Your 2019 Giants: BP Rant Time

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]

My First 2018 Giants Venting

Ugh, I hate when people talking about solving a team's problems and then lists a "solution" that is not even realistic at all.  Recently I read talked about a "solution":  just sign free agents Lorenzo Cain, Howie Kendrick, Todd Frazier, Jon Jay, Tyler Chatwood, Brandon Morrow, Yusmeiro Petit.  Problem solved!

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:

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.

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):

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.

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...

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.