Your 2018 Giants: Striking Out

The Giants just set a new record for strikeouts in a series, by a lot, in the Phillies series.  I thought I would compare key Giants players contact rate and strikeout percentage between 2017 and 2018.


ogc thoughts

For around half the team (stats for games to May 10th), it is about the same (i.e. down a little or around the same) or better for contact rate (balls hit into fair territory or AB minus K divided by AB) and strikeout percentage (strikeouts as percentage of PA), with stats 2017/2018:

• Posey:  Contact Rate:  86.6%/86.6%;  K%:  11.6%/12.0%
• Belt:  72.8%/70.6%;  23.1%/24.3%
• Panik:  89.4%/93.3%; 9.4%/6.0%
• Hundley:  71.8%/77.2%; 26.7%/21.3%
• Tomlinson:  76.3%/74.5%; 20.7%/22.4%
• Williamson:  63.2%/84.2%; 34.2%/15.8% (very SSS)

But many are doing much worse:

• Crawford:  78.2%/71.7%;  19.8%/26.5%
• Pence:  79.3%/62.1%;  18.9%/36.1%
• Hernandez:  76.5%/62.5%; 21.0%/35.8%
• Sandoval:  81.9%/69.1%; 17.0%/28.8%
• Longoria:  82.2%/72.9%; 16.1%/26.3%
• Jackson:  77.1%/58.1%; 20.1%/37.1%
• McCutchen:  79.6%/75.0%; 17.8%/20.5%

Especially our three big acquisitions on the field, McCutchen, Longoria, and Jackson.   I would note that for bench players, SSS looms large over their rates, and thus they are morenoted performances than necessarily significant performances.  The starters are the ones that mean more to the overall results, and there are many in the list doing worse.

Get Duggar, As Jackson is What He is:  Fourth Outfielder

On top of that, Jackson's defense has been horrible in CF (along with Hernandez and Blanco).  It may be very SSS for CF fielding, but with a horrible seasonal rate over -3 wins for CF defense, even if Duggar came up, hit replacement level (i.e. generates zero WAR) and average defense (i.e. generates zero WAR), he would be an upgrade on the team as the starting CF.  And the projections I saw had him just slightly under replacement level hitting but slightly above average defensively.   He should be brought up sooner than later, though perhaps they are waiting for the road trip to end to pick him up at home.  The sooner the better.

And I don't blame Jackson for this.  People looked at his 2017 hitting against LHP, but LHP hitting is prone to wide swings because of SSS, and his number previously were very pedestrian.  Plus, his defensive numbers have been bad for years now as well in CF, not even close to above average, let alone elite.  This is on the Giants for choosing him, as what he's doing now could have been easily projected, as 2018 regresses the great hitting vs. LHP that he had in 2017.   And, in any case, the Giants even said, in this case Sabean, that Jackson is not a starting CF, he's a 4th OF, and we see here that he's being exposed starting so much, as the Giants wait for Duggar to start hitting well enough to justify bringing him up.

Starting Pitching Is Unproven, There Will Be Ups and Downs

In addition, the starting pitching seems to have already hit the wall, particularly Stratton, though I wonder if his newborn created havoc to his body's cycles, and he's been out of it since, recovering.  He certainly isn't pitching as well now, as he was before.  Without his good starts, we had no starting pitcher to stop long losing streaks.

Samardzija, in particular, was rushed back to the majors, clearly.  He just recently got his velocity back, and now he's working on getting his command and control back.  He's been no better than a back of rotation guy, and it has not been totally his fault, as he's been pitching to get back into MLB shape.

I've been disappointed by Holland, but when one looks at his stats, he is not doing any worse in terms of his peripherals, he is just getting worse results.  Between him and Blach, they are okay as 5th starters and is being exposed by needing to produce mid-rotation starter results. 

Then we got Suarez, who has pitched well for a pitcher who is new to the majors.  But was exposed in this last start.  Part of me wonders if the pitchers and players are being affected by the need to travel to their next road destination without a full night's sleep.  That would push a players performance down the crapper, and why there is a playing at home advantage. 

Still, the starting pitching has been much better than expected.  The Giants have lost their two aces and their middle rotation guy in Samardzija, for extended periods now, and overlapping, and the vast majorities of teams cannot survive that for very long.  So this losing streak should not be unexpected, particularly after losing Cueto.  Hopefully the young pitchers are learning from all this and it prepares them for better performances later in their careers.