Feeling the Need to Write: Giants Great Season so far reminds me of the 2010 Padres

I've been following this season, and been enjoying it so far, pleasantly surprised, but if you follow me, you know that I have not been happy with Zaidi's strategy for the starting rotation, which is basically what the Dodgers did when he was the GM there: overflow the starting pitching on the roster with starting pitching projects, whether projects who they can improve or frequently injured starting pitchers who will be on and off the roster, mixed in with farm system prospects. 

One of the key components of the 2010's dynasty is the starting rotation, so I wanted to dig into their performance so far to see whether this is a sustainable. For now, it reminds me of the 2010 Padres, who, as I wrote about back then, led the NL West with great ace level pitching by a staff that had no real history of being ace starters, and as that staff reverted to their mean, the Giants caught up with them, though it took a superlative stretch of starting pitching on the part of the Giants pitching staff at the end of the season.

ogc thoughts

As of mid-point, July 2nd, 2021, after 81 games, four of the seven main starting pitchers have missed starts, with two (Webb and Sanchez) sitting on the IL currently.  But like it worked out with the Dodgers, when one goes down, another is coming off the list or sitting on the side waiting to take a turn in the rotation, like when Webb was pushed out with one pitcher coming off the DL, then back in when another went down, or Kazmir coming up when Webb went on the IL, and now Long coming up. 

Depth is great for getting through a season successfully, and getting into the playoffs, not to put down that achievement, but pitchers with injury history makes success in the playoffs more random, because teams very rarely have an equally good replacement waiting in the wings. As my blog has studied and researched, teams that want to go deep into the playoffs need a great pitching staff, both starting and relief pitchers. 

Here is the data on the SP who have had the most starts for the Giants in the 2021 Season (I left out Kazmir, but he's been out of baseball for a few years, and was outrighted to AAA, which means that it will be harder for him to be brought up again, needing a 40-man spot, and it was just two starts):

	GS	IP	ERA	FIP	xFIP
Gausman	16	101.2	1.68	2.67	3.34
DeSciafani	16	92.2	2.91	3.69	3.95
Webb	9	49.0	3.94	3.34	3.07
Cueto	13	72.0	4.00	4.06	4.16
Wood	14	76.1	3.89	3.87	3.59
Long	3	15.0	6.00	4.09	4.72
Sanchez	6	28.1	3.18	3.87	4.33
	77	435	3.21	3.52	3.74

As we can see here, the rotation as a whole has been pitching better than what would be expected under less luckier circumstances.  Per my calculations, instead of being 51-30 right now, which puts them in fist place, they should be 46-35, while still very good, 4.5 games behind the Dodgers and 1.5 games behind the Padres, in third place.  If their good luck reverts to the mean in the second half, as it did for the Padres ini 2010, they could fall out of first place, and even now, the Dodgers are right behind them, whereas the Padres had a huge lead in 2010, which means the Giants can't afford to revert to mean.

And, obviously, none of them are exactly expected to be ace level seasonal performers, even Gausman has not done it over a full 162 game schedule yet, though given what he has done in last year's shortened season and this year so far, looks to be a great find.  Furthermore, none of them, over the 2018-2020 three season period had an ERA, FIP, or xFIP that was better than 3.95, other than Cueto, who had an ERA of 3.45 over that period, but 3,72 FIP and 4.69 xFIP.  So it is not like one could expect them to perform at an ace level over this season.  On top of that, four of them are already in their 30's, when they are expected to hit their decline phase at some point.  

So while this has been a nice season to enjoy, enjoy it as long as you can, because, unless they can bring up some great performers to boost the overall team performance in the starting pitching department (though there are a few interesting performers, Killian, Frisbee are two to come to mind quickly), they will start to fade and fall back to their mean seasonal performance. Gausman looks to be the real deal, and Webb is starting to blossom, based on his peripheral stats, but the rest of the rotation will need an uplift to have the strong 3-Ace plus average starter scenario that dominated during the 2009-2012 period.