Sabean and Bochy get contracts extended thru 2013

As reported (Baggarly, Shea, Haft), the Giants extended Sabean's and Bochy's contracts in lock-step again.  Their contracts were due to expire in 2012, but got extended to 2013 plus there is a team option year for 2014, like there was for their prior contract, which was picked up for the 2012 season last year by Neukom.  Basically, the Giants upper management had to wait for Baer to be annointed "person of control" by the MLB, before he could finalize negotiations with Sabean and Bochy, else this deal might have been finished earlier.

In the press conference that announced the deal, they made a number of comments about the Giants future course (Baggarly, Shea, Haft):

• The plan is to earmark most of their money for their pitching staff, then use the remainder to improve the offense.  People rag on the offense, but as I'll show soon, a large part of that decline was the loss of Posey, but people conveniently forget about abnormal, unlikely to repeat events like that.  "There won't be any big splash.  Our pitching is our gold standard.  We have to make sure we take care of that commodity first," said Sabean.
• Evans noted in the meeting that he has just started talking with Lincecum's and Cain's agents, exchanging ideas and some numbers, mostly talking broadly, so they are not very far into the process yet (due to "so many other things").
• They also have a large number of arbitration-eligible players:  Ryan Vogelsong, Ramon Ramirez, Sergio Romo, Santiago Casilla, Nate Schierholtz, Pablo Sandoval.
• Once they take care of the pitching, then they will see how much money is left in the payroll and see which free agents will fit in that.  But they don't anticipate a household name, per se, no sticker shock type of play.
• The payroll has been bumped up to $130M (I believe it was around $125M last season, plus there is always the mythical rainy day fund).
• What they are looking for is better balance and flexibility.  Depth is important and thus flexibility with the roster is important.  (ogc note:  rumors are that the Giants are kicking the tires on Jerry Hairston, Jr., who can play MI as well as COF.  I view him as the successor to the role envisioned for Mark DeRosa, though I'm not sure how good he is defensively; DeRosa was great defensively and good offensively).
• Appears that re-signing Carlos Beltran is a longshot.  He was asked and agreed that an AL club (with the ability to DH regularly) could probably offer Beltran a longer-term contract than the Giants were comfortable with offering to a player with bad knees in his mid-30's.  Still, Sabean noted, "He is a consideration but term will be an issue with anybody we pursue, whether it's him or anybody else.  We have a game plan with what we consider a reasonable length."  (ogc note:  I would note here that they were comfortable with giving Franchez a 3-year contract, which, fortunately for us, he turned down for a two-year, and he's been even more injured prone than Beltran.  People need to remember that as business-people, you don't want to negotiate publicly nor give away your hand.  The Giants might be willing to give 3 years, but you don't give that away, particulalry in public, it is better if you play poor, act like it is possible that you will pass on signing, show some reticience in re-signing, as negotiations will always be one where each side has to give on something. You can't make a fair offer publicly and not have it bite you in the ass later in private negotiations).
• Baggarly:  "Sabean made it clear that the extensions will not be his focus when he arrives at the winter meetings in Dallas on Sunday. He is looking to improve the offense via trade or free agency, with the outfield being the area most in need."
• About SS, Sabean was impressed with the strides Brandon Crawford made in the AFL.  He could possibly be annointed the starter, though it was noted that they could carry his questionable bat if the offense improves elsewhere, and it was noted that he did what was asked to do in AFL, getting high marks regarding the strides he has made (ogc:  everyone has a questionable bat, that is why in the NL the 8th place hitter don't hit for much, so he has a low bar to make.  Plus the pitching makes the bar lower.  I think the offense is good enough as is to handle his bat, particularly because he was actually pretty good at avoiding strikeouts last season, so I think it is just a matter of adjustments and experience before he starts hitting.  May as well start in 2012 as the starter).
• About Belt, Sabean praised his work in the Dominican Winter League, noting Belt's adjustments and his willingness to go there, accept their challenge (he was not intending to go to Winter League, Giants asked him to, partly to make up for development he missed in 2011 because of injury and sitting on the bench).  Moises Alou (GM of the team Belt played on) gave positive reports on Belt.   They noted that he was playable in the OF, though they realize that 1B is his best position. 
• About Ross, he is still up in the air, Sabean noted, "not sure" when asked about him.  (ogc:  that is consistent with before, Sabean noted that Ross could come back to the team later, if available.)
• Sabean, according to  Baggarly, left the general impression that he might not make another move to help the offense.  Sabean:  “I think we have developed enough choices including our young players in the mix and our arbitration eligible players as far as the price point that’s suitable.  I think we’ve created enough food for thought and flexibility... Health is always an issue. We hope the guys who were banged up last year come back to form and do their part and pull their weight.”  (ogc:  I agree that another move is not necessary to help the offense, it should be good enough to win right now, but obviously any additional buffer to risk mitigate another hitter failing to perform would be great.)

And that is roughly it for the press conference, though there were a few other items that came up (read the accounts for that).  

Giants Thoughts

This is what I thought should happen, though I am sure that there are legions of Giants fans crying into their garlic fries right now.  I am very happy right now that Sabean and Bochy got extended another season plus a team option for another season. 

Sabean deserves to continue being the GM, both for putting together the team that we have today and for guiding the team well in the rebuilding phase during the losing.  Bochy, as I noted in prior research, is a unique manager, capable of bringing up his team by anywhere from 6 to 10 wins, every other season, that is a WAR of about 3-4 a season, which some sabers price at $4M (and higher) per win, or $12-l6M per season.  That's a bargain, as I assume Bochy probably don't make anywhere near that per season.

I was disappointed by Haft's dig at both Sabean and Bochy when he noted that others have done more than either over their tenure than they have.  First, sure, there are those who have done more, but that ignores the cycles that Baer talked about in the press conference when praising the two of them.  You have to accept that there will be times when a team is losing and rebuilding.  It also ignores that Bochy was handicapped by the Padres poor payroll problems that regularly rolled around and decimate the good team he had, then was hurt by the Giants rebuilding period at the tail end of the Barry Bonds era, where the teams weren't good enough to win yet.  Every team has a life-cycle of rebuild/compete/repeat that has to play out, nobody is going to be a winner all the time, that is rarely done in the majors, if ever.

Second, and more importantly, Sabean has the team set to win throughout the 2010's and be the team of the decade that I've been predicting for the past 3 years.  The pitching is all pretty set up, they only have to lock up Lincecum and Cain right now to set the team up nicely to do well over the next 4-5 years or so.  The middle of the lineup looks to be great with Sandoval, Posey, and Belt, and the top of the lineup will hopefully be great with Brown and Panik up top in a year or two. 

And with our great pitching and defense (just got the latest THT annual and it has the Giants team defensive runs saved figures there for the past few years and they have been one of the best defensive teams in the majors), what a lot of people don't realize is that it creates a low run environment in almost every game the Giants play in, thus making even a poor offense a good enough offense to win a lot of games with.  But people are stuck in the mindset that you can't win with a poor offense and thus think that Sabean is lame for not doing more.

He is doing what he should be doing, securing our future dominance by getting Lincecum and Cain signed longer term.  The whole team structure for winning falls apart without Lincecum and Cain up top (and with Bumgarner).  I have no doubt that we can get Cain signed to a 5 year contract that might even have a slight home discount.  I expect Lincecum to want fair value (i.e. no discount) but given the talk about liking shorter deals, I would be OK with a two year deal with an option year, then focus on getting him signed to a longer term deal next off-season.

There has been no mention about Bumgarner, but given the animosity that probably was engendered when the Giants summarily renewed his contract at their price for the 2011 season, I would hope the Giants look into making Bumgarner happy, it don't have to be a contract to buy out the rest of his pre-free agent years, though I would like something like that, but I think they should show him a little love in the contract negotiations this off-season.  And I've mentioned Posey and Sandoval getting signed up long-term as well.

All in all, a well deserved extension for both Sabean and Bochy.  Bochy in particular for bringing up the team and making it competitive for the playoffs, when by Pythagorean, by all rights they should have been scuffling around .500 during the 2011 season.  But Sabean too, deserves credit for trying to keep the team together in 2011 for another run, but when things got bad, made the big move to trade for Beltran, plus jettisoned both Tejada and Rowand, when they proved to be detrimental to winning.  Plus, by keeping the pitching staff together, that enabled the team to survive poor hitting and numerous injuries, and still be competitive enough for .500, by Pythagorean, when most teams losing a key player like Posey for the season would be sunk the moment he went down.

On Your Mark: 2011 Free Agent Season

With the World Series over, after a inspiring Cards win, showing you should never give up (or an agonizing Rangers loss, coming within a strike, twice, of winning it all), free agency has officially begun in earnest.  The Giants started things out by signing Javier Lopez to a two year, $8.5M contract and picking up Jeremy Affeldt's $5M option (nice DrB discussion and commenting here, including moi).

The Chronicle's John Shea wrote an article on "SF Giants Need to Sign Carlos Beltran".  While I love getting offense, I don't see that the Giants NEED to sign Beltran.  What they need to do this off-season is get Lincecum and Cain signed to long-term deals, buying out their free agent years.  Next level of priority is signing Posey and Sandoval to long-term deals.  And it would be nice to sign Madison Bumgarner to a long-term contract as well.

But if Giants ownership do open up their pursestrings and sign Beltran (which would be ironic since apparently that is part of the reason why Neukom was forced out, his eagerness to spend the windfall money that came out of the World Championship), I would have to think that the Giants become the presumptive team to beat for the 2012 season, assuming that Buster Posey and Freddy Sanchez return to the lineup doing what we think they can do for us.

But even if we do not, with our great pitching, returning such good hitters to our lineup will do wonders for our offense, particularly paired up with a slugging Sandoval.  We can win with that.  Any nice hitting by Aubrey Huff would then be the whip cream on top (hate those cheeries...).  We can still win with our offense as is as long as our pitcher is as good as it has been, though, like 2011, it would not be a sure thing (but few things are in life).

Of course, we still need a CF and SS.  I think Brandon Crawford is ready enough for us to go with him as the starter at SS.  His defense, while not UZR friendly (he was only 8.2 UZR/150; most fans think he's at least worth 2 wins or 20 UZR/150), is still pretty good, and batting 8th, he doesn't have to hit for much to be valuable to the Giants in the lineup.  His nice run in September, and now in AFL, suggests that he can get a good streak going sometimes; now he has to do it over a full season.  Because of the tight payroll, and particularly if the Giants do sign Beltran, I think it is a no-brainer to start Crawford at SS, first, because he should be good enough to start, and almost just as important, he's majorly cheap to pay.  Wouldn't mind getting Rollins, but not at the 5 years he wants or the big money he wants (more than Renteria got from us).

For CF, while not ideal, I think either Coco Crisp or David DeJesus would be OK for us atop our lineup.  Crisp is the more classic leadoff hitter except that he can't get on base, DeJesus has a great OBP but not enough speed to steal bases with, though enough to play CF in prior seasons.  1 season, 2 tops, no more than
$5M per, particularly Crisp who is injured so often.

Ideally, if Beltran could still play CF, that would be best for us, at least in 2012.  Unfortunately, his defense was pretty bad there the last two seasons he played there.  However, he was even worse in RF in 2011, so given his great offensive performance is worth even more in CF while he provides "better" (relative to RF) defense in CF, maybe he can play CF for us, with Nate Schierholtz perhaps helping him in the RF alley.

Then we would not need to sign a CF free agent, let Andres Torres and Brandon Belt fight it out for LF.  Whoever wins can be the leadoff hitter, as Belt actually ran well in the minors and typically gets on base a lot too.  His power would be a little wasted there, but that is where we need him in 2012 should he win LF.  Also, I would probably put Belt in AAA should Torres win, better to give him regular starts than sit on the bench, at least in early 2012.

Sabean also hinted at an upgrade at backup C for 2012, with the thought that Posey probably will not be able to play a full season at catcher due to his recovery, so he might sign a vet there.  I lobbied for Jose Molina previously because he's an excellent defensive catcher who knows how to handle pitchers really well (Fielding Bible II metric had him best during study period) but he's not much of a hitter.  Not sure who else is available, not really something to worry about either, though I would lobby for Stewart to keep the backup job, his batting discipline is actually pretty good, he could be one of those late developing catchers who figures out how to hit in his 30's (I think he was 29 last season).

I was also hoping that the Giants could somehow fit Mark DeRosa on the bench and sign him.  He can play so many positions (and well defensively) and he should finally be healthy in 2012.  He hit well for us at the end too.  But he wants to be back near home so if anyone on the east coast and particularly south offers him a job, he will probably take it.

Even if we don't get him, we probably only have two spots open for MI on the bench (backup catcher, probably Brett Pill, and backup OF, Torres if Belt wins).  The Giants probably have to have a reliable vet as backup SS, so Mike Fontenot probably got one position, unless the Giants can pick off a better SS for cheap in January.  That leaves only one spot and we have two players who we will lose if they don't win a spot, Emmanuel Burriss and Conor Gillaspie.  I think Burris has the best chance of winning that spot, since Gillaspie can't really play defense at any position (he's probably going to get traded to an AL team or released) and Burriss can play SS and can play 2B really well.  But if we lose both it won't be a huge loss either, if the Giants can pick up a nice backup SS free agent who got left without a spot on another team.

Your 2011 Giants are 68-60: Longest Home Series

As Giants (and Giants fans) lick their wounds as they limped home, the Giants actually did OK on this tough road trip where, seemingly, the team lost someone to the DL or to a day-to-day injury every other game.  They went 4-6 against tough teams, Florida, Atlanta, and a not as tough team, Houston.

Houston was greatly disappointing, but, first, we faced a true ace in Wandy in game 1, so that would have been tough to win in the first place, even with Ryan Vogelsong going.  That made a series win that much harder since it required needing to win the last two games.  Second, the pitching did very poorly, not even holding Houston to 3 runs or less in any of the games, though I must give a shout out to the bullpen for their 9.1 shutout IP which enabled the team to win that important swing game.  And you know what?  The BABIP gods decree that lousy teams like Houston will win games at least a third of the time, you just never know when that is going to happen.  Sometimes that roulette wheel stops spinning and the ball drops in 00.

Had Vogelsong, Madison Bumgarner, and Dan Runzler been able to put together a good start, the Giants might have won the series.  Particularly Bumgarner, where even a 4 run start would have delivered a win.  As much as many Giants fans beat up on the offense for the Houston series loss, it was the pitching that cost us that series, the second game was very winnable.

Long and Winding Home Stretch

The Giants are coming up on a long stretch of home games, the longest of the season, as reported by Chris Haft.  They have 18 home games out of the next 21 games, while Arizona has 10 of their next 20 at home (i.e. they only have half at home).  If the two teams win at their current home and road performance so far this season (including the Giants winning 2 of 3 in SD, who they have had problems with before, but are 6-4 against them this season), the Giants should go 13-8 and D-backs go 11-9, and the Giants would be tied against them at the end of the stretch.

Unfortunately, that won't be enough to win the division because after that Arizona has 9 at home and 6 on the road while the Giants only has 3 at home and 10 on the road.  And winning the division is the Giants only road to the playoffs as Uggla's hot hitting streak led the Braves to an 8 game lead in the wild-card race, rendering that race moot unless they suddenly lost 10 games in a road like the Padres did last season.  The Giants must win the NL West to get into the playoffs.

And the journey, while not easy, could be easier or extremely daunting, depending on what happens in the final six games between the Giants and the D-backs, 3 at each home, including a series in Arizona just before the season ends.  If the Giants can come out ahead 4-2 in those games, that would tie them up with Arizona, then the team winning the division would be determined by how they do against the rest of the schedule, where the Giants have a slight advantage in non-NL West teams, facing Houston for 4 games and Chicago for 3 games, both at home, while the D-backs got 4 on the road against Washington and 3 at home against the Pirates.  Luckily, the Giants miss Wandy this time, he starts before and after the series.

And the Giants could come out ahead, they are 8-4 so far this season against Arizona.  That is what they need to do in the remaining 6 games.  But winning at home will be hard as Collmenter, Saunders, and Kennedy are the pitchers slated for them in that series.  We have Sanchez/Runzler, Matt Cain, Tim Lincecum currently as our opposing pitchers.  Since the day before is a day off, I think the Giants will skip that spot in the rotation and go with Cain, Lincecum, Vogelsong, which would give us a much better chance of winning that series.

In any case, as we all should know by now, the Giants will win or lose depending on their pitching rotation.  The reason we went 2-5 in the last seven games is because the pitching let us down a lot (the offense wasn't great either but we expected that we would need to win by pitching).   The pitching lost 2 games it would normally win because the Giants scored 4 and 5 runs in those losses, which the pitching usually wins with.  Winning just one of those games would have gave us a successful 5-5 road trip and only half a game behind in the standings.

As it is, the Giants are only 1.5 games back.  That is not insurmountable.  They could easily pass them up with a good stretch of pitching, much like they did SD last season with a great stretch of pitching, which they needed because they were so much further behind last season.

The Offense:  Getting Better But Needs to Get Even Better

The offense has been perking up lately and that will help.  Brandon Belt has been awkwardly hitting well for power while also striking out a storm.  The striking out is fine if he is hitting for power, but not so much when he's not, because that is what we need from him, power with a capital "HR".  He has done well in that regard in his latest call-up, hitting .256/.333/.581/.915 so far.  But before any of the Giants fans get sucked into the glory of all that, before yesterday's nice 4 hit game, he was batting only .184/.279/.474/.753 with 12 strikeouts in 38 AB.  He's not "all dat" yet.

The real hero of the second half, after the All Star break, is Pablo Sandoval, who is hitting his Panda-like .320/.364/.547/.911 with 7 HR (leading the team) in 128 AB with only 19 K's and an OK 11 walks.  And that is in spite of injuries he has sustained, which he has fought hard against losing any starts because of the injuries.  That contrasts greatly with Carlos Beltran doing on the 15-day DL for a hand/wrist strain.

But one hitter cannot do it alone (as Barry Lamar discovered), and Sandoval has been supported by Aubrey Huff who has been hitting .284/.344/.457/.800 since the break, with 4 HR in 116 AB.  In particular, since July 22nd, he has hit .311/.375/.500/.875 with 3 HR in 90 AB, only 14 K's but with 11 walks.

But the Giants will need more.   Jeff Keppinger, after a hiccup initially, has hit .289/.316/.378/.694 for the Giants in 90 AB.  He only has 3 walks but he only has 6 strikeouts too.  If he can hit closer to his career .281/.335/.393/.728, then that would be great out of the 2-spot, where he has been hitting.  Nate Schierholtz has been doing his lava hot and arctic cold routine again, but he has been hot lately, hitting .333/.417/.524/.940 in 42 AB with 2 HR, 4 BB, and 11 K's.  That is a lot of strikeouts, suggesting this won't continue, but he has shown the talent to hit well before, so hopefully he is starting to put things together.

Lastly, Carlos Beltran should be coming off the DL on Tuesday, the first day of the home stand.  If he can hit like he is capable, then the Giants offense could be taking off having Sandoval, Beltran, Huff, Schierholtz swinging well in the middle of the lineup.  And he has incentive to do well now.  If he continues to linger on the DL, that is what potential team bidders will have foremost on their minds, not his great 2011 season up until he joined the Giants.  If he can turn it on, though, people will forget about his 15 game DL hiccup and remember his great hitting.  It will be interesting.

And they are the Giants best hopes of offense in the final weeks.  Aaron Rowand has regressed greatly, once again, in the second half of the season.  No matter what he does for physical fitness in the winter - mountain bike riding mostly - he has suffered a sharp downturn in offense in the second half at some point.  This time it happened as early as the All-Star break.  Andres Torres has turned into a pumpkin overnight.  Mike Fontenot has never been that good in any case, he's just a utility guy.  Orlando Cabrera has been useless so far for the the Giants, hitting even worse than Brandon Crawford, who probably will take over the starting SS role once September 1st rolls up and the call-ups are allowed.  Unless, that is, Miguel Tejada can recover the stroke he had before he went on the DL, when he was hitting .299/.348/.449/.796 since June 1st and was a major catalyst for the offense jumping up to 3.9 RS/game in July before he went on the DL.

Cody Ross is the only real wildcard on the offense for the rest of the season, barring some unforeseen breakout by a 40-man roster call-up surprise.  He was hitting very well for the season, in the high 700 OPS range, until the All-Star break, and then he has been horrible, hitting .155/.232/.291/.523 since then.  His 4 HR has helped but we need more out of him.  If he can turn it on soon, that would help the offense even more.

The Pitching:  Keep On Doing Well

Of course, none of this happens unless the pitching comes through.  Unfortunately, a lot of key pitchers on the DL or still recovering:  Brian Wilson, Sergio Romo, Jonathan Sanchez, and Barry Zito.  Still, the pitching has performed great in the second half, 3.05 ERA overall, but there has been a lot of errors behind them, leading to a 3.67 runs allowed per game overall.

They, obviously, will need to continue doing well with the occasional hiccup.  Lincecum has been leading the staff with a 1.13 ERA over 7 starts, though despite that he has only had a 4-3 record.  Matt Cain has a 2.31 ERA but is only 2-4.  Vogelsong has a 3.12 ERA but 4-2 record.  Madison Bumgarner has a 3.31 ERA but 3-3 record.  Those plus Zito's 0-3 and Dirty's 0-2, has led to the Giants 16-20 record since the All-Star break.

The relievers have been similarly good, with only Javier Lopez doing poorly, relatively, with a 3.75 ERA over 15 appearances.  At lot of that was just bad BABIP luck, with 17 hits in 12.0 IP.  Brian Wilson has a 3.38 ERA but been lucky with that, in 10.2 IP, only 10 hits, but 9 walks to go with 9 K's.  We will need him to return healthy when he's off the DL.  Same with Romo.  But hopefully Steve Edlefsen can step in and do a decent enough imitation until they return.  He was great in spring training and while his minor numbers look bad, he also had arm problems he played with until he went on the DL and got it healed up.

Stretch Run:  Should be Fun

I find fighting for the playoffs fun, and as the old joke goes about aging, just consider the alternative.  I've named my blog aptly because I still have OCD tendencies, but one that I mostly outgrew long ago was the need for everything to come out perfectly.  That's never going to happen, you need to look at the overall picture and enjoy the view, should there be one.

And the Giants have a good view, both short term and long term.  Barring injuries, the Giants pitching staff should be dominant for a long time, longer if Neukom ponies up the money to keep Lincecum and Cain (and Bumgarner) with us deep into this decade and give us a super-rotation.  And Bochy seems to have a knack of knowing how to put together a killer bullpen that can shut down the opposition until the offense can eke out a run and win the game.  As I've shown in my research, Bochy has been an outlier manager, statistically significantly good at winning 1-run games.

As far as this season goes, the offense, as maligned as it has been, had been good enough to win a lot of games with until around the time when the Giants picked up Beltran.  Not that he is to blame, but that is roughly when the offense went off the rails.  It did not help that Cody and Nate both went cold offensively at the same time, nor that Torres continued to struggle, or that Miggie, who was one of our hottest bats, went on the DL right around then.  In addition, the catching, which had been hitting well in holding Buster's starting spot warm, both went cold after the All-Star break.  I would guess that the toll of catching so many games finally caught up with them, since neither were used to or conditioned for playing so many games.  Too many of the cylinders of the offense went dead at the same time.

But the offense appears to be perking up together lately and could get a big pickup when/if Beltran gets off the DL and start playing.  There was a lot of talk in the media when he was first picked up, about how he was mentoring and leading some of the players he already knew on the team, Pablo and Torres, but I think the bigger story is if Panda's recent demand - no other way to put that - to play despite various injuries might inspire Beltran to come off the DL and play anyway.  Beltran has been able to hit right-handed for a while but refused to play until he can bat left-handed as well.  Kung Fu Panda insists on playing even though he can't bat right-handed, insisting to bat left-handed against LHP.

The pitching, despite hiccups at the start of August and in the past week, has been pitching great.  The fielding has not been great, leading to many unearned runs - 11 in August already, 13 in July, only 10 or less in prior months - but that is the beauty of great pitching, it can overcome a lot of baseball sins:  bad offense, bad defense.

And with the next 9 games against bad teams like San Diego, Houston, and Chicago, they could even come much closer to .500 for the month (currently at 7-13), if they can go 7-2 (leaving them at 14-15) for the rest of the month.  Of course, the problem is that the 'Dres have been hot lately, winning 12 of 18, the Giants lost 2 of 3 in Houston and was close to getting swept, and the Cubs are 14-6 out of their last 20 games.  The key thing is that most of these teams are bad on the road, only SD has done well on the road.  So 6-3 looks possible and if the offense can pick up, then 7-2, but if not or the pitching continues to falter, they could end with an ugly 5-4 or worse record.

Then again, the D-backs are facing the hot Nats for 4 games on the road.  The Nats are 36-25 at home and are 12-8 in their last 20 games.  And they beat the Braves at home, winning that series, plus won a series at home against the Phillies as well in that streak, plus splitting with them on the road.  They also won a series against the Reds at home.  So the D-backs will have their hands full in upcoming games as well.

It should be a good pennant race.  The Giants, despite all the injuries, look talented enough to stay close if not take the pennant for the rest of the season.  Arizona is still doing it with some good luck, like Goldschmidt hitting well after their 1B good luck ended, but his BABIP is horribly high, for anyone, and he's not even speedy plus is striking out at a record pace (24 in last 49 AB, only 3 walks), making it all the more likely his BABIP will be crushed sooner or later.  But the funny thing about baseball luck is that it can last him to the end of the season and regress to the mean next season.

In any case, the D-backs have regressed a lot in August, they are only 11-10 so far this month.  The only reason they have taken the division lead is because the Giants lost a lot more games this month.  Their pitching has regressed greatly, particularly with the addition of Marquis to the rotation.  He was suppose to be the NL West killer, as he has been in his career, but he has a horrible 9.53 ERA so far in 3 starts for the D-backs.  Plus Saunders and Collmenter have both regressed this month, as I had noted that they should earlier, 6.75 and 4.30, respectively.  Plus Hudson has regressed some as well.

The schedule looks good for the Giants.  They have 27 out of their remaining 34 games against NL West rivals and they have been 28-17 against these teams so far and are above .500 against the four teams, though only 6-4 against SD with 8 games to go and history noting that the Giants have lost the prior two season series against the 'Dres.  They have 21 home games left and only 13 road games, with 18 of the next 21 games at home.  All the teams are below .500, except for Arizona.

However, the Giants are only 43-40 against below .500 teams, 25-20 against .500 and above teams.  They are one of three teams with records above .500 against winning teams, suggesting that they have struggled to get up against the poorer teams, while taking on the winning teams when presented with that challenge.

Given that there are not a lot of games left, hopefully the Giants can raise their performance against these losing teams in the rest of the season.   They should be realizing that they need to step it up now, whether good team or mostly bad, and go for the throat, like the starting pitching did last season in September, going so many games without giving up more than 3 runs.  Bruce Bochy, as I have noted before in a post, has that killer, go for the win instinct, so they should be getting the message soon if not already.  And Kung Fu Panda should be inspiring them with his desire to play and to win, at all costs and pains.

We might not be leading now, but leading is over rated, just ask the 2003 Giants about that.  We need the pitching and fielding to be going well, and frankly the fielding has been lacking, costing us runs we cannot afford to give up.   The defense has costed us at least one win (which is a two win swing) in August, and we would either be ahead or behind half a game right now if the defense was up to normal standards.  Also, we have been having hiccups in relief, particularly Wilson, due to his arm problems.   Things should be better in September, when we can bring up the young players who are good on defense, and swap them in late in the game.

The media does not help with the fans overall sentiment. They go for the easy story: Giants offense stink. They can't accept that a very good pitcher was on and had a really good game or that even a bad team like the Astros do win some series. They encourage these extreme ups and downs in fan sentiment, I get that from reading the news accounts of this game, I get that from listening to any show about the Giants, but all this down in the mouth stuff is just useless worry.

We get that the offense stinks. Hello, whenever you take all your top hitters out of the lineup, you are going to really stink. Take Pujols and Holliday off the Cards, Ethier and Kemp off the Dodgers, Utley and Howard off the Phillies, they will stink too. We are missing Posey and Huff had been MIA until recently. Plus, we lost Freddy Sanchez, who was an important cog, and Torres has totally not performed at all. Expecting the Giants to replace all that is not realistic. I think the Giants have done as well as they can given the circumstances, without trading away all our best prospects.  You roll the dice and see what happens.

It is not perfect, but life never is.  What I focus on is that the Giants are in position to win the division, this season and for foreseeable seasons.  That is really all you can ask for unless you are the Yankees and maybe the Red Sox.  There are too many injuries and poor performances that can happen and derail your playoff chances.  I think it has been a great season and looks to continue to be great for the rest of the season, barring any catastrophic injury to someone new.  I have enjoyed this season a lot and hope that everyone can enjoy it as well, because it has been good and look to get better.

Giants Reportedly Trade for Carlos Beltran

The rumored news is that the Giants have traded for Carlos Beltran, sending Zack Wheeler to the Mets.  Out of his $6M remaining on the contract, the Giants will get a reported $4M from the Mets and pay the remaining $2M.  Because Beltran is a 10-5 player, he gets 24 hours to reflect on the trade, but reportedly will approve it, according to a report by Tim Brown of Yahoo.
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