Your 2023 Giants: To Zaidi or Not Series - What's the Plan?

The Giants fanbase, from the view of The Athletic's comment pages for the Giants, are in an uproar about Farhan Zaidi's stewardship of the Good Championship Giants.  The Zaidi Haters complaints include but are not limited to:

• Five years is enough to rebuild a farm system and the team
• 2023 season was a disaster
• The farm system has not made any progress
• They are not as good as Texas, LAD, Atlanta, etc.
• Zaidi is in love with platoons and openers
• Zaidi can't sign the best free agents; there's no stars
• What's the plan?

This is the second in a series examining each complaint.

ogc thoughts

Okay, I'm going to tackle the complaint about what the Giant's plan is.

Media Outrage Echo Chamber

The media often echoes the outrage of Giants fans, and it's true now as it was true then, back in 2007, when a local columnist questioned the Giants plans after Bonds, and today, when another local beat writer, asked what exactly is the Giants plans, questioning it in the wake of Gabe Kapler's firing.

The Plan is Simple: Pitching, Pitching, More Pitching

It is clearly pitching, again, much like the complaint back in 2007.  It is as plain as my nose on my face. And couldn't be more obvious.

Let's start with where the pitching staff is today.  The Giants Runs Allowed is above average, ranked 12th overall in MLB (out of 30 teams), with an average of 4.44 vs. MLB average of 4.62, and 4th overall in NL (out of 15), with an average of 4.44 vs. NL average of 4.66.  That's actual results.

However, looking at the underlying talent, based on removing the randomness of base hits and home runs, the Giants were ranked much higher.  The Giants were 2nd in xFIP, with 3.86 (1st was the Rays with 3.84, so they were edged out, 3rd was Twins with 3.94; median was 4.24) and 3rd in SIERA, with 3.88 (1st was Twins with 3.77, 2nd was Rays with 3.78, 4th was Mariners with 3.88 as well; median was 4.16).  There were a lot of bad luck homers, like for Harrison and Stripling.  

And it should get even better in 2024, even without accounting for the possibility that the Giants might add an ace level starter like Yamamoto to the rotation.  First and most of all, Kyle Harrison should be starting for the Giants all season.  I'm not sure how many innings they will allow him to throw, he only threw 67.2 IP in 2023, 113.0 IP in 2022, so I would guess anywhere from 138.0 IP to 160.0 IP. And I'm not sure how great his ERA will be, though ZiPS forecasted 3.65 ERA for 2024.  But given how good he has been in the minors, which was elite, he at worse won't be so bad that they will have to remove him from the rotation, like the three spots with openers in 2023.

Also, Tristan Beck and Keaton Winn will be available as starters during the season, which will set a high base of 4.00 ERA, which both were around (ERA/FIP).  Then there are prospects who are looking very good at the moment in Carson Whisenhunt, Mason Black, and Hayden Birdsong.

The Plan Revolves Around Harrison

And it all started with Harrison.

The 2020 Draft was all about getting Kyle Harrison. Because he wanted a certain number (apparently $2.5M) but teams today, especially analytical teams, don’t like drafting high school pitchers (draft studies have found that to be the worse return), especially in the first round. So Farhan had to plan on finding players that his scouts liked, but was expecting to get much less money than the amount slotted for the pick that the Giants had, in order to save up bonus money for drafting and then paying Harrison his bonus. 

Making his job even harder, this was the infamous Covid draft, which was reduced to only five rounds. Normally teams would save a little on picks up to the 10th round, especially drafting college seniors who usually signed for maybe $5-10 thousand, but the Giants had to save money only on the four rounds available.  And picks in the third round only was slotted for $710,700, and who the Giants needed to save up another $1,786,800, in order to reach the $2.5M that Harrison was demanding for his bonus.  

Astonishingly, the Giants not only managed to save enough money to sign Harrison, they needed up drafting a Gold Glove finalist as a rookie, who was only promoted in May, but still led the majors in a number of key catching statistics, as well as drafting a third baseman who looks like he’ll be a Gold Gloev caliber 3B, once he figures out hitting well enough to start.

Once the Giants had Harrison, they switched their draft strategy from including college position players to "pitching, pitching, and more pitching", drafting pitchers with their first 9 picks in 2021 (Vaun Brown, normally a throw-away senior signed just to save money, was the first position player, in the 10th round) and drafting pitchers with first 6 picks (though first pick was a two-way player) and 8 of 10 in the 2022 draft.  

Those drafts yielded interesting prospects:  Mason Black, Vaun Brown, Landon Roupp, Carson Whisenhunt, Hayden Birdsong, Wade Meckler, John Choate, and it is too soon to write off Reggie Crawford, Will Bednar, Eric Silva.  These prospects are currently ranked by MLB Pipeline as the Giants Top Prospects:  3, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 21, 26

As I explained in my baseball business plan, which was originally addressed to Bill Neukom then updated to Zaidi, there are a lot of good reasons to focus on pitching as the team's core competency, which one can read all about in that business plan.  Some highlights:

• First, and most importantly, studies by Baseball Prospectus and Fangraphs found that it is pitching and fielding that wins in the playoffs and thus lead to deep playoff runs.  BP's study specifically noted pitching staff strikeout dominance, closer performance, and strong fielding defense.  BP also noted that having three aces was a statistically significant factor as well. 
• Second, because prospects become good randomly, pitching is good to focus on because the more good pitchers you have, you can just slot them in without needing to trade them off and risking not only that the pitcher becomes better with the other team, but also that the hitter you receive won't play up to the levels he had before (which is especially possible since their home park is a pitcher's park). And the more you focus on pitching, the more likely you are to develop at least two aces, and hopefully three.
• Third, pitching prospect failures can have a powerful second chance life as a major leaguer if they can become a good reliever. Met's and A's famously had four ace prospects about 30 year ago, and all of them failed to even make it as starting pitchers, but one became a great closer, another was a good reliever.  Failed position players only find bench value by being good pinch hitter or utility player.
• Fourth, building a good set of aces improves your chances in the playoffs because the best pitchers are able to consistently throw quality starts, and that greatly improve your chance of winning in the playoffs. It's no guarantee, as the 2011 Phillies team showed, but in the playoffs I've studied, starters who had a DOM quality start won 82% of the time when the other team didn't have a DOM start (68 games out of 93, 73% of the games).  Even more importantly, aces avoid a lot of disaster starts (68 in total, and when the other team had a higher PQS, they lost 70% of the time.