with respect to the side the provided the "fair" position) decision for the team that went first with a public position.

That is why most teams do not let their position be known in the press, you don't want to be negotiating in the press or via the press. Some agents like to do that because then it might entice another team to join the bidding war. When when it is team vs. team as in this case, you gain nothing by being soft in public. You take the hardline approach and only once you all are behind closed doors do you start moving away from the extremes to a compromise agreement somewhere in the middle.

Hopefully, the Giants will stand their ground and get paid for their rights to the area. The A's have cost the Giants much over the years by, first, not paying anything for the Oakland rights, and second, taking away a lot of paying customers. The A's appear to be either saying for a rainy day or pocketing a lot of money for something or perhaps both, as it will cost a lot to build their own stadium in San Jose as well as pay off the Giants. They have profited enough in the three years since Selig has been stalling to pay the Giants off for their rights to the South Bay.

Perhaps they realized that the Giants were not going to give in on their rights nor that they would get enough votes to bypass the Giants and have the teams vote for taking away the Giants rights without fair payment. So by Selig's stalling, the A's have profited enough to pay off the Giants for their rights now, hence why the sudden decision by Selig to finally do something about the South Bay, else why would they seemingly been twiddling their thumbs for three years and then suddenly start moving on the decision now?

Did Recession Cause Delay? Or Final Negotiations?

I guess that brings me to the decision of San Jose to sell the option to Wolff. Maybe the MLB was worried about San Jose following up on their side of the bargain and been waiting for San Jose to buy up all the parcels, because until that is done, the Giants could give up their rights and still nothing would happen. Perhaps the option was sold to Wolff to get the MLB to start moving again.

Since the recession hit basically three years ago, one of the parties in the decision, whether A's or MLB, could have decided that there should not be any movement on this until the land situation is finalized as any movement was useless until that happened. With most local governments in crisis due to the recession, the odds of the city buying up all the parcels anytime soon was slim to none, but if they sell the land to Wolff so that he can buy the final parcels of land (perhaps the discounted price accounts for how much money Wolff estimated it would cost him to personally buy the remaining parcels to complete ownership of all the land necessary to build the park).

San Jose tried but failed, short of all the parcels. But if they basically sold the land to Wolff via the option, with the understanding that he would not execute the option until he had secured ownership of all the parcels of land, so that construction could legally start at any time once the South Bay rights issue is settled, then the MLB and/or Wolff would be in control of the situation and thus be able to finalize purchase of the entire piece of land necessary to build the stadium. And thus substantive negotiations with the Giants could then proceed, unhindered by the relative uncertainty of obtaining ownership of the land necessary to build upon.

Of course, with the parcels not all obtained right now, there is some uncertainty involved. Perhaps it took Wolff all of three years to gain informal agreement with the remaining parcel owners (he did make his money in real estate), but now that he has the agreements with all the parcels, that freed the city to sell him that option since they don't have the money to finalize the deal, and allow Wolff, who does have the money to finalize the deal, to buy the remaining parcels to complete the land purchase.

That seems the most logical reason for why this has dragged on for three years with no movement, then suddenly there is a lot of movement.

2011 Giants 40-Man Moves Ahead of Rule 5

2011-11-20T00:59:00.000-08:00

Hank Schulman scooped everyone with his report on Villalona, the 40-man changes, and Pablo Sandoval's lasix eye surgery. Andy Baggarly had an extensive blog on the whole matter.

The News: Added to the Giants 40-man roster were 1B Angel Villalona, outfielders Tyler Graham and Roger Kieschnick, infielder Charlie Culberson, and pitchers Dan Otero and Hector Correa, whom the Giants got as part of a series of trades that sent now-retired Jack Taschner to the Phillies.

However, the Giants were at 36 at that time, so they had to DFA Waldis Joaquin again and Darren Ford. If they are not traded in 10 days, any team may pick them up, but the Giants are interested in picking them both back up afterward. Last time they DFAed Joaquin, he was claimed but the White Sox, he refused and became a free agent, upon which he resigned with the Giants.

The surprising news was that Villalona was added. It was speculated that perhaps this was related to getting Angel's visa reinstated so that he can return to the U.S. There are other logical reasons I could think of. One is that this was part of the legal settlement of the $5M lawsuit that Villalona filed against the Giants. I have to think that a 40-man player is paid a lot more than a minor leaguer. Another is that perhaps the Giants would just like to move forward on this, and by putting him on the 40-man, there is now a timeclock on when he can be jettisoned from the organization without there being really hard feelings. For example, if he were not put on the 40-man but was just released after he becomes a 6 year minor leaguer, he could decide that the Giants didn't give him enough of a chance and decide to sue again. Lastly, I believe that Rule 5 also has drafting of lower level prospects ( never understood that), and since his highest level is single-A, perhaps he could have been grabbed for someone's AA team.

Hopefully, and more likely, is that Villalona is still a viable prospect. The reports are that his swing is still good, that he has good bat speed. The original reports noted that he had slimmed down. I would have liked to have heard more about that, because he was a Big Boi, and slimming is not much when you are that big to begin with. But he sounds very serious about doing something in baseball, so with all that free time I was hoping that maybe he did something like Sandoval and really slimmed down. Maybe Sandoval can introduce him to his trainers during spring training and get him on the program.

I saw some worries out there about there being so many 1B now in the Giants system. I would note that he's always wanted to play 3B, was rated a plus prospect at defense at 3B when he first was signed, and continued to take fielding practice at 3B even while he was playing 1B. He was only playing first because the Giants wanted him to focus more on his offense than his defense. So I think 3B is viable for him going forward, if not already part of his legal settlement.

Among other news, Panda got his eyes Lasiked. He was having problems with his contacts -remember, he hit 2009 without good eye sight - and this procedure would allow him good vision without the equipment, as I recall goggles being involved too. He reported that it went fine, or maybe it was his brother who tweeted that, do not recall. So, in other words, he was hampered by his vision again in 2011 but should be able to see the ball clearly all the time in 2012. It was also noted that his shoulder was healed too, and should not hamper him in 2012 either. Hopefully, look out baseball world!

Vogelsong's Song: Will He Sing or the Fat Lady?

2011-11-18T20:55:00.000-08:00

A couple of the reasons I used to hit just about every Giants blog way back when are that 1) I like to find solutions to questions, and 2) it's a waste if I find something interesting, good or bad, and don't share it with other Giants fans (that's probably why I've made a career in research). Back then, the idiot quotient was still relatively low and I didn't have to go through 999 columns of dreck before I get to some interesting and serious Giants discussion, where interesting questions get asked and I would answer. That's why I used to come in second in polls on MCC when asked who was the most informative poster there (I always came in second to Steve Shelby, which is no shame, he's really good). So I kind of miss that, but I don't miss getting totally aggravated by all the nonsense I see out there.

Long time reader Allfrank just recently made my day by asking me a question on my blog (Thanks! BTW) about Vogelsong's chances of repeating in 2012. Or more specifically, he noted that his performance was great then seemed to come back to Earth after the All-Star game, and is worried about whether he can repeat or if the league has caught up with him.

Giants Thoughts
I have addressed this issue previously here by taking another tack, which is what performance does he and the 5th starter, who I presume is Barry Zito, have to collectively do in order to match what we got from the 4th and 5th starters in 2011.

I'll do that again here, as a starting point, and go from there (as I am wont to do :^). As great as Ryan Vogelsong did in 2011, we got a lot of poorer performances from the other starters in the rotation, outside the top 3: Runzler, Dirty, Zito, and Surkamp. They collectively had a 3.91 ERA in 354.1 IP in 63 starts. So the 2012 #4 and #5 starters only need to duplicate that for the Giants to do similarly well in terms of starter's performance relative to 2011.

Looking at Vogelsong, I think we can expect 32 starts from him in 2012. That leaves 31 for the #5 starter (Zito). Zito, as badly has he has pitched for us in the minds of Giants fans, has pitched well enough when not injured, physically or mentally (as he was his first two seasons).

Vogelsong averaged 6.25 IP per start, and actually boosted that up later in the season vs. earlier. That works out to 200 IP in 32 starts, which leaves roughly 160 IP for Zito to achieve in 2012. Assuming that Zito can at least get a 4.50 ERA, something he has basically achieved in 3 of his 4 healthy seasons, that would mean that Vogelsong would need to achieve a 3.60 ERA in 2012 for the 4/5 starters to achieve a collective 4.00 ERA (close enough to the 3.91 from 2011)

For continuity, I would note that previously I had assumed that Zito could repeat his 2009-2010 performance, and while I still think he can do it, I think most do not share that viewpoint so I decided to tackle the tougher scenario of Zito doing a bit worse, but still within his Giants career performances so far, so I chose his 2007 4.53 ERA, rounded for mathematical simplicity. That also makes the bar a little higher for Vogelsong, and I thought it would be interesting to see how the possibility for a repeat frays given a worse performance out of Zito, particularly since he didn't pitch much in 2011.

About Zito, I thought it was fortunate that he did work his way back to return to the team in September (unlike Sanchez), I will give him that. And I was heartened as well that he had a great two starts upon his return from his first DL. So I still think he can repeat (which only requires Vogelsong to have a 3.90-ish ERA in 2012, which I think he can make in a heart-beat, and Bill James projection has him at 4.09).

So how good did Vogelsong do in 2011, particularly early vs. late? I think that is good news, mostly. First half, he had a 2.17 ERA in 16 games, 14 starts, 6.19 IP per start, 6.9 K/9, 2.19 K/BB. Second half, 3.26 ERA in 14 starts, 6.29 IP per start, 7.0 K/9, 2.38 K/BB. So, while his ERA went up a lot, that was the more fluky part, as his peripherals actually went up a bit in the second half.

And it even looks better by month. I don't include April because he only got one start there, but here are his stats from May to Sept:

May 1.78 ERA 2.18 K/BB 6.1 K/9 6 starts
June 2.53 ERA 2.80 K/BB 7.9 K/9 5 starts
July   2.59 ERA 1.14 K/BB 4.6 K/9 5 starts
Aug 3.79 ERA 1.94 K/BB 7.8 K/9 6 starts
Sept 3.03 ERA 3.86 K/BB 7.4 K/9 5 starts

As you can see, he was really lucky with his ERA in July, as his strikeout rate went way down, and, I didn't capture it here, but his walk rate went up high, reciprically, which logically it should if you are not throwing as many strikes. But then he recovered in August, then adjusted further and had a great September.

So instead of the steep fall that his performance gave an impression of, he actually had more of a U-curve, falling from his great early season success to the nadir in July/August until he returned back even better in September. Looking at his game peformances, he had a 3 starts of 4 bump from July 8th to July 29th, where he found it hard to throw strikes, then another 3 start bump from August 19th to 30th.

And, actually, looking further, he actually was starting to wobble by his June 28th start, where while he had 6 strikeouts, it was his first start with 4 walks since his second start of the season (that was his 12th start). Prior to that start, he had 1 start out of 11 with 4 walks, but starting with that start, he had 3 consecutive starts with 4 walks and 6 starts out of 17 with 4 or more. So one could point to that 3 start sequence as the nadir as well.

And that makes sense. For the prior 5 seasons, he averaged only 75.1 IP per season in the minors. His body was not ready for a full major league season and so his body hit the wall. And, wow, don't you just love it when it works out perfectly, he went past the 75.1 IP mark in that July 28th start, as he had 72.2 IP prior to that.

So once that happened, Ryan had to figure out how to adjust to his new situation with his body. He was pretty much up and down for the rest of the season. But the good news is that he ended on a pretty good up in September with a 3.86 K/BB, which is great for any pitcher.

Now this is where I go to Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster's Pitchers Toolkit. Pitchers with good command (K/BB) tend to do the best, though as we all know, ERA goes all over the place, generally, within a one season context. Unfortunately, it has not come out with their 2012 version with updated stats, but in 2010, which is a clear down year in terms of ERAs, pitchers with K/BB from 2.1 to 2.5 collectively had a 3.95 ERA. From 2.6 to 3.0, a 3.71 ERA. And 3.1 and above, a 3.25 ERA.

Looking at Vogie's starts, basically, after a wobbly 2 starts as he got acclimated to the majors, he had a great 9 start sequence, followed by 12 starts of ups and downs where he battled to get control of his pitches, then a 5 start sequence in September where he was back on track. It is actually amazing how similar the 9 starts and 5 starts are in terms of peripherals:

9 starts:   58.1 IP - 2.0 BB/9 - 6.8 K/9 - 3.4 K/BB - 0.3 HR/9 - .269 BABIP - 1.23 ERA
12 starts: 74.1 IP - 4.2 BB/9 - 6.7 K/9 - 1.6 K/BB - 1.0 HR/9 - .295 BABIP - 3.39 ERA
5 starts:   32.2 IP - 1.9 BB/9 - 7.4 K/9 - 3.9 K/BB - 0.8 HR/9 - .304 BABIP - 3.03 ERA
14 starts: 91.0 IP - 2.0 BB/9 - 7.0 K/9 - 3.6 K/BB - 0.5 HR/9 (adding together the times when he was on track)

Now that clarifies more why he did so well initially. Not only was his BABIP abnormally low, so was his HR/9, which like his BABIP, bounced back up after that great start.

Now back to Shandler. They also analyzed how often a pitcher within a range either has an ERA under 3.50 or above 4.50:

K/BB
2.1-2.5: 19% under 3.50; 35% over 4.50
2.6-3.0: 26%; 25%
3.1+:      53%; 5%

Now add in K/9 (or Dominance in Shandler's parlance; don't know why he used different ranges) and see the difference in ERA:

K/BB   <5.6 K/9 >5.6 K/9
2.0-2.4   4.32      4.08
2.5-2.9   4.21      3.88
3.0-3.9   4.04      3.46
4.0+       4.12      2.96

As I've been trying to make clear here on my blog, the strikeout provides a lot of great benefits to preventing runs that don't always show up as a direct link, but this one I think makes it very clear. From Baseball Forecaster: "This helps to highlight the limited upside potential of soft-tossers with pinpoint control. The extra dominance makes a huge difference." As well as the K/BB, I would additionally note.

So, if Vogie can continue pitching like he did for half the season, with a K/BB comfortably over 3.0, and continue to strike out a lot (and 5.6 K/9 is not that high a threshold), historically (or at least for Shandler's set of data), pitchers like that averaged a 3.46 ERA and 53% of the time had an ERA under 3.50, while only 5% of the time going above 4.50, though I would note that this means that 42% of the time the pitcher was between 3.50 and 4.50 ERA.

Using PQS, he had a 61% DOM last season vs. only 7% DIS. So even when he was struggling, he had enough control to avoid Disaster starts, which is the bane of any pitcher's ERA. Mediocre pitchers can survive in the majors by avoiding Disaster starts as those start really kills the ERA. And he ended the last month, September, with a flourish, 4 DOM starts out of 5, no DIS start, which is another sign that his earlier success is more indicative of his future than his middle, not as good, part of the season.

And from my studying of PQS, good pitchers have DOM% over 40%, the best have over 50%, and the elite have over 70% (FYI, Cain had 76%, Lincecum 73%, and Bumgarner 70% in 2011). So Vogelsong was in rareified company in 2011.

I don't have the stats for 2011 season yet, but from my following of this, I know that 61% is pretty rare. Heck, I think I can demonstrate this with data from the 2010 book, here are pitchers current for 2010 season who had 60%+ DOM% with at least 28 starts and 9%- DIS% sometime in the past five seasons: Josh Beckett, Chad Billingsley, Matt Cain, Chris Carpenter, John Danks, Ryan Dempster, Yovani Gallardo, Zack Greinke, Roy Halladay, Cole Hamels, Aaron Harang, Dan Haren, Felix Hernandez, Ubaldo Jimenez, Josh Johnson, Scott Kazmir, John Lackey, Cliff Lee, Jon Lester, Colby Lewis, Tim Lincecum, Derek Lowe, Dice Matsuzaka, Gil Meche, Brett Myers, Roy Oswalt, Jake Peavy, David Price, C.C. Sabathia, Ervin Santana, Johan Santana, Ben Sheets, James Shields, Javier Lopez, Justin Verlander, Edinson Volquez, Adam Wainwright, Jered Weaver, Todd Wellemeyer, Randy Wolf. (OK, that was harder to compile than I thought...)

As you can see, there are a lot of good pitchers in there, interspersed with a few random names that were flukes (like Wellemeyer). But the vast majority, while they may not have repeatedly done as well as this, were generally good from season to season.

There was a table matching up DOM% with DIS% and pitchers with over 60% DOM and under 10% DIS averaged an ERA of 3.09 (and this was back in 2003, when the offensive era reigned). Even at over 50% DOM, the ERA was 3.47, while keeping DIS% under 10%. For DIS% between 10-20% but DOM% over 60%, the ERA was 3.71. FYI, they call this qERA, or ERA based solely on PQS.

So, will Vogelsong repeat? My premise all along is that he can't repeat, that is just homerism talking, most pitchers do not come out of nowhere and do that well. So I've focused more on what the Giants need from him in 2012 in order to repeat the great 2011 season (which is much like 2009 and 2010 for that matter, in terms of the pitching staff dominance) and now tackled analyzing his season in this post.

While he clearly had a down period in the middle of the season, I think it is very plausible that he just hit the wall and lost a lot of his control, because he had not gone that deep into a season in a long while. While a big jump in IP like that is troubling for a much younger pitcher, at his age, he had done it before, so I think it is just a matter of him conditioning himself during this off-season to handle a longer season in 2012. And the way he came back, as shown by his PQS, heck, looking at his season, his PQS was actually pretty good in August too, I guess a bad game here and there brought the month down a lot. It is a great sign to me about his future that he came back to early season form that last month, perhaps even better.

I know people say I cherry-pick data, but it is not like I pick willy-nilly. There are clear reasons for opting to select only certain data over others, or to at least point out differences that contextually explains things, like his lack of conditioning, then his period of dominance at the end of the season, that demonstrates that after he hit his bad spot, he righted himself, somehow, whether by "adjusting" as some people will say he did, after the league "adjusted" to him. It is a matter of understanding the context within which you make that decision to take out data that does not represent reality, in your opinion.

And I don't see the down period as one of adjustment. He was still striking out batters at almost the same rate but he just was walking double what he was before, and that to me is on him, it is within his control there. If the hitters really adjusted, they would have not struck out as much as they did in that period of a lot of walking, the strikeout rate should have took as big a hit as his walk rate, just in the opposite direction. That to me meant that this was something within his control, not the batter's control. And he just physically couldn't do it anymore, for a while, then was able to get himself back into good enough shape to end with a flourish good enough that it matched his peripherals that he had earlier in the season.

That to me bodes well for the 2012 season, whether for repeating himself or just simply ensuring the Giants pitching staff repeats what they did in 2011. I think there are very good odds that he will pitch well enough so that he and Zito can help the starting rotation repeat what they did in 2011. Given how well he pitched, plus how well I think Zito can pitch, but even if Zito falters, I think Vogelsong can do enough to counter that, plus I think there is huge potential for Bumgarner to join Cain and Lincecum as a serious contender for Cy Young Award, as his K/BB was regularly extraordinary, he just is young and would let mistakes compound into disaster starts, his DIS% was 15% in 2011, if he gets it under 10%, he'll easily be in the 2's in ERA, and that would ease the need for Vogelsong to be great versus merely being good in 2012.

I also think that there are good odds, just not as good, that he repeats what he did in 2011. While he was very lucky early on, in terms of BABIP and HR/9 (ideally I would use HR/FB here but that stat is not available), his peripherals were very good in any case, and he was able to repeat that late in the season, suggesting that he had some sort of physical condition (like lack of stamina) that prevented him from pitching like he could.   Unlike Dirty, who once he hit his wall, his ERA soared, Vogelsong is a pitcher, not a thrower, and was able to dance away from trouble even when he didn't have his best control, keeping his ERA still low during that period, as well as avoiding disaster starts, which Dirty couldn't do after he hit the wall. Not only that, he soon recovered and was able to deliver a lot of DOM starts at the end of the season, also unlike Dirty.

Of course, unlike what most sabers say (I really hate when people use projections as reality), there are no absolutes here, only probabilities and chances. I think there is a very good chance that he will pitch well in 2012. I don't think that he can repeat his 2011, but that is generally just true for anybody doing it for the first time, particularly with his history. However, I think that there are enough signs and indications that I would not be surprised if he repeats being a very good pitcher in 2012 and contribute to the Giants again being one of the Top 2-3 teams in the majors in the least runs allowed per game.

But ace-like performance again? At his age and history, I'll just be happy with a good performance again, we just need a reliable pitcher who can go out and give us 32 relatively good starts, because that is where the Giants have a huge advantage over other teams, our 4/5 starters can usually kick the butts of the other teams, even their top starters. We can discuss ace-like performance next off-season if he can repeat it in 2012.

Bill James Handbook: 2011 Giants Defensive Leaders and Laggards

2011-11-17T20:12:00.000-08:00

Just got the 2012 Bill James Handbook, which has a TON of 2011 statistics that you can't get anywhere else, or hardly anywhere else.

The first thing I wanted to get into was the Fielding Bible stats in the front of the book, using their Plus/Minus system which they then translate into Runs Saved. And generally, 10 runs saved is the equivalent of one extra win.

OK, going with my train of thought, to show the power that the Giants have with their great pitching staff, I plugged in the NL average RA (4.16) in 2011 and that is actually true, when I add 10 runs to the RS, that is pretty close to 1 extra win, 1.014 wins to be exact. I think plugged in the Giants RA (3.57) and that works out to 16% more effectiveness in winning, 1.181 wins. Or looking at it another way, the Giants only has to score 8.457 more runs in order to win one game, where the average NL team has to score roughly 10 runs. In contrast, Houston had the worse pitching staff in the NL, and each additional 10 runs they score only gets them 0.861 wins, meaning they have to score 11.6 runs in order to win one additional game.

And one thing that is neglected to be said when it is noted that it results in one extra win, and that has always bothered me, is that this is a zero-sum game, so adding one win from 81 to 82 in a season, is actually a 2 game bump in games above .500, pushing you from 81-81 to 82-80, as it also takes away a loss. Thus, adding 5 wins via player acquisitions pushes a team from 81-81 to 86-76.

Now onto the data.

Aubrey Huff was among the leaders in 2011 1B defense with 4 runs saved, and not only that, but he didn't play as many games as the guys above him, had he played the full season there, he probably could have been among the top 5, as Mark Trumbo led with 7 runs saved, and Adrian Gonzalez and Daniel Murphy had 6 each. He probably would have had 5 or 6 with a full season. In any case that added around half a win to the Giants in 2011 (unfortunately his offense probably took away multiples of that).

FYI, projecting out Brandon Belt, he would be roughly equivalent to what Huff did, somewhere in the 4-6 runs saved range had he played a full season. Hard to tell exactly because they only give whole numbers for runs saved and he only played about 20% of a full season, leading to huge projection skews. But it gives a nice ballpark, they appear to be about equal.

Amazingly, Pill in just the very small amount of time played saved THREE runs! No use projecting that small amount of playing time, but WOW, he almost matched Huff's seasons and Belt only had 1 runs saved himself.

Jeff Keppinger was HORRIBLE defensively at 2B. -12 runs saved in 2011, -21 runs over the past three seasons, which was good for worse and second worse, respectively, in the majors. And he wasn't even a full-time player in either situation! And his offense isn't even plus! The Giants should try to trade him for anything they can get or non-tender him when it comes time for arbitration decisions. Also, this brings into question all their work on having custom defensive metrics, as Kepp was pretty bad, though I would note that no defensive system is perfect and worse, the various systems that do exist don't even agree on the direction, let alone the magnitude.

Freddy Sanchez actually wasn't that good himself, -5 runs saved, which projected over a full season would have put him among the worse in the majors as well. Burriss saved 3 runs in his small amount of playing time, 2B was the only position where he saved any runs, though he only costed runs at 3B, he was average everywhere else.

Echoing the gold glove talk that he got, Pablo Sandoval saved 22 runs in 2011 via his defense at 3B, leading the majors by a good margin (second was Adrian Beltre with 17, Placido Polanco had 16, Evan Longoria had 12, to show how much better he was). Showing further how much he has advanced, his three year total of 16 means that in 2009 and 2010, he was a cumulative -6 runs saved. Had 2011 been his first season, his 22 would have ranked fifth in the 3-year rankings. And remember, he missed a lot of time on the DL too.

And if he continued this going forward and, say, saved roughly 60 runs, he would have led the majors, as Adrian Beltre was the 3-year leader with 48, Evan Longoria had 42, and so did David Wright, and Chone Figgins was at 33. Pablo's defense alone was worth almost 4 wins (3.7) by itself and his offense was stellar on top of that. This is why I have been saying that Pablo as well as Lincecum and Cain, should be extended this off-season. Just buy out his arb-years plus option his first free agent year.

I'm not going to bother with the older SS, we know how bad they were, but Brandon Crawford was as good as we all thought, with 6 runs saved, ranking him 10th in the majors despite playing about 40% of a starter. Projecting over a full season, he would have saved about 15 runs, which is almost 2 extra wins for the Giants, just on defense alone, meaning that, in saber parlance, he is almost an average player (2 wins) by his defense alone, and all he has to do from a sabermetric viewpoint to be an average player is to be a replacement level player as a hitter (which unfortunately varies from one implementer from another, so hard to say what that is exactly, but it is usually hard defined into the WAR calculations as the point where a hitter contributes zero wins via his offense. This is done because when a player is average that is still of value to a team, because average is still pretty good, or so the sabermetric thinking goes.)

I would also note that Mike Fontenot ended up at +3 runs saved in his time at SS, so he was pretty good there as well, despite not really playing SS much in recent seasons. And Orlando Cabrera was at 0 for the season at SS, but Tejada was -5 runs saved. However, I should note that while playing in place of Sandoval at 3B, he was +7 runs saved there, putting him at +1 run saved overall (he was -1 run saved at 2B)..

Among LF, nobody had full-time stats there, obviously. Belt, however, was stellar there, with 3 runs saved. Burrell was -1, as expected, and he hardly played much there. Schierholtz was +1 there. Huff was +1 there as well. Christian was +1 as well. Rowand and Ross were at 0.

No regular in CF either. Andres Torres had 3 runs saved there. Ross was -2 runs there and he did not play very many innings there, about 15-20% of a starter's time there, so he was really bad there in 2011. Rowand was -1 run there, in about a third of a starter's time there.

FYI, Melky Cabrera was -3 runs saved there, and that was helped by a fluky +2 runs saved via catches of homerun balls pulled back into the playing field. That would have made him -5, which would have been tied for 5th worse among major league CF. That fits in with his three year total of -12 runs saved, which placed him tied for 4th worse in the majors with Matt Kemp. Also, that would cost us a little more than half a win, so he will have to produce offensively to make up for that.

Shockingly, in RF, Nate Schierholtz had the 4th worse runs saved with -5, and in limited playing time there to boot. He was not among the 3 year leaders at least, so perhaps 2011 was an aberration. Still, Beltran was +2 runs saved, so he was better than Nate according to the Fielding Bible's system.

Belt in very limited time there saved one run in RF. Ross was -3 runs, Torres +1 run, but Huff was an ugly -6 runs saved, negating all his good defensive work at 1B.

Thought I would end with catcher because as undeveloped defensive stats are relative to offensive stats, catcher stats are even more undeveloped. Still interesting to note what one system thinks. Obviously, none made the lists, as none has played enough. Buster Posey was rated at +2 runs saved in his less than 2 months of playing. Projecting that out, he would have been among the leaders in 2011, with 5-7 runs saved as he played roughly a third of what starting catchers played. Whiteside was at -3 runs, which projects out to -5 to -7 runs. Stewart was at a +9!!! runs saved in about half time playing. Most of it was due to his arm, +6 but he also handled the staff well according to their methodology, adding +3 runs that way. That's about one extra win based on his defense. And in contrast, Posey only had 0 runs handling the staff.

Overall, the team was ranked 8th in the majors in defensive runs saved with 26. Thus our defense gained us almost 3 wins. Almost every position contributed runs saved except for 2B (where Franchez and Kepp , plus even Fontenot, stunk up the place, to the tune of -14 runs saved, with -9 between Franchez, Fontenot, and Tejada) and RF (where Schierholtz, Huff, and Ross stunk up the place, -14 runs between them, -15 overall including Beltran, Belt - who was +1 - and Torres was +1 too). The Giants were very good at 3B (+27 runs) and 1B (+10), good at C (+7) and LF (+6), OK at SS (+3 despite Crawford), CF (+1 as Torres was only +3 in just over half season there), and P (+1).

Giants Thoughts

Pretty interesting stuff. Based on these defensive stats, we should get rid of Kepp, sign Sandoval long-term, start Crawford at SS, probably play Huff at 1B and Belt in LF, Melky is probably OK in CF as long as his hitting holds up, and wonder about Schierholtz in RF. And I would keep Stewart as the backup catcher, his batting discipline is pretty good, I think he just needs more experience to get his offense to OK levels and his defense there is stellar no matter how you look at it.

Oh, and keep the core pitchers around for the long run, because with a great pitching staff helping to keep the RA environment for the team so low that our offense does not have to do as much as other teams to win a game.

Speaking of which, there has been a lot of hubbub about the Giants trying to sign Lincecum and Cain long-term, in that order, according to tweets that have been making the rounds. Not sure why, Sabean said in his first post-season conference that signing the young pitching is the key job this off-season, plus Cain is signed for 2012 but Lincecum isn't and in fact is up for arbitration, so there is a deadline attached to that discussion and decision. And last time it took until minutes before arbitration to get a deal done.

Plus, if I were Cain's agent, I would want to know how much the Giants are paying Lincecum, then set Cain's salary demands in relative to that. So I would stall and tell Sabean to take care of Lincecum first, but reiterate that my client is very happy here and looking to stay long-term.

And that much is clear, despite writers talking about trading for Cain or trading away Cain, they obviously don't really know about Cain's history and situation here. He is a Giants player, he bleeds orange and black, I'm certain of that. He has noted before that he never followed a major league team before when he was a kid, so the Giants are his first love. He has always talked positively and lovingly about being a Giants player. He also moved here for his permanent home (contrast with Lincecum's pad in Seattle and Bumgarner's home spread at his hometown; nothing wrong with that, just noting the difference) and then married someone from the area, plus now had his first child here. Not only that, but he accepted basically the same pre-arb deal that Lowry was given, even though his historic performance was much better than Lowry's and he could have asked for more; he was just happy to be here and he is not about the money and getting the last dime (unlike Lincecum, who could have signed the year before the Giants got him, with the Indians, but they offered him a rumored high 6-figure bonus and he wanted $1M, and with the Giants he asked for the same bonus as the year before even though player around him were signing for slot, which put him down $200K from what he eventually got, and don't forget that whole arbitration thing last time; or Bumgarner for that matter, he wasn't happy with the salary the Giants offered for 2011, and they eventually just renewed him, he's going to want blood when arbitration comes).

I think Lincecum will stay if he gets what he thinks is fair for what he has done. Of course, he has done things that no other pitchers have done. People keep on talking about him getting $25M in this round of arbitration, but this just reminds me of all the "experts" who thought he was going to get $20-30M last time and his side "only" asked for $13M, and then he ended up with $9M ultimately. I think $20M is the right range for this year in arbitration, and the Giants probably would want to backload the deal, which Lincecum's agents would love because then that sets a high floor for the bidding when he becomes a free agent after the contract has ended. I'm thinking $18M, $22M, $25M, $30M for a total of $95M over four years, which I think is in line with what CC Sabathia got in his deal with the Yankees and relative to what Verlander got in his deal. Plus maybe a $5M buyout or $30M contract for the 5th year.

I'm thinking Cain should be around what Verlander got, but he's not as good as Verlander, I think, so maybe a 5 year contact at $90M, which works out to $18M per year. That's a nice bump over the $15M that Cain makes for the 2012 season.

And while they are at it, sign up Posey and Sandoval long term as well.

On the free agent front, the Giants are apparently kicking the tires of Grady Sizemore, among others. Could be part of due dilligence, could be part of letting Beltran's camp know that the Giants are not sitting around waiting for him to decide, could be part of giving up on Beltran already. Grady was -3 runs saved in limited CF play in 2011, so he appears to be just as bad as Melky, though if he is healthy, he should be better defensively.

If we can get Beltran for 3 years or less, I still think that I prefer that, even with his injury issues, just think of it like when we had Bonds for part-time duty, because we are pretty barren in the OF, particularly if Schierholtz is as bad defensively as these stats make him out to be. I'm OK with Belt spending 2012 in AAA getting ready to take over 1B from Huff, either in 2012 (if Huff sucks again) or 2013 (when Huff's deal is over), and he can be a great backup in LF should Beltran get put on the DL again, so that there is not as huge a drop down in production when Beltran goes down, or even take over LF and push Beltran to RF, if Schierholtz falters or get injured himself again.

But at worse, I think the Giants will eventually be able to re-sign Cody Ross on the cheap if they are unable to get anyone else, and be the fallback option across the OF. I am not sure that Torres returns in that scenario, though, as the bench look to be full, catcher, Pill, two middle infielders plus another OF.

They have also been pursuing middle infield utility players, in particular Willie Bloomquist (OK Shankbone, I give :^), who according to the Fielding Bible methodology was pretty bad any position he played in 2011, I mean really minus one win type badness. So be glad we dodged the bullet there, assuming the rumor is true (hard to tell though if writers are just passing on what others write on, making the story "true", like the rumor that eBay started as a project to sell his girlfriend's Pez collection - not true - but which had a long life because each subsequent user of that bit of "fact" assumed the prior person checked the fact properly).

On the other hand, Clint Barmes was among the top defensive SS in the league, so he could probably handle 2B or SS pretty well, and his offense, as I noted before, isn't as bad as I had thought away from his Coors homepark advantage. I just worry about how much it would cost to secure his services, given how much lousy utility guys are getting right now in deals. He could get the 2 year, $12M dinner plate deal that Sabean has given out a lot of in recent years. I think I would rather have Burriss be the right-handed complement at SS with Crawford in that case.

I saw someone suggest Theriot as another option but at SS he had a -12 runs saved there in over half a season playing there, which, as you can hopefully see by now, is not good at all.

And that brings up back full circle to defense, the original focus of this post. I think the catching defense will improve with Posey back and, particularly, Whiteside gone (without him, C would also been at +10 without him and therefore assuming Posey plays that time, even higher). 1B at +10 runs, one would not think could get any better, but given how much Pill contributed in little time there, assuming he becomes Huff's semi-platoon buddy (getting many LHP starts), or even Belt there, the defense could be better, particularly if Huff is in shape.

2B, oy, not sure what to say there. Franchez back does not necessarily improve things given how poorly he did in 2011 under the Fielding Bible's methodology. Though I would note that he was -1 in 2010, so perhaps his off-season surgery affected him defensively more than he had thought in 2011. And Keppinger was just bad again, just not as bad as 2011.

3B, wow, Sandoval was so good there, and Tejada, arguably just as good. Still, I've noticed that these go up and down for some players, though most good players are consistently good. But with Pablo there a full season, he played at around a roughly +30 runs saved rate, he would have to drop a little to still meet the +27 recorded for 2011, but given how much higher he was than other players, he's either the second coming of Brooks Robinson and continues to do well, or he'll come back to the back and "only" get somewhere in the 15-20 runs saved range. Most probably a drop there, it looks like, and possibly by a significant amount.

SS however, only +3 runs saved for the 2011 season, looks to cover if not more than make up for any fall at 3B. Crawford, as noted, played at a very high rate there, and he's still young and learning the league and the hitters, so I think any shortfall at 3B should be covered by him playing full-time.

For LF, at +6, there is probably a drop if Beltran is re-signed to play there, but probably an increase if Belt plays there. If Huff plays there, he could bump it up (in 2010 he had a +3 there playing only 20% of the time of a regular LF). Melky Cabrera, if he ends up there for whatever reason, probably makes it a negative for the season, in 2010, he was really bad whether in LF or CF, though it should be noted that he was out of shape while at Atlanta, so maybe now that he's in better shape, he'll handle LF better.

CF, at +1, probably will go down, as I don't expect Torres to regain his batting stroke, and thus it is either Melky there or another poor fielding CF, like Cody Ross, or maybe another free agent, like Grady Sizemore.

However, with RF at -15 runs saved in 2011, hopefully it can get better as much as CF gets worse. Schierholtz was a +4 in 2010 playing RF, showing how that metric can go up and down for the same player playing in the same park/team. If Nate can play like in 2010 and for a full season, there could be a positive two wins swing in RF alone.

The bench is hard to say right now. I expect Pill to be much better at 1B and Stewart will be a better backup at C than Whiteside. But we have no idea who the MI utility guy(s) are nor the 4th OF (if Pill is around, he's the fifth OF). I think with a couple of positives so far, it should be no worse than last season.

Overall, it looks like the Giants should be around the same shape defensively in 2012 as they were in 2011, which was very good, 8th in the league, with the potential to move into the mid-30's range, which could push them into the Top 5 overall. And barring any debilitating injury that a player can "play" with, the defense should not fall that much in the worse case, keeping the team strongly in the positive and among the top teams still.

It's Begun: Giants Trade Dirty for Melky Cabrera

2011-11-07T12:59:00.000-08:00

Just read the news, oh boy: Hank Schulman blogged that the KC writer tweeted that Jonathan Sanchez has been traded for CF Melky Cabrera. He was able to confirm it. There is also an article on Yahoo on it as well, which reported that Ryan Verdugo was also included in the trade.

Giants Thoughts

Not too surprising because Sabean in recent interviews noted that the Giants might have to trade a starting pitcher. That leaves the rotation at Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Madison Bumgarner, Ryan Vogelsong, and Barry Zito, with Eric Surkamp as the first guy up in case of need. I also didn't think that Zito would end up in the bullpen as some had suggested, no way that would happen. His greatest value is as a starter, particularly if he can return to his 2009-10 form, which was pretty good.

This also made sense because Sanchez was the most obvious to trade, in terms of value in return as well as lack of future value, because of his agent, Scott Boras. Lincecum, Cain, and Bumgarner look like keepers, if at all possible, while Vogelsong and Zito would not yield much in trade, if anything in Zito's case.

This is a great trade assuming the Melky continues hitting the way he did in 2011, a breakout offensive season for him. He plays CF, his OBP is decent enough for leadoff, and he has some speed judging by his SB, he just needs to hone his skill down to achieve a higher success stealing rate, which the Giants appear capable of doing, they were able to improve Randy Winn's percentage in his time here.

His agent is NOT Scott Boras, so we might even be able to sign him long-term, and his hitting is good enough to move to the corners if necessary. As much as I love Nate Schierholtz and believe in Brandon Belt, they both still need to prove themselves. As do Melky as well, for that matter. And his defense could be below average in CF while above average on the corners, according to Baseball-Reference.com, so that fits with him holding CF until Gary Brown is ready.

Another nice thing about him is that 2012 will be his 27 YO season, so he is headed into his prime years, potentially with us, if we end up signing him to a longer term contract, maybe an extension into his first or second year of free agency, which would still leave him at around 30 for his first big free agent contract, two good seasons won't necessarily get him that kind of big money.

Verdugo I think is thrown in because of the injuries that Sanchez had in 2011 that reduced his value a bit, as that leaves a question mark on his 2012 season. Also, Sanchez is 29 next season, so he is a bit older then Melky, so that also justifies giving up another player. I can live with that. Verdugo struck out a lot but also walked a lot, and was a bit old for AA. And the Giants have been very good in deciding which pitchers to give up in trades so far.

I like this trade a lot. Clears up the CF situation, he's a pretty good player in exchange for a pretty good pitcher, he's a good hitter, and can play all OF positions, which gives Bochy a lot of flexibility in setting the lineup, depending on who is hitting and who is not (or injured). Don't really see any need to sign any other OF now, OF appears to be set at Belt/Torres, Cabrera, Schierholtz, unless, of course, they somehow sign Carlos Beltran.

On Your Mark: 2011 Free Agent Season

2011-11-03T22:38:00.000-07:00

With the World Series over, after a inspiring Cards win, showing you should never give up (or an agonizing Rangers loss, coming within a strike, twice, of winning it all), free agency has officially begun in earnest. The Giants started things out by signing Javier Lopez to a two year, $8.5M contract and picking up Jeremy Affeldt's $5M option (nice DrB discussion and commenting here, including moi).

The Chronicle's John Shea wrote an article on "SF Giants Need to Sign Carlos Beltran". While I love getting offense, I don't see that the Giants NEED to sign Beltran. What they need to do this off-season is get Lincecum and Cain signed to long-term deals, buying out their free agent years. Next level of priority is signing Posey and Sandoval to long-term deals. And it would be nice to sign Madison Bumgarner to a long-term contract as well.

But if Giants ownership do open up their pursestrings and sign Beltran (which would be ironic since apparently that is part of the reason why Neukom was forced out, his eagerness to spend the windfall money that came out of the World Championship), I would have to think that the Giants become the presumptive team to beat for the 2012 season, assuming that Buster Posey and Freddy Sanchez return to the lineup doing what we think they can do for us.

But even if we do not, with our great pitching, returning such good hitters to our lineup will do wonders for our offense, particularly paired up with a slugging Sandoval. We can win with that. Any nice hitting by Aubrey Huff would then be the whip cream on top (hate those cheeries...). We can still win with our offense as is as long as our pitcher is as good as it has been, though, like 2011, it would not be a sure thing (but few things are in life).

Of course, we still need a CF and SS. I think Brandon Crawford is ready enough for us to go with him as the starter at SS. His defense, while not UZR friendly (he was only 8.2 UZR/150; most fans think he's at least worth 2 wins or 20 UZR/150), is still pretty good, and batting 8th, he doesn't have to hit for much to be valuable to the Giants in the lineup. His nice run in September, and now in AFL, suggests that he can get a good streak going sometimes; now he has to do it over a full season. Because of the tight payroll, and particularly if the Giants do sign Beltran, I think it is a no-brainer to start Crawford at SS, first, because he should be good enough to start, and almost just as important, he's majorly cheap to pay. Wouldn't mind getting Rollins, but not at the 5 years he wants or the big money he wants (more than Renteria got from us).

For CF, while not ideal, I think either Coco Crisp or David DeJesus would be OK for us atop our lineup. Crisp is the more classic leadoff hitter except that he can't get on base, DeJesus has a great OBP but not enough speed to steal bases with, though enough to play CF in prior seasons. 1 season, 2 tops, no more than
$5M per, particularly Crisp who is injured so often.

Ideally, if Beltran could still play CF, that would be best for us, at least in 2012. Unfortunately, his defense was pretty bad there the last two seasons he played there. However, he was even worse in RF in 2011, so given his great offensive performance is worth even more in CF while he provides "better" (relative to RF) defense in CF, maybe he can play CF for us, with Nate Schierholtz perhaps helping him in the RF alley.

Then we would not need to sign a CF free agent, let Andres Torres and Brandon Belt fight it out for LF. Whoever wins can be the leadoff hitter, as Belt actually ran well in the minors and typically gets on base a lot too. His power would be a little wasted there, but that is where we need him in 2012 should he win LF. Also, I would probably put Belt in AAA should Torres win, better to give him regular starts than sit on the bench, at least in early 2012.

Sabean also hinted at an upgrade at backup C for 2012, with the thought that Posey probably will not be able to play a full season at catcher due to his recovery, so he might sign a vet there. I lobbied for Jose Molina previously because he's an excellent defensive catcher who knows how to handle pitchers really well (Fielding Bible II metric had him best during study period) but he's not much of a hitter. Not sure who else is available, not really something to worry about either, though I would lobby for Stewart to keep the backup job, his batting discipline is actually pretty good, he could be one of those late developing catchers who figures out how to hit in his 30's (I think he was 29 last season).

I was also hoping that the Giants could somehow fit Mark DeRosa on the bench and sign him. He can play so many positions (and well defensively) and he should finally be healthy in 2012. He hit well for us at the end too. But he wants to be back near home so if anyone on the east coast and particularly south offers him a job, he will probably take it.

Even if we don't get him, we probably only have two spots open for MI on the bench (backup catcher, probably Brett Pill, and backup OF, Torres if Belt wins). The Giants probably have to have a reliable vet as backup SS, so Mike Fontenot probably got one position, unless the Giants can pick off a better SS for cheap in January. That leaves only one spot and we have two players who we will lose if they don't win a spot, Emmanuel Burriss and Conor Gillaspie. I think Burris has the best chance of winning that spot, since Gillaspie can't really play defense at any position (he's probably going to get traded to an AL team or released) and Burriss can play SS and can play 2B really well. But if we lose both it won't be a huge loss either, if the Giants can pick up a nice backup SS free agent who got left without a spot on another team.

Now Catching (Up With) Buster Posey

2011-10-31T22:21:00.000-07:00

Been meaning to point out this milestone in Posey's recovery, courtesy of Henry Schulman of the Chronicle:

Good news from Scottsdale, Ariz., if you’re a fan of the Giants and Buster Posey.

Dave Groeschner, the Giants’ head athletic trainer, just told me that Posey has begun catching live bullpen sessions for pitchers in the instructional league. Groeschner watched Buster catch his second one this morning. The session lasted about 8 minutes.

This is a huge benchmark in Posey’s recovery from devastating injuries to his left leg that occurred in a May 25 home plate collision with Florida’s Scott Cousins, which required two surgeries thus far and ended his 2011 season. With that, the Giants’ hopes for a repeat World Series championship went down the tubes, too.

Though the Giants initially set Nov. 1 as a target date for Posey to catch live bullpen sessions, they hoped he might start a bit earlier, and Groeschner said Posey is about a week ahead of schedule.

“He’s been feeling good and progressing well, so there was no reason to wait,” Groeschner said.

We won’t know if Posey is truly recovered until spring training in February, when he does all the regular activities with the team and plays in a game, but the fact he’s ahead of schedule raises hopes that he will be ready to hit the ground running when pitchers and catchers report.

This is pretty huge, though as noted, in a long recovery like this, and we won't really know until Spring Training. But as the saying goes, a journey of 1,000 miles begins with one step. Keep on, stepping on, Buster!

Then this latest update came along from Schulman again, which reminded me I should put up this post:

Those who saw Posey all summer in a cast, then a boot, tooling around the clubhouse on a wheeled contraption that allowed him to walk on his good leg, would be pleasantly stunned to see him look like abaseball player again, four months before he expects to catch the first pitch of the first Cactus League game not far from this park.

For the last six weeks, Posey has been rehabilitating and strengthening his leg in Scottsdale. He is taking batting practice. He has caught bullpen sessions from instructional-league pitchers. He is running 100-foot sprints, at 90 to 100 percent of full speed, he surmises, with no noticeable discomfort.

Nothing the front office accomplishes this winter will overshadow Posey's labors in Arizona. He was the catcher and cleanup hitter for San Francisco's first World Series championship team, among the strongest links in the chain of players. Nobody can deny the Giants will need a healthy, productive Posey to return to the playoffs in 2012.

He is encouraged by his progress.

"It was a pretty traumatic injury," he said as he rested between his outdoor work (batting practice and running) and an hour in the weight room. "To be five months out, I'm pretty happy where I am.

"When I was in San Francisco thinking about what I'd be doing at this time, I was thinking I'd just start to be running, or start to be hitting off a coach throwing. I've been doing that for four or five weeks now."

On Saturday, Posey will reach an important waypoint in his journey back. He will end his daily workouts in Arizona and go home to Georgia, where, in his mind, he no longer will be rehab guy. Rather, he will be another player preparing for the 2012 season just like any of his teammates.

Giants head trainer Dave Groeschner provided the reality check.

"He'll be in rehab until he plays a major-league game," Groeschner said. "Nov. 5 is the day he'll go home so he can have a little offseason and take a little mental break. He still knows he's got to work on his lower leg and ankle all the way to spring training."

Moreover, Posey and the team will have to remain vigilant because one sprained ankle breeds susceptibility to another. Posey will spend more time in the treatment room, before and after games, than he would prefer. He still has pain at times. Team trainers have warned him it will be a persistent companion.

Posey plans to hire a physical therapist in Georgia to stretch him out before his workouts and has a friend in that line of work, a back therapist. ...

... Perhaps Posey simply understands how much work remains before he can resume his life as a major-league catcher and cleanup hitter.

He can hit 1,000 home runs off Tom Trebelhorn, a 63-year-old coach, on an empty diamond in Scottsdale. Facing Ian Kennedy of the Arizona Diamondbacks on Opening Day 2012, 10 days after his 25th birthday, will be an entirely different story.

Groeschner said Posey's thrice-weekly batting practice has less to do with technique than sending him to Georgia confident that he will be able to hit come spring training, when the real preparations begin.

"The good thing is, you ask him how he is, and he's more frustrated at the way he's swinging his bat than the ankle," Groeschner said. "This is October. We're not worried about his swing much, just that he can do it and he feels good."

Posey confessed he is anxious about playing again, more about running than hitting or catching. When he closes his eyes, he visualizes himself in the squat behind the plate, or standing in the box against a pitcher throwing 95 mph.

So there has been continued progress and no setbacks from the last reported good news (as noted up top), again, another positive step forward in his long journey to resuming his major league career.

I also ran into some interviews that Johnny Bench has given about Posey, and I thought I would capture them together here. Basically, Bench is a long-time Buster fan, and he thinks that Posey has the stuff to be one of those generational Hall of Fame catchers. See this interview with Johnny Bench at The XLog. In it, he notes how few catchers are in the Hall of Fame, only 13, basically one per decade. Meaning to him that there is about one per generation. He noted that Buster Posey (as well as Matt Weiters and two Reds prospects) could be that catcher for this generation.

Here are some of Bench's thoughts about how good Buster is, interviewed after the Giants won the World Series last season:

“The thing’s that so impressive, everybody saw in every interview, it was a class act,” Bench said. “He handled himself well. It was like a Tuesday game somewhere else, and he just got four hits. It was about being on the level with the game. He knows as a catcher knows, it’s one game. Then you’ve got to start all over.”

Posey knows Bench, having won the Johnny Bench Award as the best college catcher in 2008.
In their conversation, according to Bench, Posey said, “I asked my mom, ‘Should we call you and talk to you?’ I said, ‘Of course you should.’ “

Bench said Posey has what it takes to be a great catcher.

“He was a shortstop that became a catcher (at Florida State), so every game is still a learning experience for him,” Bench said. “He wasn’t beaten down or anything else. He’s a kid who loves the game. You can tell from his coach and family what a great person he is. And then to move up (to the majors) that quickly is really rare. You’ve got to say he’s a rare example of any phenom that stands up and does the job . He throws well. Calls the game. He’s got it all. And he runs well . . . for a catcher.”

Bench was impressed how Posey, at such a young age, handled pitchers. In this case, perhaps the best staff in the majors.

“There are three types of pitchers you have to deal with,” Bench said. “Some you just have to tell what town they’re in, remind them where they are. Some you remind them about mechanics, and some you have to bust their tail. You have to make them your friend and have them trust you.”

According to the Hall of Famer, the kid pulled it off.

Giants Thoughts

After going through this season, I have come to the conclusion that the Giants rode the back of Buster Posey to win the World Series last season. He was the leader who got the team moving towards that goal, as evidenced by this quotes before and after winning, "Why not us?" "Let's do it again". So that leads me to a couple of conclusions.

First, the 2012 Giants with Posey leading the way will be that much more competitive than the 2011 version, no matter who we end up signing as free agents. I think we can win with the group we have, though I would love any offensive upgrades the team can make via free agency or trades. And Buster would lead the way for us.

Second, the Giants should be looking into signing Buster to one of those mega-long contracts, like what Evan Longoria from the Rays or that Colorado doled out to their position stars. As much as we need the pitching to continue to get the opportunities to win it all, I think we need Posey's leadership to push us over the top and achieve that. I love his "Can Do" attitude and that he wasn't bowed by any high expectations nor questioning that they can't achieve the seemingly impossible.

This and signing Lincecum and Cain to long-term contracts are the key things I want to see from the Giants this off-season. Sandoval too would be nice.

FYI, I've been spending a lot of my off-season time checking out DrB's blog for interesting discussions, check it out for my thoughts on some of the things happening to the Giants this off-season, like his recent post on the signing of Lopez then picking up Affeldt's option. (Not too surprising, glad they did it; also, I would love it if the Giants go for it on Grady Sizemore for a one year deal) Unfortunately, I don't usually remember to re-post my thoughts here, as I usually comment all across the internet on the Giants, though I might recap some of it at some point when the mood strikes me.

Interviews with top prospects Brown and Panik

2011-10-24T21:56:00.000-07:00

The Giants/MLB's video section got two nice interviews with Gary Brown and Joe Panik, where they answer some questions about their background, college experience, their 2011 performance, type of hitter they are, what they are working on in the AFL, and future plans.

Brown

I've been very impressed so far by the interviews that Gary has given before and he was great in this one too. This is the first time I've seen him not smile like a Cheshire Cat, he has a great smile usually, like he is just so happy to be in the position he is in (I think I've seen him in 3-5 interviews before). He was very serious in this interview, barely cracked a smile at all that I can recall, though he did look like he did in prior interivews when he commented about liking to take a HBP.

I like that he took on the Moneyball concept, which to me reflects perfectly what he has done in his career: the most important thing is to get on base, walking to do that is one aspect of it, so is taking HBP. If he can't figure out hitting in any particularly league, he'll adjust and get on-base via other methods. But if he's hitting the ball well, why take the bat out of his hands by walking?

I find that the Moneyball topic is the key thing that separates the Saber-wannabes and those who know their stuff and are serious about it. Walking is important but not to the extreme extent that many people make it to be. There is a nuance to it that a lot of people don't get, it is important but not the only important thing. Not being able to walk is not necessarily a bad trait if he is good at hitting the ball well. A hit is much more valuable than a walk, you can advance the runners, you put pressure on the defense to make an error as well. Also, a walk will never become a homer unless you can easily steal 2B, 3B, and home. :^)

Still, there is some importance, as there are those players who are not able to hit and thus need to be able to take walks to be able to add value as a hitter. And ultimately, someone who can avoid swinging at pitches outside of the strike zone and swing only at strikes will be able to force the pitcher to come in with pitches that the hitter can handle and hit for a line drive or a hit somewhere. But there are plenty of good hitters who do not take walks. Sure, they are rarer and harder to find, but they do exist and they do provide a lot of good value as a player.

I guess it just bugs me a lot that people would point his lack of walks as a huge negative. First of all, they based their analysis on one year's worth of data, his junior year when he was a hitting god. Looking at his three years in college plus Cape Cod, he clearly was all about getting on base, whatever it takes. Second, there are plenty of hitters who do well in the majors without walking that much. Yes, it is better if he could take walks no matter what, but the focus was always on the lack of walks, not on the fact that he was hitting great and didn't need to take walks.

As an analytical lark, I examined what would have happened if he took away 5 PA from his non-walk PA's and somehow magically changed them into five walks (no one really knows what would happen to a hitter if he suddenly tried to change his hitting style to take more walks, he might get more walks but much less hits plus additional outs as well; it would be like predicting the weather, i.e. right sometimes, but you can't really predict the rarer events, nor the complex sequence of results). Using the valuations of each component of a non-walk PA, I found that his offensive production was REDUCED by converting his non-walk PA's into five walks. He had so many hits, and so many of his hits were for extra bases, that the value of all the offense that could generate was higher than the offense generated by taking walks, even though a larger percent of those non-walk PAs were outs. So he was better off hitting than trying to change and take a walk instead.

Panik

This is my first interview that I can recall seeing of Panik. He was very poised, very humble, much like Brown, two really nice guys working hard to achieve their dreams. He discussed the issue of switching to 2B in the AFL, really enjoyed the interview. He has a nice smile too, a more serious face like Brown, maybe the interviewer asked them to do that? Sounds like the same guy doing the interview.

There are also nice clips of them playing: hitting and fielding. Brown's batting stance is not so jittery anymore, so that was good to see. Get to see Panik in the field too, that was nice.

Really nice, particulary in-depth interviews given how short, really, they are, allow us fans to get to know these two prospects. Seeing these makes me root for them even more, they seem to be solid hard-working ballplayers who are not full of themselves.

Here are the links:

Gary Brown on playing in the AFL
Joe Panik on moving to second base in AFL

Giants Thoughts

Neither of them have been doing that well so far, but I understand it is just small samples. As of the latest available stats, Brown is only hitting .220/.278/.300/.578 and Panik is only hitting .211/.302/.212/.513. They are third and second worse on their team by OPS among the leaders on this list (not sure how many PA to qualify, but based on rough perusing of AB and BB, 30 is the lowest I could find, lowest AB is 27; also, sort by OPS to get most up to date stats, found lower ABs when sorted by BA for some reason). At least they are doing better than Angel's Wunderkind Mike Trout (.222/.222/.289/.511) and not much worse than Nat's Wunderkind Bryce Harper (.214/.313/.381/.693).

But Panik does not appear to be totally overmatched. Panik has done well with his batting discipline, he has only 3 strikeouts in 38 AB with 4 walks, both great ratios. That is a 92% contact rate, which is great, 1.33 BB/K ratio (anything over 1.0 is great), and 10.5% BB/PA, which is good too. However, his BABIP is only .229, which leads to the bad overall results and batting line.

The fact that he isn't hitiing anything for extra bases suggest that while he's not being fooled in terms of striking out, he's also not able to do anything with the strikes he is hitting, he is not hitting them with much authority and either getting only singles or weak outs. So that is bad, but given that his basic type of hitting is going for gap to gap line drives, this suggests that the pitching has an advantage over him at the moment but as he adjusts to and figures them out, he'll start hitting line drives again.

Brown, however, appears to be overmatched to an extent but he's also suffering from some bad luck. In 50 ABs, he only has 1 walk and 10 strikeouts. That is a 80% contact rate, which is OK (good is 85%) but he needs to bring up his walk rate, that is just too low to sustain if he is to be our leadoff hitter. Still, he is going with his bread and butter of HBP to boost up his OBP, it appears from the numbers that he already has 3 HBP in the 11 games he has played in so far. His BABIP is .275, but he has 3 XBH in 11 hits so far, so he is making some hard contact when he is hitting the ball, so his poor hitting so far could be related to a simple case of bad luck with the BABIP gods. Boosting him up to .325 BABIP would put him at 13 hits, for a batting line of roughly .260/.315/..340/.655 (and .360/.675 if he got an extra double among the extra hits). At his .369 BABIP for San Jose, he would be at .295/.347/..400/.747 overall, roughly, assuming a slight uptick in XBH. With some HR power that he normally tries for, that would push him closer to .800 OPS.

The cool thing with him is that while he realizes that as a lead-off hitter, he needs to figure out how to get on-base a lot, he also knows the value of hitting for extra-base power, including homeruns. There are many speedsters who limit themselves to trying to get on base, ending up with a low OPS overall because their SLB is so low, like Burriss. With just an uptick in power, the way Carney Lansford was trying to teach him to do, Burriss could be our starting 2B right now, instead of Franchez, because he'll be hitting more linedrives that will fall in for more hits as well as more extra-base hits. Instead, he's probably going become, at best, a bench utility player, worse, a AAAA player bouncing up and down, as needs dictate.

Brown's philosophy at the plate, which he has espoused in the interviews I've seen him in before, encapsulates both getting on base (the OBP) as well as the driving in runs (SLG) components of the Runs Created formula. He will always get HBP, it appears. He will walk when he can't get on base via hitting (typically he did this in college, freshman and sophomore years), but if he's the leading hitter in the league (which he was in junior year, he was among top in BA, OBP, SLG, and thus OPS), he didn't focus so much on the walks as the power he was generating with his bat. He wants to hit gap to gap and use his speed, but he also wants to get the regular HR as well. He focuses on being an all-around hitter, which to me is kind of like a Rickey Henderson-lite: not as much walks, hits, or homers, but that's Rickey's HOF standards, as what Brown has done is still pretty good overall. He just needs to do it all at the major league level.

Brandon Crawford, meanwhile, has been doing well. Playing SS while Panik plays 2B, he is hitting .353/.389/.588/.977 in 34 AB. He has 7 K's for a 79% contact rate (OK, but not good) but only 2 walks, so he could stand to take a few more walks, so that it is closer to his K's, plus he could stand to not strikeout so much. But neither is a big deal with so few games played so far and few ABs. He's not going to hit that well forever, though, his BABIP is high at .423, there is no way he can sustain that at any level.

But his 235 ISO is potentially repeatable, so if he can hit mid .200 BA and walk enough to reach .300 OBP, with that ISO, he will roughly be in the high 700 OPS range, which is more than enough for the Giants to play him at SS with his defense, heck, in that range, he would be a good offensive SS. And even if he hits in the low .200 BA range, with that ISO, he would still be around 700 OPS (or slightly under), which is doable with his defense for him to be our starter in 2012. Heck, if he is batting 8th for us, he probably can hit in the .650 OPS range and still be a productive SS for us, given his plus defense and OK (at that range) offense. Anything above that would probably be gravy. Still, he has under 50 PA, so it is very much a small sample size issue right now.

And that is a large part of looking at their stats right now, realizing that there are not that many ABs so far. Still, there are some things that can be pointed out about each hitter that they can work on, whether they are doing well or doing poorly, overall. There are some good things to point out as well, on a thus far basis, that if they continue, would be good signs. Obviously, it would be nicer if they were all hitting like BCraw is hitting (though with a .423 BABIP, he's not going to continue that going for very much longer), but there is nothing to panic over yet, and there are some good signs for each, as well as things to work on.

The bad news of their performance so far is that most probably the highest Brown and Panik will probably be promoted to is AA, and thus 2013 is the more likely the earliest season they ascend to the majors permanently, particularly Panik. Brown definitely will get promoted to AA Richmond, but Panik could end up at San Jose instead, like Brown did in his first full season as a pro, this season. Brown could push the envelope with a good performance and make the majors by the end of 2012, but right now I don't see that happening with Panik given his difficulties in the AFL. Still, I think Panik's decision to sign early has paid off, he has made his mark and got the AFL gig, a opportunity which he probably would not have gotten had he waited until the last minute to sign.

I know the Giants said that they will not rush prospects, but as I noted, Panik is not exactly being dominated by pitchers in the AFL, which experts have said that the talent would be like between AA and AAA. Personally, while I agree that the talent overall is like that, I think it is tougher than either because you are facing that top level of player every day, whereas when playing in those leagues, you get to play against a lot of organizational players. Thus the Giants might push him up to AA, partly because his batting discipline is good, with the thought that he will figure it out but also to pair up Brown and Panik atop the lineup and learn to play together, much like how they had Bumgarner and Posey together in order to give them some time together to work together. Overall, though, the caution in Sabean's talk suggests that unless Panik heats up soon, he's most probably ending up in San Jose for the 2012 season.

And while Crawford most likely will cool off at some point, if he can keep his batting line in a good range, probably at least .800 OPS, he most probably will be given the chance to win the SS spot and the Giants will not consider signing any SS to a big money, long-term deal (meaning no Rollins). Instead, they would do as they have been in recent years when keeping a spot open for a top prospect, sign a vet on the cheap who looks capable enough to keep the seat warm until the top prospect is ready, presumably sometime mid-season. If they do sign Rollins to a long-term deal, then clearly they don't think much of Crawford's future. But I don't think that is the scenario we will be facing by the end of the AFL season, I think Crawford is making his case, both in the AFL as well as his last month in the majors, that he's ready enough to start at SS for the Giants in 2012.

VIllanova's Baaack!

2011-10-05T19:55:00.000-07:00

Angel Villanova is back with the Giants. Read this article on it, on Yahoo.

One minor quibble, only quibble since it was never verified, but the Giants reportedly only outbid the Yankees, Mets, and Red Sox. One rumor was that the Mariners actually outbid the Giants by a lot, I believe the figure was $3.0M vs. the Giants $2.1M, which is probably why Villalona's agent, Scott Boras (yes, that agent) promptly announce that he was going to sue the Giants for not including him in the negotiations, whereupon the Giants stated that Villalona had the proper representatives for the Giants to execute a legally signed contract, so if Boras has a problem with how it went down, he should speak to Villalona. Since I heard nothing about it afterward, Boras probably licked his wounds with a big chunk of the $2.1M. (at, say, 10%, that's $210K vs. $300K, at 15%, $315K vs. $450K, the difference of which is probably pocket change in the big scheme of things for Boras).

Reportedly, the Giants scouts had been in on Villalona since he was 13 YO (he could officially sign once he turned 16) and had built up a relationship with him and his family over the intervening years. Much like how that Atlanta Braves scout did with Jason Heyward as serendipity placed Heyward on the scout's son's Little League team, where he developed a strong relationship with the Heyward family (there was probably no way he would have signed with any other team that draft year; he probably viewed it as fate deciding, because his parents are college professors and he would have been just as happy to go to college if the Braves did not pick him). Supposedly, Villalona went with the Giants because he was more comfortable with the team because of that long relationship built up.

Giants Thoughts

Not surprising that once the Giants reinstated Villanova, he dropped his $5M lawsuit (which is probably the main reason why the Giants reinstated him). Not surprising that they waited to reinstate him once he was cleared of the homicide charges, because they didn't want this to put a dark cloud on the World Championship afterglow. Not surprising that he sued them because they were probably ignoring all his entreaties to rejoin the organization. The $5M was more to get the Giants attention, I think, than any real intent to collect on the damages.

The article mentioned comparisons to A-Rod, Adrian Beltre, and Wily Mo Pena, but I've never see ones like that. Angel, physically, would never resemble the first two, and I don't know where they got Beltre, who is mostly all glove with some power, whereas Villanova is mostly all power with some glove. Most probably the author chose them because they are Latin players who have a lot of HR power and play good defense at 3B. There were reports that he has lost some of his baby fat and is slimmer now, but I think, like Sandoval, he's always going to be a big boi. Whether he can play 3B, like the first two, is also in question.

The comparison I recall, which was when he was signed, was to Andres Gallaraga. Villanova is suppose to have 40 home run power. His being among the leaders in HR in his one year at Augusta helped validate that, as he was much, much younger than the pitchers there, and yet was able to hit for power (though not much else, so his OPS was not that high, though very good, I believe, for his age).

He was suppose to be good defensively at 3B but the Giants had him play 1B to take some defensive pressure off him and let him focus on developing his bat, as well as adjust to a foreign culture. He reportedly still practiced a lot at 3B and had hopes of returning back to 3B at some point as he rose up higher. I think reports of his defense at 1B was positive, though not great.

I think the Wily Mo Pena comparison is probably more apt because Pena is one of the big busts of big money Latin American Bonus Babies. I believe his bonus was among the biggest up to his signing, if not the biggest, and thus his progress has been followed closely. He will be 30 next season and will have still not put in a full season yet.

His highest PA in a season was in 2004 with 364 PA when he was only 22. He got around 300 PA in his early to mid-20's, but once he turned 26, he could not do enough to keep teams interested enough to see if he would finally meet his projected potential, which is not unlike Angel, a 40 homer potential. He showed it in 2004 with 26 homers, but that is his career high water mark, though perhaps he still has a chance, as he has been stuck in the minors for the prior two seasons before getting some playing time in 2011 with Arizona and Seattle. He had 5 homers in 46 AB for Arizona.

Unfortunately for him, he has the classic "swing for it all" swing which results in a lot of HR power, but unfortunately even greater strikeout power and numbers, and thus his batting line is almost all SLG, as there are few hits or walks. He's a career .250 hitter with .303 OBP.

And that is what Villanova profiles as so far: big power, big whiffs. To be fair, though, he's been the youngest regular at each league he's been in, so a lot of whiffs are to be expected, the pitchers are that much more older, that much more experienced, than he was. Still, so was Sandoval and he was still able to avoid the strikeouts pretty well, even though he was young. The encouraging thing is that despite that disadvantage, Villanova, while striking out a lot, was not excessively so, which gave hope that as he rises and catches up in age and experience with the competition, he would continue to do so.

However, after missing two years of organized baseball, there is no way to tell how well he might do. He should definitely be very rusty, if not having regressed, slimmer body or not. He did OK in San Jose in 2009, but not as well as he did in Augusta, so they could restart his career in Augusta to account for that lost time, and let him work upward from there. On the other hand, I would think that some consideration would be given towards him starting in San Jose because there is a large Spanish speaking population here in the South San Francisco Bay Area, plus to see where he is competitively. Along that line, they might just put him in instructional league to now and just continue that into the start of 2012 to bring him back up to speed, and once he looks ready, then place him on one of the affiliates.

Obviously, mixed reactions on his return. Whoever may have done it, a life was lost because his group and another group were fighting over a chair in a dingy dive bar. While it is suspicious to Western eyes that he paid off the family, we don't know how life is in that part of the Dominican Republic, nor of how the court system works there. It could be like the U.S. where people sue when rich people are involved, only magnified exponentially because even the piddly $10K or so that he would have made in the minors this season, had he been re-instated earlier, is a lot of money for the average citizen of that town, most probably. His $2.1M bonus basically makes him the Warren Buffett of his town, essentially.

Moving on, focusing strictly on the baseball implications, this is great for the Giants farm system. The Giants have graduated a lot of people over the past few years, top players like Lincecum, Bumgarner, Sandoval, Posey, Belt, and still had some top prospects this season in Wheeler and Brown, plus now Panik most probably as well, plus perhaps Surkamp, though his major league debut was not that good. Adding Villalona will be like finding lost money, which basically he was for two seasons, though I would note here that one of the major questions marks when this thing hit was that his visa was revoked at that time, and I've seen nothing about it being re-instated. Since he says that he plans to return to baseball, I assume getting his visa back is a mere formality at this point.

Villanova was a Top 50 prospect for all of baseball at one point. While he lost development time while away, honestly, the way he looked previously, he looked like he was eating his way out of baseball anyway. If he has slimmed down in any significant way, that will help him regain his baseball status quicker. And he is still only 21 YO for next season.

He most probably will never regain Top 40 status. If he returned to San Jose, he would still be young for the league, still 2 years younger than the pitchers there (average in 2011 was 23.2 YO), but there are a lot of 20 and 21 YO players in the league and they are typically the top prospects for their teams. It is incredibly unlikely that he can keep up with that level of production to keep his status. For example, the top 21 YO was Jose Altuve (who became the Astro's starting 2B after they traded Jeff Keppinger to us) who hit .408/451/.606/1.057 there. Michael Choice was next, hitting .285/.376/.542/.918, Henry Rodriguez 3rd, hitting .340/.378/.513/.891. Villanova hit .267/.306/.397/.704 for San Jose in 2009 at age 18 (to think, he could have been close to the majors right now without all this, assuming he at least made AA by now and did well). He would have to hit pretty well there in 2012 to earn high prospect status for the Giants, let alone all of baseball again.

Still, to show his potential, he was still 83rd in OPS in 2009 in the California League, even though he was 5 years younger and less experienced than the pitchers there. His SLG ranked 69th and he was tied for 42nd in homers, despite being injured mid-season and missing a lot of the season. If he got the 530+ PA that our top position players got in 2009 for San Jose, he would have prorated hit at least 15 homers, which would have ranked tied for 14th in the league for homers. 21 YO with that much HR power that season were Thomas Neal and Trayvon Robinson, though they also hit for a heck of a lot better batting average. Both were in AAA this season, and Trayvon got some time in the majors with Seattle. Coincidentally, both Neal and Robinson were traded this season. And he did that at age 18, whereas now he is now 21, more physically developed, hopefully better fit and slimmer as well.

If he can regain status next season, he could still make the majors before he turns 25, which would still be pretty good. By that point, Sandoval could have moved to 1B by then, or even LF, if the Giants want to keep Belt at 1B, heck, he could even be gone, as he is slated to be a free agent after the 2014 season (Villalona will be 24 for the 2015 season). So 3B could be open at that point, should Angel still be able to play that position at that point, and perhaps 1B is open too. Given his difficulties with weight up to now, I don't see how 1B is not his eventual position at some point, so 3B would be the whip cream on top of the sundae.

I see him being a Mark Reynolds type, lots of strikeouts (though hopefully not as bad as Reynolds), enough walks to make his poor batting average into an OK OBP, but the main attraction will be his huge HR potential, 30-40 each year, with a lot of runs batted in too. Key questions will be whether he can walk enough to make his poor batting average into an OK enough OBP, whether he can not strikeout so much, so that his batting average isn't so poor, and whether he can hit enough homers that the first two questions are not that big an issue.

Giants Fans Guide to 2011 Playoffs

2011-10-02T11:08:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm a bit late for this but as my big posts the past few days took a bit of time as well.

As I've done in the past, when the Giants did not make the playoffs, I would give a Giants fans rooting guide to who to root for, based on the Giants past, if any.

Texas Rangers: I'm rooting for them the most this post-season. I felt bad for them last season and, hey, they did it again even though Cliff Lee used and snubbed them to get the contract he really wanted. And they made it sort of easy for us last year, no drawn out 7 games to really put us Giants fans in a funk.
Milwaukee Brewers: I'm rooting for Rangers-Brewers World Series. Fox Network would love that, wouldn't they? Giants do have a bad history with them regarding Fielder being a bowling ball, but if it had not happened to the Giants, yeah, it was pretty funny. Else, nothing really brewing there (honest, did not do that as pun, just came out naturally), plus I feel bad for them always pushing to win it all and failing for one reason or another. They clearly shot their wad this season to win with Fielder this one last time before he breaks their hearts and run off to a 10 year mega-contract somewhere. (Good luck on that, Yankees and Boston already got one, and I don't think Mets can handle one with Madoff losses, bowl on that one big boi).
Detroit Tigers: Have no hate for them, but nothing compelling like the above for me to root for them higher. Verlander maybe.
Tampa Bay Rays: I'm tired of hearing all the accolades their management gets. I see their success as more driven by the fact that they purposefully lost horribly for about 10 years, the life of their franchise, giving them great picks atop the draft, and stocking themselves up with talent. Easier to make risky trades like Delmon Young when you have a stockpile of other goodies lying around, not as easy if he's the only one they got. Still, admire their trades, so I have some grudging admiration, but have to see more to give them more credit. Easy to have small payroll when you have a stockpile of young studs, lets see what happens when they all get expensive..
St. Louis Cardinals: I'm still mad at them for Jack Clark and 1987. 2002 helped take the edge off, and I really don't care for the teams below, from a Giants fan's perspective.
Philadephia Phillies: I would prefer that the Phillies be known as the Buffalo of the 2010's, coming close but not accomplishing anything with all the riches they have, talent-wise. They are our biggest rivals in the NL, no use encouraging them.
New York Yankees: No way I reward their spending so much more than 90% of the teams in baseball that it almost guarantees them a spot in the playoffs every year. One and out is what they deserve. Hopefully all MLB revenues will flow through MLBAM eventually and even things out between the teams. Until then, Yankees can suck it, thinking they can buy the title each year.
Arizona D-backs: Some believe you should back the guys in your division. Sorry, not one of them. I still think they lucked out on this season, so I don't think they deserved it. Take away their extra Pythagorean and 1-run wins and the Giants would have had a nice battle with them the whole month of September for NL West title. Give us Posey, we would have won for sure. Not going to reward them just because Marlins helped them out.

Your 2012 Giants: Born A Ramblin' Man

2011-10-01T21:30:00.000-07:00

Now that the season is over, with the Giants ending up 86-76, I thought I would just get my thoughts and info out on the Giants next year.

Click on the title for the full post

Sign as Many Young Stars Long Term

First, the most important thing is that the Giants should be signing some of their young stars - Cain, Lincecum, Bumgarner, Posey, Sandoval - to longer-term contracts, buying out their arbitration years and maybe going into their free agent years. Lincecum is on record that he's looking for shorter deals, but according to one rumor I read somewhere, he doesn't want to saddle the team's payroll with a big long contract. I would still like a 5 year, $90-100M contract with him anyway, that is about what Verlander got (5 years, $80M), and toning it down to 4 years would be OK with me, just get some of his free agent years covered.

The low offensive support is probably a concern to him, but he has to be aware of how awesome the Giants lineup will look in a couple of years with Sandoval, Posey, Belt in the middle, Brown and Panik up top, plus Schierholtz would be good 6th, plus maybe others like Joseph, Hector Sanchez, Gillaspie, Culberson, Dominguez, Peguero, RafRod. Retaining Beltran would really make the point, but I'll get to that later. Anyway, I also think that he and Cain understand that 2011 was greatly hurt by loss of Posey, which I think a lot of Giants fans are missing.

Others worry likewise that Cain will get tired of the low support, but as I've been noting, the Giants are HIS team, he had no boyhood team, and more importantly, he lives in SF, his wife works in the Bay Area, his daughter is growing up here, and as we have seen with prior contracts, the Giants don't really skimp on contract dollars, so as long as he gets anything fair - and he might even give a hometeam discount (he's the only one I think there is any chance of that happening, though I won't hold it against him if he doesn't) - he will remain a Giant as long as the team wants him. Stop worrying.

Bumgarner had his salary dust-up with the Giants this past season, so if they can offer him a contract that covers his arbitration years, 5 years, $20-30M, I think that would soothe things between them. I still think he's going to leave to join Atlanta at some point - his ranch and wife are near there - but he has the SF World Series ring, so that might help sway him, but I fear he is gone as soon as he free agents, so hopefully we can get an option on his first year of free agency for $9-12M. And, who knows, if the offense comes together soon enough, he may grow to love it here, there are ranches out here too.

Signing Posey now would be buying low, so I don't think Posey would go for it. Plus there is risk for the Giants since we have no idea what we will get until he starts playing again. But I would rather at least kick the tires and see what interest is there and for how much, maybe the collision made him see the frailty of a baseball career and we can get a good, fair deal done.

Sandoval won't be cheap either, but I think it's time to keep him happy with a 4 year deal, buy out his arbitration years and a free agent year, as this is his first arbitration year. Yes, he has gained weight, and weight will always be an issue, but this is not a 10 year deal, only 4, I think it would help motivate him more, unlike others who would just sit on their butts and eat away their fortune. And the recent report from Schulman is that he only gained 10 pounds, he's always going to look like a hefty boy, the fan reports that he had gained back everything he lost appears to be way off. And he's going back to the same fitness firm again this off-season to lose that weight and continue getting fitter.

Sabean noted in the first post-season press conference that the Giants payroll was not changing from the roughly $124M that it was in 2011. Have not seen the math of all that, so I'm not sure how much is left after raises to Lincecum, Cain, Dirty, and Wilson, plus Romo and Casilla too. As he noted, the Giants will have to take care of their pitchers first, before handling the position players.

He was also asked about long-term deals by the reporters. He said that the goal right now is to figure out all the arbitration cases (i.e. who to keep, etc.) and once he gets them signed to one year deals, then the Giants can look long-term. Cain, since he is a free agent after next season, will have some urgency but they are going to be open minded with Lincecum and see if they can get something done there too.

Rotation: Game, Set, Match

The rotation looks great with Lincecum, Cain, Bumgarner, Vogelsong, plus either Dirty or Zito, and with Surkamp probably sitting in AAA as our emergency starter if necessary. Surkamp did well at first, but has been very exposed since then, though he only really had that one bad start last time (I'll forgive any bad starts in Colorado). A full season in AAA should do wonders for him and then he'll be ready in 2013, hopefully.

I had been hoping that the Giants are able to trade Dirty at some point before the start of the 2012 season and get at least one good prospect for him, preferably a hitter, maybe even two good position prospects, depends on how desperate the other team is. I didn't think that would be too much to ask for one season of Dirty before he and Boras goes to free agency. However, apparently his shoulder was hurting all year (thanks DrB!), so the earliest he can be traded is probably just before the season opener, and even that is pretty unlikely. Best hope would be mid-season, and if he is starting.

I can see a tweener team, who is around .500 this season, be willing to give up a good prospect for a pitcher like Dirty to help their rotation, at the mid-season point. But most probably he's with the Giants all season now, with this injury news. Zito looks destined for the bullpen as long reliever, unless Sanchez is still recovering next season, and thus get put in the bullpen.

Position Roster-bation

Now the lineup needs a leadoff hitter. I mentioned Rollins the other day, but I have to take him out of consideration: just saw that he's looking for a 5 year contract, on MLB Trade Rumors. That notes that execs expect contracts between 3 years at $12M per to 4 years at $14M per. That's just too much, I clearly was way off on my guess on his contract, the money is too much and so are the years. And this will cover his 34-36 seasons, another big negative.

Also, I just looked at Crawford's UZR: as brilliantly as we have seen him play the position, he isn't even rated at one win above average over a full season, barely over half a win. That definitely won't work with how poorly he hit this season, he really should use 2012 learning how to hit better.

However, he did very nice for the Giants in September, particularly once he started getting regular starts. From Sept 11, he started 11 of 17 games and hit .250/.333/.425/.758 with 5 walks and 6 K's in 40 AB, which would be excellent to get from him over a season with his defense. And he was even better from Sept 22, he started 5 of 7 games and hit .267/.353/.467/.820 with 2 walks and 2 K's in 15 AB, very good numbers over the last week of games.

Crawford probably rose the most in my eyes this season among the prospects. I still think he's probably not up here for good until 2013, hence why he should be in minors in 2012, but he handled the bat amazingly well considering how poorly he had done previously in the minors. I was very impressed. He could be like a Vizquel who has the great glove but poor bat who slowly works his way up to being good with the bat, I really like the way he was able to keep his strikeout rate down while taking more walks.

And maybe he finally made a break in September. He will have to show that was not a fluke by continuing to hit well in the AFL and maybe the Giants will go with him as the starter at SS and not sign a free agent.

So maybe a FA SS signing is coming, depending on how Crawford does in the AFL, unless there is a trade out there, not sure who is available.

Right now, assuming they are still searching for a starting SS, looking over the 2012 Free Agent list on MLB Trade Rumors, I think the two most likely targets would be Marco Scutaro, who is OK defensively while OK offensively as well, though Boston might want to keep him at $6M or he might want to stay at $3M (player option), though with a $1.5M buyout, he would only need a $2M contract to get more the $3M, so he probably will be bought out if Boston don't keep. But $6M for what he did, I can't see them not picking him up. Maybe we can trade for him if they don't need him by end of spring training.

I'm also thinking that Jack Wilson would be a target too. The Giants were rumored to be interested in him previously, and he was buddies with Franchez too when they were with Pirates. He has hardly played the past few seasons, not as a starter, not sure if injuries or what, but defensively, over a full season, he's around +1-2 wins defensively, and while his offense is not that great, actually pretty bad, it is not as bad as Crawford.

A sticking point is that he might want the $5M per season he's been getting for a number of years now, and I think that would be too much given how poorly he has hit and age will erode his defense some as well. I think a one year contract for $3M would work for the Giants and maybe for him too. He has also played a little at 2B too, so he could be insurance there as well in case Franchez is slow coming back (again...).

Clint Barmes might be interesting to some fans, but his offense is all homegrown, it is pretty bad on the road, though still better than Wilson, now that I'm realizing it. Barmes is just as good defensively, a year younger, and has not made a lot of money, so he could be happy with a $3M contract for 2012 or 2 years, $6M.

OK, he's growing on me as an alternative, while he has hit much better at home, and he doesn't hit that well on the road, he at least has been better than Wilson still. And he has played a lot of 2B too, and been good defensively there too, though not as good as SS. He could be a better alternative over Keppinger as utility MI, if he is willing to take such a position.

CF, I think the Giants will look at Coco Crisp, David DeJesus, and maybe Nate McLouth, if he is desperate and nobody is kicking his tires. All three either has experience as leadoff or gets good enough OBP to help generate offense there. I think DeJesus and McLouth could be buy low candidates who the Giants might take a chance on. Crisp, while not ideal, can provide a lot of speed up top, OK defense in CF, good offense, but he will probably want and get $6M per year contract, probably for 2 years. We would probably have to promise him CF, whereas DeJesus and McLouth could be happy with a promise that they will get a chance.

Plus there is Cody Ross, though the way Sabean likes to play it, he would rather target someone early and pursue that person, so the position could be filled before Cody gives up and accept a one year deal. But who knows, if he does not get a lot of long-term feelers early on, he might decide he would rather stay here and work out a one year deal to stay before the Giants sign anyone else.

I've seen some talk about getting Cuddyer as a potential corner OF or 2B. I say pass. He has not hit very well on the road, his high offensive batting line is due to his home park. Plus, we need a CF, not another corner OF or 2B, we have a lot of options for both spots.

In the OF, Belt, Torres, and Schierholtz are the only ones I would say is most likely to be on the team next season, despite rumblings among scribes that Torres might get DFAed, but even then, I think he resigns at lower contract, a la Fontenot last season, and be our 4th OF. Torres has to be upset about how poorly he did this season and want to make amends. Clearly, though, Giants management made it clear in the press conference that Torres is not the starting CF.

Schulman noted that Pill was asked by Giants to get practice playing OF in winter league, looks like he will get a long look (and as long as he doesn't implode in spring training) as a super utility guy on the bench who has power, plus would get first shot if anyone is injured or not performing. He plays 1B well, has experience at 2B this season, though don't know how well (could not be that good though, else would have done long ago I would think, so just in pinch when necessary), plus probably LF during off-season.

Speaking of Pill, I wanted to note his quote that "The pitchers don't make as many mistakes up here. My biggest thing is not hitting the pitcher's pitch - finding my pitch, a pitch to drive." Pitchers adjusted to him, after hitting a homerun in his first two games, he hasn't hit one since. Still, he has hit OK since, .282/.310/.436/.745, with only 7 K's in 39 AB, which is not that bad, 82% contact rate. That's great for a bat off the bench.

People accuse me of cherry picking, but there are a lot of reasons why you take out slices from the data, like the first games or week when the other teams don't know what to do with him. Particularly when you are dealing with a small sample, you have to watch out for when outliers greatly affects the overall picture, you want to get as close to the truth as possible.

Burrell may or may not be back, depends on his foot, he probably does not re-sign with Giants - he says he'll either re-sign or retire if his foot is too bad. Hey, we'll always have 2010. Thank you Pat!

We got Panda at 3B, Franchez at 2B, Huff at 1B, and Pill as probable backup at 1B, and Fontenot probable backup at 3B, 2B, SS. Emmanuel Burriss and Conor Gillaspie are out of options so they are probably up for spots on the bench too. Gillaspie is seeing some practice time at 2B - he has been a 3B during his pro career - and probably will learn some 1B as well as LF.

With a CF signing, that would mean 5 players for 4 bench positions. Which means that the Giants most probably is not going to keep Keppinger around, though they might sign him with the intention of keeping him around as insurance in case Franchez is not ready, and then trade him in spring if Franchez is ready. Sabean called him a "luxury item" in the press conference.

I also like Mark DeRosa for the bench, though after looking at the bench, I'm not sure there is a spot for him unless they dump Fontenot (possible if Burriss is on the bench) AND Gillaspie. DeRosa wants to be closer to his home in Atlanta, anyway (remember, his never playing for us is due to him going to local Georgia doctor instead of the specialist he went to get it done right), so I expect him to sign with the Braves, even for a minor league deal.

But Pill, Burriss, Gillaspie/Fontenot probably got spots on the bench, and assuming a CF is signed, Torres too, and that is four spots gone, so one of them would have to go for DeRosa to have a spot. Only way he returns is if Atlanta passes on him and the Giants give him a minor league contract with a chance to win a spot. Gillaspie/Fontenot is probably the loser in that scenario.

Also, it was noted in the post-season press conference that Huff was ordered to get into good shape for 2012 and that he has been told to be ready to play the outfield (presumably LF since Bochy named Schierholtz the starting RF) should the Giants decide to go with Belt or Pill at firstbase. Huff has been very contrite in late season interviews, he totally blames himself (unlike Rowand who blames the park), so I expect the good Huff next year, particularly with Posey and Pablo hitting well in the lineup, taking the pressure off of him. But you never know, so be prepared for him being DFAed at some point if he don't deliver.

For the last bench spot, Chris Stewart most probably is the backup catcher in 2012, Whiteside most probably is gone, says a lot that Stewart is Lincecum's personal catcher right now. I also like the way that Stewart handles the bat, he avoids strikeouts well and for catchers, offense is the last thing to click, and usually in his 30's, and Stewart will be 30 next season. Whiteside got really exposed this season, offensively as well as defensively. And Hector should play in minors and work on his bat and defense.

A wrench in this scenario is that the Giants don't think that Posey can handle a full catching load of 120+ games next season, as he recovers from his devastating injury. And they don't really view Stewart of being capable of taking on more than a backup's role. So they could find a backup who is more of a starter to be backup (like a Torrealba) or they could keep Stewart while signing someone who would backup both catcher and other positions.

Wild card: Schulman reported that Beltran will actually talk with the Giants during their exclusivity period negotiating with him, before he goes free agent. Boras usually prefers his players to NOT talk to teams, but he seems to be flexible enough to listen to his player's preferences. So maybe Beltran realized his mistake with his statement, appreciated that Sabean actually made the effort to make Carlos look smart, maybe Boras spoke to him not to burn that bridge yet, since Boras went public to say that Beltran does want to talk with the Giants and consider them.

At minimum, according to this report, he admits obliquely that he is happy here without saying that he was happy here, by saying that a player needs to listen to a team that is interested and offers a fair deal, while the player is happy. Why mention this if he wasn't happy here. Appears that he and Pablo had a good time together, so perhaps that is part of the allure. And he has backed off the comment he made before, noting the improved lineup once Posey and Franchez return.

I wonder if Boras is looking to do one of those one year for big money deals with the Giants, which gives Beltran a good chance to finally win a ring with the Giants in 2012, then get a big contract afterward wherever. Much like I-Rod's one year deal with Marlins (which was not planned, he simply waited too long and no more teams were interested; he brokered a deal with Marlins where most of that $10M was deferred). Would look really good on his resume to be offensive leader on playoff and hopefully World Series team for 2012. Or maybe Beltran finally gets the Giants pitcher dominance thing, and want to give it a try over a year. Or maybe he had a change of heart. Of course, speculation can go in many different directions.

In any case, Sabean noted in the post-season press conference that the Giants have already reached out to Boras (and perhaps this is the reason both Beltran and Boras have been conciliatory in recent days) and let him know that the Giants are interested in retaining Beltran. He also acknowledged, using his Sabean-ism, that "it's a process" and it might take time, so that suggests that one should not expect this to resolve quickly.

However, since he made the point of having done this, instead of the usual "we need to sit down and discuss everything", that to me suggests that the Giants already have a ballpark idea of what Beltran wants and that they could get there financially, else why mention this? As he usually keeps everything "under his kimono", as he likes to say, and he normally do not lead on the public with things he don't intend to do. No use mentioning this unless the Giants are, as Beltran had mentioned, going to make what they believe to be a fair offer for Beltran. We will see.

If he is re-signed, I doubt he will play RF. Schierholtz should get RF because of his knowledge there. And Bochy said that Nate is the starting RF right now, it is his job to lose, in the first post-season press conference with Sabean and Bochy. And it wasn't like Beltran was good there. Only reason the Giants didn't move Beltran was because most players don't like to adjust mid-season and they respected that. With spring training, he can get reps in LF or even perhaps CF, if the Giants really want to give Belt a shot at starting in LF (or Huff there as well). Don't think Beltran is that good anymore in CF, but with Nate in RF, perhaps Nate can help cover extra ground and help him out in right-center. And Beltran's offense is good enough to make up for that poor defense, particularly in CF where offense is a premium.

Bullpen Changing

In the bullpen, the Giants will have Wilson, Romo, Casilla back, plus probably Mota as well. Sabean noted in the post-season press conference that the Giants will retain Affeldt, though not necessarily exercise his $5M option. Don't know about Lopez or Ramirez, but given the tight payroll budget, both probably are gone, particularly since we will probably get draft picks for them being Type-B free agents and they should be highly sought, so we won't need to offer arbitration to get the picks..

Runzler probably won a spot with his nice showing after his last call-up, as he cut down on the walks that has been haunting him all his career. Though his injury in the last game was worrisome, though Bochy said that he is fine and expected to be fully healthy by spring. Runzler noted that he succumbed to a problem many pitchers do, being afraid of getting hit and giving the hitters too much credit, instead "I was pressing not to give away runs and trying too hard to get people out, trying to make the perfect pitch," he was quoted by the Chronicle. He mentioned, "When I was down in Fresno this year, I had an opportunity to look in the mirror and say, 'Just attack the hitters like you used to,' " Runzler said Tuesday. " 'Don't give the hitters too much credit. If a pitch gets away from you, get ready to throw the next one.' "

Great attitude for any pitcher, starter or reliever. That was a problem for Cain for a while early in his career, I remember Matt Morris and fellow Giants hitters telling Cain this, that he gave hitters too much credit and was nibbling instead of taking it to them. Krukow mentioned this a number of times on broadcasts too, that he needed to trust his stuff, hitters can't hit that pitch.

Probably one of Steve Edlefson and Waldis Joaquin will get Ramirez's spot, and I would put as an outside shot that maybe Hembree will force his way onto the team in spring training. I think Dan Otero might be in the mix as well, plus they could always put Surkamp in as lefty relief like they did with Sanchez, though I doubt it because Surkamp did not strike out that many in the majors and they really need him to be ready to start, he would benefit greatly from pitching in AAA. Plus there is always Osirus Matos.

And undoubtedly, they will check out the free agents there as well, and pick up a buy-low reliever who they like, like they did with Mota. Plus, if Dirty is not tradeable, then Zito probably will be long main as lefty out of the pen, I would think, though you never know, the roles could get reversed, Dirty has been injury prone, they could push him into the pen instead, much like Righetti was, despite doing well as a starter. He and Boras would not be happy though, getting put in the pen just before he turns free agent.

Prospects

Prospects to look out for in 2012 include Gary Brown, Joseph Panik, Heath Hembree, Surkamp still qualifies, Otero, Edlefson, Joaquin, Hector Sanchez, Francisco Peguero, Ehire Adrianza, Max Ramirez, once hot catcher prospect with Texas, not sure how we got him but very intriguing to me, who I would not rule out as a dark horse to take the backup catcher job in 2012 from Stewart if he should ever figure out his bat, he's only 27 next season, still young for developing catchers, and he has a LOT of power, 10 HR in 148 AB in Fresno this season. I still like Crawford a lot even though he is no longer considered a rookie prospect.

Among the draft picks this season, I'm hopeful that Andrew Susac, Ricky Oropesa, Bryce Bandilla, Chris Marlowe, Josh Osich, and Kelby Tomlinson will also get their names into the "To Watch" list in 2012. I am most excited over Susac and Osich, two prospects who were thought by some to be first round talent, but who fell to the Giants in later rounds. Oropesa has intriguing power. And the Giants always finds the arms.

Speaking of the draft, if the Giants do let go of Lopez, Ramirez, and Ross, according to MLB Trade Rumors reversed-engineered Elias Ratings, the Giants could get Type-B compensation for them (assuming that the CBA renewal includes that type of compensation in 2012, if I understand everything right) for all three of them. Most probably, though, only Lopez and Ramirez will get signed before the Giants need to offer arbitration to get the picks, while Ross will go past the deadline, ending in two picks. Cabrera, unsurprisingly, is not that high.

Keppinger, however, is rated a Type-A, so the Giants might retain him first as backup insurance in case Sanchez has any problems coming back from his surgery, and second, as trade bait, should they don't need him for that. They could even keep him all season, just in case Sanchez has yet another injury, but that would mean that the other MI utility player is definitely a SS (Fontenot or Burriss or free agent) and that DeRosa is most probably gone (Torres, Pill, Keppinger, Fontenot/Burriss/FA in this scenario).

Sabean and Bochy: Two More Years

I hope the Giants give Sabean and Bochy a two year extension this off-season. Both have been deserving of it again. They should not be put in the position of being lame ducks next season, like Neukom did in his first season. Maybe he was going to do it again? They have earned that much after all that they have done for the Giants the past two seasons.

Sabean has the franchise's youth movement in its best shape that I have ever seen in following the Giants for 40 years. Our rotation is pretty set for years with Lincecum, Cain, and Bumgarner, and Vogelsong should help us buy time to find good starters to fill out the rotation in the second half of this decade. Wilson is a great closer, Hembree looks like he'll be ready to take over the reins should Wilson price himself out of our payroll (sorry, just can't see them giving him the big money closers get nowadays, more important to keep Lincecum, Cain, Bumgarner, Sandoval and Posey), Romo, and it does not cost too much to pick up good relievers plus they find them out there, like Casilla. Plus there is Runzler and other reliever candidates. The Giants have been good finding pitchers down later in the draft who jump up, like Wilson, Dirty, Romo, Runzler.

Meanwhile, the lineup looks to be very good as well. Sandoval, Posey, and Belt in the middle look to be among the better in the NL. Brown and Panik look like they will take the top two spots in the lineup in a couple of years. Perhaps next year if they do well in AFL this season. And Schierholtz would be good in the #6 spot. Plus we have a lot of potential starters still, despite all the trades, with Joseph, Peguero, RafRod, Hector Sanchez, Susac. Plus there is Max Ramirez. And who knows, maybe Villanova will re-ignite his prospect status. Don't need to be great hitters when we are filling out the #7 and #8 spots, but they could become good.

Bochy has impressed me the past two seasons. Last season, he made the hard decisions that had to be made and he kept the players productive even after they were benched. Else Renteria would have never stamped his name permanently into Giants history. I did not think that he was capable of that, based on what he did in previous seasons, but he was aware enough to know when he needs to go all out in his decision making versus most of the time when the lineup he writes down won't make a heck of a big difference, run-wise. He knew when it was do-or-die time and when it is all deck chair shuffling on the Titanic. I greatly admired that.

This season, it became clear to me from my research that Bochy is one of the most unique managers since he become manager, perhaps and probably in the history of baseball, by being able to manage his way to NL leading records in 1-run games, among or the leader in most games above .500 in 1-run games. In the years since he started his managerial career, he probably managed nearly 7% of the manager seasons and yet he has 40% of the seasons where a manager was 8 games or more above .500, a huge outlier among managers. He has basically done that in 50% of his years as manager. The only manager with such a high percentage is Bobby Valentine; the only other manager who is closest to Bochy in terms of number of seasons among the leaders in the NL was Bobby Cox, but while he was like that for a number of years, he hasn't done that for years now. Bochy is in a class all by himself, I look forward to him managing our team for years to come.

We Hardly Knew Ye, Neuk

I also wanted to thank Neukom. He brought a nice touch to the position of Giants owner, brought a lot of hope to us fans, set the team's image straight after Magowan got mud splashed all over him from the steroids scandal. I love the Giants Way, I loved that he would at least entertain all baseball moves, even if finances didn't work, to see if he could make the finances work, I loved that he has been so passionate a Giants fan all these years, and not only that, put his vast fortune where his mouth is.

But if the rumor is true that he wanted $10M to run the Giants, then I'm sorry, you just aren't worth that. I would rather see the team spend that on keeping our young players around as long as possible. Paying him that much would cost the team a lot of good players. Thanks but no thanks.

Still, thank you Bill for everything, particularly 2010's World Championship!

Larry Baer, I'm watching you!

He's said some reassuring things, implying that he will continue Neukom's policy of looking at all baseball deals and have Sabean let the owner's rep worry about the financing part. But he's basically done what he has always done, say the pat things that managers say, so I don't really know what to expect out of him. Hopefully he learned some lessons from Magowan's signings of Zito and Rowand.

Still, one thing he won't be able to do is whip out his wallet and say "I'm investing another $100M into the Giants so that they can sign some players" like Neukom could have. Unless the A's give the Giants $100M for the South Bay, I am not hopeful that we can keep all our core young players around for a long time.

Row, Row, Rowand on the Bike

Speaking of Aaron Rowand, apparently part of the reason he was complaining so much that he got DFAed was about the ballpark. Hello! Look in the mirror! Riding a mountain bike every day during the off-season is not a robust fitness routine. If you want to see how a baseball player mans up and get into fit shape, look no further than how Sandoval went to a professional fitness firm and got experts to help him get into the best shape. And he's not even being paid $12M per year by the team, Rowand could certainly have paid for that. He hit great for us early in the season for us his first couple of years. Here is how he did, split before and after:

2008:
to June 2: .342/.408/.549/.957, 8 HR in 193 AB (24 AB/HR)
Afterward: .233/.300/.334/.635, 5 HR in 356 AB (71 AB/HR)

He was still hitting .287/.355/.445/.800 on August 23rd.

2009:
to July 4: .302/.365/.486/.850, 9 HR in 278 AB (31 AB/HR)
Afterward: .208/.259/.335/.594, 6 HR in 221 AB (37 AB/HR)

He was still hitting .282/.336/.455/.792 on August 22nd.

Funny, but all those games in AT&T didn't seem to hurt his hitting at all those first two seasons early on. Seems more like him being out of shape and unable to play a full MLB season that really hurt his performance, as he just sunk from there. Then his 10 cent head took it from there, blaming the park when he should have pointed at himself, something Huff did immediately at the end of this season. Not once have we heard from Rowand that he did anything wrong.

He finally tried to do something to get into shape after the 2009 season - at least he did realize he had a problem - but did it with mountain biking every day, week. That is not the effort I expected for $12M, I guess he didn't have as good a professional attitude as was thought when he was signed.

Despite his "workout", he didn't do much hitting last season, that deep into the season. He cooled off almost immediately and lost his starting job in early June. Maybe he spent too much time biking and not enough batting. He did the same again this season, starting out hot enough, but cooling off fast again. The biking, if anything, one could say hurt him more than whatever he was doing before.

And what was with that batting stance he used this season? Ugh! About the worse batting stance I've ever seen in 40 years. And I'm counting the PONY League (competitor of Little League that is more fair to all players) players I've seen in the years I was a coach on my son's team.

He will probably find a job somewhere for next season, for the minor league minimum, hey, maybe Ozzie will attract him to the Marlins. But I can see him finally getting himself into the right shape in hopes of getting another contract after this one expires. That would really piss me off.

Loser. At least man up and get into shape the right way, not like how a child would do it. You got a big contract, you are suppose to be professional and do all that you can to deliver on that contract. Huff at least understands that. Good riddance, what a mistake his contract was. It looked bad from the beginning and proved to be even worse than advertised.

Giants Set for 2012 Division Title

Still, the Giants look good for 2012. Taking a look at the lineup for 2012, assuming we sign Crisp for leadoff and CF, the lineup of Crisp, Franchez, Sandoval, Posey, Huff, Belt, Schierholtz, SS, #9 is that the lineup would produce 4.32 RS/game. That with 3.55 RA/game of this season would result in a .589 winning percentage, 95-67 record. That is with Crisp's poorer stats in last 5 seasons, Franchez last 4 seasons, Sandoval's 2011 season, Posey's career stats, Huff's stats in the second half of 2011 (.259/.330/.384/.714), Belt's stats in 2011, Schierholtz career stats, 12th worse SS stats in NL in 2011 (Pittsburgh), and #9 stats for Giants #9 hitters.

That's without Beltran coming back or getting a great leadoff hitter as he suggested the Giants needed even with Posey coming back. That does not include any possible uptick in power from Sandoval, as he recovers fully from his broken hamate bone and shoulder problems, any upside if Huff really is on an odd-even alternating career, Posey doesn't improve any, Belt doesn't improve any, Schierholtz maybe reaching a new career level this season and next, and the Giants not getting much offense from whoever is SS for us in 2012. It also does not account for the possibility that Brown or Panik might show a lot in the AFL and could be ready to come up and contribute by mid-season 2012. And, of course, getting Beltran back would be an even greater boost.

Of course, that also depends on Vogelsong impossibly delivering again another good season. However, he don't need to be that good, as long as we get a big improvement out of our #5 starters. In 2011, #5 starters collectively in 34 starts, 174.2 IP, had a 4.95 ERA. If we can get a #5 starter who can deliver a 4.00 ERA (which both Dirty and Zito was basically able to do in 2010), Vogelsong only has to deliver a 3.72 ERA for the Giants to get the same performance out of our #4 and #5 starters that we got in 2011. Between Vogelsong and all the other starters, they had a collective 3.86 ERA in 2011.

So Vogelsong don't need a repeat, he only needs to do well, though even 3.72 ERA seems like a lot to ask out of him given his career. However, from his July 23rd start, he had 13 starts, 81.2 IP, 64 K's only 28 BB (good 2.29 K/BB ratio) and 3.53 ERA (.307 BABIP). So he appears capable, as even after the league figured him out some and some fatigue set in on him since he hasn't pitched a full season in a long time, his ERA was still pretty good in the second half, showing how he can pitch well even without his best stuff.

The Giants look all set to do well in 2012, assuming no idiot takes one of our top hitters out of the lineup and our starters are healthy for the most part. And there are potential upsides offensively that is not accounted for, which is balanced by the risk of poor performances (like Huff or Crisp or Franchez or Schierholtz). Still, I was pretty conservative with the lineup stats for the older players, so not a lot of downside there for the 4.32 RS and, as noted, a number of upsides.

That 95 wins should win us the NL West title in 2012. None of the other teams should be that close.

Arizona was very lucky in 2012, with a very good record in 1-run games, which as I noted, only Bochy is proven to be consistent in delivering that, and even he don't do it every year, so Arizona will need a big boost from prospects, particularly Bauer in my mind, to compete for the title in 2012. Plus, I don't think Goldschmidt can duplicate his 2011 season, I think he will be not as productive striking out so much, and that will be something else they will need to make up for. I think they will be in the mix but that Gibson will prove to not be capable of doing that well in 1-run games every season and they will fall back to the middle, low to mid-80 wins.

How lucky were they? At 6 games above Pythagorean, AZ would have been at 88 wins had they been at the mean. Most teams balance that by being below the next season. They were 12 games above .500 in 1-run games, which basically explain a lot of their Pythagorean surplus. Again, at .500 in 1-run games, they are at 88 wins. The Giants ended the season with 86 wins. Can't tell me that Posey was not worth at least 4 wins over what Whiteside and Stewart did for us and that would have put the Giants up on top.

Colorado traded away Ubaldo, and I don't see them replacing him easily, and they don't really have a lot of good prospects either, that I see coming up. Everyone loved them entering 2011 but they ended up about where I thought they would, far from the division lead. I just don't see them being being in the hunt once again, though certainly competitive, just not enough to be in it to the end of the season. Enjoy that, Tulo!

LA certainly have a lot of good young players, but they also have a lot of so-so players as well. Like AZ in 2010 and SD in 2009, they had a very nice end to 2011, going 40-24 from July 20th. So I would count LA as the dark horse team to watch out for in 2012 in the NL West.

But I just don't see the upside. Only Kemp is young and producing, everyone else is either old and/or mediocre offensively. Kershaw had a Cy Young level season but can he repeat? Billingsley should rebound from a poor season but Kuroda at 37 probably don't repeat a 3.07 ERA. Rubby De La Rosa had a nice season, but can he do it over a full season? He just walks too much, in my opinion. And Lilly is 36, Garland 32, next season, and I'm not sure Garland is even back. Great looking bullpen, potentially, though, with Kenley Jensen. Both SD and AZ had great ends to seasons with young players coming to the fore and contributing in those seasons, but I just don't see that with the D-gers for 2012. Still, they won a lot of games, so beware.

SD, I just see no there there, not like 2009. They did about as bad as I expected given that they traded away Adrian Gonzalez. Their GM had the nerve to say publicly that they were still fighting to win the title even after that trade. Still, .500 is not out of the question in 2012, I see a lot of the NL West teams being around .500, slightly above maybe, while the Giants would be on top with 90+ wins and win the division title. And they do have some good young pitching.

On top of all that, this assumes the Giants will play .500 in one-run games. Bochy is 2 out of 5 seasons in achieving a top win differential in one-run games for the Giants and he has basically been at 50% during his career, slightly higher given that he struggled in managing his new team in his first season with them. Any uptick there should result in an even better record overall. And should we sign Beltran, 100 wins would not be out of the question. Lots of good reasons to be positive about the 2012 season for the Giants. Can't wait to see Sabean's moves.

Go Giants!

Your 2011 Giants: Postmortem Press Conference

2011-09-30T21:02:00.000-07:00

Giants Management likes to hold their first post-season press conference on the day after the last day of the season. Last season, it was obviously very late in the year, but it isn't even October yet. Oh well, that is how the baseball bounces every year.

Andy Baggarly and Hank Schulman provided their partial transcripts. I took some quickee notes here (I missed the very end) so I'm relying on Tim Kawakami's full transcript that he provided on his blog with help from his writer friends, plus my comments after each Giants management comments to a reporter's question.

Please click title to see full post.

—-BRIAN SABEAN and BRUCE BOCHY, season wrap-up presser/

-Q: Can you talk about the positive things you saw this season?

-SABEAN: To win 86 games is an accomplishment in itself. Because we were challenged all year. So I give all due credit to the manager, the coaching staff and the players themselves for having the right attitude, playing it out until the end.

And overall, I think we’ve set a bar pretty high as to what our expectations are, which is how to conduct ourselves, our professionalism and moreso this culture we’ve created—you come through the clubhouse door, you’re ready to play.

I can’t say enough about our veterans or how our young players responded to what the mantra is in there.

And then the fans have been completely… off the wall as far as their support, including in the last three games. And that’s the atmosphere these guys have created.

-BOCHY: I think your goal every year is to contend, to get in September and play meaningful games that decide whether you make the postseason or not. And we did that.

Sure we’re disappointed we didn’t get there. I think if you look at yesterday, shows you how difficult it can be at times with what happened with some clubs there—Atlanta for example, Boston… and we had to deal with a lot.

But the guys kept going and pushing, looked like we were out of it, then we ran off a nice streak to get back in it. So to go down to the last week and still be alive, I consider that a success.

Now believe me we’re not happy we’re not going to a postseason.

But… I think if you look at individuals like a Vogelsong, Bumgarner getting to .500… I felt great for those guys. They were a big part of why we did contend. We know we have some work to do.

I think you do have to look at the silver lining during the course of a season on what you did do well. I thought the guys kept fighting. Sure we had a tough month there but they still found a way to bounce back and stay in it.

ogc: Typical things management says afterward. Sabean-isms and Bochy-isms. Disappointed Bochy did not mention Pablo Sandoval's accomplishments.

-Q: Brian, last year you kept most of your own free-agents. This year, do you go into it thinking you might need a lot of new faces? Do you assume some may be gone no matter what?

-SABEAN: That’s one of the reasons we’re meeting so early. I don’t think we’ve ever had a, quote, organizational meeting, or at least with the front office and the coaching staff getting together as soon.

Biggest reason, to answer you’re question, is we’ve got 13 arbitration-eligible players. Conventional wisdom would tell you we’re not going to bring all of them back because of how we have to build a budget.

We have eight free-agents and as a result of building a budget, with what you can control, being who you choose to arbitrate with or go further than that contracturally, and who you have under contract, you’ve got to be selective with what you want to do in bringing your own guys back.

And then once you build that model, let’s say, of what you’re going to spend, and specifically with our pitching staff, then you decide what the outside world can bring. But that’s our first challenge—identify who we can go into the future with, which is immediately, for 2012. What that means against the budget. And then identify or target what we need to do from the outside world.

ogc: Lots of obvious stuff that one could have gotten off Cot's Contracts (great resource for contracts and arbitration info). Sabean always does a good job of saying a lot without saying a lot. He likes to, as he puts it, keep things hidden behind his kimono.

-Q: Have you been given general budget parameters?

-SABEAN: I have not other than what Larry spoke to publicly. We know it’s not going down. It’s right around 124-plus as we ended the season.

ogc: Well, if they hope to sign Carlos Beltran, it will have to go up, that much is clear, and as they note later, they will be trying to pursue him. That's a policy that existed under Neukom, not at all under Magowan, so this is possibly a good sign for the Baer era/reign.

Looking over the Chronicle's salaries estimations, the Giants $124M will barely cover the players that they are thinking of keeping. Add in a free agent SS and maybe a better backup catcher, and there goes the whole payroll budget. Beltran would definitely be a huge bump up on the payroll, so he's not looking that likely.

-Q: Are there any particular positions you’re going to be focusing on, either in free agency or the trade market, for example shortstop, lead-off hitter, outfield? And what are the challenges when two of your key players are coming off of injury years?

-SABEAN: I go back to the nature or the theme of the meetings—the first model we have to build is how we keep this pitching staff intact. And how many dollars it’s going to take against the budget.

Secondarily, to the Posey or the Sanchez issue, they’re both coming off significant injuries.

We did talk about our catching situation last night. We know that Buster’s going to catch, but we can’t over-tax him early. So you’re going to have to have a back-up plan, in terms of a back up, let’s say, not knowing how many games that back-up might have to catch.

In Sanchez’s case, that shoulder was finicky before he had the second surgery. Thank goodness as we speak and I don’t know how it’s going to turn out, but at least we have the possibility with Keppinger to protect ourselves there.

But in general, we all know that the lead-off spot is a driving force in your line-up, we don’t have that. And we have to make some decisions on what we think of Crawford specifically as we go into 2012.

And we really don’t have a centerfield alternative within that we necessarily feel comfortable with. That does not mean that that will end up being our specific targets, if it ends up that way in free agency. But that’s pretty much what we already realized as weaknesses.

ogc: Implies that they might look for a better backup catcher, much in the mode of Yorvit Torrealba, who they have almost signed or traded for a few times in the past. This also seems to imply that Keppinger will be kept around at least until the Giants are sure that Freddy Sanchez will be healthy enough to start the season. In fact, this to me, seems to indicate that Jeff Keppinger might be kept just-in-case, all season. Lastly, clearly stated, the Giants will have to go outside and locate a CF alternative, whether free agent or trade.

-Q: What are your thoughts on Cain and Lincecum long term and Jonathan Sanchez for 2012?

-SABEAN: Well, I’ll address the fifth starter first. Jonathan Sanchez, as you know, we can control with him being arbitration-eligible.

We do know his value when he’s healthy and how he’s pitched at times for us. That will be a big decision, and I don’t want to speak for the manager or the pitching coach, that our fifth starter situation might come down to what happens – whoever the candidates are – in spring training.

I personally don’t think Surkamp’s ready. We know that Zito’s had his trials and tribulations especially this year from an injury standpoint. Jonathan is a viable candidate for that spot given his track record.

Cain, as you know, is a free agent at the end of next year. That might be more pressing to address, per se.

But we are going to be open-minded in Timmy’s situation. I think what we will probably do first with these arbitration guys is to address the one-year look first and maybe solve that piece of the puzzle before you go forward in a bigger fashion.

I don’t want to speak for how a negotiation could go from the other side but that might be one of our approaches. I’m not going to say that will be our only approach.

ogc: Despite speculation by the media, Jonathan Sanchez will still be around. I thought that was unfounded, Sanchez has been a very good pitcher for us, and at $5-6M, still a good value to keep around as a 5th starter, and had he not be injured, would have been good trade bait this winter.

Basically, it looks like Dirty will battle with Barry Zito for the #5 spot, and as long as both are healthy, he should get the job and Zito will become our long-reliever and spot starter. Given all the injuries, though, neither is a lock for anything right now. Meanwhile, Eric Surkamp will get AAA in 2012 and prove himself at another level, he hasn't looked good at all in any of his starts after his first one.

What he said about Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum makes sense. We have not heard any word from Lincecum's agent, but Tim noted that he is only interested in shorter deals anyway, so a two-year deal is probably what will happen there. Cain might get something along the lines of what Verlander got, but down a notch or two.

-Q: In recent years, you haven’t given out anything longer than a three-year contrct. Could that change that and how will that affect your thinking with Beltran?

-SABEAN: The first way that we’ll play, again, is with the pitching staff.

I hate to be redundant but until you really can build a budget that can hold a free agent coming in or retaining a free agent of your own we have to decide how many years out we can go or would go with our pitching staff.

We can’t just pull players or figures from out of the air, we have to have a specific budget because our relative budget isn’t going to explode from year to year or be able to go up with one real significant acquisition. We know we’re going to have to spread money through the roster.

ogc: Question have to ask, avoidance answer, saying the obvious. Classic Sabean.

-Q: So are you saying that, if you get your pitching staff in order for the long haul, it would be more likely you’d go after a free agent?

-SABEAN:That would be a topic that we’d have to sell to ownership being that we would want to have to show them first how we can go forward with this pitching staff.

Once we do that either in a specific way by getting it done or more so just in our game plan in how and when we’ll visit these folks, then we can make the recommendation of ‘There’s X player out there we think is going to take this’.

Or in Beltran’s case if he’s still in the mix with us, ‘This is what we recommend on him, this is how it will fold in.’

Our pitching’s going to get expensive, that’s the punch line and we have to take care of that first.

ogc: Amen to that, pitching first. The rest is just their decision-making process, and often that is all Sabean will share, his process for reaching the answer to the question, but not the meat of what the question was hoping to get. His kimono is usually very tight-fitting, not letting loose of much information.

-Q: When you released Rowand, you said you weren’t sure about Zito’s status going into the winter. What is Zito’s status?

-SABEAN: He’s under contract, he’ll be in spring training, it’s that simple.

ogc: Sometimes the media reads too much into statements. No way that Zito could be released, which is what a lot of Giants fans are calling for (and hence the media asks), the better question is what role do they envision for Zito in 2012, assuming Jonathan Sanchez is healthy and producing as he is capable, taking the #5 starter role?

-Q: Are there any young players who didn’t come up this year who might be factors next year?

-SABEAN: Our biggest decision is how ready and how much more we can get Crawford and/or Belt to improve. Crawford’s going to the fall league, Belt’s going to the Dominican evidently.

That’s a topic that will be first and foremost in the next few days, how we evaluate their situation.

ogc: With the Arizona Fall League starting up on October 4th, the Giants will get to see how Brandon Crawford, Gary Brown, and Joseph Panik does against AA-AAA talents, some of whom might already be ready for the majors.

Now Crawford made some progress at the end of the season, hitting a pretty good .256/.333/.419/.752 with 5 walks and only 6 strikeouts in 43 AB in September (and only .278 BABIP, so some upside potentially), so if he can continue to show that progress in the AFL, the Giants can skip looking for a SS free agent and focus mostly on leadoff and CF. After sitting his first week or so back, for the most part, starting September 11, he started 11 of the next 17 games, doing most of his good hitting then.

I also think that how Brown and Panik does in the AFL will affect how the Giants view the CF and SS positions, respectively. If either can do very well in the AFL, that should lean the Giants towards a stop-gap acquisition for those positions, as they have been pretty good about not signing free agents long-term if there is a prospect who look like they will come up sometime early in the contract.

They have kept spots open or in flux for a number of prospects over the past few years, so if either look like they can handle the upper levels of the minors well, I would look for only 1-2 year deals for whoever they sign for either position. Of course, if Crawford continues to look good, Panik would shift to 2B and be Franchez's replacement in 2013, if he does well in the AFL.

Perfect point of the season, having the AFL start now, teams get another extended view of their best players, also playing against the best players, the best simulator of the majors that minor leaguers can get, besides, of course, playing in the majors. That gives them great info on where top prospects stand, and can greatly influence how decisions are made once the off-season starts after the end of the wait period after the World Series.

I think Brandon Belt is in the mix for 2012, so the Giants should be looking to keep LF open, either for Belt or for Aubrey Huff to play there and either Belt or Brett Pill at 1B (or perhaps both platooning). Winter League is for getting him more reps/ABs batting against soft-tossers so that he can learn how to handle the off-speed stuff.

-Q: Bruce, if Zito is there at spring training, is he in the mix for fifth starter?

-BOCHY: When we get to spring training we’re going to stay open-minded about the fifth starter. He’s going to be there just like Jonathan.

I don’t know what’s going to happen this winter but that’s going to be a need for this ballclub. I agree, I think Surkamp needs more seasoning. Z will be in the mix there.

ogc: Nothing new here, what else is Bochy suppose to say to such a question? But question got to be asked anyway, just to confirm, bad to just assume.

-Q: Bruce, who do you see having the biggest impact on next year’s club?

-BOCHY: It’s a tough call. In these meetings the next two days we’ll be talking about Crawford quite a bit and Brandon Belt.

I think you have to talk about those two, and of course, Brett Pill made some noise when he came up here. Here’s a guy who knocked in 100 runs the past couple years.

I think they’re both going to be nice players in the major leagues, it’s just a matter of when. That’s what we’ll discuss. I don’t want to say one over the other right now.

A kid like Crawford, who we pushed but we had a need there, here’s a guy who hadn’t played very much at the higher level and I thought he got better and better and handled himself very well including the 0-for-4s.

That’s what you look for from the younger players, how they’re going to deal with that. I thought Brandon (Belt) had a little tougher time with that because he’s had more success in the minor leagues and the not hitting thing really got to him a little bit more.

It’s just a matter of him getting at-bats right now. This spring we’ll see where we’re at. The fact they got this experience, that’s nice for us to have under their belts.

If we think we’re fine with a Crawford or a Belt or even a Pill, they’ve got some time up here. Very similar to Posey when he came up in September. That’s an invaluable experience.

ogc: It is nice to get Bochy's take on Crawford. I was very impressed with him this season, and after looking at how he changed himself and hit so well in September once he got starts, I would be surprised if he's not the starting SS next season. But you never know, we'll have to see how he handles the AFL, but that September performance has me impressed a lot.

Funny how Crawford's lack of success in the minors allowed him to relax up here while Belt's great success left him getting bothered. I think it is clear that Belt will eventually make it up here, it is just a matter of him adjusting, and that will probably just will take more experience. Matt Williams took quite a few seasons before he figured it out, but I think Belt will be better able to relax in 2012 if we have Posey and Sandoval and hopefully Huff being the main offensive cogs, and Sanchez and Schierholtz good complementary players. That is partly why I think they warned Huff about playing LF, the Giants might want Belt playing 1B and being comfortable there, to enable him to be more comfortable hitting up here as well.

The point about September being helpful to players the next season is often lost on fans, and thus there is often a lot of complaining if the young players aren't actually playing. One, patience is a virtue. Players often learn a lot just sitting back and observing how major league professionals get it done.

Two, the majors is a very different place from the minors, in ways that fans cannot imagine. It is such a leap that the great manager Earl Weaver had a policy of NOT bringing up his top starters and installing them into the rotation, but he preferred to bring them up as a reliever. He felt that they needed the time to adjust to being a major leaguer. He also felt that he could help boost their confidence by finding good spots to put them in. Being on the bench also gave them invaluable time to study the league's hitters and tuck away knowledge that he could use the next season as a starter, though this is not as important today with all the scouting and pre-game opponent discussions.

-Q: Is Hector Sanchez ready to challenge next year for the spot to help out Posey?

-SABEAN : I don’t think so. And that’s a good question because one of the reasons we actually decided to take a look at Sanchez was he was in A-ball playing very well.

We didn’t know what was going to happen with our catching with Stewart or Whiteside, and they did a great job from the standpoint of handling the staff.

We moved (Sanchez) to Triple-A to see if he could hold his own. He did improve as a receiver and swung the bat decent. We brought him up here to kind of compare him against the other two guys, and in my mind, we saw that he was overmatched.

I personally think he has to go back to the Minor Leagues, but I think Bruce can address that, too.

-BOCHY: For a catcher, he just needs some experience back there handling the staff. I think he’s going to be a nice player.

You have a switch-hitter that can hit from both sides, he has a good arm and I like the way he receives the ball. It’s all the little things that he’s got to get better at, and that’s just catching at a higher level.

It’s nice to have a kid like this in our system, so if something does happen, we can have him available.

ogc: Not too surprising, but nice to hear what they think of Hector and where he stands. I still think that catcher is not Buster Posey's long-term position, but even when he moves to another position, I can see him being the backup catcher from that point on, freeing one spot on the bench for the Giants to get another hitter. That would be quite an advantage for our team to be able to do that.

-Q: Given his track record, do you wipe the slate clean with Aubrey Huff, or his status kind of tied to Brandon Belt for next year?

-SABEAN: It’s a touchy subject because we expected more out of Huffy, and he certainly did, too.

But I will say this: Whether you’re the manager, or how you deal with a veteran player that struggles, I don’t believe that you should turn your back on somebody, or all of a sudden somebody that’s got a track record of hitting, saying that he can’t hit or won’t hit.

If we really thought we had a better alternative earlier, we might have made an adjustment to kind of give him less playing time. But we were hoping that he’d come out of it.

And that’s got really nothing to do with his salary. I mean, if you look at his baseball card before last year, this guy’s been a run producer. He got himself in a funk.

A lot of what went on might have been the residual effect of maybe not doing enough in the offseason, and he knows that. But it was a touchy thing to deal with.

Now, having said that, next year’s a different year. He’s going to have to come in ready. He’s going to have to come in and pull more weight. And if he can’t, as we’ve shown before, the manager’s going to be in a position hopefully to have other choices, and we’ll put other people in there if need be.

ogc: Huff was the whipping boy in this year's press conference; Pablo Sandoval was it last year. I like that they call out players in this way (assuming, of course, that they deserved it and assuming they already addressed this with the player first as well). And Huff was deserving, with all this info about his lack of preparation and lack of will to improve, plus his "Que Sera" attitude, he was surprisingly all this while acknowledging last year that he was tired of losing. Apparently not, if not for our pitching, particularly Ryan Vogelsong, the Giants would have had a losing record this season, thanks to Huff taking our $10M and resting on his laurels. With Belt and Pill as alternatives (even as platoon buddies), I think the hook on him will be shorter in 2012, rightfully so, just like why he got a longer rope in 2011, because of how well he did in 2010.

Given his contrition in his final statements of this season, I have to think that he's going to make the effort to do the right things and be as good in 2012 as he was in 2010. However, however good he does, I hope the Giants do not pick up his option for 2013, the contract was thanks for 2010, and at some point we have to move on, and by then Belt and/or Pill should be ready enough to take the position and hold it in 2013, and, who knows, we could move Pablo there if a 3B is ready by then too. Tommy Joseph is another possibility at 1B by then, Max Ramirez as well. And Chris Dominguez has been climbing and he could be ready as well. And LF for him by that age, just don't really want to see that.

-Q: Do you see Gary Brown starting at Richmond or Fresno, and what goes into that decision?

-SABEAN: That will be discussed a little bit in this meeting, even though he’s not on the 40-man roster. I think he could go to either place because of his style of play and moreso the way he approaches the leadoff position.

Double-A is a very tough league to hit in: A, because of the Richmond ballpark, and B, it’s really a pitchers’ league. And that’s not a bad thing for a hitter to have to go through.

ogc: Brown, frankly, did not hit superlatively in Advanced A in 2011. He did very very well, particularly in the last three months, but that just goes to show how well you have to do to make the majors. He will have to really kill in the AFL to not get assigned to Richmond next season, I think. But he did do well enough in those last three months for me not to be surprised if he rakes in the AFL and get the call up to AAA instead.

Also, his success stealing bases was not very good in San Jose, only 73%, and that will be a key component of his value in the majors, being able to steal a lot of bases. He will need to advance one level at a time and figure out how to steal against that level of catchers' talent before moving to the next. He is not as polished a base-stealer as I had hoped he would be, particularly since he's a Boras client. If Boras has all these stats to show GMs in making deals, he should be doing this with all his clients and teaching them how to maximize their talents, I would think.

Brown did, however, tone things down by the end of the season, and during those last three months when he hit well, he was 20 for 25, 80% success rate, which is the benchmark I use as the minimum a stealer has to do where his CS starts costing us more runs than his SB is creating. He was only at 70% (33 for 47) his first three months, and appeared to smartly stop trying to steal in June, study things, then righted his ship the last three months.

But with a gun to my head, I think I would say he ends up in Richmond. All that talk about rushing players seem to suggest that the Giants will be more conservative going forward in advancing players. Still, I think he will do well in the AFL, so the Giants could surprise and promote him to Fresno anyway.

-Q: Follow up, obviously the PCL is a hitters’ league, and it’s closer to home. Will it be a factor that you can keep a closer eye on him?

-SABEAN: Not necessarily. We’ll have him well-scouted. But it is right down the street. We know he’s not going back to San Jose, and we know he could go to Triple-A, so it’s not as if we prescribe to everybody they have to go to the next level before they go to a higher level.

Although I will say that we’re all learning that we’re probably moving players too fast now, even the ones like Brandon Belt that fly through the Minor Leagues.

I think what Bochy can tell you, and what the players can tell you, is that all of a sudden in the National League especially, and in our division, there’s some pretty rugged pitching you face every night.

It’s very difficult to protect a young player that doesn’t have a lot of Minor League experience.

And I’ll use Pill as an example. In Pill’s case, he’s really honed his swing in a lot of ways through those games in the Minor Leagues. And he doesn’t panic when he has an 0-for-4.

Brandon Belt hasn’t gone through that. Bochy can tell you as a manager, his biggest fear is dealing with their failure and what you need to do to ‘protect’ them.

The old-school way was, going back to Brown, you had a hell of a year in A-ball. Well, guess what, you’re going to Double-A, and you’re going to have a hell of a year in Double-A then you’re going to Triple-A and earning your way to the big leagues.

I think we’ve learned a lesson that it’s not as easy to push position players as it is to push pitching now. Because the pitching up here is so good that you better be sure that someone can pull their weight in the lineup.

ogc: This "keep them close" theory has always been suspected in the media, so it is nice to get this myth out of the way. I don't see why a team would put a top prospect in the position to do poorly by pushing him up higher than he should be, just so you can observe him up close. Besides, isn't that what scouts are suppose to do for the team? And if he really wants a good look, it doesn't cost that much to fly the GM over and watch the player over a week.

-Q: How much consideration will Ross get in coming back, and are you convinced that Schierholtz will be full strength?

-SABEAN: I’m probably 100 percent that he’ll be all right in Spring Training.

-BOCHY: Nate’s fine now. If we had to, I could’ve used him yesterday. He’s been running. He’s good to go.

-SABEAN: Cody will be given due consideration because he’s versatile, including him ending up playing center field a little bit and even leading off.

ogc: The more I think about it, the more I think Ross is Gone. There really is no space on our bench for him. And given the call for a lead-off hitter, and the likelihood that Crawford will be our starting SS for 2012, the Giants will be pursuing a starting CF who can leadoff (which leaves us at Coco Crisp and Nate McLouth).

Even if Cody Ross is still around at the end of the free agent period, the Giants should have settled their CF/leadoff situation by then. And Andres Torres is probably the one holding the 4th OF spot, as he should be a heck of a lot cheaper than Ross is, even for a one year contract. Only way he signs with us is if he decides early on that he wants to return on a one year $1M contract and basically take away Torres' spot as 4th OF. Of course, the Giants could still have both on-board in that case and then drop whoever loses at the end of spring training.

Still, I find that unlikely, and the bench should be full with Pill around and probably playing some LF. And the money he would want would take up the rest of our budget, just for a backup player. I just don't see how we can keep him. Thanks Cody for 2010!

-Q: Is it likely that you would not jump into the Beltran negotiations since you have to talk about pitching first? Is it likely he’ll be on the market for a little while before you can start talking to him and seeing where he’s at?

-SABEAN: It could be something as simple as the nature of the kind of player he is, being a switch-hitter, being someone who can hit third in almost anybody’s order, how many American League teams would get involved where he could part-time DH.

And that might mean a longer contract being offered. As you know, Scott’s going to be thorough, and it might take some time. Bochy has talked to him a couple times.

I’ve talked to him briefly. Boch even ran into Scott in LA, and he’s had a good experience here, and he’ll give us due consideration. We’ll see if it’s mutual. I can’t guarantee anything.

ogc: As I noted above, without a boost to payroll, the Giants cannot afford Beltran, less he signs a massively backloaded contract or defer a lot the monies. Even then, I don't see anything team won't offer him more in years and dollars.

-Q: Will you go into the season with the assumption that Nate is going to be one of your starting outfielders?

-BOCHY: I think that’s fair to say. I thought Nate really made a lot of progress this year, especially with the bat, so that’s the plan right now. Really, I think he has to look at this as his job to lose at this point in his career.

He’s driving the ball the way we know he can. Now, it’s a matter of him staying healthy. That was his toughest thing this year — the nagging injuries and of course the stress fracture in the foot.

But he plays a tremendous right field, and in this ballpark, that’s critical for us. He’s going into the season for me right now as the starting right fielder.

ogc: Yeah Nate! Good to hear. But that's the toughest thing for him every year, injuries. Not one year not marred by injury for him. Going to need some good outfielders to back up the position, so Torres would be good for that. Huff maybe too if he is in better shape. But I think Nate Schierholtz is ready for his close-up.

-Q: I’m getting the sense that to score more runs next year, it’s going to be on players returning from injuries, players in the system, guys having better years as opposed to free-agent acquisitions. Is that correct?

-SABEAN: I think it’s going to be a combination of that. The other thing you have to consider, too, is that we’ve got time.

Players don’t get cleared of free agency until — actually now it’s done electronically automatically the day after the World Series, then six days after that, they’re able to be on the market.

My job is to build a model and make some recommendations where we have a plan of action. To answer the question better from an internal standpoint, and this is going to be a big theme, no matter who we have on the field, we have to play better defense.

Our defense wasn’t as good as it should have been. That can help our pitching. We also have to run the bases better. We were station-to-station in that regard, and that’s something that we can control.

That will be a major theme going into next Spring Training. But I hope it’s going to be a combination of all that. We’re going to have to be resourceful to do that.

ogc: Again with the process, but wouldn't expect Sabean to answer any other way. Defense and speed on the bench suggests that Burriss will be around, as he plays good defense (when his head is in the game) and provides a lot of speed. He could play the Ford role of pinch-running and getting things to happen. That would also suggest keeping Torres around over Ross.

-Q: Do you need to sort out your 13 arbitration-eligible guys before you can even think about what you might do in free agency?

-SABEAN: In some ways. And again, we’re not going to tender everybody. We have time to do that. But we need to be thorough.

Before you non-tender somebody, you better either have someone you can add to the roster internally that’s going to take that player’s place or somebody that you go into the market and get — maybe it’s after other players are non-tendered — to replace that type of player.

So there’s a lot of questions that need to be answered about what we have in the pipeline, what’s in the organization. And before you let somebody go, you certainly have to have an adequate replacement or somebody better, hopefully.

ogc: It looks like we can get draft picks for Javier Lopez, Ramon Ramirez, and Cody Ross, but I suspect that none will get offered arbitration and while Lopez and Ramirez will probably get signed in time to get us draft picks, I think Ross wanting a multi-year contract will end up signing something cheap in January, so no pick for him most probably.

-Q: Can you see possibly declining Affeldt’s option but re-signing him?

-SABEAN: The best way to answer that is I expect him to be in uniform with us next year. I don’t know exactly how that’s going to happen, but the option is the option.

If we have to pick it up, we could end up picking it up. If we decide to renegotiate in some form, that could happen, too.

ogc: Great question, interesting answer. Looks like the Giants will pursue Jeremy Affeldt but will be looking to get a lower salary, and if he sticks to his guns, the Giants still might keep him, but would re-evaluate at that point.

-Q: How do you see decisions happening with the new management structure? Will it be similar to the way you’ve previously worked with Larry?

-SABEAN: I don’t think it’s going to be nine people he’s going to go through. I do know there’s not going to be a managing general partner. There will probably be one chairman he’ll report to.

But Larry will be day to day in the office, working with us hand-to-hand. How and when we’re in meetings above him, I can’t answer that.

How Larry has to handle what we turn over to him, I’m sure he’ll apprise you of that once that’s more clear to him.

ogc: Baer has made the point over and over again in his interviews that really, nothing will change. The same process will be there that Neukom had, the only difference is Baer is now in charge, not Bill. We will see if that is true, and whether the decisions and message will be the same.

-Q: Last year you challenged Sandoval at this same news conference last year to lose weight and get in better shape. How do you think he responded to this and what are his winter plans?

-SABEAN: I think his response was great in two ways. We saw what he was like, how he came into spring training and how committed he was.

But maybe even more so, what we forget, when the injury knocked him down, which was a significant injury, he bounced back and if you factor in the games he lost, if he had played those games, he would have had a huge year.

He really understands what he needs to do. He’s going to take some time to go to Venezuela for some family time. But, as I understand the conversation with Dave Groeschner, he’ll come back and participate
in the same program in Arizona.

At this time, I don’t know if he has any plans or will play any winter ball, in and around that conditioning program.

ogc: About what could be expected in a response. Got some good personal info on what he's doing. He's already said that he's going back to the same fitness company to lose the 10 pounds he added this season, and further improve his overall fitness and physique. I assume he still has things he can improve on during this off-season in this way. 2012 should be good for him.

-Q: Will the Giants allow him to play winter ball?

-SABEAN: I would be open-minded if we could find away that he could continue his conditioning. Do I think he needs to play? No.

But do I understand it’s the nature of what these guys grew up with and his popularity and his commitment and what it means to his country? You have to be open-minded.

ogc: About what could be expected as an answer. Gave Sandoval big thumbs-up noting he doesn't need to play, but being flexible with the player's needs and desires.

-Q: Is Justin Christian in the mix for a leadoff job?

-SABEAN: I personally don’t think so. I think he’s a call-up-type of player. He was a guy that we took a look at because of the given situation.

Nobody stepped up. Ross got hurt and never came back. I think he’s an extra man in the big leagues. But I wouldn’t see us going forward with him as our leadoff hitter next year.

ogc: Not too surprising, he didn't do that well in minors nor majors. Wasted question, not sure why this was asked.

-Q: You have a lot of internal options at first base…

-SABEAN: It may. It may. One of the topics that’s going to come up, are we better off in the short term or as we look at Brandon Belt and his development as a hitter.

One of the things we don’t know, the pressure that was put on him, how much pressure he put on himself by having to play left field versus just being a first baseman.

I mean, this guy can really play first base. So on the days he was taking that 0-for-4, much like J.T. Snow, he could have saved the game with a 3-6-3 double play or a diving catch or picking the ball in the dirt.

We do have first-base options, including Pill. We have Huff, who’s been told by Boch get ready for anything, you might have to go to the outfield next year; Pill, may or may not play winter ball, played a little bit of the outfield in Fresno.

We might take a look at that in winter ball or in spring training. But we do seem to have some protection at first base.

ogc: Another wasted question that, as Sabean noted, was mentioned before. Better question would have been to ask how likely it would be that Belt ends up at 1B given the statement of Huff being ready for anything. I have to think that winter league will not answer this question. I think the Giants will play both at 1B and LF in spring training, and Bochy will get a feel for how comfortable Belt is in LF, and if he's still struggling, he would get 1B and Huff LF, putting development of Belt over the current situation. But I would think ideally Belt in LF and Huff at 1B for 2012.

-Q: What are your thoughts on Keppinger heading into future?

-SABEAN: That’s what we have to decide. It might be a luxury item at the price point. I’m not sure. But again, we know that he can hit second.

We know he plays the position that for some reason, if Sanchez isn’t ready, it gives you good protection, or if something happens with Sanchez’s comeback. He also can play third and first base. We like the bat, but I can’t fully answer that until I see what our other options are.

ogc: I didn't realize he can play 3B and 1B. That is basically the Mark DeRosa role. Maybe the Giants try to sign DeRosa for $1M before having to decide whether to offer Keppinger arbitration and pay him maybe $3M, as the Chronicle thinks he would get. Either would be good backup for Franchez at 2B if he's not ready for any reason. Of course, the risk on DeRosa is whether he can start regularly anymore, only the Giants can decide that one for us. Still, Keppinger appears to be highly rated, I can see the Giants signing him and keeping him around before trading him at the end of spring training if they end up not needing him. Should be a team around somewhere desperate for a starting 2B to replace someone injured. I wouldn't expect anyone great back, get someone's failed prospect, just like what we gave up to get him.

-Q: Bruce, do you have anything to say about possibly talking about a contract extension?

-BOCHY: Again, I think we’ll talk when it’s he appropriate time. It’s something that I’ve been thinking about. We wanted to get these coaches done. We’ve got them done. I’m happy for them.

But at this point we have too much work right now. We have [organizational] meetings. I’ll answer that when it’s the right time.

ogc: Wasted question, knew he wouldn't say anything about that, even if there was anything, he won't say anything.

-Q: Bruce, you said Huff is your first baseman going into 2012; that would seem to take guys like Pujols and Prince off the market for you guys. Can you see a scenario where Brandon Belt is your left fielder, Brett Pill and Aubrey Huff maybe share the first base position?

-BOCHY: Yeah, I think Aubrey knows as we’re coming into 2012 it’s going to be a little bit different. This past year was an up-and-down season for him. It was a tough year for him.

But now you go into the next year, that can’t happen again or you have to make changes. He has to come in ready and he’s expected to get back to the form that he was at the year before.

[Or] we’re going to have to make adjustments there. He does know that we could put him in the outfield. As we break spring training, we’ll see where we are with this club.

It’s going to be important that Aubrey gets back to form. We’re here to win. He knows that.We stumbled this year so if we have to make changes, as you saw at the end of August, we did it. And he knows that.

ogc: Given the harsh things said about Huff earlier (but things that needed to be said), this question was not that good. I think it would have been better to focus more on Pill, that could have elicted interesting information about what their thoughts on him is. Any question regarding Belt in LF and Huff at 1B, you just know it would have gotten something like what Bochy said here, he was not going to say much more, and he already said as much earlier about Huff: things cannot be the same as 2011, he must get back to 2010 or face the consequences.

Unlike Aaron Rowand, I think Huff will respond well and do well.

-Q: Is there room for all three — Belt, Pill and Huff?

-BOCHY: It’s hard to answer that right now, really, until we get into spring training and see where the club is. Here at the end, yeah, we had room, but [untll] we break [camp], it’s hard to say.

ogc: Really the question is, is there room for Pill? Because, barring something horrible happening, Belt and Huff will be on the team in 2012 (and bad things have happened before, see Wilson when he had team made then blew it in spring and got send down). So one could have seen that the answer is then we'll have to see after spring training. Wasted question, would have been better, as above, to focus more on their thoughts on Pill.

-Q: Bruce, did you challenge Aubrey as you did with Sandoval last year?

-BOCHY: Honestly, I think he challenged himself more than I had to challenge him. He owned up to what happened this year. And he knows that his struggles helped cause our struggles.

He’s going to get back to what he did the year before, same workout routine, [same] trainer. Whether he dropped the ball last year and didn’t work out enough in the winter, he’s looking at all those things.

He was embarrassed. And he was humbled by what happened. So I think he’s determined to get back to where he was. The thing that’s important with Aubrey right know, he accepted full accountability for what happened to him this year and maybe not working as hard.

ogc: Bochy was pretty conciliatory here, qualifying things for Huff, not saying that he was out of shape, but acknowledging that Huff will be examining that, among other reasons, for his face plant in 2011. Honestly, from above, I thought Giants management challenged Huff like they did Sandoval, but it appears that Huff's late season statements are as they seem, he honestly is embarrassed and will work hard to get back to 2010. Much better than Rowand ever said.

Giants Thoughts

Pretty good press conference. Got some good information as usual, got some clunker questions again, as usual, but overall good job by the media again.

I think Baggarly and Schulman captured the major points well in their accounts, so I would recommend checking out their links, I won't rehash my points above.

Looking Forward: Gary Brown

2011-09-27T18:49:00.000-07:00

Great article on Giants prospect Gary Brown by incomparable Andy Baggerly, as everyone looks to next season and beyond, now that the Giants season will end soon. He's had another great season dishing great information to us Giants fans, we are truly lucky to have him as one of our local scribes. Some good bits I liked:

"This guy is going to be a big-league ballplayer," San Jose manager Andy Skeels said. "There's no doubt about it. He has everything he needs, and I don't think he needs anybody else to tell him that."

"I've still got more to learn, but I think I've shown what I'm capable of doing," he said. "Hopefully I can clean my up some of my mistakes in the Fall League and carry it into next season."

Skeels, the San Jose manager, believes the organization has earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to grooming talent. He notes that players such as Buster Posey, Pablo Sandoval and Madison Bumgarner all thrived in San Francisco from the moment they arrived.

"Once we determine that Gary's ready, he really will be ready," Skeels said. "He's a focused player who understands all the noise is meaningless. And he shares a lot of the same traits with Buster and Bumgarner. This kid competes."

Brown concedes that he's not happy about one thing he heard this season.

"People keep saying I'm a singles hitter," said Brown, who is 6-foot-1, 190 pounds. "Maybe they think that because I'm a leadoff man, but that's not me. I've been a gap hitter my whole life. So that gets me a little riled up."

Please click on the title for whole post

Giants Thoughts

I agree with Skeels, I don't see it as "if" he'll be in the majors, more rather "when". I also like his attitude, same as it was when he was first drafted and then signed: humble, realize that there is a lot he needs to learn to make the majors, got a bit of a chip on his shoulder. I find that players who can find that chip that drives them to maximize their talents are ones to bet on to do something.

Of course, first, he has to have the talent, and he does, his speed, his defensive abilities, and a talent that many misinterpreted, his ability to adjust his batting approach to what the league is giving him. As I showed in my analysis when he was drafted, he is able to adjust how he bats to what the league will give him. The net result, at every level he has played on in college and the pros, is that he ends up with a high OBP that he leverages with his speed.

On top of that, he is pushing himself to be beyond the stereotyped speedster who don't walk much or hit for much power, he not only can take the walks as necessary to keep his OBP high (plus lean into pitches to get a high amount of HBP which also boosts his OBP greatly at whatever level he has been at), but he is looking to provide power as well, which is what you ideally want from your leadoff hitter: ability to get on base at a high rate (whether by hit, walk, or HBP), ability to steal bases to get a rally started (which gets back to the first point, you can't steal to get in scoring position if you don't get on base in the first place), and the ability to hit for extra-base hit power, so that you can drive in any runners that happen to be ahead of you from the bottom of the batting order.

He had a good but not great season in San Jose: .336/.407/.519/.925. For example, last year two 22 YO did better in Cal League, Brandon Belt (1.125 OPS) and Paul Goldschmidt (.990 OPS), while two others, Albert Cartwright (.932 OPS) and Kyle Seager (.921 OPS). Albert was out, I guess with an injury, and actually Seager made the majors with Seattle this season, though he had trouble hitting.

The prior season, James Darnell (.930 OPS) struggled in AA in 2010, then did well in 2011 before struggling in AAA, at age 24. And this is roughly the same talent level, good for around 15th in the league in OPS each of the seasons. And it varies, Jon Gaston had a .966 OPS but has struggled the last two seasons in AA while Posey with a .967 OPS had, well, done pretty well last season. Of course, big difference probably because Posey had few K's and equal BB, while Gaston struck out a lot lot more (164 in 518 AB). Jason Castro (.916 OPS) has done OK as well, making the majors, albeit with the Astros.

So how well did Brown do in bat command? 77 K's in 559 AB equals 86% contact rate, which is the minimum level (85%) for good contact. He only had 46 walks but still a decent 60% BB/K rate because of his low strikeout rate, which he supplemented greatly with 23 HBP (tied for league among top 100 in OPS, third had 16, fourth 15, and a couple tied at 14). His ISO was 183 in a league where the average was 153 (almost 20% better).

Still, he was mostly in the low .800 OPS for the first half of the season (having a really bad June), but then he really turned it on the last three months of the 2011 season, in addition to reducing his strikeout rate (see his month by month stats on First Inning). So that is very encouraging.

If he can do well in the AFL this season, he could jump to AAA to start the 2012 season, which could line him up for promotion to the majors by mid-season, assuming he continues to excel offensively and defensively, while the Giants current CF and leadoff options (currently just Andres Torres and Darren Ford, and perhaps Justin Christian) continue to struggle into 2012.

Speaking of which, I would put it at 50-50 that Cody Ross resigns with the Giants, I can't see any team offering him a multi-year contract after two overall down seasons in 2010 and 2011, on the wrong side of 30, but the Giants probably won't be able to offer him anything more than $2-3M, much like Huff before the 2010 season, because of the need to pay Lincecum big money (probably Sanchez as well; he has Boras as his agent) plus some of their relievers. Some team might be willing to offer at least that much while giving him a starting job, something the Giants will not be offering him, just a chance to compete for a spot.

Speaking of which again, there are not any good options on the free agent market for leadoff hitters. In CF, Nate McLouth and Coco Crisp are the best options there, but both have serious issues, McLouth performance, Crisp injury. At SS, Jose Reyes is the star option for leadoff but there is just not enough team payroll budget to cover him and still keep our young pitchers, a sacrifice I'm not willing to endorse. We need to keep our pitchers long-term. Other options include Rafael Furcal and Jimmy Rollins. Age and potential injury problems are the main issues there, particular for Furcal, who is 35 YO next season (Rollins 33 next season).

Rollins, an Alameda native and Giants fan when he was young appears to be the best option here to get a SS who can bridge us to when Crawford is ready to hit in the majors, either 2013 or 2014. He's been making $8.5M per year, but his stats have not been stellar the past few years, suggesting a repeat of the Miguel Tejada experience (though Rollins is younger and more motivated and excited to be a Giants player), with a DeRosa sized contract, two years at $12M ($6M per season) plus maybe an option. If he's as gung-ho as Burrell was, maybe he'll take a little less to play for his boyhood team (but he hasn't made the money that Burrell has made). But his downward slide is a big warning sign, along with the missed games. And I'm not sure if he would cost a first round pick, I would not give up a first round pick to get him either.

I know Giants fans are against contracts like this but if Crawford hits .183/.263/.246/.509, like he did after his first week in the majors, we'll have another bad year offensively in 2012, even with Buster Posey back. We need to take a chance on some SS, particularly if Crawford does not hit that well in the AFL. Crawford has hit better since getting regular starts the past couple of weeks, starting 10 out of the last 15 games, hitting .216/.293/.324/.617, which is probably just bad enough to not be countered by his great defense. The good news is that he is still controlling the zone well, only 6 K's in 37 AB, with 4 BB's, but still horrible BABIP of .233 (which is really bad, average hitters are at .300 BABIP).

That is what teams have to do when their young prospects do not look ready, they have to sign medium to high priced veterans to try to ensure a minimum level of production at a certain position, whether lineup or fielding. That is the game teams have to play because there is no way to supply all of your lineup and starting rotation from the farm system, that is just how the business of baseball works. And just because another team later on gets a similar or better position player for a low price does not mean that the price of that player was that low when the Giants made their move, sometimes teams overplay their hand and are left accepting a very low offer in the end. For a great example of that, see how the Twins went from selecting from the Yankees and Red Sox's best prospects to accepting so-so prospects from the Mets.

We'll have a better gauge of how good or bad Crawford is right now with his performance in the AFL. If he hits really well, he could probably start 2012 in AAA and be ready by 2013, but I fear that he'll only be average at best and thus end up in AA instead and probably won't be ready until 2014. Even if he figures things out faster than expected, the Giants could still use Rollins as backup plan at 2B, where we are not sure how Freddy Sanchez will handle things, and he could also blow himself out of the season, again, even if he starts out healthy enough. That is his history and, unfortunately, he's probably going to do that again. And Panik and Posey are still far away from being ready for 2B at the major league level (Posey because he is so good as a catcher and still young).

Your 2011 Giants: Do or Die

2011-09-20T12:57:00.000-07:00

Wow, much more exciting rush this last, roughly, week's worth of games (9 in total) left in the season than we could have imagined just a week ago. That's what an 8 game win streak will do for you.

Still, 3.5 games back of wildcard (and another team in-between) and 5.5 games back of division title with only 9 games left in the season means that while the week should be exciting, the sands of time is pretty much gone and it is extremely unlikely that the Giants will even make the playoffs, let alone repeat. Still, as the saying goes, you never know.

Let's take a look at the tough road to the division title since, although further back, the Giants have some control in their hands, due to the three games in Arizona in the middle, and they don't have another team to climb over.

The D-backs only have 8 games left, having played and, more importantly, won, yesterday. Even if the Giants sweep the D-gers, in LA, and the D-backs, say, win 2 of 3 against the Pirate, at home (and they play at home the rest of the season), the Giants will still be 4 games behind when they go to Arizona. Then, even if the Giants sweep the D-backs (and we will face Kennedy in the series), they would still be 1 game behind, with 3 to play, with the Giants facing the D-Rox at home and the D-backs facing the D-gers, again, at home, where the GIants need to win one more game than the D-backs just to tie for the division lead.

So, even if the Giants extend their winning streak to 14 games, they would still be 1 game behind and the D-backs get to play the woeful D-gers at home for the last three. Though, to their credit, LA has been playing well as of late, despite losing Ethier for the season. And the Giants will have to beat both Kershaw and Kennedy in that nine game stretch. It appears oh so unlikely and oh so hard.

And we are playing the D-gers three games in LA now. The first game is the marque game with Tim Lincecum facing Clayton Kershaw. Kershaw's dominance over the Giants this season has been almost total this season, and amazingly, somehow, with only 18 team meetings, this will be his 6th start, so somehow Mattingly has manipulated the rotation to get Kershaw a start in each and every series the Giants have had with LA. He is also going for his 20th win of the season and is 4-0 against the Giants this season in 5 starts, 1.04 ERA. Yikes! And the Giants don't have one of their major weapons against LHP, Cody Ross, as he's out with an injury (though as noted in my comments previously, Ross's poor 2011 season is directly related to his poor hitting against LHP this season).

Still, the Giants are amazingly 25-15 against LHP, and that includes their 0-4 against Kershaw. And it is not like he has dominated them in all the games, though still 4 of 5, but in that other game, he only went 5.0 IP, giving up 4 runs, and that was in LA. Teams normally do not face the ace of the other team so often, and if, say, two were switched over to one of LA's other sad sack starters, the Giants would be two games closer in both races and have a real chance of catching up, instead of an unlikely chance. Taking out his games (which LA won 4 of 5), the Giants are 7-3 against the rest of the D-gers' starters, and 24-11 against all other LHP.

Let's see, LHP lineup is probably Torres, Keppinger, Beltran, Sandoval, Pill/1B, DeRosa/LF, Whiteside, Cabrera.

Game 2 has Ryan Vogelsong vs. Dana Eveland, a former A's prospect, and LA is his 6th team in the last 6 seasons. At only 27, maybe LHP Eveland finally has figured it out, 2.25 ERA in 3 starts, but only 10 K's in 20.0 IP, and his BABIP has been very favorable, .262, whereas previously in his career, it was .347 in extensive opportunities, 95 games. He's facing our version of that journeyman journey in Vogelsong, who in the last month has a 3.21 ERA in 7 starts, not as great as earlier, but still very good. Should be a good battle, but as noted, Giants beat up on most LHP and Eveland has been extremely lucky with BIP so far in his starts and he's not striking out hardly anybody, on par with Kirk Rueter.

Game 3 has Madison Bumgarner vs. Hiroki Kuroda, the D-gers only other very good starter, Mattingly even managed to include him in this series. However, he has only had two starts against the Giants and he was not that great, good in first start of year, 3 runs in 7.0 IP, but in the other start, 9 days ago, 3 runs in 4.2 IP with 8 hits and 1 walk. And he has a 3.79 ERA against the Giants in 7 career starts (see how weird it is that Kershaw has 6 starts this season against the D-gers, Kuroda has pitched 4 full seasons now and will only have his 8th start in two days) so the Giants do hit him relatively well.

Meanwhile, Bumgarner completes our 3 headed dragon atop the rotation, showing way more maturity and gravitas than Dirty ever showed, even though Sanchez is older and has had way better stuff than Bumgarner. Since Madison started his run of starts where he was striking out a lot more batters, on July 24th, he has had a 2.40 ERA in 11 starts, 75.0 IP, 67 hits, 78 K's and only 19 walks. I heard on KNBR a debate on who would you rather have, Lincecum or Kershaw, right now, but really, we have our own Kershaw already in Bumgarner. He should be able to keep LA down while the offense handles Kuroda enough to win.

Signing Young Giants Core

Shankbone noted in the comments that one of the key things the Giants need to do is sign their young pitchers - Lincecum and Cain - to long-term contracts this off-season, and I totally agree. But writing this, I realize that the Giants should also try hard to sign Bumgarner to a long-term deal as well (and maybe Shankbone meant him too, I just know I didn't think of it until now). Unfortunately, they had that disagreement about how much Madison would make this season, and so the Giants just enforced their figure, so Bumgarner's side will probably want extra to make up for that. So I suspect that his agents will play hardball on a long-term deal, much like how Lincecum's agents did that, and thus no long-term contract yet with Tim-meh. Still, the Giants should at least kick the tires on that with Madison.

And I expect them to at least broach that. This is the similar timing when the Giants signed Lowry and then Cain to their long-term deals, and I'm sure they approached Lincecum's agents and was rebuffed. Hopefully they can get him signed.

And while they are at it, may as well try to get Posey and Pablo signed as well. Buster Posey's leadership and presence in the lineup and the field spoke volumes between what happened last season and what happened this season. Normal players don't do that, but potential Hall of Famer's do. Teams need leaders and Posey is a natural-born leader, just give him a Longoria type contract.

And Pablo Sandoval is a great hitter, let him worry more about getting hits than worry about his future with the Giants.

And the price for either will never be this low again, not that we should short-change them, but that if we wait any longer, I think their awesomeness will be that much more apparent and thus will cost more to get. Get them signed long-term as well as the pitchers.

Unless a miracle happens and we somehow make history and get into the playoffs, the Giants fan base will want some sort of feel-good news to get them through the winter. Signing all these players to long-term contracts will leave a sunny glow that will last all the way through to spring training I think.

You Never Know But, You Know, It's Pretty Much Over

And history still might happen. The more I think about it, the more I think Kirk Gibson is a Billy Martin type of manager that can get lowly talent to play above their heads for a season. No way their team should be so high up the standings, but to their credit, they are. They went 18-3 over that incredible stretch where they took their huge lead. And they are now 11 games above .500 in 1-run games, which normally does not happen. And they are 6 games above their Pythagorean W/L.

But when the cracks start to appear, players could start to press, causing a downward cycle. They recently lost 3 in a row, but have now won 2. Will they steady their ship, or would cracks continue? Still, with so few games left, they would have to have an epic type of collapse to enable the Giants to get back into the race substantively. Very unlikely.

So enjoy the rest of the Giants season, but don't get your hopes up too high. I've already mourned for this season and will just enjoy the rest of the games that we have left, and hope for the best. I curse Cousins and what might have been, but that's life sometimes. I won't get my hopes up too much unless we can get to within one game of the playoffs.

Go Giants!