The Look of Success: Latos' Bewildered Panda Look

Andy Baggarly wrote of this in his report of the game yesterday:  the look on San Diego's ace, Mat Latos, face after Pablo Sandoval's homer in the 7th which drove him out of the game.  I think that is the look of success for the Giants as we move firmly into the pennant stretch.

As I wrote about in a post a few days ago, it appears that Kung Fu Panda has returned.  Sure, small samples, but what people are forgetting is that in statistics, the significance of data is unlike others, clearly out of the box.  Sandoval hitting homers were part of the equation that I noted in the post a few days ago.

Now the look.   Here is what Baggarly wrote:

Pablo Sandoval snapped Latos' shutout when he led off the seventh inning with a home run that bounced into McCovey Cove. It was a swing full of hope, and not only because it knocked the Padres' young starter from the game.

It might have been a sign the Kung Fu Panda is emerging from his season-long hibernation. He had gone 46 games without a home run before Thursday, but now he has two in a span of three games.

Not only that, but he connected on a pitch above the letters and off the plate. Latos had a look of bewilderment in the dugout -- the kind of facial expressions the Giants saw often last year when Sandoval barreled up pitches off the plate while hitting .330.

"High pitch," said Sandoval, smiling. "I haven't hit a ball out of the park like that all year. I think that's a good sign for the team and me."

That is something that has been mostly missing this season, Pablo swinging at pitches that clearly are out of the strike zone for a big hit, in this case a big homer.

Here is what Chris Haft reported on this:

After going 46 games without a homer, Sandoval now has hit two in the past three games.

"That was a big homer he hit today; don't ask me how he did it," Huff said. "That's special, man, to be able to hit a ball like that. That was a big homer -- that was probably one of the turning points of the game, to be able to get [Latos] out."

The thing about stats is that you try to look for things that are not like before to show that something has changed substantially.  While that works really well when dealing with rolling dice or analysis of a population, and it works well in baseball as well, as humans, we can take into account qualitative bits of data as well.

The qualitative data here is not just that he homered for first time in a long time, as well as hit well in a week stretch, which he hasn't done in a long time, but also that he hasn't been hitting well on balls out of the strike zone.  When Pablo was going well in his prior year and a third in the majors, he was great at hitting pitches out of the zone.

Sure, it would be better if he swung only at strikes.  But I don't really understand what the problem is when he was hitting like he was, particularly in 2009.  He is capable of hitting homers on pitches out of the strike zone and still able to hit well overall while doing that.  I prefer to take the path of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" because there will always be unforeseen consequences to trying to change things.  A batter's swing is a complex system that can be improved with training and education, but when you have a hitter like Pablo, you don't know if changing him might cause changes that you don't anticipate nor would like to see.

Great Photo in Chronicle



If we win and get into the playoffs, this would be a photo that captures it best, I think.  Here is the link to the article by Hank Schulman.

Additional Guillen Thoughts

I am feeling better about the Guillen trade now.  Reading all the article with interviews with him and hearing more about him, it sounds like he may have been underperforming both because of being on a loser as well as recovering from an injury earlier in the season, which he says is 100% now.  He's in his last season of his contract and wants to play next season, so he has to perform well for us to improve his chances of getting that contract.  He's excited to join a winner, something he has not done a lot of, kind of like with Huff, and so he's motivated to do well and help the Giants win.  Given how Bochy has been willing to push vets to the bench when not performing, I expect that if he don't do well, he'll sit or be released too.  Win if he delivers, nothing really lost if he doesn't because our other hitters, particularly Kung Fu Panda, should be hitting well enough in any case.

Speaking of which, sounds like Fontenot will be seeing regular playing time at 2B if Franchez continues season long pattern of up and down performance.