The news is LA Dodgers uber prospect Julio Urias is being brought up (already started at the time I'm writing this, getting hit a bit, not the reason I'm writing this, and could make this post moot).
Showing posts with label D-gers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label D-gers. Show all posts
Friday, May 27, 2016
Tuesday, April 05, 2016
2016: Dodger's SP Depth Takes a Hit
Ran across a few articles regarding LA's starting pitching problems:
- Fangraphs: Dodgers Pitching Depth Begins to Erode The losses of Anderson and Ryu has left the Dodgers with five starters they can rely on to start the season.
- LA Times: Dodgers pick rookie Ross Stripling as No. 5 starter Then LA reduced by Bolsinger injury to pick from two guys who have some name recognition in Frias and Lee, but makes a left turn to Albuquerque and selects Stripling, who wasn't even considered as a possibility for the rotation this spring.
- Chronicle: Can Pitching Strapped Dodgers Threaten the Giants Jenkins basically notes the sudden importance of Kenta Maeda now that Anderson is out with his back issues.
- USA Today: After rash of spring injuries, will Dodgers pay for coupon-clipping winter? Nightingale notes all the injuries, not just pitchers
- Fangraphs: Grading the Off Seasons for All 30 Teams But this article by Cameron disagrees and ranked LA's off season as 6th best in the majors, even better than the Giants at 8th.
Thought I would continue my previous thoughts on the Dodgers. Was trying to get this out before the season started, so apologies if this post isn't the best, but I just want to get it out.
Tuesday, September 15, 2015
Your 2015 Giants: Some Thoughts Looking at the Standings
I was looking at the standings, seeing how difficult it is for the Giants to climb out of the hole that they are in, and I had some thoughts, which are below.
Thursday, September 03, 2015
Your 2015 Giants: Playoff Hopes Swept Away For Most
My thoughts following horrendous sweep by The Evil Ones (tm).
Monday, August 31, 2015
Your 2015 Giants: Beat LA!
The game has already started but I don't think that changes much that I'll say here.
Tuesday, January 07, 2014
LA LA Lagging for 25 Years
LA LA Laughable
ogc thoughts
I was vacationing in the LA area and while wandering all over the Magic Kingdom's two parks, I got to noticing that a lot of Giants fans were representing our colors. There were around 6-8 wearing Giants clothing of some sort. There were also just as many 49er fans as well, including a Kaepernick uni (Go Niners!). There was even a pair of Angels fans (so maybe they should count as one). I also saw a Padres cap.
Two Dodgers fans walking around.
Now, I do realize that Disneyland has more visitors from outside, but still, they sell their season passes too to locals, and they were on school vacation too. Plus, I went on the weekend, so more locals could have shown up too, as people can do things in the weekend. In addition, I am counting the people I saw while doing down Downtown Disney, as well as roaming around Koreatown, looking for my daughter's K-pop music store, as well as driving down the lovely I-5 freeway (though mostly just moseying along, a few feet at a time).
Two Dodgers fans.
And that got me to thinking about a post I was going to post up, which I'm now incorporating into this post, which was to point out that the Dodgers have now gone 25 years without a World Series championship, which is their longest stretch without one since their franchise start long one that stretched from the 1800's to their first one in 1955 (71 years). And sadly for their fans there, the team left Brooklyn within two years of accomplishing their first championship.
Perhaps this relatively long stretch of nothing explains the lack of fervor in their fan base publicly. Sure, they had a nice season in 2013, but after so many years of not winning, the fans will believe it when they see it. I can certainly understand that feeling, while I have always worn Giants clothing most of my adult life, when possible, I know that I did not see as much orange and black on the public before that glorious 2010 Championship. The general fan base had a malaise that would need the shock of a championship to make it alive again.
They also had a stretch of 16 years between their 1965 and 1981 titles, meaning that their glory years were really last in the 1960's, with a brief blossoming in the 1980's. That's two in the last 48 years.
Of course, the Giants had their 56 year stretch, getting into three World Series but losing each time, which was preceded by a 21 year stretch, where they also got into the World Series three times but lost each time. And for myself, I had been a fan for nearly 40 years before our first World Series Championship. But with the counter reset by our glorious World Series Championships in 2010 and 2012, we are only one season since our last championship.
Whereas the Dodgers have now gone through 25 seasons without tasting that sweet sweet championship champagne!
While the Dodgers have a lot of money buying up a lot of talent, I think the Giants are in good position to stay relevant and playoff worthy for the rest of the decade, no matter what LA does. The Giants have spent money to keep their best players around. They have a number of young players who are blossoming and relatively cheap. They have a huge mass of pitching talent climbing through the farm system, now filling up Richmond's and San Jose's rotation, plus some good ones in Fresno and Augusta as well, mostly starters but also some very interesting and dominating relievers as well. They should be able to win the 92 games necessary to get into the playoffs each season and win at least 90 games, which would give them a fighting chance, year in, year out, to make the playoffs, barring catastrophic injury to a core player.
The Dodgers lineup is creaking with their age, only Puig is significantly under 30, Kemp is the only other one under 30 (and will soon enough be 30 YO season in 2015). Their pitching rotation however, is very young, and if they are able to add Tanaka or Price or someone equivalent to their rotation, they could be even better than the Giants.
But as we saw in 2013, if your players don't have their health, the team will suffer, and the Dodgers have a lot of health question marks in their lineup (for pitching, it is a given), as well as hitters getting into that nexus of their early 30's when things start to break down in the human body. So they are just as likely, if not more likely, to suffer from player injuries as the Giants would, which I see as one area of concern from the general fan base.
And the Giants formula from 2009 to 2012 was strong starting pitching and we should have it again in 2014. Bumgarner is just getting better every year. Cain after his post-Perfecto lull in PQS DOM starts, ended the season with a strong 7 5-PQS starts in 10 starts, something he could not accomplish since the Perfecto. Hudson is a pitching machine, generating mid-3 ERA seasons whether AL or NL, pre-TJS or post, and there is no reason his ankle injury should affect him in the future, he got a clean bill of health from the Giants doctors and there has been no reports of set backs in his recovery.
That's a great 1-2-3 rotation. Then Lincecum probably will be a good 4th starter. Lincecum ended the season with a nice run, which would have been even better if not so many of his inherited runners scoring while in the care of the bullpen, 7 out of 8, when on average 2-3 scores. Reducing that to 4 of 8 would have reduced his ERA to 3.48 for his second half starts (excusing his poor start after his no-no, given what we saw what happened to Cain after his no-no). That's the formula we had in 2009-2012, surviving even a poor 5th starter, like we did in some seasons, to be a Top 5 team in RS allowed, with two starters around 3 ERA and two starters around mid-3 ERA, and if Vogelsong can just be average, that would be a big advantage over other teams because they usually have garbage in their 5th spot (if not their 4th spot). The Giants would not have spent all that money re-signing Lincecum unless they thought he was close to returning to relevance as a starter.
Combine that with strong offense - lineup calculator with projections estimate the offense to be around 4.5 to 4.6 RS per game - and the Giants easily wins 92 games, maybe approach 95 games. LA will be strong, but so will the Giants. Bring it on!
Go Giants!
ogc thoughts
I was vacationing in the LA area and while wandering all over the Magic Kingdom's two parks, I got to noticing that a lot of Giants fans were representing our colors. There were around 6-8 wearing Giants clothing of some sort. There were also just as many 49er fans as well, including a Kaepernick uni (Go Niners!). There was even a pair of Angels fans (so maybe they should count as one). I also saw a Padres cap.
Two Dodgers fans walking around.
Now, I do realize that Disneyland has more visitors from outside, but still, they sell their season passes too to locals, and they were on school vacation too. Plus, I went on the weekend, so more locals could have shown up too, as people can do things in the weekend. In addition, I am counting the people I saw while doing down Downtown Disney, as well as roaming around Koreatown, looking for my daughter's K-pop music store, as well as driving down the lovely I-5 freeway (though mostly just moseying along, a few feet at a time).
Two Dodgers fans.
And that got me to thinking about a post I was going to post up, which I'm now incorporating into this post, which was to point out that the Dodgers have now gone 25 years without a World Series championship, which is their longest stretch without one since their franchise start long one that stretched from the 1800's to their first one in 1955 (71 years). And sadly for their fans there, the team left Brooklyn within two years of accomplishing their first championship.
Perhaps this relatively long stretch of nothing explains the lack of fervor in their fan base publicly. Sure, they had a nice season in 2013, but after so many years of not winning, the fans will believe it when they see it. I can certainly understand that feeling, while I have always worn Giants clothing most of my adult life, when possible, I know that I did not see as much orange and black on the public before that glorious 2010 Championship. The general fan base had a malaise that would need the shock of a championship to make it alive again.
They also had a stretch of 16 years between their 1965 and 1981 titles, meaning that their glory years were really last in the 1960's, with a brief blossoming in the 1980's. That's two in the last 48 years.
Of course, the Giants had their 56 year stretch, getting into three World Series but losing each time, which was preceded by a 21 year stretch, where they also got into the World Series three times but lost each time. And for myself, I had been a fan for nearly 40 years before our first World Series Championship. But with the counter reset by our glorious World Series Championships in 2010 and 2012, we are only one season since our last championship.
Whereas the Dodgers have now gone through 25 seasons without tasting that sweet sweet championship champagne!
While the Dodgers have a lot of money buying up a lot of talent, I think the Giants are in good position to stay relevant and playoff worthy for the rest of the decade, no matter what LA does. The Giants have spent money to keep their best players around. They have a number of young players who are blossoming and relatively cheap. They have a huge mass of pitching talent climbing through the farm system, now filling up Richmond's and San Jose's rotation, plus some good ones in Fresno and Augusta as well, mostly starters but also some very interesting and dominating relievers as well. They should be able to win the 92 games necessary to get into the playoffs each season and win at least 90 games, which would give them a fighting chance, year in, year out, to make the playoffs, barring catastrophic injury to a core player.
The Dodgers lineup is creaking with their age, only Puig is significantly under 30, Kemp is the only other one under 30 (and will soon enough be 30 YO season in 2015). Their pitching rotation however, is very young, and if they are able to add Tanaka or Price or someone equivalent to their rotation, they could be even better than the Giants.
But as we saw in 2013, if your players don't have their health, the team will suffer, and the Dodgers have a lot of health question marks in their lineup (for pitching, it is a given), as well as hitters getting into that nexus of their early 30's when things start to break down in the human body. So they are just as likely, if not more likely, to suffer from player injuries as the Giants would, which I see as one area of concern from the general fan base.
And the Giants formula from 2009 to 2012 was strong starting pitching and we should have it again in 2014. Bumgarner is just getting better every year. Cain after his post-Perfecto lull in PQS DOM starts, ended the season with a strong 7 5-PQS starts in 10 starts, something he could not accomplish since the Perfecto. Hudson is a pitching machine, generating mid-3 ERA seasons whether AL or NL, pre-TJS or post, and there is no reason his ankle injury should affect him in the future, he got a clean bill of health from the Giants doctors and there has been no reports of set backs in his recovery.
That's a great 1-2-3 rotation. Then Lincecum probably will be a good 4th starter. Lincecum ended the season with a nice run, which would have been even better if not so many of his inherited runners scoring while in the care of the bullpen, 7 out of 8, when on average 2-3 scores. Reducing that to 4 of 8 would have reduced his ERA to 3.48 for his second half starts (excusing his poor start after his no-no, given what we saw what happened to Cain after his no-no). That's the formula we had in 2009-2012, surviving even a poor 5th starter, like we did in some seasons, to be a Top 5 team in RS allowed, with two starters around 3 ERA and two starters around mid-3 ERA, and if Vogelsong can just be average, that would be a big advantage over other teams because they usually have garbage in their 5th spot (if not their 4th spot). The Giants would not have spent all that money re-signing Lincecum unless they thought he was close to returning to relevance as a starter.
Combine that with strong offense - lineup calculator with projections estimate the offense to be around 4.5 to 4.6 RS per game - and the Giants easily wins 92 games, maybe approach 95 games. LA will be strong, but so will the Giants. Bring it on!
Go Giants!
Thursday, September 06, 2012
Your 2012 Giants Are 77-60: Beat LA!
The Giants have been up and down lately, but so has the D-gers, unable to lift off the ground, as they had expected, when they made the blockbuster trade with Boston, k. The Giants are 6-5 since the Boston-LA blockbuster trade, LA has been 5-7. The key thing, however, is that the Giants are 13-7 since the Melk-down, while LA went 9-12, as they were tied when the Melk hit the fan and now the Giants are 4.5 games ahead of the D-gers.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Your 2012 Giants are 71-57: Houston and Chicago Got Problems
I'm not going to go in-depth on the next two series because both teams have got a lot of problems winning games (Houston is 6-24 in their last 30 games - and 4-16 at home - Chicago 9-21 in last 30 games- though 11-9 at home in their last 20 games there). Basically, the Giants ideally need to go 4-2 in the six games, because they will be headed into tough series against NL West teams for the rest of the season.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Wicked Witch of the West: The Empire Returns
Wow, Boston and LA pulled off the huge trade. as reported by MLB Trade Rumors: LA receives Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett, Carl Crawford, and Nick Punto for James Loney and four prospects, Rubby de la Rosa, Alan Webster, Ivan De Jesus, and Jerry Sands. Apparently Toronto screwed with the deal by claiming Rubby, so he was pulled off waivers and will be traded as a player to be named later in the off-season to complete the trade. MLB Trade Rumors also provided their take on the prospects.
They also followed up with a post on future obligations. $189M in 2013 and that does not include arbitration eligible players or pre-arb players (in particular, Clayton Kershaw). Wow, all the talk about Yankees West appears to be coming true.
They also followed up with a post on future obligations. $189M in 2013 and that does not include arbitration eligible players or pre-arb players (in particular, Clayton Kershaw). Wow, all the talk about Yankees West appears to be coming true.
Monday, August 20, 2012
Your 2012 Giants are 66-55: Downward Dog Position
I haven't done this in a long while, but Richard from Canada mentioned his wish for my daily notes at another site. I assume he meant the post I used to do covering each series, which I'm doing here. I can't promise to do this consistently for the rest of the season but for the D-gers series, I can man up for it.
Thursday, July 05, 2012
2012 Giants: June PQS
This post has the Giants Pure Quality Start scores for the month of June 2012, PQS as defined in Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster annual book and they published the details here (unfortunately, they removed the article; this link gets you at least to the PQS definition, read down to middle for details). I wrote on this first in 2006 and have compiled their stats on a regular basis, so I'm continuing it this season for continuity and historical comparison (there is the "PQS" label that you can click to see the old posts on this). Regular readers can skip to the next section.
This is the Quality Start with a sabermetric DIPS twist, and it gets really easy to calculate once you get used to it. I don't think it's the end all or be all, but then nothing really is that. It is, as I like to say, another piece of the puzzle. A dominating start is scored a 4 or 5 and a disaster start is scored a 0 or 1. DOM% is the percentage of starts that are dominating, DIS% is the percentage of starts that are disasters (any start under 5.0 IP is automatically a 0, or disaster).
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).
Tuesday, July 03, 2012
Your 2012 Giants: BP's Adjusted Standings Show Giants Well
I just ran into Baseball Prospectus' Adjusted Standings report, where they analyzes all team's win/loss record, and adjusts them based on a a variety of factors, such as Pythagorean (they use the Pythangpat's formula however), the Pythagorean using adjusted runs scored (though I wonder why they don't do one with adjusted runs allowed as well), and lastly one adjusted for quality of competition as well as the other adjustment.
Interesting enough, the Giants should be leading, by about 1-2 games, but over the D-backs, not the D-gers. The D-gers have been playing above their heads and should be close to, if not under, .500, which is where I opined they would be this season. Of course, it helps that Kemp is out, but they are also being propped up by pitchers doing better than previously.
Of course, the Giants should be above their Pythagorean: they are currently 4 games over .500 in 1-run games, which most teams regress to zero, but as my research showed, Bochy is the rare manager who can manage a winning record in 1-run games. So that regression that BP expects with the first order win percentage probably will not happen.
Still, even with all that, the Giants are about where they are expected to be, statistically. And the D-backs are the real team to be worried about, as they have been underperforming. I don't know how they are doing it but for the second season in a row, their pitching staff is in shambles the first couple of months, then somehow they regroup, find some new pitchers and start rising up the standings quickly.
They also have playoff odds. The Giants are currently at 83.5%, best in the NL.
Interesting enough, the Giants should be leading, by about 1-2 games, but over the D-backs, not the D-gers. The D-gers have been playing above their heads and should be close to, if not under, .500, which is where I opined they would be this season. Of course, it helps that Kemp is out, but they are also being propped up by pitchers doing better than previously.
Of course, the Giants should be above their Pythagorean: they are currently 4 games over .500 in 1-run games, which most teams regress to zero, but as my research showed, Bochy is the rare manager who can manage a winning record in 1-run games. So that regression that BP expects with the first order win percentage probably will not happen.
Still, even with all that, the Giants are about where they are expected to be, statistically. And the D-backs are the real team to be worried about, as they have been underperforming. I don't know how they are doing it but for the second season in a row, their pitching staff is in shambles the first couple of months, then somehow they regroup, find some new pitchers and start rising up the standings quickly.
They also have playoff odds. The Giants are currently at 83.5%, best in the NL.
Friday, April 27, 2012
Your 2012 Giants: Season So Far (10-9)
I'm noticing a mostly downcast dauber on the part of Giants fans and media. Of course, that is probably strongly influenced by being only 2 outs away from being swept by the Reds. Still, there are good things as well as bad things.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
D-ger Deal Viability Questioned But Maybe New Owners Have Grander Plans
Very interesting article on ESPN regarding the D-ger sale deal. Economists are also shocked at the $2.15B price tag (the actual details seems to vary with the wind, but the latest I understand is it is $2B for the team, and $150M for the parking lot, where they own half and McCourt owns half, but the team would control everything and receive all monies generated, but any development would then benefit both).
Andrew Zimbalist, an economist who writes a lot of articles and books on team valuation, noted "At the end of the day, you have to question the deal." Mark Rosentraub, a University of Michigan sports management professor said "It's the craziest deal ever; it makes no sense. That's why you saw so many groups drop out. I don't get it. The numbers just don't work. It doesn't make business sense. ... [it] is over $800 million more than what pencils out for a profitable investment for a baseball team. If making money doesn't count, this is a great move. But now we're into buying art and I can't value art. I can just run the model numbers and it doesn't make sense." That extra money is basically McCourt's profit off the deal, from what I can tell from the articles I've read, he is suppose to come out of this with $7-800M after paying off debts and his ex-wife.
The article noted, "The problem economists have with the sale of the team being tied to the television contract is teams use their television deals as revenue to improve the team, not to offset the costs of overpaying for a franchise."
One of the economists also noted McCourt's continued involvement as a stunner, but as I noted above, subsequent info from the buying group stated clearly that McCourt's involvement is nil except as an equity partner. Though I agree with the economists, for the money they paid, they should have been able to buy out everything and push him out completely, when you are overpaying by that much. They also make the interesting point that McCourt has been in court frequently in the past suing his partners for one thing or another, which would be a headache that the new owners would have to deal with.
Lots of good info on TV deals reiterated here, so I thought I would bring that up. Fox had offered McCourt a 20-year, $3B deal, which was basically what the Angels got last December from Fox, worth "at least $3B" and apparently the Rangers got a similar deal at similar terms as well. It also noted that a TV deal is not a done deal, that they could start their own regional sports network like the Yankees have with the YES Network (and Red Sox with their NES Network). Looking this up on Wikipedia, the Giants own 30% of CSN Bay Area, with 45% owned by NBCUniversal (formerly Comcast) and 25% owned by Fox.
Giants Thoughts
Nothing like good D-ger turmoil to warm a Giants fan's heart. Baer had his "play nice with your neighbors" message about it being good to have a competitive D-ger team, but I am more than happy to see the D-gers fall on their faces for an eternity.
I didn't look too deeply at the numbers, but I thought the deal looked kind of squirrelly financially, but I couldn't put my finger on it. But the comment above confirmed the thought I had, that the potential TV deal appears to pay for the valuation, but then where is the money for the team?
But either economist noted that most teams are not bought for their financial flow into their owner's coffers. They are usually bought for their long-term appreciation, which is when they would get their money back. Still, overpaying by double is a sure way to reduce your ROI by a lot.
Here is how I think the value works out for the owners. It has to do with the land involved and the new owners wanted to be aggressive and win the bidding outright, without much thinking on the part of McCourt or the MLB before they agree on the deal. So that's why I think Magic's group went with their "Buy It NOW" bid, a la eBay (this article on Yahoo supports this notion, noting the new owner wanted to "win by two touchdowns."; this article has another figure on a TV deal, $4M over 20 years).
As Mark Purdy notes in his column, the new owner is the CEO of a huge $125B financial firm called Guggenheim Partners, and the official name of the new D-gers ownership group is Guggenheim Baseball Management LLC, and not named after Walters or anything else, implying that the assets of this firm could be intertwined with the D-gers in some way. What is the mission statement for the new owner? "all I want to do is get to the World Series." (Sidenote: obviously, he's never spoken with Barry Bonds, who, after losing the 2002 World Series, his wife at that time told him, "well, you got what you wished for, you wanted to get to the World Series, and you did...").
In the Purdy article, he noted that Andy Dolich, a long-time sports management executive in the Bay Area (stints with A's, Warriors, and 49ers), who was an advisor to one of the bidders, had his financial people run a financial model and came up with a bid of $1.2-1.3B as the one that made the most economic sense, which is in line with what one of the professors was quoted (he noted it was $800M over). So he was blown out by the actual winning bid.
One of the theories he came up with that could explain the grander plans is one where Dodger Stadium would be razed and a new one built near the Staples Center, in the L.A. Live District, which is owned and run by Anschutz Entertainment Group. AEG would partner with Guggenheim to build the new baseball park, which would benefit the L.A. Live District since there are 81 baseball dates each year (and 3-10 more if playoffs), while Dodger Stadium would be razed to build a new football stadium complex at Chavez Ravine.
And that is basically what I thought is how they plan on making the big money, doing something with the Chavez Ravine property, because it is a huge tract of mostly undeveloped land in land-locked LA, though this baseball-football plan is way beyond what I would have thought. Kind of like what was envisioned for the 49ers, where there would be a hotel and commercial complex built around the stadium, where synergies would feed off each other for additional revenues beyond just the team itself.
Purdy also noted that Jed York once worked for Guggenheim, so Walter could have perhaps contacted him to discuss the NFL. It makes sense, as Walter, per this theory, would be very interested in the 49er's quest for their stadium. But this theory is a bit of a stretch, Walter won't know every employee who has ever worked in his $125B company, and it is not like people from rich families will necessarily seek either other out. Still, you never know, maybe York sought out Walter's advice at some point, for some reason, when he was pursuing his 49er's stadium deal.
Meanwhile, Walter/Guggenheim has so much money that they do not need to pocket the $150-200M per year TV deal in order to make their investment work for them, cash flow is not the only way to benefit from an investment, which is what the economists above statically assumed. This reminded me of the situation when the Texas Rangers were sold to their prior owner, he bought up all sorts of land around the stadium, with plans to build, build, build and profit off the synergies thereof.
It didn't work for him, but this football-baseball stadium theory makes a lot of sense. As nice as I've heard Dodger Stadium to be, it is now around 50 years old, and even Yankee Stadium, the House that Ruth built, was razed (though Fenway and Wrigley still are kicking). Stadium technology is way beyond now, and you know L.A. love their glitz and glam, and as nice as Dodger Stadium might be, it is neither.
And as the Giants park showed, and I'm sure other parks too, there can be a lot of commercial synergies between the park and the surrounding area, which will show up in the financial statements of the owners in some way, just not necessarily from their Dodger's investment (which was the Texas owner, Hicks, idea). The owner does not care how the money gets into their pockets, whether through the Dodgers or their other investments, as long as it gets into their pockets. And given the high probability that the new L.A. NFL franchise should be a huge money maker for the new owner (remember, Walter has many more billions that he can tap into, $2B is pocket change for him), if they can come in with a grand plan for a stadium/commercial complex, the NFL will probably come hat in hand with the coveted L.A. franchise.
Which means that however the Dodgers go with their TV situation - a deal with a cable outlet or their own network (better bet given the big money involved) - that money stream will probably go straight to the team to be used for payroll and everything, not retained by the owners to get a return on their $2B investment. And thus they will be a big bidder for free agent riches next offseason, much like the Angels were this off-season, when they signed Albert Pujols and C.J. Wilson.
So hopefully Baggerly's report that the negotiations between the Giants and Cain "have picked up talks again" is accurate and shows that both sides want to get things done. As I noted in my post yesterday, it made sense that there would be a stall in negotiations to see what happens with the D-ger sale, to get a better feel - for both sides - of how much of a threat the new D-ger owner might be in the free agent market next off-season. I think this boosts Cain's leverage a lot, and think something in the $110-120M range for 5 years is now possible, though anywhere from $100-120M is possible I think, the only clear thing now is that he probably will reach 9 figures.
Baggerly reported today that Baer participated in a chat via Twitter with fans and said that it is a mischaracterization to say that there is a hard deadline or that the Giants are lowballing Cain. Given that talks have started up again, I rather doubt that the Giants were lowballing Cain (else, at this point, why bother continue talking with the Giants?), but rather, Cain's agents have been asking for the moon on the assumption that the new D-gers owners would be spending big bucks next season. Particularly given the rumor that the Giants were willing to meet them halfway between their offer and Cain's agent's asking but was turned down.
While I think that the D-gers will be spending, that is not a certainty given what is known right now about the situation, it does look like the new owners overpaid and that they will be soaking in the TV deal to make their return on investment, per what the economists said. And that situation will not be clarified for a long while, perhaps not even by next off-season, so if Cain's agents were to wait for free agency, they could be taking the chance that the D-gers might pass on free agents next off-season and not get into free agency in a big way until they get all their plans lined up.
Cain does not appear to be a dice roller, so I expect the negotiations to move a lot faster now that the D-ger situation is cleared up for his agents, and a deal will get signed at some point. I would guess given Baer's statement, most likely no deal will get done before the start of the season, but that there will be more media announcements like this that the two sides are continuing to talk and moving closer to agreement. You have to talk tough as a negotiator and nicely once the deal is done, for maximum image as a negotiator in the public eye.
I still think that $20M per season is fair market value for Cain. I have seen comments that C.J. Wilson's deal sets Cain's price higher, but in researching it now, I see that most of those people were mixing contract numbers. They saw him signing for 5 years and $78M and assumed the Marlin's $100M deal was for 5 years, but all the instances I found stated that was for 6 years, so really, the Angel's offer was actually very similar to the Marlins, only one year less. So he only got roughly $16M per season, not the $20M that I saw some quote.
But the D-gers are now a wild card bidder that will provide some upward loft on Cain's salary. While no sure thing, it is enough of a threat that the Giants will move higher than they had intended, but enough of a question mark that Cain's side must drop their asking price, because not many teams can afford $20M per season and most of the big spenders have spent their money already. Cain's agents don't want to get into a situation like Madson this off-season or Ivan Rodriguez in 2003, where a very good player has to take a one year deal to wait for a big money team to offer big bucks to him.
That's huge additional risk to take when your client is a pitcher, as Ryan Madson's agent found out, pitching for a contract year to year. His agents can't advise Cain to leave a 9 digit deal on the table, that would be fiduciary incompetence on the part of his agents, especially in light of the slow growth in the U.S. economy that threatens to implode if the EU or China hits a speed bump in their economies (or debt deals), as well as the possibility that the number of MLB bidders might be limited (the Mets are surely out).
But agents and players have done stupid things before. There have been players before who turn down big deals (like the Red Sox's Nomar Garciaparra) or asked for contracts way beyond the market interest (like the Giants's Rich Aurilia) who lived to regret doing that. And I don't want the Giants to accede to stupid outrageous salary demands, should Cain's agents be doing that as a big show for their big new client.
For as sure as it is now that Giants fans complains about the Zito signing, if Cain signs an outrageous deal and, say, his elbow implodes and he's no longer productive (see Noah Lowry for how fast things can change), you will find the same fans who derided the Giants for not giving Cain all the money in the world will be the same ones saying what idiots the Giants were to sign Cain to such a huge contract.
Andrew Zimbalist, an economist who writes a lot of articles and books on team valuation, noted "At the end of the day, you have to question the deal." Mark Rosentraub, a University of Michigan sports management professor said "It's the craziest deal ever; it makes no sense. That's why you saw so many groups drop out. I don't get it. The numbers just don't work. It doesn't make business sense. ... [it] is over $800 million more than what pencils out for a profitable investment for a baseball team. If making money doesn't count, this is a great move. But now we're into buying art and I can't value art. I can just run the model numbers and it doesn't make sense." That extra money is basically McCourt's profit off the deal, from what I can tell from the articles I've read, he is suppose to come out of this with $7-800M after paying off debts and his ex-wife.
The article noted, "The problem economists have with the sale of the team being tied to the television contract is teams use their television deals as revenue to improve the team, not to offset the costs of overpaying for a franchise."
One of the economists also noted McCourt's continued involvement as a stunner, but as I noted above, subsequent info from the buying group stated clearly that McCourt's involvement is nil except as an equity partner. Though I agree with the economists, for the money they paid, they should have been able to buy out everything and push him out completely, when you are overpaying by that much. They also make the interesting point that McCourt has been in court frequently in the past suing his partners for one thing or another, which would be a headache that the new owners would have to deal with.
Lots of good info on TV deals reiterated here, so I thought I would bring that up. Fox had offered McCourt a 20-year, $3B deal, which was basically what the Angels got last December from Fox, worth "at least $3B" and apparently the Rangers got a similar deal at similar terms as well. It also noted that a TV deal is not a done deal, that they could start their own regional sports network like the Yankees have with the YES Network (and Red Sox with their NES Network). Looking this up on Wikipedia, the Giants own 30% of CSN Bay Area, with 45% owned by NBCUniversal (formerly Comcast) and 25% owned by Fox.
Giants Thoughts
Nothing like good D-ger turmoil to warm a Giants fan's heart. Baer had his "play nice with your neighbors" message about it being good to have a competitive D-ger team, but I am more than happy to see the D-gers fall on their faces for an eternity.
I didn't look too deeply at the numbers, but I thought the deal looked kind of squirrelly financially, but I couldn't put my finger on it. But the comment above confirmed the thought I had, that the potential TV deal appears to pay for the valuation, but then where is the money for the team?
But either economist noted that most teams are not bought for their financial flow into their owner's coffers. They are usually bought for their long-term appreciation, which is when they would get their money back. Still, overpaying by double is a sure way to reduce your ROI by a lot.
Here is how I think the value works out for the owners. It has to do with the land involved and the new owners wanted to be aggressive and win the bidding outright, without much thinking on the part of McCourt or the MLB before they agree on the deal. So that's why I think Magic's group went with their "Buy It NOW" bid, a la eBay (this article on Yahoo supports this notion, noting the new owner wanted to "win by two touchdowns."; this article has another figure on a TV deal, $4M over 20 years).
As Mark Purdy notes in his column, the new owner is the CEO of a huge $125B financial firm called Guggenheim Partners, and the official name of the new D-gers ownership group is Guggenheim Baseball Management LLC, and not named after Walters or anything else, implying that the assets of this firm could be intertwined with the D-gers in some way. What is the mission statement for the new owner? "all I want to do is get to the World Series." (Sidenote: obviously, he's never spoken with Barry Bonds, who, after losing the 2002 World Series, his wife at that time told him, "well, you got what you wished for, you wanted to get to the World Series, and you did...").
In the Purdy article, he noted that Andy Dolich, a long-time sports management executive in the Bay Area (stints with A's, Warriors, and 49ers), who was an advisor to one of the bidders, had his financial people run a financial model and came up with a bid of $1.2-1.3B as the one that made the most economic sense, which is in line with what one of the professors was quoted (he noted it was $800M over). So he was blown out by the actual winning bid.
One of the theories he came up with that could explain the grander plans is one where Dodger Stadium would be razed and a new one built near the Staples Center, in the L.A. Live District, which is owned and run by Anschutz Entertainment Group. AEG would partner with Guggenheim to build the new baseball park, which would benefit the L.A. Live District since there are 81 baseball dates each year (and 3-10 more if playoffs), while Dodger Stadium would be razed to build a new football stadium complex at Chavez Ravine.
And that is basically what I thought is how they plan on making the big money, doing something with the Chavez Ravine property, because it is a huge tract of mostly undeveloped land in land-locked LA, though this baseball-football plan is way beyond what I would have thought. Kind of like what was envisioned for the 49ers, where there would be a hotel and commercial complex built around the stadium, where synergies would feed off each other for additional revenues beyond just the team itself.
Purdy also noted that Jed York once worked for Guggenheim, so Walter could have perhaps contacted him to discuss the NFL. It makes sense, as Walter, per this theory, would be very interested in the 49er's quest for their stadium. But this theory is a bit of a stretch, Walter won't know every employee who has ever worked in his $125B company, and it is not like people from rich families will necessarily seek either other out. Still, you never know, maybe York sought out Walter's advice at some point, for some reason, when he was pursuing his 49er's stadium deal.
Meanwhile, Walter/Guggenheim has so much money that they do not need to pocket the $150-200M per year TV deal in order to make their investment work for them, cash flow is not the only way to benefit from an investment, which is what the economists above statically assumed. This reminded me of the situation when the Texas Rangers were sold to their prior owner, he bought up all sorts of land around the stadium, with plans to build, build, build and profit off the synergies thereof.
It didn't work for him, but this football-baseball stadium theory makes a lot of sense. As nice as I've heard Dodger Stadium to be, it is now around 50 years old, and even Yankee Stadium, the House that Ruth built, was razed (though Fenway and Wrigley still are kicking). Stadium technology is way beyond now, and you know L.A. love their glitz and glam, and as nice as Dodger Stadium might be, it is neither.
And as the Giants park showed, and I'm sure other parks too, there can be a lot of commercial synergies between the park and the surrounding area, which will show up in the financial statements of the owners in some way, just not necessarily from their Dodger's investment (which was the Texas owner, Hicks, idea). The owner does not care how the money gets into their pockets, whether through the Dodgers or their other investments, as long as it gets into their pockets. And given the high probability that the new L.A. NFL franchise should be a huge money maker for the new owner (remember, Walter has many more billions that he can tap into, $2B is pocket change for him), if they can come in with a grand plan for a stadium/commercial complex, the NFL will probably come hat in hand with the coveted L.A. franchise.
Which means that however the Dodgers go with their TV situation - a deal with a cable outlet or their own network (better bet given the big money involved) - that money stream will probably go straight to the team to be used for payroll and everything, not retained by the owners to get a return on their $2B investment. And thus they will be a big bidder for free agent riches next offseason, much like the Angels were this off-season, when they signed Albert Pujols and C.J. Wilson.
So hopefully Baggerly's report that the negotiations between the Giants and Cain "have picked up talks again" is accurate and shows that both sides want to get things done. As I noted in my post yesterday, it made sense that there would be a stall in negotiations to see what happens with the D-ger sale, to get a better feel - for both sides - of how much of a threat the new D-ger owner might be in the free agent market next off-season. I think this boosts Cain's leverage a lot, and think something in the $110-120M range for 5 years is now possible, though anywhere from $100-120M is possible I think, the only clear thing now is that he probably will reach 9 figures.
Baggerly reported today that Baer participated in a chat via Twitter with fans and said that it is a mischaracterization to say that there is a hard deadline or that the Giants are lowballing Cain. Given that talks have started up again, I rather doubt that the Giants were lowballing Cain (else, at this point, why bother continue talking with the Giants?), but rather, Cain's agents have been asking for the moon on the assumption that the new D-gers owners would be spending big bucks next season. Particularly given the rumor that the Giants were willing to meet them halfway between their offer and Cain's agent's asking but was turned down.
While I think that the D-gers will be spending, that is not a certainty given what is known right now about the situation, it does look like the new owners overpaid and that they will be soaking in the TV deal to make their return on investment, per what the economists said. And that situation will not be clarified for a long while, perhaps not even by next off-season, so if Cain's agents were to wait for free agency, they could be taking the chance that the D-gers might pass on free agents next off-season and not get into free agency in a big way until they get all their plans lined up.
Cain does not appear to be a dice roller, so I expect the negotiations to move a lot faster now that the D-ger situation is cleared up for his agents, and a deal will get signed at some point. I would guess given Baer's statement, most likely no deal will get done before the start of the season, but that there will be more media announcements like this that the two sides are continuing to talk and moving closer to agreement. You have to talk tough as a negotiator and nicely once the deal is done, for maximum image as a negotiator in the public eye.
I still think that $20M per season is fair market value for Cain. I have seen comments that C.J. Wilson's deal sets Cain's price higher, but in researching it now, I see that most of those people were mixing contract numbers. They saw him signing for 5 years and $78M and assumed the Marlin's $100M deal was for 5 years, but all the instances I found stated that was for 6 years, so really, the Angel's offer was actually very similar to the Marlins, only one year less. So he only got roughly $16M per season, not the $20M that I saw some quote.
But the D-gers are now a wild card bidder that will provide some upward loft on Cain's salary. While no sure thing, it is enough of a threat that the Giants will move higher than they had intended, but enough of a question mark that Cain's side must drop their asking price, because not many teams can afford $20M per season and most of the big spenders have spent their money already. Cain's agents don't want to get into a situation like Madson this off-season or Ivan Rodriguez in 2003, where a very good player has to take a one year deal to wait for a big money team to offer big bucks to him.
That's huge additional risk to take when your client is a pitcher, as Ryan Madson's agent found out, pitching for a contract year to year. His agents can't advise Cain to leave a 9 digit deal on the table, that would be fiduciary incompetence on the part of his agents, especially in light of the slow growth in the U.S. economy that threatens to implode if the EU or China hits a speed bump in their economies (or debt deals), as well as the possibility that the number of MLB bidders might be limited (the Mets are surely out).
But agents and players have done stupid things before. There have been players before who turn down big deals (like the Red Sox's Nomar Garciaparra) or asked for contracts way beyond the market interest (like the Giants's Rich Aurilia) who lived to regret doing that. And I don't want the Giants to accede to stupid outrageous salary demands, should Cain's agents be doing that as a big show for their big new client.
For as sure as it is now that Giants fans complains about the Zito signing, if Cain signs an outrageous deal and, say, his elbow implodes and he's no longer productive (see Noah Lowry for how fast things can change), you will find the same fans who derided the Giants for not giving Cain all the money in the world will be the same ones saying what idiots the Giants were to sign Cain to such a huge contract.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Your 2011 Giants: Payback D-gers
Well, that's a lot better, Giants win series against Cards, coming close to sweeping, but I'm happy with a series win, the Giants faced two tough starters and squeaked wins against them. Winning series is the first step towards repeating. Now they face the D-gers at home.
This is a key series to win because the Giants will be going back on the road again afterward. Obviously a sweep would be sweet, both because they are our arch rivals and because they won the first series 3-1. But I would be happy with a series win, particularly because we'll be facing the D-gers top three starters, so it would be tough enough just to win two. If they should somehow pull off a sweep, then I would be pretty impressed with that feat. And, given the toughness and match-ups, it would not be surprising to lose the series 1-2 either, unfortunately, that is how the baseball bounces sometimes when you are facing the best of any team.
Game 1: Kershaw vs. Bumgarner
Schulman reports that you can buy a replica, though not exact, for a very pretty penny (over 200,000 of them, to be inexact).
Still, even if they are at their best, Kershaw will be a tough nut to crack, he's the guy the D-gers preferred over Lincecum. He has a 1.06 ERA in AT&T, though he has not been that dominating, only 10 K's in 17.0 IP with 5 walks (wow, 4 IBB though) and 12 hits, so the Giants are due since their BABIP is low against him, plus no HR either.
Meanwhile, Bumgarner did not pitch well at all in his first start of the season. And he was giving up a lot of hits and homers in spring training, though his K/BB was stellar (almost 4) and K/9 great too (10.2 K/9), indicating a strong streak of bad luck BABIP and HR/FB. I think he will right himself a bit but Kershaw has been great so I have to say that unless Bumgarner can straighten his boat and pitch like he did at the end of 2010, the D-gers should win this game. And even if he were pitching at his best, Kershaw would still get the edge because he's just been that good during his career.
Game 2: Billingsley vs. Lincecum
Billingsley has a 2.50 ERA in 8 starts/11 appearances in AT&T. Aaron Rowand, Miguel Tejada, Nate Schierholtz and Buster Posey have hit him well, so we might see them in the lineup. Plus for the Giants is that Cain has won his last three decisions against the D-gers, after starting his career 0-8. Should be another close game, could go either way due to mistake by either side, like first series.
Game 3: Lilly vs. Sanchez
Sanchez appears to be still feeling his way into his mechanics, for when he's on, he's dominating. And he has been striking out a lot of guys, which is a great sign, but he hasn't made it out of the 6th inning himself. But the good news is that when he has been in there, he has been pretty dominant, so he has a 2.53 ERA with 15 K's in 10.2 IP.
That should mean a win for the Giants but given how good Lilly has been in the past, it is hard to say how this game should go exactly. Basically, if old Lilly is back, it should be a tight game again, but if he's not right, then the Giants should win this game because Sanchez has been effective, though leaning on the bullpen extensively.
Giants Thoughts
Giants need to win this series to end with a nice opening home stand (4-2) before heading off to the road for tough games: three in Arizona and three in Colorado. It will be tough to do given the caliber of pitchers the Giants will face, but the opening series was so close that the Giants could have been easily 3-1 as the 1-3 they ended up, so the baseball gods might giveth back in this series, after taking in the last series against them.
So far, as nicely as Brandon Belt did initially, he has been struggling a bit, since. But not by a lot. His strikeout rate is not horrific and he's been walking a good amount. His main problem is that his BABIP has been much below the .300 average for the majors. Not that his BABIP is necessarily as high as that, but given that he moves around pretty well and has good wheels, one would expect a BABIP of at least .300, if not higher.
Frankly, I still think the Giants need to keep Nate Schierholtz around for 2012, because they cannot be sure right now who they might have on the team playing the OF in 2012. Particularly since a lot of the payroll budget will go towards Lincecum's and Wilson's pay raises, and thus the Giants might not even retain Cody Ross. But someone in the outfield goes if Belt stays on the 25-man roster when Ross returns off the DL (unless Andres Torres is injured worse than currently feared right now, which would open up a spot), and hence my stance that Belt should go down when push comes to shove, unless he finally figures it out and hits like Posey did last season.
Also, I'm still of the mind that we should be starting Aaron Rowand as much as we can right now, particularly with both Ross and Torres unavailable. He has been hot, which is what he normally starts off in the season for the Giants in the past; it is just that he has been so cold at the end of the season that he ends up with a below average batting line. And it is my opinion that the cold streak at the end is a combination of both injuries he had occurred earlier in the season combined with his lack of physical fitness and stamina (which he finally acknowledged prior to the 2010 season, by saying that he kept himself in shape by mountain biking during the off-season.
If he plays and he's hot like in the past, that creates a great quandary for the Giants brass: who should play and who should sit? It also would mean that he would be playing regularly most probably, as Bochy normally plays the hot bat, but not everyday, which would give him frequent rests and time to recover from the aches and pains of playing in his 30's, which apparently has taxed him so far in his Giants career. That will give the Giants a window at least where they might be able to deal him to a desperate team, with the Giants maybe splitting his remaining contract in half, resulting in the other team paying roughly $6M per season, which is not that bad a deal for a productive OF in the middle of the season and your team needs such an OF to stay competitive for the playoffs.
And should Belt be hot enough to keep up when push comes to shove, I would hope the Giants keep Mike Fontenot in mind as a possibility to drop off the roster. That would hamper moves that Bochy can make, particularly using Mark DeRosa as a pinch-hitter, but should that happen, the Giants should just make Schierholtz a backup 2B as well. I understand he's never played there before, and that he hasn't played 3B in years, but given that he has played in the infield before, he should be able to handle 2B in late game emergency situations now and again, like Willie Mays playing SS in one long extra-inning game. I really do not want to lose Schierholtz for nothing before mid-season.
And mid-season is the point where I think the Giants might be more willing to deal Rowand with more money to make him worthwhile for another team to take him off the team's hands. He isn't as lousy a ballplayer as many Giants fans make him out to be. If the season had ended by August, he would be considered pretty good, .281/.348/.438/.786 in 2008, .276/.334/.441/.775 in 2009. Those are excellent OPS for an average defensive CF. Rowand is currently hitting .389/.389/.611/1.000, which leads the team in OPS right now.
Aubrey Huff has been struggling too but I think he's been taking his awful defense in the OF with him to the plate. I think he'll be fine once he finds himself defensively and get comfortable out there. But if he continues to struggle, that could mean the Giants need to move Belt either down to AAA or to LF in order to start Huff at 1B. I see people thinking of trading him but frankly I think he was one of the key leadership pillars that led the team in 2010 and it would hurt the team chemistry in 2011 to trade him. I think the soonest he can go is after the 2011 season: by then I think Posey would have enough experience and proven performance to take that rein, and judging from all that I've read about him, he's a natural born leader and he is the heir apparent waiting for that to happen.
I'm not sure what Pat Burrell's problem is though. Well, one is that his BABIP is horribly low, sub-.100, that is part of the problem. And he's also striking out too much, much higher than when he's going good. Still, he leads the team in homers with 3, so the power is there, the hits just appear not be falling for him, just major bad luck. If he continues to struggle this badly, though, he might become the OF who gets waived, although I would expect the Giants to come knocking again should they need him later in the season and nobody else has picked him up.
Pablo Sandoval has been pretty much his old self, as I had predicted. He is hitting .400/.438/.500/.938, which is in the ballpark of what he did in 2008 and early 2009, but not what he did when he had his breakout in 2009, which is when the home runs kicked in. His ISO is only .100 despite his one HR, he just hasn't had any other extra-base hit so far. Of course, part of that reason is that he hasn't started one game yet against a LHP, DeRosa has gotten those starts, despite Bochy's assurance early in the season that he is not in a platoon, but Bochy is starting Pablo today, so there goes that.
Speaking of DeRosa, he has been hitting well too, .364/.417/.455/.871. I think that he will start getting starts at 2B once Freddy Sanchez starts to cool off (.929 OPS; looks like his extension for the 2012 season got him all excited), but for now he's been getting starts at 3B in place of Pablo. I think he might start seeing starts at 1B when the Giants are facing a LHP, since Belt hasn't been hitting anyway. Of course, that is partly why he's been hot too, he mashes LHP, but not so much RHP, though he's good enough there that he can start if necessary at many different positions.
So far the Giants have underperformed on the whole, particularly offensively, though some pitchers have disappointed too. But it is too early to jump off the bandwagon, as some fans appear to have already did. In fact, as long as they have more weeks left in the season than games behind the leader, they are doing well enough to have some hope that they can still pull it out.
As I noted, they could have easily been 3-1 in the D-gers series and their record would be 6-3 rather than 4-5. And they are just a couple of games back, so they could be in the lead within a week with a good win streak (though hard to do on the road). It is too early to be worried when we are in the position we are in: it would be much different if we were 1-8 and many games behind already.
I think the biggest question mark was whether Pablo was back and he appears to be back, at least most of the way back, so that one positive that I would take from this early part of the season. The second biggest would be how well Cain would do given his shortened spring training and arm problems, and he has been stellar so far. The third is how well Wilson would do given his oblique and so far that has been bad, though it has mostly been bad luck with dribblers and balls just finding the right spot to fall in untouched. That he is rearing back and throwing mid-90's tells me that he is physically well and most forget that he is basically going through spring training now, so there will be hiccups.
Of course, there was also the question about Belt, and he has looked very good but just has not had the results so far. It might be better off if he is the one who gets moved to AAA when necessary, if only to push his service time clock enough so that we control his rights in 2017. People need to remember, as much as baseball is a game, it is also a business. And I'm not going to feel sorry for a player, who will probably make tens of millions in dollars in salary over his career, that the team's control over him lasts an extra year, maybe costing him a few million. He will be well paid no matter how you slice it if his career goes the way people expects (and if it doesn't then this would not mean a thing monetarily for him, as his bigger worry would be staying in the majors).
This is a key series to win because the Giants will be going back on the road again afterward. Obviously a sweep would be sweet, both because they are our arch rivals and because they won the first series 3-1. But I would be happy with a series win, particularly because we'll be facing the D-gers top three starters, so it would be tough enough just to win two. If they should somehow pull off a sweep, then I would be pretty impressed with that feat. And, given the toughness and match-ups, it would not be surprising to lose the series 1-2 either, unfortunately, that is how the baseball bounces sometimes when you are facing the best of any team.
Game 1: Kershaw vs. Bumgarner
Clayton Kershaw: Kershaw gets another chance to dominate the Giants, as he did Opening Day, when he pitched seven scoreless innings at home and allowed four hits. He's coming off a quality-start loss in Colorado with eight strikeouts and one walk.
Madision Bumgarner: Oddly, Bumgarner fared better on the road (6-3, 1.91 ERA) as a rookie than at pitcher-friendly AT&T Park (1-3, 4.60). He sabotaged his last start at San Diego by mishandling a Chris Denorfia comebacker that went for an RBI single.Should be a tough game to win for either team, but Kershaw should get a strong lean. Last time they faced Kershaw, the Giants, as I noted previously, were probably a bit pre-occupied with getting their goodies that they got on Saturday, their World Champion rings. Really nice:
Still, even if they are at their best, Kershaw will be a tough nut to crack, he's the guy the D-gers preferred over Lincecum. He has a 1.06 ERA in AT&T, though he has not been that dominating, only 10 K's in 17.0 IP with 5 walks (wow, 4 IBB though) and 12 hits, so the Giants are due since their BABIP is low against him, plus no HR either.
Meanwhile, Bumgarner did not pitch well at all in his first start of the season. And he was giving up a lot of hits and homers in spring training, though his K/BB was stellar (almost 4) and K/9 great too (10.2 K/9), indicating a strong streak of bad luck BABIP and HR/FB. I think he will right himself a bit but Kershaw has been great so I have to say that unless Bumgarner can straighten his boat and pitch like he did at the end of 2010, the D-gers should win this game. And even if he were pitching at his best, Kershaw would still get the edge because he's just been that good during his career.
Game 2: Billingsley vs. Lincecum
Chad Billingsley: Billingsley had his routine slightly altered by Friday night's marathon, being held back for emergency relief that wasn't needed. He allowed the Giants three runs over six innings in the opening series, including Brandon Belt's first homer.
Tim Lincecum: Now we know why Lincecum criticizes himself regarding walks. He issued only two unintentional free passes in his season-opening start at Los Angeles, but one of them resulted in the lone run he allowed, though it was unearned.Like Kershaw and Lincecum was drafted in the same draft, Billingsley was selected by the D-gers before the Giants plucked Cain later. As great as Kershaw-Billingsley is, Lincecum-Cain is that much better.
Billingsley has a 2.50 ERA in 8 starts/11 appearances in AT&T. Aaron Rowand, Miguel Tejada, Nate Schierholtz and Buster Posey have hit him well, so we might see them in the lineup. Plus for the Giants is that Cain has won his last three decisions against the D-gers, after starting his career 0-8. Should be another close game, could go either way due to mistake by either side, like first series.
Game 3: Lilly vs. Sanchez
Ted Lilly: After a rough outing against the Giants, Lilly rebounded with a gutty start in the rain against the Padres, pitching into the fifth inning despite multiple rain delays. The competitive lefty believes his mechanics are improved.
Jonathan Sanchez: Sanchez pitched capably in his previous two starts but didn't escape the sixth in either of them. His seven strikeouts in his last start represented the highest total by a Giants pitcher in a home opener since Jason Schmidt struck out nine in 2005.Hard to call this one. Giants whacked Lilly around easily but he says he's much improved mechanically, though it should be noted that he didn't get out of the 5th in his other non-Giants start. So he looks like a someone the Giants should beat up on easily, but when he's on, he's one tough son-of-a-gun.
Sanchez appears to be still feeling his way into his mechanics, for when he's on, he's dominating. And he has been striking out a lot of guys, which is a great sign, but he hasn't made it out of the 6th inning himself. But the good news is that when he has been in there, he has been pretty dominant, so he has a 2.53 ERA with 15 K's in 10.2 IP.
That should mean a win for the Giants but given how good Lilly has been in the past, it is hard to say how this game should go exactly. Basically, if old Lilly is back, it should be a tight game again, but if he's not right, then the Giants should win this game because Sanchez has been effective, though leaning on the bullpen extensively.
Giants Thoughts
Giants need to win this series to end with a nice opening home stand (4-2) before heading off to the road for tough games: three in Arizona and three in Colorado. It will be tough to do given the caliber of pitchers the Giants will face, but the opening series was so close that the Giants could have been easily 3-1 as the 1-3 they ended up, so the baseball gods might giveth back in this series, after taking in the last series against them.
So far, as nicely as Brandon Belt did initially, he has been struggling a bit, since. But not by a lot. His strikeout rate is not horrific and he's been walking a good amount. His main problem is that his BABIP has been much below the .300 average for the majors. Not that his BABIP is necessarily as high as that, but given that he moves around pretty well and has good wheels, one would expect a BABIP of at least .300, if not higher.
Frankly, I still think the Giants need to keep Nate Schierholtz around for 2012, because they cannot be sure right now who they might have on the team playing the OF in 2012. Particularly since a lot of the payroll budget will go towards Lincecum's and Wilson's pay raises, and thus the Giants might not even retain Cody Ross. But someone in the outfield goes if Belt stays on the 25-man roster when Ross returns off the DL (unless Andres Torres is injured worse than currently feared right now, which would open up a spot), and hence my stance that Belt should go down when push comes to shove, unless he finally figures it out and hits like Posey did last season.
Also, I'm still of the mind that we should be starting Aaron Rowand as much as we can right now, particularly with both Ross and Torres unavailable. He has been hot, which is what he normally starts off in the season for the Giants in the past; it is just that he has been so cold at the end of the season that he ends up with a below average batting line. And it is my opinion that the cold streak at the end is a combination of both injuries he had occurred earlier in the season combined with his lack of physical fitness and stamina (which he finally acknowledged prior to the 2010 season, by saying that he kept himself in shape by mountain biking during the off-season.
If he plays and he's hot like in the past, that creates a great quandary for the Giants brass: who should play and who should sit? It also would mean that he would be playing regularly most probably, as Bochy normally plays the hot bat, but not everyday, which would give him frequent rests and time to recover from the aches and pains of playing in his 30's, which apparently has taxed him so far in his Giants career. That will give the Giants a window at least where they might be able to deal him to a desperate team, with the Giants maybe splitting his remaining contract in half, resulting in the other team paying roughly $6M per season, which is not that bad a deal for a productive OF in the middle of the season and your team needs such an OF to stay competitive for the playoffs.
And should Belt be hot enough to keep up when push comes to shove, I would hope the Giants keep Mike Fontenot in mind as a possibility to drop off the roster. That would hamper moves that Bochy can make, particularly using Mark DeRosa as a pinch-hitter, but should that happen, the Giants should just make Schierholtz a backup 2B as well. I understand he's never played there before, and that he hasn't played 3B in years, but given that he has played in the infield before, he should be able to handle 2B in late game emergency situations now and again, like Willie Mays playing SS in one long extra-inning game. I really do not want to lose Schierholtz for nothing before mid-season.
And mid-season is the point where I think the Giants might be more willing to deal Rowand with more money to make him worthwhile for another team to take him off the team's hands. He isn't as lousy a ballplayer as many Giants fans make him out to be. If the season had ended by August, he would be considered pretty good, .281/.348/.438/.786 in 2008, .276/.334/.441/.775 in 2009. Those are excellent OPS for an average defensive CF. Rowand is currently hitting .389/.389/.611/1.000, which leads the team in OPS right now.
Aubrey Huff has been struggling too but I think he's been taking his awful defense in the OF with him to the plate. I think he'll be fine once he finds himself defensively and get comfortable out there. But if he continues to struggle, that could mean the Giants need to move Belt either down to AAA or to LF in order to start Huff at 1B. I see people thinking of trading him but frankly I think he was one of the key leadership pillars that led the team in 2010 and it would hurt the team chemistry in 2011 to trade him. I think the soonest he can go is after the 2011 season: by then I think Posey would have enough experience and proven performance to take that rein, and judging from all that I've read about him, he's a natural born leader and he is the heir apparent waiting for that to happen.
I'm not sure what Pat Burrell's problem is though. Well, one is that his BABIP is horribly low, sub-.100, that is part of the problem. And he's also striking out too much, much higher than when he's going good. Still, he leads the team in homers with 3, so the power is there, the hits just appear not be falling for him, just major bad luck. If he continues to struggle this badly, though, he might become the OF who gets waived, although I would expect the Giants to come knocking again should they need him later in the season and nobody else has picked him up.
Pablo Sandoval has been pretty much his old self, as I had predicted. He is hitting .400/.438/.500/.938, which is in the ballpark of what he did in 2008 and early 2009, but not what he did when he had his breakout in 2009, which is when the home runs kicked in. His ISO is only .100 despite his one HR, he just hasn't had any other extra-base hit so far. Of course, part of that reason is that he hasn't started one game yet against a LHP, DeRosa has gotten those starts, despite Bochy's assurance early in the season that he is not in a platoon, but Bochy is starting Pablo today, so there goes that.
Speaking of DeRosa, he has been hitting well too, .364/.417/.455/.871. I think that he will start getting starts at 2B once Freddy Sanchez starts to cool off (.929 OPS; looks like his extension for the 2012 season got him all excited), but for now he's been getting starts at 3B in place of Pablo. I think he might start seeing starts at 1B when the Giants are facing a LHP, since Belt hasn't been hitting anyway. Of course, that is partly why he's been hot too, he mashes LHP, but not so much RHP, though he's good enough there that he can start if necessary at many different positions.
So far the Giants have underperformed on the whole, particularly offensively, though some pitchers have disappointed too. But it is too early to jump off the bandwagon, as some fans appear to have already did. In fact, as long as they have more weeks left in the season than games behind the leader, they are doing well enough to have some hope that they can still pull it out.
As I noted, they could have easily been 3-1 in the D-gers series and their record would be 6-3 rather than 4-5. And they are just a couple of games back, so they could be in the lead within a week with a good win streak (though hard to do on the road). It is too early to be worried when we are in the position we are in: it would be much different if we were 1-8 and many games behind already.
I think the biggest question mark was whether Pablo was back and he appears to be back, at least most of the way back, so that one positive that I would take from this early part of the season. The second biggest would be how well Cain would do given his shortened spring training and arm problems, and he has been stellar so far. The third is how well Wilson would do given his oblique and so far that has been bad, though it has mostly been bad luck with dribblers and balls just finding the right spot to fall in untouched. That he is rearing back and throwing mid-90's tells me that he is physically well and most forget that he is basically going through spring training now, so there will be hiccups.
Of course, there was also the question about Belt, and he has looked very good but just has not had the results so far. It might be better off if he is the one who gets moved to AAA when necessary, if only to push his service time clock enough so that we control his rights in 2017. People need to remember, as much as baseball is a game, it is also a business. And I'm not going to feel sorry for a player, who will probably make tens of millions in dollars in salary over his career, that the team's control over him lasts an extra year, maybe costing him a few million. He will be well paid no matter how you slice it if his career goes the way people expects (and if it doesn't then this would not mean a thing monetarily for him, as his bigger worry would be staying in the majors).
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Your 2011 Giants: Play Ball! Beat LA Edition
Well, it's finally here: opening day 2011 and the Giants fans get to celebrate all season long about our 2010 Giants World Championship. But then there is the not so little matter of defending your title in 2011 and they face a gauntlet of road games, with 22 road games out of their first 31 games, which is a real oddity: you would think the MLB would overload on home games to max attendance for the Giants fans at home? Must be a D-ger schedule planner!!!
Speaking of which, the Giants get to celebrate their title in front of the D-ger homeboys and girls to start the season. Apparently there are fans planning to fly over Chavez Ravine with plane banners to send a message to the Giants and the D-ger fans. Many fans are planning to go in full World Champion regalia. I only pray that cooler minds prevail and there is no violence committed against Giants fans, as there was a few years back in their parking lot.
With no stats for the season to use, I'll be relying on past performance and using PQS to provide commentary on each game. And, of course, using the text from the MLB's Probable Pitchers webpages.
Game 1: Lincecum vs. Kershaw
I've been saying that Lincecum will be extra tough this season and I wouldn't be surprised if he gets his ERA under 2.00, which probably isn't likely, but still, I wouldn't be surprised. He should be that much better than his Cy Young seasons, now that he got the slider to go with his changeup. Not that Kershaw will be easy for the Giants batters, but Lincecum should be that much better, even with the home advantage for Kershaw. I would also throw in that D-ger Stadium is one of the extreme pitcher's park forever.
Hard to believe, but Kershaw was even more consistently dominating in 2010 than Lincecum was during his Cy Young seasons, but his problem is that when he's bad, he's really bad, with a large percentage of the starts where he wasn't dominating, he had a disaster start, it was pretty much either/or for him in 2010. And as noted above, he pitched really well against the Giants last season.
Should be a tough, low scoring team that either team can win. I think Lincecum will be that much better, mainly because I don't think much of LA's offense, whereas I think Pablo Sandoval is back and that Brandon Belt could be the extra factor in juicing up this offense. Of course, this is but one game among 162, so they could have zero offensive contributions. But overall, I like the GIants lineup, particularly if Belt delivers as projected. Still, got to give Kershaw his due and call it even, with a lean towards Lincecum.
Speaking of which, congrats to Belt for making the opening day roster and best wishes to Travis Ishikawa for being designated for assignment. The Giants have 10 days to either trade him or to release him on waivers. Then some other team would get him, else if nobody is interested either way, then the Giants could assign him to the minors, but he could say then that he prefers to be released and become a free agent.
Remember, with no options, any team taking him would have to place him on their 25 man roster, so my guess is that most if not all teams will pass on him, as most have already made their 25-man decisions, and the Giants might be able to send him down. However, I would think that he would ask for his release and try to hook up with another team, starting with Seattle, his hometeam, though that is a risk, because if nobody signs him, he has no way to stay in shape except maybe independent ball.
Another guy needing to make a decision is Marc Kroon as he did not make the roster (congrats also to Guillermo Mota and Dan Runzler for making the opening day roster). He is reported by the Chronicle to have said he would not accept a AAA assignment, but MLB is reporting that Bochy is lobbying him hard to go down.
If he likes the team and coaches, he should stay, the Giants will cut guys if they don't perform, and frankly, I'm waiting for Mota to be that first one (well, except for Runzler who will go down once Brian Wilson is off the DL, where he was just placed) to be jettisoned, as the Giants have jettisoned non-performing relievers in the past, relatively easily, and Mota didn't really perform that well down the stretch in 2010. I really wonder if he got the assignment because the Giants wanted most of the players who won the World Series to be on the opening day roster. In any case, I would think that Kroon could make the roster within a month or two if he can wait; I hope he waits, I really wanted to see him in a Giants uniform in 2011.
Game 2: Sanchez vs. Billingsley
Billingsley, while drafted before Cain, has been a step behind our Big Boy when comparing careers, but his PQS DOM% has been very Cain-like for years, though he had a relatively bad season last year. But still better than Sanchez overall. However, again, I really like the Giants lineup, particularly against RHP: Torres, Sandoval, Huff, Posey, Belt, should be pretty nice.
I have to call it even again, but with a lean towards Billingsley, because of his career consistency and him in his home park. One of the better Giants hitters against him is gone though, Ishikawa, but Nate Schierholtz has beat on him pretty good, so we might see an outfield of Huff, Torres, and Schierholtz in the lineup, which would add another good LH bat.
Speaking of lineups, it would be interesting to see where that goes. Looks like it'll be much like last year, but with Belt, here is Monday's lineup: Torres, Franchez, Huff, Posey, Burrell, Tejada, Belt, Sandoval. I would prefer to put Pablo Sandoval in the 5 spot sooner than later, he should be better than Pat Burrell and instead of Miguel Tejada 8th, here's an idea: bat Belt as the last position player.
He has a pretty good head on his shoulders, from all indications, and he works the at-bat pretty well, not swinging at bad pitches. Plus, he's a good runner, so the pitchers could sacrifice with greater certainty. Also, Bochy could also go with the LaRussa/Saber experiment and bat the pitcher 8th and Belt 9th, with his speed and discipline in getting on base, he could be like a second leadoff guy.
Game 3: Cain vs. Lilly
Lilly, however, has a bad history against SF, 5.57 ERA, including 6.97 ERA in two starts last season and 4.88 ERA in home games. Unfortunately, until a late victory against LA last season, Cain has had a history of futility against the D-gers, though he normally pitched well enough to win. Lilly has a 3.90 ERA in LA, which is slightly better than his career numbers, so he does derive some advantage pitching there (though perhaps that difference was pumped up a bit by Lilly's lengthy career in AL too). I feel like I'm jinxing Cain, but given the difference in career results, I have to call this a close game, as Lilly is normally a good pitcher, with a lean towards Cain.
Game 4: Zito vs. Kuroda
In any case, even without the car crash, I would have to give the D-gers the edge here. Kuroda has been an excellent pitcher for the D-gers, posting great PQS and even pushing it up a notch in 2010, both in terms of increasing DOM% to an great 68% and reducing DIS% to a good 13%. Zito hasn't sniffed either in years on a seasonal basis, and barely one or the other on a half season basis. On top of that Kuroda pitches even better at home, and has pitched well against the Giants in general. The only silver lining for Giants fans is that the Giants have a 7.47 ERA against him in LA in 3 starts. But that was two bad starts in his first season, 2008, he dominated them down late in the season in 2010, 8 IP, 6 hits, 8 K's and 3 walks, but 3 ER, so the D-gers lost.
Giants Thoughts
I'm pretty excited by the 2011 Giants. ESPN, using ZiPS data, has the Giants winning the NL West division with an 88-74 record, one game ahead of D-Rox. They have 'Dres at 83-79 and D-gers at 80-82.
I still think the Giants will easily end up with 90+ wins in 2011, and I wouldn't be surprised if they win 100+ games and lead from start to finish, which I've been saying this off-season. However, with so many games on the road initially, the Giants might fall a bunch of games behind initially so I'm backing a bit off that latter part of the statement. But it won't take a historic run at the end of the season for them to win in 2011, whether them winning or the leading team losing 10 straight, they should be in it for most of the season.
I'm also pretty excited by Tim Lincecum and Pablo Sandoval. I think both will come back from their poor seasons in 2010, and even outdo what they did in 2009. Lincecum, as I've been saying, should be even better than his Cy Young years: he added a slider at the end of last season, which now gives him a "swing and miss" pitch to both LH and RH batters now. I would not be surprised if his ERA ends up under 2.00, earning him another historic contract after the season.
I think now is the time to sign him up to a long term contract, but I would bet that the Giants tried but Lincecum's agent refused the offer; fans forget that it takes two to get a contract done, and Lincecum's side has wanted a LOT more than the Giants have been wanting to give up, and I don't blame the Giants for not doing more. I would bet that Posey's agent did the same as well, I'm pretty sure the Giants contacted them as well. I think Cain is the better bet to get an extension first.
People just don't get that Sandoval is a bad ball hitter. Especially sabers, they note his penchant for swinging at balls out of the zone, but they all then forget to look at his peripherals: his strikeouts and walks in 2010 were right in line with his short career so far: 13.2% for K's, 7.6% for walks. In fact, if I had just presented his K% and BB% for 2009 and 2010, but without the years, I would bet 999 out of 1,000 people would not have known which was which (it was 13.1% and 8.2% in 2009).
The fact is, the big difference for Pablo in 2010 were two items: his BABIP and power. His BABIP dropped to .291, after a career .350+ BABIP, and that definitely you can blame his weight on. And as widely reported, he lost a ton of weight (almost literally :^).
The other was his lack of power, his slugging went way down, and part of that was because his HR% was cut in half. Oddly enough, his XB/H% was still OK, at 33% after 39% in 2009, but that also reflected his lost of power, as his doubles, triples, and homers all went down. Part of that was his big drop in hitting against LHP, but his number of HR against RHP went down as well.
But remember, he was like Panda of old in April 2010, his OPS was 1000+ and all was well, then suddenly he couldn't hit at all for anything for two weeks in May. That was an up and down pattern that went through the entire season, and as I documented, particularly for the second half of the season, when he flew down to Venezuela to finalize his divorce and when his mother was nearly killed in the San Bruno blast.
He was otherwise Panda-esque when not dealing with personal issues in the second half: 299/.348/.495/.843, with .321 BABIP, 13.8% K%. And I would point out that he was very Kung Fu Panda like late in the 2010 season, from August 7-30, he had 6 HR in 86 AB, .337/.367/.628/.995 in 22 games. All this suggests that something (like getting divorce papers or getting into custody battle with ex-wife) happened at the start of May to push him down mentally. This should not be bothering him in 2011, suggesting that he should be back to Panda of old.
Of course, nobody really knows until the season starts. One things is that Sandoval has been hitting well in spring training, but not to his full Panda performance: .280/.309/.480/.789, with 3 homers. Over a full season, that is roughly 30 doubles, 5 triples, 20 HR. This is more like the pre-Panda that we saw in 2008 and early 2009, before he busted out for the HR power.
And how can I not be excited by Brandon Belt. However, I would advise caution to all the giddy fans anticipating Posey 2.0, because Posey 1.0 was hitting .695 OPS after roughly a month in the majors, and that is roughly around the time when Cody Ross comes off the DL. Of course, Posey took off after that, maybe partly because Molina was traded and now he was the full-time catcher, maybe partly because it took that long to figure out MLB pitchers, Dustin Pedroia was horrible his first month before taking off. Still, if Belt is struggling when Ross is ready, Belt will probably go down at that point.
However, if Belt starts out like Jason Heyward 2.0, he's staying up and my best guess is that Pat Burrell and Cody Ross will start sharing LF and Torres will get more rest vs. LHP, since he was horrible against LHP in 2010, though that could be an oddity since he's right-handed. Still, I see Ross getting ABs that way, plus he might sub for Huff in RF since Huff has difficulties hitting LHP during his career, though not last season.
Also, if Belt stays up, that means the Giants will have to chose between Rowand and Schierholtz to release, and I would throw Fontenot into the mix, I think he'll be in the conversation if he's struggling. Given that the bench will be very right-handed if Schierholtz is released and defensively challenged when Burrell is on the bench, the right baseball choice is to release Rowand. It doesn't look like he will get his chance to show how good a hitter he is when healthy, and that once he moves on to another team, if released, he will make the Giants look bad, much like when the White Sox picked up Rios from the Blue Jays or even Giants picking up Burrell.
I think that there is an outside chance that if Mota is struggling in April, he could be the one to be released when Ross is off the DL. The Giants might want to buy time on the Rowand decision by going with less relievers for a month or two, in case another team might get desperate enough to take Rowand off our hands. And who knows, when Rowand is hot, he would easily push Ross and maybe even Burrell onto the bench. But hard to do that if he's not getting ABs, that would take an OF slumping in April, mainly Torres or Burrell, I don't see Huff getting sat until later, I think his rope is longer than Torres or Burrell.
Go Giants! Make us proud in defending your World Championship!
Speaking of which, the Giants get to celebrate their title in front of the D-ger homeboys and girls to start the season. Apparently there are fans planning to fly over Chavez Ravine with plane banners to send a message to the Giants and the D-ger fans. Many fans are planning to go in full World Champion regalia. I only pray that cooler minds prevail and there is no violence committed against Giants fans, as there was a few years back in their parking lot.
With no stats for the season to use, I'll be relying on past performance and using PQS to provide commentary on each game. And, of course, using the text from the MLB's Probable Pitchers webpages.
Game 1: Lincecum vs. Kershaw
Tim Lincecum: Lincecum has had mixed success in season openers. He was dominant last year in Houston, striking out seven in seven shutout innings. Lincecum clearly wasn't himself in the 2009 lidlifter, allowing Milwaukee three runs in three innings.
Clayton Kershaw: Development of a slider has made the 23-year-old that much tougher for opposing hitters. He was 9-2 against the NL West and compiled a 1.55 ERA in four starts against the Giants last year, including his first complete game and shutout.Wow, Kershaw has a new slider, Lincecum has a new slider, should be a low scoring game. I hate when writers look at two bits of data and make a comment, you need to take a bigger picture view, plus know the history. Lincecum's 2009 was his first opening day start and he has always had the jitters in his first time experience, well, except for his excellent start against the Braves in his first playoff game, though one could argue that he was in playoff like games all through September. Every first he has had as a major leaguer (except for that one), he has had to get over his nerves, his adrenaline rush, and so far he has had them, including his first start in the World Series, when the playoffs got different.
I've been saying that Lincecum will be extra tough this season and I wouldn't be surprised if he gets his ERA under 2.00, which probably isn't likely, but still, I wouldn't be surprised. He should be that much better than his Cy Young seasons, now that he got the slider to go with his changeup. Not that Kershaw will be easy for the Giants batters, but Lincecum should be that much better, even with the home advantage for Kershaw. I would also throw in that D-ger Stadium is one of the extreme pitcher's park forever.
Hard to believe, but Kershaw was even more consistently dominating in 2010 than Lincecum was during his Cy Young seasons, but his problem is that when he's bad, he's really bad, with a large percentage of the starts where he wasn't dominating, he had a disaster start, it was pretty much either/or for him in 2010. And as noted above, he pitched really well against the Giants last season.
Should be a tough, low scoring team that either team can win. I think Lincecum will be that much better, mainly because I don't think much of LA's offense, whereas I think Pablo Sandoval is back and that Brandon Belt could be the extra factor in juicing up this offense. Of course, this is but one game among 162, so they could have zero offensive contributions. But overall, I like the GIants lineup, particularly if Belt delivers as projected. Still, got to give Kershaw his due and call it even, with a lean towards Lincecum.
Speaking of which, congrats to Belt for making the opening day roster and best wishes to Travis Ishikawa for being designated for assignment. The Giants have 10 days to either trade him or to release him on waivers. Then some other team would get him, else if nobody is interested either way, then the Giants could assign him to the minors, but he could say then that he prefers to be released and become a free agent.
Remember, with no options, any team taking him would have to place him on their 25 man roster, so my guess is that most if not all teams will pass on him, as most have already made their 25-man decisions, and the Giants might be able to send him down. However, I would think that he would ask for his release and try to hook up with another team, starting with Seattle, his hometeam, though that is a risk, because if nobody signs him, he has no way to stay in shape except maybe independent ball.
Another guy needing to make a decision is Marc Kroon as he did not make the roster (congrats also to Guillermo Mota and Dan Runzler for making the opening day roster). He is reported by the Chronicle to have said he would not accept a AAA assignment, but MLB is reporting that Bochy is lobbying him hard to go down.
If he likes the team and coaches, he should stay, the Giants will cut guys if they don't perform, and frankly, I'm waiting for Mota to be that first one (well, except for Runzler who will go down once Brian Wilson is off the DL, where he was just placed) to be jettisoned, as the Giants have jettisoned non-performing relievers in the past, relatively easily, and Mota didn't really perform that well down the stretch in 2010. I really wonder if he got the assignment because the Giants wanted most of the players who won the World Series to be on the opening day roster. In any case, I would think that Kroon could make the roster within a month or two if he can wait; I hope he waits, I really wanted to see him in a Giants uniform in 2011.
Game 2: Sanchez vs. Billingsley
Jonathan Sanchez: Sanchez's previous Dodger Stadium appearance, last Sept.5, was a big one: He beat L.A. for the first time in his career, won his 10th game of the season, struck out nine and surrendered three hits in seven innings.
Chad Billingsley: There's nothing wrong with being a No. 2 starter and Billingsley gives the Dodgers a pretty reliable one. He's averaged 13 wins and 195 innings the last three seasons and during Spring Training made strides with a changeup.Wow, MLB don't have a photo for Billingsley! Not like he's a rook. Sanchez, while not a rook, was promoted to #2 status, one to break up Lincecum and Cain, two because Lincecum and Cain tends to pitch deeper into the game, whereas Sanchez tends not to, meaning the bullpen is rested, relatively before and after Sanchez. He's been a headcase before, letting nerves and adrenaline rage uncontrolled, so it's hard for me to say how he'll do here. Generally, he has been clobbered in LA, but as noted above, he pitched a beauty against them in LA last season, so maybe our little boy is growing up before our eyes.
Billingsley, while drafted before Cain, has been a step behind our Big Boy when comparing careers, but his PQS DOM% has been very Cain-like for years, though he had a relatively bad season last year. But still better than Sanchez overall. However, again, I really like the Giants lineup, particularly against RHP: Torres, Sandoval, Huff, Posey, Belt, should be pretty nice.
I have to call it even again, but with a lean towards Billingsley, because of his career consistency and him in his home park. One of the better Giants hitters against him is gone though, Ishikawa, but Nate Schierholtz has beat on him pretty good, so we might see an outfield of Huff, Torres, and Schierholtz in the lineup, which would add another good LH bat.
Speaking of lineups, it would be interesting to see where that goes. Looks like it'll be much like last year, but with Belt, here is Monday's lineup: Torres, Franchez, Huff, Posey, Burrell, Tejada, Belt, Sandoval. I would prefer to put Pablo Sandoval in the 5 spot sooner than later, he should be better than Pat Burrell and instead of Miguel Tejada 8th, here's an idea: bat Belt as the last position player.
He has a pretty good head on his shoulders, from all indications, and he works the at-bat pretty well, not swinging at bad pitches. Plus, he's a good runner, so the pitchers could sacrifice with greater certainty. Also, Bochy could also go with the LaRussa/Saber experiment and bat the pitcher 8th and Belt 9th, with his speed and discipline in getting on base, he could be like a second leadoff guy.
Game 3: Cain vs. Lilly
Matt Cain: The Giants will watch Cain carefully in the wake of the elbow inflammation he endured in spring. Durability has been an issue for Cain, who's one of only five Giants to pitch 200 frames or more at least four years in a row since the club moved west.
Ted Lilly: He's not overpowering, not an ace, but he's left-handed, he throws strikes and he wins games, double figures in each of the last eight seasons. The last time he signed a big contract, he went 15-8 for the Cubs in 2007. He was 0-1 with a 6.97 ERA.Should be another close game, the Giants and D-gers are pretty evenly matched for their top three starting pitchers. As well as Cain has pitched, his DOM% has been lower than Lilly's until last season. The key to Cain is that he rarely has a disaster start (check the PQS label way down below if you want to learn more about PQS terminology, there is a explanatory link in each post), whereas Lilly has been more prone to them, relatively.
Lilly, however, has a bad history against SF, 5.57 ERA, including 6.97 ERA in two starts last season and 4.88 ERA in home games. Unfortunately, until a late victory against LA last season, Cain has had a history of futility against the D-gers, though he normally pitched well enough to win. Lilly has a 3.90 ERA in LA, which is slightly better than his career numbers, so he does derive some advantage pitching there (though perhaps that difference was pumped up a bit by Lilly's lengthy career in AL too). I feel like I'm jinxing Cain, but given the difference in career results, I have to call this a close game, as Lilly is normally a good pitcher, with a lean towards Cain.
Game 4: Zito vs. Kuroda
Barry Zito: After being dropped from last year's postseason pitching staff, Zito has strived to start fresh this season. He was San Francisco's only starter to work six innings twice in Cactus League exhibitions, indicating that he maintained a solid mindset.
Hiroki Kuroda: He has added a curveball to the repertoire. He's made the conversion from Japanese star to solid MLB starter with a lower career ERA than Hideo Nomo and Daisuke Matsuzaka. He was 0-1 with a 3.38 ERA against the Giants last year.Zito is making news today for being hit in his car while driving last night. He's fine, so far, and has been released from the hospital, but this is something that could have later effects, whether concussion or whatever, so the story is not done here. I suspect if he is not ready to pitch, the Giants would just go with a bullpen start, going first with Runzler, then Mota, then whoever. Vogelsong is the go-to guy for a longer term stint on the DL, but for one start, and early in the season, I think the Giants will go with the bullpen route, particularly since they had been stretching out Runzler.
In any case, even without the car crash, I would have to give the D-gers the edge here. Kuroda has been an excellent pitcher for the D-gers, posting great PQS and even pushing it up a notch in 2010, both in terms of increasing DOM% to an great 68% and reducing DIS% to a good 13%. Zito hasn't sniffed either in years on a seasonal basis, and barely one or the other on a half season basis. On top of that Kuroda pitches even better at home, and has pitched well against the Giants in general. The only silver lining for Giants fans is that the Giants have a 7.47 ERA against him in LA in 3 starts. But that was two bad starts in his first season, 2008, he dominated them down late in the season in 2010, 8 IP, 6 hits, 8 K's and 3 walks, but 3 ER, so the D-gers lost.
Giants Thoughts
I'm pretty excited by the 2011 Giants. ESPN, using ZiPS data, has the Giants winning the NL West division with an 88-74 record, one game ahead of D-Rox. They have 'Dres at 83-79 and D-gers at 80-82.
I still think the Giants will easily end up with 90+ wins in 2011, and I wouldn't be surprised if they win 100+ games and lead from start to finish, which I've been saying this off-season. However, with so many games on the road initially, the Giants might fall a bunch of games behind initially so I'm backing a bit off that latter part of the statement. But it won't take a historic run at the end of the season for them to win in 2011, whether them winning or the leading team losing 10 straight, they should be in it for most of the season.
I'm also pretty excited by Tim Lincecum and Pablo Sandoval. I think both will come back from their poor seasons in 2010, and even outdo what they did in 2009. Lincecum, as I've been saying, should be even better than his Cy Young years: he added a slider at the end of last season, which now gives him a "swing and miss" pitch to both LH and RH batters now. I would not be surprised if his ERA ends up under 2.00, earning him another historic contract after the season.
I think now is the time to sign him up to a long term contract, but I would bet that the Giants tried but Lincecum's agent refused the offer; fans forget that it takes two to get a contract done, and Lincecum's side has wanted a LOT more than the Giants have been wanting to give up, and I don't blame the Giants for not doing more. I would bet that Posey's agent did the same as well, I'm pretty sure the Giants contacted them as well. I think Cain is the better bet to get an extension first.
People just don't get that Sandoval is a bad ball hitter. Especially sabers, they note his penchant for swinging at balls out of the zone, but they all then forget to look at his peripherals: his strikeouts and walks in 2010 were right in line with his short career so far: 13.2% for K's, 7.6% for walks. In fact, if I had just presented his K% and BB% for 2009 and 2010, but without the years, I would bet 999 out of 1,000 people would not have known which was which (it was 13.1% and 8.2% in 2009).
The fact is, the big difference for Pablo in 2010 were two items: his BABIP and power. His BABIP dropped to .291, after a career .350+ BABIP, and that definitely you can blame his weight on. And as widely reported, he lost a ton of weight (almost literally :^).
The other was his lack of power, his slugging went way down, and part of that was because his HR% was cut in half. Oddly enough, his XB/H% was still OK, at 33% after 39% in 2009, but that also reflected his lost of power, as his doubles, triples, and homers all went down. Part of that was his big drop in hitting against LHP, but his number of HR against RHP went down as well.
But remember, he was like Panda of old in April 2010, his OPS was 1000+ and all was well, then suddenly he couldn't hit at all for anything for two weeks in May. That was an up and down pattern that went through the entire season, and as I documented, particularly for the second half of the season, when he flew down to Venezuela to finalize his divorce and when his mother was nearly killed in the San Bruno blast.
He was otherwise Panda-esque when not dealing with personal issues in the second half: 299/.348/.495/.843, with .321 BABIP, 13.8% K%. And I would point out that he was very Kung Fu Panda like late in the 2010 season, from August 7-30, he had 6 HR in 86 AB, .337/.367/.628/.995 in 22 games. All this suggests that something (like getting divorce papers or getting into custody battle with ex-wife) happened at the start of May to push him down mentally. This should not be bothering him in 2011, suggesting that he should be back to Panda of old.
Of course, nobody really knows until the season starts. One things is that Sandoval has been hitting well in spring training, but not to his full Panda performance: .280/.309/.480/.789, with 3 homers. Over a full season, that is roughly 30 doubles, 5 triples, 20 HR. This is more like the pre-Panda that we saw in 2008 and early 2009, before he busted out for the HR power.
And how can I not be excited by Brandon Belt. However, I would advise caution to all the giddy fans anticipating Posey 2.0, because Posey 1.0 was hitting .695 OPS after roughly a month in the majors, and that is roughly around the time when Cody Ross comes off the DL. Of course, Posey took off after that, maybe partly because Molina was traded and now he was the full-time catcher, maybe partly because it took that long to figure out MLB pitchers, Dustin Pedroia was horrible his first month before taking off. Still, if Belt is struggling when Ross is ready, Belt will probably go down at that point.
However, if Belt starts out like Jason Heyward 2.0, he's staying up and my best guess is that Pat Burrell and Cody Ross will start sharing LF and Torres will get more rest vs. LHP, since he was horrible against LHP in 2010, though that could be an oddity since he's right-handed. Still, I see Ross getting ABs that way, plus he might sub for Huff in RF since Huff has difficulties hitting LHP during his career, though not last season.
Also, if Belt stays up, that means the Giants will have to chose between Rowand and Schierholtz to release, and I would throw Fontenot into the mix, I think he'll be in the conversation if he's struggling. Given that the bench will be very right-handed if Schierholtz is released and defensively challenged when Burrell is on the bench, the right baseball choice is to release Rowand. It doesn't look like he will get his chance to show how good a hitter he is when healthy, and that once he moves on to another team, if released, he will make the Giants look bad, much like when the White Sox picked up Rios from the Blue Jays or even Giants picking up Burrell.
I think that there is an outside chance that if Mota is struggling in April, he could be the one to be released when Ross is off the DL. The Giants might want to buy time on the Rowand decision by going with less relievers for a month or two, in case another team might get desperate enough to take Rowand off our hands. And who knows, when Rowand is hot, he would easily push Ross and maybe even Burrell onto the bench. But hard to do that if he's not getting ABs, that would take an OF slumping in April, mainly Torres or Burrell, I don't see Huff getting sat until later, I think his rope is longer than Torres or Burrell.
Go Giants! Make us proud in defending your World Championship!
Thursday, March 03, 2011
Your 2011 Giants Offense: Together, They Are Giants
The Giants offense is often maligned, and rightfully so in recent years. That is one of the biggest complaints of the offseason, that the Giants did "nothing" to improve, particularly in the offense. That is just not true, just because you kept the same players as you ended the season does not mean that you did "nothing" to upgrade the offense. Particularly if they would have examined the projections and the actual 2010 Giants stats, one would clearly see that the Giants did not stand pat, they didn't stand pat mid-2010 and those changes reverberate in the 2011 team roster and lineup.
These are the Giants overall offensive production by position from 2010:
What people are missing is that there was a lot of non-productive PA in 2010 that went to people no longer with the team or who won't be playing there much in 2011. The infield has plenty of upside. Bengie Molina spent a lot of time at C, 212 PA, bringing down the stats with his .264/.321/.342/.663 batting line. Buster Posey should hit much better than .274/.333/.430/.764. Both Travis Ishikawa and Pablo Sandoval stunk up 1B offensively in 2010, 161 PA, but neither should do as much in 2011. Juan Uribe hurt 3B with his 88 PA and .215/.295/.329/.625 batting line. In addition, Pablo Sandoval should do much better than his .268/.323/.414/.737 at 3B in 2010. He is in Kung Fu Fighting form this spring and I hope the Giants can sign him to an extension this spring.
The outfield also has upside. Aaron Rowand had 332 PA in CF, batting .230/.278/.369/.647; Andres Torres would have to fall a lot from his overall .268/.343/.479/.823 batting line and .264/.321/.489/.810 in CF to not improve on the .250/.304/.434/.738 we got from CF in 2010. And as down a season Cody Ross the Boss had in 2010 before joining the Giants, it still wasn't as bad as the overall .246/.314/.393/.708 we got in RF in 2010, and that includes Ross' .353/.353/.529/.882 he added to the RF mix. Even in a down year he hit .269/.322/.413/.735 and his strikeout and walk rates were right in line with his prior good seasons. What was missing, for some reason, was his power, his ISO, XBH%, X/H% were all down, same for his HR/FB until he joined the Giants, but even with that boost, his XBH% was not that great with the Giants.
The only spot that is looking like a pretty sure regression to the mean is LF with .264/.365/.485/.850, only because it is so high and Pat Burrell was just so bad before joining the Giants. However, I would note that Burrell's .266/.364/.509/.872 for the Giants in 2010 is basically that which he delivered in Philly's offensive homepark prior to his Tampa Bay crash and burn:
The Giants Did Not Stand Pat
The Giants are not standing still, or worse yet, regressing. Sure, there are some regressions, but for the most part, they are mild. Few project Huff to beat that 1B batting line, but most have him right around .800 OPS, so I would call that a push. Same for Freddy Sanchez at 2B, most have his just under the .734 OPS 2B delivered in 2010. Same goes for SS and Miguel Tejada, again, just under the .736 OPS SS delivered in 2010.
However, Buster Posey is projected to easily beat .800 OPS in 2011 and despite Pablo Sandoval's poor 2010, most projections still have him producing easily over .800 OPS in 2011. Both would be huge jumps over 2010. Same for Andres Torres in CF, most projections are for high 700 or around 800 OPS in 2011, also a huge jump on 2010's CF. Cody Ross is projected for mid-700 OPS in 2011, a big boost over 2010's RF totals. Any one of these improvements would make up for the projected loss in LF and the slight drops in the infield positions. Plus then there is Brandon Belt coming up something mid-season if he's an improvement. People are missing these huge improvements over 2010's overall offense while focusing on the older players plus not realizing that there is not much regression versus what the Giants produced at those positions in 2010.
Run Score Per Game Improvement
I plugged in the OBP and SLG, projected by a number of different well known sources of such information, into the lineup calculator and the majority of them have the team much improved over their 4.30 RS/game in 2010:
Bill James = 4.74 (been known to be high)
Baseball Forecaster (Ron Shandler) = 4.56 (I like their system because it takes age and minors into account)
ZIPS = 4.52
Marcel = 4.46
Baseball Prospectus = 4.28 (no wonder they don't like Giants every year, it seems, and demanded that Brian Sabean be fired in their 2010 annual; I wonder what they will put in their 2011 annual)
With the Giants 3.77 RA that they had in 2009 (assuming some sort of regression from 2010's 3.60 RA), the Giants would win 90 games with BP's low 4.28 RS/game and 96-7 games with Bill James calculated RS. With Shandler/ZIPS mid forecast: 93-94 wins in 2011. And if the Giants pitching hold up the way I think they will, and repeat their 3.60 RA from 2010 (remember, there is potential for improvement because of the loss of Wellemeyer and the poor relievers), that works out to 93 wins, 99-100 wins, and 96-97 wins.
Projections Are Naturally Conservative
I would note that these projections' assumptions include areas for upside because projections are naturally conservative in nature. An average Pablo Sandoval, for example, is projected. If he returns to Pandoval of 2009, that is another boost to RS and wins (2 addition wins with ZIPS projections plus another win with move to #3 position, pushing to 99 wins). Same for Burrell and Huff. If either or both return to 2010's form, those are boosts to the RS and wins as well and probably adds about 1-2 wins as well. Same for Posey, if he hits more like his mid-season form than second half form, that would add 1-2 wins as well.
Then there is the wildcard in the lineup: Brandon Belt. He is not even in the lineup and most projections have him over 800 OPS. If he comes up and delivers that, he could take over 1B, shove Huff to the OF, and either Burrell or Ross out of the starting lineup (Torres or Huff as well if either isn't producing). It could become like last year's "every day is a new lineup" situation. That would also add 1-2 win, particularly considering how well he fields 1B.
And remember, these projections include the projected drops for the older players, so if the players do not drop in performance as the projections assumes older players will, those will be improvements as well. Plus, if Belt crushes AAA, that could even force Cody Ross out of the starting lineup, as someone (between Huff and Belt) would move into LF, pushing out Burrell,
However: Not For 162 Games
Of course, the caveat here is that this will not be our lineup for 162 games. Posey is not going to start every game, they will need to give him some rest during the season where Whiteside will start, and will of course bring the RS down. He might not even meet his projections, he only hit .283/.340/.472/.812 in the second half (which could have been because of the stamina problem he had in 2010, as the Giants had said he might, and which he talked about in a recent interview, but what if it was not, that it was his true level?). The older guys like Huff, Sanchez, Burrell, Tejada, and Torres could suddenly become injury prone, like we saw with Durham and Renteria. Sandoval could hit more potholes that sets him back to 2010's form. That would reduce the number of wins by 1-2, maybe more if a lot of hitters are under-performing.
Offense Looks Ready to Produce 90-100 Wins and More Importantly Win NL West
Still, given how high the projections are on the Giants offense, which, combined with the pitching of 2008 or 2009, still leads to 90-100 wins, the team looks capable of withstanding some injuries and poor performances and still win enough games to easily win the division. 90 wins looks like a gimme for this Giants team, even with injuries, and yet the teams below them did not do much to improve themselves and only SD had 90 wins out of them in 2010 and while they added nice pieces, really, they got rid of A-Gon and I think that is all you have to say about their chances, but then on top of that they lost Garland and didn't get anyone who should replace that great performance, they are hoping Harang rebounds, but the odds don't look good there.
The other two pretenders - LA and COL - are flawed in ways that many miss. The way people are blind to the Giants offensive improvements over 2010, they are similarly blind to the D-gers lack of offensive improvements now that they are Manny-less. Colorado stood pat as well, but because many of their players are young, the assumption is onward and upward, but can they make up so many games behind (8 wins, according to Pythagorean) based on that?
LA's Offense Suspect, Not Giants
Many are touting the D-gers because of all the pitching they added (though they just lost one in Vicente Padilla), and yes, they did improve their pitching signing Ted Lilly and Jon Garland, but just because they now have a pretty good rotation (still not up there with the Giants, in my opinion) does not absolve them of not improving their offense, which nobody picks up on and yet harangues the 2011 Giants over and over again when that is not even true. It is like people's impression of offense is based on how the team was in early 2010. Adding Juan Uribe is an improvement at 2B for the D-gers, but the Giants have equal if not better chances to improve with Huff, Burrell, Sandoval, and Posey. And he is certainly no replacement for Manny Ramirez, and neither is Jay Gibbons or Marcus Thames.
And nobody is looking at the post-Manny D-ger offense: in the second half of 2010, they averaged 3.30 runs scored per game! Even the Giants pitching can't win with that putrid an offense. And as I noted, the D-gers didn't really add anyone really good to their lineup, Uribe is a nice cog, but nothing more, they needed someone like Huff or Burrell in the lineup, not Uribe. Right now James Loney is their projected #5 hitter, and he would be pushed down to 7th or 8th in the Giants lineup.
Colorado Has A Lot of Games to Make Up, Yet Also Stands Pat
I don't see anyone saying that Colorado is standing pat, but they basically are like the Giants, doing that. I understand that because they have a young lineup, there is upside, plus they have Troy Tulowitzki and Carlos Gonzalez. Same for the rotation and pitching staff in whole. However, they are depending on both Tulo and CarGon to hit like that again, plus lost Miguel Olivo, who hit much better than Iannetta, so the rest of the lineup will have to make up for that, though perhaps Jose Lopez might do that at 2B. Still, Todd Helton isn't getting younger either, if people are going to blast the Giants older vets. And Brad Hawpe is now 32, if he even still have a role.
And the pitching is relying on starters who either need to rebound or prove that 2010 wasn't a fluke. Jason Hammel and Aaron Cook had pretty bad years, yet to match the Giants rotation (probably Zito and Bumgarner), both would have to do much better PLUS Ubaldo Jimenez would have to repeat his year, which he couldn't even do in the second half: 2.20 ERA first half, 3.80 ERA second half.
And as well as Jhoulys Chacin did, his K/BB isn't as superlative as his 3.28 ERA, suggesting some regression in 2011. Looking at his splits, he had a 4.09 ERA with .299 BABIP in the first half, 2.24 ERA with .278 BABIP in the second half, but virtually identical K/BB of 2.29 and 2.23, respectively. In other words, his great season was largely the result of a lowered BABIP, and he will have to prove that he's one of the rare pitchers who can do that consistently. Obviously, the odds are against him.
On top of that, only Jimenez pitched a full season in 2010, though Hammel was close with 30 starts. The rest will be stretched in 2011 to pitch a full 32 game season. And their #3 starter, Jorge de la Rosa, is roughly equal to Barry Zito, arguably the worse starter in the Giants rotation. And he has only pitched a full season in 2009 plus 2010 was his best season ever in six seasons, career 5.02 ERA, so he would be hard pressed just to match Zito in 2011 most probably.
On top of that, they need to make up 8 wins in performance when you look at Pythagorean. The Giants were at 94 while the Rox were at 86. As good a crop of young players they got, they stood pat needing to make up 8 wins, while assuming repeat peak performances and that the older players don't decline drastically.
Giants Have Risk Mitigation Backup Plans
The Giants look very capable of beating out the main NL West contenders. Their conservative projections for the lineup already adds up to 90+ wins, get a few probable plus production from Sandoval, Posey, Huff, Burrell, and that puts him ahead of last year's win total. Meanwhile, the other teams have not addressed the weaknesses that they had and/or are hoping for good performances in order to compete, and that is a house of cards that falls down if their hoped for good performance don't come, there is no backup plan for them.
The Giants, on the other hand, has a number of backup plans. Their rotation is so good overall that they could lose anyone and not be set back as badly as, say, St. Louis or Phillies would. With a poor #5 overall - Randy Johnson, Ryan Sadowski, Joe Martinez, and Brad Penny - in 2009, they still had a 3.77 RA/game. They can easily pick up a #5 type starter for peanuts and try to upgrade with a mid-season trade. Relievers, they got Mota, Dan Runzler, Marc Kroon, Waldis Joaquin, and others waiting in AAA.
The only position where the Giants would be stuck is at catcher and cleanup should Posey ever be out. 1B could field Huff, Belt, Sandoval, DeRosa, in that order. 2B, Franchez, DeRosa, then probably Culberson or Crawford. 3B, Sandoval, DeRosa. SS would probably field Crawford after Tejada, but really not expecting much out of SS offensively right now, so shouldn't be big drop, Tejeda looks like #8 hitter if Sandoval gets bumped to #3 with his hitting returning. And obviously, we have a lot of candidates in the outfield, Torres, Burrell, Ross, Huff, Belt, DeRosa, Schierholtz, Rowand, Ishikawa, Thomas Neal.
The Giants are covered in a lot of different situations. This is the risk mitigation strategy that they have been using the past couple of seasons
These are the Giants overall offensive production by position from 2010:
| Split | tOPS+ | sOPS+ | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| as C | .274 | .333 | .430 | .764 | .293 | 109 | 117 |
| as 1B | .291 | .357 | .457 | .815 | .322 | 123 | 103 |
| as 2B | .283 | .338 | .396 | .734 | .320 | 102 | 104 |
| as 3B | .262 | .321 | .401 | .722 | .289 | 98 | 95 |
| as SS | .260 | .318 | .419 | .736 | .282 | 102 | 112 |
| as LF | .264 | .365 | .485 | .850 | .292 | 133 | 121 |
| as CF | .250 | .304 | .434 | .738 | .294 | 101 | 100 |
| as RF | .246 | .314 | .393 | .708 | .282 | 94 | 81 |
| as DH | .091 | .167 | .227 | .394 | .059 | 8 | 4 |
| as P | .122 | .144 | .135 | .278 | .210 | -22 | 60 |
| as PH | .262 | .343 | .401 | .744 | .305 | 105 | 133 |
| as Infield | .274 | .334 | .421 | .754 | .301 | 107 | 106 |
| as Outfield | .253 | .328 | .437 | .764 | .289 | 109 | 100 |
| at Def. Pos. | .267 | .323 | .420 | .743 | .298 | 104 | 108 |
| at Off. Pos. | .266 | .340 | .434 | .773 | .296 | 112 | 100 |
What people are missing is that there was a lot of non-productive PA in 2010 that went to people no longer with the team or who won't be playing there much in 2011. The infield has plenty of upside. Bengie Molina spent a lot of time at C, 212 PA, bringing down the stats with his .264/.321/.342/.663 batting line. Buster Posey should hit much better than .274/.333/.430/.764. Both Travis Ishikawa and Pablo Sandoval stunk up 1B offensively in 2010, 161 PA, but neither should do as much in 2011. Juan Uribe hurt 3B with his 88 PA and .215/.295/.329/.625 batting line. In addition, Pablo Sandoval should do much better than his .268/.323/.414/.737 at 3B in 2010. He is in Kung Fu Fighting form this spring and I hope the Giants can sign him to an extension this spring.
The outfield also has upside. Aaron Rowand had 332 PA in CF, batting .230/.278/.369/.647; Andres Torres would have to fall a lot from his overall .268/.343/.479/.823 batting line and .264/.321/.489/.810 in CF to not improve on the .250/.304/.434/.738 we got from CF in 2010. And as down a season Cody Ross the Boss had in 2010 before joining the Giants, it still wasn't as bad as the overall .246/.314/.393/.708 we got in RF in 2010, and that includes Ross' .353/.353/.529/.882 he added to the RF mix. Even in a down year he hit .269/.322/.413/.735 and his strikeout and walk rates were right in line with his prior good seasons. What was missing, for some reason, was his power, his ISO, XBH%, X/H% were all down, same for his HR/FB until he joined the Giants, but even with that boost, his XBH% was not that great with the Giants.
The only spot that is looking like a pretty sure regression to the mean is LF with .264/.365/.485/.850, only because it is so high and Pat Burrell was just so bad before joining the Giants. However, I would note that Burrell's .266/.364/.509/.872 for the Giants in 2010 is basically that which he delivered in Philly's offensive homepark prior to his Tampa Bay crash and burn:
| Year | Tm | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 | PHI | .281 | .389 | .504 | .892 | 128 |
| 2006 | PHI | .258 | .388 | .502 | .890 | 122 |
| 2007 | PHI | .256 | .400 | .502 | .902 | 128 |
| 2008 | PHI | .250 | .367 | .507 | .875 | 125 |
| 2009 | TBR | .221 | .315 | .367 | .682 | 81 |
| 2010 | TOT | .252 | .348 | .469 | .817 | 119 |
| 2010 | TBR | .202 | .292 | .333 | .625 | 74 |
| 2010 | SFG | .266 | .364 | .509 | .872 | 132 |
The Giants Did Not Stand Pat
The Giants are not standing still, or worse yet, regressing. Sure, there are some regressions, but for the most part, they are mild. Few project Huff to beat that 1B batting line, but most have him right around .800 OPS, so I would call that a push. Same for Freddy Sanchez at 2B, most have his just under the .734 OPS 2B delivered in 2010. Same goes for SS and Miguel Tejada, again, just under the .736 OPS SS delivered in 2010.
However, Buster Posey is projected to easily beat .800 OPS in 2011 and despite Pablo Sandoval's poor 2010, most projections still have him producing easily over .800 OPS in 2011. Both would be huge jumps over 2010. Same for Andres Torres in CF, most projections are for high 700 or around 800 OPS in 2011, also a huge jump on 2010's CF. Cody Ross is projected for mid-700 OPS in 2011, a big boost over 2010's RF totals. Any one of these improvements would make up for the projected loss in LF and the slight drops in the infield positions. Plus then there is Brandon Belt coming up something mid-season if he's an improvement. People are missing these huge improvements over 2010's overall offense while focusing on the older players plus not realizing that there is not much regression versus what the Giants produced at those positions in 2010.
Run Score Per Game Improvement
I plugged in the OBP and SLG, projected by a number of different well known sources of such information, into the lineup calculator and the majority of them have the team much improved over their 4.30 RS/game in 2010:
Bill James = 4.74 (been known to be high)
Baseball Forecaster (Ron Shandler) = 4.56 (I like their system because it takes age and minors into account)
ZIPS = 4.52
Marcel = 4.46
Baseball Prospectus = 4.28 (no wonder they don't like Giants every year, it seems, and demanded that Brian Sabean be fired in their 2010 annual; I wonder what they will put in their 2011 annual)
With the Giants 3.77 RA that they had in 2009 (assuming some sort of regression from 2010's 3.60 RA), the Giants would win 90 games with BP's low 4.28 RS/game and 96-7 games with Bill James calculated RS. With Shandler/ZIPS mid forecast: 93-94 wins in 2011. And if the Giants pitching hold up the way I think they will, and repeat their 3.60 RA from 2010 (remember, there is potential for improvement because of the loss of Wellemeyer and the poor relievers), that works out to 93 wins, 99-100 wins, and 96-97 wins.
Projections Are Naturally Conservative
I would note that these projections' assumptions include areas for upside because projections are naturally conservative in nature. An average Pablo Sandoval, for example, is projected. If he returns to Pandoval of 2009, that is another boost to RS and wins (2 addition wins with ZIPS projections plus another win with move to #3 position, pushing to 99 wins). Same for Burrell and Huff. If either or both return to 2010's form, those are boosts to the RS and wins as well and probably adds about 1-2 wins as well. Same for Posey, if he hits more like his mid-season form than second half form, that would add 1-2 wins as well.
Then there is the wildcard in the lineup: Brandon Belt. He is not even in the lineup and most projections have him over 800 OPS. If he comes up and delivers that, he could take over 1B, shove Huff to the OF, and either Burrell or Ross out of the starting lineup (Torres or Huff as well if either isn't producing). It could become like last year's "every day is a new lineup" situation. That would also add 1-2 win, particularly considering how well he fields 1B.
And remember, these projections include the projected drops for the older players, so if the players do not drop in performance as the projections assumes older players will, those will be improvements as well. Plus, if Belt crushes AAA, that could even force Cody Ross out of the starting lineup, as someone (between Huff and Belt) would move into LF, pushing out Burrell,
However: Not For 162 Games
Of course, the caveat here is that this will not be our lineup for 162 games. Posey is not going to start every game, they will need to give him some rest during the season where Whiteside will start, and will of course bring the RS down. He might not even meet his projections, he only hit .283/.340/.472/.812 in the second half (which could have been because of the stamina problem he had in 2010, as the Giants had said he might, and which he talked about in a recent interview, but what if it was not, that it was his true level?). The older guys like Huff, Sanchez, Burrell, Tejada, and Torres could suddenly become injury prone, like we saw with Durham and Renteria. Sandoval could hit more potholes that sets him back to 2010's form. That would reduce the number of wins by 1-2, maybe more if a lot of hitters are under-performing.
Offense Looks Ready to Produce 90-100 Wins and More Importantly Win NL West
Still, given how high the projections are on the Giants offense, which, combined with the pitching of 2008 or 2009, still leads to 90-100 wins, the team looks capable of withstanding some injuries and poor performances and still win enough games to easily win the division. 90 wins looks like a gimme for this Giants team, even with injuries, and yet the teams below them did not do much to improve themselves and only SD had 90 wins out of them in 2010 and while they added nice pieces, really, they got rid of A-Gon and I think that is all you have to say about their chances, but then on top of that they lost Garland and didn't get anyone who should replace that great performance, they are hoping Harang rebounds, but the odds don't look good there.
The other two pretenders - LA and COL - are flawed in ways that many miss. The way people are blind to the Giants offensive improvements over 2010, they are similarly blind to the D-gers lack of offensive improvements now that they are Manny-less. Colorado stood pat as well, but because many of their players are young, the assumption is onward and upward, but can they make up so many games behind (8 wins, according to Pythagorean) based on that?
LA's Offense Suspect, Not Giants
Many are touting the D-gers because of all the pitching they added (though they just lost one in Vicente Padilla), and yes, they did improve their pitching signing Ted Lilly and Jon Garland, but just because they now have a pretty good rotation (still not up there with the Giants, in my opinion) does not absolve them of not improving their offense, which nobody picks up on and yet harangues the 2011 Giants over and over again when that is not even true. It is like people's impression of offense is based on how the team was in early 2010. Adding Juan Uribe is an improvement at 2B for the D-gers, but the Giants have equal if not better chances to improve with Huff, Burrell, Sandoval, and Posey. And he is certainly no replacement for Manny Ramirez, and neither is Jay Gibbons or Marcus Thames.
And nobody is looking at the post-Manny D-ger offense: in the second half of 2010, they averaged 3.30 runs scored per game! Even the Giants pitching can't win with that putrid an offense. And as I noted, the D-gers didn't really add anyone really good to their lineup, Uribe is a nice cog, but nothing more, they needed someone like Huff or Burrell in the lineup, not Uribe. Right now James Loney is their projected #5 hitter, and he would be pushed down to 7th or 8th in the Giants lineup.
Colorado Has A Lot of Games to Make Up, Yet Also Stands Pat
I don't see anyone saying that Colorado is standing pat, but they basically are like the Giants, doing that. I understand that because they have a young lineup, there is upside, plus they have Troy Tulowitzki and Carlos Gonzalez. Same for the rotation and pitching staff in whole. However, they are depending on both Tulo and CarGon to hit like that again, plus lost Miguel Olivo, who hit much better than Iannetta, so the rest of the lineup will have to make up for that, though perhaps Jose Lopez might do that at 2B. Still, Todd Helton isn't getting younger either, if people are going to blast the Giants older vets. And Brad Hawpe is now 32, if he even still have a role.
And the pitching is relying on starters who either need to rebound or prove that 2010 wasn't a fluke. Jason Hammel and Aaron Cook had pretty bad years, yet to match the Giants rotation (probably Zito and Bumgarner), both would have to do much better PLUS Ubaldo Jimenez would have to repeat his year, which he couldn't even do in the second half: 2.20 ERA first half, 3.80 ERA second half.
And as well as Jhoulys Chacin did, his K/BB isn't as superlative as his 3.28 ERA, suggesting some regression in 2011. Looking at his splits, he had a 4.09 ERA with .299 BABIP in the first half, 2.24 ERA with .278 BABIP in the second half, but virtually identical K/BB of 2.29 and 2.23, respectively. In other words, his great season was largely the result of a lowered BABIP, and he will have to prove that he's one of the rare pitchers who can do that consistently. Obviously, the odds are against him.
On top of that, only Jimenez pitched a full season in 2010, though Hammel was close with 30 starts. The rest will be stretched in 2011 to pitch a full 32 game season. And their #3 starter, Jorge de la Rosa, is roughly equal to Barry Zito, arguably the worse starter in the Giants rotation. And he has only pitched a full season in 2009 plus 2010 was his best season ever in six seasons, career 5.02 ERA, so he would be hard pressed just to match Zito in 2011 most probably.
On top of that, they need to make up 8 wins in performance when you look at Pythagorean. The Giants were at 94 while the Rox were at 86. As good a crop of young players they got, they stood pat needing to make up 8 wins, while assuming repeat peak performances and that the older players don't decline drastically.
Giants Have Risk Mitigation Backup Plans
The Giants look very capable of beating out the main NL West contenders. Their conservative projections for the lineup already adds up to 90+ wins, get a few probable plus production from Sandoval, Posey, Huff, Burrell, and that puts him ahead of last year's win total. Meanwhile, the other teams have not addressed the weaknesses that they had and/or are hoping for good performances in order to compete, and that is a house of cards that falls down if their hoped for good performance don't come, there is no backup plan for them.
The Giants, on the other hand, has a number of backup plans. Their rotation is so good overall that they could lose anyone and not be set back as badly as, say, St. Louis or Phillies would. With a poor #5 overall - Randy Johnson, Ryan Sadowski, Joe Martinez, and Brad Penny - in 2009, they still had a 3.77 RA/game. They can easily pick up a #5 type starter for peanuts and try to upgrade with a mid-season trade. Relievers, they got Mota, Dan Runzler, Marc Kroon, Waldis Joaquin, and others waiting in AAA.
The only position where the Giants would be stuck is at catcher and cleanup should Posey ever be out. 1B could field Huff, Belt, Sandoval, DeRosa, in that order. 2B, Franchez, DeRosa, then probably Culberson or Crawford. 3B, Sandoval, DeRosa. SS would probably field Crawford after Tejada, but really not expecting much out of SS offensively right now, so shouldn't be big drop, Tejeda looks like #8 hitter if Sandoval gets bumped to #3 with his hitting returning. And obviously, we have a lot of candidates in the outfield, Torres, Burrell, Ross, Huff, Belt, DeRosa, Schierholtz, Rowand, Ishikawa, Thomas Neal.
The Giants are covered in a lot of different situations. This is the risk mitigation strategy that they have been using the past couple of seasons
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)