Manny Being Manny: Good Riddance

A reader commented on another post that he's glad the Manny dance is over, that it was such a distraction, particularly since we weren't even close to signing him.

Well, I wasn't distracted, it was misguided fans who were getting impatient with the rebuilding process who were in love with getting Manny, particularly one fiery on-air sportstalk personality.

Hello, the Giants Are Rebuilding

People need to get it in their heads: the Giants are rebuilding. Rebuilding teams often (and usually) lose a lot, most have at least 4-6 losing years, if not more. Spending $20+M on a player for 2 years don't make much sense when you are rebuilding, particularly for a 37 year old player, particularly since he might not be motivated and carries an attitude to boot, particularly since we are not that close to contending and going for winning the World Series.

Heck, all the arguments people have been giving about the Giants and losing (worse streak in SF, 1974-1977, 4 year skid, plus 1983-1985 and 1994-1996 3 year skids; franchise worse was 4 year skid 1899-1902 plus the SF 4 year period), are probably similar to what Braves fans were saying about GM Bobby Cox after the Brave's 4th year of losing. He didn't even have his Cy Young award yet (though they came soon enough afterward in Glavine and Smoltz) nor did he draft Chipper Jones yet. In fact, he lost (and horribly so, not like what the Giants have been doing, they were epic losing, worse in the majors type of losing, like the Rays recently) for another two years, for a total of 6 whole seasons.

Had they chose to listen to the fans and stop rebuilding after their fourth losing season and/or fire Bobby Cox, and just acquire a bunch of free agents in hopes of returning to competitiveness quickly, they would NOT have had their long stretch of success on the field because Chipper Jones would have been drafted by some other team (he was the #1 pick overall that year, which was the pick they earned for their putrid 5th year of losing), and a major cog of their long success would not have been around.

He has been a major offensive weapon for them. He had the team's best OPS in 8 of the past 13 years, when they went 909-709 during that period, and winning 10 division titles in that period, and the NL twice. Since he joined the Braves, they have won their division 12 times in those 16 seasons, the NL three times, and the World Series. You cannot understate his importance to the Braves offense during those years.

Are You With the Program?

So fans have to decide: do you like how the Giants are developing? If you do, let them do what they feel they need to do to keep developing the team. And if you don't, then what do you have against Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez, Lowry, Wilson, Romo, Hinshaw, Sadler, Matos, Bumgarner, Alderson, Sosa, Martinez, Pucetas, Barnes, Quirate, English, Pichardo, Casilla, Lewis, Sandoval, Ishikawa, Frandsen, Velez, Burriss, Schierholtz, Bowker, Posey, Villalona, Rodriguez, Noonan, Gillaspie, Kieschnick, Crawford, Guzman, Adrianza, Tanner, Joaquin, Schoop, Fairley, McBryde, Neal, Downs, Downs, Culberson, etc.

Use any analogy you want, where you need to exercise patience or risk ruining things: souffle, cooking in general, raising a child, detailing a car, developing a photograph, getting yourself ready for a marathon, marching downfield for a touchdown...

And that is good one, perhaps, Bill Walsh showed how effective a team can be in scoring by patiently moving downfield and moving the chains every 10-15 yards. Getting a Manny is equivalent of a Hail Mary pass, it could work out spectacularly but you can also ruin a good scoring chance by taking such a risk.

Why risk jeopardizing the rebulding effort? We have a really nice thing going right now, why risk that by spending gobs of money on an aging slugger, with a horrible body type (not like Bonds at all), with horrible LF defense (people critized Bonds' defense, but even in his last season, his UZR/150 was -14.7; from 2005 to 2007, Manny's UZR/150 was -15.5, -24.8, and -27.1, until he inexplicable (other than motivation) improved to a -3.0), and with a horrible attitude and varying motivation? At least with Bonds, you never had to doubt his motivations, he was there to win.

Not Worth the Money: Last Gasp Manny

And, according to Fangraphs, Manny's monetary value in wins for the past 7 seasons was under the $22.5M he will average for this contract if it goes the two years for every season except for 2008, when he went crazy for the D-gers for three months. To put his 2008 season into perspective, his career BABIP is .339 and his BABIP for 2005-2007 was around .320, but he bumped up his BABIP in 2008 to .370. The last time he had a BABIP that high was in 2002 when he only played in 120 games, 518 PA, when it was .373.

His 2008 BABIP was approximately the BABIP he had from 1997 to 2002, when he was 25-30 years old. It is highly unlikely that at 37 he suddenly figured out how to hit so much better consistently. Even Bonds couldn't do it, he had one peak year in BABIP, about 30 above his career BABIP in 2002, in his late 30's, but otherwise it was about average or at the end of his Giants career, much worse. So the Manny the D-gers just bid all in on is unlikely to be the Manny they saw in 2008, but more like the Manny of 2004-2007: still a very good hitter, still one of the best in the majors, but not the offensive dynamo they caught in a bottle late in the 2008 season, and not worth the money he's being paid, at least according to Fangraph's calculations.

Giants Probably Won't Have a Losing Record in 2009 Anyway

I wonder how symbolic or prophetic the headline I saw, the day he signed, was: "Dodgers lose to Giants on day Manny signs." Most projections have the Giants scoring a lot more runs than last season, and they were not outrageous projections regarding what the young unproven players might do in 2009, they were reasonable given their success in the minors and briefly in the majors. Same for the starting pitchers.

And that should give us approximately a .500 record for 2009. If we get some upside from Lewis or Sandoval or Sanchez, or return to past performance from Rowand or Renteria or Howry, we should have a winning record. Be happy with progress, be happy with development, this is preparing us for a golden age from 2010 to perhaps 2020, if players work out the way they project out to be and we are able to keep them long-term.

NL West NOT LA's Yet

They can't win just on offense, and they lost a major cog in their pitching from 2008 in Lowe. They haven't replaced a 3.24 ERA, 211 IP, 34 start pitcher with any of their pickups yet. Randy Wolf, Jeff Weaver, Jason Schmidt? Please, talk about throwing Jell-O at the wall. And to expect that good of a year out of Stultz, Kershaw, or McDonald is to be a fanboy having a nice fantasy. Only Kershaw is capable of that, but at only 21, it is not likely that he's going to duplicate Lowe's performance in 2009, perhaps in the future. Plus both Stultz and McDonald are middle rotation guys. And their bullpen after Broxton and Kuo is nothing to be scared of, unless you are a LA D-ger lead.

Plus Manny won't be repeating his 2008 performance, as I noted above. They actually had a losing record his first month, 13-16, before they had their nice run in September, going 17-8, to finish 30-24 with Manny. That's like a 90 win season.

However, it wasn't all him leading to that record. Even with Lowe's great ERA, the team was only 19-15 with him starting, but he turned it on in the last two months and greatly helped out, it was not all Manny, with a 2.27 ERA, 6-2 record, which could have been easily 8-2 with some better support offensively. So he was also significantly responsible for the D-ger's success during those two months, as the team was +4 in the win column in his decisions during that period and was +6 overall.

Another way to look at it is to compare each of their contributions in terms of wins. According to Fangraphs, Lowe contributed 5 wins to 2008, so Manny will roughly cover that with his addition, basically Manny 2009 is equal to Lowe and Manny 2008 in LA. And the D-gers, was .500 when they acquired Manny, meaning if Manny replaces Lowe's production then they end up with the same 84-78 record, assuming the rest is the same.

Any way you look at it, the loss of Lowe is a huge blow to the D-ger's efforts, because he's unreplaced by anyone, plus Manny will be a notch or two below what he did for LA in 2008. This should push them into the low-to-mid 80's win area.

That's a recipe for roughly .500, particularly since they have many young unproven players in their lineup. You don't know exactly what they are going to produce, particularly Loney and Kemp (though Ethier looks like a breakout; imagine the A's couldn't use him now?), who both look like 2007 is the fluke, and not growth from 2006.

So the D-gers are a middling team, in a division of middling teams. Injuries and unexpected good performances will be the determinants of who win in the NL Worst in 2009. And the Giants should be right in the mix of things this season.