Good Pitching vs. Hitting: Why I've Been Touting Pitching

I've been talking about the benefits of having an excellent rotation for a while now, but I don't think that people in general get it yet, why it's better to have dominant pitchers vs. dominant hitters, on your team. And I'm talking to all you people out there who ever advocated we trade Cain or Lincecum for a good hitter. I am also talking to all you people out there talking about trading Bumgarner for a good hitter.

The last two games give a good microcosm of what I'm talking about.

When Pitchers Dominate

The other day, Lincecum was absolutely dominant. Not only did he 2-hit the Cards, he struck out 8 and walked none, while only throwing 95 pitches. He's becoming what I've been hoping that he become, a Big Daddy Rick Rueschel-type pitcher, who can strike out a lot if need be, but keeps the pitch count low by getting hitters to swing early in the count at lousy pitches.

And it's not just for one game, as I've been showing in my PQS study, Lincecum can dominate 70-80% of the time, when merely good starters dominate around 40% of the time. And Cain is an elite pitcher in that he dominates 50%+ of the time. Only Lincecum can make him look ordinary. But Cain has raised things a notch this season, reducing his number of disaster starts, and it showed with his record between losses: he was 7-0 with a 1.87 ERA in nine starts between losses. If you have a rotation of them, then a team like the Giants can dominate any short series.

When Hitters Dominate

Albert Pujols was dominating yesterday. Two homers, three RBI, a walk, 2-for-3. However, Johnson was able to dominate the rest of the batters - 5 for 28, no HR - and came away with the win, despite sub-par pitching (luckily his relief, particularly Jeremey Affeldt, the star acquisition of the off-season, was sterling, again).

We saw this over and over again during the Barry Bonds era. Bonds would be totally on in a game, but many others were not, and we would end up losing, games, series, seasons. Having a dominant hitter is no panacea for an offense. And, frankly, for all the talk about how hitters contribute in every game, they only truly dominate in a game much, much less, probably on par with the number of times a starting pitcher contributes a dominant starting performance.

Improving the Odds

What people don't always get is the series sensitivity to the outcome of the first game of the series. If you have a pitcher like Lincecum who can dominate almost every game he pitches, you can almost put a W in your pocket for the first game. Suddenly it goes from a winning 3 out of 5 series to a winning 2 out of 4 series. Might not seem a lot, but that is huge. Assuming that the two teams are roughly equal (and most are in the playoffs), you go from 50% chance of winning a series to 60%.

If you have two strong pitchers in your rotation (which I have been advocating for a while now, in the mode of Johnson and Schilling for the D-backs in their World Series), if you win the first two games, now you have 75% chance of winning the series. And I didn't even account for Lincecum pitching again in the 5th game, which increases the odds to roughly 86%.

A similar process happens for a 7 game series. Clearly, having a dominating pitcher greatly increases the odds of winning any series and having two of them in the rotation, that much more so.

Add in a third one (Johnson when he is on for us) and again, the odds increase greatly.

Bullpen is Key Too

As Tom Tippett's studies at Diamond Mind in the early to mid-2000's showed, having a strong bullpen is key to being a playoff team. In today's environment of almost no starters completing games, that makes a strong bullpen key to improving your odds in short series. Because, no matter how dominating a starter can be, unless he can finish what he starts, the bullpen will have to consistently be strong enough to save the game, either the win in relief for the starter or keep the score close so that the offense can hopefully battle back and come from behind.

I think that is what will be an ace in the hole for the Giants should they make the World Series, most likely Lincecum will start games 1 and 4 and thus probably not pitch game 7 (if necessary). However, given his arm, he can probably come in, just like Randy Johnson did in his World Series and give some good innings in relief.

Here I advocate, much like the Twin Ace at the top of the rotation strategy, a Twin Closer in the bullpen, though one would be the closer and the other his regular set-up guy. I think we have one with Wilson as the closer and Affeldt as the set-up man. Often, the critical batter is not coming up in the 9th inning, but earlier, in the 7th and 8th, with men on base after the starter (or another reliever) falters and put men on base, threatening to score. If you have two closers, you have one to take care of the early fires, one to shut down the last inning fires.

In fact, we might even have more because both Romo and Valdez has been lights out for us in relief so far. This is what has been helping us win games, having a relief corp that can shut down the other team for 3-4 innings at the end of the game. The D-gers had a strong bullpen like this last season (and this one thus far, amazingly, given their minor league performances) and it helped them greatly.

Pre-Season Worries Overblown

And most Giants fans were worried in the pre-season about the Giants lack of offense. They are still just averaging only around 4 runs per game (4.09 to be exact), but with their superlative pitching, they have been winning. With the nice bump up in offense in June - they averaged 4.37 runs scored per game, which is about what was predicted for them in the pre-season based on the individual players' projections - they have been winning hand over fist, 17-10 in June, the best winning month since September 2004, their last winning season. At 7 wins above .500, it is the best for the period since September 2004, and not only that, the second best was only 2 wins above .500, achieved in four different months; mostly the Giants were at .500 or much below .500 during that roughly 5 year period since then.

And I'm not saying that the offense can't be improved. It can. What I've been more importantly saying is that with our good pitching, even our poor offense can win a good number of games. And that's the most important stat of all, not your runs scored per game, not the poor number of HR you have hit, it is the W's that you put in the win column. In that regard, the Giants offense has been good enough.

Effect on Series

Since I'm talking about series, I thought I would look at each starter.

The Giants, in series where Lincecum started one game, has been 9-4-2, and is in good shape to win an 10th, against the Cards.

Johnson: 10-3-2
Cain: 10-4-1
Zito: 7-6-2
Sanchez: 7-4-2

Sanchez benefitted from having Lincecum following him, I think.