Pitching On My Mind

I posted the following on McCovey Chronicles, thought it was worthy of repeating here, it was a response to a comment that the pitching staff is not fantastic, that it is overrated:

Cain actually just had two great games overall - he just suffered bad luck with the two homers in each game, which costed him. Otherwise, he pitched great, how often does he keep his walk total to 2 walks in 2 games? While striking out 12? Just some bad luck he's experiencing from the baseball gods.

Zito would have to regress a lot to post a 4.5 FIP: he's at 4.25 and he ends seasons with a great half regularly, which he's doing again. Fangraphs adjusted projections have him at 4.18 FIP at the end of the season. If he's his usual goodness in the second half, he should be able to get it down below 4.0 FIP.

Lincecum is Lincecum.

That gives us three great starters for the rest of the season; few teams can match that up top.

Sanchez has one so-so start and he's dumped to the wayside? He actually pitched a good game yesterday over what he could control: 5.0 IP, 5 hits, 3 walks, 6 strikeouts, 0 HR. That's a good start. Bad luck dictated that everything was bunched together and they scored 4 runs. Still, his ERA since his no-hitter is only 4.40, which many teams would love to have in the middle of their rotation; he's only our 4th starter.

Martinez et al at 5th starter is actually no worse than most other teams, including playoff contending teams. Having a semi-OK pitcher at 5th is actually hard to do for most teams. Most teams rotate somebody in that spot and hope for the best.

So no, the pitching staff is not overrated. It is fantastic. But sometimes the baseball gods giveth, sometimes they take away. They've been taking away lately, but they probably gave when we went 6-1 on that homestand. And there's still two more games.

And the way people say that we are wasting a special season: it's not wasted, it's been beautiful. Sure, the offense is lacking: the team is rebuilding. It's like complaining about the house when the builder hasn't put up the walls yet, or installed the plumbing. Of course the offense is lacking, the rebuilding isn't done yet.

Don't forget the defense has been pretty good too. How good? The Giants ERA is actually not that much better than the rest of the NL, it's been bunched up at the top. But when you examine all the teams' runs allowed averages, the Giants leap ahead of the competition. Our defense has been a huge part of the Giants leap to competitiveness and contention this season.

Why the woe over Cain not being a top 10 pitcher? He's pitching great. He's always been at the brink of being special like Lincecum. His problem has always been that he would just have those games where he is just bad, those disaster starts. Those starts is what costs pitcher's their nice shiny ERAs. If a pitcher can just avoid those meltdowns, they can have decent ERAs overall even if they are not extra dominating otherwise.

What Cain has done to leap up this season is avoid those disaster starts while also increasing the number of his dominating starts, which he has done by reducing his walks. Walks had always costed him before, but now he's eliminating that area of weakness in his game.

A good pitching staff is above average. A great one is up top the league in ERA. The Giants have been up top and has been great. It is not overrated, it is one of the best around.

And one of the best around helps the Giants stay competitive almost every game. It just does not help them win every game.

What people are missing is that pitchers are more consistently good than hitters are, game to game. They can keep their team close enough to win games. Even the best offenses go through dry spells, and even the best offenses cannot overcome when pitchers have a disaster start.

I've been trying to figure out the dichotomy of why people focus so much on offense but not as much on pitching. For example, hate to bring this up, but Giants fans almost always focus on Dusty taking the ball from Ortiz as where we lost the series. In my post-analysis, I think where we lost the series was games 2 and 3. In game 2, we came back from a 7 run deficit to take a 10-7 lead. We would have had a 2-0 lead in the series, winning that game. Instead, the bullpen gave up 4 more runs and we lost 11-10. In game 3, we lose 10-4, falling to 1-2 in the series. If either game were well-pitched, we would have won in 5 games.

Or think about the 60's Giants. We had one of the best offenses ever. In a decade dominated by pitching, so dominating that baseball made two rules to make up for that: lowering the mound and adding the DH in the AL. Did the Giants win many pennants then? Who did? The pitching-led Bums.

Good pitchers are regularly good, particularly the best pitchers, like Lincecum, and like how Cain has been this season. My studies of PQS shows how consistently good a great pitcher is, they have well-pitched games 70-80% of the time, the best up to 90% of their starts. Even the best hitters don't have much of any effect on any one game (and a series) most of the time. It really takes a team there but the starting pitcher is the lone gunman who can take over any game.

That's why there is often an unexpected World Series hero, who have a great hitting series and thus win the MVP award. Gene Tenace, Bucky Dent, many others who hit so well that they get the MVP award, not the superstar hitter who got the fame and money. Bonds was considered a choker in playoff games until the 2002 playoffs because he hit so badly in all the other ones.

Pitchers can take over any game they start, but hitters, even when they get 3-4 hits in a game, achieves nothing if the rest of the lineup don't do anything. Pitching is the key, pitching is our strength, pitching is going to lead us to the promise land over the 2010-2012 time frame (health permitting) supported by the offense. In business strategy lingo, pitching and defense are the core competencies for a baseball team, offense is the hygiene.

Why Be Confused?

I don't see why people are confused: the Giants are 61-51, only one game back of the wild card lead. So they must be doing something really extremely right: pitching and defense. They keep it so that the Giants don't have many games where they are behind by 3 runs, apparently.

Or would you rather be a team that can come back from a big deficit but have a losing record? Washington has an offense that can come back from big deficits, 6th best offense in NL. Cleveland too, averages 5.2 runs scored per game. Toronto averages 4.9 runs scored per game. I don't think any of us would trade places with them, they have been selling off their better players this season for prospects.

This is only confusing because we, as fans, are conditioned to understand big bopper type of teams, not great pitching and defense type of teams. It is as I posited before the season, that you don't need much of an offense to win enough games to compete for the playoffs when you have one of the best pitching and defenses around. And we do.

What is confusing and disorienting to me is that so many fans have a good team in front of them and they don't realize it. The Giants have one of the top records in the NL. Don't you think other teams are frustrated with their pitching? Some of them would love to have a Cain who can subdue the opposition, and he's our second best pitcher. Or a bullpen so good. Or a 4th pitcher like Sanchez who is capable of throwing a no-hitter. Even Zito the pitcher (not Zito the contract) is someone other teams would love to have on their staff as their third starter.

Learn to appreciate what we got - great pitching and defense - and stop worrying so much about the offense, as it is what it is. Just hope that it is enough.

Go Giants! Beat LA! Beat LA!