Your 2015 Giants: Trade for Mike Leake

Breaking news:  the Giants have traded for SP Mike Leake from the Reds, a player who they have coveted for a long time.  Extra Baggs has an account:

Baggs:

Leake, 27, was 9-5 with a 3.56 ERA in 21 starts for the Reds – numbers that the Giants did plenty to inflate when they scored nine runs against him on May 16. He is a ground ball machine whose strike-throwing ways should translate extremely well to AT&T Park. He’s also a perennial Gold Glove candidate and his hitting prowess will give even Madison Bumgarner a run for his money. 

The Giants have long coveted Leake, going back to when the San Diego native was the eighth overall pick in the 2009 draft out of Arizona State. Giants scout Doug Mapson, who signed Greg Maddux back when he worked for the Cubs, said he has only written a Maddux comparison once to another amateur player. It was Leake. 

Leake also knows Giants manager Bruce Bochy because he played with the manager’s son, Brett, along with Stephen Strasburg, on a travel ball team in his youth. Leake even grew up a Giants fan because of his father, whose favorite player is Willie Mays. All of this might be a factor after the season, since Leake is a free agent and the Giants planned on pursuing him over the winter even if they didn’t acquire him via trade. Now they get two months to make an attractive case while employing his services as they attempt to defend their World Series title.

The Giants traded two prospects:  corner infielder Adam Duvall and RHP Keury Mella.  It is expected to be the only deal done before the trading deadline (Morse was just DFAed by the Dodgers, so he'll be available in 10 days for free).  The Giants have not announced any other personnel moves other than that Tim Hudson will not be in the rotation now.

Bonds Overturned Conviction Upheld: Media Got it Right For Once With Bonds

Following is my comment after the news that Bonds' conviction is finally laid to rest, the government will not push this to the Supreme Court for judgement, I was happily surprised by the journalist's take in his article regarding Bonds finally clearing his name for that outrageous conviction for "obstruction" (if that is obstruction, then any politician and/or lawyer who ever spoke to a Grand Jury - hello Bill Clinton - should be convicted for felony as well).

Your 2015 Giants: Thoughts on Lincecum

Tim Kawakami wrote a beautiful article on a great athlete - Tim Lincecum - on what could be his final days, at least with the Giants.  He termed it "the long goodbye" which seems appropriate for Tim's current two year contract.  What follows is the comment I left after this article (plus updates, I always tweak :^).

Kyle Crick: Yea or Nay Prospect? Yea!

I have seen a lot of debate regarding Kyle Crick as a Giants prospect, so I thought I would share my thoughts, particularly since few seems to share my stance.

Your 2015 Giants: Second Half Thoughts

Given that this is often considered the halfway point for the season, I thought I would write about some current topics and thoughts on the second half, as well as playoff thoughts.

2015 Giants: June PQS

Happy Fourth of July!

This post has the Giants Pure Quality Start scores for the month of June 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).

Giants Sign Lucious Fox in 2015 J2 IFA Period

The Giants have signed coveted 18 YO J2 amateur international free agent prospect, SS Lucius Fox, to a reported $6M bonus.   The Dodgers were the rumored favorites to sign him at $4M until the Giants came in at the last moment with their "buy now" bid.  A very happy birthday for him since he just turned 18 today.

He is from the Bahamas but had played for a U.S. high school ("powerhouse" American Heritage High School in Florida) and in a number of tournaments, so he's probably was well known as most of the top prospects who were available in the amateur draft that happened almost a month ago.  However, because he's from the Bahamas, he went back home and declared for the J2 instead of the draft, and the MLB allowed this, which doubled or tripled (per Kiley's estimates, see below; Passan estimated $1-2M) his bonus money he would have gotten, as Kiley had him as a Top 50 pick had he been in the draft.

A fast switch-hitting SS, Fox was ranked 3rd by Fangraph's Kiley McDaniels, 4th by Baseball America's Ben Badler, and 3rd by MLB.com's Mayo and Callis.