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).
I am fine with Pence as long as he is healthy. Last year it would take him almost 7-10 days to get his timing back. I think it takes him longer than many because he has so many moving parts. A simpler swing would make his ability to come back quicker, a bit easier, but at this point of his career, not sure that could simplify his swing. He seems to be stuck with an extremely unorthodox swing, which he has never amended.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that makes a lot of sense.
DeleteThe reason he has a very unorthodox swing is because of his back issue, he has this rare condition, which does not allow him to make certain twists with his body, and thus he compensated by creating his weird swing. So I doubt he could change his swing, it is dictated by his odd physical ailment, in fact, it was so odd that none of his previous teams ever diagnose him with it, only the Giants did when they gave him a physical as the lead up to his signing his big contract with us.
I suspect that Blanco will be our hit-vs-RHP, not Dyson, and that the Giants’ determination to get a CF who can actually Field will depend entirely on how good Duggar turns out to be. We’re not going to get top-notch fielding in CF, to aid old Pence and declining McCutchen as well as deal with the AT&T acreage, out of Blanco and Jackson in 2018.
ReplyDeleteMy apologies, I had written this a while back and had set it up to publish later, but kept on pushing it back, with all the action of trades and signing and so forth. I should have edited it to account for the changes in the outfield since I first wrote this up.
DeleteSo I agree, it looks like Blanco platooning with Jackson is the likely CF solution, unless Duggar forces the team's hand by having a great spring.
Meanwhile, that means that Parker, Williamson, and Slater will be battling for the last OF spot, and likely Parker will win because he is out of options, and the Giants have liked him, and the other two have options still, last one for Mac, though.
I agree that the OF defense will not be top-notch, but the Giants never really said that they are building a top notch OF defense, they only noted that they got to greatly improve the offense, and given how poorly Span did in CF, even having average defense in CF from Blanco/Jackson would be a huge improvement overall.