Your 2018 Giants: 40-man Roster Changes Ahead of Rule 5 Draft

In preparation for the Rule 5 draft, where teams can steal players from other teams who they think are ready, as they would need to be on the 25-man roster for the 2018 season, teams have tidied up their 40-man roster, placing guys on that they are afraid of losing and DFA-ing player they are not as afraid of losing.

The Giants added RHP Tyler Beede, C Aramis Garcia, RHP Tyler Herb, and LHP D.J. Snelten.

The Giants DFAed two middle infielders, Micah Johnson and Orlando Calixte, as well as RHP Dan Slania (who has cleared waivers; the news is at this link right now, but will be pushed down as other news comes in)

2017 Winter GM Meetings: News and Thoughts

I should have probably started this Monday, but wanted to get my other posts out first.  The news leading up to the meetings were Sabean's two interviews in the week prior to the start of the meetings.

The first was in the new coaches announcements (also, Rick Schu announced as assistant hitting coach at some point), when Sabean noted that the team's main areas of improvement that they are focused on are defensive CF, starting 3B, and bullpen improvement.

The second was in an interview he gave The Athletic's Tim Kawakami, where he noted that they will have to make tough choices, saying that beyond Posey and Bumgarner, anyone else could be in play, as long as the move improves the Giants.  I assume improvement means qualities that was mentioned before, getting younger and more athletic, better defensively. 

I will add what I know to have been said in recent days in the post below, and either comment future comments or edit the post with new news, haven't decided best route yet.

Your 2017 Giants: Post-Mortem and 2018 Thoughts

The Giants had the second worse record in franchise history, going 64-98.  I've seen many in the media, including some talking heads who I don't have a lot of respect for, excoriate the Giants for not planning on pursuing power, necessarily, when the annual post-season press conference was held.  The Giants senior management emphasized improving outfield defense, looking for an upgrade at 3B, and perhaps bullpen help.

FYI, all stats from the great Baseball Reference resource.

My First 2018 Giants Venting

Ugh, I hate when people talking about solving a team's problems and then lists a "solution" that is not even realistic at all.  Recently I read talked about a "solution":  just sign free agents Lorenzo Cain, Howie Kendrick, Todd Frazier, Jon Jay, Tyler Chatwood, Brandon Morrow, Yusmeiro Petit.  Problem solved!

Your 2017 Giants: First Post-Season Presser

Ah, just like old times, when the Giants hold their first press conference after the end of their season, and the team is off a horrible season.  For a long while, Tim Kawakami had been posting the transcript and making it easy for anyone to see what exactly was said, saving me from having to listen/rewind the whole press conference to capture everything.  But he's off doing new things behind new paywalls (so maybe he did provide), and I don't feel like capturing EVERY word exactly anymore :) so like I have since my blog started, I will go over all the questions and answers said, and provide my own commentary (or snarkiness, as the case may be :).

Your 2018 Giants: The Options and the Opt-In

Per news reports, Cueto chose not to use his opt-out, opting in to stay with the Giants.  In addition, today, it was announced that the Giants picked up the options on Bumgarner, Moore, and Sandoval.

In addition, in the press conference, they announced the hires of Curt Young as new pitching coach and Alonzo Powell as new hitting coach.  Both were astonishingly recommended by their predecessors, Righetti and Meulens, respectively.

They also announced that their top areas for improvement are starting CF, starting 3B (Sandoval looking like a backup utility player at the moment), and the bullpen.

2017 Giants: September and Final PQS

This post has the Giants Pure Quality Start scores for the month of September  2017 and is the final for the season, 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, 12th 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).

Congrats to Houston Astros!!! They Beat LA!!!

Astros beat the Dodgers for their first World Series Championship in their franchise history!!!