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.

ogc thoughts

I see the angst.  His seasonal batting line was a disappointing .260/.315/.385/.701.   And that is poor for NL RF in 2018, which hit .264/.337/.464/.801.  It is even poor against NL LF, which had a .256/.330/.437/.767 batting line, since there is talk about moving him to LF.  But it was not like he was that all season.

If you take out the early stuff when he was also trying to play with the bruised knee injury that happened April 21st and the hamstring issues he had, he hit .266/.326/.403/.729, which is better but still not that close.  But if you consider that he might have not been in playing shape when he came back, and just consider the games once he got back into shape, he hit .275/.337/.421/.758, which is pretty close to the NL LF batting line, basically there, especially if you use OBP*SLG and not OBP+SLG (.142 vs. .144).  That was over half a season, covering 90 games played with 83 starts.  And, perhaps that hamstring issue lingered some and he just played with it, so if you just look at his last two months plus games, he hit .291/.360/.467/.827.

So his skills were still there, but he apparently had some issues with his batting for the first four months of the season, or roughly 3, if you consider that Pence was hitting well when he originally got injured.   It's been pretty clear the past few years that he's not so good when he's not fully 100%, but good when he's healthy.

He's Fine When Healthy, But Lately Not So Healthy

The key seems to be keeping him on the field and not dealing with lingering issues, like his hamstring.  As we saw with Durham, that appears to be an unsolvable issue.

The better plan, which I've been advocating for the Giants to do is to be very conservative about putting these ageing players back on the field as fast as they have been doing, plus giving them more rehab time in the minors to get back their timing.  If the MLB players don't feel like slumming it in the minors and taking trips, maybe the Giants can use their instructional leagues for giving their rehabbing players the reps that they need, much like they do in spring training when they simulate game action.

Especially since we have a surplus of unproven OF in Slater, Parker, and Williamson, plus Shaw could be ready anytime during the 2018 season.  We should just sit Pence when he's suffering from anything, and let the young guys play.

So, overall, I'm good with Pence still being a starting corner OF with the Giants.  With good hitters like Posey, Longoria, Belt, Panik, and, hopefully, Crawford, we don't need him to be league average.  As long as he's around mid-700's OPS, with that lineup, the offense should be OK (better if we can pick up someone like Dyson, who is good vs RHP, to play CF, as well as other OF).