Your 2015 Giants: On the One Hand, Obvious, On the Other, Not So Obvious

I think that we all know that there are platoon differences, and understand the strategic and tactical issues involved that with.  Bringing in the same-handed pitcher to face a dangerous batter.  That's how Loogies were born.

But I've never seen anyone take the next step with that thought from the other side, the lineup.  As usual, the below started as a comment (Shankbone!) and I tweaked it from there.

Your 2015 Giants: What the Offense Needed Was A Belt of Belt Belting

I commented elsewhere on Brandon Belt's contributions, making it into a post here (with updates, natch!)

Your 2015 Giants: Lincecum Appears to be Back

Six starts into 2015 season, Lincecum has a 2.00 ERA.  Many doubt that he is back, pointing out his reduced velocity and his decline in strikeouts.

I understand the reticience to say that Tim Lincecum is back. Even as late as last season, he pitched well deep into July only to get dropped from the rotation soon afterward. So how does one know for certain? 

Your 2015 Giants: xBABIP

BABIP is Batting Average on Balls In Play, and every hitter has their own level of skill in maintaining that batting average.  People could periodically try to develop an estimator.  Someone associated with Fangraphs gave it a try (here is the article) using BIS batted ball data.  The idea is that tying the likely results given where and how a ball is hit to develop what should have happened given the batted ball would give us a better idea of the underlying BABIP skill of the hitter.  The author provided a link in his article to the data, and below is my thoughts on Giants players and select NL West hitters.

2015 Giants: April PQS

This post has the Giants Pure Quality Start scores for the month of April 2015, PQS as defined in Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster annual book and they published the details here (unfortunately, they removed the article; this link gets you at least to the PQS definition, read down to middle for details). I wrote on this first in 2006 (wow, 10th year of this!) and have compiled their stats on a regular basis, so I'm continuing it this season for continuity and historical comparison (there is the "PQS" label that you can click to see the old posts on this). Regular readers can skip to the next section.

This is the Quality Start with a sabermetric DIPS twist, and it gets really easy to calculate once you get used to it. I don't think it's the end all or be all, but then nothing really is that. It is, as I like to say, another piece of the puzzle. A dominating start is scored a 4 or 5 and a disaster start is scored a 0 or 1. DOM% is the percentage of starts that are dominating, DIS% is the percentage of starts that are disasters (any start under 5.0 IP is automatically a 0, or disaster).

Your 2015 Giants: It's Getting Better All The Time

Seems as good a point to get out from all the grey clouds and examine where we are.  I would probably normally put this under my PQS for April, but don't have time to get to all that before game time.   I posted much of this at Shankbone's and put it here for those who haven't (or don't) go there regularly (which they should, good stuff there).