Your 2018 Giants: Fantasizing on Fabian

Sandra Fabian has been showing up on Giants prospects discussions, but until the International Free Agents show up in full-season leagues, I have no idea how good they are, because I haven't figured out a good way to analyze their stats when they are down that low.  I haven't paid a lot of attention down that low.

But he has been considered a good prospect.  He was #8 among Giants prospects per Baseball America for 2017, and 9th in 2018.  He was also 9th for DrB in 2018, 7th for Wrenzie (after Reynolds was traded), 7th for MLB.com Pipeline and 5th for Baseball Prospectus (after trades).

Someone on Twitter brought to my attention that Fabian had a great second half, so I thought I would look into him further, now that I have data.  As long time readers are aware, I really like prospects who outperform the league significantly when very young for the league.

Your 2018 Giants: Pensive on Pence

I keep on seeing comments about trading away Pence to save salary, and I've mentioned that he wasn't so bad after his injury, and especially after he worked himself back into playing shape, as he struggled early on in his return.  So I thought I would dig more into it.  Of course, with the trades for McCutchen and Longoria, the need for Pence to return to his norms are lessened, though still obviously better if he did.

Your 2018 Giants: NRI to Spring Training

As reported by the media, the Giants invited a number of players (commonly called NRI or "non-roster invitees") to spring training.  If you subscribe, Melissa Lockard wrote a good account of the players at The Athletic (suggest you try anyway, the tweet that I got this link from noted the unlock symbol on it).  Here is the list of players (via Alex Pavlovic):

• Tyler Cyr, RHP
• Jose Flores, RHP
• Dereck Rodriguez, RHP
• Jose Valdez, RHP
• Madison Younginer, RHP
• Andrew Suarez, LHP
• Hector Sanchez, C
• Trevor Brown, C
• Justin O'Connor
• Orlando Calixte, SS
• Chase D'Arnaud, IF
• Alen Hanson, IF
• Kyle Jensen, IF
• Josh Rutledge, IF
• Chris Shaw, LF/1B
• Steven Duggar, CF

As I noted, I suggest you try the link for Melissa's article, she goes over their history very nicely.

Your 2018 Giants: Your Leaders in Non-Aggressive Hitting?

As you may or may not know, my mind tends to wander, and when I read things on the internet, one thing leads to another, generally.  I found through Twitter that The Hardball Times published its 2018 Annual online this year, and I guess the author of one of the chapters interested me so I clicked on his links to his prior articles, and I found one that he wrote on Hitter Aggressive Visualization.

Your 2018 Giants: No-Hitter Hesto Returns!

Brief news that the Giants signed Chris Heston to a minor league deal recently.

Your 2018 Giants: Austin Jackson, Starting CF

Per many sources (here's CBS), the Giants have signed Austin Jackson to a two-year deal at $6M (which adds AAV of $3M, leaving the Giants maybe $1-2M under the CBT Penalty Threshold of $197M), with escalators that could push to $8.5M.

Your 2018 Giants: Arbitration Signings All Done (as usual)

Been meaning to write but then the McCutchen trade went through:  the Giants signed all five of their arbitration eligible players.  That is what the Giants have mostly done in the Sabean era, avoid arbitration.  Only he who must not be named has ever took the Giants to arbitration under Sabean (he who left, really blew everything there), though Lincecum and Belt were close to it twice, before a deal was struck before the actual meeting, the scheduled day.

Here are the contracts along with the estimates made by Matt Swartz:

• Will Smith:  $2.5M ($2.5M; exact)
• Cory Gearrin:  $1.675M ($1.6M;  above by $75K)
• Sam Dyson:  $4.425M ($4.6M; below by $175K)
• Joe Panik:  $3.45M ($3.5M;  below by $50K)
• Hunter Strickland:  $1.55M ($1.7M; below by $150K)

Total was $13.6M, which was $300K lower than the estimates.

Giants Ways of Winning in the Playoffs

I ran across an article that captures some of what the Giants did to win 3 of 5.   I commented there and wanted to capture that here.  Below is my comment, plus additional stuff, as I am wont to do.

Your 2018 Giants: Heavy Lifting Done: McCutchen Trade

As reported all over Twitter (see my timeline for retweets of the details from Pavlovic, Baggarly, and others), the Giants traded Kyle Crick and Bryan McReynolds for Andrew McCutchen.  There was also some cash involved, but the amount has not yet been revealed, but probably soon.

NewPQS: PQS is Dead, Long Live PQS

Regular readers will know that my main long term research project has been the recording and analysis of the Giants pitching staff with regards to their PQS performance.  Well, BaseballHQ, the creator of the PQS methodology, announced in their 2017 book that they had revised the system in early 2016, changing their secret sauce, but I missed it, not reading the book until now.

Their new system, which they called NewPQS in their book, but will refer to as PQS going forward:

• Innings Pitched:  > 6 IP
• Hits Allowed:  H < IP
• Strikeouts:  K >= 5
• Command:  K/BB >= 3 (or if BB=0, K>=3)
• Home runs:  HR=0

Subtle differences, most of which were done to bring a more standard distribution to the PQS scores than had morphed with the rise in strikeouts over the years since PQS was first devised.  Plus, even with the HR explosion, 86% of starts could fall under the HR=1 rule, hence that change.  Also, the automatic PQS-0 for any start under 5 IP has been removed.

What this does is make PQS DOM starts much harder to achieve.  It also gives a name to the mid-tier PQS (2-3) which I've been calling MID but they are now using the term DEC for "decent".