I noticed Allfrank posting a comment on a thread because he had nowhere else to go on my site. Please feel free to post your thoughts and comments (good or bad) while I'm out, I look forward to reading them all once I'm back.
6 Man Rotation?
But you know me by now, compulsive, so the last post wasn't my last post, but this should be.
Sanchez looked pretty good in his outing today and Lincecum seemed pretty lost. I know Sanchez is not ready to start yet but given the innings Lincecum is piling on, what if the Giants at some point went to a 6 man rotation, either actually 6 starters or 5 starters with Lincecum and Sanchez sharing the 5th spot, alternating starts?
I don't think they would do that for the rest of the season, but definitely perhaps during the 32 (or whatever) straight days of playing that the Giants will face in August to make up the two Pittsburgh games that were rained out, a 6 man rotation would make a lot of sense, if only to give the starters an extra day of rest during that long period of games.
And maybe from this point on, we go with the 5 man with Lincecum and Sanchez sharing the #5 spot. To build up Sanchez's arm, they make Lincecum's starts a two-man start, much like early spring training or some minor league games, with Lincecum starting and is removed around the 5-6 inning if he's going strong (earlier if necessary), allowing Sanchez to pitch the rest of the way (unless he's lit up, then removed like any bad start by a starter) and providing Lincecum's arm some rest from a full season's grind.
Not saying this is the best idea, just throwing it out there.
Side thought: I wonder how much the Giants pushing him to throw more warm-up pitches than his usual routine of 15 pitches to start the game has affected his psyche and resulted in these horrible starts? Just a thought.
It would be just like me to post again, so I will instead leave it as a comment here.
ReplyDeleteJust read an article on Baseball Prospectus about DIPS (http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=6366; free for once) and it linked to this article with data from well known (among saber-circles) MGL (or Mitchel Lichtman; BP misspelled his name, shame shame! :^) in the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/sports/baseball/17score.html?_r=2&em&ex=1182225600&en=28c36f9c9f40f137&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin&oref=slogin; need to have account to access their content so maybe the link won't work, so the article was published on June 17th, by Dan Rosenheck titled "New Statistics Says Pitchers Need to Be Lucky and Good".
Since some posters have been giving me a hard time about Zito, here is a respected (he was hired by Cards for a while) sabermetrician with his new metric called Pitching Zone Rating, and according to his calculations, the second best pitcher since 2000 in inducing weak contact is our own Barry Zito.
Here is the money shot: "Many statistically literate fans have dismissed Zito’s success as a product of a friendly stadium and superb fielders. In fact, while his favorable environment did prevent 32 runs since 2001, good for 0.20 off his E.R.A., his own ability had an effect twice as large: 64 runs and 0.40 of E.R.A."
So Zito is able to knock off 0.40 off his ERA because of his ability to get hitters to not get hits. That is a huge differential, it probably accounts for much of the difference between his actual ERA and his DIPS ERA. So if you don't believe me, now there is a respected sabermetrician who says it is so. Feel free to share with others who denigrate Zito on DIPS principles.
My perception of Lincecum was after he gave up the lead of hit, he got nervous and lost his confidence. Then something mechanically went wrong and every pitch was 4 inches low. He real;ly reacted badly to the adversity, but, I've been known to do the same.
ReplyDeleteAugusta does just what you are talking about, Martin, they have like 8 starters. Calyton Tanner, for example, jsut out of HS will pitch 4, 5 innings, then the teamed starter will come in and go 4 innings. They do this because they have too amny starters for the level, and lots of them are very young.
I think this might have some promise for the Giants except: in Augusta they have a bigger roster. Teaming Lincecum and Sanchez for the 5th spot means they, essentially, go one man down in the pen.
Not necessarily, Allfrank, Cain threw in relief during his break, so perhaps Lincecum can too.
ReplyDeleteBreaking news, the Chron reports the Giants are thinking of doing the "Cain break" with Lincecum for his next start: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/06/20/GIANTS.TMP&feed=rss.giants
Vida Blue will be making appearances at two Bank of America banking centers tomorrow, Tuesday, June 26th signing autographs and giving away free All-Star Game FanFest tickets to anyone who opens up a new Bank of America checking account. Also, anyone who stops by can enter a drawing to win tickets to the All-Star Game and HR Derby.
ReplyDeleteBlue will be at the BofA banking center at 501 Brannan Street from 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. and the 2701 Mission Street banking center from 1:30 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.
Stop by, meet Vida, get an autograph and get a start on All-Star Week festivities...
Love the commentary! Keep at it, and get back to blogging soon :). By the way, when you write new blog posts, go over to BeTheRef.com and post a link to your story, and hopefully get a little extra traffic for your blog.
ReplyDeleteHello Martin. Hope you return soon. Man, talk about a difficult month.
ReplyDeletePopular wisdom is that the Giants need at least one 'big bat,' a term usually used in connection with Dunn or someone similar. I've taken a quick look at some numbers and I don't think that is true. And I think I can see some of Sabean's emerging philosophy. Here is how we've done by month:
month W/L Runs Runs against
Apr 13-11 93 90
May 12-16 121 112
June 8-17 87 106
And this is how the players have done:
player June BA May BA
Winn 253 327
Feliz 238 263
Omar 257 223
Molina 235 319
Durham 239 239
Aurilia 217 176
Bonds 344 194
Klesko 254 328
Roberts 220 130 (23 ABs)
What stands out, to me, is that, for June, only Bonds is at or above his career numbers. Every other player is significantly below his career average. Looking at May, 3 players are (significantly) above their career averages and one (Feliz is at or slightly above his. 5 players are significantly below. Despite this, the team outscored the opposition (121-112) and scored at a nearly healthy rate, 4.32 runs/gm.
We know that Sabean is moving in a direction stressing pitching, speed, and defense. And, I think these numbers show why. If he puts together a team of 265-290 hitters and they hit at or about their expected levels, they will score close to 5 runs/gm and would be on a pace to win 88-100 games. You get a glimpse of this in early May, until they all started to collectively go into the toilet. They were 11-11 until they stopped hitting and finished May 1-5.
So, I don't think Sabean thinks he needs power hitters, I think he thinks he needs a team lof 280 (or so) hitters. Then the team will score 4.5 - 5 runs/gm and their pitching and defense will allow them to win the majority of their games.
Sorry, I don't have access to more sophisticated stats, but this was very revealing to me. Looking forward to your remarks.
That's lovely, I'm gone for a week and I get two spam messages posted on my blog.
ReplyDeleteAllfrank, I still believe that if this team hits the way they've been capable of during their career, they will score enough runs to win games. This year's team is better than last year's offensively and last year's was populated by all those sub-700 OPS hitters for much of the year.
Unfortunately, as your data shows, they have not started hitting like they are capable, suggesting that some might be entering into new career territory, as the naysayers have been saying about our aging players. It's time to consider that perhaps they are correct, but I think we got another month before we have to accept that.
What I think is that Durham's damn lingering injury is affecting his hitting still. They should have just DLed him at the start of May and let Frandsen play. He could have been healed by now instead of struggling with the injury and doing nothing offensively.
FYI, Allfrank, OPS is a better indicator of how a player is doing offensively, BA is nice but not as nuanced as OPS, as a hitter could make up for a lower BA by taking more walks and getting more extra base hits.