Fan(tasy) vs. Realist(ic)

I see a lot of moaning about the offense, and the fan in me get it, I would love to have a great offense too.  Why waste this beautiful, wonderful, great pitching?  We could be way ahead of the NL right now!  Lets get - insert great hitter - now!

But the realist in me understands that in baseball, as in most parts of life, you have to make choices.  Hard choices because we live in a resource constricted universe.  What people forget is that we would not have this beautiful, wonderful, great pitching right now, if the Giants had built up a beautiful, wonderful, great lineup.

Instead of Matt Cain, maybe they picked Sergio Santos instead.  Instead of Tim Lincecum, maybe they went ahead and trade him for Alexis Rios, as many Giants fans wanted.  Instead of Madison Bumgarner, they pick Jason Heyward (or worse, Beau Mills, or even Matt Dominguez), as many Giants fans wanted.  Instead of Jonathan Sanchez, they went ahead and traded him for Cory Hart.  Heck, instead of Buster Posey, who is out injured, they picked Justin Smoak, as many Giants fans wanted (and in fact argued the Giants made a mistake selecting Posey over Smoak).

But can anyone imagine the Giants winning the World Series with any (or all) of these replacements?  And are these fans, who think they know better, the right people to listen to for what the Giants should or should not do, when they don't even acknowledge that their alternative decisions would have been disastrous for the Giants 2010 World Championship?

I find it delusional that many of these fans think that Sabean was lucky, when I see it as that WE Giants fans are lucky these delusional fans were not in charge as GM.  Maybe Sabean was lucky, but it was his moves that put the Giants in position to take advantage of that luck.  Every World Championship team is built on some luck, no team is going to go all the way without a good modicum of luck.  But it is the teams that put themselves into position to take advantage of the situation that can win it all.  These fans would have traded away essential pieces of the championship team without knowing it at that time.  Sabean keep them all, that is not luck, that is prescience.

Meanwhile, these fans ultimately would have ended up managing the Giants into the non-playoff participating role in 2010, still hoping to win it all in their alternative universe.

The realist in me appreciates what Sabean has done for the Giants.  It is good for the soul to at least take that step and not attribute it all to luck, one, because it was NOT all luck (again, he KEPT all those players that people wanted to trade), and two, to diminish his accomplishment as luck is to diminish the accomplishment of all the Giants who contributed to that championship (again, I dare any of them to say that to a Giants player's face and see what happens) and to basically dismiss all past and future championships as shams because it is based on luck.

That is the logic that these people appear incapable of comprehending, instead, they would rather hurl invectives at me.  To say that 2010 was just luck means that all prior and future championships are luck, as every team in baseball history have elements of what these fans call luck.  And if you really, truly, feel that way, then why bother following baseball?  Roll the dice, draw a card, it is all luck, right?

Rebuilding Takes Time

What these fans also don't realize is that rebuilding takes time, a much longer time than, seemingly, they are willing to accept.  A team cannot rebuild so that one moment it is a loser, then the next moment, it is a winner.  Just like a baby is not a full grown man, one moment to next, there is all that messy in-between development time, where there is a lot of two steps forward and one step back.

And some parts will advance faster than other parts.   Sabean's apparent strategy is to build a strong pitching staff and keep it going, then add on to the offense as available.  With the pitching staff pretty much set a few years ago, the team's draft philosophy shifted and focused more on position players (while still drafting more pitchers than hitters, even though rosters built the other way).

And what people don't realize is that the lineup is coming along great.  Posey at catcher ( or Hector Sanchez or Andrew Susac as eventually replacement).  Brandon Belt at 1B (or Tommy Joseph), Joe Panik at 2B (or Charlie Culberson), Sandoval at 3B, Brandon Crawford at SS (or Nick Noonan or Ehire Adrianza), Thomas Neal in LF (or Francisco Peguero), Gary Brown in CF, Schierholtz in RF (or Rafael Rodriguez or Charlie Jones or Jarrett Parker).  We got a leadoff hitter in Brown, nice #2 hitter in Panik, middle of order presence from Posey, Belt, Sandoval, and maybe even good to great hitting from bottom of order.  And it will be here in a couple of years.  Except in the alternative universe where the fans trade away everyone to win this season.

Big Picture Needed

Fans need to take a good look at the big picture.  With Bill Neukom's wealth (Baggarly reports in his great book, Band of MiSFits, that he has $600M+; must buy book for any Giants fan, FYI) helping to keep most of our pitchers into their free agent years, and great looking arms coming up in Zach Wheeler and Eric Surkamp, the Giants should be set at pitching for the rest of this decade.  And not just set, but set to be one of the top teams in run prevention (they have been #1 or #2 two years in a row in MLB now, and look good for third time this year).

But trading just to get a boost this season, reduces the production we get from that unit going forward (unlike my suggestion that we trade Dirty to get a big bundle of prospects, which would seed our future seasons and make those teams much more winnable).  As I noted in a post before, winning the World Series, even in the best of circumstances, depends on a lot of baseball luck involved to win everything, betting on this season at the cost of future seasons makes sense if you don't think you will be able to win in future seasons.

However, it does not make sense when the Giants are set up like we are to have great pitching for the rest of this decade.   Why cost us a chance to win it all in multiple years in the future on the off chance we win it this season?

Particularly since research, and not just regular research, but from two of our top sabers out there, Baseball Prospectus and The Hardball Times, found that additional offense does not improve your chances of winning in the playoffs.  Thus, what most fans do not realize, which this realist does, is that by trading pitching for hitting, you in essence reduced your chance of winning in the playoffs and winning the World Series, as counter-intuitive as that may seem.  And that is the big picture.

Just Enough

So your first step is to build up a great pitching staff and then keep it humming for as long as you can.  Your second step is to rebuild the offense, piece by piece.  Yes, mistakes have been made, but which team hasn't?  A great pitching staff mitigates mistakes because they are much more efficient in winning games than the average team.

Let's try an example.  A league average team would have a 4.19 RA/G right now.  To be at a .500 record, the would need to score 4.19 runs/game.  The Giants, with a 3.53 RA/G right now, only needs to score 4.03 runs/game to win at a 90-72 winning percentage.  If they can achieve that, they will end up with an 89-73 record this season.

The Giants in 2009 had an overall 4.06 RS/G.  It was achieved with this batting order performance:

Batting 1st:  .258/.312/.404/.717
Batting 2nd: .251/.299/.333/.632
Batting 3rd:  .283/.337/.460/.797
Batting 4th:  .288/.316/.472/.788
Batting 5th:  .252/.321/.377/.697
Batting 6th:  .251/.303/.361/.665
Batting 7th:  .282/.336/.457/.793
Batting 8th:  .254/.307/.373/.680

As we can see, it did not take a lot to score over 4 runs per game.

And even if they continue their low scoring now, they should still end up around 84-78, which in this NL West, would still be competitive for the title and perhaps still win it.

Not More of the Same

And that is where fan veers away from realist:  assuming that what has happened up to now represents what will happen going forward.  That is not realistic given that there are a lot of players who were either missing during large parts of that period (Sandoval, Ross) or will be missing going forward (Posey, Franchez).

A big problem with the offense right now is that most players aren't hitting.  Only guys regularly hitting in June has been Cody Ross and Aubrey Huff, out of the regulars, and Pat Burrell and Bill Hall, among guys who are not regulars.  Really hurting our offense is the catcher, Emmanuel Burriss, Brandon Crawford, and Pablo Sandoval, who has not been hitting that well since coming off the DL, though he had a nice start.  All of them are killing the offense right now.  Even Schierholtz has been holding back the offense a bit, though he's been OK enough to stick in there.

And given Bochy's tone, I expect things to change sooner than later.  There is something up with Andres Torres right now, he is just not hitting right, though taking a lot of walks, which is good.  I think we see more platooning with Cody Ross in CF.  Cody, however, will play in a corner spot when not in CF.  And Burrell and Schierholtz will battle over the rest.

As much as I love Brandon Crawford's defense, hitting .169/.222/.220/.443 so far in June just doesn't make up for that.  I can see Bochy going with Tejada more and more often as Crawford continues to struggle.  And I think Bill Hall is the regular 2B going forward, unless there is a trade (Baggarly reported a rumor that Giants spoke to A's about Mark Ellis; he just came back from injury but they brought up Jemile Weeks, and he has sparked them with great hitting).  I think Burriss saw the writing on the wall and that is why he has been sleepwalking on the field.  Plus, he has got to realize that hitting .216/.256/.216/.473 in June doesn't cut it either.

Lastly, I still believe in Kung Fu Panda.  Sandoval will snap of out his slump in a big way soon, but until he does, the offense will suffer with one of their main guys not hitting, don't matter which team it is, if your middle guy isn't hitting, you will suffer.

Losing the Battle, Winning the War

So I understand the angst about getting swept by the A's.  Hey, I wanted the Giants to do the sweeping.  But you lick your wounds, tip your cap, and understand that baseball works like that, particularly against a poor offense like the Giants have.

But people forget that even our best offense, the 2000 Giants, got shut out by a Mets journeyman pitcher who by rights the Giants offense should have pounded.  It happens.

The realist in me sees that the team is still in great position, leading the NL West still, despite the sweep.  Yes, it will be tough beating the hot Twins, but they have been horrible on the road this season.  And they built their win streak off a long homestand, against some weak teams, plus beat some weak teams before that as well on the road.

Also, their hot streak has been built a lot on the back of one hot player, Michael Cuddyer.  Nobody else has been doing that great, though there are lot of good contributions from Drew Butera, Alexi Casilla, Luke Hughes, Delmon Young.  He will eventually cool, and the Giants got three pitchers who can cool bats in Madison Bumgarner, Ryan Vogelsong, and Tim Lincecum.

Looking beyond, the Giants are still 10 home games behind road games.  Once that balances out, that will improve the Giants record while bringing others down (as most other teams lose more on the road than the Giants do).  They will play 13 of the next 20 at home too, which brings us up to the All-Star break, and even things out (though they go on road for four right afterward and are on the road for 10 of 16).  And while they are ahead of their Pythagorean, they were behind by 2 games last season: some seasons it giveth, others it taketh away.

More importantly, as long as they lead the division or are within spitting distance (5 games), the Giants don't need to do anything more than tweak the team to stay in contention, as long as they have and keep this beautiful, wonderful, great pitching.  Sabean just needs to keep some trade irons hot in the fire, in case they need to make a change to shake things up (like at catcher right now).  And once Torres and Sandoval start hitting more like normal, the offense should perk up.  And betting against Tim Lincecum turning things around is usually a poor bet.

That is what the realist does, assess the current situation, balance the future and present needs, and realize that a baseball team will have hot streaks and cold streaks and that there is no need to cry that the sky is falling every time your team loses a few games.  Because that great pitching is still there and will return, and the hitters will return enough at some point to make that pitching pay off and win.

Though I don't blame it all on the fans.  The media is partly to blame for instilling in the public the tendency for short attention and focusing on the bad.  It is not that interesting to write that the team is doing fine, just hitting a bad patch, or that it is winning it all.  Nor is it as lucrative, either, for if you cater to the crowd, you sell more newspapers, website views, etc.  And drama sells.  Also, it don't take much analysis to say that the Giants are losing games and hammer on the offense, another to say that the team is in good position for doing well this season and making the playoffs and that the offense is still good enough to win the division title this season and make the playoffs.