Hey Zaidi! My Giants Business Plan: Great Team Overall Defense for Playoff Success

A key component of competitive advantage in MLB baseball is preventing runs from scoring, via both pitching and fielding. Baseball is tough enough to win without giving away runs via errors or unforced leadoff walks that eventually score.  Defense is both playoff win effective and win efficient.

Defense is Playoff Win Effective

As commonsense as this is, it has been shown in a study that good team  defense in the regular season is related to playoff success. Baseball Prospectus, it its book, "Baseball Between the Numbers", Chapter 9.3, "Why Billy Beane's S**t Doesn't Work In The Playoffs," studied the issue of success in going deep into the playoffs, and found that good defense, covering pitching and fielding, using their proprietary measure, is significantly associated with team success in the playoffs, from 1972 to 1995.  When ranked by an index of the three measures they determined to be key metrics, the Top 10 teams almost all not only made the World Series, but also won (and unfortunately for one of the teams, they lose because they faced off against another Top 10 team).

In addition, it found no correlation with going deep in the playoffs with any aspect of a playoff teams' offense.  The only metric that showed any promise of being connected with deep playoff runs was stolen base attempts, which suggests that speed is also connected with deep playoff runs.  And, obviously, speed is generally tied to good team fielding defense, as well.

Fangraphs/THT also had a playoff success study (published in 2004) and that too confirmed what Baseball Prospectus found, that offense was not tied with winning in the playoffs, and that defense was tied.  And, as the article noted:  "the most striking thing about this list is that it supports the old adages: you win in the post-season with pitching, fielding, and speed. Eleven of the 12 most important categories (by this crude measure) demonstrate skill on the mound, in the field and on the bases."

Overall, if any team wants to maximize their chances in the playoffs, you have to have good team defense, both pitching and defense.

Defense is Playoff Win Efficient

The Hardball Times showed in a past article that each run given up results in an exponential rise in the number of runs scored to maintain the same winning percentage.  This has implications regarding running a team efficiently as well as effectively.

And this is what Zaidi espoused in his interview with Ray Woodson in Ray's  Triple Alley podcast (episode 10), that your goal is quality if not elite defense, in order to support a low run environment that playing at ATT results in.  And as seen below, keeping scoring down means that you don't have to score as many runs in order to win 90 games.

To contend for a division regularly, you need to win at around a .556 percentage, or 90 wins per season, or higher. If a team can keep their runs allowed at 4.00, they need to score 4.53 runs per game to regularly contend, for example. Here is a table of what happens as runs allowed rises from 3.50 to 4.50 (average RS is 4.37, and average RA is 4.34):

RA	RS	NL 2018 RA Rank	NL 2018 RS Rank
3.50	3.96	-	12
3.60	4.08	-	12
3.70	4.19	-	12
3.80	4.30	1	10
3.90	4.41	1	7
4.00	4.53	3	7
4.10	4.64	5	7
4.20	4.75	5	3
4.30	4.87	8	1
4.40	4.98	10	1
4.50	5.09	11	-
+0.1	+0.11

As one can see, for every extra 0.1 runs allowed, the team needs to score slightly more than 0.11 runs in order to win 90 games in a season.  Which means that winning becomes more efficient in terms of winning 90 games, as your overall defense - pitching and fielding - becomes better, as reducing RA by 0.1 means you can score -0.11 runs less to win the same 90 games.

I also provided where that offense (RS) and pitching (RA) would have ranked in 2018 in the NL on a runs scored and runs allowed basis. In this run environment, 4.2 runs allowed is the tipping point, once a team goes below that, their offense no longer has to be in the top 3.  From 3.8 to 4.1 the team can be in the middle of the pack offensively, in order to win 90 games.  This shows that an elite team in terms of defense can win with a middling offense.

And the reduction in need for runs scored as runs allowed becomes good and then elite, means that dollar for dollar, if a team lead (GM or President) is looking at either buying a 2 WAR pitcher or 2 WAR hitter who provides zero value defensively, they ultimately buy more wins by getting the pitcher (since adding him would reduce RA, assuming he's replacing a 0 WAR pitcher, a team ends up with more wins per Pythagorean, than adding the hitter who would increase RS, assuming he replaces a 0 WAR hitter).  This is never accounted for whenever there is analysis of the number of wins a player adds when acquired.

2019 Giants Potential

The 2018 Giants is a misnomer.  The team's offense was vastly different in the final months, than it was earlier, when they had everyone around, and different from the first month, as some players were not producing.  Overall, the 2018 Giants averaged 3.72 runs scored per game.  But in the first half, 4.07 RS.  Cutting out poor bad first week or so (Kershaw etc.), and over the next 93 games, averaged 4.23 RS per game (close to NL average of 4.37).

And there is potential for better.  For May-June, the team averaged 4.40 RS per game (55 games).  And their peak, from late April to July 1st (61 games), they averaged 4.61 RS per game.

The 2018 pitching was different too.  With pitchers going up and down, the pitching settled down by June, and from June to August, covering 80 games, the team had a 3.26 ERA and 3.56 RA average per game.  If they can do that over a full season, given enough rest and better handling, the offense only has to average 4.03 RS per game, which it did over the first half of the 2018 season, before all the injuries caught up with the offense at the end.

And there is potential for more offense, and thus allows for a lot of regression on the part of the pitching For example, at 4.40 RS, which the Giants averaged with much of the lineup healthy, only requires an RA of 3.89 to win 90 games, almost 10% worse than what the team did for three months.  From July to end of season, they had 3.96 RA over 106 games, and subtracting Cueto and Samardzija from July, that's 3.85 RA over the 100 games.

So the pitching staff as currently constituted, now that Holland has been re-signed, was able to maintain a 3.85 RA over a four month period (and now Pomeranz and Samardzija is in the rotation, not Suarez and Stratton), so it does not seem to be a huge stretch to try to reach a full season in 2019, especially if you assume some growth from the overall group of Rodriquez, Suarez, Moronta, and Black, plus young pitchers, which basically is half the pitching staff.

While D-Rod will regress, Suarez's advanced stats suggest a much better performance, Moronta and Black should learn, and a variety of young pitchers on the roster appears ready to take an MLB role.

Conclusion

Thus, having the best defense around is the major key to efficient winning, each run given up has exponential consequences on the need for runs scored, each run you keep from scoring means that you need to have as good an offense in order to be competitive. A good defense is better than a good offense, because you each extra 10 runs you give up, you need to score 11 runs to keep the same winning percentage when you are shooting for 90 wins.  In addition, good defensive teams have historically had deeper runs in the playoffs than good offensive teams. 

Defense, overall, helps teams in a variety of ways, including, mostly importantly, winning a World Series.

Your 2014 Giants: Frantic Fans

The season is early yet and I've seen despondent fans upset over a variety of players.  I thought I would go through some of them.

ogc thoughts

Things got tough, but really, it is just early season where the slightest losing streak starts the Chicken Littles squawking that the sky is falling.

Starting Rotation

Rough start, but things are turning around after initial hiccups.  Overall, their PQS is 40% DOM/28% DIS.  40% is good but not great and great is what gets us into the playoffs. It was in the 60% range when we were winning titles.  28% DIS is horrible, it has to be in the teens for us to get into the playoffs, most probably.  However, if you remove that first five starts, where there was a lot of disaster starts, we are at 45% DOM/20% DIS, which is better but not there yet.  Still, on the right trend, but plenty of games to be played still, 137 to be exact in the regular season, no need to panic.

Leading the team, no surprise, is Hudson at 60% DOM and 0% DIS.  Cain, Bumgarner, and Lincecum each are at 40% DOM (Cain is at 20% DIS, the other two at 40% DIS).  Vogelsong has only 20% DOM and 40% DIS.

Why did I remove the first starts?  Players are human, and first starts, particularly opening day starts, can put the jitters into the best of us, like Bumgarner.  Since that first start, Bumgarner is 50% DOM/25% DIS, Cain 50% DOM/0% DIS, Hudson 50% DOM/0% DIS, Lincecum 50% DOM/50% DIS, and Vogelsong 25% DOM/25% DIS.  All looking much better and gives a hint at what they are capable of if there was an early hiccup, which I believe it was.  But when the hiccup happens in start 1 instead of start 21, then people get their feathers ruffled.

Starting Over

I'll use that as a jumping point into Lincecum and Sandoval.  I've giving each a lot of rope right now.  Both are trying to change how they play baseball.  And as I've noted before in my references to Malcolm Gladwell's article about learning and where sports is a key topic area, when a player is learning, he's lost a lot of muscle memory and he's trying to get to a level of muscle memory where he can just act and not think about what he should do next.  I don't know when it will end but both are clearly working hard to improve their command so that their walks are more indicative of a good player (low for a pitcher, high for a hitter).  And both are in a good spot right now with that peripheral.

In Lincecum's case, he's trying to be more precise with his pitches, getting more strikes while avoiding balls.  His previous low in a season was 2.7 BB/9 and he is at 3.5 BB/9 for his career.  So far this season, he's at 2.1 BB/9.  As a result, he's at his highest K/BB for his career, 4.50 this season, high of 3.84 previously.  The best pitchers are at 2.4 and higher.  He should be fine if he can continue this high K/BB ratio.

However, when you are learning to do something new, mistakes are more often, and thus his HR/9 is at 2.1 right now and H/9 is at 12.6.  At least he is improving, as in his last three starts:  1.1 HR/9, 12.1 H/9, while 2.9 BB/9 and only 8.6 K/9 but still 3.00 K/BB, for a 3.45 ERA.  But clearly, as his last start showed, he's still working out the kinks.  But I would say that things are promising for him, and we can tolerate this while we are winning.  I expect a good season out of him eventually, but it would have been foolhardy to think that there wouldn't be any bumps in the road.

In Sandoval's case, apparently this is the season he listens to other people.  He has already said that he lost weight his off-season because Posey (among others) came to him and told him he needed to get into shape to best help the team, and so he did.  In addition, there has been many references to his talk with Miguel Cabrera, a fellow Venezuelan, where Miguel worked with him extensively and gave him a lot of coaching.  And his coaching hasn't ended, a recent blog post noted that Bam Bam is still working on him, so he's not out of the tunnel yet, he's still learning.  But he has taken a lot more walks that he normally would not have gotten, but he has also struck out a lot more too.  Again, I expect a good season out of him eventually, and as it seems to always be with the Panda, there are bumps in the road.

Slumping

And fans have been up and down on a number of hitters, from Sandoval to Pence, to Posey and now Belt.  Well, early in the season, it's easy to be whiplashed by the ups and downs of any number of players.  Pence is clearly on the up now, after being in the downs for a long time.  And the others have had their downs more lately, after starting hot.

The good sign for Pence, as well as Posey, is that both were not striking out that much, making contact with pitches, while also getting a lot of walks.  In fact, perhaps Pence was in learning mode too early on, as his SO% is very low 13.8% vs. previous low of 16.0% in 2010 and career 18.2% SO%, and his BB% is 11.9% vs. previous seasonal high of 9.0% in 2009 and career 7.5% BB%.  This is the closest Pence has been in his career to 1.00 BB/K, which only the best hitters achieve, plus the best contact rate in his career, at 84%, almost at the 85% contract rate the best hitters reach.

Posey is at 84% contact rate as well.  His SO% is at 14.3% for the season, very close to his career 13.8% and his 11.0% BB% is up there for the past two seasons, 11.3% in 2012 and 10.1% in 2013, leaving him at a very good BB/K ratio and good for his career.  His main issue appears to be his BABIP of .226 for the season, whereas his career is .330 and in full seasons like 2010 and 2013, his BABIP was in the .310-.315 range.  It appears that the BABIP gods are giving him payback for his great 2012 season where he had a .368 BABIP.  Given his good peripherals, I would not worry about Posey.

I wouldn't worry too much about Belt either.  As badly as he did over the weekend, for the past 2 weeks, he's still hitting .255/.314/.404/.718.  Mind you, that includes his golden sombrero yesterday and a horrid oh-fer-12 with 9 K's weekend series with the Indians.  That stuff happens sometimes and it looks worse when there hasn't been much season to base your impressions on.  But how soon people forget that at the beginning of the Cleveland series, his overall batting line was .299/.337/.563/.900.  As quickly as he stunk up the joint, he had been our top hitter for the first 22 games of the season, even during the streak where the offense wasn't doing much of anything, except, that is for him, who hit .367/.424/.500/.924 from April 15th to 22nd, while the team only scored 15 runs in those 8 games.  How soon fans forget and start crying like Chicken Little!

Meanwhile...

The other starters (Hicks, Crawford, Morse, Pagan) have pretty good overall offensive numbers (all at or above 134 OPS+; in fact, only Sandoval is low for his position, the next lowest is Pence at 123 OPS+ which is pretty good, a lineup with 7 hitters at 120+ OPS+ is going to score a lot of runs) and the bullpen, except for occasional hiccups, like yesterday, has been stellar, with a 2.13 ERA (and the starters have been OK with a 4.02 ERA).   Only the bench players have been struggling to hit, but Adrianza has a .909 OPS in 12 games as a sub (his 3 hit game helped a LOT though) and Blanco .708 OPS in 18 games as a sub.

So, overall, starting pitching could be a lot better but is at least good so far and improving, the hitting, while giving us a monster roller coaster ride, is actually in pretty great shape and should be good for the season, barring multiple injuries, and our bullpen has been superb, as it has usually been for most Sabean GMed teams.  Only our bench leaves things to be desired, but it is early for them and SSS really hurts badly early in the season for reserves.

Lookin' Goood!

Thus, no need for despondency, and not just because of the small winning streak we have, but because of all the facts above.  The sky was not falling, and still is not falling.  Keep the faith, the team has a strong offense that should keep the runs coming most times and the pitching should be good enough to keep enough runs from not scoring to keep the wins coming.  And the fielding defense is much improved this season, helping the pitching, at 12 DRS so far, which would be 78 DRS for the season, or roughly 8 wins gained from our defense, whereas last season we barely gained half a win.  I still like my prediction of 90+ wins and not being surprised if they end up at or above 95 wins.

Your 2013 Giants: Pitching and Fielding, Intertwined

I was thinking about the Giants, and how the pitching is having a down year when I realized that defense is also part of the equation.  Could that be part of the problem?

Offense is Offensive in Playoff Success

One of the major linchpins in my discussions about playoff success is the study by Baseball Prospectus that they published in their great book, "Baseball Between the Numbers" in their chapter, "Why Doesn't Billy Beane's Sh*t Work in the Playoffs?".  And I've been waiting to publish some of their work for a while now - had it written up - but now I can't find it after a recent clean-up for friends coming by.  So I'm going to wing it for once.

Scoring Runs Does Not Correlates with Postseason Success

In their study, BP correlated postseason success, using a value system that awarded points based on what a team did in the playoffs ultimately, with various baseball metrics.  The first important result:  while preventing runs correlates with postseason success, scoring runs does not.  They note:

There is literally no relationship between regular-season offense and postseason success in our data set; the correlation is 0.0014 - in other words, it doesn't exist.

Kind of hard to misinterpret that.

They also made the point that, oddly enough, it isn't that hard to detect:

• Since 1972, there have been 27 teams that made the postseason in spite of having below-average offenses.  Of these, seven won the World Series.  All of these seven had excellent pitching staffs.  It's hard to make the playoffs with a below-average offense unless you have an excellent pitching staff.
• Conversely, 20 teams have made the post-season with below-average run prevention.  None of them won the World Series, and only two even played for the championship.  16 of 20 lost their first playoff series.

Not only that, but no offensive measure turned out to have any significant factor, though stolen-base attempts have a slight, but statistically insignificant, positive relationship.

They did not speculate on what this means, but in my mind, there is a number of ways this can tie back to playoff success. To me, I view SBA as a general measure of the team's speed overall. Sure some managers just run, but generally, faster teams steal more, which indicates team speed. And team speed shows up not only in SBA, but in things that are not measured as well, such as baserunning effectiveness (taking extra base regularly), getting to balls as a defender, heck, getting on base more often too, as their BABIP should be higher.

Great Pitching Has Slight Advantage Over Great Hitting

BP studied this by going through baseball history for great pitching but average offense teams that played great offense but average pitching teams. They found that the great pitching team beat the great offense team more than expected, resulting in an extra win 2 to 3 percent of the time. That's not huge, but at least consistent with the above.

In addition, they correlated the top-three starting pitchers VORP and found that there was a higher correlation. This shows that it is especially important to have three great starters in the post-season.   They also did it for all starting pitcher VORP and it was even higher.  They speculate that this makes sense as teams often start four starters today and fifth starters are sometimes useful out of the bullpen.

Other Factoids From Study

• The performance of non-closer relievers is of very little importance in the post-season, generally.
• Highest correlation is opponents' batting average.  
• Avoiding walks doesn't seem to have much relationship with playoff success.  And it makes sense, better to walk the other team's best hitter than give up homer.

Final Results of the Study

BP identified three factors that have "the most fundamental and direct relationship" with playoff success:

• Closer WXRL
• Pitching staff strikeout rate
• FRAA (Fielding Runs Above Average)

These make sense.  As they note, "if you strike a batter out, you'll prevent him from doing any harm."  And striking out hitters becomes particularly important when facing good offenses that one normally see in the playoffs "because good hitters tend to tee off against finesse pitchers while losing some of their advantage against power pitchers who can throw an unhittable pitch."

And when you combine that with great fielding, it can become nearly impossible for opponents to get hits and generate rallies.  Of the 33 teams to win the World Series since 1972, only five had a below-average defense and none were truly bad.

BP did note that this is not a "secret sauce", as the effect of the three accounts for only 11% of playoff success.  As they wrote, "the majority of the time, it's plain old luck that prevails."

However, when a team has all three factors going well, "they can become quite powerful."  They ranked the 180 playoff teams in their study in each of these three categories.  What they found is that the teams that did the best overall in the three categories overall (creating a composite score) not only typically ended up in the World Series, but they also won it.  7 of the top 10 won the World Series.  In fact, two of the losing teams lost to one of the ten in the playoffs.  Taking out those two results would mean 7 of 8 teams won the World Series and all got in.

I had compiled where the Giants would have ranked among the Top 10, and as I noted, I lost my original writing and research.  However, I can say that the Giants were best in the majors in strikeout rate in 2010,  and I know that Brian Wilson was among the leaders in WRXL (though I cannot locate the stat anymore).  I still cannot find FRAA on BP, but using UZR as a proxy for it, the Giants had the best UZR in the majors in 2010, and especially so by UZR/150.  I would surmise that the Giants probably would have made the Top 10 list had I been able to figure out each ranking.

Meanwhile, the worse 10 in composite ranking did not make the World Series once.  They lost in the division series four times and in the championship series six times.  All together, these teams had a 16-35 record in the playoffs.

Giants Thoughts

As I've been noting for many years now, the Giants have been built in a way that maximizes  these factors and thus give them a competitive advantage in the playoffs, even if it is slight according to the study.  Offense gives ZERO advantage.

Thus, a good business person wanting to maximize his chances in the playoffs, and accepts that the BP study gives a blueprint for your strategy, would focus most of his or her energies into obtaining and developing a high strikeout pitching staff, developing a highly effective closer, and focusing on having a good defense.  Offense will be a secondary matter until that pitching is set up nicely.  That is, you focus your scarce resources - your first round draft pick - on pitching, pitching, and more pitching, then select hitters hoping that some develop more often due to good scouting.

That is what the Giants have done.  Sabean has forever focused on having good fielding teams and having a good closer.  The strikeout pitching staff came with the personnel he picked up, Lincecum, Sanchez, Wilson, though Cain and Bumgarner are no slouches either.  And Romo is excellent too.

They have not wasted a lot of first round draft picks on position players until after their pitching staff was full up with great starters and a great closer.  And they still picked up a good pitcher in Zack Wheeler in the draft after selecting Buster .

Instead, they have signed up veterans where they needed them, and left spots for their young position players who showed some potential of becoming a major league starter, whether it was Lance Niekro, Jason Ellison, Fred Lewis, Kevin Frandsen, Pablo Sandoval, Travis Ishikawa, Emmanuel Burriss, John Bowker, Nate Schierholtz.  And they traded away Bengie Molina when they thought that Buster Posey was ready.

Free agents are hit and miss (for example, most fans would have been for the Giants signing Carlos Beltran when he was available, but he's considered a lost contract now to the Mets), but when you have one of the best pitching and fielding teams in the majors, you do not have to generate much offense in order to win with this great defensive team.  So you can sit back and try different things with your offense and still be at least treading water overall, when you have this great pitching and fielding.

I don't know if the Giants offense will ever get started in 2011.  History says that it should, particularly once Sandoval starts hitting, but you never know when history says that these old players will finally hit the wall:  Andres Torres, Aubrey Huff, Pat Burrell, Miguel Tejada.  Even Cody Ross is a possibility there as well.

Impatience Can Cost Us A Better Future

But the point to me is that the Giants are set up nicely for the rest of the decade.  Better to not trade away some of that future in order to get into the playoffs in 2011, as that would hurt multiple years in the future when a young player would contribute value and at a cheaper price.   Just pick up spare parts like Bill Hall and see how they go.

Now, if I were in Milwaukee's shoes, yeah, I can see trading away everything to win now.  They did not plan out their team structure very well, and they were impatient a few years back too and traded away a lot of young players, and their best players will soon either go free agent or go past their prime years.  Their window is closing fast.

But the Giants look great in their pitching staff for the long run and the position players are looking nice as well, in a couple of years.  The team should start to gel, both offense and defense, in a year or two, at which point we could start thinking about a long-term dynasty similar to the late 90's Yankees.   How good is a team that could lose a Tim Lincecum or Matt Cain and not skip too big of a beat?

It's not that I think offense is totally useless, it is just that offense NOW, at the cost of reducing the chances of a great future, is not a tradeoff I would take.  This is just a resource decision that I disagree with, we need the young players for the future, assuming the Giants consider them untouchables.  That tradeoff is a position that people who do not believe in this great future would take, because they just cannot see how great our future can be.

Sticks and Stones

Call me whatever names under the sun, but until I see something LOGICAL and backed by baseball studies, I'm not changing my position.  Sabean may not be perfect, but I'm not looking for perfect.  And any Naysayer clearly outs themselves by pointing out all Sabean's mistakes:  the point of your GM is not to avoid mistakes, it is to put together a great team capable of winning it all, warts, mistakes, and all.  The longer a GM has been in charge, the longer the laundry list of mistakes.  The Big Picture is what the future looks like, in spite of the mistakes along the way (and not all his doing either, like Barry Zito and probably the Pierzynski trade)

I love the makeup of the Giants pitching staff and farm system that SABEAN PUT TOGETHER.  Some parts were luck, undoubtedly, but that's true of anyone then, even Brian Cashman, so I'm not sure what the point is when the Naysayers point that out.  They don't really think through the logical consequences of such a stance (basically their position leads to the conclusion that baseball is all about luck, in which case, why do they bother to watch the players, go play APBA then or a video game version).

Ultimately Sabean is the one who decided to keep them all together and not trade any of them away, as many of his Naysayers been saying he should do for years now.  That's smarts, not luck.

UNBELIEVABLE: Sandoval Can Do Better with Better Eyesight

I was listening to KNBR this morning, to the early parts of the Pablo Sandoval interview with Brian Murphy when the big news bomb came out: Pablo Sandoval was diagnosed to need glasses and he will be wearing them all the time this coming season. Murph asked him what the difference is with the glasses, and Kung Fu Panda (I love baseball nicknames!) said that he can now see the pitches better!

Giants Thoughts

Obvioulsy, if he can see the pitches better, he should be able to hit better. That also might help explain why he was swinging at pitches out of the strike zone, he just couldn't see them well enough. But he hit .330/.387/.556/.943 with poor eyesight, can you imagine what he could do now that he can see the pitches more clearly?!?

This should also help him with his fielding as well. Now that he can see the ball better coming off the hitter's bat, he should be better able to react sooner to the batted ball, and get to them better. This would allow him to get to more balls and be a better fielder overall. Plus, he should see 1B better too and maybe his throws will be that much better (though this is probably only marginal improvement compared to being able to see the batted balls better).

Overall, we could see a new and improved Pablo in 2010, as scary as that may be for the opposing team. He can now see the pitched ball better, helping him see rotation and all that better as the pitch is coming in. He has also worked this off-season on laying off the pitches that are harder to handle, while waiting for the pitches that he can do something with and maybe hit a homer. He can now see batted balls better, which should improve his fielding at the hot corner, which is called that for a good reason, and why improved eyesight should help his fielding. He could have a monster season and that improvement would come from not just because he is young, as I'm sure a lot of non-Giants analysts would call it after the 2010 season, pontificating about how youth improves (hasn't worked for Francoeur or Loney or Russell Martin) with age, but more likely from his improved eyesight.

More importantly, why is it so hard for a team's training staff to figure out when hitters cannot see well? When it is one of the most important things that affect their overall performance, as it affects how they see the pitched ball as well as the batted ball (can you imagine if an outfielder had this vision problem?)

This is not the first Homer "Doh!" moment with the Giants regarding a medical issue. There were other players who needed glasses (though their names escape me now) and I recall Scott Eyre needing help with his ADD, which helped with his concentration and he was a much better pitcher after that. Maybe this is not unusual for baseball teams or even pro sports teams, but I don't really follow any team like I do the Giants, so I don't know.

And I understand that the player is culpable in this case as well. He should have mentioned his problem with his sight (or back or shoulder or elbow) beforehand. But the procedures should be put in place to check for conditions that could hinder a ballplayer, a checklist to go through, so that you don't just rely on the ballplayer, who ultimately just wants to play, damn the consequences sometimes (like with Jesse Foppert, sniff...).