Demographics
There were 52 pitchers who are 22 years old and younger (32 were 22 YO) who pitched at least 25 IP. They pitched 36% of the IP in the California League. As noted in the previous post, 22 YOs are young relative to the majority of players in the league, Lincecum was mainly facing hitters who are older and more experienced with pro ball than he was.
Lincecum only pitched 27.2 innings, so obviously there is the small sample effect, but he has clearly been a dominating pitcher everywhere he has gone, so I don't think that many batters would have learned enough to bring that performance down. Plus he clearly is a learner, having added a pitch last season to help his repertoire, so who is to say that he won't learn fast enough to counteract that. Just look at how he has improved from his freshman year to his junior year in college.
Lincecum Versus 22 YOs and Younger
- ERA: He was tied for 5th out of 52 with an ERA of 1.95, and the group's mean ERA was 4.64. His ERA was 1.59 standard deviations away below the mean.
- H/9: He led the group with a very low 4.23 H/9, almost a hit less than the second lowest, which was 5.20 H/9. The group's mean H/9 was 9.55 and his ERA was 2.41 standard deviations below the mean.
- HR/9: He was just under the middle, tied for 35th of 52, with a 0.98 HR/9, so he did not do so well here. But the group's mean HR/9 was 0.80, and his HR/9 is only 0.40 standard deviations higher than the mean.
- BB/9: Again, he didn't do so well here, though better, 18th with 3.90 BB/9. The group mean BB/9 was 3.58, and his BB/9 is only 0.24 standard deviations higher than the mean.
- K/9: Here is where Lincecum shines brightly, leading with a 15.6 K/9, far outdistancing his second place finisher, who had only a 12.6 K/9. Admittedly, small sampling because he only pitched 27.2 innings, but still pretty good nonetheless. The group mean was 7.81 K/9 and thus his K/9 was 3.47 standard deviations higher than the mean.
- WHIP: With his very low H/9 helping greatly, he was 2nd here, with 0.90 WHIP (first was 0.72) and the group mean was 1.46 WHIP. His WHIP was 1.87 standard deviations lower than the mean.
- K/BB: His stellar K/9 made up for his average BB/9, resulting in the 7th best K/BB among the 22 and younger crowd. His K/BB was 4.00 and the mean K/BB for the group was 2.18. His K/BB was 1.02 standard deviations higher than the mean.
Adding the 20 younger pitchers didn't do much to change any of the results of the ranking. Tim Lincecum led by so much in those areas that there were no younger players who could match up either. His rank relative to the group appeared to hold steady with this enlarged comparison group, as did his standard deviations away from the mean. Nothing greatly changed.
Lastly, I will examine how Tim Lincecum did in the California League against all pitchers, both old and young alike, and again with 25 or more IP. I think you can guess what happens there as well, but I will finish up this series anyhow.
Thanks for the comments and great info, barton!
ReplyDeleteYep, Lincecum strikes out a heck of a lot more batters than Cain ever did in the minors, good point. Good idea to compare Tim with Matt ("Tim and Matt, I'm down wit dat" :^).
I agree, I'm anxious to see how Tim does in Spring Training as well.
My opinion has been evolving but the scenario I see happening is Lincecum doing really well in ST, but the Giants sends him down to Fresno "to get experience and seasoning". Meanwhile, the Giants see how Ortiz, Lowry and Morris does for a half season. If Lincecum is still lights out - and I expect him to be - then whoever has "recovered" and is pitching well will probably be on the trading block to clear a spot for Lincecum (and perhaps Sanchez too) and pick up some good position prospects.
Tampa Bay has a lot of position prospects coming out of their ears, they should be having problems keeping them all on the 40 man and risking exposing them to Rule 5 Draft. Same with the California, er, Anaheim, er, Los Angeles Angeles. If Lowry can return to past form, he could fetch us the other team's best hitting prospect in a deal, straight up. Morris, probably not so much, but at least a pretty developed hitter since he's signed for 2008 and for a good salary too, if he's doing well. Ortiz, not so much as he would be a rental.
Oh, to those having word verification problems, I've noticed that if you log into the blogger system, you can avoid the verification repeating issue. Of course, that means you would have to be registered first...
ReplyDeleteAh, so you're an old timer like me, eh? Yeah, Montefusco was my first big pitching prospect to make it too, I was actually watching the broadcast where Al Michaels gave him the moniker of "The Count" and where he hit a homer in his first official AB (I think he had a walk in his first PA).
ReplyDeletePete Falcone was nice but not as good. Bob Knepper. But most were always highly hyped but lacking in meeting the hype: Bill Laskey, Kelly Downs, Dennis Cook, Scott Garrelts, Atlee Hammaker, Mark Grant, Mike Remlinger, Salomon Torres, etc. Oddly enough, to me at least, was that arguably our best pitching prospect to make it since the Count is John "The Bowler" Burkett. Him and Ortiz would battle for that title, I can't think of anyone else at the moment.
And to think, we have Cain and Lincecum at the same time and for many years to come hopefully (of course, Cubs fans were saying the same thing about Kerry Wood and Mark Prior...).
Part of me wants him to just start the year in the rotation, another part wants to be able to trade off Lowry for a really good hitter somewhere and we won't be able to do that (at least for a quality hitter) unless he comes back and proves himself - we won't get someone like that for Morris or Ortiz. And if he's traded, then we will need someone to come in for Lowry and not skip a step, in terms of continuing the momentum for a pennant run. Lincecum could do that for us, but not if he's already in the rotation. Sanchez might be able to do it, though, I guess.
As Lefty noted on his site, Cain's probably going to flirt with a no-hitter again and again. So I agree with you, why not the Cy Young? He had a top 10 ERA and WHIP in the second half and was near the top from the point where he skipped his start.
I think he could get even better, as Kruk noted in an interview, Cain has great stuff but wouldn't use it properly because he thought he had to do different things to get out MLB batters when he could just use what he already had. Now that he knows better, he starts the year just attacking batters instead of trying to dink the corners.
I think that Cain and Lincecum and Bonds are our least worries right now. I think our season's upside will depend on whether Klesko is back or not. If he's back, it means a lot more Klesko at 1B, a lot more Aurilia at 3B, a lot less Feliz. If not, then we might be seeing Feliz playing 160 games again and basically dying in the second half offensively.
People complain about the bullpen, and I can understand why with the question marks and youth. But there are a multitude of options for us there and we have been successful in bringing up relievers the past couple of years, so I'm not too worried about that, at least relatively. We have been good at developing relievers and have a lot of candidates to call up should anyone falters.
However, clearly, the closer is a worry, as much confidence as the Giants have shown with Wilson. Well, maybe worry is the wrong word, question mark is better since his MLB debut was less than scintillating. But he was so dominating in the minors that I think if given enough time, he will be able to do the job.
He's even looking like the part, he has a Goose Gossage looking beard in the Baseball America 2007 Prospect book. Looks much fiercer than the image he had when doing the AFL interviews in 2005, he looked liked a nice guy there.
I don't think that it is unlikely for the Giants to be competitive, though certainly not a sure thing. I think things are looking pretty good for the team, both offensively and in the pitching staff. The offense is very balanced from top to bottom, and assuming Bochy platoons players as needed, our lineup won't suffer the blackouts that happened last season regularly and particularly at the end of the season. And I think the pitching is coming around nicely and could get even better if Ortiz and Lincecum makes the Giants have to make a hard decision.
Hello Martin -
ReplyDeleteI can't say why, exactly, but I am difinitely in favor of Linececum starting in the minors and coming up in September. I am really, really hopeful for Sanchez. I hope he is the pitcher he was last year in AA and becomes a bona fide 3-4 starter, with Linececum pushing into the rotation next year.
I also think this year is much more promising than last year. 1) I think Bochy will rotate position players more and will not stick with a guy who is not getting it done. 2) For 1b and 3b, we have Feliz, Aurelia, Klesko, Frandsen. Surely 2 of those 4 will significantly outperfrom what we had at the corners last year. 3) Win should be bewtter than last year. 4) Roberts/Linden should be better than what we got out of Alou/Finley.
The way I see it, Lincecum is pretty much a sure thing, but Sanchez and Ortiz not as much, so I want to give the others a chance to show some value, before we slot Lincecum in. I want to see what Sanchez, in particular, can do, but I'm greedy that I want Ortiz to get a chance and contribute in the rotation or bullpen before we ship him out for a prospect (ideally).
ReplyDelete1) Alou had no choice but to play who he did, who would he have played at 3B instead of Feliz, for example, or even 1B for Niekro? He was stuck. He's probably wondering why he didn't get the choices that Bochy gets.
2) I totally agree, I think that's going to make our offense that much better in 2007 over 2006.
3) If you look at Winn's 2005-2006 stats together, the rates are about what they were from 2002-2004. Plus, if you look at his BABIP for 2006, it was lowered than the .300 standard and lower than the rate he established in his career, so he suffered from bad luck too. He should be back to normal in 2007.
4) I would look at it more as Winn2007/Roberts/Linden better than Winn2006/Alou/Finley. Alou was pretty good, when he was actually playing, that is.