Hey Buster!!! My Giants Business Plan

This provides easy access to my Giants business plan and captures what I've been discovering and saying are the best ways to run a baseball team for competitive advantage and, in particular, to be more successful in the playoffs, and particularly, ways that has made winning the World Series more likely.  The Giants have followed a good portion of this plan, though not all.  

Zaidi followed much of it, but did not have enough successes to get to finish his contract, which had another year to go.  My kinder side wonders if the Giants replaced him because he was hospitalized, twice, near the end of the 2024 season.  But unforced errors like the furor in hiring Kapler and the waiver wire musical chairs, ate away at public and internal support, and he got replaced by Buster Posey, who installed Zack Minasian as his GM and right hand operational man, who has had GM level experience when he was with Milwaukee.

I'm happy with the ascension of Buster Posey to be the President of Baseball Operations because the strategy and tactics he talked about in his interviews so far is exactly what I think the team needs to be competitive in the playoffs:  elite pitching and defense, which leans into the park that they have.  He will also emphasize intangibles like character and make up.  

[Note:  I've re-written the original starting post to be addressed to Buster Posey, new President of Baseball Operations of the San Francisco Giants, but the original series of links were to Bill Neukom, soon after he was hired, with additional ones after Zaidi was hired.]

My Giants Business Plan: Keeping Pitchers on 5 Day Rest Rotation Cycle

One of my pet theories for over a decade now is that once the Giants get to the dog days of August, they should go to keeping the rotation on a five day rest rotation, even when there is no rest day during a week, usually happens at least twice in August, and sometimes more, because rain outs are sometimes scheduled in August to make up that game.  Now there is a study that validates that theory and suggests keeping to it all season long.

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.

Hey Zaidi! My Giants Business Plan: Waiver Roulette

One of the tactics that Zaidi has been executing well in his first off-season running the Giants, is his extreme version of what I call, Waiver Roulette.

Hey Zaidi! My Giants Business Plan: Great Starting Rotation

As shown in a prior chapter, preventing runs are very important (and espoused by Zaidi in an interview, about low-scoring games given that the Giants play in ATT Park; though we might be getting a new name by 2020, as ATT's contract is up, and the going price has gone significantly up from the approximate $2M per year paid by PacBell, to the $20M+ range; and it has happened already, Welcome to Oracle Park!) and who has the biggest influence on that? The starting pitchers, who pitch around 70% of the innings of games. That is another pillar in the strategy of creating the best team for success in the playoffs, and ultimately in the World Series.

Hey Zaidi! My Giants Business Plan: Good Bullpen

One of the biggest change in the history of baseball, besides digging the long ball, and particularly over the past 30 or 40 years, is the change in how the bullpen is used. When baseball first started, men were men, and men threw complete games. For the most part. Just in case he was tired (or just had too much to drink the night before), there would be a reliever sitting around who would finish up the game for him. It was macho y mano a mano.

And over the long history of baseball, until very recently, that has been the code of baseball, starters finish a lot of games. As late as the 80's, probably the last one famously being Billy Martin and his Billy Ball with the A's, where he had his young starters throw the most complete games to today, that was how games were managed. The main change was the rise in prominence of the closer as a role in the bullpen.

Then, not sure if he was the first or just the first to popularize it for managers, Tony LaRussa then had the bullpen structured to have setup men each pitch the 7th and 8th then have the closer come in to save in the 9th. That was a world change in a number of ways.

One was the closer didn't pitch more than one inning anymore and could expect to get ready if the team is leading heading to the 9th. Similarly for the setup men, when the 7th and 8th rolled up and the team was in the lead, they could expect to get ready if the team had the lead and the starter got into trouble. Meanwhile, the rest of the bullpen had to be ready in the middle of the game for long relief plus maybe see work later in setup should the setup men falter. I'm not sure why having set roles is better for relievers, but there have been many relievers who have stated that this is a good thing.

With this change, the closer became the superstar of the bullpen, instead of just a complementary accessory to the starting rotation. This elevated the closer's role in the game greatly and all teams today have an assigned closer - instead of pitchers the manager happened to go to when closing the game plus there were no co-closers, like the Giants had with Moffitt and Lavelle in the 70's. And the bullpen became that much more important as well, starting the save situation much earlier in the game now that the Hold is the save metric for the rest of the bullpen.

A good bullpen is thus obviously important to today's game, but how important are they to winning in the playoffs and especially winning it all?

Hey Zaidi! My Giants Business Plan: At Least 2 Aces, If Not More

As discussed in the last chapter, an MLB team need a great starting rotation to have a competitive advantage over the other team. However, how does a team achieve that? By having at least two Aces in their rotation, if not more.

Hey Zaidi! My Giants Business Plan: Great Defense Up the Middle

Most teams want good fielding defense. This is easily understood. Nobody wants to give up unearned runs. It's bad enough to give up a run but to give up one unnecessarily? Madness!

As commonsense as this is, it has been shown in a study that good team fielding defense in the regular season is related to playoff success. As noted previously, Baseball Prospectus, in its book, "Baseball Between the Numbers", Chapter 9.3, "Why Billy Beane's S**t Doesn't Work In The Playoffs," studied the issue of success in the playoffs, and found that good fielding defense, using their proprietary measure, is significantly associated with team success in the playoffs, from 1972 to 1995.  Thus, if any team wants to maximize their chances in the playoffs, you have to have good team fielding defense.

Up The Middle

Furthermore, there is the old truism in baseball that you want to have strong defense up the middle: catcher, secondbaseman, shortstop, and centerfielder. This is also commonsense as well.

Let's examine the Giants defense in 2018, and looking forward to 2019. Obviously the catcher is key defensively because he handles each and every pitch. Cannot have passed balls or a lot of wild pitches that get away. Plus they handle the pitchers and the pitch selection as well. And has to be able to throw out base stealers on a regular basis.

Thus defense is key at catching, and hence why Posey has been kept there, and why the Giants selected Joey Bart, an excellent college defender, who hopefully can take over for Posey in 2020-21.  Also probably why Zaidi has not re-signed Hundley, his defense is pretty poor, and Aramis Garcia was pretty good in limited play last season, as well as showing flexibility by playing well at 1B.  And he has acquired a couple of good defensive catchers in Erik Kratz and Steven Vogt (passed to minors to start season). 

Both 2B and SS have a lot more assists and putouts than the 3B, over 50% more balls handled each.  Hence why Panik and Crawford has been steady starters, and why Panik is suddenly not, when his defense took a dip (as well as his hitting, to be fair).  But his off-season program appears to have worked to return him to prior spryness.  Solarte is the new MI bench player.

Obviously, 1B handles a lot more balls than the other infielders, but the vast majority of them are throws from the other infielders straight (for the most part) to him, not fast grounders hit to him, particularly since most hitters are right-handers and most hitters pull the ball to their side of the field. Still, more important than 3B, plus the Giants under Sabean has focused on elite 1B defenders in Snow and Belt.  1B might be the exception to the up the middle rule, for the Giants.

In the outfield, the centerfielder gets over 100 more balls to handle than either of the corner outfielders, over 30% more balls to handle. In addition, the centerfielder is usually the quarterback of the outfielder, directing the other outfielders to certain positions, depending on the tendencies of the hitter and how the pitcher plans on attacking that hitter. Furthermore, in ATT, with that huge right-center "Death Valley" gap, that gives the CF more real estate to cover in the outfield, requiring more defensively out of the centerfielder in ATT.  It also demands more out of the rightfielder as well, which is why there is talk sometimes this off-season of the Giants under Zaidi getting a CF-level defender in RF.  Duggar, who showed elite fielding in 2018 per StatCast should man CF well, and Zaidi recently acquired Michael Reed, a superb defensive CF-capable outfielder, who got an out at 3B the other day. 

Thus, if it is important to have great fielding defense, then it is that much more important to have strong defense up the middle because they handle the most batted balls among the fielders. Obviously, this is more important for pitchers who put more balls into play, but people need to remember that even the pitchers with a lot of strikeouts and walks, who put less balls into play, still have the majority of plays (and outs) happening out on the field via a batted ball.

Good defense is paramount, and great defense up the middle is what you shoot for in putting together a successful baseball playoff team, which allows the team to roster better hitters who are poor defenders, at the corner positions..

Hey Zaidi! My Giants Business Plan: Great Team Overall Defense for Playoff Success

A key component of competitive advantage in MLB baseball is preventing runs from scoring, via both pitching and fielding. Baseball is tough enough to win without giving away runs via errors or unforced leadoff walks that eventually score.  Defense is both playoff win effective and win efficient.

Defense is Playoff Win Effective

As commonsense as this is, it has been shown in a study that good team  defense in the regular season is related to playoff success. Baseball Prospectus, it its book, "Baseball Between the Numbers", Chapter 9.3, "Why Billy Beane's S**t Doesn't Work In The Playoffs," studied the issue of success in going deep into the playoffs, and found that good defense, covering pitching and fielding, using their proprietary measure, is significantly associated with team success in the playoffs, from 1972 to 1995.  When ranked by an index of the three measures they determined to be key metrics, the Top 10 teams almost all not only made the World Series, but also won (and unfortunately for one of the teams, they lose because they faced off against another Top 10 team).

In addition, it found no correlation with going deep in the playoffs with any aspect of a playoff teams' offense.  The only metric that showed any promise of being connected with deep playoff runs was stolen base attempts, which suggests that speed is also connected with deep playoff runs.  And, obviously, speed is generally tied to good team fielding defense, as well.

Fangraphs/THT also had a playoff success study (published in 2004) and that too confirmed what Baseball Prospectus found, that offense was not tied with winning in the playoffs, and that defense was tied.  And, as the article noted:  "the most striking thing about this list is that it supports the old adages: you win in the post-season with pitching, fielding, and speed. Eleven of the 12 most important categories (by this crude measure) demonstrate skill on the mound, in the field and on the bases."

Overall, if any team wants to maximize their chances in the playoffs, you have to have good team defense, both pitching and defense.

Defense is Playoff Win Efficient

The Hardball Times showed in a past article that each run given up results in an exponential rise in the number of runs scored to maintain the same winning percentage.  This has implications regarding running a team efficiently as well as effectively.

And this is what Zaidi espoused in his interview with Ray Woodson in Ray's  Triple Alley podcast (episode 10), that your goal is quality if not elite defense, in order to support a low run environment that playing at ATT results in.  And as seen below, keeping scoring down means that you don't have to score as many runs in order to win 90 games.

To contend for a division regularly, you need to win at around a .556 percentage, or 90 wins per season, or higher. If a team can keep their runs allowed at 4.00, they need to score 4.53 runs per game to regularly contend, for example. Here is a table of what happens as runs allowed rises from 3.50 to 4.50 (average RS is 4.37, and average RA is 4.34):

RA	RS	NL 2018 RA Rank	NL 2018 RS Rank
3.50	3.96	-	12
3.60	4.08	-	12
3.70	4.19	-	12
3.80	4.30	1	10
3.90	4.41	1	7
4.00	4.53	3	7
4.10	4.64	5	7
4.20	4.75	5	3
4.30	4.87	8	1
4.40	4.98	10	1
4.50	5.09	11	-
+0.1	+0.11

As one can see, for every extra 0.1 runs allowed, the team needs to score slightly more than 0.11 runs in order to win 90 games in a season.  Which means that winning becomes more efficient in terms of winning 90 games, as your overall defense - pitching and fielding - becomes better, as reducing RA by 0.1 means you can score -0.11 runs less to win the same 90 games.

I also provided where that offense (RS) and pitching (RA) would have ranked in 2018 in the NL on a runs scored and runs allowed basis. In this run environment, 4.2 runs allowed is the tipping point, once a team goes below that, their offense no longer has to be in the top 3.  From 3.8 to 4.1 the team can be in the middle of the pack offensively, in order to win 90 games.  This shows that an elite team in terms of defense can win with a middling offense.

And the reduction in need for runs scored as runs allowed becomes good and then elite, means that dollar for dollar, if a team lead (GM or President) is looking at either buying a 2 WAR pitcher or 2 WAR hitter who provides zero value defensively, they ultimately buy more wins by getting the pitcher (since adding him would reduce RA, assuming he's replacing a 0 WAR pitcher, a team ends up with more wins per Pythagorean, than adding the hitter who would increase RS, assuming he replaces a 0 WAR hitter).  This is never accounted for whenever there is analysis of the number of wins a player adds when acquired.

2019 Giants Potential

The 2018 Giants is a misnomer.  The team's offense was vastly different in the final months, than it was earlier, when they had everyone around, and different from the first month, as some players were not producing.  Overall, the 2018 Giants averaged 3.72 runs scored per game.  But in the first half, 4.07 RS.  Cutting out poor bad first week or so (Kershaw etc.), and over the next 93 games, averaged 4.23 RS per game (close to NL average of 4.37).

And there is potential for better.  For May-June, the team averaged 4.40 RS per game (55 games).  And their peak, from late April to July 1st (61 games), they averaged 4.61 RS per game.

The 2018 pitching was different too.  With pitchers going up and down, the pitching settled down by June, and from June to August, covering 80 games, the team had a 3.26 ERA and 3.56 RA average per game.  If they can do that over a full season, given enough rest and better handling, the offense only has to average 4.03 RS per game, which it did over the first half of the 2018 season, before all the injuries caught up with the offense at the end.

And there is potential for more offense, and thus allows for a lot of regression on the part of the pitching For example, at 4.40 RS, which the Giants averaged with much of the lineup healthy, only requires an RA of 3.89 to win 90 games, almost 10% worse than what the team did for three months.  From July to end of season, they had 3.96 RA over 106 games, and subtracting Cueto and Samardzija from July, that's 3.85 RA over the 100 games.

So the pitching staff as currently constituted, now that Holland has been re-signed, was able to maintain a 3.85 RA over a four month period (and now Pomeranz and Samardzija is in the rotation, not Suarez and Stratton), so it does not seem to be a huge stretch to try to reach a full season in 2019, especially if you assume some growth from the overall group of Rodriquez, Suarez, Moronta, and Black, plus young pitchers, which basically is half the pitching staff.

While D-Rod will regress, Suarez's advanced stats suggest a much better performance, Moronta and Black should learn, and a variety of young pitchers on the roster appears ready to take an MLB role.

Conclusion

Thus, having the best defense around is the major key to efficient winning, each run given up has exponential consequences on the need for runs scored, each run you keep from scoring means that you need to have as good an offense in order to be competitive. A good defense is better than a good offense, because you each extra 10 runs you give up, you need to score 11 runs to keep the same winning percentage when you are shooting for 90 wins.  In addition, good defensive teams have historically had deeper runs in the playoffs than good offensive teams. 

Defense, overall, helps teams in a variety of ways, including, mostly importantly, winning a World Series.

Republishing My Business Plan Series

My first step during my break is to update my business plan series now that we have a new leader in Farhan Zaidi.  This project sparks joy, so I'm going with that for now, especially since Giants news have been low-key, as I've expected, as Zaidi gave the fans low expectations as to what he'll be doing "move-by-move" improvement. 

I plan on appealing to concepts he seem to support.  I've listened to a bunch of interviews with him, both after his hiring and before, and I will re-write my old series, which was directed at former Giants managing owner, Neukom, when he first took over, and shade it in terms of what Zaidi says is his preferences and guiding principles.

I'm publishing the first one tonight and using his introductory press conference date and time for that post, as a symbolic gesture, but the rest will be published one by one, real time, as I update each with Zaidi in mind, and ten years of new analytics research available and utilized.  Of course, some will probably go through with minimal changes.  Analytics has not changed everything. 

Hey Zaidi! My Giants Business Plan

This provides easy access to my Giants business plan and captures what I've been discovering and saying are the best ways to run a baseball team for competitive advantage and, in particular, to be more successful in the playoffs, and particularly, ways that has made winning the World Series more likely.  The Giants have followed a good portion of this plan, though not all.  I'm hopeful that Zaidi will not only stay the course, but also will do more to enhance the team's opportunities, just like how the addition of John Barr improved the Giants.

As Zaidi has said in interviews, one needs to be aware of 51%/49% decisions and to understand that just because the results don't go your way, you want to stay the course of what your evidence and findings lead you, which is much like I've been trying to emphasize in my blog over the years, taking the big picture view (or as some like to call it, "trusting the process") and with this business plan. 

As much as the Giants have been losing in the past few years (yes, two and a HALF years), they have mostly stayed the course with their process of building up pitching and defense (not as much on the latter, to be frank, though, else they would have brought up Duggar sooner).  And Zaidi, with his comment about that quality elite defense is the key to low-scoring games (which implies having a great rotation and bullpen combination on the Giants going forward), appears to be on board with this process, only with his new twists that he will bring to the team.

[Note:  I've re-written the original starting post to be addressed to Farhan Zaidi, new President of Baseball Operations of the San Francisco Giants, but the original series of links were to Bill Neukom, soon after he was hired. I think that's my main thing I'll be working on during my break, is to re-examine all my prior posts, start with them as a base, re-write them giving my admittedly cursory knowledge of what Zaidi has said in his Giants interviews so far.  Like Maria Kondo advocates, it "sparks joy" for me to think about doing this.  I might do a few draft articles as well.  

I'm getting this out now, since I had started it before my decision to take a break, but probably won't start updating the rest until next year, as I research what else I can update for each chapter of my business plan.  I backdated it to the day of his press conference, hence it's calendar placement, but the rest will be published in real time.  I'll update the links below to the new chapters, as each gets published, so this post will change links over time, and perhaps other content, as noted below.]

My Giants Business Plan: Core Rotation

I haven't written for my business plan in a while, but now have realized that something I've written about before could be incorporated into it.  In a previous chapter in my Giants business plan, I discussed how a successful (i.e. successful baseball playoff team) team needs at least two aces if not more.

Since then, I have discussed (and analyzed a number of times) that during the golden years for the Giants rotation, from 2009 to 2013, they had at least 3 starters who were great dominant starters, 1 starter who filled what I called the Zito role and 1 starting rotation spot that ended up rotating among some good and not so good starters.  Even with that 5th starter, which basically every team has at least one of, the Giants had Top 3-5 standing in the majors/NL during that period.   This post will be the latest entry in my Giants business plan series.

My Business Plan: Good Pitching is Hard to Find, Harder to Acquire

This is the latest in the business plan series that I've been publishing over time.  Though additions have been fewer in recent years, that is more dependent on new research studies coming to my attention that augments what I have captured in the plan so far (here is a link to the Table of Contents).

Pitching is something that is pretty clearly a key component of this business plan, of building a championship team.  From the studies on success in the playoffs, we find that offense has not influence on the results, on winning World Championships, that it is pitching and fielding that wins World Championships.  From the roster structure, we find that building with pitchers reduces the risk of developing good players, only to find that you need to trade to complete your team, because for pitching, the cream rise to the top.   If you have 3 good pitchers, you have a great rotation, but if you have 3 good 1B (and only 1B), the team has to trade at least one of them (two for an NL team), which introduces a trade risk.

From the Pythagorean calculations, we find that when you have a great defense, you can actually win 90 games easily even when your offense is very sub-par.  Thus a rebuild is faster when a team focuses on pitching first - as cream rises to the top - and supplementing the offense - due to Pythagorean - to complete the team.  Now a study shows another positive aspect of developing your own pitching:  that's the only sure way of obtaining good to great pitchers.

Trading Prospects is a Sucker's Bet Most Times, so is Signing Other Team's Free Agents

The Hardball Times publishes a Baseball Annual and the 2012 edition had a very interesting study in it, looking at how much of an advantage it is to know your own personnel. The chapter is "Down with Other People's Players" by Matt Swartz, page 207.   He noted:

But does this extra information matter?  Does another team's extra knowledge about a player affect the market?  Should GMs think twice before signing a free agent from another team?  Should they wonder why the other team is so willing to trade that highly ranked prospect? 

Yes, a thousand times, yes.

He calculated the $ per WAR for all types of free agent deals and he found that while the premium for hitters is only 17% when signing other team's players, it is 93% for starting pitchers and 139% for relief pitchers.  He found that there were some hometown discounts given, but not enough to explain the premium.

Meanwhile, he examined players' performances after signing or resigning, versus Oliver projections.  Re-signed hitters do not beat projections any better than newly signed hitters.  More importantly, re-signed pitchers beat their projections, while newly signed free agent pitchers fell very short of their projections.  That's a double-whammy right there, not only do you pay a lot more for these free agent pitchers, you also end up with less than projected performances as well, as if the former team knew that they were not going to continue to pitch as well as before.

Trades are no better.  He found that "everyday players and starting pitchers both fall short of projections more often after being traded."  Given the evidence above, this is not surprising, "we should expect that players who are traded will underperform projections more than players who stay on the same team."  "Teams probably were able to detect injury risks that would not be observable to an outside projection system and send those players away in advance."

Strong Evidence That Teams Really Do Know Their Own Players Better Than Other Teams Do

He says that it is very strong evidence that teams know their own players - hitters and pitchers - better than even reasonable forecast systems do.  "Caveat emptor."  Trading is fraught with risk because other teams do not willingly give up good prospects to you.  Signing free agents is particularly fraught with risk, and particularly with pitching, because you need to overpay (roughly 100% premium) for expected performance but meanwhile these free agent pitchers tend to underperform, giving you a double whammy.  Again, teams generally know what they got and don't let go of players who they think are worth keeping.

The same goes for prospects.  He examined prospects from Baseball America's Top 20 from each offseason from 1990 to 2007, covering 360 prospects, dividing them into those kept and those traded away.  He found that "highly ranked prospects who are traded are more likely to be busts than the highly ranked prospects that teams retain." That was true by many angles, for while the average ranking was roughly the same, the average WAR for traded prospects was less than half that of the prospects kept, who on average ended up being good players (average WAR of 17.1).  Furthermore, "the biggest difference was the number of elite prospects who managed 15 WAR, which 42 percent of untraded prospects were able to do, but only 18 percent of traded prospects did." "Teams are better able to tell which of their own minor leaguers are going to succeed than other teams' scouts, who see them less frequently."

In conclusion, he noted:

The safest bet is to develop your own players and keep them when they seem likely to maintain or improve their performance.  When teams do need external help, they should fill holes with the reservation and suspicion derived from the knowledge that if a player is available, there is probably a reason.

Duh:  Teams Need to Develop Their Own Good Pitching

Therefore, it behooves teams to develop their own pitching, that is, those who will lead the way to championships, per the latest studies on winning championships.  I know that was really obvious before, but this new study makes the imperative that much more greater to follow this rule.  It is better to have the pitcher in hand than to rely on the trade or free agent market to acquire them, as the pitching you need in order to win championships most probably is not available in any other way, whether in trade or via free agency, and whatever is out there on the free agent market is way overpriced (100% or more).  The exception there, of course, are Boras players, so they might be good, but they most likely will still be overpriced.

On top of that, given that it is so hard to find any prospect in the draft, the most efficient way for a team to rebuild a world championship-caliber contender is to focus first on pitching, for all the reasons outlined in this business plan, the flexibility, the control, the risk mitigation with regards to finding multiples, the ability to win with subpar offenses, all that adds up to a quicker turnaround when a team focuses first on finding and developing good to great pitchers.

Once you get that core group together, it is relatively easier over time to trade for or sign bullpen arms who can round out your group, and once you start winning and start getting back of the first round picks, where it is much harder to find talent (as per my draft research), you can locate useful hitters and pitchers (like the Giants did with Brown, Panik, Stratton), guys who can complement the good players who the team had found and developed previously.  Meanwhile, once you got your great rotation, you still need to prime the pump, in case of injury (Lowry), reduced performance (Lincecum?, Sanchez), or free agency (Lincecum?), and still draft and develop pitchers.  The Giants appear to be doing that, with Crick, Stratton, and Blackburn in hand.

Hey Neukom! My Giants Business Plan: The Phoenix Strategy of Rebuilding (tm)

I have not written to this series in a while (see here for TOC), but a commenter got me thinking of it again (which drove me to create the TOC) and I thought of another addition to the plan, since a number of commenters seem to think they know how to rebuild a team: the right way to rebuild.

Phoenix Rebuilding Strategy (tm)

The best way to rebuild a team (but not necessarily the best way to run a baseball team) would be to tear down the team once it is clear that reaching the World Series is a likely impossibility, when you have to trade away talent in order to get the payroll into shape. Much like how the A's have been run since Charlie O. Finley, heck, all the way back to Connie Mack, the best way to rebuild is to trade away all the players of value to get prospects back who can be good in a few years or less (the Marlins would make Connie and Charlie O. proud)

Lose Big, Draft High

Meanwhile, as I noted about the draft, the best draft picks in terms of efficient gathering up talent for your re-building team is to ensure that your team is among the Top 5 picks overall, or better yet, the one with the top pick overall. So your team has to stink, pretty much on purpose, and get you those top picks. That apparently is the strategy that they Rays did for all these years, building up a lot of talent in their farm system that is paying off now, and the Marlins have been basically following that strategy during its short life in the majors.

That is the apparent strategy that Bobby Cox used when he was GM of the Braves, before he picked up the pieces he thought he could win with, at which point he took over as manager.  It was examining his tactics, tied to my memories of the A's (Connie and Charlie) that led me to this strategy.

By playing mostly the remaining farm prospects you have, who might develop but maybe not, to see if they can do the job, while not picking up free agents to boost up the team, other than a vet or two or three who could mentor one or more of your top prospects, you ensure having a team that is not that good and sure to struggle and lose a lot of games, earning a top draft pick overall, year in year out.

Those are the best picks to have, they can cut your rebuilding time in half or even a quarter if the talent is there. That is because the top 5 picks have the highest chance of delivering you a good starting player by far, roughly 45%. Once you fall down to the 10th, you are talking about half that, or about 23%; once you fall down to the late teens, that is roughly 15%, and if you are competing for the playoffs (i.e. picks 21-30 overall, generally, except when some team fails to sign a first round pick the season before), it is roughly 10%, or half again that of the 10th pick overall. Assuming all the following picks (2nd round and beyond) are roughly equal (because at that point the probability of finding a good player is so small with any of those picks), the main difference between any team's chances of finding a good player is your first round pick, and you can cut your rebuilding time in half (in terms of finding a star player) by being a losing team, and by three-quarters by being one of the worse teams in the majors.

Spackle With Vets When Rebuilding is Nearly Done

Then as your top prospects start coming up and sprinkling your major leaguer roster, you sign key veteran free agents to fill spots where you don't have any good prospect coming up, in order to not block them should they grow and develop, plus pass on their veteran savvy to their young charges.  The Giants have done this, first with Matt Morris mentoring Cainer, then later when Randy Johnson mentored Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, and Jonathan Sanchez.  They also did that with Bengie Molina mentoring Buster Posey.

Of course, as per the business plan, the draft focus is on the pitching staff and on having a defensively superior lineup that is offensively adequate enough to allow the pitching staff to win at least 90 games and position the team to make the playoffs. And once you get into the playoffs, your team will be positioned to maximize their chances of winning because of the superior pitching staff, superior closer, and good fielding defense (plus a bit of team speed for a cherry on top but not necessary), while being supported by a steady stream of prospects coming up over the next 4-6 seasons from when your team was re-building (and thus still losing).

A couple of good hits while competing for the playoffs (by drafting prospects that should have been drafted earlier but dropped due to some reason and/or finding a starter via international free agency, like Braves picking up Andruw Jones) will help keep the good times rolling longer than expected.

Hey Neukom! My Business Plan: Draft Philosophy and Strategy

This is the latest in the series that I've been publishing (but it's been a looong while since I added one), here is a link to the Table of Contents, which I just put together recently and will updated as necessary when I add to this series or update any of the chapters.

The MLB Amateur Draft Is Worse Than Most Think

As I have posted before, the draft is a crapshoot (I wrote this under a previous handle). When you are winning, you have lousy draft position, the most you can hope for is around a 10-15% chance with your first round pick in the last third of the round of locating and selecting a amateur who will have the necessities to become a good to great player. Even when you are losing hand over fist, the first pick overall is not even a coin flip on whether he would be a good player or not, though close. Thus, you need a strategy that maximizes your draft picks for finding players for your 25-man roster, no matter where you pick in the first round.

Draft Picks, Like Any Rare Resource, Must be Maximized

With a scarce and rare resource, like a draft pick, you need to maximize it by focusing them on something and you need a strategy that will do that. Focusing on pitching, like the Giants have since almost when Sabean took over (and basically after Dick Tidrow became his VP of Player Personnel) is probably the best way to do it. With the success rate falling exponentially, even when you select the 50 total overall picks most teams select, you are not going to find a good player after the first round very consistently at those odds. It is even worse than a crapshoot, it is finding the proverbial needle in the haystack.

Given such a poor success rate with the first round pick when you are winning, you can only hope to find one good player with your first round pick every decade that you are winning consecutively. That is not a very good replacement rate.

The fact is that the historical performance is even worse after the first round. Just making the majors is a pretty low success rate, somewhere in the 10-15% range. Even at a 1% success rate for finding a good player after the first round, at 50 picks per year, that is a good player every 2 years, only 5 in a decade. Plus the one a winning team would pick on average, that is 6 good players in a decade.

However, there are 13 starting positions on a team plus a closer, and not all good players last for a whole decade. With maybe 6 good players drafted in a decade, that means that less than half of a starting team can be replaced in a decade, assuming you started out with good players at each position. Thus, no team is going to fill in all their starting positions with good players via the draft alone when winning. There is not enough talent in the prospect pool each year to fill up all the spots with good players. Thus, each pick needs to be maximized.

In addition, a consequence of this dearth of talent is that any strategy for building a winning team has to assume that you will be using free agency to fill in the gaps in your roster. And as long as you sign good players to free agent contracts, the picks you give up is a small price to pay for a good player because the odds of getting a good player is much greater when you sign one than when you pick one, even a pick in the last half of the first round.

Pitching, Pitching, Pitching

As shown in the plan so far in the other chapters, pitching is key to building a more successful team in the playoffs. So it would make sense that one might then focus on pitching in the draft. This way, you control the supply of the critical skills necessary for building a team that maximizes their possibilities of success in the playoffs. However, there is another good reason: roster makeup and flexibility.

Pitching Provides More Options

Let's say you are drafting and have a choice between two guys you think will be equally great, but one is a 1B and one is a starting pitcher. However, what you see is not what you get: sometimes (actually, almost all the time) the prospect fails. Getting a starting pitcher gives you options.

Many a failed pitcher can go to the bullpen. Not only can he go to the bullpen, he can be your long man, middle-innings, set-up, or sometimes even closer. So even when a pitching prospect fails to become a starter, he could fill in up to four other spots on the MLB roster.

Now lets say that both were a success, you now have a great player. If you have the 1B, and another great player is playing 1B, you now have a dilemma (see Giants McCovey/Cepeda and Rangers Teixiera/Gonzalez/Hafner) that does not always resolve itself nicely. If you have a starting pitcher, however, depending on how good he is, he can fill one of up to five spots in the rotation.

A pitcher could fill one of up to 12 positions on the MLB roster, a position player can fill maybe 2 positions relatively evenly, and at best 3, maybe 4, and that usually means you take a hit on defense if he is playing out of position.

Thus, focusing the draft on starting pitching gives you much more flexibility in filling spots in your 25-man roster, helping you fill up more spots and in a faster timeframe. Any pitcher should theoretically fill at minimum the last two spots in the rotation (or more if better) and somewhere in the bullpen outside of the closer and two set-up men, another 4 spots (or more if better). The majority of position players can fill at best 3 spots in the field (the three OF spots or 2B/3B/SS) and most really only can play 2 spots generally at the most. That will help fill your MLB roster with home-grown prospects faster and to a great extent than if you focused on position players or evenly between the two.

Focus, Not Exclusively

Now this is very obvious, but I am not advocating that a team should draft only starting pitchers, that would be suicide. You should never draft based on filling a spot in your lineup, you must always respect the talent that is available to you with any draft pick. Thus, if there is a hitter available who is clearly the best player, then you should pick him, even if you are focusing on pitching.

However, there will be cases where the prospect is just one of many who appear to be equally talented, or closely so. And in those cases, you should go for the starting pitching. Given equally talented prospects, the flexibility in filling the pitching staff is an advantage that tips the scales towards selecting the pitcher.

And by the time you get to anywhere around the 3-5 round (I would guess-timate), when the odds of finding a good player falls to roughly 1% or less, the odds of finding a good player is so low that there should be some competitive advantage gained by a team that focuses on one particular skill particularly well, such as pitching.

Pitching Is the Key

Focusing on pitching works in so many ways. As Baseball Prospectus and The Hardball Times showed, success in the playoffs can be positively influenced by good pitching and fielding whereas offense plays no significant part. But pitching also works in building up a team in a faster and more efficient manner.

Another thing I would posit is that this strategy is even more effective for NL teams to follow. AL teams have a position that NL teams don't worry about: DH. A good hitter who cannot field any position acceptably is useless and thus of little value to an NL team, but he would have value, potentially good value, for an AL team. Thus, over time, AL teams will have a subtle preference for hitters who might not be good fielders, and when they are selecting this player, that will sometimes leave a more valuable pitcher (from the NL team viewpoint) still on the board for the NL team to select. That would give NL teams an overall talent boost in terms of available pitching talent when it is their turn to select and a AL team ahead of it selects a hitter that is of lesser value to the NL team over a pitcher that would have been otherwise selected and of greater value to the NL team.

Overall, finding good players is such a crapshoot that you cannot effectively plan for building a team. When you find one, you can only shout "Eureka!" If a team focuses on position players or split it evenly between position and pitching, there will be the times when you find out that you developed multiple players who can only play one or two positions. That forces you to play someone out of position, which weakens one of the key qualities of a successful team in the playoffs - fielding - or forces you to trade for what you need, and as the history of baseball shows, trading is not a science, a lot of mistakes are often made.

By focusing on pitching generally in your overall draft, you can mainly improve your team over time. No matter how good your future ace looks like (for example, Matt Cain), if you find another future ace (for example, Tim Lincecum), you can easily slot him into the rotation and move everyone else down. And if your awesome starter can't handle starting, then you throw him into the bullpen, where maybe he can be a closer (for example, Brian Wilson). And as you build the pitching staff over time (Jonathan Sanchez and Madison Bumgarner), you could reach the point where you have so many good pitchers that you can start trading off starters to boost up your lineup and/or your farm system greatly without missing a beat in the pitching staff.

The Giants are reaching such a point in their rebuilding cycle, as Jonathan Sanchez is looking more and more like a potential ace in the making, and with another good season under his wing in 2010, and with Bumgarner basically ready to take Sanchez's place, he could be traded, like Dan Haren was, for a bushelful of good and nearly ready prospects who would restock our farm system for the next 3-4 years plus supply one or two prospects about ready to start in the majors. And with Wheeler hopefully coming down the pike in 2-4 years, that could open up another trade possibility within the rotation, and we have another delightful dilemma coming up in the future.

Hey Neukom! My Giants Business Plan: Team Built With Speed

Team speed was the way to win early in baseball's history because with the low scoring environment (and low HR environment), each run was that much more precious and leverageable into victories. Hence the glory of Ty Cobb and Honus Wagner in the early days of the 20th Century, the beginning of the modern era of the MLB. However, once the HR drug hit the public's veins, like any good addictive drug, it made the user crave for more.

And I will admit here that I am in love with the long ball too. I grew up with Bobby Bonds, Dave Kingman, Jack Clark being my main HR heroes, though Stretch casted his long shadow then too (and I also love the K too, John "The Count" Montefusco was an early fave of mine too).

BP Study on Success in the Playoffs

But as the BP study showed, no matter how much or how little HR a team hits or even runs it scores, it had very little bearing on the success the team had in the playoffs. There was no significant correlation. In fact, there was no signficant correlation with any offensive metric with success in the playoffs.

However, while that is true, BP did note that there was one offensive stat that had at least a sizeable enough correction for them to note, though not at a statistically significant level: stolen base attempts. Yes, not speed score (which they tried) but stolen base attempts.

Would You Believe A "Team Built on Stealing Bases"?

So my title for this post is not quite precise enough, it is not enough to be built with speed (meaning, say, having a high speed score) but the players must be speedy enough and good enough base stealers to warrant the manager allowing them to make a lot of attempts to steal bases. Oddly enough, stolen base success was not linked to success, but stolen base attempts were. But just making all your slow guys pile up stolen base attempts obviously would not work, so I think the overarching benefit is having a lot of players who are capable of stealing bases successfully.

Giants Thoughts

I hate to bring this up again, but the team we should try to emulate is the D-gers of the 1960's, anchored by Koufax and Drysdale (Lincecum and Cain) in the starting rotation and Maury Wills on the offense, stealing bases and creating havoc on the base paths. They kept the runs allowed low and Wills provided octane to the tepid offense that was just enough offense to enable them to win a lot of games.

I don't know who our Maury Wills will be (originally, I was thinking Marcus Sanders), if ever, but we have a number of speedsters in place across the lineup possibly, so perhaps quantity over quality will do. Fred Lewis is the most obvious, as our current leadoff hitter, though he might be hitting 3rd next season. Other candidates include Emmanuel Burriss, Eugenio Velez, and Antoan Richardson. Or maybe, further down the system and into the future, the guy we got in the Durham trade, Darren Ford, Tyler Graham, Julio Izturis, Shane Jordan, Mike McBryde, and Nick Noonan. And, definitely in combination, no way we'll have a Wills-like base stealer but hopefully together as a unit.

In addition, with Pat Kelly as our firstbase coach and base running coach at the major league level, plus Bochy, who has utilized speed previously when at the Padres, the Giants seem to be set up to be a team that can and will run. And I don't think it is a coincidence that Randy Winn suddenly was able to avoid caught stealings, I think it was the addition of Kelly to the coaching staff that made a big difference. And while success was not one of the significant factors, obviously, if you are going to try a lot of stolen base attempts, the more successful you are in doing that, the better it is for your offense.

Hey Neukom! My Giants Business Plan: High K/9 Pitching Staff

As noted previously, you need a dominating starting rotation led by two aces and a dominating closer to shut things down. When you think of these dominating aces and closers, what do you notice about them? They dominate by striking out a lot of batters. But it is not enough that they are dominating, the entire staff should be dominating as a whole, as was shown in the BP study I had referred to before.

BP Study on Playoff Success

As I have written on before, BP did a study on "Why Billy Beane's S**t Doesn't Work in the Playoffs," and they found that a high K/9 pitching staff is a significant factor (out of three they found) that helps teams achieve playoff success. And it is not like having these three factors in your favor guarantees you success in the playoffs, but they certainly help to stack things in your favor.

One way a high K/9 staff helps a team win is it lessens the chances of a rally getting started. That is because the good hitters on the other team can't harm you in any way if you strike him out. That is particularly important when facing the good offenses you normally run into in the playoffs.

Another point in favor of a high K/9 staff, there was a The Hardball Times study that examined the ERAs for pitchers above the 2.0 K/BB ratio that marks good pitchers, and compared those who have less K and less BB versus those with high K and high BB as well. What the study found was that the ERA was lower for those with high K and BB. So in spite of having very high BB, higher than the standard 3.0 BB/9 that divides the good from the bad, apparently that limits the number of hits that could drive in a run, ultimately, and result in a lower ERA.

Furthermore, a high K/9 pitching staff implies a lot of high K/9 on your staff period. The plus for your team is that it doesn't let up as much as other teams. Having a high K/9 staff means that there are less pitchers on your staff (than the other team) where luck plays a greater hand. You have more pitchers, and therefore the opposing teams has less AB, where the pitcher can assert himself and dominate the other team by using his pitches well enough to strike them out. Being able to strike out MLB batters regularly is a true sign of pitching skill, and that is represented by a high K/9.

A high K/9 pitching staff helps your team put more skills out on the field, reducing the luck involved with the game, and tilting it towards you. It doesn't guarantee that you will prevail. But it does help you win more, over time, than a staff with a lower K/9, based on the results of BP's study.

Hey Neukom! My Giants Business Plan: Great Closer

As was shown in my last post, a good bullpen is a key ingredient of any team today that hopes to make the playoffs, do well in the playoffs, and ultimately win the World Series, and obviously a closer is a key ingredient of any good bullpen. As we'll see next, the closer is very clearly an important cog for maximizing your team's success in the playoffs.

BP Study on Playoff Success

As I have written on before, BP did a study on "Why Billy Beane's S**t Doesn't Work in the Playoffs." And while they did not get into it in the book, I felt that one of the reasons why Billy Beane's teams didn't do well in the playoffs was because Beane has generally thought that a closer was an easily replaceable part. Hence why he changed closers regularly during their playoff hey-days in the early 2000's. However, he appears to have learned his lesson by drafting and keeping Huston Street.

In this study, they did regression analysis on what team metrics had a significant correlation with success in the playoffs and found that one of the key factors that had a significant effect on playoff success was how good their closer is, as defined by their closer metric, WXRL. WXRL is the increase in the probability of a pitcher's team going on to win the game given the game situation. That is the closer's win expectancy adjusted for replacement level and the opposing lineup and the higher the better.

Thus, this study says that a team serious about winning the World Series better have a knockout closer at their disposal. And the importance of an above average closer is clear: post season games are usually close contests between evenly matched teams. And that results in many more opportunities for the closer to pitch in high-leverage situations.

I would also add here that in the playoffs, the one game swing from a win to a loss can be pivotal. Instead of being 2-1 and one game from winning the first round, if you lost instead, you would be 1-2 and one game away from elimination, needing to win two straight games. Or in the second round and World Series, instead of being tied 2-2 with a win, if you lost instead, now you are down 3-1 and one game away from elimination, needing to win three straight games. Thus each game has greater importance, hence why the need for dominating starters that was noted previously and particularly hence why a team needs a great closer, because each game's importance is magnified that greatly and if your team is in position to win, having a closer who can close for you reliably is worth his weight in gold.

Hey Neukom! My Giants Business Plan: Good Bullpen

One of the biggest change in the history of baseball, besides digging the long ball, and particularly over the past 20 or 30 years, is the change in how the bullpen is used. When baseball first started, men were men, and men threw complete games. For the most part. Just in case he was tired (or just had too much to drink the night before), there would be a reliever sitting around who would finish up the game for him. It was macho y mano a mano.

And over the long history of baseball, until very recently, that has been the code of baseball, starters finish a lot of games. As late as the 80's, probably the last one famously being Billy Martin and his Billy Ball with the A's, where he had his young starters throw the most complete games to today, that was how games were managed. The main change was the rise in prominence of the closer as a role in the bullpen.

Then, not sure if he was the first or just the first to popularize it for managers, Tony LaRussa then had the bullpen structured to have setup men each pitch the 7th and 8th then have the closer come in to save in the 9th. That was a world change in a number of ways.

One was the closer didn't pitch more than one inning anymore and could expect to get ready if the team is leading heading to the 9th. Similarly for the setup men, when the 7th and 8th rolled up and the team was in the lead, they could expect to get ready if the team had the lead and the starter got into trouble. Meanwhile, the rest of the bullpen had to be ready in the middle of the game for long relief plus maybe see work later in setup should the setup men falter. I'm not sure why having set roles is better for relievers, but there have been many relievers who have stated that this is a good thing.

With this change, the closer became the superstar of the bullpen, instead of just a complementary accessory to the starting rotation. This elevated the closer's role in the game greatly and all teams today have an assigned closer - instead of pitchers the manager happened to go to when closing the game plus there were no co-closers, like the Giants had with Moffitt and Lavelle in the 70's. And the bullpen became that much more important as well, starting the save situation much earlier in the game now that the Hold is the save metric for the rest of the bullpen. A good bullpen is thus obviously important to today's game, but how important are they to winning in the playoffs and especially winning it all?

Tippett Bullpen Study

In 2003, Tom Tippett of Diamond Mind Baseball did a study of bullpens and how it related to the success of the team. Unfortunately, he sold the company and does not appear to write anymore on the site and I had to google to get this study, as it is no longer easily accessible via the main website anymore, so I will go into some of the details since the link could end at any point in time.

What he found was that there was a correlation between a strong bullpen, as measured and defined as OPS allowed by the bullpen, and overall team success from 1998-2002:

• Of the ten teams that led their league in bullpen OPS, eight made the post season, three reached the World Series and two won it all.
• Of the ten teams that finished second in their league in bullpen OPS, six made the post season, four made the World Series, and two won it all.
• Of the ten teams that finished third in their league in bullpen OPS, seven made the post season, two made the World Series, one won it all.
• Thus, all five World Series winners from 1998-2002 finished in the top 3 of their league in bullpen OPS
• In addition, 27 of the 40 post season teams finished in their league's top 5 in bullpen OPS and only 7 of the 40 post season teams were in the bottom half of their league in bullpen OPS. None of the teams in the bottom half of their league in bullpen made the World Series.

Admittedly, this only covered a five year period and 40 playoff teams, but the results speak pretty clearly to the fact that in today's baseball, teams rely greatly on the performance of their bullpen. While they still need good starting pitching and an offense that allows them to win a lot of games, teams today need a good bullpen to help them win games and thus to win in the playoffs and win the World Series. A good bullpen is crucial to winning it all.

Hey Neukom! My Giants Business Plan: At Least 2 Aces, If Not More

As I went over in my last post, you need a great starting rotation to have a competitive advantage over the other team. However, how does a team achieve that? By having at least two Aces in their rotation, if not more.

True (and Only) Dominance in Baseball

A pitcher on his game will have his way with the opposing team. That happens regularly with good pitchers, but even average (or sometimes worse) pitchers can just dominate the other team on the right day. For an extreme example of this, look at all the pitchers who have ever had a no-hitter: obviously some were greats, but there are a lot of unsuccessful, not even good pitchers who, on one blissful day, was the best pitcher on the planet and keeps the other team down with no hits. Obviously, having a pitcher who can dominate a game increases the odds of winning any game.

That is not true with hitters. You can have the most dominant hitter ever, but if the rest of the offense is not up to the task, you lose that game, as he can only hit so many homeruns. You can even have the most dominant lineups ever, but if the opposing pitcher is up to the task, it is rendered inert, benign. You will have a monk's row instead of a murderer's row, if you will, as the offense will be silent.

However, if a pitcher is a dominant pitcher, one with a high percentage of dominating PQS 4 and 5 starts, your offense doesn't need to do as much to win. And if you have two of them, it particularly increases the odds of winning in a short playoff series, where every game's results can have a wide swing of your team's fortunes.

PQS and DOMinating Starts

The best pitchers have dominating starters at least 50% of the time, the elite pitchers 70%+ of the time. This has been confirmed in the latest Baseball Forecaster (which created the Pure Quality Start methodology as the sabermetric version of the Quality Start; it uses peripherals to qualify a start as a quality start or not), they list above 50% DOM as the best pitchers and below 20% DIS as the best pitchers. Here are some old data they collected on cumulative pitching stats when the game is Dominating (PQS 4 and 5), Neutral (PQS 2 and 3) and Disaster (PQS 0 and 1)

DOM: 2.39 ERA, WHIP 1.00, K/9 7.8, BB/9 2.1, K/BB 3.6, HR/9 0.6, OOB 0.255

NEU: 4.58 ERA, WHIP 1.47, K/9 5.0, BB/9 3.4, K/BB 1.5, HR/9 1.3, OOB 0.335

DIS: 11.19 ERA, WHIP 2.37, K/9 5.2, BB/9 5.3, K/BB 1.0, HR/9 2.5, OOB 0.448

Obviously, the data is skewed because all the good performances are put together, as well as all the bad ones too. What is important to know is that when a pitcher is dominating, his ERA is down in the low 2's and the WHIP is down low as well (ideally want WHIP under 1.4), as it is hard for a team to score when they cannot get on base (Opponent OBP of only 0.255, WHIP of 1.00 for DOM starts). Thus, basically by definition, anytime a pitcher throws a DOM start, they are doing really well. And the key thing here is if the pitcher can regularly throw DOM starts, the starts on average will have stats similar to that pitching line.

Also interesting is that in DOM performances the K/9 is so high, 7.8 (of course, having a high strikeout rate is essentially a perequisite for a DOM start, due to the definition for it; see my past posts for description of the PQS methodology, for those who don't know what I'm talking about). That means that your odds of having a top DOM pitcher is better when the pitcher can strike out batters regularly at a high rate (which I will get to later in my business plan).

Low DIS Also Important

And it is not just having DOM starts, but it is the avoidance of DIS starts as well. Obviously, if you have a very high DOM rate, the DIS is naturally lower since it all adds up to 100%. As you can see above, if you don't have a DOM, it is either a NEU or DIS, and there is a world of difference between the two. A DIS start basically means that your team has almost no chance of winning that game, while a NEU start gives your team a fighting chance to win, as that is basically giving up 3 runs in 6 innings, after that if your bullpen is good enough to come through with zeros, the offense can try to pick it up for the starter.

If your starters in your playoff rotation as a group can keep their DIS down below the 20% that marks a good performance while keeping their DOM above 50%, that means that in the playoffs, there is only 1 game in 5 or 7 that you have no chance in, 2-3 where you have a very good chance to win, and the rest are coin tosses. That is no guarantee of playoff or World Series victory, but I like and would take those odds.

Consistency of DOM

Few pitchers can be consistently throwing DOM starts. That is why the ones who can are part of the elite in all of baseball. As noted, the elites can have a DOM start in at least 50% of their starts, which is over half of his starts. And the best in all the majors can do it over 70% of the time.

Doing it once in a whole season, though, is a fluke. The ones who can do it regularly and for a long time are special. Only the best and the healthiest are able to do it every season, year in, year out. Greats like Roger Clemens, Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson. Clearly, if you can build your rotation with starters who can consistently dominate at least 50% of the time, and ideally 70%+ of the time, you greatly increase the chances of getting DOM performances in the playoffs and greatly increase your chances of winning in a short series.

Playoff Dominance

Clearly, having a dominating pitcher is good, and if you got two pitchers even better. With two who can do that regularly at 50+%, the odds are good in a short 5 game series where you are starting four, that at least one of them will be DOM starts, with good odds that two of them will be DOM; if you go with three starters (2 DOM, one not), then you are looking at definitely two starts, and possibly three starts. There's your winning series margin. It works out just as well in a seven game series. With two ace pitchers, you are likely to have at least two DOM starts, perhaps three, when going with a four man rotation. If you go with a three man rotation, 4 of 5 starts, 5 of 7, are DOM starts from your two aces.

And the other starter(s) should not be that bad either, he'll be your middle of rotation, #3/4 starter, and most likely will be able to contribute a DOM start himself. That's potentially 3-4 DOM starts in a 5 game series and 3-6 DOM starts in a 7 game series, depending on the size of your playoff rotation. That's a lot of low runs allowed games for a series, giving your team a great chance to win in the playoffs.

History of Two Aces

In addition, history has shown that this can work. Teams have won with two dominating starters leading the way. The D-gers during the 60's with Koufax and Drysdale was a good example of that, particularly since the only playoffs back then was the World Series, giving them a great advantage in the short series. The D-backs with Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling, winning the 2001 World Series is another, more recent, example.

Some might note how one of the best pitching rotations in the history of baseball - the Brave's Maddux, Smoltz, and Glavine - were not that successful during their long run together. Other might mention the A's with Hudson, Mulder, Zito. I will get to this in greater detail later, but as noted above, it takes high strike out ability to deliver a DOM start regularly. Smoltz is the only fireballer in this bunch.

If you cannot really strike out a lot of batters, the only way you can deliver a DOM start of 4 is by doing all of the following:

• Pitch six or more innings
• Allow equal to less hits than innings pitched
• Allow one or less homers
• At least strike out twice the batters you walk

Thus, you have to be a pitcher much like Greg Maddux, ironman reliable, able to eat innings, keep hits down, and, just as important, keep walks very down. As that is the only way you can make up for the fact that you cannot strike out that many, is by walking a heck of lot less than most other pitchers. However, because he has few batters who don't put balls into play, he is often up against the fates in the big games because his success will rest on BABIP, which is out of his control for the most part, except for extreme circumstances. As it is those hits that result in runs.

In addition, a study that was on The Hardball Times earlier this season showed the importance of the strikeout. The study looked at pitchers who were able to keep their K/BB at or above the 2.0 mark, which most good pitchers are able to do. The study's author then categorized them into a number of groups, one being pitchers who don't strike out a lot (and therefore must walk very low), another being pitchers who strike out a lot but also walk a lot. What he found was that the ERA was lower for the pitchers who were able to strikeout a lot while also walking a lot.
And that makes sense when you analyze it. The more strikeouts and walks there are, the less balls in play there is, the less hits there are overall. Hits drive in runs, while walks don't normally do, unless the bases are loaded, and obviously not with a strikeout. Heck, you can even drive in a run with a sac fly or a well-placed grounder.

That is why it is not enough to have good or even a great pitcher like Maddux if you want to maximize your chances of winning in the playoffs. You need pitchers who can dominate a game like Maddux, but ones who can dominate using the all-mighty, all-American mid-90's+ fastball. And if you can get two of them, all the better for making it easier on your team to win in the playoffs.

Giants Set to Dominate in Future

That is why the Giants look to be set for the future in the starting rotation. Cain has been over 50% each season of his career, and overall is at 54% for his career up to this season. His main problem has been keeping his DIS% under 20%, and this has continued into this season. Lincecum last season had a 67% DOM, 21% DOM. He appears to be making the leap to the top this season by limiting his DIS% under 10%, while keeping his DOM% at around 70%. Only the best of the best - Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens, Pedro Martinez - can run up 70% DOM, <10%dis>And that is why the Giants look to be set for the future to do well in the playoffs. With Cain and Lincecum regularly contributing DOM starts, the team will have an excellent chance in the playoffs. The key now is to keep them healthy enough so that they can do this long-term (and of course, sign them up long-term so that they are around when we reach the playoffs again).

And now Sanchez is also contributing as well, he has been putting up a string of DOM starts. If he can consistently do this, then we could have a three-man ace rotation. Which would be that much more dominating during the playoffs and World Series.

Scenario

Basically you can treat these as probabilities that are additive across a series. If you have the rotation set (estimated DOM/DIS) with Lincecum (70% DOM, 10% DIS), Cain (50% DOM, 20% DIS), Sanchez (50% DOM, 20% DIS) , Zito (30% DOM, 30% DIS):

• by the end of three games, you have 1.7 DOM, 0.8 NEU, 0.5 DIS
• by the end of four games, you have 2.0 DOM, 1.2 NEU 0.8 DIS
• by the end of the five game series, you have 2.7 DOM, 1.4 NEU, 0.9 DIS

Thus, roughly, you would have 3 DOM starts, 1 NEU (or flip a coin start) and 1 DIS start. THe other team having roughly 50/40/30/30 DOM would have 2 DOM starts, 2 NEU and 1 DIS. Better odds, eh? Especially when you need to win 3 games.

For a seven game series:

• by the end of three games, you have 1.7 DOM, 0.8 NEU, 0.5 DIS
• by the end of four games, you have 2.0 DOM, 1.2 NEU 0.8 DIS
• by the end of five games , you have 2.7 DOM, 1.4 NEU, 0.9 DIS
• by the end of six games, you have 3.2 DOM, 1.7 NEU, 1.1 DIS
• by the end of the seven game series, you have 3.7 DOM, 2.0 NEU, 1.3 DIS

Again, roughly 4 DOM starts, 2 NEU, 1 DIS, that is a difference vs. 3 DOM, 2 NEU, 2 DIS. Not a great difference, but when you are dealing with the playoffs, you should want every edge that you can get.