Your 2014 Giants: Defense Rising

I was just perusing the Giants defensive numbers (I was curious if Perez registered; nope) and thought I would write about their defense at, admittedly, a very early part of the season, but lots of interesting notes, I think.

Pablo Sandoval is HR Power Hitter

I had a longer post I wanted to write and detail the data, but I just had to get this out:  Sandoval is a legit homerun hitter.  I am getting so tired of seeing the Fox and ESPN "analysts" harp on and on about Sandoval only having 12 homers this year.  HELLO?  Do any of you do ANY research at all about any of the players?  He was clearly injured and you would think baseball people would know that the hamate bone surgery saps power, but no.

DrB once posited that he thought that Sandoval is going to reach 40 homers one year.  I then did the research on his homerun rate and determined that he has shown enough homerun power that it would not be surprising if Sandoval did reach that figure one of these days.

And what I did did not take a lot of brain power or effort.  It is embarrassing in today's world of the internet, lots of free information, and easy analysis, that people going on TV as "experts" and spouting drivel like this.  They are such mediots!

I'll post my analysis another day, when I have more free time...

Your 2011 Giants are 31-25: Home at Last, Now Beat D-Rox

Wow, that trip was looking like it was going to be the worse.  Losing Posey was obviously a huge downer and I was worried that the team would sleepwalk through the road trip because of that.  And they did look a bit like that in Milwaukee losing 2 of 3, but then it appears now that Brandon Crawford's slam woke the team up a bit, and they came into St. Louis and won 3 of 4, ending their road trip with a 4-3 record, which is great for the road, as the vast majority of teams end up under .500 on the road for the season.  Any winning road trip is a good accomplishment.

Now they get to play at home for a nice 10 game homestand and 16 of 22 at home, plus 3 of those road games are in Oakland, so you can make the case that they are home for 19 of the next 22 games.  Playing on the road has been what has been keeping the Giants record down significantly relative to the other teams in the NL West:  they have had only 21 at home vs. 35 on the road.  They will get 10 of those games back now, bringing them close to 50-50, but still under by 4.  Given how hurting their offense has been, yesterday's game notwithstanding, a 6-4 homestand would be nice to get.

And up first are the D-Rox.

Game 1:  Nicasio vs. Cain

Juan Nicasio:  Nicasio, displaying a mid-90s fastball and a fearlessness that impressed the Rockies' brass throughout his Minor League career, held the Cardinals to one unearned run in seven innings in his Major League debut -- a win last Saturday.

Matt Cain:  After a solid early April, Cain is just 1-4 with a 4.80 ERA in his past eight starts. He acknowledges he is giving up too many two-out runs, including three in six innings in his last outing at Milwaukee.

Somehow, Nicasio was only the D-Rox's 8th best prospect according to Baseball America's pre-season rankings, but his numbers in the minors have been amazing.  Still, he was doing all that while just about at the average age for the league, so it's not like when Bumgarner was doing even better at a younger age, but still impressive, I think.  Since he just had his first start and it was great, not really much to say other than he's a RHP and thus we will see our LHB lineup:  Torres, Tejada, Sanchez, Huff, Schierholtz, Ross, Crawford, Whiteside.

Don't worry about Matt Cain.  Again with the win-loss, but his ERA is totally inflated:  his last 5 starts were DOM starts (where his PQS was 4 or 5), so he has been fine for the most part, just suffering from some bad baseball luck.  And even when he is going good, he's going to pick apart what he is doing wrong.  The Cainer is doing fine, thank you.

Still, fastball and fearlessness suggests that our offense might not do too much against him.  Hopefully Huff is over his big contract and starting to be himself:  four homers in two games is a pretty good start towards that.  

However, Cain has been super this season so far, 78% DOM/9% DIS, that is what elite pitchers put up, and for elite pitchers, when they start, you expect to win.  Give slight edge to Giants for Cain and playing at home, but I don't know how many times unknown pitcher comes in and shuts down the Giants (though they finally did nicely against the Cards' unknown pitcher yesterday).

Game 2:  Chacin vs. Bumgarner

Jhoulys Chacin:  Chacin was plagued by a rocky start in his last outing, giving up three runs on four hits in the first inning against the Cardinals. The right-hander has pitched well in his career against the Dodgers, posting a 4-3 record with a 2.40 ERA.

Madison Bumgarner:  Bumgarner has recorded seven consecutive quality starts, posting an ERA of 2.12 in that stretch. Yet he believes he hasn't established full consistency. Bumgarner has struggled at home, where he's 0-2 with a 5.49 ERA.

Don't know why the guy is talking about the D-gers, Chacin is playing the Giants, dammit!  :^)  Chacin is arguably the D-Rox's best starter right now, he has continued doing what he did last season, which is spin great starts.  He has had 5 straight DOM starts and has had only DIS start all season, out of 11 starts.  

But he's facing Bumgarner, who has had a nice string of DOM starts since flailing early in the season.  He has only pitched once in SF, spinning a great one-hit shutout for 7 IP.  And he has held the Giants to a 3.21 ERA in Colorado as well.  With so few outings, the best I can say is that Huff has 2 HR in 9 AB against him (also 3 K's).  

This is going to be a battle between two great young pitchers with something to prove about taking on the other team's good pitchers.  Should be a great battle, could go either way, a push.

Game 3:  Hammel vs. Vogelsong

Jason Hammel:  Hammel's hard-luck season took a worse turn in his last start, a loss to the Dodgers on Monday night. Hammel gave up 10 hits and seven runs in 4 2/3 innings, but most of the hits were of the soft variety.

Ryan Vogelsong:  Vogelsong will be pleased to return to AT&T Park, where he has allowed one earned run in 23 2/3 innings spanning four appearances (three starts). That's a remarkable 0.38 ERA. Yet Vogelsong is only 1-1 at home due to insufficient run support.

Hammel has not really pitched that well on the road (or frankly, at home either) during this career.  His nice season so far appears to be an improvement both home and road vs. career, but he's not really doing that well from a K/BB basis, so I have to think that he's been lucky so far on the road.  He has pitched well in SF before, though, 4 starts, 2.66 ERA, 3.3 K/BB.  And he pitched well here last season, 6.2 IP, 5 K's, 1 R/ER.

Vogelsong has been a miracle, plain and simple.  He amazingly has kept up with the staff in terms of DOM/DIS and nothing in his current numbers suggest that this is an illusion, but his career numbers totally suggest that he is pitching way over this head right now.  How can a pitcher who struggled so much in the minors last season that he got dropped by two teams suddenly become an elite starter (over 7 starts) at the major league level?

Well, I don't look gift horses in the mouth (Giants already have stated that Zito is not guaranteed a starting job when he returns, that he is pitching now to win that job back) and will assume he will continue to do well until he doesn't.  I was going to call this game for the Giants because of how well Vogelsong has been pitching and my low opinion of Hammel, but it goes both ways, somehow Hammel has had the Giants number the past two seasons, so I'll have to call this a push also, with lean towards Giants for home advantage.

Giants Thoughts

We are now 4-4 in the post-Posey period (though much of that was on road so strong bias to .500), and luckily enough, Pablo Sandoval was impressive in his batting practice yesterday, so he'll be headed to San Jose today for a few games to get his timing back, then to Fresno for a couple there, before rejoining us.  He could be back sometime next week then, depending on how it goes.

That could spell the end of the Miguel Tejada era, if you can even call it that, as he has not hit at all for any stretch of time, really.  Crawford has shown a good enough offense (in fact, good so far) plus his sooo good of a defense (he was considered MLB ready defensively when he was drafted) that he's probably going to hold the starting job for at least until Panda returns and a while longer, probably, though he has cooled off considerably (I know SSS) since hitting a grand-slam homer in his first major league game (one of six in MLB history, second Giants after Bobby Bonds).

Still, Tejada most probably will be kept at least until the end of June, if I had to bet.  As nicely as Burriss has done, he still hasn't hit one extra-base hit or a walk, so despite a nice .286 batting average, he has a horrible .572 OPS, which is not much more than what Tejada has been providing.  So I think that Burriss is the one going down when Sandoval returns.  However, if Crawford can continue hitting OK until Fontenot returns and Tejada continues to hit this poorly, Miguel could get DFAed at that point.

The Giants are leading the NL West by half a game but not over who anyone would have thought before the season:  D-backs.  Colorado is actually 4.5 games behind us and if we win this series, would push them further back.  A sweep would put them back 7.5 games and put a real crimp on their contention plans, but unless Huff keeps on hitting so many homers, that's probably not going to happen.

D-backs Are Dyno-mite!

I was worried about the D-backs because they actually ended the 2010 season well (relatively) with Gibson managing them, and had a number of young starters doing well for them, though above their heads a bit.  I considered them to dark horse to challenge the Giants because of that and because I thought the D-gers did not do enough to replace Manny's production (they haven't) plus Uribe, their big acquisition in the off-season, has mainly stunk for them and the 'Dres killed their chances to compete by trading A-Gon.

And really, their starting pitching has mostly stunk, so it was not even that pushing them upward right now.  It is equal parts of nice starts from a trio unexpected to start for them - Joshua Collmenter, Zach Duke, and Micah Owings - and hitters doing better than expected - Juan Miranda, Ryan Roberts - plus a lights out bullpen.  In fact, they already DFAed near-perfect-gamer Armando Galarraga and dropped Barry Enright from their rotation.  And I have to think that Joe Saunders spot in the rotation is slipping away as well.  That's three of their opening day starters.

It also helped that they swept the falling Astros on the road and swept the equally bad Twins at home.  But I have to give them props for doing that to teams you hope to do that plus they also took two of two from the Braves, won series against the D-Rox (3 of 4!) and Marlins as well, in recent series.  So it has not totally been flukes.

They have had a slight home advantage (3 more at home plus 3 more to make 6 above) that won't equalize until the All-Star break, so that has helped, as well as the Giants strong road schedule, so if things play out as it has been playing, the Giants should pull away from them a bit by the ASB.  But they are playing a number of under .500 teams to then as well, so we will see how that plays out.  Though luckily for us they are playing the Marlins, Indians, White Sox, and Cards as well, plus Giants.  I think the Giants should be able to slowly move ahead as the home/road imbalance equals for the Giants.

Nicknames Are Cool With Me

I've seen some people say that they are sick of the nicknames, but then lump Panda into the mix.  In the history of baseball, nicknames have made the game:  it isn't quite the same if I'm talking about George Herman Ruth instead of Babe Ruth.  And my youth wouldn't have been quite the same without John "the Count" Montefusco.  And Panda came organically, as well as making a lot of sense, if you ever saw the Kung Fu Panda movie and heard a Sandoval interview.  

The outrage, which I understand and agree with generally, is how some sportscasters have to force a nickname on almost every player.  That I can live without.  But don't diss the good ones, like Panda.  And it creates great marketing too, I think, and remember:  every panda hat sold means the Giants can do more with their baseball team.

My Thoughts on Your 2011 Giants

I posted this on ELM's post regarding that Uggla trade, and it basically regards how I think the Giants will do in the 2011 season:

This is the flawed thinking [i.e. Giants barely got into playoffs in 2010] I've been seeing in discussions about the Giants. ajax covers changes that should make 2011 better [full year of FSanchez, Posey, Ross and even Torres]; I would also add two other big changes: Bumgarner full year, no Wellemeyer; and Kung Fu Panda's return.

The end of season is the result of the whole season's mix of talents but extrapolating that to 2011 is incorrect because of all these changes. The team was not static last season, as all the pundits have been saying when discussing the Giants 2010 season. The team at the end of the season is much different from the one we will have in 2011.

What some don't realize is that the Giants played at a roughly 100 win-rate since Posey took over the starting catching duties, and even elevated it in Sept/Oct/Nov to roughly 110 win-rate. If they do that over a season, they will win running away.

Of course, they probably will not play at that rate. The pitching can't possibly be that good over a whole season, can they? But even at a low 90 win rate, the Giants should be contending for a playoff position again.

Here is how I see why things will continue into 2011 from that ending to a playoff contending level. While pitchers probably won't be that great, Lincecum with his new slider will still be there, and should put in another Cy Young level season. Cain took another step in 2010 and I don't see him stepping back in 2011. Sanchez took a giant leap in 2010 and I don't expect him to go back either. And Bumgarner is like Posey's doppelganger: very young, yet very mature and very confident and talented. We'll have a full season of that.

Meanwhile, the bullpen will be greatly improved because we will have Lopez, Ramirez, Casilla, and Ray for a whole season. Plus, Affledt should not have as bad a season, he came around at the end when we needed him. And Romo will have another season under his belt and not be as inconsistent.

Our lineup, though, is probably where fans get off the bandwagon. Poor offense, blah, blah, blah. As I've been writing for years now, when you have a great defense (pitching, fielding) you can get into playoff contention with a crappy offense, even one as crappy as 2008 and 2009. For example, with last year's defense (3.6 RA), the 2008/9 offense would have legitimately won 88 games. And remember, 2011's defense should be better with 1) less Timmy hiccups, 2) more MadBum, less Wellemeyer, 3) better bullpen, 4) better fielding overall (Torres in CF, Ross in RF, Belt 1B).

And yes, I'm going there: I think Belt will be the starting 1B for most if not all of the 2011 season. His hitting in the minors and AFL, plus Sabean comments that they will move him up if he forces his way up, leads me to think that he will force his way up in spring training. He has shown the talent to do it, he seems to have the mentality to handle it, plus I have a bad feeling about Huff coming back, he might be gone. Even if Huff is here, he could move to LF and Belt 1B. I think a season like Pablo's 2009 is not out of the question for Belt.

That leads me to offense. We might lose Huff's great hitting at the end, but that was countered by how poorly Uribe hit at the end [Throw in Renteria too]. If we get them back great, but it won't be like replacing the two of their end of season production should be as hard, particularly if Belt comes up and hits like I think he can. Burrell was very good, but I think Ross can put up similar power numbers while providing much better defense [better than what Guillen did at the end of the season too]. Torres was actually pretty bad in September, either horrible or on the DL. He should be able to hit basically what he did in 2009-10 in a full season as a starter in 2011. Franchez should hit about the same while playing full season. Posey should hit about the same while playing a full season [remember, he "only" hit .283/.340/.472/.812 in the second half].

All that is about the same offense, and with that we still won a lot of games down the stretch. But, as I noted, the pitching definitely won't be at that high a level for a whole season (else, it'll be like we went back to the dead-ball era). I think the other big factor in the offense being good enough for us to win the division again is Pablo.

I think Pablo's 2010 season is misunderstood. First, yes, it was not like his 2009 season. But despite all his problems, his OPS was around that of the average 3B in the NL in 2010. So it wasn't like he fell into the abyss. Second, it wasn't like he stunk the whole season, despite what a lot of people have been writing. He was Panda in April. Then the divorce papers hit and he was crap until the All-Star Break, then he hit like the Panda again. Until he had to fly down to Venezuela to sign the papers, and then he had another downturn. Once he recovered from that, he was Panda again, until he nearly lost his mom in the San Bruno pipeline explosion and fire. Then he was Panda again, in the last two weeks of the season. Then he froze in the limelight of the playoffs and World Series.

So, was he bad? Yes, but not all the time, and except for the divorce papers being served (which we have no timeline for), his ups and downs in the 2010 season matches up with key emotionally charged events happening in his life, things that get regular people very depressed or upset, and they don't do their job so well [and tend to eat a lot].

He should be back to his Kung Fu Panda-ness in 2011, assuming he doesn't have other bad personal events happening during the season. His talent never went away in 2010, it clearly came up for air when his personal life wasn't spinning out of control. People carp on his weight, but many people eat and get fat when they are depressed and angry. And even at that, his UZR wasn't that bad in 2010, in fact, if I recall right, it was better than his 2009.

So he'll be back in 2011. He might not lose all the weight the Giants want, but his bat will be there and that will put him back in the lineup, the Giants don't really have a choice. They had their tough love speech to get his butt moving on working to lose weight, but if he's hitting like he did in 2009, there is no way they are sending him down to the minors. [At worse] He'll be like Miguel Cabrera, play 3B in short-term before shifting to 1B because of his size.  [But if he works at losing his weight - and his willingness to spend the offseason in San Diego, away from home in Venezuela and his baby girl, suggests that he will work diligently at it - he could be our 3B for the rest of the decade.]

And if his bat is back, that is something that will mitigate any drop in the pitching relative to the end of 2010. And the Giants should win the NL West division easily if he is back and everyone else performs around where they are expected to.

Additional Giants Thoughts

As I've been saying, the 2010's will be known as the Giant's decade.  They will make frequent runs at the championship, and should win more with the pitching that they have led by Buster Posey.  Young players like him, Sandoval, Belt, and Brown (Killer B's offense?) will make our offense better than what they were in the 2000's, the Oughts.

Will they do it again in 2011?  I don't think one can ever predict a World Series championship.  You need things to go your way to do that (like Burrell and Ross, then Brooks Conrad).

However, you can't win it if you don't make it into the playoffs.  The Giants have a team that should be competing for the NL West title again in 2011, if not win it, so I'm hopeful for 2011.  Like 2010, it will depend on young players (Belt, Sandoval, Posey, Bumgarner) to perform well, and you can't always rely on that from young players.  But I think that they will, as Nike advocates, just do it.

It is good timing too.  The D-gers, who looked like they might have a perennial pennant winner just a couple of years ago (and thus is a cautionary tale for our Giants today), have some key underperforming players (Loney, Martin; but really, based on what they did in the minors, they overperformed in their first MLB season then fell back to their talent level) and a pending D-vorce that should derail their ability to compete (see what happened to the 'Dres when their owner Moore got a divorce) once that is settled.

The D-backs are back-tracking and cutting salary (ironically dropping Adam LaRoche, who passed on a 3 year, $21M contract with the Giants, losing a lot of guaranteed money and potentially a World Series ring).  And the rumor is that they are shopping Justin Upton.  You don't do that if you are planning on trying to win the division title, that is the behavior of a team re-trenching and re-building.  They have a nice group of young pitchers, much like the 'Dres did in 2010, which to me is good news because while they pitched well in 2010, their minor league stats suggest that they are no where near the ace status that most of the Giants starters are at.  And you need that to compete consistently in the regular season, let alone playoffs.

Speaking of the 'Dres, with the rumors of A-Gon being a-gone during the off-season, I don't see how they are going to compete in 2011 if they trade him.  That might set them up for 2012, but, again, only Latos look ace worthy, the other pitchers will get exposed at some point or another.  And they don't really have many top prospects (overall) that look to boost them up soon.

That leaves the D-Rox.  Jimenez is not going to have another half season like 2010, but he will be very good. And Tulowitski will have a healthy season in 2011 (won't he?  He seems to get injured all the time, but appears to alternate, making 2011 a non-injury year).  Car-Gon looks to be the real deal (thanks for that idiotic trade, A's!), and unlike the other teams, they have a couple of nice young pitchers in Jimenez and Chacin.  Thus I see them as the Giant main competitor for the NL West title.

But the Giants have more pitchers and of greater quality, and the D-Rox's offense doesn't look that great beyond Tulo and Car-Gon.  And, after all, they only won 83 games last season, and it wasn't like they played great when Tulo was in the lineup or that poorly when he wasn't (around .500, so it was not like they fell off the cliff, and they had chances down the stretch).

So the Giants look pretty good for repeating in winning the NL West division title.  Not only do they look like they could be even better in 2011, but all the other teams look vulnerable and/or weak.

And once you get into the playoffs, our pitching will get a chance to dominate again.

Your 2010 Giants are 2-1 in the NLCS: MadBum Rush the Phillies

It was tweeted by Jeff Fletcher of AOL that teams with a 2-1 lead in a 7 game series have won 30 of the 40 playoff series.  So the Giants are in a very good position from this history.  However, I would also note that this means that 25% of the time, this team has lost the series.  So it is not a gimmee, there is still a significant chance that the Phillies could roar back.

However, as I noted in my original series blog post, Madison Bumgarner, he of 1.13 ERA in last month of season and the steely nerves of a veteran player twice his age, is going for us against Joe Blanton, who had horrible stats for the season, which looked like a gimmee.  But it is not as easy as I once thought.

Game 4:  Joe Blanton vs. Bumgarner

Shame on me for looking at just his surface seasonal stats:  Joe Blanton has been on a huge roll since the All-Star break.  3.48 ERA overall, 3.33 ERA in his 15 starts (hat tip to KNBR for noting his great performance at the end).  10 DOM starts and only 2 DIS starts in those 15 starts, excellent numbers if kept up over a full season.  He won't be as much of a gimme as I thought in my original post.

If there is any consolation, most of his 5 non-DOM starts (4), happened in his last 10 starts, and both DIS starts happened then.  He did man up, however, and delivered four 5 PQS starts in his last six starts.  Basically he hit his bad patch in August but was great in September.  That is the exact opposite of what he has done in his career, he's usually good in August and horrible in September.

However, his last start was on September 29th and October 3rd is the last time he pitched in an actual game, 16 days of rest since his relief appearance, and he did not do well in that game, 1 IP, 4 H, 2 ER, BB, and one of the hits were a homer.  And he has not done well with extra rest, interestingly enough:

4 days rest:  3.83 ERA (104 starts)
5 days rest:  4.80 ERA (64 starts)
6+ days rest: 4.97 ERA (22 starts)

Basically, when he don't get exactly 4 days rest, he gets rusty a lot, one day alone has made a huge difference, almost a run more, and he has pitched in a significant number of games in 5+ days rest situations to suggest that this is not a fluke.

And, also interestingly enough, he has built his career on keeping LHH down, he is not even that great against RHH.  The batting line for LHH is worse than for RHH:

LHH:  .267/.320/.406/.726
RHH:  .278/.325/.440/.764

So the Giants will be facing a very tough opponent, who should be thoroughly rested, though possibly rusty.  The Giants might need to capitalize on that rustiness early in the game, to knock him out before he finds his strike, and get into a good groove.  For some reason, RHH can hit Blanton for extra power, could be our key to winning today, as we will have Burrell, Ross, and Posey in there, plus Franchez and probably Uribe. If he had that batting line for RHH and the usual platoon advantage that LHH would have on him, he would not be a major league pitcher today, he's probably a AAAA pitcher bouncing up and down to fill in a rotation spot.

Giants Hitters Vs. Blanton

Bill James matchup report shows that the Giants hitters don't have a great history against Blanton.  Some key names and numbers:

Burrell:  3-12, 3 HR, BB, 5 K
Fontenot:  2-9
Huff:  4-20, BB, 2 K (due for hits, low BABIP)
Ishikawa:  3-4, K
Posey:  1-3, K
Renteria:  0-3
Ross:  3-11, 1 HR, 6 K though
Rowand:  2-4
Franchez:  2-7, K
Sandoval:  0-6, K
Torres:  1-3, HR, K
Uribe:  1-11, 3 K

Sandoval Need to Step:  Could be Ready to Step Up

The speculation among the Giants beat writers is that Sandoval will get a shot at Blanton.  Obviously, his numbers are not good, but that was probably half in August when Pablo was not doing well.  Of course, he hasn't been doing well recently either, but drew a walk in his last PH assignment, so I think he might be ready to contribute.  I think for the Giants to win this series and hopefully win the World Series, Sandoval is among the key players who needs to heat up NOW.  We cannot rely on Cody Ross to carry us all the way through (though if he's capable of that, all the better :^)  (Just saw a tweeted factoid:  apparently Ross was also claimed by the Phillies but the Giants got him because they had a worse record;  funny how fate works!).  Sandoval is in today's lineup.

Other key guys are the usual suspects that we all can name, pretty much our whole lineup, really:  Torres, Posey, Huff, Burrell, Uribe.  For our long-term benefits, I really want Posey or Sandoval to take the lead, we've seen Posey do it during the season, so we know we have it in him (maybe next year he can be like Will Clark and take over a series), but Sandoval we are still learning, his ups and downs this season has put a lot of doubt in people's minds (not in mind, though), so it would be nice if he started blasting balls out like he does when he's zoned in.

Given that Sandoval was patient enough to battle for 7 pitches, 3 of which were strikes, to take a walk in a situation where we needed every base runner we could get (down 6-1), where someone might be tempted to hit a 6-run homer with the bases empty, he was able to hold back, take the balls given him, foul off the third strike, I have to think that he is now not swinging at everything hoping to connect, like he was the first two games, his first two playoff games, he might be ready to Kung Fu the ball.

If we had a functioning Kung Fu Panda, that would put pressure on the opposing pitchers and give our other hitters better pitches as well, particularly if he confounds the pitchers by hitting good pitches for line-drive hits (much like how Ross has been doing that so far).  A Pandoval would also, as Bochy likes to say, keep the line moving, much like they did yesterday to score two runs.  And the occasional homer would help as well.

Torres Could be Key But Not Today

There has been a lot of stats noting how important it is for a team to score first, and the key for the Giants to score first in 2010 has been Andres Torres.  Bochy said specifically that he was resting Torres yesterday so that he can regain his focus, but still kept him out of today's lineup.  Torres also mentioned some problems with his ADD medicine but that he's got that fixed now, though maybe not enough for Bochy's tastes.

If he can return to his 2009-10 goodness, that would obviously be a huge plus for our offense, particularly if he contributes a homer here and there.  I think he's going to be ready as well, assuming that ADD med problem was a big part of his struggles.  But obviously we won't find out today.

Getting Bumgarner the lead early would allow him to be aggressive in going after hitters.  Our pitchers seem to gain an advantage when they get the lead, they have been very successful when given the lead.  Hence the need for our offense to wake up, but with no Torres, have to hope Renteria and Sanchez up top can do something for Huff, Posey, Burrell, Ross to drive in.  Sandoval is batting 7th and Rowand 8th.   Rowand says that he's really strong right now, it would be great if he catches on fire, but he struck out twice yesterday.  Have to assume the line drive double makes Bochy thinks he is in his groove, Bochy unfortunately has seen Rowand at his best and worse the past few seasons, hopefully he can tell when Rowand is on or not.

Panda-monium!

Somehow the Phillies manager did not notice Pablo Sandoval's .332/.386/.572/.958 batting line or his 13 HR and 48 RBI, which basically is a pace for roughly 25 HR and 100 RBI, and doesn't even account for the fact that he didn't do much in the month of April, he has done most of this in May and June, particularly June for HR.

So Kung Fu Panda is left to beg for an All-Star spot via the MLB Final Spot voting, against 4 other worth players, but obviously I don't think are as worthy as Pablo: Shane Victorino, the Flying Hawaiian, Matt Kemp, Mark Reynolds, and Cristian Guzman. He currently has a slim lead after a day of voting and the voting ends on Thursday. Vote for Pablo here. I have been putting in about 25 votes per day. There does not appear to be a limit on the site to the number of times you vote, but it gets a bit monotonous after a while, so 25-30 votes appear to be my physical/mental limit.

Hot Streak/Cold Streak

One of my favorite toys, er, tool has been Baseball-Reference.com, and one thing I like to play with recently is their game logs stats, where I can add up stats over a stretch of games pretty easily. A new feature or post I'm thinking of doing is a "Hot Streak/Cold Streak" where for certain players I will present their current hottest streak and coldest streak. I don't know how many times I go through a Giants comment area and there would be people saying that a player is lousy because his overall numbers weren't that good, but if they looked closer, they would have seen that he has actually been pretty hot recently, but was just weighed down (or buoyed up) by that first month of greatness/suckness.

And this is all relative to how good or bad he is doing. Their hot might not be that hot, or their cold could be someone else's hunka-hunka burning inferno.

Here is Panda's current Hot Streak/Cold Streak:

Hot: since June 4th, .382/.452/.755/1.207 with 10 HR in 110 AB, 15 BB, 20 SO, 19 runs, 27 RBI
Cold: since June 29th, .259/.344/.556/.899 with 2 HR in 27 AB, 4 BB, 6 SO, 5 runs, 10 RBI

Even when he's cold he's hot. He has been striking out more then what he usually did during this professional career, but not outrageously so. 15% is the key limit, a batter wants to keep it below that, as most players who hit well can limit the number of strikeouts he gets. He is at 18% for the hot streak, 22% for the cold streak. And he has started taking walks, he used to not get that much, but now he is piling them up, relatively, it is vastly improved to being where good hitters are, in terms of BB/SO ratio.