Hey Zaidi! My Baseball Business Plan: Pitchers Produce more WAR than Position Players

Happy Thanksgiving!  What people don't really realize about WAR is how much is contributed by the good to great pitchers vs. the position players on a per game basis.

2015 Giants: May PQS

This post has the Giants Pure Quality Start scores for the month of May 2015, PQS as defined in Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster annual book and they published the details here (unfortunately, they removed the article; this link gets you at least to the PQS definition, read down to middle for details). I wrote on this first in 2006 (wow, 10th year of this!) and have compiled their stats on a regular basis, so I'm continuing it this season for continuity and historical comparison (there is the "PQS" label that you can click to see the old posts on this). Regular readers can skip to the next section.

This is the Quality Start with a sabermetric DIPS twist, and it gets really easy to calculate once you get used to it. I don't think it's the end all or be all, but then nothing really is that. It is, as I like to say, another piece of the puzzle. A dominating start is scored a 4 or 5 and a disaster start is scored a 0 or 1. DOM% is the percentage of starts that are dominating, DIS% is the percentage of starts that are disasters (any start under 5.0 IP is automatically a 0, or disaster).

2015 Giants: April PQS

This post has the Giants Pure Quality Start scores for the month of April 2015, PQS as defined in Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster annual book and they published the details here (unfortunately, they removed the article; this link gets you at least to the PQS definition, read down to middle for details). I wrote on this first in 2006 (wow, 10th year of this!) and have compiled their stats on a regular basis, so I'm continuing it this season for continuity and historical comparison (there is the "PQS" label that you can click to see the old posts on this). Regular readers can skip to the next section.

This is the Quality Start with a sabermetric DIPS twist, and it gets really easy to calculate once you get used to it. I don't think it's the end all or be all, but then nothing really is that. It is, as I like to say, another piece of the puzzle. A dominating start is scored a 4 or 5 and a disaster start is scored a 0 or 1. DOM% is the percentage of starts that are dominating, DIS% is the percentage of starts that are disasters (any start under 5.0 IP is automatically a 0, or disaster).

Your 2015 Giants: Perhaps the Giants Do Have an Offensive Type: Strikeout Avoidance

Baseball America published a study on team with the lowest strikeout rates by their hitters, and found that five teams - Cardinals, Giants, Royals, Rangers, Tigers - had the lowest strikeout rates over the 2010-2014 period and won 9 of the 10 league championships over that period.

ogc thoughts

First study I've seen to find correlation between offense and winning.  However, as I commented on there (and someone else), study size is probably an issue, it might be holding now, but not so much over history, perhaps.  Also, as I noted, both BP's (Baseball Prospectus) and FG's (Fangraph) studies, which studied a long period of time, found that offense has no correlation with winning.  Still, don't mean that there could not be some correlations over periods of time, just not over history.

The Giants over this period has definitely focused on hitters who minimize strikeouts. Sandoval, Posey, Blanco, Stewart, Arias, Panik (he also walks a lot while striking out less) and even Belt and Crawford, when they are on (I studied their strikeout rates over 10, 20, 30 game intervals a couple of years ago), could get their strikeout rate down, resulting in contact rates above 85%. And players they traded for or signed as free agents, like Freddie Sanchez, Angel Pagan, and Marco Scutaro, in particular, and now Aoki and McGehee. Only Pence, Morse, and Belt were the free swingers in this lineup for the last few years, I think, piling up the strikeouts at times, and even Pence wasn't that bad.  And of course, Burrell before that (Huff was actually a good hitter in terms of strikeout rate in 2010 and before, and so he would be included in the list of good contact hitters) and Torres, for his improvements over before, wasn't that great at avoiding strikeouts.

One thing I found interesting that that while OBP was much better than batting average in terms of correlation with winning on the offensive side, as sabermetrics has basically denigrated the value of batting average to the extent that most newbie sabers treat BA with disdain, on the defensive side, batting average had almost as high a correlation as OBP, and both were considered strong correlations.  Then again, on the defensive side, all the metrics were strong in the 2010-2014 period except for HR/PA.

Lack of Homeruns Does Not Mean a Team is Weak or Can't Win

Thus, the media's strong preoccupation with the long ball - be honest, how many articles have you seen regarding the Giants lack of HR hitting as a key weakness on this team, and heck, for many prior Giants teams during this golden era - is misplaced.  Hitting a lot of homers has a weak correlation with winning.  And this is something both the BP and FG studies noted as well, that there was no connection between the number of homers hit by a team and how well they did in the playoffs.   Girls may dig the long ball, but the trophies don't necessarily end up with the guys hitting them.

The Very Strong correlation, for both offense and defense, at least in this new defensive era, is with winning and SO/BB.  It is very significant offensively (-0.72 vs. next highest correlation of 0.58 for OBP) and still pretty significant defensively (0.73 vs. -0.67 for OBP and 0.61 for SO%).

The Giants have appeared to be focusing on getting such pitchers and hitters.  Bumgarner had a wonderful SO/BB ratio in high school and continued it into pros.  Strickland, Law, and Okert exhibit such great ratios as well.  Cain and Lincecum once had very high ratios, dropping in recent years, but there are indications they should revert to prior performances in 2015.  Both Hudson and Peavy have had good ratios as well.  Among the hitters, Posey, Susac, Belt, Crawford, Scutaro, and Panik have shown this skill in the majors, and Adrianza showed it in the minors in a couple of seasons.

Truisms: Is the Eastern League A Pitcher's League?

One of the truisms I've come across in following the Giants is that the Eastern League is a pitcher's league.   The reasoning I've seen before is that with the California League a hitter's league and the PCL another hitter's league, seeing how poorly our hitters do in the EL makes that league a pitcher's league.  Given some discussions I have had in the ether, I thought I would examine that truism.

Your 2014 Giants: 9th Rotational PQS

As long time readers know, I've been studying and analyzing PQS for a long time (for new readers check out the label "PQS" or see the links I set up to the right showing the final analysis of the past three seasons).  I had the occasional thought on this but finally thought of it early enough in the season to quickly compile the data then update it every game, making the data collection less onerous.  I was wondering if anything could be seen by checking out each turn of the rotation and how the starters collectively did as a group in each turn of the rotation.  This is a first in a series I plan on doing this, though at this point, I'll probably be writing when there is something interesting to say, so right now, I don't know if I'll be writing about every turn of the rotation or just certain ones.

As for what I've been collecting, in addition to PQS organized by groups of five starts, I'm also looking at the average for the last N starts, for N=5, 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30 (roughly a month).  I might check higher N's later, but I thought this would be a good start.

ogc thoughts

This is the 9th turn of the rotation for the team.  They are at 49% DOM and 22% DIS, both good but not great, though closing in on that (great is >50% DOM, < 20% DIS).  And remember, this is the whole rotation that is good, nearing great, not just one pitcher doing that.

The rotation had early problems in their first five turns of the rotation, with that bad first turn of the rotation and another bad one in the 4th.  Since then they have been on an upward trend, despite having Petit pitching for a starter in three starts, attaining one DOM, one DIS, and one Middle (there was never an official name given to this PQS score of 2 or 3), bringing down the average.  Still, it has slowly improved to the point where in the last two turns of the rotation, the Giants are at 60% DOM and 0% DIS, great averages, a team will win a lot of games playing at this level.

Looking at the averages for N starts, given the improvements noted above, I thought I would note some of the trends for these averages, stated in terms of the number of averages over 60% DOM and under 20% DIS, which has been the dividing lines for prior Giants rotations in terms of monthly and annual average performances.

Because of up and down DOM starts, it has varied between one and two averages (out of the 6 being captured now) but with Vogelsong's great start today, this is the second straight week of 60% DOM, pushing it to three averages at 60% and another one getting close (at 56%).  Without the Petit starts, the starting rotation has a 50% DOM overall right now.

Because of so many DIS starts early on, the averages have been running high, above 20% easily.  The 8th turn of the rotation was just the second one to feature 1 or less DIS starts in a turn, and this 9th turn is just the third.  Last week, only one of the six were under 20% but with two straight turns without a DIS start, five of the six averages are under 20% now, and the sixth (the 30-game average) is at exactly 20%.  While DOM starts are no guarantees of a win (though pretty good), DIS starts are generally pretty good guarantees of a loss (from my playoff study of PQS starts, roughly 80% for each, that is, 80% chance of win with DOM, 80% chance of a loss with DIS).

And it could get better if our top of the rotation gets themselves into a groove.  As we all know, Hudson has been the one steady starter for us (no DIS starts yet, plenty of DOM, 62.5%).  Vogelsong has gotten himself into great shape, with 4 DOM starts out of the last 5 and no DIS.  Lincecum has also been strong, with 5 DOM starts in 7 (elite 71% DOM), though with some DIS starts thrown in.

However, Bumgarner and Cain has been up and down so far this season, they would have a two game streak of DOM then non-DOMs before two more DOM then non-DOMs.  On top of that, Bumgarner has had a team high 3 DIS starts (tied with Lincecum, so some more recent vintage great Timmy, bad Timmy).   If they can get into their usual good grooves, this rotation could be unstoppable, much like the Dodgers last season in July/August, except that the Giants could be doing that all season long if everyone can stay healthy.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, things can turn on a dime sometimes with PQS, so we will see if Lincecum and Vogie can continue to do well.  On top of that, Hudson had his recent hip issues, so we will see if his old body (his words in many interview) can handle the stress still, or if he'll be up and down as well.  Plus, Cainer and Bum, this could be their new level of performance.  Cain, I thought was back at the end of last season, but he's been off so far this season.  Bumgarner, I could excuse one or two starts, because it was his first season opener and another was in Colorado, but the ace is suppose to be able to shrug those off, and he didn't.  But it could also be learning curve for him.  So we will see.

Still, things are on an uptrend, they are lookin' good.   They just now have to rinse and repeat.   Let me know if any questions pop up, I'll try to answer them.  

Examination of the Sillyball Era Theory

Never let it be said that I don't re-examine my stances time to time.  That is what led me to appreciate what Sabean does for the Giants, when I studied how darn hard it is to find a good player via the draft.  That is what led me to change my mind about whether Bochy was the manager to lead us to a World Championship.  I am willing to change my mind if presented with new data that changes my mind.

I got into a "discussion" about my stance that Eric Walker's theory of the Sillyball era is correct.  You can read the full theory here at his website, as well as the studies he has found which examined the composition of the ball.  Seeing the complaints about it, I realized that while Walker's analysis made sense to me - and still do - there are some who don't see what I saw.

Walker's finding that got me believing him is this:  starting roughly in the 1993-94 timespan, baseball suddenly started scoring more runs than it did in the 15 year period before.  And not just a little, in 1994, it went beyond the max of before and stayed there for the next 15 or so years.  Basically, the offense suddenly started scoring, on average, 12% more runs than they did before on average.

Walker also examined a number of angles on how that could happen and came to the conclusion that the only explanation that makes sense is that the baseball changed in the 1993-94 time period, that is, it got juiced, leading to the offensive era that most people call the steroid era.  Hence why Walker calls it the "sillyball" era.

PQS in the Playoffs (first in a series)

I've been trying to think of a way to analytically examine the playoffs using PQS.  I first tried looking at a pitcher's PQS for the season and then looking at what they did in the playoffs, and realized that the randomness of PQS would not yield anything in short series like the MLB's playoffs.  Then I hit upon what I think is a good way of examining the power of PQS in the playoffs, and I got that from the game of chess.

In chess, when players play each other for their championship, they either win, lose, or stalemate, which is a tie for those not into chess.  And points are awarded (much like hockey too, I just realized) thusly:  +1 for a win, +0.5 for a stalemate, and 0 for a loss.  I will do that for each playoff series and see how each series ends in terms of who won vs. who won on PQS, and cover all the playoff series in a season.

It is pretty simple.  There are three types of starts:  DOM, DIS or other, which never got a name but I'm going to call it MID.  And DOM beats MID and MID beats DIS, and if they are the same, then it is a draw, a stalemate.  The rationale here is that each type of start is mostly random, thus leading to a draw, a coin-flip on who wins, but it is pretty clear that the majority of the time, the relationships of DOM > MID > DIS will hold.  Summing up the points per the matrix, each team will get what I will call their PQS Score, with the idea of looking to see if teams that have the winning PQS Score typically wins, and once I get enough data, I can do a correlation between winning a series and winning the PQS Score.

Here is the table:



I have no idea what I will find, though obviously, I hope to find that PQS does rule in the playoffs as I've been postulating for a while.  What I hope to see is that teams with the better PQS score, per my matrix above, What I am more hoping is that it will be interesting in some way.

I don't have the time to dig through every series first and then write on it, so this is intended to be a series of posts, depending on time, inclination, and what I find.  I am covering 2011 and 2010 in this post.

PAP Smear: Giants and PAP

There are a number of Giants fans who like to bring up PAP and note how badly the Giants are doing in taking care of their young pitchers. I thought I would bring up the opposing view again, plus bring up some Baseball Prospectus content that people might not be aware of, since it's in a book, and give another view of the situation, using BP's stance in the book.

PAP Smeared

First off, Bill James doesn't like PAP, which he noted in a chapter in his book, "The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers". I can’t do James justice, but basically he says that the PAP underlying methodology and assumptions are flawed, and nothing they change about it will change that underlying problem. James believes that overuse is just one of many different ways a pitcher gets injured and thinks that pitch counts could push players to the point where underuse will affect their ability to build enough stamina to withstand even the games they are pitching now.

PAP Defense

BP was allowed to rebut and, in their defense, basically said that they made improvements to their methodology that James analyzed, that he was looking at their first generation of that methodology, and that they already had a better methodology that is based on research now (first version was a guess). They also noted that “there is clearly a danger in relying on pitch counts as the sole arbiter of a pitcher’s risk.” “It’s clear that pitch counts are only one factor in determining a pitcher’s injury risk. A pitcher’s mechanics, his workout regimen, his body habitus – all are factors which play a part in determining how many pitches is too much.”

BP's Standards for Good Pitcher Management

They also noted a number of pitchers who had pitch counts in the low 120’s, which they were not that concerned about (up to 127 pitches), nor were they that concerned that they went over 127, as long as they didn’t do it very often. Thus, doing it once, twice, over a few years period was not a big concern, it was doing it regularly that they had a problem with.

Lincecum, in his roughly 2 years of pitching, over 66 starts, has gone over 127 twice, and thus has been at or under 127 pitches in 64 of those 66 starts, with those two starts coming late last season.

Cain in a little over 3 seasons of pitching, 112 starts, has gone over 127 once and thus has been at or under 127 pitches in 111 of those 112 starts, with that one start coming in mid-2006.

Thus, based on BP's stance in the book, they should have no problem with the usage of Lincecum or Cain by the Giants management. Particularly since mechanics is important to them, both Lincecum and Cain are suppose to have great mechanics.

Giants Pitchers: Lincecum and Cain, Heading Down the Stretch

BP also admitted that they agree with James that it was pitchers who were 24 and younger who were more at risk: "Bill is almost certainly right when he states that almost all of the risk inherent in throwing too many pitches occurs in a pitcher’s formative years. The connection between overuse and catastrophic injury seems to drop off quickly past age 25 or so. "

Well, that's good news for Giants fans. Lincecum will be 25 on June 15. Matt Cain will be 25 on October 1. So unless Bochy has either of them throw more than 127 pitches in a number of games between now and their next birthdays, they would have passed through their injury nexus years (pre-25) without being overly abused, per BP’s comments in the book regarding sterling examples of baseball manager's proper usage of pitchers.

Rotation slot effects on scoring support

It has been my contention that where a pitcher falls in the rotation will affect his run support because, in theory, if you are higher in the rotation, the tougher the pitchers you face and thus the less run support you get. On the other hand, then the lower rotation guys get more run support because they generally face pitchers who are the back fo the rotation.


The argument against this is that with varying off-days and rainouts, plus other reasons for disturbing the rotation, that this would not hold true, that it would vary enough that my theory would turn out to be wrong. I understand these factors, but from my fantasy league experience, I find that varying off-days might change one or another, but then they fall back into sync again. Rainouts are more problematic, but the Giants typically don't have a lot of those to deal with.


What I present is not definitive, but certainly indicative that my supposition has some validity. Here are the 2008 Giants starters run support, which I'm ordering them from 1 (ace) to 5 (back of the rotation), based on who went 1 to 5 to start the season:

• Zito: 3.60 runs per 9 innings support
• Cain: 3.12 runs
• Lincecum: 4.57 runs
• Sanchez: 4.79 runs
• Correia: 3.96 runs

For 2007 Giants, from 1 to 5:

• Zito: 4.21 runs
• Cain: 3.12 runs
• Morris: 4.99 runs
• Lowry: 4.70 runs
• Ortiz: 5.45 runs
• Lincecum: 4.54 runs (took over Ortiz's spot in rotation; average of the two is 4.67 runs)

For 2006 Giants, from 1 to 5:

• Schmidt: 4.38 runs
• Morris: 4.11 runs
• Lowry: 5.40 runs
• Cain: 4.67 runs
• Wright: 4.67 runs

For the 2006-2008 Giants, from 1 to 5, average of 3 years:

• #1: 4.06 runs support
• #2: 3.46 runs
• #3: 4.99 runs
• #4: 4.72 runs
• #5: 4.44 runs

I should note here that the setup of the rotation for the Giants rarely did not change when it came time to readjust the rotation after the All-Star break. Still, as one can see, generally, the front of the rotation gets much less support from the offense because they are facing the front of the rotation for other teams. And the mid to back of the rotation gets much more, over 1.5 runs more from #2 to #3 and, at the closest, over 0.38 runs from #1 to #5.

The odd thing, obviously, is that runs scored is greater in the middle than at the back end. I attribute part of that to the fact that teams' off days are not always in sync, thus pushing the ace to pitch against the #5 sometimes, bringing down the average run support for the #5 starter. Likewise, sometimes the #5 would get pushed to face the other team's #4.

Still, it is odd that the highest run support was usually in the #3 spot (Lincecum fell short in 2008, but remember, he got moved to the #1 spot in the second half, which reduced his run support). And that the #4 spot was still lower than the #3 spot.

A wild guess would be that the truly worse starter is typically #3 or #4 because teams like to reward the vets senority and pitch them higher in the rotation than they should be, had expected performance been used to drive the selection instead. Then age decline or expected performance happens and more runs are given up in the middle, while the new young starters typically get thrown at the back of the rotation, where they sometimes kick butt, pushing the runs scored lower. But if they do poorly, then they are like the other pitchers in the back of the rotation. Thus the upside potential at the back end of the rotation is greater than the expected averageness (but low chance of upside) that is normally in the middle of the rotation.

Still, not conclusive, but the general sizing is that the back of the rotation gets more runs support than the front, and the only plausible explanation of that is that rotations generally keep the same general order over at least the first half of the season, which is demarked by the All-Star game, which generally happens around the 95th game of the season, not the 81st, or roughly 19 starts in the first half, 13 starts in the second half, which is when rotations often change, but typically the ace is still up top, and generally the #2 is still #2.

I think my idea not only has legs, but good support by the data, albeit only one team over only 3 seasons, but the general shape held well across the time span, each starting position generally held the same rank: #1 got more runs than #2, but much less than #3, #4, #5; and #3 was greater than #4, which was greater than #5, for the most part.

Dodd Stadium at it Again

The Giants, with the opportunity to leave that hellhole that is Dodd Stadium, that their affiliate Connecticut Defenders play in, decided to re-up for two more years.  Bad move, they should have taken the leap and leave, as I have shown how in the past few years how it has severely limited the hitters' power there, both our batters and opponents.  Thus hitters are not as bad as seen, but neither are pitchers as good.

Today, the one who caught my eye was Eddy Martinez-Esteve.  He finally had a relatively healthy season, but he was much better than his numbers show:

Total:  .300/.389/.384/.773, 6 HR in 393 AB (66 AB/HR)

Home: .266/.387/.277/.664, 0 HR in 184 AB ( -- AB/HR)

Away:  .330/.391/.478/.869, 6 HR in 209 AB (35 AB/HR)

In addition, he did well in May and July, but not so great in other months.  Still, except for April, when he got the rust off, he had more or equal walks than strikeouts each month, which only the best hitters can do.  

As one can see, his power is horribly reduced at home, particularly in terms of homers.  He's a 15-20 HR hitter on the road, Duane Kuiper at home.  His ISO is reduced from 148 on the road to 84 at home, reducing his SLG a whole 96 points overall.

Still, his hitting is not that of a great prospect in the Eastern League (though it is good).  His .869 would have ranked him 19th this year, just ahead of Orioles highly touted Nolan Reimold, who is also 24 years old for the season.   No data available for 2008, but in 2009, the average age of players in the Eastern League was basically 25.0 years old for hitters and pitchers, so EME stats should be given a bit of a boost as he was doing it against slightly older, more experienced pitchers.

Other hitters affected included:

• Pablo Sandoval:  ISO of 195 at home, 253 on road
• Adam Witter:  ISO 166 at home, 245 on the road; 26 AB/HR at home, 17 AB/HR on road; .394 SLG at home, .500 on road; .726 OPS vs. .861 on the road
• David Maroul:  95 ISO at home, 212 ISO on road; 167 AB/HR at home, 24 AB/HR on road; .305 SLG at home, .453 SLG on road; .570 OPS at home, 729 OPS on road
• Antoan Richardson:  59 ISO at home, 122 on road; .293 SLG at home, .376 SLG on road; 184 AB/HR at home, 43 AB/HR on road; 634 OPS at home, 759 OPS on road

Only Witter had a good performance hidden, but still, why make your hitters work so hard to figure out how to hit there, when doing so would bring no to little benefit down the line?   Has not done much for the Mayor of Norwich, that's for sure.

Prospects and Confidence

I've been talking for over two years now about how playing at Dodd Stadium could prey on the confidence of prospects who are forced to play at a home park where their SLG and ISO is reduced 30-40% by the park. Many disagreed, few (if any, don't recall any) supported me. But I ran into an industry opinion that supports my assertion.

Depodesta And the A's

As I noted before, Paul Depodesta has started up a blog called "It Might be Dangerous... You Go First" and yesterday he wrote about his thoughts and experiences regarding the decision of bringing up a prospect. Here is what a baseball industry expert and insider (and former GM) wrote about how even the most confident prospect need to get his confidence stroked:

There are examples at nearly every level. During spring training of 2003, Nick
Swisher was having a monster camp. After being drafted in 2002 he had finished
the season in High-A ball, and the plan all winter was to start him back there.
Due to his great spring, some people starting pushing for Nick to go to AA even
though he didn't even have a year's worth of minor league at-bats yet (I'm sure
I was one of them). I specifically remember Keith Lieppman, the Farm Director of
the A's, saying, "If he goes to AA and struggles to the point where we have to
send him back to A ball, I won't even know where to begin to pick up the
pieces." Nick Swisher was not a guy who lacked for confidence, by the way. So,
Nick started back in A ball, killed it, moved to AA, and so on.

I'll never forget Keith making that stand, especially considering his experience in player development is second to none. We all want to get our players to the big leagues as quickly as possible, but we also need to be as prudent as possible (and Keith needed to remind us in that situation), because when the players get there we
want to succeed. Not survive. Succeed.

This is basically what I've been writing about sending prospects to Dodd. The Giants apparently agree with me now, as their best prospects has been leapfrogging AA to AAA this season, in order to avoid that park. Now I've found this example.

End the horrors for our hitting prospects NOW!

Inter-Division Play: AL Dominance Explained?

In my last post, I examined how pitchers who can hit has an advantage over pitchers who don't, then thought about the advantage for the AL team in terms of the DH during that series. That also might explain the AL's dominance in inter-division play. If NL pitchers aren't that good in the first place, then the AL pitchers' lack of hitting practice doesn't matter much in terms of advantage for the NL over the AL when playing in NL. However, when you are in an AL city, you often have 1B-type hitters (high 800 OPS) in the DH position for the AL team but a replacement level hitter (probably high 600's OPS) in the DH position for the NL team.

Since that is roughly the difference for my examination using the Giants data and Vizquel's OPS (.467 OPS for the #9 hitter vs. .671 OPS for Vizquel), that means that the AL gets roughly one extra win for every 32 games played in the AL. That means for every 162 games played in AL cities, between two otherwise equal teams, the AL would only be 81-81, but with their DH advantage, they would be 86-76.

How does this look in practice:

• Last season, they won 137 games out of 252, for a winning percentage of .544, which works out to a 88 win season. Based on my assumptions above - equal at NL, unequal at AL - the AL teams should win around 130 games, so it appears that the AL is better than the NL by a slight margin.


• In 2006, they won 154 out of 252 for a much larger margin.


• In 2005, 136 wins out of 252.


• In 2004, 127 wins vs. 125 losses, so they were actually below average there.


• In 2003, 115 wins vs. 137 losses, so the NL were clearly better this year.


• In 2002, 123 wins vs. 129 losses, again NL better.


• In 2001, 132 wins vs. 120 losses, AL back ahead again


• In 2000, 136 wins


• In total, for the 2000's, the AL were 1060-956 for a .526 winning percentage or 85 wins in a 162 game season

My theoretical model predicted a 84 wins season. That is roughly the rate (85 wins) that the AL has won at in the 2000's, suggesting that the wide ups and downs in each season is roughly random fluctuations around the mean. Based on this, the AL and NL have basically been equal all these years, with a slight advantage to the AL, but because of the imbalance at the DH position all these years, they have appeared to be much more dominant.

Pitcher's Value as Hitters: BP Found Similar Gains as I Did

I wrote a while back on the value of a hitting pitcher: here. Baseball Prospectus has recently did a more comprehensive analysis of it (well, they do have a much better database of information; they did the same thing when they replicated my draft study) and came to basically the same conclusion I did, though the range is smaller than what I had posited. Their article is here.


As a recap, I bumped up the Giants pitcher's performance to that of Omar Vizquel last season (i.e. not that huge a jump) and found that the increase in runs scored relative to their pitching performance resulted in an extra win, but since it's a zero sum game, it is a net two win swing.


Sidenote: I just realized that this is something that sabermetrics types either didn't notice or don't make clear in their discussions on this or, more likely, I was being stupid, but while increasing runs scored or runs prevented by the roughly 10 runs that results in an additional win in a season (say from 81 wins to 82 wins), that results in a swing of two games in your record (from 81-81 to 82-80, for example). So I always thought that when they say you increase by one win, you need to get to two wins in order to go from 81-81 to 82-80.


BP didn't quite find such a jump in wins but something similar and, I just realized, is using a different measure so perhaps we are more similar in results than I originally thought. They used a regression-based system for projecting hitter performance that they call SPHPS (Simple Pitcher Hitting Projection System). They used their Marginal Lineup Value formula to calculate how many extra runs a pitcher produces relative to a league-average hitting pitcher, where the rough rule of thumb is 10 extra runs equals one win.


The best hitting pitcher, Dontrelle Willis, adds a whopping 8.7 runs per season, which is ironic since he's now in the AL where this advantage is gone. He is a full 2.3 runs better than the next pitcher, Micah Owings, who is a full 0.8 runs better than the third, and the third is 0.7 runs higher than 4th. The 10th best hitting pitcher is Brad Penny with +2.8 runs per season.


Dontrelle's lifetime hitting line is .234/.280/.359/.639 with almost 30% XBH and 44 AB/HR. That is almost but not quite to the stats I used for Omar (which was .671 OPS). Plus the Giants pitchers OPS (or rather #9 hitter's OPS) of .467 is probably close to the league-average for the NL (since AL has DH), plus or minus.


So the results are very similar, if a pitcher can rise from a league-average hitter to one as good as Omar was last season, which is considered pretty bad for a regular starting position player, you would add, based on the calculation that BP did for Dontrelle Willis, roughly 10 runs extra per season, which translates to an extra win (if the translation is linear, the .671 OPS would equal 9.1 runs extra per season but close enough).


In my study, I stated that it adds around 0.34 runs per game, which translate into 10.9 runs extra per season. BP's finding is roughly equal to that, particularly if the Giants pitchers are below the league-average for the NL (very possible, they don't seem to be that good as hitters, particularly last season), that would account for the 1.8 runs difference between my calculation and their calculation. And obviously this only applies to NL cities where the pitcher bats.


Do You Really Want to Win?


So this is an open challenge to any pitcher reading my post. Do you really want to win? If you do, you would keep up your hitting skills every day and try to get as good as one of the worse starting position players, and if you can do that, you can add an extra win (which results in a two win swing in your team's record) every year. I always thought it was a shame that you see in high school all these pitchers who could also hit as well or better than any regular position player, but then you get to the majors and don't see the same thing anywhere in the NL.


And if you can get your teammates to buy into it and duplicate your feat (Livan, as much as I don't like him, did at least challenge his fellow starting pitchers with bets and contests, to hit better when he was around), that is an extra five wins per MLB season. Thus if your team is just an average team overall but have pitchers who can hit as crappy as the worse hitting position player around, you would change an 81-81 team into a 86-76 team. In other words, from a mediocre also-ran to a team that would be in contention every year.

World Series Gambit


Now this advantage would be diminished in the World Series because the DH would be used in the AL cities, so that got me thinking. Most teams are rarely in place to be assured a spot in the playoffs before the last day you can trade for somebody, but if you are close enough and you are an NL team, you could try to pick up a cheap rental of a good hitter from another team so that you have a better caliber hitter on the bench for the playoffs and so that you would have a better caliber hitter DH-ing for you in the AL cities.


Typically, the NL team is reduced to using their best hitter on the bench. But unless you are extremely lucky, most of the hitters on your bench are there for a reason, they are replacement level hitters or worse, unless you are lucky enough to have a McCovey-Cepeda-like competition going on where one sits when the other one plays. That creates a huge advantage for the AL team against the NL team when playing in the AL city, and lately with the NL losing the All-Star game each year, the AL team gets that extra game in their city and extra advantage.


That is probably similar to the advantage the NL team has over the AL team in terms of how well their pitchers hit.

Want to Win a Couple More Games Per Season?

This has been something I've thought about for a long time, since I saw John "the Count" Montefusco hit a home run and reinforced by Don "Caveman" Robinson, then brought to mind again last season when Russ Ortiz re-joined the Giants: most pitchers are missing something by not working on their hitting as well as their pitching. Are you competitive enough to want it, to get that extra win or two?

If Only I Could Hit


Using the lineup analysis data that ties run production as a function of OBP and SLG, I tried some numbers out to see what would happen to a pitcher if he could hit as well as the worse position player. For this experiment, I used the Giants pre-season lineup that I noted should produce 4.27 runs per game and compared it with a lineup where the 9th hitter could hit as well as Omar Vizquel was projected to hit. Thus, the .467 OPS pitcher/PH/double-switch (pitcher alone is much lower) is now a .671 OPS hitter. That's roughly a 200 point increase in OPS.


First, I assumed that the pitcher was good enough to keep runs allowed to 4.27 runs and thus would be a .500 pitcher with our projected offense, or 81 win season for a team like that. Improving the pitcher to Omar level would boost runs scored to 4.61, or an extra 0.34 runs per game. That would change a .500 pitcher, or 16-16 win/loss in 32 starts, decision in each game, to a .538 pitcher, or 17-15 win/loss. Only two games, or really, just changes one game from a loss to a win, but on a team-wide level, that makes a .500 team with 81 wins to a 87 win season and competitive for the division title (though usually just short by the end).


Second, I assumed a good pitcher that would win at a .600 winning percentage, which working through the math in reverse, means that he has a 3.49 ERA when the team is scoring runs at a 4.27 pace. Again, boosting the runs scored by 0.34 runs per game results in a loss turning into a win, changing a 19-13 starter to a 20-12 starter. That changes a 97 win team to a 103 win team.

Overall Result

It does not seem like much, but, like a baseball season, if you are around long enough, it makes a difference. Over a ten year career, that's the difference between a, say, 120-120 record or a 130-110 record (that is the equivalent of an 88 win season). You go from an average pitcher to one who is not that bad, pretty good even. Or a good pitcher at 130-110 to a great pitcher 140-100 (that is equivalent of a 94-95 win season for a team). Or a great to an elite at 150-90.


Seems like it's only a little gain for such a big jump in OPS - and I will admit that jumping from 200 OPS points is a big jump and probably beyond the abilities of a lot of pitchers - but there are many pitchers who don't hit well AND don't work at it, and they brush that off like it's nothing, as long as they pitch well, that is all that they care about. Well, would they like to win a couple more games per season?


And I know that sabermetrically, wins are not the greatest measure of a pitcher's value, but a win is a win when you look at the final standings of the year. And most pitchers are not going to go chapter and verse about their DIPS ERA if they won a lot of games. Shouldn't their pride at least get them off their butts and take batting practice more seriously and learn how to hit better? It might change only one loss into a win, but that's a two win swing and can move a pitcher from one level of winning to the next level.

Pitcher's Command: Giants Starters

The Hardball Times have an article on what's important when looking at a pitchers' K/BB ratio. The standard is that you want starters with K/BB over 2.0 and ideally over 2.4. But are there other factors that should guide your opinion on which pitcher is better?

Walks Not Always Bad

What the study by Derek Carty does is separate starting pitchers into three categories: low strikeout pitchers, solid in both, and high walk. Low strikeout pitchers was categorized as having: 2.00+ K/BB, 5.00- K/9, 50+ IP. Solid in both pitchers had: 2.00+ K/BB, 2.75+ BB/9, 7.00- K/9, 50+ IP. And High walk pitchers had: 2.00+ K/BB, 3.50+ BB/9, 50+ IP.

When the pitchers were split in those three categories, what he found was that pitchers with high walks had the best ERAs. In the NL, the High Walk pitchers had an ERA of 3.85, while the other two had 4.21 and 4.28 ERAs. The split was even wider in the AL, the High Walk pitchers had a 3.75 ERA, while the other two had 4.40 and 4.48 ERAs. How can that be when it has been drummed into us that high walk pitchers are to be avoided or at least strongly admonished?

What he concluded is that: "All K/BB rates should not be treated equally." Which, as he noted, is pretty obvious from the data. He also noted:

"Pitchers who achieve their K/BB rates using pinpoint control and poor strikeout rates are not nearly as good of a bet as those who achieve their K/BB rates by getting a high number of strikeouts, even if they have below-average control."

Leave Them Young Giants Starters Alone

Of course, what a lot of Giants fans have been saying, me included, is that Lincecum and Cain need to get their walks under control if they are to become elite pitchers. But as this study shows, even if you walk a lot (over 3.5 BB/9), as long as you strike out a lot as well, that mitigates the danger inherent in walking batters and adding runners, as a lot of strikeouts means less balls in play, and less BIP means less hits, and less hits means less run scoring hits, even if you happen to walk more than is usually prudent.

All in all, they are not just another brick in the wall, they are clearly among the elite in the majors and we have the privilege of getting to see two of them pitch for our beloved team, the Giants. Just another piece of evidence that keeping them is better than trading them away for even very good players like Rios. As the table shows, there are only 17 of them like that in the NL, and we got two of them.

That is a strength, that is a competitive advantage. An advantage throughout the season, an advantage any season we make the playoffs. Now Sabean has to build us a lineup that is capable of scoring enough runs for the pitchers to win more often than not.

Strong Starting Rotation IS Competitive Minimum Now In NL West

I think that it should be noted that while it is a competitive advantage in general, it is the competitive minimum in the NL West starting in 2008 (in order of finish):

• D-backs: Arizona upped the ante with their bold trade for Dan Haren to pair with Brandon Webb. They also have The Big Unit, Randy Johnson, contributing as well, plus Micah Owings and Doug Davis. Still, Johnson is a big question mark with no established or up-coming starter in the wings other than untested Yusmeiro Petit and while Owings had a great season and a better second half, curiously, he was much worse on the road than at home - 3.81 ERA at home vs. 4.96 ERA on the road - suggesting that his home numbers was the fluke and thus he should suffer a sophomore slump in 2008. Other negatives: despite low groundballs%, his BABIP was a strong .280, suggesting that he should suffer a regression to the mean and see his BABIP rise to the .300 area; his K/9 is a relatively weak 6.25; his BB/9 is borderline at 2.95 (3.0 is max you want to see it at); he pitched more games at home, where he did well, than on the road, and this should even out in 2008. He falls into the Solid in Both category, which had the worse ERA among the three categories. Even with Haren, too many question marks to be top rotation, but still strong and led by two ace-type starters in Webb and Haren (though as I had cautioned previously, Haren probably will not pitch as well as last year, despite moving to NL, he was lucky in a number of ways).
• D-Rocks: Colorado has a nice set of starters who could be comparable to the Giants rotation: Jeff Francis, Aaron Cook, Jason Hirsh, and Ubaldo Jimenez, with Franklin Morales waiting in the wings. However, while Francis and Cook are solid, they are not as good as any other team's top two starters. Hirsh still needs to put things together and pitch to his potential, though since he's in the back of the rotation, he did OK last season. Jimenez needs to show that he can pitch like he did in 2007 for a full MLB season, when batters get another chance to figure him out. He did do a lot (LOT) worse in September than he did in August (with low BABIP too, though he does get a significant amount of groundballs and give up less line drives). Same for Morales, whenever he gets a chance to start, D'Rocks have Kip Wells in the rotation at the moment.
• D-Dres: San Diego has Jake Peavy and Chris Young heading their rotation, and a year ago, they were probably the elite of the NL West, but now the other teams have caught up and perhaps even passed them up. The rest of their rotation includes the incomparable Greg Maddux (but very old now), Mark Prior (who hasn't been healthy in ages), and Randy Wolf (who hasn't been healthy AND good for ages now, and will be 31 in 2008; you don't get healthier with age).
• D-gers: LA has Brad Penny, Derek Lowe, and Chad Billingsley heading their rotation, plus Hiroki Kuroda and Esteban Loaiza, and Jason Schmidt lurking around, saying he's feeling better and probably competing with Loaiza for the last spot in the rotation.

So why trade one off now to build up the rotation? Because if we do, we would just have to get another one somehow once the lineup is fixed. And the Giants right now - with Cain, Lincecum, Zito, Lowry, and Correia - is probably comparable with the rotations above, based on past performances and expected performances in 2008. Why break up that strength (and probably make it a weakness) by trading off one of the top two guys in Cain and Lincecum? To me, that would be like covering up a hole in the dam by removing your finger from another hole in the dam: either way, the dam is leaking and you are no better off overall. And in this case, even worse now, you don't have twin aces like the rest of the division.

I think there are a number of strengths to having Cain and Lincecum together. Both Cain and Lincecum ranked among the leaders in a number of the leaderboards for starting NL pitchers in the Bill James 2008 Handbook and in THT 2008 Annual. If one should falter, the other should be good, there should always be one pitching like an ace - if you only have one ace, like when we only had Schmidt on top, when he did poorly, there was no one else around to pick up the slack, and the team suffered. Their high K/9 pitching will help us in the playoffs. And in short series, like the playoffs, they can pretty much take over them as a tandem.

The rest of the rotation is pretty good too. Zito is comparable to the other teams' #3 starters, given that others have injury history, short history of success, and/or are old. Only the D-gers appear to be comparable, or even superior, to our top 3.

However, Lowry pushes us above other rotations. I think Lowry is head and shoulders above any other teams' #4 starter. None can really match his performance and experience. And while he has had health problems, the others' #4 had worse injuries or has less successful experiences which put them much below him.

Given Bochy's history of protecting pitchers, I see him not letting Lowry go as deep into games as he did in 2007, in terms of number of pitches. He let him go to 100 or more pitches in half his starts (13 out of 26) and he went 105 or more pitches 6 times, over 110 pitches 3 times, and he reached 125 pitches one time. Though he still only averaged 98.5 pitches per game in 2007 and the number of starts over 100 is much much less than what Alou put him through, I think Bochy's going to restrict him even further in 2008. I think he will continue to target him at about 100 pitches, but will not let him go beyond 105 pitches anymore, and perhaps could even try to keep him under 100 each game. I could also see the Giants try to rearrange the rotation in the second half to give him less starts overall.

Lastly, Correia is about as questionable and potentially good as any other #5. This can go either way in wide swings, but generally, a team's #5 starter should not affect the top 4 overall competency much, unless he has a totally breakout or totally disastrous season.

Lots of Groundballs Are Good Too: Sign Lincecum Soon

He also noted a table he put together that showed that pitchers who can get more than 50% groundballs are also able to keep their ERAs low. So that's a way a pitcher can get away with poorer K/9 and/or BB/9 rates. Still, while Lincecum is a high K/9 pitcher, he also gets a lot of groundballs in his balls-in-play too, a great combination to have in a pitcher. And hence another reason why he should not be traded.

The only reason he should be traded is if the Giants medicos decide that his arm really is ready to fall off. Otherwise, we should sign him soon and buy out all his pre-free agency years plus get an option on his first free agent year, if not try to get his second year as well.

Another Win for the Home Team

ogc brief

Pitching is king, so says study.

Giants have strategy around pitching, no use trading away developing pitching for lesser value, we need to learn what we got first.

Rebuilding is hard, have to be patient, let prospects develop and go from there, not trade in desperation.

In 2008, progress not measured in wins or losses, but in knowledge gained on our prospects capabilities.

Study Says Pitching is King

I was perusing the 2007 Baseball Forecaster - and anxiously awaiting the arrival of the 2008 - and ran across another interesting finding that supports the whole premise of what I have been advocating for the Giants strategy going forward, which is simply: pitching rules.

In the 2007 book there is a study of "Home Field Advantage" by John Burnson on page 34. He examined how runs scored and runs allowed affect winning percentage, modeling the results. He did this study because some fantasy leaguees put a premium on guessing the outcomes of single games.

What he found was that "All in all, the mission for the home team should be to allow fewer runs." And his finding "reinforces a fact of baseball: Run prevention is king. A team that scores 10 runs can still lose, but a team that allows 0 runs can't." His conclusion? "If you are betting on single games, go with pitching, and do not underestimate home-field advantage."

Giants Thoughts

I know that by now I'm probably either preaching to the choir or falling on deaf ears. But like a barnstorming evangelist, I seek additional converts. I seek to find the key that will unlock more minds, to convince them that I am correct, or to find the person who is able to set me straight.

From my previous posts, I have been trying to make the case that pitching first is the ideal strategy for the Giants (really for most teams). Having a park that favors certain pitchers - while it has become a neutral park over the past few years, it still inhibits HR hitting by hitters, particularly for lefties - the Giants are better off being in the position of trading pitchers, because pitchers will look better than they really are pitching in AT&T, while hitters will look worse than they really are in AT&T.

Also, studies have shown that offense don't play much of a role in the success of a team in the playoffs, whereas pitching and defense does. Obviously you need to score enough to win in the regular season and get into the playoffs, but once there, it is pitching that makes a difference in who wins the series and who doesn't. So the smart team and GM starts from there and build around that core of pitching and defense, not trade it away to at best do a sideways move, because as much as Rios improves the offense, the starting pitching is probably that much worse, if not more since Lincecum is better than Rios.

Some have been advocating trading off our pitching now because we have to improve our offense. We are rebuilding and rebuilding takes patience and belief in the plan. In life, as in baseball, the adage that those who fail to plan, plans to fail. This is very true in the Giants case.

Cain and Lincecum are perfect pitchers to build around for a successful run in the playoffs, with high K/9 pitchers like them being very rare and their low H/9 is just as rare. Those advocating trading either basically agree that any trade of either would not finish the rebuilding job of the offense, that it would only incrementally improve the offense. They acknowledge that further moves are necessary. Some say that they will worry about the pitching when they get to the point of getting into the playoffs, but pitchers like Lincecum are rarely available via trade or free agency but 24 HR outfielders like Rios often are.

So why overpay for Rios now? Rios is nice but he was no underaged wunderkind, like Cain or Lincecum. It took him a couple of years of struggle to figure things out in the majors. Neither Cain nor Lincecum had much struggle - about a month's worth - to become consistently good. So why trade now when Rios is not the final answer plus Lincecum could improve his value immensely with another good season.

I think the analogy to a farm is apt here, particularly since we call it a "farm system." Just because the team is struggling, it does not mean you go ahead and sell the fruits of your farm before they are fully ripe and mature. You need to be patient and allow them to be fully developed before you go to the market to sell them off.

As I've been saying for a while now, the Giants are just getting to the tipping point, but they are not quite there yet in regards to top pitchers. However, we do have mid-range pitchers like Lowry, Hennessey, and Sanchez who we could deal as we have pitchers like Correia and Misch who can come up and take their places. But obviously this is not an area of depth, particularly after we lost Blackley in the Rule 5 draft, so that's why the Giants have been sniffing around free agent starters.

Those worried about pitchers and injury miss the big picture. They are just advocating Cover Your Ass (CYA) behavior, which is what the Giants have been doing since the 2002 World Series, covering their ass by getting a bunch of experienced vets instead of taking a risk and shooting for greatness by signing good players like Vlad or Carlos Beltran.

The fact is that not every pitcher performs badly or become injured, else teams would have a hospital at the park to save the travel. If you are going to live in fear of pitchers falling apart, then you may as well stop drafting pitchers or trade all the young ones away for veteran pitchers who are more sturdy (in whatever way you define as sturdy). Obviously, the bed the Giants have made revolves around young pitching, for better or worse (I believe better), but we are not at the point yet in our development where we can just go off trading off great pitching just to cover your ass on offense.

As I've advocated before, my Phoenix Theory of Rebuilding requires a period of pain where the team is going to stink, where you give players who appear to have some potential a chance to show whether they have it or not. 2008 is that year of pain. That's why you give Ortmeier a chance, unless you can pick up a failed 1B free agent prospect (like Tampa did in 2007 with Carlos Pena) and give him a chance, but you don't waste a good pitching prospect trading chip just to trade for a failed 1B prospect when you have Ortmeier already. If he fails, then you can trade for that better 1B prospect mid-season, he should still be available somewhere, whether you do that trade now or then don't really make a big difference, so why not give Ortmeier a chance, however brief.

Hopefully, prospects develop as you hope, particularly from the 2007 draft, and you proceed from there. It will be incremental step, by incremental step, some giant leap, with some steps backward. But you short change the rebuilding process by trading off one of the best pitching prospects around for an OK outfielder when he won't make a huge difference to the offense, as the offense will be that much worse unless you think that he's a better hitter than Barry Bonds (since the offense as it exists now, with Bonds, was anemic still). So why not find out in 2008 what our position prospects are made out of before you make drastic moves like moving Lincecum? Why not be patient?

Trades made out of desperation - which is how I read the position of all the people I've seen advocating the trade, they are desperate for more offense - are rarely a good trade, rarely a good position to be in when in negotiations. Because then you make deals that don't make sense, that is short term rather than long term, that are knee-jerk reactions, instead of following some sort of plan.

The plan is pitching dominance. With Lincecum and Cain, we have dominance, then we build around them. People point at the offense and the losses with Cain especially, but the Tigers were in that situation a few years ago too, with Bonderman (their Lincecum/Cain) taking a beating in losses even though he pitched well, because they had a poor offense. They rebuilt the team over a few years and now Bonderman is pitching with a good offense.

I'm not saying the Giants will have such a great offense, but I'm saying the Tigers bit the bullet with a number of poor years as they built up their farm system with high draft picks (Maybin, Miller, Porcello), signed some select good free agents like I-Rod and Ordonez, and turned themselves around. They didn't trade, say, Verlander away in 2005 when they were 71-91, to get more offense (they were 11th out of 14), they picked up a nice free agent in Kenny Rogers to improve the pitching even more, plus let their offense develop.

I don't know how many years away we are, so that's sure to be scary for some. I think we are closer than most think, as our team underperformed in 2007; they should have been much closer to .500 than they were. So the loss of Bonds should be offset a lot by the regression to mean of the team offense overall. So it would take some development of our young players, both position and pitchers, to progress from where we were last season, as we have some pluses in 2008 that didn't exist in 2007.

One is that Roberts will be healthy as a leadoff hitter and platooning with Davis, who should be good in that role - he should not be starting, at least not until he can prove that he can hit well over a season. Two, Zito should be fully over his contract-itis-oopsy, and can pitch as well as he did in the second half of the season, if not better. Three is Cain and Lincecum should be over their learning pains - Cain in trusting his fastball, Lincecum in truly believing he belongs in the majors - and, as scary as they may sound to the NL West, they could even be better than they have been. Four, 2B should not be a sink-hole like it was in 2007, either Durham rebounds or Frandsen will take over and be a decent 2B, his history in the minors suggest that he can do at least that much. Even if not, at least we would have learned what his capabilities are, rebuilding is about learning what we got, plus giving prospects who have performed in the minors a chance.

Then we need a bit of luck. One would be Schierholtz doing it again: during his career, he is powerless his initial run at a new level, then the lightbulb turns on and he is superman again. He had an extended run in 2007 in the majors, hopefully if he is given the chance to start in 2008, the light bulb will turn on. I am hopeful that he will be one of the unexpected surprises that will make 2008 a better season than thought.

Two would be Ortmeier. Yes, his history is not the greatest in the minors and that counts greatly against him. However, he handled two separate stints in the majors nicely, and while that is small samples, unless we can get a 1B alternative that doesn't cost us anything, he should get a chance to see whether he can do that over a full season, I respect when a player can deliver in the majors. Yes, he could turn out like Gladden and Herndon and not be as good as initially, but what do we have to lose? If we are rebuilding, we should not be caring much about the win-loss and more about whether the player we have is good enough or not, then move on and trade then, only then, as losses don't matter, in fact, it's even good, as it gets us a better pick in 2009.

Three, we will need our pitchers in new roles to come through: Wilson, Walker, Correia, Sanchez, Misch. If Wilson and Walker can solidify the end of game roles, particularly closer and setup respectively, that would fix a big problem area of 2007 - for example, Cain lost 5 wins because of the bullpen, he could have been close to .500 instead of 9 games under .500. The others could be new starters in the rotation, and if they can duplicate past performance, we can safely trade away Lowry or Sanchez without a loss of performance.

But in any case, whether they do or not, that is what we have to learn, we have to be patient, we have to accept that most probably 2008 will be a learning year where progress is not measure in wins and losses but in finding out what our prospects got, which will guide us in the 2008 off-season on what we need to do next going forward. It is like Edison testing out thousands of materials to find the best light filament, each failure is not a true failure because you now know what doesn't work and you can move on from there. That's how it should be with our prospects, unless we can get someone without losing prospects - say players who are non-tendered this month or released for whatever reason.

What Makes a Great Baseball Player (Plus Villalona News)

There was an interesting article on baseball players, written by scientists, that I wanted to share: Mind Games. It talks about some of the personality traits that mark the good players vs. the bad players. It even mentions Billy Beane, though not as a GM, but as a failed top prospect. I thought it was a good read.

My Apologies, Tambien

Also, sorry I haven't posted much lately, but I've been busy with outplacement classes and since I got only that one month (not that I'm not appreciative, at least I got that much, I know others who don't even get that), I had to maximize the use of that service. I think it has been time well spent. In fact, I've had a Lowry post written since I had that long discussion with others on him, but haven't had time to post it. But my service just ended, so I'll be having more time to post, at least until I start submitting resumes and getting interviews.

Also, I joined a new fantasy baseball league that is starting up and I've been knee deep in drafting players as well. I think I'm doing OK: Santana, Lincecum, and Dice-K leading the rotation; A-Rod, Brandon Phillips, Eric Byrnes, plus Khalil Greene, Corey Hart, and Shane Victorino. I've been focusing on the top power-speed players, after being "forced" to select Santana with my first pick and Lincecum with my second. Not sure who to get next, maybe a catcher, maybe a closer, maybe just the best player available, though I've spent big thus far (we are using Cot's contract salary info) and now will have to be conservative in my spending going forward after adding A-Rod's big contract.

Hiatt Retires, Stanley Takes Over: What About V?

Long-time Giant Jack Hiatt, who has overseen the Giants farm system for years now, has retired and Fred Stanley is taking over. I listened to the press conference on sfgiants.com and while it was suppose to be about Hiatt retiring and Stanley taking over, there was an extended chat about Angel Villalona in there due to the Chronicle's John Shea's persistence (thanks John!).

First, Hiatt was asked by Shea about V's weight problem. He noted that while it's true that V came in heavier than the Giants would have liked, it was all explainable and rectified with maturity.

Let's put it this way, he was 16 years old, so when he went back home after some instructional league after his signing, he was left alone and didn't work out at all, because he didn't know how to take care of himself. And so the Giants spent much of the spring teaching him how to take care of himself while he got himself into shape. He gained maturity and got slimmer in the process.

He learned that it's OK to fail sometimes, and Hiatt took his hat off to him, as V learned from all this and was playing better. The money, prestige and attention he got after signing kind of made him think that it will all be easier, and he has learned from that too. So he's learning to take care of himself better now, getting in to shape plus eatting more properly, plus getting over his homesickness - he was still only 16 much of the season, after all.

All in all, Hiatt thinks V's going to be a strong impact type player.

Then Hiatt mysteriously dropped out of the conference call, cell phone problem of some sort, and Stanley handled John Shea's oft-repeated question: so when's he coming up? Stanley said that V is just now understanding how to play baseball in the states. Growing up playing in the Dominican is nothing like playing in CA and growing up there. So there is a lot of "on the job" training that V is going to need to get, a lot of things he need to learn, because they want him to have learned all that he needs to learn so that when he finally comes up, he will be up to stay, instead of bouncing up and down.

Stanley thinks that 3 years would be conservative in saying when he'll be up. He also noted that the Giants are only playing him at 1B as well as 3B this season so that he will have flexibility coming up, not because of any other reason.

Giant Thoughts

All I can say is that if I made a $2M investment in a teenage, I would have hired someone to come in and teach him all the things he needs to learn to become a professional ballplayer. We must have some Dominicans on the payroll somewhere, give them bonus pay to live with Angel for a while and teach him all those things, taking care of himself, keeping in shape, etc. Then bring Angel to Arizona early - or is there some rule on that? - and set him up to live in AZ and again have someone there to watch over him and to guide him. Just get some of those things out of the way so that he doesn't start out slowly and help accelerate his learning curve. How hard is that?!?!?

Looking over Villalona's season, obviously it is impressive that he was rated the top prospect in the Arizona Rookie League when he was just 16 years old for much of the season. One note of caution is that he had an extreme home/road stats, so it is possible that his good stats (.279/.338/.441/.779) were home park driven and not talent driven.

Home: .304/.357/.490/.847, 3 HR in 102 AB (34 AB/HR), 34% XBH
Road: .255/.319/.392/.711, 2 HR in 102 AB (51 AB/HR), 27% XBH

In addition, he started out hot (in a short month), then cooled off greatly the rest of the season:

June: .333/.375/.667/1.042 (only 21 AB)
July: .247/.347/.412/.759 (85 AB)
Aug: .296/.321/.418/.739 (98 AB)

In addition, his plate discipline dropped a lot as well.

June: 2 BB/2 K (1.00 BB/K; 9.5% K%)
July: 10 BB/ 18 K (0.56 BB/K; 21% K%)
Aug: 2 BB/ 24 K (0.08 BB/K; 24% K%)

The main good news that counteracts (hopefully) all these bad news is that he actually hit very well against RHP, but sucked big time against LHP, and he is a right-handed batter, so he should improve greatly against LHP both because it was limited AB against LHP (i.e. small sampling) and if he's the hitter he's made out to be, righties should mash LHP and he should get much better.

vs.LHP: .200/.229/.444/.674, 0 BB vs. 16 K, 67% XBH, .259 BABIP (45 AB)
vs.RHP: .302/.367/.440/.807, 15 BB vs. 28 K, 29% XBH, .352 BABIP (159 AB)

When viewed this way, he was hitting at least as well as he did vs. RHP (807 OPS) and probably closer to 900 OPS if he had hit LHP as well as he should have. And the average batter in the league only hit .264/.350/.377/.727, where the average age was 20 years of age. Thus, at 16 years old, hitting against mainly 20 year old pitchers, he hit much above average against them.

In addition, oOut of the 52 players with the 150 AB to qualify, Villalona was 19th with his 779 OPS and was 12th in SLG with 450. And most of the top hitters were 21 and 22 years old. Only 4 of the 11 hitters ahead of him in SLG were under 20 (FYI Nick Noonan was one of those under 20's and Andrew D'alessio was one of the 20+, and with a huge OPS, 2nd highest in the league, only one of two with OPS over 1.000).

Patience Needed

It is hard to be patient but we need to remember that he just turned 17 in August. So if the Giants conservative estimate is that it would take him 3 years to reach the majors for good, that means he would be coming up late season in 2010 WHEN HE'S JUST TURNED 20 YEARS OLD.

With Cain and Lincecum succeeding at such a young age themselves, some might get jaded and think that's no big deal, but most ballplayers figure things out in their mid-20's, many latter, and it is the truly rare players who can come up in their early 20's and dominate. We could have three of them by 2010 with Cain, Lincecum, and Villalona. And from what I've been reading about Bumgarner and Alderson, our first two draft picks in the 2007 amateur draft, they might join them.

That Goes for Sabean Too

That's why I've been urging patience with Sabean. Yeah, the past farm system sucked, but the recent past actually has been pretty good but overshadowed by our major league club's lousy seasons. Baseball is not a sport of instant gratification like it is for the NFL or NBA, where young players are drafted and thrust onto the starting lineup from day 1 often. It takes time, you have to be a farmer and not get too upset with poor performances in the way past, AS LONG AS THINGS ARE APPEARING TO GET A LOT BETTER.

With Lowry, Cain, Lincecum, plus Hennessey, Correia, Sanchez, Accardo, and apparently Wilson, coming up in quick succession, and others (Lewis, Schierholtz, Frandsen, Ortmeier) looking like they can be decent contributors at the major league level, the farm system has taken great strides the past few years. I think things are getting a lot better.

To throw out Sabean now would be like getting mad at the farmer because the seedings haven't broke through the ground, you need to let things play out and see where they lead, because the seedlings he has cultivated thus far - Cain, Lincecum, Lowry, Sanchez - are excellent enough that we have to have the patience to see it through, rather than ruminate on past slights (farm system from 1997 to 2002) or current problems that can be fixed with young players (MLB club from 2003 to 2007).

Two years is not a long time in baseball. It is not like basketball where you get a Lew Alcinder (Kareem) or Shaq and become a winner just like that, or pick up a whole new defensive backfield like Walsh did with the 49ers (or draft 6-7 new starters one year), or draft Wayne Gretzky and become a legit contender.

Put another way, when teams go bad, they tend to go bad for a long time. Witness the Giants from the 70's to late 80's. Braves before Cox took over. Tigers before Dombrowski. Brewers before Melvin. Also still rolling the stone up the hill, only to watch it roll back, are the Pirates, Rangers, and Royals. Plus the Rockies and Devil Rays had stunk since joining the league until the Rockies had their miracle run at the right time of the season (and cooled off at the wrong time). And that's off the top of my head.

So if things were totally horrible, yeah, dump Sabean. But with potentially great players like Cain and Lincecum, and maybe Villalona, coming to maturity and productivity soon, and a number of other good players doing the same, I think two years is not too much to ask so that we can further evaluate where the Sabean Ship is going.

It is almost like politics to me. Voting for Sabean, to me, means that you like Cain and Lincecum, plus Sanchez and Villalona, and the rest of the gang. Voting to dump Sabean means that you don't like all that. The Nathan trade is over and done with, and so is the Accardo trade, they are sunk costs that don't matter in the financials going forward. What matters are the young players coming up and I like what has come up and what is coming up, and hence I vote for him to stay on the island. Either you like Cain and Lincecum, or you don't, I think it is as simple as that. And I LOVE Cain and Lincecum.