Bonds Overturned Conviction Upheld: Media Got it Right For Once With Bonds

Following is my comment after the news that Bonds' conviction is finally laid to rest, the government will not push this to the Supreme Court for judgement, I was happily surprised by the journalist's take in his article regarding Bonds finally clearing his name for that outrageous conviction for "obstruction" (if that is obstruction, then any politician and/or lawyer who ever spoke to a Grand Jury - hello Bill Clinton - should be convicted for felony as well).

Giants Sign Lucious Fox in 2015 J2 IFA Period

The Giants have signed coveted 18 YO J2 amateur international free agent prospect, SS Lucius Fox, to a reported $6M bonus.   The Dodgers were the rumored favorites to sign him at $4M until the Giants came in at the last moment with their "buy now" bid.  A very happy birthday for him since he just turned 18 today.

He is from the Bahamas but had played for a U.S. high school ("powerhouse" American Heritage High School in Florida) and in a number of tournaments, so he's probably was well known as most of the top prospects who were available in the amateur draft that happened almost a month ago.  However, because he's from the Bahamas, he went back home and declared for the J2 instead of the draft, and the MLB allowed this, which doubled or tripled (per Kiley's estimates, see below; Passan estimated $1-2M) his bonus money he would have gotten, as Kiley had him as a Top 50 pick had he been in the draft.

A fast switch-hitting SS, Fox was ranked 3rd by Fangraph's Kiley McDaniels, 4th by Baseball America's Ben Badler, and 3rd by MLB.com's Mayo and Callis.

Your 2015 Giants: xBABIP

BABIP is Batting Average on Balls In Play, and every hitter has their own level of skill in maintaining that batting average.  People could periodically try to develop an estimator.  Someone associated with Fangraphs gave it a try (here is the article) using BIS batted ball data.  The idea is that tying the likely results given where and how a ball is hit to develop what should have happened given the batted ball would give us a better idea of the underlying BABIP skill of the hitter.  The author provided a link in his article to the data, and below is my thoughts on Giants players and select NL West hitters.

Your 2015 Giants: Enough With the Duvall Talk!

I've been seeing a lot of talk about bringing up Duvall because of his hot hitting.  Here's where sabermetrics comes to the rescue, from the hype.

ogc thoughts

First off, I have to state that I have nothing against Adam Duvall.  I like him as a prospect, particularly his power, but he needs to prove that he can field a position as well as just hit in the majors.  Like any fan, I would love for a guy to come up and do what he's doing in AAA right now, hitting .431/.455/.824/1.278 with 4 homers in 51 AB (13 AB/HR) and 15 RBI in 12 games.  Sign me up!

But, unfortunately, AAA is not the majors and he's only had 51 AB.  SSS to the extreme, it is two weeks worth of games, a drop in the storm.  And remember, the vast majority of pitchers in AAA are not good enough to pitch in the majors, lacking a major out pitch, for the most part.

Nobody is mentioning his 15 K's in those 51 AB.  This is a miserable 70.6% contact rate.  Which would only get worse in the majors, where most of the major league pitchers have out pitches that enable them to stay there and not end up in AAA.

Nobody is mentioning his .545 BABIP, which nobody in MLB history has ever duplicated in a season.  Even the best hitters of our era, like Ichiro, never maintain an BABIP that high over a full season.  He did reach .399 (again, he was one of the best of this era) in 2004, and .389 another season, but his career BABIP is .343 and over his best period of years, .357, which are considered great for a hitter.  And he was one of the fastest players around, which helped him beat out grounders for infield hits.

Duvall is not much of a runner, so he's not going to get many of these.  So what are the odds of him having a .545 BABIP in the majors?  Especially in light of his sad 70.6% contact rate.  Which might be fine if he was walking a lot, but with only 3 walks in 55 PA, he isn't much of a walker either.  Which is another sign that he's not that great a hitter (because good hitters generally walk a lot, while doing other good things with his bat), and therefore unlikely to be able to maintain such a high BABIP.

Even his career numbers for BABIP are not as good as that.  Individual hitters attain their own levels of BABIP.  And remember, these were achieved in the minors, there will be a reduced ability to achieve these numbers in the majors, what sabers call Minor League Equivalencies.  Each has their own methodology, but essentially the idea is that the competition is that much tougher in the majors, and thus, say, an 1.000 OPS guy in AA, might be a .800 OPS in AAA, and a .600 OPS in majors (my own made up numbers to illustrate how the process might work)  I'm not sure what the exact translations are, but I would note that I noticed that guys who hit 1.000 OPS in AA is a sign of a guy who will get chances in the majors:  Sandoval, Bowker, Ishikawa (but against RHP), Schierholtz, Belt are ones who come immediately to mind, so you can see the checkered history of that (and again, they hit over 1.000 OPS in AA!).

Some are able to learn at each level and advance, like Duffy or Panik, but the vast majority of players who hit very well in AA do not necessary make it in the majors.  There is a severe weeding process and many a prospect (Linden, Feliz, Ishikawa, Bowker) come up from AAA after killing the ball there, and not do all that well.  Swing and miss guys like Duvall usually just end up missing even more in the majors.  If he could get his contact rate up into the 85% rate, I would have greater hope for him.

And I wish him all the best, as I do all Giants prospects.  But calling him up now is just an act of desperation, a hope to catch lightening in a bottle.  Just because Duvall has been very very lucky thus far in just a couple weeks of games does not mean that he's going to duplicate that at the major league level, particularly given his lack of overall contact, his high BABIP and low walk rate.

He will need to continue to hit like this into June before I would start to take notice and think that this might be real, it is not impossible to strike out so much and still do well in the majors, but two weeks is not enough for me to believe. If I were totally tied to statistics, the amount of time statistically necessary to verify him would be too much time to take, probably a couple of season's worth, and that's obviously too long a time.  I don't think that you can wait for confirmation in baseball or you will never make any moves at all until the guys career is over.

Stats help point out stuff, but then intuition and guts (i.e. scouting) need to be part of the overall equation.  I don't have the scouting, so two months seems fair to me, he would have earned a chance with such hot hitting over an extended period.  But everybody is different, I recognize that.  Still, two weeks is just too short, statistically just too short.

Your 2015 Giants: Big Six Prospects

I've tried in prior years to discuss prospects, and so again I'm trying.  I honestly don't think more than 6 prospects at any time is ever going to make the majors, and Christy Mathewson was nicknamed the Big Six (after a famous fire engine company in NYC), so I've named it in his honor in my blog posts so far.

But in recent seasons, more than six were interesting, and so I would at least mention ones who looked interesting to me in some way (honorable mentions).  And I've never liked the format of combining by some combination of closeness, or potential impact, so I'm going to break them up in this post.  Also, I'll mention interesting players for both pitching and hitting.

I Read the News Today: Lon Simmons Passed Away

And a strong part of my boyhood passed away with him.  Lon Simmons' death was reported Sunday night by the beat writers and the Giants issued a press release today.

ogc thoughts

I guess it was just meant to be.   My passion for baseball.  My dad was not into sports, he being an immigrant coming into the U.S. around the time he was in high school, though he was open to a lot of things and I would not put on him the image of the immigrant stuck in the old ways.  So I didn't get it from him.

I was introduced to baseball in fourth grade and I loved it from the first second.  Made my dad get me a baseball glove.  Made my dad return that catcher's mitt (here his old-world sensibilities came in:  it had a lot of material and thus a lot of worth).  I think he got me an outfielder's glove:  it didn't have an autograph (not that I would have recognized anyone at that point) and it's not small like the infielder's gloves I've seen since nor large like a firstbaseman's glove, but it wasn't as large as the outfielder's gloves either, it was a tweener.  It was perfect.

I've thought about why I love baseball so much.  As a skinny kid growing up (and on the taller side), basketball was the sport most people thought was for me.  But I had problems shooting the ball up close (unfortunately, pressure gets to me) and was only OK from the outside, so I focused mainly on rebounds.  Plus, the point guard generally hogged the ball most of the time (rightfully so :^).  And my physique and generally awkwardness made me a lineman in football, either rushing or defending.

But baseball, it didn't matter if I was the last player picked when choosing up teams (really, you picked THAT guy over me?), I got to bat and I got a position.  It might have been behind the pitcher, it might have been catcher, it might have been Left-Out, but I had a position.  And while some would bat me last often, they learned that I was better than that (I eventually batted leadoff for my 8-1 intramural softball team in college) and I was usually in the mix higher.

So while I didn't do much of significance in basketball or football that I can remember (getting a QB down behind the line?  I can remember passes I dropped...), I can still remember big plays in baseball.  Hitting a double down the line and driving in the winning run.  Blocking the plate to keep the runner from scoring and holding onto the ball for the out.  Doing a Willie Mays, running straight back for the ball and reaching out and grabbing it blind.  I might not have always been good in baseball (or any sports for that matter) but in baseball, I could be the hero at some point, you never know.

So, of course, I had to follow major league baseball.  Again, it was fate, meant to be.  Like any kid, I went for the team that was winning, and so I went for the Giants that season, 1971.  But after that season, growing up in the East Bay, I heard it a million times:  why aren't you an A's fan?  And I just missed their World Series run that happened then, though as a baseball fan, I enjoyed it.  So it was just meant to be.

And I wouldn't have it any other way, I feel like I earned my fan badge by cheering on my team from 1972 to 1986, and it was branded on, white hot with each near miss, 1978, 1982, 1987, 1989!, 1993!!!, 2002!!!!!!!!! Blacker and Oranger.

If I were an A's fan growing up, I'm not sure I'll be a fan today, I think I would be more jaded than I am, more willing to move on to grown up stuff.  You would think I would be a better fan, given that I loved sabermetrics forever, even before Bill James came around, I was fiddling with statistics anyway, crude stuff and yet strangely apt, I didn't have the Pythagorean formula, but I was using runs scored over runs allowed plus runs scored, so I think I have some affinity to the discipline.

But there was a time after the strike of 1994, when Matt Williams was stolen of a chance to match Babe Ruth's 60 homers, and worse, the World Series was cancelled.  I barely paid attention to the MLB back then.  If it wasn't that I was a lifelong newspaper reader and subscribing, it was Pavlovian, I would read the sports because it was there, as I still had interest in other sports, like basketball, football, golf, it was just, now, baseball was just another sport.

Maybe since it was McGwire and Sosa who brought me back, with their home run chase (I still believe Commisar Selig had the ball juiced to bring back the homers, but that's another story), one would think I would be draw to the A's story.  Maybe, maybe not.  I think I would have tired of the ownership being cheap, though.  I know I had some feelings like that when Lorie owned the club, and definitely when Magowan forced Sabean to buy a boadload of cheap players instead of allowing him to pursue Vlad, and worse, sacrifice a draft pick in order to save money to buy a player.  No owner should ever put a GM into such a position, they should just get out of baseball then.  Still, Magowan for the most part never cheaped out, and once AT&T was open, the pocketbook was open too.  So I think I was just meant to be a Giants fan.

And if you follow the Giants, you had to watch their games or at least listen to them.  Just happened that my Uncle gave me a small Japanese transistor radio, and I killed it carrying it everywhere, listening to games, no matter where I was.  It's like kids today glued to their smartphones or iPads, only I had that radio next to my ear.  And under my pillow, listening when I should have been sleeping (sorry Mom!).

And for me, listening to the Giants don't get any better than listening to Lon Simmons' rich baritone broadcasting the Giants games.  His humor, as he was very self-deprecating.  His grace.  His humility.  His distinctive voice.  He was a great story teller and yet knew when less was more.  He was a great announcer.  His voice was the voice of my childhood.

And that's another thing different between the Giants and the A's.  Simmons was the long-time voice of the Giants, then Hank Greenwald, then Jon Miller (there were a few others mixed in, but they were the main guys I remember over the years).  When I think Giants, I think KSFO and then KNBR, Channel 2 for TV games, there was stability throughout much of that period.  The A's had a new radio station every season, it seemed, nobody was willing to listen to them, and the broadcasters would change often too, and TV wasn't always assured, it seemed.

And, I'm sorry, I love Bill King, but for me, he was the voice of the Warriors (and apparently the Raiders too) and to hear him doing the A's was weird, though not as weird as Simmons doing A's broadcasts (a time we should not speak of...).  And that was after my childhood, I think, I would listen to A's game back then too (I needed my baseball fix), but don't really recall anyone distinctive enough to come to memory.

That continuity would help to sustain my interest, I believe, as my radio station locks were always set to KNBR first, then I get to the rest.  It would have faded had I been an A's fan, as I would not have been able to keep up with the radio and TV changes over the years, and would lack the identification with the team that I got with the Giants.

And Lon Simmons is a huge part of that.  His voice will forever mean that I'm a teenage boy, listening furtively to a Giants broadcast late night, hoping that his team will win (for once).  His voice will forever remind me of green grass and picnics, with the radio blaring in the background, ready to give me the latest score.  It will mean good times and bad, the next "great" player, starting with King Kong Kingman, the past losing season.  It will mean mediocre teams and yet the feeling that it might be different, next year, but generally not.

I was happy when the Giants re-hired him to be a broadcaster emeritus, who would show up sometimes to bring back good memories for fans like me.  I was especially happy because I knew that he was ripped off an some jerk investor who stole his life's savings, and needed the income.  It sounds like he has had a great retirement life in Hawaii (Maui Wowie!) for many years now, and I was happy about that.

Now he is gone:  Rest in Peace, Lon Simmons, now you get to broadcast again with Russ Hodges (who I never got to hear, so that's why it's all Lon for me) and get to tell him all about the three World Championships that the Giants have now.  And show him all your rings.

Your 2015 Giants: Big Reason Giants Don't Want to Move Posey Just Yet ... And Yet, Susac!

I'm not sure exactly how I ran across this, but BP studied catcher framing in this article.

ogc thoughts

There are three interesting data points that were interesting to Giants fans regarding Buster Posey.

Buster Rules!

As one of the best strike framers today.  Despite playing roughly 4 seasons worth of catching so far, because of that devastating, even worse than NFL nasty hit in 2011, he had 71 Called Strikes Above Average, good for a tie with Mauer for 16th place, covering 1988-2014 (or the last 27 seasons, so a fair amount of history; wish authors would have given us total number of catchers captured in their analysis).  And if you look at his catching defensive stats, you will find that resulted in 80.6 runs (or roughly 8-9 wins or roughly 2 wins per season, a huge defensive contribution just from one area).

The stats in his profile don't match what is in the article, but making rough guesses, he is adding around 25 CSAA per season.  So in 3 seasons, he would be 9th (depending what Ross does), which would take him up to his 30 YO season.  Looking at his stats and those of others still playing at the top of the list, he's one of the best in the past three seasons (except for Lucroy, though Lucroy's 2014 was much reduced versus previous seasons), even better than Yadier and Martin.  Good reasons to keep him catching.

But So Does Aging

Looking at the Framing Aging Curve, however, most players his age are headed into a slight decline (and I would bet is a mix of guys who stay as good as they had been and guys either injured - they are catchers after all - or suffered physical declines, which led to the slight decline overall), and then at 30, there is a steep decline in the ability to frame, which suggests that as catchers' physical peak is over and physical decline happens, their ability to frame to gain strikes declines quickly.  Doesn't mean he will, but it would mean that he would be defying history of catchers captured in that study.

And this result, especially given the defensive value this provides, some 3-4 wins added (and this is defensive, so the effect is multiplied due to Pythagorean) for the best players, suggests that aging older catchers need to be replaced with younger starters who are good framers as soon as their framing skills decline in their 30's, though some do keep doing well, like Jose Molina.

But age appears to be a powerful factor in decline in the ability to frame (i.e. steal) strikes:

• Jose's brother Yadier hit his decline at age 31, though I would note that he had a poor year at age 26 then reverted back to goodness, and age 31 was last season for him;  then again, his FRAA was negative for two consecutive seasons, so this could be it for him defensively.  
• McCann hit his decline at age 29, two years going down now.  
• Lucroy, who appears to be among the best in his era, had a poor season last year at age 28 (I would note here how Yadier bounced back so perhaps just a glitch).   
• AJ Pierzynski was washed up defensively by his 30's, and retroactively, BP has his FRAA as horrible his whole career, so they must have decided their research back then showing him to be good defensively was not correct, making the trade look even more stupid and more likely, in my eyes, that Colletti was the one who instigated that trade, not Sabean.  
• Russell Martin didn't have a steep drop but has been gentling getting worse in framing starting at age 29 (which was within career range, but not the last two seasons).  
• Mauer has never been a top catcher at framing strikes, but he's been good enough to save about a one win per season, and his decline appears to have started at age 29, which covers the last two seasons.  

2015 is Posey's 28 YO season.  As I've shown above, all the top catchers above him which has this type of data has shown declines in their ability to frame strikes somewhere in the 29-31 age range.   That suggests that his decline in this ability could be starting in the 2016-2018 time frame.

Susac to the Rescue

The authors also analyzed AAA and AA catchers, and guess who popped up on the lists?  Susac.  He was tied for third with 14 CSAA runs, all the other guys were older than he, and a couple of the guys ahead of him were much older than he was.   And he did that catching 56 games in AAA since he spent significant time in the majors (unfortunately, didn't do as well in majors in gaining strikes, in fact, lost a few, though basically at 0).  Extrapolate that to Posey's catching, and they were roughly the same on a seasonal basis.  Of course, it was only AAA, but he is apparently on his way defensively,

I think that this article makes the case for what I've been suggesting as the way to handle the catching situation over the next few years.  We should have Susac spend 2015 working on all his catching defensive abilities, which is his 25 YO season.  Then for 2016-2020, the Giants should have Posey and Susac (assuming he can hit well enough at MLB level, something he has shown so far, but will need to prove he can sustain; I believe he can) as co-starters at C and another position on the field.  1B probably works best, but if they can handle 3B, all the better, as then we can keep Belt at 1B.

Posey at one point will decline defensively during this period, and Susac would be wasting his prime strike framing years being a backup, better to trade him and pick up a good veteran than do that, if he's not a starter.  By sharing the catching duties, Posey gets less wear and tear, hopefully enabling him to extend his effectiveness in framing pitches as he gets older, while Susac gets quality time at starting catcher (though not full, albeit) and by saving his legs in his youth, perhaps he'll last longer as a good defensive catcher deeper into his 30's.  Look at how Jose Molina was able to keep doing well deep into his 30's being a half-time/part-time catcher.

Your 2015 Giants: Back to Back Jack

Spring is in the air...

And I'm on jury duty.  I've actually written up a lot of stuff for all the player positions, and I'll get to them when I get the chance, but I thought I would jump to my conclusions about the 2015 Giants chances first, and go from there.  I've already covered the starting rotation, and hope to get through the rest of the roster eventually, but honestly, this trial got me depressed and sad - I've been ill since it began, and feel very sick when I start the week and experienced massive headaches when I end the week (FYI, I very rarely experience headaches; also, maybe I'm getting used to it, but no headache last week, and I'm feeling better this week) - so I'll get to them when I'm able.

2015 Hall of Shame Voting: Four Gets In, But Bonds Doesn't Again

First, congrats to the deserving players who got in:

• Pedro Martinez
• Randy Johnson (former Giant!)
• John Smoltz
• Craig Biggio

ogc thoughts

This great article by USA Today's Nightingale captured my thoughts almost exactly (h/t to Raising Cain for bringing to my attention):  hypocrisy in HoF voting must end

I've been writing about this for many years now, much of the Hall of Fame voting I've been ashamed of for years (how could Willie Mays and Hank Aaron not be unanimous, among many others?), too many men who think they are above the game, and in the end, their stupidity will be acknowledged.

Bonds again getting the snub from around two-thirds of the voters just gets my blood boiling.  Use the eyes they were supposedly using to judge baseball players, it don't matter if he cheated, he already had the Hall of Fame talent.

And it could be all for naught, it could be all a big misconception, because there is an alternative theory for the offensive era that has a lot of good evidence backing that stance.  I've linked to it before, but here they are again:

Juiced ball
The Not Steroid Era

If the data in these two links are true, then these high and mighty moral sportswriters could be punishing players for taking drugs that did very little for their performance, making them look bad twice-fold in history's eyes:  first they were blind to what was happening, with nobody even following one clue, I mean Gary Hart was found to be cheating pretty easily, yet nobody followed up on McGwire when he was caught with the stuff in his locker, and the rumors were out there, so not one enterprising sportswriter thought to follow any of the clues out there?  

Then to make up for the fact that none of them were enterprising enough to follow the frequent rumors and was asleep on the job while baseball players were using en masse, they take it out on the players who appears to have used - but as the two links above assert - gained nothing (but acne and possibly shortening their lives) for taking the snake oil.

What would be karma would be if none of the voters who did not vote for Bonds or Clemens end up getting shunned from the Hall of Fame as well.

My thoughts on Hembree, BABIP usage in Minors

This was a comment in response to a statement a while back about Hembree's BABIP "regressing to the mean" since it was higher than .300

ogc thoughts

The problem with using BABIP for minor league pitchers is that not all pitchers figure out the skill of hewing to the BABIP mean of .300 in the majors.  This gets especially iffy then for relievers where it is all SSS and BABIP isn't all that accurate.   So Hembree bad BABIP does not necessarily mean that there will be a regression to the mean.

There is a great interview with Mike Fast of the Astros where he talked about learning this while working inside (he was a well known sabermetrician prior to joining the Astros, for those who didn't know).   He noted that DIPS don't quite apply in the minors, that there are pitchers who don't learn the fine art of keeping BABIP to the mean .300 that most MLB pitchers do learn.  Search for interview with Mike Fast of Astros and that should get you the right link.

Not that Hembree hasn't learned, just that you can't just quote a high BABIP and make that assumption.   Checking out his numbers (reminder, this was written a while back), his career BABIP is roughly .327, so perhaps he hasn't learned.  And subtracting his poor numbers this season, his career BABIP previously was still .316, so perhaps this is an issue with Hembree.

Again, SSS, but the Giants must have a reason for keeping him down, I was amazed this off-season that Law got all the love from the Giants FO while Hembree barely got any mention, even though he had a stellar performance for them in his 2013 call-up, I thought he would be at least penciled in for a spot in 2014 opening day, since Sabean said that they needed to improve their bullpen.   But even Dunning got more mention for the bullpen than Hembree, it seemed to me.

And looking at his numbers, as closer, he should not be that messed up by poor relief with his inherited runners, and yet his ERA in AAA has never been all that good.  Yes, it's an offensive league, but there are plenty of pitchers who are better, he was 76th in the league.   And if DIPS don't work in the minors, ERA is all we got.  

He does have great K/BB ratios, and that will probably get him his chance, but if he can't figure out the BABIP issue, his chances to be a major leaguer, let alone a closer, is pretty iffy.   The good thing for him is that he has pretty good command and control, so he can minimize walks, but hits is what hurts, especially for a reliever, particularly for the closer expected to come in sometimes with runners on.  Giving up hits is fine if he's strictly closing when starting the 9th with no outs and no runners, but not so good when coming in a truer save situation. 

He must be grooving in pitches in order to avoid walks, so it seems to me that he needs to learn that walks aren't all that bad to give up if it means that you are giving the hitter good pitches to hit for base hits.   He has a very high K/9, he can afford to walk a few more if that means less hits given up, better to give up one more walk than one more hit, the vast majority of the time.

That said, I agreed with what was said about him.  He's probably coming up by season's end and getting some 7/8th inning action.  He's probably up for the closer role in 2015, but I wouldn't bet on it given the above.  Plus Casilla appears to be the man right now, though if Machi ever rights his ship, he could be considered given his experience closing in Venezuela.   And Affeldt could easily slip into the closer role, I think.  

In any case, Hembree should be out of options by next season, so he's most probably making the 25-man roster next season barring any implosion on his part in the spring 2015.   But even that's not a given, even if Romo leaves (doubtful he stays unless willing to accept reliever money like Affeldt and not closer money like Wilson), I expect Kontos to take a spot in the bullpen after his great comeback this season.  So Hembree's probably battling Kontos, Machi, Gutierrez for three spots in the bullpen, with Casilla, Affeldt, Lopez, and Petit in the other four bullpen spots (that's assuming Petit doesn't take Vogelsong's spot in the rotation, but then maybe Kickham takes that long reliever spot, right now).  And given Romo's difficulties now and ties to the Giants, he might accept an set-up reliever contract like Affeldt, Casilla, Lopez have gotten and be retained, making it only two spots open among the four.

And push come to shove, if it's three spots, probably its him against Gutierrez for the final spot, though I've noticed the Giants have been pushing their relievers to go beyond 1 inning, so Hembree could take the long relief spot by being able to pitch 2 innings to bridge to the middle relievers, who could also go 2 innings as necessary.