Your 2014 Giants: April's At the Rate They Are Going - Addendum

I had written a blog post earlier this month with this title, and I felt the need to add an addendum.  I noticed recently that another blog basically dissed the concept of my post, perhaps an oblique slap since he and I are not on good terms, but my blog was not mentioned in the post.

ogc thoughts

The opinion was expressed that there is no value to examining the extrapolated production of players.  I would agree if that is all that was done, was to extrapolate, as he did, and marvel at a player on pace to hit, say, 80 homers or get 2 bajillion RBIs.

Plus, as I noted, it was suppose to be a fun exercise to see where players are on pace for, which brought me back to my youth, and hopefully others.  I feel sorry for those who think that they are so high and mighty now and can't remember their youth and innocence.

But that wasn't all that I did, look at the extrapolated production.  I not only extrapolated out what people's rates were, but also noted standards, like what the leader had last season, and where they would rank.  And besides homers and Machi's wins, nobody is producing at an outrageous rate, unlike other teams where their guys are clearly on a hot streak that will end at some point, at which point they will fall back to the pack.

Plus there were areas of underperformance.  That bodes well for continuing our winning ways, few are over producing as well as there are a number of those underperforming, and hopefully they balance out as the former produces less.  That's a sign that this type of winning should be continuing, as long as we have everyone (and we just lost Belt, which could have been a factor in our 4-3 homestand, and Hudson's skipped start definitely was a factor, the Giants scored 5 runs in that game, and in his eight starts this season, the most runs given up so far is 4 runs, so we should have won that game; but funny how one win changes a view entirely about a homestand, as then they would have been 5-2 instead, hence why I'm not too put out by this homestand, can't win every series, can't do great in every homestand).

Then I discussed these factoids at the end, noting:

The good news is that most of the players are not playing over their heads except for homers, where there is no way all those players are going to be at 30 or more homers.  Morse's RBI pace is the only one where he's not likely to continue at that pace.

And I did note right at the very beginning, that this is for people who are not as experienced in following a baseball season, who might not have a sense for what is too unrealistic.   And my analysis showed that most players were not off the charts in any way, though in my review again here of the article, I probably should have made more of an emphasis that performing at this rate does not mean that they will, but I thought that any reader should readily understand that.  It also provided a springboard to a discussion regarding the disappointments of the starting rotation as well as the bench.

What this post provided is a view as to whether a player is performing at a rate that does not jibe with leader standings of the 2013 season, i.e. is totally unbelievable.  Not everyone (probably few) is aware of what the leaders produced, I know I didn't until I did this exercise, as newspaper rarely list the leader list anymore since such info is readily available on-line.  And looking at the production, most people don't have a sense of what that type of production means over a full season.  5 homers seems a lot but not so much, but that translate into a 30 homer season, which is unreasonable for everyone on this team except for Morse and perhaps Sandoval (though with his slow start, not this season either).

Sure, some, like Hicks is performing way better than anyone could have hoped, but that's the beauty of baseball, sometimes a player, when given the chance, will do well enough to keep the job.  It is not like this is impossible for Hicks to do, his minor league history is full of this type of hit and miss performance, he is a three-true-outcomes type of player, and as his age approached the age of the league, he has hit better and better, and he's reaching league average (average hitters age is 28.5, pitchers is 28.8).    It is too early in the season to say definitively that he couldn't continue the pace he was producing in other areas, but to think that he can reach 30 homers, a figure only the best homerun hitters in the league has achieved in recent years, that for certain is not something to expect.

And yet, sometimes players do the usual, that's the beauty of baseball, and that is what I try to teach in my blog, rather than reach for the lowest common denominator in order to goose readership.   I try to illuminate what can be expected, good or bad, from anything related to the Giants.  Hopefully my faithful readers understand all this, but if not, let me know how I can improve.