I'm going on a rant about BP, feel free to ignore this post if that topic don't interest you. [sorry, forgot about this, been tied up with work, just publishing now, no time to update]
Showing posts with label Mediocy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mediocy. Show all posts
Thursday, May 02, 2019
Monday, May 19, 2014
Your 2014 Giants: April's At the Rate They Are Going - Addendum
I had written a blog post earlier this month with this title, and I felt the need to add an addendum. I noticed recently that another blog basically dissed the concept of my post, perhaps an oblique slap since he and I are not on good terms, but my blog was not mentioned in the post.
ogc thoughts
The opinion was expressed that there is no value to examining the extrapolated production of players. I would agree if that is all that was done, was to extrapolate, as he did, and marvel at a player on pace to hit, say, 80 homers or get 2 bajillion RBIs.
Plus, as I noted, it was suppose to be a fun exercise to see where players are on pace for, which brought me back to my youth, and hopefully others. I feel sorry for those who think that they are so high and mighty now and can't remember their youth and innocence.
But that wasn't all that I did, look at the extrapolated production. I not only extrapolated out what people's rates were, but also noted standards, like what the leader had last season, and where they would rank. And besides homers and Machi's wins, nobody is producing at an outrageous rate, unlike other teams where their guys are clearly on a hot streak that will end at some point, at which point they will fall back to the pack.
Plus there were areas of underperformance. That bodes well for continuing our winning ways, few are over producing as well as there are a number of those underperforming, and hopefully they balance out as the former produces less. That's a sign that this type of winning should be continuing, as long as we have everyone (and we just lost Belt, which could have been a factor in our 4-3 homestand, and Hudson's skipped start definitely was a factor, the Giants scored 5 runs in that game, and in his eight starts this season, the most runs given up so far is 4 runs, so we should have won that game; but funny how one win changes a view entirely about a homestand, as then they would have been 5-2 instead, hence why I'm not too put out by this homestand, can't win every series, can't do great in every homestand).
Then I discussed these factoids at the end, noting:
What this post provided is a view as to whether a player is performing at a rate that does not jibe with leader standings of the 2013 season, i.e. is totally unbelievable. Not everyone (probably few) is aware of what the leaders produced, I know I didn't until I did this exercise, as newspaper rarely list the leader list anymore since such info is readily available on-line. And looking at the production, most people don't have a sense of what that type of production means over a full season. 5 homers seems a lot but not so much, but that translate into a 30 homer season, which is unreasonable for everyone on this team except for Morse and perhaps Sandoval (though with his slow start, not this season either).
Sure, some, like Hicks is performing way better than anyone could have hoped, but that's the beauty of baseball, sometimes a player, when given the chance, will do well enough to keep the job. It is not like this is impossible for Hicks to do, his minor league history is full of this type of hit and miss performance, he is a three-true-outcomes type of player, and as his age approached the age of the league, he has hit better and better, and he's reaching league average (average hitters age is 28.5, pitchers is 28.8). It is too early in the season to say definitively that he couldn't continue the pace he was producing in other areas, but to think that he can reach 30 homers, a figure only the best homerun hitters in the league has achieved in recent years, that for certain is not something to expect.
And yet, sometimes players do the usual, that's the beauty of baseball, and that is what I try to teach in my blog, rather than reach for the lowest common denominator in order to goose readership. I try to illuminate what can be expected, good or bad, from anything related to the Giants. Hopefully my faithful readers understand all this, but if not, let me know how I can improve.
ogc thoughts
The opinion was expressed that there is no value to examining the extrapolated production of players. I would agree if that is all that was done, was to extrapolate, as he did, and marvel at a player on pace to hit, say, 80 homers or get 2 bajillion RBIs.
Plus, as I noted, it was suppose to be a fun exercise to see where players are on pace for, which brought me back to my youth, and hopefully others. I feel sorry for those who think that they are so high and mighty now and can't remember their youth and innocence.
But that wasn't all that I did, look at the extrapolated production. I not only extrapolated out what people's rates were, but also noted standards, like what the leader had last season, and where they would rank. And besides homers and Machi's wins, nobody is producing at an outrageous rate, unlike other teams where their guys are clearly on a hot streak that will end at some point, at which point they will fall back to the pack.
Plus there were areas of underperformance. That bodes well for continuing our winning ways, few are over producing as well as there are a number of those underperforming, and hopefully they balance out as the former produces less. That's a sign that this type of winning should be continuing, as long as we have everyone (and we just lost Belt, which could have been a factor in our 4-3 homestand, and Hudson's skipped start definitely was a factor, the Giants scored 5 runs in that game, and in his eight starts this season, the most runs given up so far is 4 runs, so we should have won that game; but funny how one win changes a view entirely about a homestand, as then they would have been 5-2 instead, hence why I'm not too put out by this homestand, can't win every series, can't do great in every homestand).
Then I discussed these factoids at the end, noting:
The good news is that most of the players are not playing over their heads except for homers, where there is no way all those players are going to be at 30 or more homers. Morse's RBI pace is the only one where he's not likely to continue at that pace.And I did note right at the very beginning, that this is for people who are not as experienced in following a baseball season, who might not have a sense for what is too unrealistic. And my analysis showed that most players were not off the charts in any way, though in my review again here of the article, I probably should have made more of an emphasis that performing at this rate does not mean that they will, but I thought that any reader should readily understand that. It also provided a springboard to a discussion regarding the disappointments of the starting rotation as well as the bench.
What this post provided is a view as to whether a player is performing at a rate that does not jibe with leader standings of the 2013 season, i.e. is totally unbelievable. Not everyone (probably few) is aware of what the leaders produced, I know I didn't until I did this exercise, as newspaper rarely list the leader list anymore since such info is readily available on-line. And looking at the production, most people don't have a sense of what that type of production means over a full season. 5 homers seems a lot but not so much, but that translate into a 30 homer season, which is unreasonable for everyone on this team except for Morse and perhaps Sandoval (though with his slow start, not this season either).
Sure, some, like Hicks is performing way better than anyone could have hoped, but that's the beauty of baseball, sometimes a player, when given the chance, will do well enough to keep the job. It is not like this is impossible for Hicks to do, his minor league history is full of this type of hit and miss performance, he is a three-true-outcomes type of player, and as his age approached the age of the league, he has hit better and better, and he's reaching league average (average hitters age is 28.5, pitchers is 28.8). It is too early in the season to say definitively that he couldn't continue the pace he was producing in other areas, but to think that he can reach 30 homers, a figure only the best homerun hitters in the league has achieved in recent years, that for certain is not something to expect.
And yet, sometimes players do the usual, that's the beauty of baseball, and that is what I try to teach in my blog, rather than reach for the lowest common denominator in order to goose readership. I try to illuminate what can be expected, good or bad, from anything related to the Giants. Hopefully my faithful readers understand all this, but if not, let me know how I can improve.
Wednesday, January 09, 2013
Sanctimonious Moralistic Hall of Fame Voter Hypocrites
I had recently written about the vote for Barry Bonds and other tainted with steroids and PEDs, but I recently ran across a column written by a local columnist who I admire, so I won't mention the writer's name, but since the writer's stance is similar to a lot of the national writers who are going to vote No for Bonds, I felt the need to answer some of the points made in that column.
Also, the Hall of Fame vote was reported today and it was a referendum against the steroid era, as nobody was voted in. Probably because there were a number of people who voted but left their ballot blank.
"Don't Reward Those Who Cheated the Game"
This would be a great idea: if it were done about 40-60 years ago. Journalists can beat the drum loud today but the real assault on the record books began when amphetamines entered the game. This enabled the better players to be better later into the season, helping them compile better seasonal and therefore career stats. However, even though many players came out about this - BACK THEN (Ball Four, testimonies in court attesting to Mays' usage of "red juice", others) - there was never anything done by the media about this type of cheating, certainly nothing to the extent steroids gotten, and that covers a much longer period of time.
Moreover, the benefits of speed is clear, it boosts the athlete's ability to stay at the same level of performance deeper into the season, whereas steroid's benefits seems to be driven more by non-experts' (public and journalists) fears of how steroids might help a player, rather than what science has been able to show are the real effects (which by one large compilation at High Boskage House is minimal, at best).
One justification for this type of behavior versus steroids is that "everyone" used speed while not everyone used steroids. But cheating is cheating, no matter how many do it, it is still cheating. And that is what the writers have been saying, that cheating is why they are not voting for certain players. That is, if that is really what the writers feel.
Cheating Since World War II
Cheating has been happening at least since the 1960's and, most probably, since World War II, when the military routinely dispensed amphetamine to the troops to keep them in fighting shape. It is only natural that once these ballplayers returned to civilian life, they knew of and seeked out such medical help when the effects of the long baseball season made them feel weak. Krukow in his morning show a few weeks ago noted that each team's training staff routinely and openly dispensed this to players (this was in the 70's).
At least one baseball journalist, long ago, must have seen this in the clubhouse, and even if they could not go after the players - because that would ruin their relationship with the team - they could have had one of their colleagues in another department investigate and expose this cheating long ago, at minimum, when Jim Bouton's Ball Four came out and he outed the players. No reporter ever did anything about it. Ironically, amphetamines were finally pushed out with the drug rules put in place because of steroids.
If cheating is going to be the litmus test today for not voting for Barry Bonds, then this national debate should have been happening when his godfather, Willie Mays was being voted into the Hall of Fame. Cheating was rampant then. Heck, cheating of all sorts have been rampant throughout the history of the game. Today, the horse has not only left the barn, it is on another continent, perhaps another planetary object.
If the writer cannot vote for a player clouded by this, why vote at all? Maybe the bigger message would be sent by not voting at all for anyone, because we can never really know who was using what. And some are doing that.
Yes, certain players were obvious with their steroids usage. But HGH usage was not, but is equally considered to be cheating and helpful by the public (High Boskage House research also shows minimal benefits), so for all we know, even players who appear to be clean are not clean at all either. There is no real way to distinguish who was a cheater in this era and who was not. And so many writers say that they are not going to vote, either by not returning their vote (which at least does not actually affect the voting) or by returning a blank vote (which makes it harder for any player to make the Hall of Fame, whether cheating or not).
Moralistic
Also, when were writers made the arbiters of "character"? I mean, I know that is in the language of the Hall of Fame determination, but as far as I know, the only requirement for a writer to earn the right to vote for the Hall of Fame is having 10 years following a team under their belt. They don't add in any language there about the writers being good judges of character.
In fact, one of the major reasons given that justifies giving the vote to writers with at least 10 years of experience following a team every day is that this enables them to be able to view baseball players with an expertise that allows them to see when a player is good or not, and thus whether they belong in the Hall of Fame. Many writers today say that Bonds had a Hall of Fame already made when he allegedly started using steroids. Instead of standing on moralistic grounds on which their expertise is unknown, they should use the skills that they are suppose to have developed over the years and see who should get in and who should not?
Unless they are saying that they cannot distinguish this. But in that case, why are they being allowed to vote then? If they have this expertise, use this expertise. If steroids help homers (according to research found by Eric Walker, steroids add about 5 feet to any ball hit by a hitter, so this appears to be a fallacy in the thinking of people who don't want to vote for steroids users), then make some determination of what exactly is so different.
Here is a good quote from his steroids website (about third way down):
Walker later had a section on Bonds specifically. He illustrated that what Bonds did was not all that different from other players who had extraordinary seasons. He states that there is no proof in his performance that he had extra help.
Witch Hunters
So Bonds should be in, not even close. I've seen nobody yet claim that steroids helps a hitter see the ball better and to hit it hard. All they talk about is body bulk, and there are 250 pound behemoths that hit lollipops while a lanky 180 pound stick with good wrist action can become the career leader in homeruns (Aaron; of course, he got legal cheating as the Braves brought in their fences, coincidentally enough, right when he was getting close and they brought them back out when he left the team and set the new record; why there was no outrage about that as the reason Ruth was beat, I don't know). Bonds was universally agreed to be a Hall of Famer before he reportedly started using. This non-vote is meant to be punitive.
That's funny, I thought the Hall of Fame was suppose to celebratory, not an instrument of punishment.
What makes it even more sad is that the writers have had over 20 years to get down to business and actually DO THEIR JOB as journalists. Eric Walker, of A's and Sinister Firstbaseman fame, keeps up a website to sell his baseball analytics service and, first, he discovered that the offensive era looks like it was caused by a juiced ball, and second, because people claimed he was wrong and started claiming steroids did certain things, he researched the heck out of it and concluded that steroids provided very little to benefit baseball players and gave further evidence that the ball was juiced during that period. He did the investigative journalism that was necessary to show that steroids didn't do much of anything, instead of copying the "journalists" who just spread the same misconceptions that another "journalists" claimed was true.
Read through his steroid's website, look at all the associated subsites that cite even more things in detail, discussing the physical changes to the baseball, the actual effects PED has, the medical effects, the healing effects, ethical issues, and effects on role models. Makes a very strong case that the general public, including reporters, got it all wrong: yes, they might have cheated (definition slippery), definitely took something illegal (at least the ones caught), but it apparently didn't help players out at all in performing better.
In other words, whatever PEDs players might have used were no different than a placebo. They cheated with today's version of snake oil. They are no different from the Asians today who eat rhino horns, thinking that would give their bodies some sort of boost. Both groups are sadly wrong.
Journalists could have done this type of investigative journalism work long ago, not some OCD baseball analyst, if they were really interested in the truth and not in a witch hunt. Here is how I view this: the writers felt greatly embarrassed by the steroids era because they did nothing while it was going on, and thus many of them feel the need to punish the players who used or allegedly used PEDs. When, really, they should be embarrassed twice over now, first for not only missing the steroids rise, but mostly overlooking and ignoring it - it is not like it is a shock, McGwire was suspected of using long ago, yet no reporter ever thought of investigating him closely, they waited until Bonds was suspected and even then they used illegally released grand jury testimony that basically proved nothing - and second for spreading false "truths" about steroids, and then taking their anger out on star players like Bonds and Clemens, and really, since nobody got in this year, all players, as there were players who appeared clean and who should get in, like Biggio. They should be ashamed.
Also, the Hall of Fame vote was reported today and it was a referendum against the steroid era, as nobody was voted in. Probably because there were a number of people who voted but left their ballot blank.
"Don't Reward Those Who Cheated the Game"
This would be a great idea: if it were done about 40-60 years ago. Journalists can beat the drum loud today but the real assault on the record books began when amphetamines entered the game. This enabled the better players to be better later into the season, helping them compile better seasonal and therefore career stats. However, even though many players came out about this - BACK THEN (Ball Four, testimonies in court attesting to Mays' usage of "red juice", others) - there was never anything done by the media about this type of cheating, certainly nothing to the extent steroids gotten, and that covers a much longer period of time.
Moreover, the benefits of speed is clear, it boosts the athlete's ability to stay at the same level of performance deeper into the season, whereas steroid's benefits seems to be driven more by non-experts' (public and journalists) fears of how steroids might help a player, rather than what science has been able to show are the real effects (which by one large compilation at High Boskage House is minimal, at best).
One justification for this type of behavior versus steroids is that "everyone" used speed while not everyone used steroids. But cheating is cheating, no matter how many do it, it is still cheating. And that is what the writers have been saying, that cheating is why they are not voting for certain players. That is, if that is really what the writers feel.
Cheating Since World War II
Cheating has been happening at least since the 1960's and, most probably, since World War II, when the military routinely dispensed amphetamine to the troops to keep them in fighting shape. It is only natural that once these ballplayers returned to civilian life, they knew of and seeked out such medical help when the effects of the long baseball season made them feel weak. Krukow in his morning show a few weeks ago noted that each team's training staff routinely and openly dispensed this to players (this was in the 70's).
At least one baseball journalist, long ago, must have seen this in the clubhouse, and even if they could not go after the players - because that would ruin their relationship with the team - they could have had one of their colleagues in another department investigate and expose this cheating long ago, at minimum, when Jim Bouton's Ball Four came out and he outed the players. No reporter ever did anything about it. Ironically, amphetamines were finally pushed out with the drug rules put in place because of steroids.
If cheating is going to be the litmus test today for not voting for Barry Bonds, then this national debate should have been happening when his godfather, Willie Mays was being voted into the Hall of Fame. Cheating was rampant then. Heck, cheating of all sorts have been rampant throughout the history of the game. Today, the horse has not only left the barn, it is on another continent, perhaps another planetary object.
If the writer cannot vote for a player clouded by this, why vote at all? Maybe the bigger message would be sent by not voting at all for anyone, because we can never really know who was using what. And some are doing that.
Yes, certain players were obvious with their steroids usage. But HGH usage was not, but is equally considered to be cheating and helpful by the public (High Boskage House research also shows minimal benefits), so for all we know, even players who appear to be clean are not clean at all either. There is no real way to distinguish who was a cheater in this era and who was not. And so many writers say that they are not going to vote, either by not returning their vote (which at least does not actually affect the voting) or by returning a blank vote (which makes it harder for any player to make the Hall of Fame, whether cheating or not).
Moralistic
Also, when were writers made the arbiters of "character"? I mean, I know that is in the language of the Hall of Fame determination, but as far as I know, the only requirement for a writer to earn the right to vote for the Hall of Fame is having 10 years following a team under their belt. They don't add in any language there about the writers being good judges of character.
In fact, one of the major reasons given that justifies giving the vote to writers with at least 10 years of experience following a team every day is that this enables them to be able to view baseball players with an expertise that allows them to see when a player is good or not, and thus whether they belong in the Hall of Fame. Many writers today say that Bonds had a Hall of Fame already made when he allegedly started using steroids. Instead of standing on moralistic grounds on which their expertise is unknown, they should use the skills that they are suppose to have developed over the years and see who should get in and who should not?
Unless they are saying that they cannot distinguish this. But in that case, why are they being allowed to vote then? If they have this expertise, use this expertise. If steroids help homers (according to research found by Eric Walker, steroids add about 5 feet to any ball hit by a hitter, so this appears to be a fallacy in the thinking of people who don't want to vote for steroids users), then make some determination of what exactly is so different.
Here is a good quote from his steroids website (about third way down):
As I remarked above, there are at least five other studies--all listed and linked on the longer page--all based on sophisticated analysis of real data, and each using a different approach, that each reach the same basic conclusion: there is no visible effect attributable to steroids. In the most mathematically dense and rigorous paper, its author, Professor Arthur DeVany, spares no words:
| There is no evidence that steroid use has altered home-run hitting and those who argue otherwise are profoundly ignorant of the statistics of home runs, the physics of baseball, and of the physiological effects of steroids. |
Walker later had a section on Bonds specifically. He illustrated that what Bonds did was not all that different from other players who had extraordinary seasons. He states that there is no proof in his performance that he had extra help.
Witch Hunters
So Bonds should be in, not even close. I've seen nobody yet claim that steroids helps a hitter see the ball better and to hit it hard. All they talk about is body bulk, and there are 250 pound behemoths that hit lollipops while a lanky 180 pound stick with good wrist action can become the career leader in homeruns (Aaron; of course, he got legal cheating as the Braves brought in their fences, coincidentally enough, right when he was getting close and they brought them back out when he left the team and set the new record; why there was no outrage about that as the reason Ruth was beat, I don't know). Bonds was universally agreed to be a Hall of Famer before he reportedly started using. This non-vote is meant to be punitive.
That's funny, I thought the Hall of Fame was suppose to celebratory, not an instrument of punishment.
What makes it even more sad is that the writers have had over 20 years to get down to business and actually DO THEIR JOB as journalists. Eric Walker, of A's and Sinister Firstbaseman fame, keeps up a website to sell his baseball analytics service and, first, he discovered that the offensive era looks like it was caused by a juiced ball, and second, because people claimed he was wrong and started claiming steroids did certain things, he researched the heck out of it and concluded that steroids provided very little to benefit baseball players and gave further evidence that the ball was juiced during that period. He did the investigative journalism that was necessary to show that steroids didn't do much of anything, instead of copying the "journalists" who just spread the same misconceptions that another "journalists" claimed was true.
Read through his steroid's website, look at all the associated subsites that cite even more things in detail, discussing the physical changes to the baseball, the actual effects PED has, the medical effects, the healing effects, ethical issues, and effects on role models. Makes a very strong case that the general public, including reporters, got it all wrong: yes, they might have cheated (definition slippery), definitely took something illegal (at least the ones caught), but it apparently didn't help players out at all in performing better.
In other words, whatever PEDs players might have used were no different than a placebo. They cheated with today's version of snake oil. They are no different from the Asians today who eat rhino horns, thinking that would give their bodies some sort of boost. Both groups are sadly wrong.
Journalists could have done this type of investigative journalism work long ago, not some OCD baseball analyst, if they were really interested in the truth and not in a witch hunt. Here is how I view this: the writers felt greatly embarrassed by the steroids era because they did nothing while it was going on, and thus many of them feel the need to punish the players who used or allegedly used PEDs. When, really, they should be embarrassed twice over now, first for not only missing the steroids rise, but mostly overlooking and ignoring it - it is not like it is a shock, McGwire was suspected of using long ago, yet no reporter ever thought of investigating him closely, they waited until Bonds was suspected and even then they used illegally released grand jury testimony that basically proved nothing - and second for spreading false "truths" about steroids, and then taking their anger out on star players like Bonds and Clemens, and really, since nobody got in this year, all players, as there were players who appeared clean and who should get in, like Biggio. They should be ashamed.
Friday, October 26, 2012
Pablo Sandoval is HR Power Hitter
I had a longer post I wanted to write and detail the data, but I just had to get this out: Sandoval is a legit homerun hitter. I am getting so tired of seeing the Fox and ESPN "analysts" harp on and on about Sandoval only having 12 homers this year. HELLO? Do any of you do ANY research at all about any of the players? He was clearly injured and you would think baseball people would know that the hamate bone surgery saps power, but no.
DrB once posited that he thought that Sandoval is going to reach 40 homers one year. I then did the research on his homerun rate and determined that he has shown enough homerun power that it would not be surprising if Sandoval did reach that figure one of these days.
And what I did did not take a lot of brain power or effort. It is embarrassing in today's world of the internet, lots of free information, and easy analysis, that people going on TV as "experts" and spouting drivel like this. They are such mediots!
I'll post my analysis another day, when I have more free time...
DrB once posited that he thought that Sandoval is going to reach 40 homers one year. I then did the research on his homerun rate and determined that he has shown enough homerun power that it would not be surprising if Sandoval did reach that figure one of these days.
And what I did did not take a lot of brain power or effort. It is embarrassing in today's world of the internet, lots of free information, and easy analysis, that people going on TV as "experts" and spouting drivel like this. They are such mediots!
I'll post my analysis another day, when I have more free time...
Monday, June 25, 2012
Bengie's Thoughts On Timmy
Dan Brown of the Merc has a great interview with Bengie Molina that Alex Pavlovic kindly shared with his blogging audience early, which I've linked here. This is exactly what I've been saying here and other places, that Tim is fighting himself mentally. And Bengie provides a lot of good information about pitching, catching, and his thoughts on Timmy (mostly) plus some comments on Buster, and Hector Sanchez, catching in general. I highly recommend reading the article. It even noted the Chris Lincecum interview on USA Today, and Molina noted how cruel sports can be.
USA TODAY Out of Line Baiting Papa Lincecum
I would add here, like I added on the original USA Today article interview with Chris Lincecum, that it is the media that is crucifying Tim, specifically USA Today. Most fans I've seen are concerned, of course, but not "crucifying" Tim. Of course, there are whack jobs in any group, but the vast majority are still very supportive of Tim.
And they should be. As Papa Lincecum noted, Tim has given us two Cy Youngs and a Worlds Championship. We are indebted for life to Tim, is the way I see it. And his father expressed that rather forcefully in his article.
But it was not the fans bringing up that Tim could be sent to the minors, nor was it Giants management - in fact, just the day before that interview, Sabean was interviewed on CSN regarding Tim and he said, very clearly, that Lincecum is a part of our rotation, that there will be nobody will be coming in to take his spot in the rotation, and if the experts - Bochy, Righetti, and Gardner - think that Tim needs a break, then that will happen, but at that moment, they saw no need for one. Said that Tim's record "speaks for itself," that "he's our starting pitcher." As far as I can tell, it was USA Today who brought up the fact that Lincecum could be sent to the minors, to which, of course, Papa Lincecum exploded when it was brought up.
That's where the media toes the line between reporting news and making news. True, Timmy could be sent down. I've certainly been aware of that, so I'm sure others are, including Giants management. But nobody from the Giants have said that. And the Giants blogs I've been going to have not suggested that either, not even close.
What does USA Today think would happen if they brought up that fact to Chris Lincecum? What would be the logical, common sense reaction? It would be similar to asking a father what if a terrible thing happened to your child, of course you are going to get a strong negative reaction. Why put people through such a mental exercise when nobody remotely connected with the team had even intimated that something like that is possible? What purpose does it serve, other than to sell more newspapers (or in today's world, get more eyeballs reading)?
And I think USA Today generally does a very good job of reporting on baseball, so I'm disappointed in them that they took the low road in baiting Papa Lincecum with that loaded "what-if" scenario. I expect better from them. And I hope Tim knows that it was not fans nor Giants management who brought up the minors to his Dad, I hope it does not negatively affect his signing a long term deal with the Giants, as his father intimated. I'll be very angry with the USA Today if Lincecum leaves us because of their baiting of Tim's father in that interview.
USA TODAY Out of Line Baiting Papa Lincecum
I would add here, like I added on the original USA Today article interview with Chris Lincecum, that it is the media that is crucifying Tim, specifically USA Today. Most fans I've seen are concerned, of course, but not "crucifying" Tim. Of course, there are whack jobs in any group, but the vast majority are still very supportive of Tim.
And they should be. As Papa Lincecum noted, Tim has given us two Cy Youngs and a Worlds Championship. We are indebted for life to Tim, is the way I see it. And his father expressed that rather forcefully in his article.
But it was not the fans bringing up that Tim could be sent to the minors, nor was it Giants management - in fact, just the day before that interview, Sabean was interviewed on CSN regarding Tim and he said, very clearly, that Lincecum is a part of our rotation, that there will be nobody will be coming in to take his spot in the rotation, and if the experts - Bochy, Righetti, and Gardner - think that Tim needs a break, then that will happen, but at that moment, they saw no need for one. Said that Tim's record "speaks for itself," that "he's our starting pitcher." As far as I can tell, it was USA Today who brought up the fact that Lincecum could be sent to the minors, to which, of course, Papa Lincecum exploded when it was brought up.
That's where the media toes the line between reporting news and making news. True, Timmy could be sent down. I've certainly been aware of that, so I'm sure others are, including Giants management. But nobody from the Giants have said that. And the Giants blogs I've been going to have not suggested that either, not even close.
What does USA Today think would happen if they brought up that fact to Chris Lincecum? What would be the logical, common sense reaction? It would be similar to asking a father what if a terrible thing happened to your child, of course you are going to get a strong negative reaction. Why put people through such a mental exercise when nobody remotely connected with the team had even intimated that something like that is possible? What purpose does it serve, other than to sell more newspapers (or in today's world, get more eyeballs reading)?
And I think USA Today generally does a very good job of reporting on baseball, so I'm disappointed in them that they took the low road in baiting Papa Lincecum with that loaded "what-if" scenario. I expect better from them. And I hope Tim knows that it was not fans nor Giants management who brought up the minors to his Dad, I hope it does not negatively affect his signing a long term deal with the Giants, as his father intimated. I'll be very angry with the USA Today if Lincecum leaves us because of their baiting of Tim's father in that interview.
Thursday, August 05, 2010
Watching the Watchmen: Raging Razor
As regular readers know, I really hate it when the media goes off, spouting their ideas and opinions. They are in a position of great influence and can mislead a large number of fans. The latest who got me going is Ralph Barbieri.
I usually lay off Ralph because I like his show and he's pretty innocuous most of the time, plus he's a HUGE Giants fan, but I just couldn't let what he did yesterday go without writing about it. He raged on and on about the Giants needing to do something. That's OK. But then he went on about how the Giants had to do something, ANYTHING, to prove to Ralph that the Giants were willing to do anything to win it all.
Prove it to ME!
He should get over himself. Yes, he gets to hobnob with a lot of Giants personnel, and has access to people we can only dream about: he is very lucky. But he has to assured that they will do anything? He periodically talks with Bill Neukom on his show, why not get into some sort of conversation with the guy with his hands on the pocketbook to get that assurance? You know, like, interview him?
He basically gave the impression that if the Giants went out and signed someone to BIG money, that would be proof. Can you imagine if we actually signed Manny, one of the guys he mentioned, to a, say, $30M per year contract? With all the crap he does and time he has spent on the DL, I don't really see the Giants being where they are today had we signed him as many wanted back then
Or worse, what if we had signed, say, an Andruw Jones-type free agent, to name one recent big money bomb. We already have Rowand, another big bomb would have killed our chances to win this season, but that's OK, it would prove to Ralph that the Giants really are willing to spend the bucks.
Also, the Giants have shown that they are ready to step up. They signed Lincecum, Cain, Affeldt, and Wilson to extended deals this pre-season. They didn't have to do that. They could have waited to make these moves. Give the Giants some credit for these moves, which ties up budget that they didn't need to do but did, particularly regarding Cain.
And you don't want them making stupid deals. Stupid deals will hurt even more going forward because it would force the Giants to trade away some of their young talent who they now can't afford because of the stupid deal. I would rather the Giants tread gingerly in the free agent market, like they did this past off-season, $6M, while more money than most of us will ever see in our lifetime, multiple lifetimes, would not kill the Giants budget. Mistakes of those size don't hurt as much, aren't long-term, won't affect how we can afford our young stars..
WHOOSH! Over His Head!
Then he went on and said that the Giants should just trade Jonathan Sanchez away and get a bat, he don't care, just get a 5th starter somewhere, look at other team's 5th starters, they don't have anyone good there either. Ralph just don't get it.
I've been writing about how great it is to have a pitching rotation that can put down the other team at an ace-like level in any game. With a rotation like that, there are no easy holes in the rotation, the other team will face a tough pitcher every game they play the Giants. People always talk about how there are holes in a lineup and how a pitcher can ease up and relax, but if you have a great lineup, the pitcher gets no rest. But until now, we have never really had an example of that except perhaps the Orioles circa 1970-ish.
But look at the game yesterday. Sanchez has the stuff to strike out a lot of guys. He did something that other big strikeout guys for the Giants couldn't do, strike out seven in a row like the great Juan Marichial. Gaylord Perry didn't. John the Count Montefusco didn't. Jason Schimidt didn't. Matt Cain didn't. Tim Lincecum didn't. Sanchez did.
And Sanchez did something Giants pitchers have had huge problems with in recent years, shutting down Colorado's potent lineup. While they did miss the Giants killer, Dexter Fowler, because he had a rib cage injury, Tulowitski returned to the cleanup spot, Todd Helton to his #2 spot, Carlos Gonzalez has been on a raging hot streak recently, they have one of the best home records in the majors, and just won four in a row at home, against the Cubs and Pirates, they scored 40 runs in those four games. Sanchez shut them down, 3-hit them in 6 innings.
Another media commenter noted Sanchez's 4 walks, but research from The Hardball Times found that as long as the pitcher is a high strikeout pitcher, the walks are tolerable as long as his K/BB ratio is above the 2.0 you want to see your starters at. In fact, that research compared high K/high BB pitchers with low K/low BB pitchers who have K/BB over 2.0 and found that the high K pitchers had a better ERA than the low K pitchers. So it appears that walks are OK as long as they are companied by at least two strikeouts to match it.
That kind of makes sense. With BABIP at .300 for most pitchers, if you strike out 3+ more than most pitchers, you on average give up one less hit than other pitchers, so you can afford to give up one more walk than other pitchers, as one walk is not as harmful, usually, as one hit, particularly an extra-base hit.
There are many good things about a great rotation like this. One is that competitiveness will push each one to try to match or top the other, pushing them to greater heights. I think that is what pushed Cain to take the step up last season, and keep it going this season, is being compared unfavorably relative to Lincecum. Not that he is jealous, just, competitively, he wants to get where Lincecum is.
Another is that losing streaks will tend to be shorter. One less hole in the rotation helps that. The competitiveness is another that helps, in that each will want to be the one to stop the streak, and each are very capable of doing that. Most of all, each are so good that the odds of a loss is that much less than for any other rotation, top to bottom. For other teams, once they get past their first or second starter, they could go into a 3-4 games losing streak easily.
And this is not guarantee of good times in any short series. Our pitchers are not that good. But if we could run a simulation of this rotation one million times, more times than not, our pitchers can take on any other rotation and beat the other team, because when they are on, they can shut down good offensive teams like Colorado. We need that advantage this year because we are neck and neck with SD and need every win, but perhaps we can do with just four next season. But until then, I think we need to keep that advantage going.
I'm OK with Trading a Starting Pitcher
And it is not like I would not be willing to trade one of them to get a good bat. The problem is that other people's opinion on an equivalent bat does not match what I see as to how good Sanchez is. Most of the trade suggestions would be a overtrade where we give up a lot more value in Sanchez just to get a good bat. Same for the ones involving Cain and Bumgarner as well.
No way we should do that. If anything, the other team should overpay us to get one of our starters. Starters who pitch this well are very rare. People don't seem to realize or understand that. Few teams have even two starters like this, while we have five. We need to hold strong to our pitchers and when the other team is willing to overpay (think A's haul for Haren), then we can pull the trigger, as that would replenish the farm system while not harming our team significantly since we would still have four good starters in the rotation plus a more established offense.
Still, with media talking heads spout off using their 50,000 watt soapbox, people don't realize this and think that we should trade someone just to get a bat, that something like that makes sense under any circumstances. It only makes sense under very few scenarios because most teams are not willing to give up their big bats easily.
Carpe Diem: You Don't Know What Happens Next Year... Or Do You?
This is another sentiment that he expressed: you don't know about next year, so just blow things out this year, trade Bumgarner, trade Sanchez, they are 5th starters. Luckily, Tom Tolbert was there to remind him that neither of them are 5th starters on other teams. Is Ralph really that stupid? They are only 5th starters on our team. On any other team, they would be front-line starters.
And this whole "Oh woe is me, I want to see a championship now, I'll sell my team's soul if necessary" B.S. really drives me up the wall. We have a great core of young players around which we can have a dynasty type team over the next 3-6 years and these people want to throw that all away because they need to have a championship, now! How mature!
Yeah, Lincecum might not be the same next year. Cain too, everyone, heck. But on an overall basis, they are what they are, and that is pretty good, barring really unfortunate circumstances. And we should be in it every season for the foreseeable future. If you are going to take that attitude of not knowing about next season, you may as well trade everyone away for prospects every year, because, you know, you don't know what you will have next year, so why risk it. That is a very fatalistic view.
I just had to turn off KNBR at that point. I was getting sick to my stomach. That's why I don't go to most of the popular Giants' watering holes, because there are people like this spouting off all this garbage.
Golden Age: Show Some Brains!
Grow a pair! Man up! We have a great team and these will be the core for the next 3-6 seasons, minimum. This could be a golden age for us, and all people can think about is trading away that future just to get a hitter for 2 months. TWO MONTHS!
Now, if I KNEW that such a move would win us the World Series, of course I would be OK with the trade. But the playoffs is such a crapshoot, all the studies show that, and just studying the playoff results show that even when you have a good to great team, you can easily be shut out of the World Series in the first or second round of the playoffs. But people are willing to blow off a lot of talent in Sanchez or Bumgarner just to make the playoffs, and the way we are going now, we probably make the playoffs anyway.
That is why you build a good core of players, young and good, that you build around - and not trade away for shiny baubles - so that you can go to the playoffs every year and fight the good fight. Go enough times, we will crack the code eventually and win a World Series. It is a numbers game as well as a talent game.
And I love the makeup of this team. We have a good group of hardcore competitors. Lincecum. Cain. Bumgarner. Wilson. And now, most of all, Posey, I think he's the tipping point for us. He gives our offense a good image, he gives us a leader. He is nonchalant about all the awards and accolades coming his way, he knows what the prize really is, and you only get there by winning. His quiet confidence is infectious, I think, and he will lead us to our goal of a World Series championship.
But only if you can be patient and willing to go through the process. Luckily, it seems like the Giants management has a plan and has been sticking to it. Despite the awkwardness of having to meet near-sighted boneheads like Barbieri every week on KNBR and listening to this nonsense. Ralph was cute in the way he cheered the Giants on all these years, but the Giants really got a good thing going now, and I won't want to see him or anyone else muck that all up.
Hopefully Sabean will rip him a new one soon, they have had good battles in the past, and you can hear it in Sabean's voice sometimes, the weariness of having to deal with Ralph. That is probably why Baer and Neukom is now in the rotation for this, when Sabean don't feel like putting up with Ralph's crap, he sents Baer out to smooze with Ralph.
In Other News: Buster Posey Player and Rookie of Month for July
I got my info from the Chron's The Splash by John Shea and he got it from Giants PR staff:
Congrats to Buster for his historic July and awards for that! John Shea also tweeted that the last rookie to win the Player of the Month award was Ryan Braun in July 2007. Posey continue to do things that only good to great players have done in their careers, good signs that he's the real deal and not just having a lucky streak so far in his MLB career.
I usually lay off Ralph because I like his show and he's pretty innocuous most of the time, plus he's a HUGE Giants fan, but I just couldn't let what he did yesterday go without writing about it. He raged on and on about the Giants needing to do something. That's OK. But then he went on about how the Giants had to do something, ANYTHING, to prove to Ralph that the Giants were willing to do anything to win it all.
Prove it to ME!
He should get over himself. Yes, he gets to hobnob with a lot of Giants personnel, and has access to people we can only dream about: he is very lucky. But he has to assured that they will do anything? He periodically talks with Bill Neukom on his show, why not get into some sort of conversation with the guy with his hands on the pocketbook to get that assurance? You know, like, interview him?
He basically gave the impression that if the Giants went out and signed someone to BIG money, that would be proof. Can you imagine if we actually signed Manny, one of the guys he mentioned, to a, say, $30M per year contract? With all the crap he does and time he has spent on the DL, I don't really see the Giants being where they are today had we signed him as many wanted back then
Or worse, what if we had signed, say, an Andruw Jones-type free agent, to name one recent big money bomb. We already have Rowand, another big bomb would have killed our chances to win this season, but that's OK, it would prove to Ralph that the Giants really are willing to spend the bucks.
Also, the Giants have shown that they are ready to step up. They signed Lincecum, Cain, Affeldt, and Wilson to extended deals this pre-season. They didn't have to do that. They could have waited to make these moves. Give the Giants some credit for these moves, which ties up budget that they didn't need to do but did, particularly regarding Cain.
And you don't want them making stupid deals. Stupid deals will hurt even more going forward because it would force the Giants to trade away some of their young talent who they now can't afford because of the stupid deal. I would rather the Giants tread gingerly in the free agent market, like they did this past off-season, $6M, while more money than most of us will ever see in our lifetime, multiple lifetimes, would not kill the Giants budget. Mistakes of those size don't hurt as much, aren't long-term, won't affect how we can afford our young stars..
WHOOSH! Over His Head!
Then he went on and said that the Giants should just trade Jonathan Sanchez away and get a bat, he don't care, just get a 5th starter somewhere, look at other team's 5th starters, they don't have anyone good there either. Ralph just don't get it.
I've been writing about how great it is to have a pitching rotation that can put down the other team at an ace-like level in any game. With a rotation like that, there are no easy holes in the rotation, the other team will face a tough pitcher every game they play the Giants. People always talk about how there are holes in a lineup and how a pitcher can ease up and relax, but if you have a great lineup, the pitcher gets no rest. But until now, we have never really had an example of that except perhaps the Orioles circa 1970-ish.
But look at the game yesterday. Sanchez has the stuff to strike out a lot of guys. He did something that other big strikeout guys for the Giants couldn't do, strike out seven in a row like the great Juan Marichial. Gaylord Perry didn't. John the Count Montefusco didn't. Jason Schimidt didn't. Matt Cain didn't. Tim Lincecum didn't. Sanchez did.
And Sanchez did something Giants pitchers have had huge problems with in recent years, shutting down Colorado's potent lineup. While they did miss the Giants killer, Dexter Fowler, because he had a rib cage injury, Tulowitski returned to the cleanup spot, Todd Helton to his #2 spot, Carlos Gonzalez has been on a raging hot streak recently, they have one of the best home records in the majors, and just won four in a row at home, against the Cubs and Pirates, they scored 40 runs in those four games. Sanchez shut them down, 3-hit them in 6 innings.
Another media commenter noted Sanchez's 4 walks, but research from The Hardball Times found that as long as the pitcher is a high strikeout pitcher, the walks are tolerable as long as his K/BB ratio is above the 2.0 you want to see your starters at. In fact, that research compared high K/high BB pitchers with low K/low BB pitchers who have K/BB over 2.0 and found that the high K pitchers had a better ERA than the low K pitchers. So it appears that walks are OK as long as they are companied by at least two strikeouts to match it.
That kind of makes sense. With BABIP at .300 for most pitchers, if you strike out 3+ more than most pitchers, you on average give up one less hit than other pitchers, so you can afford to give up one more walk than other pitchers, as one walk is not as harmful, usually, as one hit, particularly an extra-base hit.
There are many good things about a great rotation like this. One is that competitiveness will push each one to try to match or top the other, pushing them to greater heights. I think that is what pushed Cain to take the step up last season, and keep it going this season, is being compared unfavorably relative to Lincecum. Not that he is jealous, just, competitively, he wants to get where Lincecum is.
Another is that losing streaks will tend to be shorter. One less hole in the rotation helps that. The competitiveness is another that helps, in that each will want to be the one to stop the streak, and each are very capable of doing that. Most of all, each are so good that the odds of a loss is that much less than for any other rotation, top to bottom. For other teams, once they get past their first or second starter, they could go into a 3-4 games losing streak easily.
And this is not guarantee of good times in any short series. Our pitchers are not that good. But if we could run a simulation of this rotation one million times, more times than not, our pitchers can take on any other rotation and beat the other team, because when they are on, they can shut down good offensive teams like Colorado. We need that advantage this year because we are neck and neck with SD and need every win, but perhaps we can do with just four next season. But until then, I think we need to keep that advantage going.
I'm OK with Trading a Starting Pitcher
And it is not like I would not be willing to trade one of them to get a good bat. The problem is that other people's opinion on an equivalent bat does not match what I see as to how good Sanchez is. Most of the trade suggestions would be a overtrade where we give up a lot more value in Sanchez just to get a good bat. Same for the ones involving Cain and Bumgarner as well.
No way we should do that. If anything, the other team should overpay us to get one of our starters. Starters who pitch this well are very rare. People don't seem to realize or understand that. Few teams have even two starters like this, while we have five. We need to hold strong to our pitchers and when the other team is willing to overpay (think A's haul for Haren), then we can pull the trigger, as that would replenish the farm system while not harming our team significantly since we would still have four good starters in the rotation plus a more established offense.
Still, with media talking heads spout off using their 50,000 watt soapbox, people don't realize this and think that we should trade someone just to get a bat, that something like that makes sense under any circumstances. It only makes sense under very few scenarios because most teams are not willing to give up their big bats easily.
Carpe Diem: You Don't Know What Happens Next Year... Or Do You?
This is another sentiment that he expressed: you don't know about next year, so just blow things out this year, trade Bumgarner, trade Sanchez, they are 5th starters. Luckily, Tom Tolbert was there to remind him that neither of them are 5th starters on other teams. Is Ralph really that stupid? They are only 5th starters on our team. On any other team, they would be front-line starters.
And this whole "Oh woe is me, I want to see a championship now, I'll sell my team's soul if necessary" B.S. really drives me up the wall. We have a great core of young players around which we can have a dynasty type team over the next 3-6 years and these people want to throw that all away because they need to have a championship, now! How mature!
Yeah, Lincecum might not be the same next year. Cain too, everyone, heck. But on an overall basis, they are what they are, and that is pretty good, barring really unfortunate circumstances. And we should be in it every season for the foreseeable future. If you are going to take that attitude of not knowing about next season, you may as well trade everyone away for prospects every year, because, you know, you don't know what you will have next year, so why risk it. That is a very fatalistic view.
I just had to turn off KNBR at that point. I was getting sick to my stomach. That's why I don't go to most of the popular Giants' watering holes, because there are people like this spouting off all this garbage.
Golden Age: Show Some Brains!
Grow a pair! Man up! We have a great team and these will be the core for the next 3-6 seasons, minimum. This could be a golden age for us, and all people can think about is trading away that future just to get a hitter for 2 months. TWO MONTHS!
Now, if I KNEW that such a move would win us the World Series, of course I would be OK with the trade. But the playoffs is such a crapshoot, all the studies show that, and just studying the playoff results show that even when you have a good to great team, you can easily be shut out of the World Series in the first or second round of the playoffs. But people are willing to blow off a lot of talent in Sanchez or Bumgarner just to make the playoffs, and the way we are going now, we probably make the playoffs anyway.
That is why you build a good core of players, young and good, that you build around - and not trade away for shiny baubles - so that you can go to the playoffs every year and fight the good fight. Go enough times, we will crack the code eventually and win a World Series. It is a numbers game as well as a talent game.
And I love the makeup of this team. We have a good group of hardcore competitors. Lincecum. Cain. Bumgarner. Wilson. And now, most of all, Posey, I think he's the tipping point for us. He gives our offense a good image, he gives us a leader. He is nonchalant about all the awards and accolades coming his way, he knows what the prize really is, and you only get there by winning. His quiet confidence is infectious, I think, and he will lead us to our goal of a World Series championship.
But only if you can be patient and willing to go through the process. Luckily, it seems like the Giants management has a plan and has been sticking to it. Despite the awkwardness of having to meet near-sighted boneheads like Barbieri every week on KNBR and listening to this nonsense. Ralph was cute in the way he cheered the Giants on all these years, but the Giants really got a good thing going now, and I won't want to see him or anyone else muck that all up.
Hopefully Sabean will rip him a new one soon, they have had good battles in the past, and you can hear it in Sabean's voice sometimes, the weariness of having to deal with Ralph. That is probably why Baer and Neukom is now in the rotation for this, when Sabean don't feel like putting up with Ralph's crap, he sents Baer out to smooze with Ralph.
In Other News: Buster Posey Player and Rookie of Month for July
I got my info from the Chron's The Splash by John Shea and he got it from Giants PR staff:
Buster Posey was named the NL's rookie of the month and player of the month for July.
The catcher hit .417 (43-for-103)in 27 games with 20 runs, six doubles, seven homers and 24 RBIs. His on-base percentage was .466., his slugging .699. He had a 21-game hit streak. The 43 hits broke Jim Ray Hart's San Francisco record for most hits in a month by a rookie.
Last Giant to win a player-of-the-month honor? Randy Winn in September 2005. No Giant ever had been named the NL's rookie of the month. It's a fairly new award.
Buster was recalled from Triple-A on May 29. He has the league's highest average (.356) since then while hitting safely in 43 of 56 games -- including 24 of the last 26. He has 21 multiple-hit games, including seven games with three or more hits.
Dude is hitting .429 on the road. With a 15-game hit streak.
Defense? Tim Lincecum swore by Bengie Molina. Now he likes throwing to Posey, who has caught four shutouts this year, including Tuesday's. He was the first rookie in big-league hsitory to catch back-to-back shutouts started by former Cy Young Award winners. That would be Lincecum and Barry Zito on July 15-16.
Want more? OK. .353 with runners in scoring position, including .423 over his last 22 games.
Whew.
Thank you, Giants PR staff.
Congrats to Buster for his historic July and awards for that! John Shea also tweeted that the last rookie to win the Player of the Month award was Ryan Braun in July 2007. Posey continue to do things that only good to great players have done in their careers, good signs that he's the real deal and not just having a lucky streak so far in his MLB career.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Mediot Alert: Forbes Writing on Baseball Trades?
I just ran across this article that was just so egregious that I had to post quickly on it. This baseball "expert", from Forbes.com, no less (known more for their business news and information, but they do have a nice analysis of baseball finances every year), in this article posted on Yahoo, talks about baseball's biggest trade deadline busts and while he listed some good ones there, he then shows he knows nothing (or rather, nothing of the current common knowledge for baseball fans) about baseball.
Here is the offending paragraph (hide your eyes, it is pretty glaring):
First off, "talented young catcher"? In four years in Colorado, the team was dying for a starting catcher, went to many different options, and while they admitted turned to him eventually, he wasn't that good. Baseball-Reference.com had him at less than 2.0 WAR (1.3 to be exact) for the four seasons he played for them, and even though he was playing half his games in Coors, he only had a .710 OPS overall playing there. Baseball-Reference.com notes that the average starter generates 2+ WAR PER SEASON, and he couldn't even do it over a four season period. Where does the talented part come into play?
Now, he is having a breakout year, at age 31 so he's no longer young, for the Padres, he's hitting better there than in 8 previous season, but 31 is hardly young anymore. And that's still only 3.7 WAR since the trade. Meanwhile, Randy Winn produced 13.2 WAR for us in the time he played for the Giants, four plus seasons, even last season, his poorest season in ages, he produced 3.2 WAR. Not quite All-Star level, which Baseball-Reference.com notes is 5+ WAR, but at an average of 3 WAR per season, roughly, he was a solid regular starter for us the time we had him. And up to last season, he produced over 8 times more WAR than Yorvit did, over 4+ seasons.
Second, and this is so easy to check, so it is a wonder that Forbes' editors and fact checkers did not catch this, but Randy Winn did not have three-plus years and $29M left on his contract. He had a team option for $5M, which the Giants exercised, and then they signed him to the 3 year contract in the off-season after the trade.
Third, he talks about Winn as a corner OF and mentions his RBI totals, which is pretty much what one would say - in the 20th Century. Today, one could mention his OPS, his UZR, and realize that he was an OK hitter who provided a lot of value as the rightfielder with his great fielding defense.
Fourth, it is not like Randy Winn is an impact type of trade material. Still, while the team might not have made the playoffs that season or any season afterward, it was not his fault in 2005, he hit .359/.391/.680/1.071 with 14 HR in 231 AB, that was a huge contribution. And it was not better to hold tight, we had nobody ready to play RF and we would have been much, much worse without Winn than with Winn. Sometimes it is not all about winning, but of improving the team. Winn improved our team.
Sigh, I try to not let these people bother me, but this was so bad that I couldn't help myself.
Here is the offending paragraph (hide your eyes, it is pretty glaring):
Then there are the 2005 San Francisco Giants, who made a deadline deal with the Seattle Mariners in which they gave up talented young catcher Yorvit Torrealba(notes) for outfielder Randy Winn(notes), who had three-plus years and $29 million left on his contract. Winn, a corner outfielder, never drove in more than 65 runs for the Giants, who finished 75-87 that year and failed to make the postseason during Winn’s tenure. Sometimes, it’s just better to sit tight.
First off, "talented young catcher"? In four years in Colorado, the team was dying for a starting catcher, went to many different options, and while they admitted turned to him eventually, he wasn't that good. Baseball-Reference.com had him at less than 2.0 WAR (1.3 to be exact) for the four seasons he played for them, and even though he was playing half his games in Coors, he only had a .710 OPS overall playing there. Baseball-Reference.com notes that the average starter generates 2+ WAR PER SEASON, and he couldn't even do it over a four season period. Where does the talented part come into play?
Now, he is having a breakout year, at age 31 so he's no longer young, for the Padres, he's hitting better there than in 8 previous season, but 31 is hardly young anymore. And that's still only 3.7 WAR since the trade. Meanwhile, Randy Winn produced 13.2 WAR for us in the time he played for the Giants, four plus seasons, even last season, his poorest season in ages, he produced 3.2 WAR. Not quite All-Star level, which Baseball-Reference.com notes is 5+ WAR, but at an average of 3 WAR per season, roughly, he was a solid regular starter for us the time we had him. And up to last season, he produced over 8 times more WAR than Yorvit did, over 4+ seasons.
Second, and this is so easy to check, so it is a wonder that Forbes' editors and fact checkers did not catch this, but Randy Winn did not have three-plus years and $29M left on his contract. He had a team option for $5M, which the Giants exercised, and then they signed him to the 3 year contract in the off-season after the trade.
Third, he talks about Winn as a corner OF and mentions his RBI totals, which is pretty much what one would say - in the 20th Century. Today, one could mention his OPS, his UZR, and realize that he was an OK hitter who provided a lot of value as the rightfielder with his great fielding defense.
Fourth, it is not like Randy Winn is an impact type of trade material. Still, while the team might not have made the playoffs that season or any season afterward, it was not his fault in 2005, he hit .359/.391/.680/1.071 with 14 HR in 231 AB, that was a huge contribution. And it was not better to hold tight, we had nobody ready to play RF and we would have been much, much worse without Winn than with Winn. Sometimes it is not all about winning, but of improving the team. Winn improved our team.
Sigh, I try to not let these people bother me, but this was so bad that I couldn't help myself.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Columnist Show Lack of Savvy
A local columnist wrote a column denigrating the Giants (as well as the A's, but I don't care about the A's), saying that the Rangers and Padres show savvy that the Giants lack. But she showed her lack of understand long-term business management, nor of the baseball product lifecycle (I would link except it's only available in the newspaper version right now).
Strategies Are Different
She praised the Rangers' acquisition of Cliff Lee, but she ignored the consequences of such actions. They lost a lot of their future in those trades. She made it seem like they didn't give up much in trade, noting, "so they gambled some of their future..." Smoak is not just some of their future, he is a highly accomplished and regarded hitter, who has struggled in his time in the majors, but has been starting to figure things out recently, blasting homers and driving in a bunch of runs.
She points out how low their payroll is, but then ignore the fact that if it is that low, then they most probably would not be able to re-sign Lee when he goes free agent on them after this season, at which point they will get draft picks for him that won't pay off for another 5-7 years, if ever. But she lays out hope for the Rangers' fans by writing that they "possibly [have] a chance of paying Lee to stick around." There is a reason why their payroll is low right now. Nobody is showing up at the turnstiles, and without that revenue, they won't be able to afford Lee for the huge contract demands that caused the Phillies to let him go to the Mariners in the first place.
True, they have other young talents in the farm system, but many of them have been in the majors already and struggled mightily to become valuable players. They may never do it. But they traded off their one most likely to succeed candidate in Smoak. They also lost upside potential by giving up those pitchers to the Giants for Molina.
They are going for it all this season. The Giants are trying to build for the next 5+ seasons, something she ignored, yet she claims the Rangers are "savvy" for doing this move. Well, the equivalent move would have been the Giants trading Posey. I don't think Giants fans would be happy with that move right now, just a guess on my part.
She also claims that they got what they needed, implying that the Giants didn't. Last I checked, Posey hit 6 homers on this road trip. Just what the offense ordered. Bumgarner has been outstanding in the rotation. Just what the rotation ordered. Chris Ray has stabilized the set-up man role. Just what the bullpen ordered. The Giants got a lot of new pieces in the last month and a half, and they are starting to gel together, there is a lot of season left.
Season Not Over
And no wonder some fans are ready to give up on the season, when the media is the lead lemming, heading over the cliff. She wrote that the "Padres have ... robbed the Bay Area of midsummer hope." Last I checked there is still 74 games to be played (75 when she wrote her column). And the Giants were only 4 games back at that time (still only 4 games back).
Has she ever seen and followed a baseball season? As a newspaper writer, she presumably has. But 4 games behind is nothing at the All-Star Break. The Jeopardy game show familiar tune has not even started to play yet. No wonder some fans want to commit hari-kari on the Giants season, when the newspaper media is feeding this lunacy to them, one tree at a time.
Ranger's At Different Point of Life-Cycle Than Giants
In addition, the Rangers is in a different part of the baseball product life-cycle, that is, in rebuilding a pennant contender. The Giants may have a lot of older players, but most of their key players for the future are still young, Jonathan Sanchez at 27 and Brian Wilson at 28, are the oldest. Lincecum is 26, Matt Cain 25, Bumgarner is only 20, Posey is only 23, so is Pablo, and, while not key yet, but potentially so, Schierholtz, Bowker, and Ishikwaka are all 26.
The older guys help greatly but are not key to our future success. With the offense, they are not key, except for maybe Huff and Uribe, but Uribe is 30, old for our group, but he would, as you will see, fit right in with the Rangers. Zito is 32, but anything he contributes will be additional to what the core young players contribute. Most of our key players are very young, we are starting our upward arc.
For while the Rangers do have some young players blended in, their key players are all near, at or past their prime. Ian Kinsler is 28, Mike Young is 33, Josh Hamilton is 29, Nelson Cruz is 29, Vlad Guerrero is 35, David Murphy is 28, even their hot young pitcher, Colby Lewis is already 30, closer CJ Wilson is 29, and Cliff Lee is 31. If they don't win now, who knows if they will ever have a chance again, particularly with the lead they have now.
They have a lot of question marks over their future. All of their stars and players they are counting on this season could either start declining or leave as a free agent within the next couple of years. Lewis could just be having a fluke season, Kinsler has been injury prone his whole career, Young is not young anymore, Hamilton is a loose cannon, Vlad is having a nice season but it is his first in a number of seasons. There are a lot of question marks.
If they don't win this year, another chance might not come. The Angels have a lot of money and will usually be dominating the division. The Oakland A's are up and comers. Even Seattle has a nice core of young players with King Felix leading the way and now Smoak on their team. The Rangers saw that even if they had Smoak, he probably would not be enough - given how poorly all their other young prospects have done - to lead the Rangers in the future to success, so they sold him now in hopes that Cliff Lee can help them win it all this season, but for them, it is all or nothing this season.
Meanwhile, the Giants are young and have a lot to look forward to. The cost of selling off some of that youth in order to win this season could jeopardize the Giants chances of having a dynasty over the next 5-10 seasons. We have a lot of good young players, but we still need Posey and Bumgarner, Sanchez and Cain. Trading them now to fix a hole in the lineup would only put holes elsewhere. Better the angel you know than the devil you don't know.
Missing the Point
She is also mis-analyzing the 'Dres success. They did not slap together "an ark" of an offense. They improved their runs scored from 3.96 to 4.22, which is an increase of 0.26 runs. The Giants improved their runs scored from 4.06 to 4.43, which is an increase of 0.37, which is greater than what the 'Dres did, whether by number of runs or percentage increase. Either way, the Giants did better than the 'Dres in increasing their run scoring.
She talks about their running on the bases to do all that they can to score and win games. But, as you can see from the number above, their offense is even worse than our offense, the Giants are averaging 4.43 runs per game, which is above average for the NL, while 'Dres are averaging 4.22 runs per game, which is 0.18 runs per game less than average. How is running a lot that much better when the Giants are outscoring them?
The key to San Diego's success has been a rotation that has been just as superb as the Giants, only better as we had to suffer with Wellemeyer as our 5th starter and their worse starter is a whole half run better than Wellemeyer is. Their bullpen has also been better as well, which helps their rotation be better as well.
The Giants recently added a 5th starter who not only equalizes things but put us above them, in my opinion: you may have heard of Madison Bumgarner. You know, pretty fair hurler of the white ball with red stitching, great ERA so far, who has shut down some pretty good offensive teams so far.
Getting Molina Was Not Mistake
She also made the point that getting Molina was a mistake. It was not a mistake. Posey struggled, relatively, to hit in AAA in April. His MLE was in the low 700's. Molina's OPS until he took the foul tip off his arm in mid-May was in the high 800 OPS, which is very good for any hitter, let alone the catcher. He was a good offensive contributor up to then. And while he wasn't that good anymore after that, the Giants were able to flip him for a good reliever with closer experience to solidify our set-up man situation plus pick up a very nice prospect with potential.
We would not have been able to buy either one from another team at this point of the season, nor would we have won as many games as we did in April and May had we had Posey behind the plate instead of Molina, just based on offense. Who knows if Posey would have continued to struggle, much like Matt Weiters has struggled, without the Giants being able to ease him into the job, first in AAA, then at 1B in the majors, before promoting him to starting catcher. We do know that he struggled in April to hit AAA pitchers, let alone MLB pitchers, based on his MLE. And we basically bought another good prospect with a lot of potential in Main, they like pitchers like him who throw hard. Molina was a good investment, the only thing that went wrong was the foul tip that ruined his hitting stroke after mid-May, but otherwise, we got good production early on then picked up two good pitchers for him/money.
Faulty Analysis
That is the problem I have with most baseball analysis: they look at the season or situation as a single point in time and the implicit assumption is that what has gone on before will continue to go on in the future. Just as the Rangers' season is now different because they acquired both Molina and Lee, the Giants season is now different because Posey and then Bumgarner joined the team, and again once Posey became the starting catcher, as Molina is now gone and other players are starting at 1B or other positions because Molina is gone.
Of course, the error with assessment of the 'Dres success is another problem. Their success is built on the success of their young starters plus the addition of Jon Garland. They have done a great job with that. As I noted in the other post, their young pitching will be headed into unknown territory in terms of inning pitched, because they have never reached that level ever before. To expect all three of them to not experience any bumps in the road in terms of performance before the end of the year is unrealistic. Yet, that is what has driven a lot of their success so far.
San Diego's Rotation Projection: Worst Second Half Performance
Digging deeper into the pitchers, other potential problems crop up that suggest that they will have a tougher second half of the season, much worse in some cases, but still worse for most of them. And I have to assume that there is no accounting for potential worsening due to fatigue, analysis has not gotten that far yet. This is just based on how they have done so far this season and their history of performing.
Clayton Richard's season's success is built up by his abnormal HR/FB rate of 7.5% (most pitcher's regress to 10%, though he should regress lower due to pitching in San Diego's pitcher's park). ZiPS has him at 4.03 FIP for the rest of the season and that is what xFIP has his performance for the first part of the 2010 season, which, while still good, is not as good as his 3.33 ERA thus far this season.
Mat Latos has been pitching well as well, but he's also been benefiting from a low HR/FB rate of 8.1%. He has an ERA of 2.45, which ZiPS forecasts increasing to 3.53 in the second half, with a FIP of 3.45. His FIP is 3.20, xFIP is 3.52. Any way you slice it, he has not performed at an elite level of performance, though still certainly good, as he has benefited from a lot of good luck in his performances so far, and his BABIP appears to be lucky as well, with a .246 average this season, better than his .257 from last season, and better than his whole minor league career, though it is entirely possible he is a pitcher who can achieve that, we just won't know for certain for another 6 seasons of additional performance. For now, clearly, he's been lucky in his HR/FB rate and BABIP, resulting in an ERA a whole run better than his peripherals would suggest.
Wade LeBlanc is forecasted for the biggest fall of all the starters and he currently has a great ERA of 3.30. However, his FIP is 4.60 and his xFIP is 4.69, even his tERA is 4.35, all indications that he has been extremely lucky with his overall ERA thus far. His strikeout rate is very low, but he has a relatively high walk rate. He has been unlucky with his HR/9 rate, but his BABIP is right on target at .302. He doesn't even get a lot of groundballs, he is actually a flyball pitcher the past couple of seasons. His performance so far is that of a middle rotation starter, somewhere in the mid-4's, than the good pitcher his 3.30 ERA would suggest. He has the furthest to fall of these three young starters.
And while I'm at it, Jon Garland is also benefiting from extended good luck. 3.56 ERA so far, 4.51 FIP, 4.49 xFIP, 4.38 tERA, projected 4.15 ERA for the rest of the season, BABIP of .279 when his career is .290, his HR/FB is right at his career rate, so that appears to be on target, but somehow he has elevated his groundball rate to 50.0%, much higher than his 44.8% career rate. He is also projected to suffer a decline in performance level in the second half.
The only good news for SD is that Kevin Correia is not projected to be as bad in the second half. He is expected to be much improved in the second half as he has had some bad luck even though his peripherals have been OK. He has been the one hard luck starter in the rotation in 2010, but who should be much improved in the second half.
All in all, they look to suffer from a big fall in starting pitching in the second half. The pitching look poised to suffer a worse second half. It might have already began, they are 5-5 in July while they won a number of games more than they lost in April, May, and June. They have been extremely lucky in one run games this season, going 19-12 so far, and most teams regress to .500 (though not necessarily in the same season, so this could persist for the rest of the season). Their hitting has improved in July, but their pitching has regressed a lot already in July, 4.45 ERA vs. 3.00 in April, 3.08 in May, 3.30 in June.
And there is no one performing well among position players in their upper minors who look like they can jump to the majors and help boost up their offense, certainly no Buster Posey level pospect, but not even anyone hitting as well as John Bowker has done, who we could still bring up (though Jedd Gyorko has been hitting up a storm in A-ball, could possibly get a late season call-up, but not anytime soon). And their top pitching prospects are already up here, they have been up in previous seasons and appear to be starting to put things together, but their farm system is depleted, their top pitching prospect was only 6th on Baseball America's Top 30 list for 2010 season, and only one, Cory Luebke, is doing well this season, and he's in AA. Nice K/BB, but very low K/9.
The Giants, on the other hand, has not had any pitcher over performing. Each has shown the capability to do what they have been doing, and Lincecum could be even better. They are all experienced, except for Bumgarner, but he's the #1 pitching prospect in all of baseball, none of the San Diego starters have that pedigree, they have all been nice prospects, but only Latos was expected to do so well in the majors, both Richard and LeBlanc were considered, at best, back of rotation starters, not top line starters, as their current ERA would suggest, and none of them made BA's Top 100 prospect lists.
Misunderstanding Bill James and Baseball In General
The writer also shows her lack of understanding of baseball and sabermetrics by claiming that Bill James' "bible" states that "A walk is as good as a hit." I think even little kids in Little League knows that is not true. A hit is clearly better than a walk as you can drive in runs with a hit. Shouldn't her editor have caught that one? Or does no one at her newspaper understand baseball?
Huh?
She also analyzed San Diego's situation incorrectly as well, opining that the 'Dres pitchers "don't have to cope with the deflating experience of routinely throwing great games, only to see a slovenly offense burp up a loss." As I shown above, the Giants are actually scoring MORE runs per game on average than San Diego, which of course means that the 'Dres have been routinely not scoring a lot of runs, which puts just as much pressure on their pitchers, if not more so. And they were forced to run, because none of their hitters were hitting, it was their last hope, I was following their team then because I had a number of their players on my fantasy team briefly.
In addition, she also spent about a quarter of her column bemoaning Jonathan Sanchez's 1-hitter loss, 1-0, to San Diego, talking about how they "undoubtedly got a lot out of that win." Yes, so much that 3 days later, their pitchers threw a combined 3-hitter and lost 1-0 to the D-gers.
In fact, since that "fateful" game where they beat us 1-0, they have been 29-27 since then, while the Giants were 29-26. They sure showed us, didn't they? They got so much out of that win, clearly, so much that they were only 2 games above .500 since then. With inspiration like that, the Giants won't need to do much in the remaining part of the season to catch up with and pass them.
Giants Thoughts
Comparing the Giants with the Rangers and 'Dres is foolhardy. Texas is at the end of their product life-cycle and this could be their last good chance to win it all. Their strategic imperative is different from the Giants, who are still in the early stages of their life-cycle and is much younger than the Rangers in terms of their key personnel. San Diego's performance is an illusion because their peripherals do not support them being so good, they should be headed to a regression as their overall ERA catches up with what their true talent level is, and, in any case, is not the result of them converting their "running" into wins.
Of course, in baseball, teams do overperform over an entire season. The 'Dres might be able to keep it up all season. However, the key thing for them is to keep their success going against the Giants all season.
They may be 14 games above .500, but 6 of those games is a result of them being 7-1 against the Giants. If the Giants could have split the games and were 4-4 against them, then they would be tied with D-Rox atop the NL West at 49-38, 1 game ahead of LA and 2 ahead of SD.
At 44-36 against the rest of the league, assuming they continue that, that would mean that they would finish 35-29 in those remaining 64 games, making them 86-66 overall. With 10 games left against the Giants, 4 at home and 6 on the road (2 3-game series), they will need to go 4-6 against us to finish at 90 wins, which looks to be the minimum necessary to win the NL West.
Different Giants Now
But the Giants are a different team now. They have added Posey and Burrell since then, and Huff started hitting great, since they swept us in three games twice. And we will have Bumgarner in the rotation, not Wellemeyer. And Ray in the bullpen.
They most probably will be different too. Their pitching is probably going to be worse and could be tired out by then. That is what happened to Jonathan Sanchez in his first full season as a starter, he was great for the first half of the season, but then pooped out in the second half, his performances started varying wildly and his ERA began to climb up, as he stopped throwing consecutive DOM starts and started throwing many more DIS starts as well as less DOM starts.
Their offense is perking up in July, but their pitching has regressed to where their FIP suggest that they should be, around low-to-mid 4 ERA. And they are only 5-5 for the month, showing that their pitching regressed much more than their offense has improved. And, again, they have no young prospect who look ready to come up and give the team a charge, either on offense or on their pitching staff.
The Giants have already added Posey and Bumgarner, and while they don't have anyone ready to make the jump yet (though Belt might be ready by September, the way he just keeps on hitting at every level), they did acquire Michael Main in the Molina trade, and he could be traded like Alderson was, for a major league hitter who might contribute to the team this season and next season.
And, in any case, we don't know how well the Giants will play overall going forward, now that Posey and Bumgarner are both performing to their potential. So the Giants play before? While pertinent for overall season standing, this is a new Giants team, which should lead to better results if Posey and Bumgarner continue to play as well as they have so far. And we are not that far behind.
And if Sandoval ever figures out how to hit, even like he did before he started hitting homers when he first came up, we would have quite a formidable middle of lineup in Posey, Huff, Sandoval. In any case, Posey and Huff is pretty good for now. By mixing and matching in the lineup, Bochy has been able to cobble together a consistent enough offense that should get us to 90 wins, which should put us in the thick of things when the season ends.
Strategies Are Different
She praised the Rangers' acquisition of Cliff Lee, but she ignored the consequences of such actions. They lost a lot of their future in those trades. She made it seem like they didn't give up much in trade, noting, "so they gambled some of their future..." Smoak is not just some of their future, he is a highly accomplished and regarded hitter, who has struggled in his time in the majors, but has been starting to figure things out recently, blasting homers and driving in a bunch of runs.
She points out how low their payroll is, but then ignore the fact that if it is that low, then they most probably would not be able to re-sign Lee when he goes free agent on them after this season, at which point they will get draft picks for him that won't pay off for another 5-7 years, if ever. But she lays out hope for the Rangers' fans by writing that they "possibly [have] a chance of paying Lee to stick around." There is a reason why their payroll is low right now. Nobody is showing up at the turnstiles, and without that revenue, they won't be able to afford Lee for the huge contract demands that caused the Phillies to let him go to the Mariners in the first place.
True, they have other young talents in the farm system, but many of them have been in the majors already and struggled mightily to become valuable players. They may never do it. But they traded off their one most likely to succeed candidate in Smoak. They also lost upside potential by giving up those pitchers to the Giants for Molina.
They are going for it all this season. The Giants are trying to build for the next 5+ seasons, something she ignored, yet she claims the Rangers are "savvy" for doing this move. Well, the equivalent move would have been the Giants trading Posey. I don't think Giants fans would be happy with that move right now, just a guess on my part.
She also claims that they got what they needed, implying that the Giants didn't. Last I checked, Posey hit 6 homers on this road trip. Just what the offense ordered. Bumgarner has been outstanding in the rotation. Just what the rotation ordered. Chris Ray has stabilized the set-up man role. Just what the bullpen ordered. The Giants got a lot of new pieces in the last month and a half, and they are starting to gel together, there is a lot of season left.
Season Not Over
And no wonder some fans are ready to give up on the season, when the media is the lead lemming, heading over the cliff. She wrote that the "Padres have ... robbed the Bay Area of midsummer hope." Last I checked there is still 74 games to be played (75 when she wrote her column). And the Giants were only 4 games back at that time (still only 4 games back).
Has she ever seen and followed a baseball season? As a newspaper writer, she presumably has. But 4 games behind is nothing at the All-Star Break. The Jeopardy game show familiar tune has not even started to play yet. No wonder some fans want to commit hari-kari on the Giants season, when the newspaper media is feeding this lunacy to them, one tree at a time.
Ranger's At Different Point of Life-Cycle Than Giants
In addition, the Rangers is in a different part of the baseball product life-cycle, that is, in rebuilding a pennant contender. The Giants may have a lot of older players, but most of their key players for the future are still young, Jonathan Sanchez at 27 and Brian Wilson at 28, are the oldest. Lincecum is 26, Matt Cain 25, Bumgarner is only 20, Posey is only 23, so is Pablo, and, while not key yet, but potentially so, Schierholtz, Bowker, and Ishikwaka are all 26.
The older guys help greatly but are not key to our future success. With the offense, they are not key, except for maybe Huff and Uribe, but Uribe is 30, old for our group, but he would, as you will see, fit right in with the Rangers. Zito is 32, but anything he contributes will be additional to what the core young players contribute. Most of our key players are very young, we are starting our upward arc.
For while the Rangers do have some young players blended in, their key players are all near, at or past their prime. Ian Kinsler is 28, Mike Young is 33, Josh Hamilton is 29, Nelson Cruz is 29, Vlad Guerrero is 35, David Murphy is 28, even their hot young pitcher, Colby Lewis is already 30, closer CJ Wilson is 29, and Cliff Lee is 31. If they don't win now, who knows if they will ever have a chance again, particularly with the lead they have now.
They have a lot of question marks over their future. All of their stars and players they are counting on this season could either start declining or leave as a free agent within the next couple of years. Lewis could just be having a fluke season, Kinsler has been injury prone his whole career, Young is not young anymore, Hamilton is a loose cannon, Vlad is having a nice season but it is his first in a number of seasons. There are a lot of question marks.
If they don't win this year, another chance might not come. The Angels have a lot of money and will usually be dominating the division. The Oakland A's are up and comers. Even Seattle has a nice core of young players with King Felix leading the way and now Smoak on their team. The Rangers saw that even if they had Smoak, he probably would not be enough - given how poorly all their other young prospects have done - to lead the Rangers in the future to success, so they sold him now in hopes that Cliff Lee can help them win it all this season, but for them, it is all or nothing this season.
Meanwhile, the Giants are young and have a lot to look forward to. The cost of selling off some of that youth in order to win this season could jeopardize the Giants chances of having a dynasty over the next 5-10 seasons. We have a lot of good young players, but we still need Posey and Bumgarner, Sanchez and Cain. Trading them now to fix a hole in the lineup would only put holes elsewhere. Better the angel you know than the devil you don't know.
Missing the Point
She is also mis-analyzing the 'Dres success. They did not slap together "an ark" of an offense. They improved their runs scored from 3.96 to 4.22, which is an increase of 0.26 runs. The Giants improved their runs scored from 4.06 to 4.43, which is an increase of 0.37, which is greater than what the 'Dres did, whether by number of runs or percentage increase. Either way, the Giants did better than the 'Dres in increasing their run scoring.
She talks about their running on the bases to do all that they can to score and win games. But, as you can see from the number above, their offense is even worse than our offense, the Giants are averaging 4.43 runs per game, which is above average for the NL, while 'Dres are averaging 4.22 runs per game, which is 0.18 runs per game less than average. How is running a lot that much better when the Giants are outscoring them?
The key to San Diego's success has been a rotation that has been just as superb as the Giants, only better as we had to suffer with Wellemeyer as our 5th starter and their worse starter is a whole half run better than Wellemeyer is. Their bullpen has also been better as well, which helps their rotation be better as well.
The Giants recently added a 5th starter who not only equalizes things but put us above them, in my opinion: you may have heard of Madison Bumgarner. You know, pretty fair hurler of the white ball with red stitching, great ERA so far, who has shut down some pretty good offensive teams so far.
Getting Molina Was Not Mistake
She also made the point that getting Molina was a mistake. It was not a mistake. Posey struggled, relatively, to hit in AAA in April. His MLE was in the low 700's. Molina's OPS until he took the foul tip off his arm in mid-May was in the high 800 OPS, which is very good for any hitter, let alone the catcher. He was a good offensive contributor up to then. And while he wasn't that good anymore after that, the Giants were able to flip him for a good reliever with closer experience to solidify our set-up man situation plus pick up a very nice prospect with potential.
We would not have been able to buy either one from another team at this point of the season, nor would we have won as many games as we did in April and May had we had Posey behind the plate instead of Molina, just based on offense. Who knows if Posey would have continued to struggle, much like Matt Weiters has struggled, without the Giants being able to ease him into the job, first in AAA, then at 1B in the majors, before promoting him to starting catcher. We do know that he struggled in April to hit AAA pitchers, let alone MLB pitchers, based on his MLE. And we basically bought another good prospect with a lot of potential in Main, they like pitchers like him who throw hard. Molina was a good investment, the only thing that went wrong was the foul tip that ruined his hitting stroke after mid-May, but otherwise, we got good production early on then picked up two good pitchers for him/money.
Faulty Analysis
That is the problem I have with most baseball analysis: they look at the season or situation as a single point in time and the implicit assumption is that what has gone on before will continue to go on in the future. Just as the Rangers' season is now different because they acquired both Molina and Lee, the Giants season is now different because Posey and then Bumgarner joined the team, and again once Posey became the starting catcher, as Molina is now gone and other players are starting at 1B or other positions because Molina is gone.
Of course, the error with assessment of the 'Dres success is another problem. Their success is built on the success of their young starters plus the addition of Jon Garland. They have done a great job with that. As I noted in the other post, their young pitching will be headed into unknown territory in terms of inning pitched, because they have never reached that level ever before. To expect all three of them to not experience any bumps in the road in terms of performance before the end of the year is unrealistic. Yet, that is what has driven a lot of their success so far.
San Diego's Rotation Projection: Worst Second Half Performance
Digging deeper into the pitchers, other potential problems crop up that suggest that they will have a tougher second half of the season, much worse in some cases, but still worse for most of them. And I have to assume that there is no accounting for potential worsening due to fatigue, analysis has not gotten that far yet. This is just based on how they have done so far this season and their history of performing.
Clayton Richard's season's success is built up by his abnormal HR/FB rate of 7.5% (most pitcher's regress to 10%, though he should regress lower due to pitching in San Diego's pitcher's park). ZiPS has him at 4.03 FIP for the rest of the season and that is what xFIP has his performance for the first part of the 2010 season, which, while still good, is not as good as his 3.33 ERA thus far this season.
Mat Latos has been pitching well as well, but he's also been benefiting from a low HR/FB rate of 8.1%. He has an ERA of 2.45, which ZiPS forecasts increasing to 3.53 in the second half, with a FIP of 3.45. His FIP is 3.20, xFIP is 3.52. Any way you slice it, he has not performed at an elite level of performance, though still certainly good, as he has benefited from a lot of good luck in his performances so far, and his BABIP appears to be lucky as well, with a .246 average this season, better than his .257 from last season, and better than his whole minor league career, though it is entirely possible he is a pitcher who can achieve that, we just won't know for certain for another 6 seasons of additional performance. For now, clearly, he's been lucky in his HR/FB rate and BABIP, resulting in an ERA a whole run better than his peripherals would suggest.
Wade LeBlanc is forecasted for the biggest fall of all the starters and he currently has a great ERA of 3.30. However, his FIP is 4.60 and his xFIP is 4.69, even his tERA is 4.35, all indications that he has been extremely lucky with his overall ERA thus far. His strikeout rate is very low, but he has a relatively high walk rate. He has been unlucky with his HR/9 rate, but his BABIP is right on target at .302. He doesn't even get a lot of groundballs, he is actually a flyball pitcher the past couple of seasons. His performance so far is that of a middle rotation starter, somewhere in the mid-4's, than the good pitcher his 3.30 ERA would suggest. He has the furthest to fall of these three young starters.
And while I'm at it, Jon Garland is also benefiting from extended good luck. 3.56 ERA so far, 4.51 FIP, 4.49 xFIP, 4.38 tERA, projected 4.15 ERA for the rest of the season, BABIP of .279 when his career is .290, his HR/FB is right at his career rate, so that appears to be on target, but somehow he has elevated his groundball rate to 50.0%, much higher than his 44.8% career rate. He is also projected to suffer a decline in performance level in the second half.
The only good news for SD is that Kevin Correia is not projected to be as bad in the second half. He is expected to be much improved in the second half as he has had some bad luck even though his peripherals have been OK. He has been the one hard luck starter in the rotation in 2010, but who should be much improved in the second half.
All in all, they look to suffer from a big fall in starting pitching in the second half. The pitching look poised to suffer a worse second half. It might have already began, they are 5-5 in July while they won a number of games more than they lost in April, May, and June. They have been extremely lucky in one run games this season, going 19-12 so far, and most teams regress to .500 (though not necessarily in the same season, so this could persist for the rest of the season). Their hitting has improved in July, but their pitching has regressed a lot already in July, 4.45 ERA vs. 3.00 in April, 3.08 in May, 3.30 in June.
And there is no one performing well among position players in their upper minors who look like they can jump to the majors and help boost up their offense, certainly no Buster Posey level pospect, but not even anyone hitting as well as John Bowker has done, who we could still bring up (though Jedd Gyorko has been hitting up a storm in A-ball, could possibly get a late season call-up, but not anytime soon). And their top pitching prospects are already up here, they have been up in previous seasons and appear to be starting to put things together, but their farm system is depleted, their top pitching prospect was only 6th on Baseball America's Top 30 list for 2010 season, and only one, Cory Luebke, is doing well this season, and he's in AA. Nice K/BB, but very low K/9.
The Giants, on the other hand, has not had any pitcher over performing. Each has shown the capability to do what they have been doing, and Lincecum could be even better. They are all experienced, except for Bumgarner, but he's the #1 pitching prospect in all of baseball, none of the San Diego starters have that pedigree, they have all been nice prospects, but only Latos was expected to do so well in the majors, both Richard and LeBlanc were considered, at best, back of rotation starters, not top line starters, as their current ERA would suggest, and none of them made BA's Top 100 prospect lists.
Misunderstanding Bill James and Baseball In General
The writer also shows her lack of understanding of baseball and sabermetrics by claiming that Bill James' "bible" states that "A walk is as good as a hit." I think even little kids in Little League knows that is not true. A hit is clearly better than a walk as you can drive in runs with a hit. Shouldn't her editor have caught that one? Or does no one at her newspaper understand baseball?
Huh?
She also analyzed San Diego's situation incorrectly as well, opining that the 'Dres pitchers "don't have to cope with the deflating experience of routinely throwing great games, only to see a slovenly offense burp up a loss." As I shown above, the Giants are actually scoring MORE runs per game on average than San Diego, which of course means that the 'Dres have been routinely not scoring a lot of runs, which puts just as much pressure on their pitchers, if not more so. And they were forced to run, because none of their hitters were hitting, it was their last hope, I was following their team then because I had a number of their players on my fantasy team briefly.
In addition, she also spent about a quarter of her column bemoaning Jonathan Sanchez's 1-hitter loss, 1-0, to San Diego, talking about how they "undoubtedly got a lot out of that win." Yes, so much that 3 days later, their pitchers threw a combined 3-hitter and lost 1-0 to the D-gers.
In fact, since that "fateful" game where they beat us 1-0, they have been 29-27 since then, while the Giants were 29-26. They sure showed us, didn't they? They got so much out of that win, clearly, so much that they were only 2 games above .500 since then. With inspiration like that, the Giants won't need to do much in the remaining part of the season to catch up with and pass them.
Giants Thoughts
Comparing the Giants with the Rangers and 'Dres is foolhardy. Texas is at the end of their product life-cycle and this could be their last good chance to win it all. Their strategic imperative is different from the Giants, who are still in the early stages of their life-cycle and is much younger than the Rangers in terms of their key personnel. San Diego's performance is an illusion because their peripherals do not support them being so good, they should be headed to a regression as their overall ERA catches up with what their true talent level is, and, in any case, is not the result of them converting their "running" into wins.
Of course, in baseball, teams do overperform over an entire season. The 'Dres might be able to keep it up all season. However, the key thing for them is to keep their success going against the Giants all season.
They may be 14 games above .500, but 6 of those games is a result of them being 7-1 against the Giants. If the Giants could have split the games and were 4-4 against them, then they would be tied with D-Rox atop the NL West at 49-38, 1 game ahead of LA and 2 ahead of SD.
At 44-36 against the rest of the league, assuming they continue that, that would mean that they would finish 35-29 in those remaining 64 games, making them 86-66 overall. With 10 games left against the Giants, 4 at home and 6 on the road (2 3-game series), they will need to go 4-6 against us to finish at 90 wins, which looks to be the minimum necessary to win the NL West.
Different Giants Now
But the Giants are a different team now. They have added Posey and Burrell since then, and Huff started hitting great, since they swept us in three games twice. And we will have Bumgarner in the rotation, not Wellemeyer. And Ray in the bullpen.
They most probably will be different too. Their pitching is probably going to be worse and could be tired out by then. That is what happened to Jonathan Sanchez in his first full season as a starter, he was great for the first half of the season, but then pooped out in the second half, his performances started varying wildly and his ERA began to climb up, as he stopped throwing consecutive DOM starts and started throwing many more DIS starts as well as less DOM starts.
Their offense is perking up in July, but their pitching has regressed to where their FIP suggest that they should be, around low-to-mid 4 ERA. And they are only 5-5 for the month, showing that their pitching regressed much more than their offense has improved. And, again, they have no young prospect who look ready to come up and give the team a charge, either on offense or on their pitching staff.
The Giants have already added Posey and Bumgarner, and while they don't have anyone ready to make the jump yet (though Belt might be ready by September, the way he just keeps on hitting at every level), they did acquire Michael Main in the Molina trade, and he could be traded like Alderson was, for a major league hitter who might contribute to the team this season and next season.
And, in any case, we don't know how well the Giants will play overall going forward, now that Posey and Bumgarner are both performing to their potential. So the Giants play before? While pertinent for overall season standing, this is a new Giants team, which should lead to better results if Posey and Bumgarner continue to play as well as they have so far. And we are not that far behind.
And if Sandoval ever figures out how to hit, even like he did before he started hitting homers when he first came up, we would have quite a formidable middle of lineup in Posey, Huff, Sandoval. In any case, Posey and Huff is pretty good for now. By mixing and matching in the lineup, Bochy has been able to cobble together a consistent enough offense that should get us to 90 wins, which should put us in the thick of things when the season ends.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
From the Mouths of Mediots, Case Number 680
Just earlier today, like a moth to a flame, I turn to listen to sports talk on the radio. Literally the first thing I heard is this:
So that means that 23 out the 30 teams in the majors are falling down on the job in putting together their offense because they don't have a thirdbaseman or a firstbaseman who can hit 40 HR. At least according to this radio show host.
May Have to Eat His Words Soon
The funny thing is that since Pablo Sandoval started figuring out how to hit homers in the majors in June, he has hit 18 HR in 360 AB and 84 games. That is a 35 HR pace. Pretty close to the ideal noted on the airwaves.
However, he hasn't hit any in 30 AB this month as he has battled leg problems, and his batting line shows that at .233/.361/.333/.694 (WOW, he has 6 walks and only 4 strikeouts!). Assuming he can be healthy over a full year and play at the pace he was at in June, July, and August, then over a 162 game season, Kung Fu Panda would hit 40 or 41 HR in a season.
So the Giants may already have a 40 HR 1B/3B in Pablo Sandoval and therefore, based on what this host said, Sabean has done his job there.
Sigh... why do I keep on turning the radio there? Well, besides the fact that it's always on KNBR during the baseball season and I have to cycle through there to change from FM1 to FM2 on my presets on my car.
Why does the evening host have to cater to the angry Giants fan crowd? Despite all the anger over the past few seasons, the Giants have been rebuilding very nicely. So wouldn't that mean that they were wrong to be so angry? That they were being impatient with the rebuild (and rebuilds normally take many years to pull off correctly and some teams are stuck in rebuild purgatory for decades) and was missing the changing of the guard?
I mean, given this vitriol aimed at Sabean, had the Braves fans been just as angry and actually had Bobby Cox fired as GM, he would never have had the chance to build the 17 year dynasty he had there, because the team was so lousy during the six years he was their GM. They were even worse than the Giants, much worse, Tampa Bay Devil Rays bad.
And no GM is perfect. They make a lot of mistakes along the way, some of them big (don't you think Billy Beane wishes he got more for Tim Hudson? Or how about Andre Ethier?). You have to take a look at the big picture and see where the team is headed.
And the big picture is that the Giants are headed for a nice run in the next few years. Obviously, our pitching should be great again. Particularly if we can sign Penny to a one year deal and pick up another good end-game reliever like Affeldt. Though Waldis Joaquin and Dan Runzler might fill that need.
Ande the offense should be improved as well. Sandoval should be a full-fledged star by next season, as I noted above, he should be hitting somewhere between 30-40 HR if he can continue the pace he was going at after he figured out how to hit major league pitching for homers and when he was healthy. I think Buster Posey should be either up at the start or my mid-season, and should be figuring out things by the end of the season. That's two offensive cogs right there.
Rowand, for all the complaints about him and for all the ups and downs of his hitting, he is still hitting better than the average CF. And Nate Schierholtz has shown enough in his time in the minors and in brief stretches in the majors that I think he'll be able to duplicate what Randy Winn was giving us: average offense with superlative defense in RF. You don't need every hitter to be great, you need complementary bats like Winn when he was going good, Rowand, and Schierholtz, as I believe he should be as good as Winn eventually.
Freddy Sanchez should be a big improvement over what we got from 2B this season: our 2B collectively hit .241/.292/.350/.641 this season. His career numbers are .299/.335/.419/.754, and he was good enough to win the batting title one season and has hit around .300 every season except for one while playing regularly.
Renteria has hit well enough since he said he was feeling better - .264/.331/.397/.728 with 3 HR in 121 AB - that I think that he will be fine next season assuming that he is healthy for a full season. Still, as badly as he has done, his .255/.313/.335/.648 is still a huge improvement over the .228/.295/.281/.576 we got last season.
I also think that Ishikawa and Garko can be a nice platoon tandem at 1B in 2010, once Garko gets used to the NL. Both hit pretty well against their opposite throwing pitchers, and Ishikawa's great defense will be out there most of the time since there are more RHP.
That leaves LF as the main area of question. We could go out and sign a high-priced free agent like Jason Bay, or some lower cost options like Rocco Baldelli, Rick Ankiel, or Xavier Nady. I think they will sign a free agent like Ankiel, as Bay would be expensive and longer-term, and we need to keep budget space open so that we can sign Lincecum and Cain to long-term extensions. That would leave Bowker to battle Schierholtz for RF, with the loser being the 4th OF. And the Giants will probably trade Lewis away.
"It's not Larry [Baer]'s fault the Giants don't have a thirdbaseman or a firstbaseman who can hit 40 HR."
Teams without a thirdbaseman or a firstbaseman who can hit 40 HR:
- Atlanta Braves
- Baltimore Orioles
- Boston Red Sox
- Chicago Cubs
- Cleveland Indians
- Colorado Rockies
- Detroit Tigers
- Florida Marlins
- Houston Astros
- Kansas City Royals
- Los Angeles Angels
- Los Angeles Dodgers
- Minnesota Twins
- New York Mets
- Oakland Athletics
- Pittsburgh Pirates
- San Francisco Giants
- Seattle Mariners
- Texas Rangers
- Toronto Blue Jays
- Washington Nationals
So that means that 23 out the 30 teams in the majors are falling down on the job in putting together their offense because they don't have a thirdbaseman or a firstbaseman who can hit 40 HR. At least according to this radio show host.
May Have to Eat His Words Soon
The funny thing is that since Pablo Sandoval started figuring out how to hit homers in the majors in June, he has hit 18 HR in 360 AB and 84 games. That is a 35 HR pace. Pretty close to the ideal noted on the airwaves.
However, he hasn't hit any in 30 AB this month as he has battled leg problems, and his batting line shows that at .233/.361/.333/.694 (WOW, he has 6 walks and only 4 strikeouts!). Assuming he can be healthy over a full year and play at the pace he was at in June, July, and August, then over a 162 game season, Kung Fu Panda would hit 40 or 41 HR in a season.
So the Giants may already have a 40 HR 1B/3B in Pablo Sandoval and therefore, based on what this host said, Sabean has done his job there.
Sigh... why do I keep on turning the radio there? Well, besides the fact that it's always on KNBR during the baseball season and I have to cycle through there to change from FM1 to FM2 on my presets on my car.
Why does the evening host have to cater to the angry Giants fan crowd? Despite all the anger over the past few seasons, the Giants have been rebuilding very nicely. So wouldn't that mean that they were wrong to be so angry? That they were being impatient with the rebuild (and rebuilds normally take many years to pull off correctly and some teams are stuck in rebuild purgatory for decades) and was missing the changing of the guard?
I mean, given this vitriol aimed at Sabean, had the Braves fans been just as angry and actually had Bobby Cox fired as GM, he would never have had the chance to build the 17 year dynasty he had there, because the team was so lousy during the six years he was their GM. They were even worse than the Giants, much worse, Tampa Bay Devil Rays bad.
And no GM is perfect. They make a lot of mistakes along the way, some of them big (don't you think Billy Beane wishes he got more for Tim Hudson? Or how about Andre Ethier?). You have to take a look at the big picture and see where the team is headed.
And the big picture is that the Giants are headed for a nice run in the next few years. Obviously, our pitching should be great again. Particularly if we can sign Penny to a one year deal and pick up another good end-game reliever like Affeldt. Though Waldis Joaquin and Dan Runzler might fill that need.
Ande the offense should be improved as well. Sandoval should be a full-fledged star by next season, as I noted above, he should be hitting somewhere between 30-40 HR if he can continue the pace he was going at after he figured out how to hit major league pitching for homers and when he was healthy. I think Buster Posey should be either up at the start or my mid-season, and should be figuring out things by the end of the season. That's two offensive cogs right there.
Rowand, for all the complaints about him and for all the ups and downs of his hitting, he is still hitting better than the average CF. And Nate Schierholtz has shown enough in his time in the minors and in brief stretches in the majors that I think he'll be able to duplicate what Randy Winn was giving us: average offense with superlative defense in RF. You don't need every hitter to be great, you need complementary bats like Winn when he was going good, Rowand, and Schierholtz, as I believe he should be as good as Winn eventually.
Freddy Sanchez should be a big improvement over what we got from 2B this season: our 2B collectively hit .241/.292/.350/.641 this season. His career numbers are .299/.335/.419/.754, and he was good enough to win the batting title one season and has hit around .300 every season except for one while playing regularly.
Renteria has hit well enough since he said he was feeling better - .264/.331/.397/.728 with 3 HR in 121 AB - that I think that he will be fine next season assuming that he is healthy for a full season. Still, as badly as he has done, his .255/.313/.335/.648 is still a huge improvement over the .228/.295/.281/.576 we got last season.
I also think that Ishikawa and Garko can be a nice platoon tandem at 1B in 2010, once Garko gets used to the NL. Both hit pretty well against their opposite throwing pitchers, and Ishikawa's great defense will be out there most of the time since there are more RHP.
That leaves LF as the main area of question. We could go out and sign a high-priced free agent like Jason Bay, or some lower cost options like Rocco Baldelli, Rick Ankiel, or Xavier Nady. I think they will sign a free agent like Ankiel, as Bay would be expensive and longer-term, and we need to keep budget space open so that we can sign Lincecum and Cain to long-term extensions. That would leave Bowker to battle Schierholtz for RF, with the loser being the 4th OF. And the Giants will probably trade Lewis away.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Annual Rant on Hall of Fame Voting: 2009
Rickey Henderson, unsurprisingly, was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame on his first ballot; Jim Rice was voted into the Hall of Fame in his last year of eligibility, else he would have been in limbo for years until the Veterans' Committee can (not) vote for him (the Veteran's Committee hasn't voted in anyone in years, probably decades; the players are worse the writers, it seems, holding a tougher standard).
Why Wasn't Rickey Unanimous?
Heck, why wasn't Willie Mays unanimous? Or Hank Aaron? Or George Herman "Babe" Ruth! That has been my problem with the Hall of Fame voting, when players who are obviously Hall of Famers does not get all the votes available. How could any of those players be in doubt? At least, without any need for brain surgery or a new brain. How could these three players not be unanimous?
Likewise, why not Rickey? 28 voters did not vote for Rickey, one of the one name players in the history of the game: Mays, Aaron, Ruth, Ty, Ted, DiMaggio, Mantle, Seaver, Ryan, Koufax, Gibson, etc (just quickly off the top of my head; I'm sure there are many more). How can you not vote for the guy who scored more runs than anyone in history? On top of that, he revolutionized the leadoff spot, adding an element of power that most did not have, plus also broke the career stolen base record as well, and held the career record for walks until Bonds took the crown. How many players today can retire with the top spot in one key offensive category, let alone three like Rickey? And still 28 voters were not impressed with that.
Now, if it was that some of them thought that nobody deserves to go in unanimously, then I guess I would grudgingly give them that, though I still think that is a silly reason not to vote him into the Hall of Fame in his first year. Come on people: he had the top spot in three key offensive categories and look to hold the remaining two of them for as long as Ty Cobb held his record, if not longer.
There was one writer who admitted that he made a mistake and would change his vote if he could now. At least he admits his mistake, but still, even a blind man could see this one, as the saying goes. Why didn't he see this when he voted? How can you not see this?
What Has Rice Done in Last 14 Years?
On the flip side, Jim Rice got in after 14 years of being kept out. He's happy just to be in now, and I have no problem with him in (I could go either way with him, much like the voters), but as he himself noted, he hasn't done anything in the last 14 years, so why now and not earlier? I guess I answered my question there, since I'm on the fence with him too. However, I would have voted for him all 15 years. Because, while I think he's a Hall of Famer, it would not have been an outrage for me without him in there either and hence my ambivalence.
The True Outrage
Meanwhile, someone who I think should have been in years ago fell short again: Bert Blyleven. He was usually described as having one of the best curve balls ever and won a lot of games despite pitching for pretty lousy teams, and had a long career that he probably could have milked to get to 300 if he had wanted to, but didn't. He has a winning percentage of .534 for his career when the teams he played for combined probably isn't even .500. Yet, still not close to making the Hall, though he is close enough to think about it, as he has 62.7% of the vote and need 75% to get in; but that is still 67 votes short. In addition, his 15 years should be up soon, I think in 2012.
Remedy
I've been trying to think of some sort of remedy, but anything I could think of would just drive the ones who would have voted incorrectly to vote correctly and not have their vote rescinded, as I would hope. The best I could think of so far would be to give writers three strikes, so that they can get two out of their system before they are forced to vote the way they think others think, and you get a strike when a player gets a high percentage, which could be 90% or even 95% (though Rickey technically had 94.8%, and thus would not qualify, so perhaps 90% is better), on their first vote (though I doubt any player has ever or will ever get over 90% many years after their first year of eligibility).
The only way this works is if the writers are not informed of their two strikes, but rather had to keep track of it themselves if they care enough. Then when the third strike happens, since they were not aware of where they were, they get kicked out and have their vote taken away. However, once the first writer gets the heave-ho, the rest of the voters will probably start deligently counting their misses and there would be no more strikeouts and players would start getting 100% of the votes.
If you have a better idea, then I am all ears.
Why Wasn't Rickey Unanimous?
Heck, why wasn't Willie Mays unanimous? Or Hank Aaron? Or George Herman "Babe" Ruth! That has been my problem with the Hall of Fame voting, when players who are obviously Hall of Famers does not get all the votes available. How could any of those players be in doubt? At least, without any need for brain surgery or a new brain. How could these three players not be unanimous?
Likewise, why not Rickey? 28 voters did not vote for Rickey, one of the one name players in the history of the game: Mays, Aaron, Ruth, Ty, Ted, DiMaggio, Mantle, Seaver, Ryan, Koufax, Gibson, etc (just quickly off the top of my head; I'm sure there are many more). How can you not vote for the guy who scored more runs than anyone in history? On top of that, he revolutionized the leadoff spot, adding an element of power that most did not have, plus also broke the career stolen base record as well, and held the career record for walks until Bonds took the crown. How many players today can retire with the top spot in one key offensive category, let alone three like Rickey? And still 28 voters were not impressed with that.
Now, if it was that some of them thought that nobody deserves to go in unanimously, then I guess I would grudgingly give them that, though I still think that is a silly reason not to vote him into the Hall of Fame in his first year. Come on people: he had the top spot in three key offensive categories and look to hold the remaining two of them for as long as Ty Cobb held his record, if not longer.
There was one writer who admitted that he made a mistake and would change his vote if he could now. At least he admits his mistake, but still, even a blind man could see this one, as the saying goes. Why didn't he see this when he voted? How can you not see this?
What Has Rice Done in Last 14 Years?
On the flip side, Jim Rice got in after 14 years of being kept out. He's happy just to be in now, and I have no problem with him in (I could go either way with him, much like the voters), but as he himself noted, he hasn't done anything in the last 14 years, so why now and not earlier? I guess I answered my question there, since I'm on the fence with him too. However, I would have voted for him all 15 years. Because, while I think he's a Hall of Famer, it would not have been an outrage for me without him in there either and hence my ambivalence.
The True Outrage
Meanwhile, someone who I think should have been in years ago fell short again: Bert Blyleven. He was usually described as having one of the best curve balls ever and won a lot of games despite pitching for pretty lousy teams, and had a long career that he probably could have milked to get to 300 if he had wanted to, but didn't. He has a winning percentage of .534 for his career when the teams he played for combined probably isn't even .500. Yet, still not close to making the Hall, though he is close enough to think about it, as he has 62.7% of the vote and need 75% to get in; but that is still 67 votes short. In addition, his 15 years should be up soon, I think in 2012.
Remedy
I've been trying to think of some sort of remedy, but anything I could think of would just drive the ones who would have voted incorrectly to vote correctly and not have their vote rescinded, as I would hope. The best I could think of so far would be to give writers three strikes, so that they can get two out of their system before they are forced to vote the way they think others think, and you get a strike when a player gets a high percentage, which could be 90% or even 95% (though Rickey technically had 94.8%, and thus would not qualify, so perhaps 90% is better), on their first vote (though I doubt any player has ever or will ever get over 90% many years after their first year of eligibility).
The only way this works is if the writers are not informed of their two strikes, but rather had to keep track of it themselves if they care enough. Then when the third strike happens, since they were not aware of where they were, they get kicked out and have their vote taken away. However, once the first writer gets the heave-ho, the rest of the voters will probably start deligently counting their misses and there would be no more strikeouts and players would start getting 100% of the votes.
If you have a better idea, then I am all ears.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Media Idiocy: because his reasons were wrong, arbitrary, and not logical
The Merc in their morning buzz (no link as they literally just now require viewers to register but for some reason my account's password is not working; I had read the article earlier with no problem then suddenly, bam!, need to log in later) noted that "Frankly, we don't understand the anger about something that didn't affect the outcome," when referring to Chris DeLuca leaving off Tim Lincecum off his Cy Young ballot.
ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?
It's like this: his reasons were wrong, arbitrary, and not logical. I went through much of this in my comments on the post about Lincecum's Cy Young Award, and despite the writer being relatively young and thus should know better, he gives Webb first because he has 22 wins, Lidge second because he didn't blow one save, and Santana because, well, he pitches in NY and did well there.
Don't even get me into how 22 wins is not a valid SOLE determinant of how well a pitcher pitches today, even I knew when I was teenaged and pimply almost 40 years ago that wins were not always the best determination of who pitched the best that season! How out dated is this concept?
By every metric known today to be better indicators of how good a pitcher is, Lincecum and Santana were 1/2 in almost every one. Webb did not beat out either in anything except for wins. And as I noted in the comments, the only reason Webb has 22 wins and Lincecum only 18 is because his bullpen blew one win for him, the Giants blew five wins, which means Webb got this vote because his bullpen was better than Lincecum's. How is that related to how Webb is better than Lincecum?
And rewarding a relief pitcher for not blowing one save would be like giving a pitcher the Cy Young for throwing a no-hitter that season. Hello, it was a fluke and random, there was not any particular extraordinary skill involved, beyond what it takes to save 41 games, which numerous other closers did, this should not be such an amazing event to people! If there was that strong a skill involved, that is, blowing one save versus blowing none, then one would think it would happen more often with the best closers, not someone like Lidge who has been a headcase forever.
Or maybe Eckersley wasn't that good in 1990 when he only walked 4 and had a 0.61 ERA, but still blew 2 saves while saving 48, Lidge was so much better with his 1.95 ERA 35 walks in 69.3 IP (4.5 BB/9!!!) and flukey 2 HR in 69.3 IP but, wow, look at that, 41 saves in 41 opportunities! Looking at his stats, he did not pitch that much different in 2008 as he did in 2007, the only difference being the 7 HR reduction, which as readers here know, is a fluke, as HR is related to the flyballs he gives up and most pitchers regress to 10% HR/FB. So maybe we should retroactively give him Cy Young votes in 2007 too.
And, boo hoo, Santana has to pitch in NY and survive that pressure. If that is such a problem, then start up an Ed Whitson Award and give it to the New York pitcher who did the best surviving of the city that doesn't sleep. Don't give him a vote for Cy Young just because of that though.
Now, if he went through the litany of all the things Santana actually accomplished and argued that Santana did better than Lincecum, I could accept that. But to give him the vote because he survived the crushing pressure of pitching in NY? PLEASE!!!
To top it off, the Buzz then points out the AL Cy Young as more irritating, with Halladay getting votes over Cliff Lee. I'll make it easy for the Buzz: read the stats you put in the newspaper! Halladay had very similar stats to Lee, plus the Buzz included stats where Halladay outdid Lee. Lee only had the fluke that his team scored more runs for him when he pitched, allowing him to lose less for the Indians than Halladay lost for the Blue Jays.
I would agree that the Dale Sveum vote was irritating too, but, playing devils advocate, it was still only a third place vote. Who were deserving in the NL anyway? Can't vote for the guy who was fired and replaced by Sveum. Torre was given a ton of big name free agent signings and it still took the blockbuster trade for Manny to squeek past the .500 D-backs. Pass. LaRussa? They were expected to be contenders and barely registered in their division. Jerry Manuel? With all the talent and free agent signings, the Mets were expected to do well, that's why his predecessor was fired. Piniella? I suppose, but again, with all the talent and free agent signings and big trades, did he really do THAT well? I would give Charlie Manuel and maybe Piniella as deserving votes. The rest, as noted, did not have a great amount of positives to get a vote, frankly.
Sveum was put into a situation of great pressure to make the playoffs. The Brewers had lost 11 of 14 when he took over, in serious trouble of not making the playoffs when they went all in and acquired CC Sabathia, and 7-5 in that context is pretty good. So yeah, Sveum getting a third place vote is irritating, but really, it's a third place vote among a bunch of non-deserving candidates as well, it was more a case of "you have three votes, you have to vote for somebody as third".
Still: Idiotic
However, in DeLuca's case, he passed on Lincecum not one, not two, but with all three votes. While people can make arguments for why one or another might get the vote above Lincecum, to put all three above seems, well, idiotic.
And what is more galling is that he was a big Giants fan growing up. You would think that he would have given more thought to his vote, more consideration to Lincecum, because of his history. Perhaps, in an attempt to be objective and fair, he purposefully did not examine Lincecum to such depth as a fan might do. However, the best he could do was outdated and thus wrong, arbitrary and random, and not logical or fair. And THAT is why he is getting scorn and anger, at least from these quarters.
ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?
It's like this: his reasons were wrong, arbitrary, and not logical. I went through much of this in my comments on the post about Lincecum's Cy Young Award, and despite the writer being relatively young and thus should know better, he gives Webb first because he has 22 wins, Lidge second because he didn't blow one save, and Santana because, well, he pitches in NY and did well there.
Don't even get me into how 22 wins is not a valid SOLE determinant of how well a pitcher pitches today, even I knew when I was teenaged and pimply almost 40 years ago that wins were not always the best determination of who pitched the best that season! How out dated is this concept?
By every metric known today to be better indicators of how good a pitcher is, Lincecum and Santana were 1/2 in almost every one. Webb did not beat out either in anything except for wins. And as I noted in the comments, the only reason Webb has 22 wins and Lincecum only 18 is because his bullpen blew one win for him, the Giants blew five wins, which means Webb got this vote because his bullpen was better than Lincecum's. How is that related to how Webb is better than Lincecum?
And rewarding a relief pitcher for not blowing one save would be like giving a pitcher the Cy Young for throwing a no-hitter that season. Hello, it was a fluke and random, there was not any particular extraordinary skill involved, beyond what it takes to save 41 games, which numerous other closers did, this should not be such an amazing event to people! If there was that strong a skill involved, that is, blowing one save versus blowing none, then one would think it would happen more often with the best closers, not someone like Lidge who has been a headcase forever.
Or maybe Eckersley wasn't that good in 1990 when he only walked 4 and had a 0.61 ERA, but still blew 2 saves while saving 48, Lidge was so much better with his 1.95 ERA 35 walks in 69.3 IP (4.5 BB/9!!!) and flukey 2 HR in 69.3 IP but, wow, look at that, 41 saves in 41 opportunities! Looking at his stats, he did not pitch that much different in 2008 as he did in 2007, the only difference being the 7 HR reduction, which as readers here know, is a fluke, as HR is related to the flyballs he gives up and most pitchers regress to 10% HR/FB. So maybe we should retroactively give him Cy Young votes in 2007 too.
And, boo hoo, Santana has to pitch in NY and survive that pressure. If that is such a problem, then start up an Ed Whitson Award and give it to the New York pitcher who did the best surviving of the city that doesn't sleep. Don't give him a vote for Cy Young just because of that though.
Now, if he went through the litany of all the things Santana actually accomplished and argued that Santana did better than Lincecum, I could accept that. But to give him the vote because he survived the crushing pressure of pitching in NY? PLEASE!!!
To top it off, the Buzz then points out the AL Cy Young as more irritating, with Halladay getting votes over Cliff Lee. I'll make it easy for the Buzz: read the stats you put in the newspaper! Halladay had very similar stats to Lee, plus the Buzz included stats where Halladay outdid Lee. Lee only had the fluke that his team scored more runs for him when he pitched, allowing him to lose less for the Indians than Halladay lost for the Blue Jays.
I would agree that the Dale Sveum vote was irritating too, but, playing devils advocate, it was still only a third place vote. Who were deserving in the NL anyway? Can't vote for the guy who was fired and replaced by Sveum. Torre was given a ton of big name free agent signings and it still took the blockbuster trade for Manny to squeek past the .500 D-backs. Pass. LaRussa? They were expected to be contenders and barely registered in their division. Jerry Manuel? With all the talent and free agent signings, the Mets were expected to do well, that's why his predecessor was fired. Piniella? I suppose, but again, with all the talent and free agent signings and big trades, did he really do THAT well? I would give Charlie Manuel and maybe Piniella as deserving votes. The rest, as noted, did not have a great amount of positives to get a vote, frankly.
Sveum was put into a situation of great pressure to make the playoffs. The Brewers had lost 11 of 14 when he took over, in serious trouble of not making the playoffs when they went all in and acquired CC Sabathia, and 7-5 in that context is pretty good. So yeah, Sveum getting a third place vote is irritating, but really, it's a third place vote among a bunch of non-deserving candidates as well, it was more a case of "you have three votes, you have to vote for somebody as third".
Still: Idiotic
However, in DeLuca's case, he passed on Lincecum not one, not two, but with all three votes. While people can make arguments for why one or another might get the vote above Lincecum, to put all three above seems, well, idiotic.
And what is more galling is that he was a big Giants fan growing up. You would think that he would have given more thought to his vote, more consideration to Lincecum, because of his history. Perhaps, in an attempt to be objective and fair, he purposefully did not examine Lincecum to such depth as a fan might do. However, the best he could do was outdated and thus wrong, arbitrary and random, and not logical or fair. And THAT is why he is getting scorn and anger, at least from these quarters.
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