Sorry I'm late on this, but I was offsite at work and then travelling back, stuck in the airport, when all this happened, not getting back home until 2AM. Here are reports from Baggs, Hank, Pavlovic, and Haft. Also, there is an interesting backstory on the Giants pursuit of Pence by CSN Bay Area's Rael Enteen and one by Schulman.
The deal is the Giants get Hunter Pence and cash (but not that much, I recall one report noting $2M total for both Scutaro and Pence, so maybe a $1M?) for Nate Schierholtz, Tommy Joseph, and Seth Rosin.
Showing posts with label Nate Schierholtz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nate Schierholtz. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 01, 2012
Monday, July 23, 2012
Nate Not So Great: But I Still Like Him
I had been out on vacation and was going to write one big post to cover all my thoughts, but my work is crazy good right now, so I'll bite off one at a time.
Nate Schierholtz made news lately by complaining in an interview with Hank Schulman that he's not satisfied with the amount of playing time he's been getting and that he would welcome a trade. He said that if he's not their guy, then maybe he should move on.
He didn't back off of it yesterday but gave a more team oriented comment instead. Schulman noted in his blog that it was clear that the team informed him that he appeared selfish with his original statements.
Giants Thoughts
First off, I don't really think that Nate is going anywhere. The Giants love defense, or specifically, Sabean has loved defense since he first became GM. He might have to hornshoe in guys with poor defense, to accommodate roster and budget realities, but mostly, in his comments over the years, it's clear he prefers good defensive players. Nate is a virtuoso in RF.
The main reason I think he is going nowhere is because I see another round of competition for playing time in the OF in 2013. There is almost no way the Giants sign both Melky Cabrera and Angel Pagan, due to all the money devoted to the pitching, and most likely Melky will be signed, the question is how much (one item I wanted to cover). Plus not much money for free agents, I don't think.
That means Melky got LF most probably, and Gregor Blanco will be the presumptive starting CF (perhaps in platoon with Justin Christian), and then Nate in RF, as nobody in Fresno is knocking down the door for the RF starting spot. Francisco Peguero and Chris Dominguez isn't doing much there, and Roger Kieschnick, who put himself into position to challenge, got injured again, so who knows what he can do for us next season. Plus maybe a journeyman OF, like Torres and Blanco before him.
Nate is just too valuable, as well as cheap, to trade away, unless another team really thinks he's as good as he think he is, and gives up more to the Giants in terms of a RF starter, who they can control for multiple years. If teams really felt that way about him, then an offer like that might have happened before, and if that offer had ever been done, I would think the Giants would have gone for it, Nate has always been a tweener in terms of prospect potential, showing enough to warrant interest and continued opportunities, but never breaking out enough to hold the starting job. However, the only type of trade I can see Schierholtz being a part of is one where both teams are giving up on a prospect, and seeing if they can do something with our castoff, like when we traded Salomon Torres for Shawn Estes, or Yorvit Torrealba and Jesse Foppert for Randy Winn..
A major league starter needs to be consistently good, or rather, not consistently really bad. Nate has been great over up to a month's period of time. If he hit like that all the time, he would be a star in the MLB and not needing to do such interviews. Heck, if he could at least be replacement level during his down time, then the Giants could live with that. But he's typically not and the Giants are forced to go elsewhere for RF starting.
That he didn't understand why he sat down for so long shows that he was being myopic and selfish. Blanco had a monster May, much like the ones Nate puts out. Like Nate, when he cooled off, he got the benefit of the doubt - if you go over Nate's usage patterns in the past, the Giants would give him chance after chance after his nice surge, but eventually had to go to another player as Nate was just cold. Now that his cool off period has ran too long, plus Pagan is having a long cold period, Nate is getting his opportunities.
Bochy, contrary to popular opinion, likes static lineups, where he can write in the same names every day. However, if a guy isn't hitting, he's going to mix and match. If Nate had paid any attention the past few years, he would have seen that and realize that Bochy would probably start using him more again after the All-Star break. He just needed to be patient.
The Giants believe in him, else he wouldn't still be around, unlike Lewis, Frandsen, Bowker, Linden (OK, he came back, but he was gone for a while). He needs to realize that a MLB hitter can't be cold for an extended period and not get put on notice. Bochy wants to win, and now. I like that about him, and that is what changed my mind about him in 2010 down the stretch, you need a manager with that killer attitude to bring in the hardware, which he did in 2010.
This bit of hot hitting will get Nate some more opportunities. Don't blow them Nate and you will have RF sewn up and Pagan and Blanco would end up sharing CF playing time. I still believe in his abilities, but this lava hot and arctic cold can't continue if he hopes to start. I think Bochy told him he wasn't starter's material to rile him up and get him motivated to get to this consistency level he needs to be a starter. The Giants appear to be reaching the end of their string in terms of Nate as a starter, but he's still very valuable as a 4th OF because he can take over if there is any injury or cold stretch without much downside in production, so I don't see him going anywhere, unless the Giants get a very good deal.
Nate Schierholtz made news lately by complaining in an interview with Hank Schulman that he's not satisfied with the amount of playing time he's been getting and that he would welcome a trade. He said that if he's not their guy, then maybe he should move on.
He didn't back off of it yesterday but gave a more team oriented comment instead. Schulman noted in his blog that it was clear that the team informed him that he appeared selfish with his original statements.
Giants Thoughts
First off, I don't really think that Nate is going anywhere. The Giants love defense, or specifically, Sabean has loved defense since he first became GM. He might have to hornshoe in guys with poor defense, to accommodate roster and budget realities, but mostly, in his comments over the years, it's clear he prefers good defensive players. Nate is a virtuoso in RF.
The main reason I think he is going nowhere is because I see another round of competition for playing time in the OF in 2013. There is almost no way the Giants sign both Melky Cabrera and Angel Pagan, due to all the money devoted to the pitching, and most likely Melky will be signed, the question is how much (one item I wanted to cover). Plus not much money for free agents, I don't think.
That means Melky got LF most probably, and Gregor Blanco will be the presumptive starting CF (perhaps in platoon with Justin Christian), and then Nate in RF, as nobody in Fresno is knocking down the door for the RF starting spot. Francisco Peguero and Chris Dominguez isn't doing much there, and Roger Kieschnick, who put himself into position to challenge, got injured again, so who knows what he can do for us next season. Plus maybe a journeyman OF, like Torres and Blanco before him.
Nate is just too valuable, as well as cheap, to trade away, unless another team really thinks he's as good as he think he is, and gives up more to the Giants in terms of a RF starter, who they can control for multiple years. If teams really felt that way about him, then an offer like that might have happened before, and if that offer had ever been done, I would think the Giants would have gone for it, Nate has always been a tweener in terms of prospect potential, showing enough to warrant interest and continued opportunities, but never breaking out enough to hold the starting job. However, the only type of trade I can see Schierholtz being a part of is one where both teams are giving up on a prospect, and seeing if they can do something with our castoff, like when we traded Salomon Torres for Shawn Estes, or Yorvit Torrealba and Jesse Foppert for Randy Winn..
A major league starter needs to be consistently good, or rather, not consistently really bad. Nate has been great over up to a month's period of time. If he hit like that all the time, he would be a star in the MLB and not needing to do such interviews. Heck, if he could at least be replacement level during his down time, then the Giants could live with that. But he's typically not and the Giants are forced to go elsewhere for RF starting.
That he didn't understand why he sat down for so long shows that he was being myopic and selfish. Blanco had a monster May, much like the ones Nate puts out. Like Nate, when he cooled off, he got the benefit of the doubt - if you go over Nate's usage patterns in the past, the Giants would give him chance after chance after his nice surge, but eventually had to go to another player as Nate was just cold. Now that his cool off period has ran too long, plus Pagan is having a long cold period, Nate is getting his opportunities.
Bochy, contrary to popular opinion, likes static lineups, where he can write in the same names every day. However, if a guy isn't hitting, he's going to mix and match. If Nate had paid any attention the past few years, he would have seen that and realize that Bochy would probably start using him more again after the All-Star break. He just needed to be patient.
The Giants believe in him, else he wouldn't still be around, unlike Lewis, Frandsen, Bowker, Linden (OK, he came back, but he was gone for a while). He needs to realize that a MLB hitter can't be cold for an extended period and not get put on notice. Bochy wants to win, and now. I like that about him, and that is what changed my mind about him in 2010 down the stretch, you need a manager with that killer attitude to bring in the hardware, which he did in 2010.
This bit of hot hitting will get Nate some more opportunities. Don't blow them Nate and you will have RF sewn up and Pagan and Blanco would end up sharing CF playing time. I still believe in his abilities, but this lava hot and arctic cold can't continue if he hopes to start. I think Bochy told him he wasn't starter's material to rile him up and get him motivated to get to this consistency level he needs to be a starter. The Giants appear to be reaching the end of their string in terms of Nate as a starter, but he's still very valuable as a 4th OF because he can take over if there is any injury or cold stretch without much downside in production, so I don't see him going anywhere, unless the Giants get a very good deal.
Friday, April 27, 2012
Your 2012 Giants: Season So Far (10-9)
I'm noticing a mostly downcast dauber on the part of Giants fans and media. Of course, that is probably strongly influenced by being only 2 outs away from being swept by the Reds. Still, there are good things as well as bad things.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Your 2012 Giants: Say Hey Panda and other notes
Apologies to the content police, I just want to publish this post and not deal with links to sourcing. I will note that I read the usual suspects, Baggs, Hank, Alex.
Also, blogger screwed up (AGAIN! They forced me to use their new tool format and so far it STINKS!) and didn't publish when I scheduled it to, as this should have went out during lunch, before today's game, so all the stats below are for before today's game's stats.
Also, blogger screwed up (AGAIN! They forced me to use their new tool format and so far it STINKS!) and didn't publish when I scheduled it to, as this should have went out during lunch, before today's game, so all the stats below are for before today's game's stats.
Wednesday, April 04, 2012
Your 2012 Giants: Opening Day 25-man Roster
Ultimately, the fans' fury and worry was for naught, as the Giants went with youth over vets. Bochy announced the roster live on CSN Bay Area at 11:30AM PDT (it was available on-line!). Here is the 25-man roster (CSN, Mercury, Chronicle):
Eli Whiteside was optioned (amazingly, he still had one!) to Fresno, so if we need an experienced catcher, we can pull one up as necessary. Chris Stewart, unfortunately, had to be let go and Bochy said that his fate would be announced in around an hour (he has been traded to the Yankees for a reliever, George Kontos, who was the top RH reliever not ranked in BA's Top 30, if that counts for anything. 2.62 ERA in 89.1 IP in AAA last season). They must really really like Sanchez's bat a lot to do this.
Otero won the battle for the right to hold the spot warm for Ryan Vogelsong while Vogie is DLing until the 5th spot opens up on April 15th. As I noted before, great stats, should not be the last time we see him, could be first RH call-up if any problems; Runzler is probably first LH.
Bochy said that Belt would be playing 1B most of the time, but then noted that Pill would get the starts against LHP. Later, he also noted that Posey would see time at 1B when it is decided that he needs rest but can play 1B, and Bochy said that it would be against LHP. Of course, that pushed Huff to LF and Schierholtz out of the starting lineup, which was one of the scenarios I laid out before spring training. One thing I did not see was Gregor Blanco winning a spot, and so convincingly, even if a starter went down, Bochy would probably go to him before Schierholtz.
He would not commit to a starter at 2B, stating his mix and match process. I think that has to do with a number of factors. One is that Burriss suddenly got cold. Another is that Theriot heated up. Most of all, I think, it was noted at some point (can't recall if Bochy said it or I hear/saw it somewhere else) that Freddy Sanchez was suddenly looking better and doing more, so the Giants are more hopeful now that he'll be back sooner than later. That could explain the Giants comment about Burriss being a super-utility guy for them.
- SP: Tim Lincecum, Madison Bumgarner, Matt Cain, Barry Zito
- RP: Brian Wilson, Jeremy Affeldt, Santiago Casilla, Clay Hensley, Javier Lopez, Guillermo Mota, Dan Otero, Sergio Romo
- C: Buster Posey, Hector Sanchez
- IF: Brandon Belt, Emmanuel Burriss, Brandon Crawford, Aubrey Huff, Brett Pill, Pablo Sandoval, Ryan Theriot
- OF: Gregor Blanco, Melky Cabrera, Angel Pagan, Nate Schierholtz
Eli Whiteside was optioned (amazingly, he still had one!) to Fresno, so if we need an experienced catcher, we can pull one up as necessary. Chris Stewart, unfortunately, had to be let go and Bochy said that his fate would be announced in around an hour (he has been traded to the Yankees for a reliever, George Kontos, who was the top RH reliever not ranked in BA's Top 30, if that counts for anything. 2.62 ERA in 89.1 IP in AAA last season). They must really really like Sanchez's bat a lot to do this.
Otero won the battle for the right to hold the spot warm for Ryan Vogelsong while Vogie is DLing until the 5th spot opens up on April 15th. As I noted before, great stats, should not be the last time we see him, could be first RH call-up if any problems; Runzler is probably first LH.
Bochy said that Belt would be playing 1B most of the time, but then noted that Pill would get the starts against LHP. Later, he also noted that Posey would see time at 1B when it is decided that he needs rest but can play 1B, and Bochy said that it would be against LHP. Of course, that pushed Huff to LF and Schierholtz out of the starting lineup, which was one of the scenarios I laid out before spring training. One thing I did not see was Gregor Blanco winning a spot, and so convincingly, even if a starter went down, Bochy would probably go to him before Schierholtz.
He would not commit to a starter at 2B, stating his mix and match process. I think that has to do with a number of factors. One is that Burriss suddenly got cold. Another is that Theriot heated up. Most of all, I think, it was noted at some point (can't recall if Bochy said it or I hear/saw it somewhere else) that Freddy Sanchez was suddenly looking better and doing more, so the Giants are more hopeful now that he'll be back sooner than later. That could explain the Giants comment about Burriss being a super-utility guy for them.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Mike Newman Prospect Chat on Fangraphs And Giants Spring Training!
On the eve of the start of the Giants spring training for the 2012 season, ran across a chat by a Mike Newman, who writes a blog named Scouting the Sally. He writes for Fangraphs and, er, scouts the South Atlantic League, or Sally to afficionados. He had been a player, scout and coach, and wanted to get back into the game in some way, and took this route.
Here are some key moneyshots of Giants and NL West prospects:
Brandon Belt
Comment From Tony in SLC: Having a hard time letting go of the dream called Brandon Belt, if he gets playing time he's easily the 3rd best hitter on the team, right? Thursday February 16, 2012 4:16 Tony in SLC
Mike Newman: Well, Belt is teaching prospect followers that age-versus-level does matter regardless of the numbers. However, he really does need 600 plate appearances or the chance to go somewhere else. I can see Huff playing because he's being paid well, but Schierholtz? 28 with a .750 OPS is a find 4th outfielder, but no way he's a starter on a first division ball club.
obsessivegiantscompulsive: Again, people assume the Giants don't like him. They were the ones who discovered and nurtured him. He is far from a failed prospect, he will get his chances, he is not like Freddy Lewis or John Bowker, or even Nate Schierholtz, all unheralded prospects, Belt was rated in the Top 20 last year and the Giants have been very good at identifying who to keep and who to not keep. They know what they got, and they will give him a lot of chances.
Given the comment by management about rushing prospects, I expect the Giants to be more conservative in 2012 in bringing him up. Meaning first that he will need to beat out Nate Schierholtz for a starting spot in spring training, and if he doesn't, he'll start in AAA until either an OF or Huff struggles enough for the Giants to bring up Belt (assuming he isn't totally struggling). I hope that doesn't happen, but you never know - just look at last season.
My expectation is that Huff will be good, high 700 OPS range, but not 2010 good, Pagan will be an OK placesetter but nothing special enough that Gary Brown will be blocked, and Melky will be good enough that the Giants will probably try to sign him to an extension of some sort, as he'll be a free agent at the end of the season. However, as much as I like Nate, he has a history of extreme hot and coldness plus eventual injuries that I expect one of them to happen, resulting in the opening of 1B for Belt at some point, pushing Huff to LF.
But that comment about Nate starting not a sign of a contender is a result of what I call the lack of understanding how powerful it is to have a pitching staff and fielding defense as great as the Giants have. With such a strong overall defense, keeping the RA/G very low and among the top 3 the past three seasons, and which I expect to happen again in 2012, you only need an average offense to win. And Nate, if he can handle a full season at .750 OPS is average, when you include how great he is on defense plus how well he runs the bases, generating a lot of extra bases each season, is perfectly fine for us in RF.
Gary Brown
Comment From Jack: From most top prospect lists, I get the feeling that Gary Brown is one of the more controversial players. Why, do you think that is? Thursday February 16, 2012 4:54 Jack
Mike Newman: College players dominate the California League. He more or less did what he was supposed to do. Francisco Peguero did the same thing and was a meh prospect. Should Gary Brown repeat in double-A, I'll buy into his production much more.
ogc: As nicely as Brown did, I do agree to a certain extent that Brown's overall numbers were not great, and thus a concern. However, that is why you need to sometimes look into his monthly splits and see what he actually did.
First Inning provides his splits and his April/May look like one talent performance set, then he was out of sync in June and then July/August (Sept small samples; for example his K% of 16% would be OK 12% if you take away one strikeout) is another set. Initially, he was striking out a bit, and borderline OK, around 85% contact rate, which is the mark of a good hitter. He also walked nicely in April but settled into his talent rate in May. He struggled in July and struck out a lot more. Then he got his strike rate down, kept his walking, and looked a lot better than July, clearly, or even early in the season. He adjusted.
His overall .405 OBP looks great, but if you take out his struggles in July then he was around .430 OBP for the season. His OPS of .922 was pretty good, but not clearly outstanding in the league. However, without his July, he would have been around 1.100 OPS for the season, which is extremely good for the season.
Of course, the key question is whether he's going to struggle for a month again in AA, then AAA, then the MLB continuously. They way I view it, prospects will have these in-season adjustments. Obviously, if he can keep it going for the whole season, that makes it much easier to discern, yeah, he's good. But obviously, at some point, for the better players, the league can't adjust back, and he's consistently good, that month would be gone from his full season performance. I think one month of adjustment, versus many months of good play is what you want to see on the players who are more borderline in terms of prospect certainty (many doubted Brown's ability to adjustment, particularly his ability to take walks).
I really like his track record of adjustments. He wasn't that great in college, he adjusted and by his junior season, he had the highest OPS of any hitter in the Big West League. In the Cape Cod League, his first year was not that good, but he came back the next year and he was pretty good. In the pros, where there is a lot more games, that adjustment happens in-season instead of between seasons.
I also like his attitude that I've see in all his interviews online. These have been a boon, in my eye, to getting a feel for the guy's psyche. He has a good head on his shoulder, does not take himself seriously, and just views the challenge as getting better all the time.
The good news too is that with his great defense, he could rise to the majors and be an average player sooner because with his speed and good eye at the plate, his BABIP should be above average, helping him to keep his OPS at least replacement level to begin with as he adjusts to the league and improves. And his OBP should be good enough initially to justify inserting him at leadoff sooner than later, and the power should come later, as that is part of his game that he says he works on, in the interviews I've seen.
I've very excited by him, I was excited after my analysis after the Giants drafted him and I'm even more excited now that he's had a great first pro season. As much as the Giants talked about not rushing prospects, I think that if he does well in the Eastern League to start, they will promote him to AAA by mid-season, to see if he can take over the lead-off/CF position well enough so that they can let Pagan go in the off-season or if they need a lead-off guy for 2013. I am drinking the Kool-Aid enough to think that he will do this and get some call up experience in September, before making the team in 2013.
LAD's Rubby De La Rosa
Comment From Rick: Did I read that Rubby De La Rosa has the best fastball that you've seen in the Sally ? Thursday February 16, 2012 5:00 Rick
Mike Newman: No, Rubby has the best fastball I've ever scouted... period. He never pitched in the Sally. I scouted him twice in Chattanooga last season before his promotion.
ogc: Ugh, that's not good to hear. He could help the D-gers recover from losing Kuroda, someone to watch for 2012.
AZ's Paul Goldschmidt
Comment From Philip: Speaking of 80 power, what was Goldschmidt considered to have when he was there? Thursday February 16, 2012 5:05 Philip
Mike Newman: I'm honestly not a big Goldschmidt guy, but may have been a little too hard on him when I scouted him last summer. I saw a touch of slider bat speed and wondered if it would translate well to the bigs, or if he'd be destined to make a living off of bullpens and #5 starters. I'm still not sold, but a 25-home run first baseman with strong walk rates has considerable value for sure.
ogc: I am not a big Goldschmidt guy either. Looking at his numbers, I think he was very lucky and will have a regression season in 2012, where playing the full season he'll be exposed. Still, as he noted, power like that could keep him in the lineup, he could be their replacement for that strikeout-homerun 3B Mark Reynolds who they traded to the Orioles. But back to the Giants, a regression like that will be good for the Giants, they will probably have to sit him down, and he'll probably have a season similar to Belt's 2011, except that he'll get a lot more AB's and playing time, because I don't think that they have any good alternatives.
SD's Cashner/Rizzo Trade
Comment From AJ: Who will end up getting the better deal in the Rizzo/Cashner trade. Is rizzo's wing too long to be abel to hit for avg and/or good power numbers in chi? Thursday February 16, 2012 5:21 AJ
Mike Newman: I didn't understand that deal from SD's perspective. For Chicago, buying low on Rizzo for Cashner who seems like a closer (maybe) in the end strikes me as a steal.
ogc: Yeah, I didn't get the trade either unless SD is pretty sure that Cashner is a future dominant closer. Then again, maybe they saw something about Rizzo that didn't look good to them and sold low.
SD's Casey Kelly
Comment From Tom: ETA and ceiling for Casey Kelly? And general question - do you think too much emphasis is put on K and BB rates below AA ball for pitchers? Thursday February 16, 2012 5:29 Tom
Mike Newman: Kelly will be up this year and now appears to be more of a mid-rotation guy. As for K/BB rates, for older prospects, they are laughably blown out of proportion. For age appropriate guys, they deserve a closer look for sure. however the numbers can be tricky as hitters simply can't handle fringe breaking balls at the lower levels in general leading to crazy numbers.
ogc: This chat make the A-Gon trade look worse and worse. Rizzo is sold low on for maybe a closer, and Kelly is now profiling as a middle rotation guy now. For A-Gon, you would hope to get more. Maybe that's why Hoyer left now, while the getting's good, as he maybe felt that he was on the ledge with SD's management. Good the Giants if they don't get good value for A-Gon, that and the Latos trade could help to keep them in the cellar.
I highlighted the last two sentences because I believe in them. If the prospect is older than the league, then his extra experience and development should lead him to dominate, so you have to take any good performance with a large grain of salt. If the prospect is age appropriate, then the way I see it, you want to see him among the league's leaders, as confirmation of his goodness. This is especially so for prospects who are younger than the league. The more of any outlier they are, the better the probability that he can translate that to the majors.
If you look at the league leaders, you will always find players who are older than the league up there, and if you go far back enough and look to see if they are in the majors, most are not. They will need to prove that they are good at every level they rise to. And most usually fail at some point.
But if you find age appropriate (Shandler books says 22 YO is age appropriate for AAA, 21 for AA, 20-ish for Advanced A, and 19-20 for A), then if he is among the leaders then that is a good performance for him. And if he is younger than these ages, then his rating goes even higher. These types of players have a greater probability of making it in the majors, at minimum as a regular starter for a while, and if he develops, an all-star.
Here are some key moneyshots of Giants and NL West prospects:
Brandon Belt
Comment From Tony in SLC: Having a hard time letting go of the dream called Brandon Belt, if he gets playing time he's easily the 3rd best hitter on the team, right? Thursday February 16, 2012 4:16 Tony in SLC
Mike Newman: Well, Belt is teaching prospect followers that age-versus-level does matter regardless of the numbers. However, he really does need 600 plate appearances or the chance to go somewhere else. I can see Huff playing because he's being paid well, but Schierholtz? 28 with a .750 OPS is a find 4th outfielder, but no way he's a starter on a first division ball club.
obsessivegiantscompulsive: Again, people assume the Giants don't like him. They were the ones who discovered and nurtured him. He is far from a failed prospect, he will get his chances, he is not like Freddy Lewis or John Bowker, or even Nate Schierholtz, all unheralded prospects, Belt was rated in the Top 20 last year and the Giants have been very good at identifying who to keep and who to not keep. They know what they got, and they will give him a lot of chances.
Given the comment by management about rushing prospects, I expect the Giants to be more conservative in 2012 in bringing him up. Meaning first that he will need to beat out Nate Schierholtz for a starting spot in spring training, and if he doesn't, he'll start in AAA until either an OF or Huff struggles enough for the Giants to bring up Belt (assuming he isn't totally struggling). I hope that doesn't happen, but you never know - just look at last season.
My expectation is that Huff will be good, high 700 OPS range, but not 2010 good, Pagan will be an OK placesetter but nothing special enough that Gary Brown will be blocked, and Melky will be good enough that the Giants will probably try to sign him to an extension of some sort, as he'll be a free agent at the end of the season. However, as much as I like Nate, he has a history of extreme hot and coldness plus eventual injuries that I expect one of them to happen, resulting in the opening of 1B for Belt at some point, pushing Huff to LF.
But that comment about Nate starting not a sign of a contender is a result of what I call the lack of understanding how powerful it is to have a pitching staff and fielding defense as great as the Giants have. With such a strong overall defense, keeping the RA/G very low and among the top 3 the past three seasons, and which I expect to happen again in 2012, you only need an average offense to win. And Nate, if he can handle a full season at .750 OPS is average, when you include how great he is on defense plus how well he runs the bases, generating a lot of extra bases each season, is perfectly fine for us in RF.
Gary Brown
Comment From Jack: From most top prospect lists, I get the feeling that Gary Brown is one of the more controversial players. Why, do you think that is? Thursday February 16, 2012 4:54 Jack
Mike Newman: College players dominate the California League. He more or less did what he was supposed to do. Francisco Peguero did the same thing and was a meh prospect. Should Gary Brown repeat in double-A, I'll buy into his production much more.
ogc: As nicely as Brown did, I do agree to a certain extent that Brown's overall numbers were not great, and thus a concern. However, that is why you need to sometimes look into his monthly splits and see what he actually did.
First Inning provides his splits and his April/May look like one talent performance set, then he was out of sync in June and then July/August (Sept small samples; for example his K% of 16% would be OK 12% if you take away one strikeout) is another set. Initially, he was striking out a bit, and borderline OK, around 85% contact rate, which is the mark of a good hitter. He also walked nicely in April but settled into his talent rate in May. He struggled in July and struck out a lot more. Then he got his strike rate down, kept his walking, and looked a lot better than July, clearly, or even early in the season. He adjusted.
His overall .405 OBP looks great, but if you take out his struggles in July then he was around .430 OBP for the season. His OPS of .922 was pretty good, but not clearly outstanding in the league. However, without his July, he would have been around 1.100 OPS for the season, which is extremely good for the season.
Of course, the key question is whether he's going to struggle for a month again in AA, then AAA, then the MLB continuously. They way I view it, prospects will have these in-season adjustments. Obviously, if he can keep it going for the whole season, that makes it much easier to discern, yeah, he's good. But obviously, at some point, for the better players, the league can't adjust back, and he's consistently good, that month would be gone from his full season performance. I think one month of adjustment, versus many months of good play is what you want to see on the players who are more borderline in terms of prospect certainty (many doubted Brown's ability to adjustment, particularly his ability to take walks).
I really like his track record of adjustments. He wasn't that great in college, he adjusted and by his junior season, he had the highest OPS of any hitter in the Big West League. In the Cape Cod League, his first year was not that good, but he came back the next year and he was pretty good. In the pros, where there is a lot more games, that adjustment happens in-season instead of between seasons.
I also like his attitude that I've see in all his interviews online. These have been a boon, in my eye, to getting a feel for the guy's psyche. He has a good head on his shoulder, does not take himself seriously, and just views the challenge as getting better all the time.
The good news too is that with his great defense, he could rise to the majors and be an average player sooner because with his speed and good eye at the plate, his BABIP should be above average, helping him to keep his OPS at least replacement level to begin with as he adjusts to the league and improves. And his OBP should be good enough initially to justify inserting him at leadoff sooner than later, and the power should come later, as that is part of his game that he says he works on, in the interviews I've seen.
I've very excited by him, I was excited after my analysis after the Giants drafted him and I'm even more excited now that he's had a great first pro season. As much as the Giants talked about not rushing prospects, I think that if he does well in the Eastern League to start, they will promote him to AAA by mid-season, to see if he can take over the lead-off/CF position well enough so that they can let Pagan go in the off-season or if they need a lead-off guy for 2013. I am drinking the Kool-Aid enough to think that he will do this and get some call up experience in September, before making the team in 2013.
LAD's Rubby De La Rosa
Comment From Rick: Did I read that Rubby De La Rosa has the best fastball that you've seen in the Sally ? Thursday February 16, 2012 5:00 Rick
Mike Newman: No, Rubby has the best fastball I've ever scouted... period. He never pitched in the Sally. I scouted him twice in Chattanooga last season before his promotion.
ogc: Ugh, that's not good to hear. He could help the D-gers recover from losing Kuroda, someone to watch for 2012.
AZ's Paul Goldschmidt
Comment From Philip: Speaking of 80 power, what was Goldschmidt considered to have when he was there? Thursday February 16, 2012 5:05 Philip
Mike Newman: I'm honestly not a big Goldschmidt guy, but may have been a little too hard on him when I scouted him last summer. I saw a touch of slider bat speed and wondered if it would translate well to the bigs, or if he'd be destined to make a living off of bullpens and #5 starters. I'm still not sold, but a 25-home run first baseman with strong walk rates has considerable value for sure.
ogc: I am not a big Goldschmidt guy either. Looking at his numbers, I think he was very lucky and will have a regression season in 2012, where playing the full season he'll be exposed. Still, as he noted, power like that could keep him in the lineup, he could be their replacement for that strikeout-homerun 3B Mark Reynolds who they traded to the Orioles. But back to the Giants, a regression like that will be good for the Giants, they will probably have to sit him down, and he'll probably have a season similar to Belt's 2011, except that he'll get a lot more AB's and playing time, because I don't think that they have any good alternatives.
SD's Cashner/Rizzo Trade
Comment From AJ: Who will end up getting the better deal in the Rizzo/Cashner trade. Is rizzo's wing too long to be abel to hit for avg and/or good power numbers in chi? Thursday February 16, 2012 5:21 AJ
Mike Newman: I didn't understand that deal from SD's perspective. For Chicago, buying low on Rizzo for Cashner who seems like a closer (maybe) in the end strikes me as a steal.
ogc: Yeah, I didn't get the trade either unless SD is pretty sure that Cashner is a future dominant closer. Then again, maybe they saw something about Rizzo that didn't look good to them and sold low.
SD's Casey Kelly
Comment From Tom: ETA and ceiling for Casey Kelly? And general question - do you think too much emphasis is put on K and BB rates below AA ball for pitchers? Thursday February 16, 2012 5:29 Tom
Mike Newman: Kelly will be up this year and now appears to be more of a mid-rotation guy. As for K/BB rates, for older prospects, they are laughably blown out of proportion. For age appropriate guys, they deserve a closer look for sure. however the numbers can be tricky as hitters simply can't handle fringe breaking balls at the lower levels in general leading to crazy numbers.
ogc: This chat make the A-Gon trade look worse and worse. Rizzo is sold low on for maybe a closer, and Kelly is now profiling as a middle rotation guy now. For A-Gon, you would hope to get more. Maybe that's why Hoyer left now, while the getting's good, as he maybe felt that he was on the ledge with SD's management. Good the Giants if they don't get good value for A-Gon, that and the Latos trade could help to keep them in the cellar.
I highlighted the last two sentences because I believe in them. If the prospect is older than the league, then his extra experience and development should lead him to dominate, so you have to take any good performance with a large grain of salt. If the prospect is age appropriate, then the way I see it, you want to see him among the league's leaders, as confirmation of his goodness. This is especially so for prospects who are younger than the league. The more of any outlier they are, the better the probability that he can translate that to the majors.
If you look at the league leaders, you will always find players who are older than the league up there, and if you go far back enough and look to see if they are in the majors, most are not. They will need to prove that they are good at every level they rise to. And most usually fail at some point.
But if you find age appropriate (Shandler books says 22 YO is age appropriate for AAA, 21 for AA, 20-ish for Advanced A, and 19-20 for A), then if he is among the leaders then that is a good performance for him. And if he is younger than these ages, then his rating goes even higher. These types of players have a greater probability of making it in the majors, at minimum as a regular starter for a while, and if he develops, an all-star.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Giants 2012 Arbitration Cases: Dust Clearing
Thought I would run down the Giants arbitration cases, using MLB Trade Rumor's estimates as guidelines (but not absolutes) and reports on recent signings.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Your 2011 Giants are 68-60: Longest Home Series
As Giants (and Giants fans) lick their wounds as they limped home, the Giants actually did OK on this tough road trip where, seemingly, the team lost someone to the DL or to a day-to-day injury every other game. They went 4-6 against tough teams, Florida, Atlanta, and a not as tough team, Houston.
Houston was greatly disappointing, but, first, we faced a true ace in Wandy in game 1, so that would have been tough to win in the first place, even with Ryan Vogelsong going. That made a series win that much harder since it required needing to win the last two games. Second, the pitching did very poorly, not even holding Houston to 3 runs or less in any of the games, though I must give a shout out to the bullpen for their 9.1 shutout IP which enabled the team to win that important swing game. And you know what? The BABIP gods decree that lousy teams like Houston will win games at least a third of the time, you just never know when that is going to happen. Sometimes that roulette wheel stops spinning and the ball drops in 00.
Had Vogelsong, Madison Bumgarner, and Dan Runzler been able to put together a good start, the Giants might have won the series. Particularly Bumgarner, where even a 4 run start would have delivered a win. As much as many Giants fans beat up on the offense for the Houston series loss, it was the pitching that cost us that series, the second game was very winnable.
Long and Winding Home Stretch
The Giants are coming up on a long stretch of home games, the longest of the season, as reported by Chris Haft. They have 18 home games out of the next 21 games, while Arizona has 10 of their next 20 at home (i.e. they only have half at home). If the two teams win at their current home and road performance so far this season (including the Giants winning 2 of 3 in SD, who they have had problems with before, but are 6-4 against them this season), the Giants should go 13-8 and D-backs go 11-9, and the Giants would be tied against them at the end of the stretch.
Unfortunately, that won't be enough to win the division because after that Arizona has 9 at home and 6 on the road while the Giants only has 3 at home and 10 on the road. And winning the division is the Giants only road to the playoffs as Uggla's hot hitting streak led the Braves to an 8 game lead in the wild-card race, rendering that race moot unless they suddenly lost 10 games in a road like the Padres did last season. The Giants must win the NL West to get into the playoffs.
And the journey, while not easy, could be easier or extremely daunting, depending on what happens in the final six games between the Giants and the D-backs, 3 at each home, including a series in Arizona just before the season ends. If the Giants can come out ahead 4-2 in those games, that would tie them up with Arizona, then the team winning the division would be determined by how they do against the rest of the schedule, where the Giants have a slight advantage in non-NL West teams, facing Houston for 4 games and Chicago for 3 games, both at home, while the D-backs got 4 on the road against Washington and 3 at home against the Pirates. Luckily, the Giants miss Wandy this time, he starts before and after the series.
And the Giants could come out ahead, they are 8-4 so far this season against Arizona. That is what they need to do in the remaining 6 games. But winning at home will be hard as Collmenter, Saunders, and Kennedy are the pitchers slated for them in that series. We have Sanchez/Runzler, Matt Cain, Tim Lincecum currently as our opposing pitchers. Since the day before is a day off, I think the Giants will skip that spot in the rotation and go with Cain, Lincecum, Vogelsong, which would give us a much better chance of winning that series.
In any case, as we all should know by now, the Giants will win or lose depending on their pitching rotation. The reason we went 2-5 in the last seven games is because the pitching let us down a lot (the offense wasn't great either but we expected that we would need to win by pitching). The pitching lost 2 games it would normally win because the Giants scored 4 and 5 runs in those losses, which the pitching usually wins with. Winning just one of those games would have gave us a successful 5-5 road trip and only half a game behind in the standings.
As it is, the Giants are only 1.5 games back. That is not insurmountable. They could easily pass them up with a good stretch of pitching, much like they did SD last season with a great stretch of pitching, which they needed because they were so much further behind last season.
The Offense: Getting Better But Needs to Get Even Better
The offense has been perking up lately and that will help. Brandon Belt has been awkwardly hitting well for power while also striking out a storm. The striking out is fine if he is hitting for power, but not so much when he's not, because that is what we need from him, power with a capital "HR". He has done well in that regard in his latest call-up, hitting .256/.333/.581/.915 so far. But before any of the Giants fans get sucked into the glory of all that, before yesterday's nice 4 hit game, he was batting only .184/.279/.474/.753 with 12 strikeouts in 38 AB. He's not "all dat" yet.
The real hero of the second half, after the All Star break, is Pablo Sandoval, who is hitting his Panda-like .320/.364/.547/.911 with 7 HR (leading the team) in 128 AB with only 19 K's and an OK 11 walks. And that is in spite of injuries he has sustained, which he has fought hard against losing any starts because of the injuries. That contrasts greatly with Carlos Beltran doing on the 15-day DL for a hand/wrist strain.
But one hitter cannot do it alone (as Barry Lamar discovered), and Sandoval has been supported by Aubrey Huff who has been hitting .284/.344/.457/.800 since the break, with 4 HR in 116 AB. In particular, since July 22nd, he has hit .311/.375/.500/.875 with 3 HR in 90 AB, only 14 K's but with 11 walks.
But the Giants will need more. Jeff Keppinger, after a hiccup initially, has hit .289/.316/.378/.694 for the Giants in 90 AB. He only has 3 walks but he only has 6 strikeouts too. If he can hit closer to his career .281/.335/.393/.728, then that would be great out of the 2-spot, where he has been hitting. Nate Schierholtz has been doing his lava hot and arctic cold routine again, but he has been hot lately, hitting .333/.417/.524/.940 in 42 AB with 2 HR, 4 BB, and 11 K's. That is a lot of strikeouts, suggesting this won't continue, but he has shown the talent to hit well before, so hopefully he is starting to put things together.
Lastly, Carlos Beltran should be coming off the DL on Tuesday, the first day of the home stand. If he can hit like he is capable, then the Giants offense could be taking off having Sandoval, Beltran, Huff, Schierholtz swinging well in the middle of the lineup. And he has incentive to do well now. If he continues to linger on the DL, that is what potential team bidders will have foremost on their minds, not his great 2011 season up until he joined the Giants. If he can turn it on, though, people will forget about his 15 game DL hiccup and remember his great hitting. It will be interesting.
And they are the Giants best hopes of offense in the final weeks. Aaron Rowand has regressed greatly, once again, in the second half of the season. No matter what he does for physical fitness in the winter - mountain bike riding mostly - he has suffered a sharp downturn in offense in the second half at some point. This time it happened as early as the All-Star break. Andres Torres has turned into a pumpkin overnight. Mike Fontenot has never been that good in any case, he's just a utility guy. Orlando Cabrera has been useless so far for the the Giants, hitting even worse than Brandon Crawford, who probably will take over the starting SS role once September 1st rolls up and the call-ups are allowed. Unless, that is, Miguel Tejada can recover the stroke he had before he went on the DL, when he was hitting .299/.348/.449/.796 since June 1st and was a major catalyst for the offense jumping up to 3.9 RS/game in July before he went on the DL.
Cody Ross is the only real wildcard on the offense for the rest of the season, barring some unforeseen breakout by a 40-man roster call-up surprise. He was hitting very well for the season, in the high 700 OPS range, until the All-Star break, and then he has been horrible, hitting .155/.232/.291/.523 since then. His 4 HR has helped but we need more out of him. If he can turn it on soon, that would help the offense even more.
The Pitching: Keep On Doing Well
Of course, none of this happens unless the pitching comes through. Unfortunately, a lot of key pitchers on the DL or still recovering: Brian Wilson, Sergio Romo, Jonathan Sanchez, and Barry Zito. Still, the pitching has performed great in the second half, 3.05 ERA overall, but there has been a lot of errors behind them, leading to a 3.67 runs allowed per game overall.
They, obviously, will need to continue doing well with the occasional hiccup. Lincecum has been leading the staff with a 1.13 ERA over 7 starts, though despite that he has only had a 4-3 record. Matt Cain has a 2.31 ERA but is only 2-4. Vogelsong has a 3.12 ERA but 4-2 record. Madison Bumgarner has a 3.31 ERA but 3-3 record. Those plus Zito's 0-3 and Dirty's 0-2, has led to the Giants 16-20 record since the All-Star break.
The relievers have been similarly good, with only Javier Lopez doing poorly, relatively, with a 3.75 ERA over 15 appearances. At lot of that was just bad BABIP luck, with 17 hits in 12.0 IP. Brian Wilson has a 3.38 ERA but been lucky with that, in 10.2 IP, only 10 hits, but 9 walks to go with 9 K's. We will need him to return healthy when he's off the DL. Same with Romo. But hopefully Steve Edlefsen can step in and do a decent enough imitation until they return. He was great in spring training and while his minor numbers look bad, he also had arm problems he played with until he went on the DL and got it healed up.
Stretch Run: Should be Fun
I find fighting for the playoffs fun, and as the old joke goes about aging, just consider the alternative. I've named my blog aptly because I still have OCD tendencies, but one that I mostly outgrew long ago was the need for everything to come out perfectly. That's never going to happen, you need to look at the overall picture and enjoy the view, should there be one.
And the Giants have a good view, both short term and long term. Barring injuries, the Giants pitching staff should be dominant for a long time, longer if Neukom ponies up the money to keep Lincecum and Cain (and Bumgarner) with us deep into this decade and give us a super-rotation. And Bochy seems to have a knack of knowing how to put together a killer bullpen that can shut down the opposition until the offense can eke out a run and win the game. As I've shown in my research, Bochy has been an outlier manager, statistically significantly good at winning 1-run games.
As far as this season goes, the offense, as maligned as it has been, had been good enough to win a lot of games with until around the time when the Giants picked up Beltran. Not that he is to blame, but that is roughly when the offense went off the rails. It did not help that Cody and Nate both went cold offensively at the same time, nor that Torres continued to struggle, or that Miggie, who was one of our hottest bats, went on the DL right around then. In addition, the catching, which had been hitting well in holding Buster's starting spot warm, both went cold after the All-Star break. I would guess that the toll of catching so many games finally caught up with them, since neither were used to or conditioned for playing so many games. Too many of the cylinders of the offense went dead at the same time.
But the offense appears to be perking up together lately and could get a big pickup when/if Beltran gets off the DL and start playing. There was a lot of talk in the media when he was first picked up, about how he was mentoring and leading some of the players he already knew on the team, Pablo and Torres, but I think the bigger story is if Panda's recent demand - no other way to put that - to play despite various injuries might inspire Beltran to come off the DL and play anyway. Beltran has been able to hit right-handed for a while but refused to play until he can bat left-handed as well. Kung Fu Panda insists on playing even though he can't bat right-handed, insisting to bat left-handed against LHP.
The pitching, despite hiccups at the start of August and in the past week, has been pitching great. The fielding has not been great, leading to many unearned runs - 11 in August already, 13 in July, only 10 or less in prior months - but that is the beauty of great pitching, it can overcome a lot of baseball sins: bad offense, bad defense.
And with the next 9 games against bad teams like San Diego, Houston, and Chicago, they could even come much closer to .500 for the month (currently at 7-13), if they can go 7-2 (leaving them at 14-15) for the rest of the month. Of course, the problem is that the 'Dres have been hot lately, winning 12 of 18, the Giants lost 2 of 3 in Houston and was close to getting swept, and the Cubs are 14-6 out of their last 20 games. The key thing is that most of these teams are bad on the road, only SD has done well on the road. So 6-3 looks possible and if the offense can pick up, then 7-2, but if not or the pitching continues to falter, they could end with an ugly 5-4 or worse record.
Then again, the D-backs are facing the hot Nats for 4 games on the road. The Nats are 36-25 at home and are 12-8 in their last 20 games. And they beat the Braves at home, winning that series, plus won a series at home against the Phillies as well in that streak, plus splitting with them on the road. They also won a series against the Reds at home. So the D-backs will have their hands full in upcoming games as well.
It should be a good pennant race. The Giants, despite all the injuries, look talented enough to stay close if not take the pennant for the rest of the season. Arizona is still doing it with some good luck, like Goldschmidt hitting well after their 1B good luck ended, but his BABIP is horribly high, for anyone, and he's not even speedy plus is striking out at a record pace (24 in last 49 AB, only 3 walks), making it all the more likely his BABIP will be crushed sooner or later. But the funny thing about baseball luck is that it can last him to the end of the season and regress to the mean next season.
In any case, the D-backs have regressed a lot in August, they are only 11-10 so far this month. The only reason they have taken the division lead is because the Giants lost a lot more games this month. Their pitching has regressed greatly, particularly with the addition of Marquis to the rotation. He was suppose to be the NL West killer, as he has been in his career, but he has a horrible 9.53 ERA so far in 3 starts for the D-backs. Plus Saunders and Collmenter have both regressed this month, as I had noted that they should earlier, 6.75 and 4.30, respectively. Plus Hudson has regressed some as well.
The schedule looks good for the Giants. They have 27 out of their remaining 34 games against NL West rivals and they have been 28-17 against these teams so far and are above .500 against the four teams, though only 6-4 against SD with 8 games to go and history noting that the Giants have lost the prior two season series against the 'Dres. They have 21 home games left and only 13 road games, with 18 of the next 21 games at home. All the teams are below .500, except for Arizona.
However, the Giants are only 43-40 against below .500 teams, 25-20 against .500 and above teams. They are one of three teams with records above .500 against winning teams, suggesting that they have struggled to get up against the poorer teams, while taking on the winning teams when presented with that challenge.
Given that there are not a lot of games left, hopefully the Giants can raise their performance against these losing teams in the rest of the season. They should be realizing that they need to step it up now, whether good team or mostly bad, and go for the throat, like the starting pitching did last season in September, going so many games without giving up more than 3 runs. Bruce Bochy, as I have noted before in a post, has that killer, go for the win instinct, so they should be getting the message soon if not already. And Kung Fu Panda should be inspiring them with his desire to play and to win, at all costs and pains.
We might not be leading now, but leading is over rated, just ask the 2003 Giants about that. We need the pitching and fielding to be going well, and frankly the fielding has been lacking, costing us runs we cannot afford to give up. The defense has costed us at least one win (which is a two win swing) in August, and we would either be ahead or behind half a game right now if the defense was up to normal standards. Also, we have been having hiccups in relief, particularly Wilson, due to his arm problems. Things should be better in September, when we can bring up the young players who are good on defense, and swap them in late in the game.
The media does not help with the fans overall sentiment. They go for the easy story: Giants offense stink. They can't accept that a very good pitcher was on and had a really good game or that even a bad team like the Astros do win some series. They encourage these extreme ups and downs in fan sentiment, I get that from reading the news accounts of this game, I get that from listening to any show about the Giants, but all this down in the mouth stuff is just useless worry.
We get that the offense stinks. Hello, whenever you take all your top hitters out of the lineup, you are going to really stink. Take Pujols and Holliday off the Cards, Ethier and Kemp off the Dodgers, Utley and Howard off the Phillies, they will stink too. We are missing Posey and Huff had been MIA until recently. Plus, we lost Freddy Sanchez, who was an important cog, and Torres has totally not performed at all. Expecting the Giants to replace all that is not realistic. I think the Giants have done as well as they can given the circumstances, without trading away all our best prospects. You roll the dice and see what happens.
It is not perfect, but life never is. What I focus on is that the Giants are in position to win the division, this season and for foreseeable seasons. That is really all you can ask for unless you are the Yankees and maybe the Red Sox. There are too many injuries and poor performances that can happen and derail your playoff chances. I think it has been a great season and looks to continue to be great for the rest of the season, barring any catastrophic injury to someone new. I have enjoyed this season a lot and hope that everyone can enjoy it as well, because it has been good and look to get better.
Houston was greatly disappointing, but, first, we faced a true ace in Wandy in game 1, so that would have been tough to win in the first place, even with Ryan Vogelsong going. That made a series win that much harder since it required needing to win the last two games. Second, the pitching did very poorly, not even holding Houston to 3 runs or less in any of the games, though I must give a shout out to the bullpen for their 9.1 shutout IP which enabled the team to win that important swing game. And you know what? The BABIP gods decree that lousy teams like Houston will win games at least a third of the time, you just never know when that is going to happen. Sometimes that roulette wheel stops spinning and the ball drops in 00.
Had Vogelsong, Madison Bumgarner, and Dan Runzler been able to put together a good start, the Giants might have won the series. Particularly Bumgarner, where even a 4 run start would have delivered a win. As much as many Giants fans beat up on the offense for the Houston series loss, it was the pitching that cost us that series, the second game was very winnable.
Long and Winding Home Stretch
The Giants are coming up on a long stretch of home games, the longest of the season, as reported by Chris Haft. They have 18 home games out of the next 21 games, while Arizona has 10 of their next 20 at home (i.e. they only have half at home). If the two teams win at their current home and road performance so far this season (including the Giants winning 2 of 3 in SD, who they have had problems with before, but are 6-4 against them this season), the Giants should go 13-8 and D-backs go 11-9, and the Giants would be tied against them at the end of the stretch.
Unfortunately, that won't be enough to win the division because after that Arizona has 9 at home and 6 on the road while the Giants only has 3 at home and 10 on the road. And winning the division is the Giants only road to the playoffs as Uggla's hot hitting streak led the Braves to an 8 game lead in the wild-card race, rendering that race moot unless they suddenly lost 10 games in a road like the Padres did last season. The Giants must win the NL West to get into the playoffs.
And the journey, while not easy, could be easier or extremely daunting, depending on what happens in the final six games between the Giants and the D-backs, 3 at each home, including a series in Arizona just before the season ends. If the Giants can come out ahead 4-2 in those games, that would tie them up with Arizona, then the team winning the division would be determined by how they do against the rest of the schedule, where the Giants have a slight advantage in non-NL West teams, facing Houston for 4 games and Chicago for 3 games, both at home, while the D-backs got 4 on the road against Washington and 3 at home against the Pirates. Luckily, the Giants miss Wandy this time, he starts before and after the series.
And the Giants could come out ahead, they are 8-4 so far this season against Arizona. That is what they need to do in the remaining 6 games. But winning at home will be hard as Collmenter, Saunders, and Kennedy are the pitchers slated for them in that series. We have Sanchez/Runzler, Matt Cain, Tim Lincecum currently as our opposing pitchers. Since the day before is a day off, I think the Giants will skip that spot in the rotation and go with Cain, Lincecum, Vogelsong, which would give us a much better chance of winning that series.
In any case, as we all should know by now, the Giants will win or lose depending on their pitching rotation. The reason we went 2-5 in the last seven games is because the pitching let us down a lot (the offense wasn't great either but we expected that we would need to win by pitching). The pitching lost 2 games it would normally win because the Giants scored 4 and 5 runs in those losses, which the pitching usually wins with. Winning just one of those games would have gave us a successful 5-5 road trip and only half a game behind in the standings.
As it is, the Giants are only 1.5 games back. That is not insurmountable. They could easily pass them up with a good stretch of pitching, much like they did SD last season with a great stretch of pitching, which they needed because they were so much further behind last season.
The Offense: Getting Better But Needs to Get Even Better
The offense has been perking up lately and that will help. Brandon Belt has been awkwardly hitting well for power while also striking out a storm. The striking out is fine if he is hitting for power, but not so much when he's not, because that is what we need from him, power with a capital "HR". He has done well in that regard in his latest call-up, hitting .256/.333/.581/.915 so far. But before any of the Giants fans get sucked into the glory of all that, before yesterday's nice 4 hit game, he was batting only .184/.279/.474/.753 with 12 strikeouts in 38 AB. He's not "all dat" yet.
The real hero of the second half, after the All Star break, is Pablo Sandoval, who is hitting his Panda-like .320/.364/.547/.911 with 7 HR (leading the team) in 128 AB with only 19 K's and an OK 11 walks. And that is in spite of injuries he has sustained, which he has fought hard against losing any starts because of the injuries. That contrasts greatly with Carlos Beltran doing on the 15-day DL for a hand/wrist strain.
But one hitter cannot do it alone (as Barry Lamar discovered), and Sandoval has been supported by Aubrey Huff who has been hitting .284/.344/.457/.800 since the break, with 4 HR in 116 AB. In particular, since July 22nd, he has hit .311/.375/.500/.875 with 3 HR in 90 AB, only 14 K's but with 11 walks.
But the Giants will need more. Jeff Keppinger, after a hiccup initially, has hit .289/.316/.378/.694 for the Giants in 90 AB. He only has 3 walks but he only has 6 strikeouts too. If he can hit closer to his career .281/.335/.393/.728, then that would be great out of the 2-spot, where he has been hitting. Nate Schierholtz has been doing his lava hot and arctic cold routine again, but he has been hot lately, hitting .333/.417/.524/.940 in 42 AB with 2 HR, 4 BB, and 11 K's. That is a lot of strikeouts, suggesting this won't continue, but he has shown the talent to hit well before, so hopefully he is starting to put things together.
Lastly, Carlos Beltran should be coming off the DL on Tuesday, the first day of the home stand. If he can hit like he is capable, then the Giants offense could be taking off having Sandoval, Beltran, Huff, Schierholtz swinging well in the middle of the lineup. And he has incentive to do well now. If he continues to linger on the DL, that is what potential team bidders will have foremost on their minds, not his great 2011 season up until he joined the Giants. If he can turn it on, though, people will forget about his 15 game DL hiccup and remember his great hitting. It will be interesting.
And they are the Giants best hopes of offense in the final weeks. Aaron Rowand has regressed greatly, once again, in the second half of the season. No matter what he does for physical fitness in the winter - mountain bike riding mostly - he has suffered a sharp downturn in offense in the second half at some point. This time it happened as early as the All-Star break. Andres Torres has turned into a pumpkin overnight. Mike Fontenot has never been that good in any case, he's just a utility guy. Orlando Cabrera has been useless so far for the the Giants, hitting even worse than Brandon Crawford, who probably will take over the starting SS role once September 1st rolls up and the call-ups are allowed. Unless, that is, Miguel Tejada can recover the stroke he had before he went on the DL, when he was hitting .299/.348/.449/.796 since June 1st and was a major catalyst for the offense jumping up to 3.9 RS/game in July before he went on the DL.
Cody Ross is the only real wildcard on the offense for the rest of the season, barring some unforeseen breakout by a 40-man roster call-up surprise. He was hitting very well for the season, in the high 700 OPS range, until the All-Star break, and then he has been horrible, hitting .155/.232/.291/.523 since then. His 4 HR has helped but we need more out of him. If he can turn it on soon, that would help the offense even more.
The Pitching: Keep On Doing Well
Of course, none of this happens unless the pitching comes through. Unfortunately, a lot of key pitchers on the DL or still recovering: Brian Wilson, Sergio Romo, Jonathan Sanchez, and Barry Zito. Still, the pitching has performed great in the second half, 3.05 ERA overall, but there has been a lot of errors behind them, leading to a 3.67 runs allowed per game overall.
They, obviously, will need to continue doing well with the occasional hiccup. Lincecum has been leading the staff with a 1.13 ERA over 7 starts, though despite that he has only had a 4-3 record. Matt Cain has a 2.31 ERA but is only 2-4. Vogelsong has a 3.12 ERA but 4-2 record. Madison Bumgarner has a 3.31 ERA but 3-3 record. Those plus Zito's 0-3 and Dirty's 0-2, has led to the Giants 16-20 record since the All-Star break.
The relievers have been similarly good, with only Javier Lopez doing poorly, relatively, with a 3.75 ERA over 15 appearances. At lot of that was just bad BABIP luck, with 17 hits in 12.0 IP. Brian Wilson has a 3.38 ERA but been lucky with that, in 10.2 IP, only 10 hits, but 9 walks to go with 9 K's. We will need him to return healthy when he's off the DL. Same with Romo. But hopefully Steve Edlefsen can step in and do a decent enough imitation until they return. He was great in spring training and while his minor numbers look bad, he also had arm problems he played with until he went on the DL and got it healed up.
Stretch Run: Should be Fun
I find fighting for the playoffs fun, and as the old joke goes about aging, just consider the alternative. I've named my blog aptly because I still have OCD tendencies, but one that I mostly outgrew long ago was the need for everything to come out perfectly. That's never going to happen, you need to look at the overall picture and enjoy the view, should there be one.
And the Giants have a good view, both short term and long term. Barring injuries, the Giants pitching staff should be dominant for a long time, longer if Neukom ponies up the money to keep Lincecum and Cain (and Bumgarner) with us deep into this decade and give us a super-rotation. And Bochy seems to have a knack of knowing how to put together a killer bullpen that can shut down the opposition until the offense can eke out a run and win the game. As I've shown in my research, Bochy has been an outlier manager, statistically significantly good at winning 1-run games.
As far as this season goes, the offense, as maligned as it has been, had been good enough to win a lot of games with until around the time when the Giants picked up Beltran. Not that he is to blame, but that is roughly when the offense went off the rails. It did not help that Cody and Nate both went cold offensively at the same time, nor that Torres continued to struggle, or that Miggie, who was one of our hottest bats, went on the DL right around then. In addition, the catching, which had been hitting well in holding Buster's starting spot warm, both went cold after the All-Star break. I would guess that the toll of catching so many games finally caught up with them, since neither were used to or conditioned for playing so many games. Too many of the cylinders of the offense went dead at the same time.
But the offense appears to be perking up together lately and could get a big pickup when/if Beltran gets off the DL and start playing. There was a lot of talk in the media when he was first picked up, about how he was mentoring and leading some of the players he already knew on the team, Pablo and Torres, but I think the bigger story is if Panda's recent demand - no other way to put that - to play despite various injuries might inspire Beltran to come off the DL and play anyway. Beltran has been able to hit right-handed for a while but refused to play until he can bat left-handed as well. Kung Fu Panda insists on playing even though he can't bat right-handed, insisting to bat left-handed against LHP.
The pitching, despite hiccups at the start of August and in the past week, has been pitching great. The fielding has not been great, leading to many unearned runs - 11 in August already, 13 in July, only 10 or less in prior months - but that is the beauty of great pitching, it can overcome a lot of baseball sins: bad offense, bad defense.
And with the next 9 games against bad teams like San Diego, Houston, and Chicago, they could even come much closer to .500 for the month (currently at 7-13), if they can go 7-2 (leaving them at 14-15) for the rest of the month. Of course, the problem is that the 'Dres have been hot lately, winning 12 of 18, the Giants lost 2 of 3 in Houston and was close to getting swept, and the Cubs are 14-6 out of their last 20 games. The key thing is that most of these teams are bad on the road, only SD has done well on the road. So 6-3 looks possible and if the offense can pick up, then 7-2, but if not or the pitching continues to falter, they could end with an ugly 5-4 or worse record.
Then again, the D-backs are facing the hot Nats for 4 games on the road. The Nats are 36-25 at home and are 12-8 in their last 20 games. And they beat the Braves at home, winning that series, plus won a series at home against the Phillies as well in that streak, plus splitting with them on the road. They also won a series against the Reds at home. So the D-backs will have their hands full in upcoming games as well.
It should be a good pennant race. The Giants, despite all the injuries, look talented enough to stay close if not take the pennant for the rest of the season. Arizona is still doing it with some good luck, like Goldschmidt hitting well after their 1B good luck ended, but his BABIP is horribly high, for anyone, and he's not even speedy plus is striking out at a record pace (24 in last 49 AB, only 3 walks), making it all the more likely his BABIP will be crushed sooner or later. But the funny thing about baseball luck is that it can last him to the end of the season and regress to the mean next season.
In any case, the D-backs have regressed a lot in August, they are only 11-10 so far this month. The only reason they have taken the division lead is because the Giants lost a lot more games this month. Their pitching has regressed greatly, particularly with the addition of Marquis to the rotation. He was suppose to be the NL West killer, as he has been in his career, but he has a horrible 9.53 ERA so far in 3 starts for the D-backs. Plus Saunders and Collmenter have both regressed this month, as I had noted that they should earlier, 6.75 and 4.30, respectively. Plus Hudson has regressed some as well.
The schedule looks good for the Giants. They have 27 out of their remaining 34 games against NL West rivals and they have been 28-17 against these teams so far and are above .500 against the four teams, though only 6-4 against SD with 8 games to go and history noting that the Giants have lost the prior two season series against the 'Dres. They have 21 home games left and only 13 road games, with 18 of the next 21 games at home. All the teams are below .500, except for Arizona.
However, the Giants are only 43-40 against below .500 teams, 25-20 against .500 and above teams. They are one of three teams with records above .500 against winning teams, suggesting that they have struggled to get up against the poorer teams, while taking on the winning teams when presented with that challenge.
Given that there are not a lot of games left, hopefully the Giants can raise their performance against these losing teams in the rest of the season. They should be realizing that they need to step it up now, whether good team or mostly bad, and go for the throat, like the starting pitching did last season in September, going so many games without giving up more than 3 runs. Bruce Bochy, as I have noted before in a post, has that killer, go for the win instinct, so they should be getting the message soon if not already. And Kung Fu Panda should be inspiring them with his desire to play and to win, at all costs and pains.
We might not be leading now, but leading is over rated, just ask the 2003 Giants about that. We need the pitching and fielding to be going well, and frankly the fielding has been lacking, costing us runs we cannot afford to give up. The defense has costed us at least one win (which is a two win swing) in August, and we would either be ahead or behind half a game right now if the defense was up to normal standards. Also, we have been having hiccups in relief, particularly Wilson, due to his arm problems. Things should be better in September, when we can bring up the young players who are good on defense, and swap them in late in the game.
The media does not help with the fans overall sentiment. They go for the easy story: Giants offense stink. They can't accept that a very good pitcher was on and had a really good game or that even a bad team like the Astros do win some series. They encourage these extreme ups and downs in fan sentiment, I get that from reading the news accounts of this game, I get that from listening to any show about the Giants, but all this down in the mouth stuff is just useless worry.
We get that the offense stinks. Hello, whenever you take all your top hitters out of the lineup, you are going to really stink. Take Pujols and Holliday off the Cards, Ethier and Kemp off the Dodgers, Utley and Howard off the Phillies, they will stink too. We are missing Posey and Huff had been MIA until recently. Plus, we lost Freddy Sanchez, who was an important cog, and Torres has totally not performed at all. Expecting the Giants to replace all that is not realistic. I think the Giants have done as well as they can given the circumstances, without trading away all our best prospects. You roll the dice and see what happens.
It is not perfect, but life never is. What I focus on is that the Giants are in position to win the division, this season and for foreseeable seasons. That is really all you can ask for unless you are the Yankees and maybe the Red Sox. There are too many injuries and poor performances that can happen and derail your playoff chances. I think it has been a great season and looks to continue to be great for the rest of the season, barring any catastrophic injury to someone new. I have enjoyed this season a lot and hope that everyone can enjoy it as well, because it has been good and look to get better.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Giants Reportedly Trade for Carlos Beltran
The rumored news is that the Giants have traded for Carlos Beltran, sending Zack Wheeler to the Mets. Out of his $6M remaining on the contract, the Giants will get a reported $4M from the Mets and pay the remaining $2M. Because Beltran is a 10-5 player, he gets 24 hours to reflect on the trade, but reportedly will approve it, according to a report by Tim Brown of Yahoo.
{Click title for the full post}
{Click title for the full post}
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Nate is Getting Great
Nate Schierholtz has been a fan favorite for a number of years now. He's also been one of my favorites too, I recall when he was first drafted (many considered him an overdraft of massive proportions) and when he came in and started hitting for power immediately and captured the imagination of Giants prospect hounds all over.
What I've noticed over his career, as he moved from one level to the next is that there is a period of transition that Nate has to get through before he can do well and advance to the next level. The way it looked to me was that Nate would feel his way towards success hitting in the new level. He would apparently purposefully swing to make good contact first, that is, he would hit for average but not for power initially. Then, once he got comfortable, then he was able to adjust his swing so that he could then tap into his prodigious power.
So, though his numbers didn't always look great, because of this pattern, he's always been one of my top position prospects, even as others looked to Fred Lewis and John Bowker, I was always in Nate's corner.
Another pattern that unfortunately has marked his career is that he would have a great period of hitting, like right now, then go totally cold, usually because of some injury that he was hiding and soon afterward, he would be DLed. Then he would return too fast and return unproductive, and eventually had to sit again until his next chance.
What I've noticed over his career, as he moved from one level to the next is that there is a period of transition that Nate has to get through before he can do well and advance to the next level. The way it looked to me was that Nate would feel his way towards success hitting in the new level. He would apparently purposefully swing to make good contact first, that is, he would hit for average but not for power initially. Then, once he got comfortable, then he was able to adjust his swing so that he could then tap into his prodigious power.
So, though his numbers didn't always look great, because of this pattern, he's always been one of my top position prospects, even as others looked to Fred Lewis and John Bowker, I was always in Nate's corner.
Another pattern that unfortunately has marked his career is that he would have a great period of hitting, like right now, then go totally cold, usually because of some injury that he was hiding and soon afterward, he would be DLed. Then he would return too fast and return unproductive, and eventually had to sit again until his next chance.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Nate and Romo Love
There are two misbeliefs out there that I disagree with (at least two that I will tackle in this post :^). One is that the Giants and Bochy don't like Nate Schierholtz. The other that Bochy don't like Romo. The latter is more opinion, less fact, but it is what it is.
Nate the Great
I see a lot of people saying that Bochy doesn't like Nate but I just don't see it. Looking at his usage pattern in the past, if anything, the Giants have tried multiple times to bend over backward and give him the starting RF job, but he would eventually hit his way out of the lineup, which I've attributed to 1) his penchant for injuring himself and 2) his penchant to continuing to play when he wasn't 100%.
In his first season, 2007, out of the Giants last 25 games, in September, he got into 24 of them, starting 15 of them, for a total of 73 PA/71 AB. He hit .282/.288/.394/.682, showing some potential. In 2008, he didn't get a call-up until September, but out of the Giants last 25 games, he got into 19 games, starting 18 of them, for a total of 81 PA/75 AB, hitting .320/.370/.493/.864, showing more of his potential.
In 2009, I think he was out of options, so he was with the team the whole season. Lewis, Rowand, Winn were the starters so he didn't get a lot of playing time, though still compiling 116 games, 285 AB. Lewis got a lot of rope, basically not hitting from mid-April to mid-June before Bochy mercifully sat him down, which opened starting time for Nate.
Nate starting getting regular starts on June 11th, and he earned his time over the next 3 weeks, starting in 16 of the next 21 games (playing in all), batting .406/.443/.609/1.052 with 3 HR in 64 AB. But as hot as he was then, he then cooled off over the next 3 weeks, still starting, 14 out of 19 games (playing in all), but hitting .242/.262/.339/.600 with 1 HR in 62 AB, until he injured himself and went on the DL. Once he returned, he continued to get starts, starting 15 out of 23 games (playing in 20), but hitting .200/.250/.383/.633, so he fell out of the rotation, only starting 6 of the next 26 games (though playing in 18), hitting .219/.286/.281/.567 with 0 HR in 32 AB.
In 2010, he lost the battle for RF in spring training, but Bowker soon hit his way off the team and organization. It also helped that Rowand got injured and opened playing time for Nate to show he belonged: over 3 weeks, he started 16 games out of 17 games, hitting .393/.469/.607/1.076 with 1 HR in 56 AB.
However, he made a diving catch in the first inning of the Phillies game in SF on April 27, 2010, which appears to not affect him immediately as he continued hitting well for the next 7 games, but he admitted this year that his right shoulder severely affected him the rest of the season, particularly after diving back into firstbase on May 19th. By then he had already been in a horrendous slump - .171/.209/.171/.380 in 11 starts out of 12 games - and the injury took him out of games for two days and out of the lineup for a week.
Once he returned, he started 3 of next 6 games (played in 5), hitting an anemic .091/.286/.091/.377, and after that, from June to the rest of the season, he didn't really get a chance to start again, which made people mad at Bochy and the Giants, but as Nate noted, he couldn't really hit well regularly as his shoulder did not heal because he came back too soon and it never ready got healthy until he stopped doing things over the off-season and worked at getting his shoulder healthy.
So this timeline is why I didn't really believe the rumors that Schierholtz was seriously on the trading block. Bochy has previously put him into the lineup and kept him there until his poor hitting forced the Giants hand. And clearly, to me at least, injuries have played a significant part of his cold periods and eventual benching. As Bochy said in an interview after the 2011 season began, it was a given to him that Nate was coming up with the Giants, never in doubt, though apparently Nate did not know that until nobody told him to pack up.
And that brings me to yesterday's game when I heard about Nate's dive. I instantly flashed back to all his other diving injuries which led soon to his benching. I really like Nate as a Giants and been rooting for him since he was clobbering pitchers in the Sally League for Hagerstown, and really loved him when I learned he was a Giants fan, like me, even though we grew up in the East Bay, plus I have college rooting interest as we both "played" baseball at Chabot College (I only took their summer program, thinking I would get into games, but there was maybe 2-3 people showing up, so we ended up spending the whole class feeding the pitching machine to each other; which was ultimately even better as I got to face high velocity pitches for the first time and got an appreciation for the hitters who claimed that they could see the stitches on the ball rotating; it was great just getting to hit over and over like that).
I think the Giants really like Nate's abilities, based on how they have given him the starting job, for the most part, a number of times and let him keep it for a while even while he struggled. But when Belt comes on the team, it will push one of the outfielders off the team, and it has appeared to me to be Nate all off-season so I was pretty sad thinking about that, as I still think he can be a good regular starter in the majors. An injury now won't help his case, though if he stinks it up really good, maybe no team will touch him and we can stash him in AAA until 2012. But his defense is so good that I wholeheartedly believe that another team will pick him up and stash him on their bench, an up and coming team looking for good pieces for their team in 2012.
So I'm rooting hard for Nate right now as this could be his last chance to stick with the team. He's been hitting very well and if he can continue hitting like this into mid-season, at least to July, that increases the chances that the Giants might decide that the best thing to do would be to DFA Aaron Rowand and eat his contract. He does not even have to hit for that much to be very valuable to the team given how good his RF defense is.
Our 2012 OF, believe it or not, is actually not that certain. Pat Burrell and Cody Ross are both free agents, and Andres Torres, as much as I believe in his new batting mechanics and abilities to sting the ball, will still be 34 years old, an age when players abilities often fail them and the end is nye. So keeping a young guy with potential like Nate would behoove the Giants, I believe.
And then there is Rowand, whose new batting stance is about the weirdest I've ever see a professional hitter use, and I recall Joe Morgan's elbow flap, seen Mel Ott's leg lift, heck, I would even rate it weirder than Gary Brown's jittery batting stance in college. It looks like he is bending backwards unnaturally then suddenly snaps to the proper normal batting stance once the pitcher starts throwing. I don't see how he can keep his eye on the ball while his head is moving like that. Just seems to add another layer of difficulty on his eyes and brains needing to adjust for that head movement while the pitcher is throwing.
Heck, I guess I should be glad, he has been so cold for the past month (from April 18-May 18: .196/.265/.272/.536) that if he continues this for another month or two, the Giants would be hard pressed to release someone as talented defensively as Schierholtz for someone like Rowand who at best is average defensively today and hits worse than Nate. Rowand could then go mountain biking for another team this off-season.
Romo Usage
Like others I've been concerned about Sergio Romo's usage, or lack thereof, lately. He clearly have great stats and works well against both righties and lefties. Yet he has hardly gotten many innings, with Bochy going regularly to Lopez, Ramirez, and even Affeldt, who is having another bad season. However, Brian Wilson's twisted ankle and walks brought comments that perhaps he's not fully recovered from his oblique strain that DLed him to start the season, so that gave me a thought about how this usage might make sense.
Speculation on my part, but my thought is this: what if Romo is respected enough by the Giants that they want him around to save Wilson, so to speak? Now that's not an absolute, as he got into a game the other day in the 8th and then they took him out, though I don't blame Bochy for swapping out to Lopez, he has been lights out versus LHP and the game was in play at that point, I like that Bochy is aggressive in going for the win at key points like that. Also, you have to give Romo some in-game pitching to keep him sharp.
But given that Wilson has not exactly been his 2010 self since the season started and, if you would recall another oblique injury that lingered (Lowry) all season, a sensible person would be prepared in some way for the possibility that Wilson might not be at his best any particular day and holding back Romo would make sense as a tactic in this scenario. Plus, who do you want pitching if Wilson has pitched and the game is tied and we could go into extra innings if we don't score in the bottom of the 9th (that's how Wilson got all those wins, pitching when the game was already tied or got tied with him pitching).
Again, just my speculation, but that is what makes sense to me right now given the idea that Wilson might not be 100% yet (or ever) this season.
Another thought I had previously but never got to write on it is that perhaps the Giants are showcasing Santiago Casilla (obviously the DL probably ruined this possibility), Ramon Ramirez, and Javier Lopez as potential mid-season trading pieces. The Padres picked up Cameron Maybin for two relievers, maybe the Giants can pick up a prospect in trading away a bullpen piece, what with Marc Kroon ready in the minors, Heath Hembree potentially ready by year end, a la Runzler in 2009, or 2012 at the latest. There is also Dan Otero, returned back to AA after an injury knocked out him out for a large portion of his 2010 season, but previously he was a closer on the rise up the system. But with how well they have been pitching, it would be hard to trade any of them now, I assume, but if there are arms that they think are ready for the majors, why not? So I thought I would throw this in.
But really, if Ramirez/Lopez can handle the 8th, why not save Romo to potentially save Wilson and/or pitch well for us into extra innings, giving us two innings (since he's getting more rest, he can pitch longer if necessary)?
A's Series
Yeah, not really up for a full exploration yet, but with Vogelsong vs. Cahill, Lincecum vs. Brett Anderson, Jonathan Sanchez vs. Gio Gonzalez, it could go either way, with an edge to the Giants because they are home.
Had the rainout not happened, the rotation would have been Linecum, Sanchez, Cain and I would think we would have won that series.
I like Vogelsong but Cahill has been lights out this season, hard to bet against him in that matchup, looks like win there. Lincecum is facing the "worse" starter of the three, and as long as the last start was just the occasional blip all good pitchers have, the Giants should win that one. Which leaves the last matchup and Sanchez has been good enough most of the season, and the last two games have seen great improvement, only 2 walks total with both games the most IP in a start this season, but Gio has been even better this season, so that is a push, and so is the series.
Good news for the Giants offense is that Andres Torres, Freddie Sanchez, Aubrey Huff, Buster Posey, Nate Schierholtz, and Cody Ross have been relatively hot, on and off, and if they can pull it all together at the same time, the offense will be more than good enough during this short two series homestand if the starting pitching holds up. I don't care for the A's (or rather, I don't care for their fans so I root to beat the A's) so I feel good that the Giants can pull out a series win, but it's no sure thing and a sweep either way would be improbable.
Go Giants!
Nate the Great
I see a lot of people saying that Bochy doesn't like Nate but I just don't see it. Looking at his usage pattern in the past, if anything, the Giants have tried multiple times to bend over backward and give him the starting RF job, but he would eventually hit his way out of the lineup, which I've attributed to 1) his penchant for injuring himself and 2) his penchant to continuing to play when he wasn't 100%.
In his first season, 2007, out of the Giants last 25 games, in September, he got into 24 of them, starting 15 of them, for a total of 73 PA/71 AB. He hit .282/.288/.394/.682, showing some potential. In 2008, he didn't get a call-up until September, but out of the Giants last 25 games, he got into 19 games, starting 18 of them, for a total of 81 PA/75 AB, hitting .320/.370/.493/.864, showing more of his potential.
In 2009, I think he was out of options, so he was with the team the whole season. Lewis, Rowand, Winn were the starters so he didn't get a lot of playing time, though still compiling 116 games, 285 AB. Lewis got a lot of rope, basically not hitting from mid-April to mid-June before Bochy mercifully sat him down, which opened starting time for Nate.
Nate starting getting regular starts on June 11th, and he earned his time over the next 3 weeks, starting in 16 of the next 21 games (playing in all), batting .406/.443/.609/1.052 with 3 HR in 64 AB. But as hot as he was then, he then cooled off over the next 3 weeks, still starting, 14 out of 19 games (playing in all), but hitting .242/.262/.339/.600 with 1 HR in 62 AB, until he injured himself and went on the DL. Once he returned, he continued to get starts, starting 15 out of 23 games (playing in 20), but hitting .200/.250/.383/.633, so he fell out of the rotation, only starting 6 of the next 26 games (though playing in 18), hitting .219/.286/.281/.567 with 0 HR in 32 AB.
In 2010, he lost the battle for RF in spring training, but Bowker soon hit his way off the team and organization. It also helped that Rowand got injured and opened playing time for Nate to show he belonged: over 3 weeks, he started 16 games out of 17 games, hitting .393/.469/.607/1.076 with 1 HR in 56 AB.
However, he made a diving catch in the first inning of the Phillies game in SF on April 27, 2010, which appears to not affect him immediately as he continued hitting well for the next 7 games, but he admitted this year that his right shoulder severely affected him the rest of the season, particularly after diving back into firstbase on May 19th. By then he had already been in a horrendous slump - .171/.209/.171/.380 in 11 starts out of 12 games - and the injury took him out of games for two days and out of the lineup for a week.
Once he returned, he started 3 of next 6 games (played in 5), hitting an anemic .091/.286/.091/.377, and after that, from June to the rest of the season, he didn't really get a chance to start again, which made people mad at Bochy and the Giants, but as Nate noted, he couldn't really hit well regularly as his shoulder did not heal because he came back too soon and it never ready got healthy until he stopped doing things over the off-season and worked at getting his shoulder healthy.
So this timeline is why I didn't really believe the rumors that Schierholtz was seriously on the trading block. Bochy has previously put him into the lineup and kept him there until his poor hitting forced the Giants hand. And clearly, to me at least, injuries have played a significant part of his cold periods and eventual benching. As Bochy said in an interview after the 2011 season began, it was a given to him that Nate was coming up with the Giants, never in doubt, though apparently Nate did not know that until nobody told him to pack up.
And that brings me to yesterday's game when I heard about Nate's dive. I instantly flashed back to all his other diving injuries which led soon to his benching. I really like Nate as a Giants and been rooting for him since he was clobbering pitchers in the Sally League for Hagerstown, and really loved him when I learned he was a Giants fan, like me, even though we grew up in the East Bay, plus I have college rooting interest as we both "played" baseball at Chabot College (I only took their summer program, thinking I would get into games, but there was maybe 2-3 people showing up, so we ended up spending the whole class feeding the pitching machine to each other; which was ultimately even better as I got to face high velocity pitches for the first time and got an appreciation for the hitters who claimed that they could see the stitches on the ball rotating; it was great just getting to hit over and over like that).
I think the Giants really like Nate's abilities, based on how they have given him the starting job, for the most part, a number of times and let him keep it for a while even while he struggled. But when Belt comes on the team, it will push one of the outfielders off the team, and it has appeared to me to be Nate all off-season so I was pretty sad thinking about that, as I still think he can be a good regular starter in the majors. An injury now won't help his case, though if he stinks it up really good, maybe no team will touch him and we can stash him in AAA until 2012. But his defense is so good that I wholeheartedly believe that another team will pick him up and stash him on their bench, an up and coming team looking for good pieces for their team in 2012.
So I'm rooting hard for Nate right now as this could be his last chance to stick with the team. He's been hitting very well and if he can continue hitting like this into mid-season, at least to July, that increases the chances that the Giants might decide that the best thing to do would be to DFA Aaron Rowand and eat his contract. He does not even have to hit for that much to be very valuable to the team given how good his RF defense is.
Our 2012 OF, believe it or not, is actually not that certain. Pat Burrell and Cody Ross are both free agents, and Andres Torres, as much as I believe in his new batting mechanics and abilities to sting the ball, will still be 34 years old, an age when players abilities often fail them and the end is nye. So keeping a young guy with potential like Nate would behoove the Giants, I believe.
And then there is Rowand, whose new batting stance is about the weirdest I've ever see a professional hitter use, and I recall Joe Morgan's elbow flap, seen Mel Ott's leg lift, heck, I would even rate it weirder than Gary Brown's jittery batting stance in college. It looks like he is bending backwards unnaturally then suddenly snaps to the proper normal batting stance once the pitcher starts throwing. I don't see how he can keep his eye on the ball while his head is moving like that. Just seems to add another layer of difficulty on his eyes and brains needing to adjust for that head movement while the pitcher is throwing.
Heck, I guess I should be glad, he has been so cold for the past month (from April 18-May 18: .196/.265/.272/.536) that if he continues this for another month or two, the Giants would be hard pressed to release someone as talented defensively as Schierholtz for someone like Rowand who at best is average defensively today and hits worse than Nate. Rowand could then go mountain biking for another team this off-season.
Romo Usage
Like others I've been concerned about Sergio Romo's usage, or lack thereof, lately. He clearly have great stats and works well against both righties and lefties. Yet he has hardly gotten many innings, with Bochy going regularly to Lopez, Ramirez, and even Affeldt, who is having another bad season. However, Brian Wilson's twisted ankle and walks brought comments that perhaps he's not fully recovered from his oblique strain that DLed him to start the season, so that gave me a thought about how this usage might make sense.
Speculation on my part, but my thought is this: what if Romo is respected enough by the Giants that they want him around to save Wilson, so to speak? Now that's not an absolute, as he got into a game the other day in the 8th and then they took him out, though I don't blame Bochy for swapping out to Lopez, he has been lights out versus LHP and the game was in play at that point, I like that Bochy is aggressive in going for the win at key points like that. Also, you have to give Romo some in-game pitching to keep him sharp.
But given that Wilson has not exactly been his 2010 self since the season started and, if you would recall another oblique injury that lingered (Lowry) all season, a sensible person would be prepared in some way for the possibility that Wilson might not be at his best any particular day and holding back Romo would make sense as a tactic in this scenario. Plus, who do you want pitching if Wilson has pitched and the game is tied and we could go into extra innings if we don't score in the bottom of the 9th (that's how Wilson got all those wins, pitching when the game was already tied or got tied with him pitching).
Again, just my speculation, but that is what makes sense to me right now given the idea that Wilson might not be 100% yet (or ever) this season.
Another thought I had previously but never got to write on it is that perhaps the Giants are showcasing Santiago Casilla (obviously the DL probably ruined this possibility), Ramon Ramirez, and Javier Lopez as potential mid-season trading pieces. The Padres picked up Cameron Maybin for two relievers, maybe the Giants can pick up a prospect in trading away a bullpen piece, what with Marc Kroon ready in the minors, Heath Hembree potentially ready by year end, a la Runzler in 2009, or 2012 at the latest. There is also Dan Otero, returned back to AA after an injury knocked out him out for a large portion of his 2010 season, but previously he was a closer on the rise up the system. But with how well they have been pitching, it would be hard to trade any of them now, I assume, but if there are arms that they think are ready for the majors, why not? So I thought I would throw this in.
But really, if Ramirez/Lopez can handle the 8th, why not save Romo to potentially save Wilson and/or pitch well for us into extra innings, giving us two innings (since he's getting more rest, he can pitch longer if necessary)?
A's Series
Yeah, not really up for a full exploration yet, but with Vogelsong vs. Cahill, Lincecum vs. Brett Anderson, Jonathan Sanchez vs. Gio Gonzalez, it could go either way, with an edge to the Giants because they are home.
Had the rainout not happened, the rotation would have been Linecum, Sanchez, Cain and I would think we would have won that series.
I like Vogelsong but Cahill has been lights out this season, hard to bet against him in that matchup, looks like win there. Lincecum is facing the "worse" starter of the three, and as long as the last start was just the occasional blip all good pitchers have, the Giants should win that one. Which leaves the last matchup and Sanchez has been good enough most of the season, and the last two games have seen great improvement, only 2 walks total with both games the most IP in a start this season, but Gio has been even better this season, so that is a push, and so is the series.
Good news for the Giants offense is that Andres Torres, Freddie Sanchez, Aubrey Huff, Buster Posey, Nate Schierholtz, and Cody Ross have been relatively hot, on and off, and if they can pull it all together at the same time, the offense will be more than good enough during this short two series homestand if the starting pitching holds up. I don't care for the A's (or rather, I don't care for their fans so I root to beat the A's) so I feel good that the Giants can pull out a series win, but it's no sure thing and a sweep either way would be improbable.
Go Giants!
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Your 2011 Giants are 10-11: Boarding the Pirates Ship
Whoa, that series couldn't have gone much worse. Our pitching just didn't have it, but neither did the offense. However, that is more of what people thought the Braves would be this season - good hitting, great pitching - and they finally showed up, after an 8-12 start. Unfortunately, they decided to show up after stinking it up against the D-gers.
Now the Giants get to go on a 10 game road trip. I'll bet the home "series" probably felt more like a road trip than being at home, because you fly in and you fly out. They will face the Pirates, Nats, and Mets, in that order, 3-4-3. They are 9-12, 10-10, and 9-13, respectively.
The Giants are playing three beatable teams and thus need to play up to their potential and come out of this trip at least 6-4, if not 7-3 since they got swept.
Game 1: Cain vs. Morton
Morton has pitched twice against the Giants in Pittsburgh, with a 2.08 ERA in 13.0 IP, 12 K's and 4 walks. However, he's been beaten pretty badly in SF, and while no batter has more than maybe 3 games against him, Rowand, Tejada, Whiteside, Huff, Burrell, and Fontenot all have OPS of over 1.000 against him. But it looks like he might have turned a corner last season, he was much better in the second half of the season with a 57% DOM, and appears to be continuing it into this season, though it also looks very flukey so far, his 3.33 ERA, because he only has 12 K's in 27.0 IP against 15 BB's, a horrible ratio no matter how you look at it.
I think Cain should win this game, he has been remarkably steady in delivering DOM starts and avoiding bad starts and since he had a bad start in his last outing, I have to think that he should have another good outing in Pittsburgh, whereas Morton, while he has a good ERA this season, looks like a train wreck waiting to happen, he has lucked out with a .250 BABIP so far this season.
Game 2: Vogelsong vs. McDonald
Bumgarner has no history in Pittsburgh but as a LHP, has an advantage here in suppressing LHB power, as this park boosts LHB's power and hitting, while suppressing RHB's power and hitting. So this could be the park to get him out of his funk this season, as he and the Giants struggle to figure out what is wrong with their wunderkind, who already has 2 DIS starts out of 4.
McDonald has a 10.13 ERA in 4 starts, 12 K's vs. 12 BB's in 18.2 IP, 25 hits, 5 HRs, so far in 2010. He has a career 4.00 ERA against the Giants in Pittsburgh (and maybe also LA, hard to tell easily). He has struggled to stay in the majors and continue to struggle, obviously. Any other team, and he might be gone already and still might be soon, depending on how he handles the Giants. Lots of guys with OPS over 1.000 against McDonald, albeit in 1-2 starts against him: Sandoval, Schierholtz, Franchez, DeRosa, Posey, Rowand, plus Ross good.
Have to think that Bumgarner would normally be able to take down McDonald in this start, and the Giants win. But we really have no idea whether he's back to normal or still the struggling starter, and thus it would be a toss of the coin for this game with a strong lean towards Bumgarner because of his success in the majors last season, whereas McDonald is struggling for his major league life in this start.
Game 3: Vogelsong vs. Karsten
Karstens has not been that good a pitcher in the majors, so what he has been doing this season is a bit of a surprise, though obviously over two games, anything can happen. However, his peripherals last season was much better than his ending 4.92 ERA, as he had 72 K's vs. only 27 BB's, but unfortunately he had 122.2 IP and those balls fell in last season, 146 of them, including 21 HRs, and .311 BABIP. And what people have to remember is that while generally pitchers mean BABIP is around .300, borderline pitchers like Karsten might legitimately have a higher BABIP than the mean. FYI, his BABIP this season is also .311, though his career BABIP is .295 so far. And if he's out by 75 pitches, the Giants get into their bullpen.
Hard to call this game. Vogelsong vs. Karstens could go so many different ways. Just call it even and see how it goes.
Giants Thoughts
First, I have to point out a columnist's complaint against the Giants over the weekend. I like his prose, so I won't out him, but he basically complained that the Giants showed Brandon Belt no patience whereas it took them all season to sit Pablo Sandoval in 2010. Of course, the HUGE difference, clearly to me, is that Sandoval had a monster year in the majors in 2009 and thus earned the creds and respect to be kept up in 2010, whereas Belt has no experience at all in the minors and we don't know how well he will eventually do in the majors. Had Sandoval started out in the majors in 2008 as Belt did, he would not have been given the starting job in 2009 nor given all year in 2010 to figure things out. And as I showed with my analysis previously, he was still good in spurts during the 2010 season.
Second, I've seen some article questioning whether Sandoval is back because he was good in April 2009 as well and then sunk down in performance. Again, it appears clear to me that Sandoval was affected by personal issues last season, and his ups and downs in the second half, against publicly known personal issues (flying down to sign divorce papers, his mother's close brush with death) shows that he is unable to put such issues aside. Still, that's my analysis against others.
However, one good indicator that this is the old Pandoval and not the Sadoval of 2010 is his homers. In 2009, he had 25 homers, and according to HitTrackerOnline.com, 10 of those homers were No Doubts homers. And remember, he didn't start really hitting them in bunches until June 2009, so the total number is suppressed by him only really hitting homers in 4 of the 6 months, and he averaged roughly 2-3 No Doubts per month. He still was tied for 7th in No Doubts homers in the NL in 2009; prorating would have put him either in the lead or tied for 2nd.
In 2010, he only had 3 No Doubts homers, out of 13 total homers. He was way down the list for both, as a result. And he didn't even average one No Doubts per month, he had one in April, one in June, and one in August, about two months apart.
In 2011 so far, only 21 games, he already has 3 No Doubts homer, which matches what he had last season after only 21 games, and he reached that #3 on April 19th. That is exactly like what he was accomplishing in 2009, and nothing like his 2010. And I don't recall my stats exactly, but I'm sure that the odds are very low that someone whose true talent is 0.5 No Doubt homers per month, as he was in 2010, could randomly produce 3.0 No Doubt homers as he did this April. Sandoval is back, no question.
Third, there is the rumor about Nate Schierholtz being on the trading block and thus may be DFAed when Torres returns. This is why you don't want to listen to rumors from non-Giants analysts or Giants fans who are not analysts. Schierholtz has been on the block since spring training, that rumor has been out there for a long time. Somebody is just refreshing that rumor.
To anyone who has paid attention to the Giants 25 man roster situation and analyzed the consequences of Brandon Belt being promoted, it has been clear since off-season that there is a 25-man crunch this season. We saw that first with Ishikawa, there was no space for him to start the season had Ross been healthy, and the Giants instead used Ross's injury as an opportunity to kick the tires on Belt and see if he was ready or not (turned out not).
And when Belt is ready again for his promotion, four of the spots will be taken by Whiteside, DeRosa, Fontenot, and Rowand, and the fifth will be taken by who ever sits when Belt comes up, either Huff (1B), Burrell (LF), or Ross (RF). The Giants could put him in a platoon because Ross was clearly a platoon player by his 2010 performance, and Burrell doesn't play a full season in LF anyway. And that would push Schierholtz off the 25-man roster at that point.
That is why the Giants have been looking to trade Schierholtz since spring training, something any Giants close observer would have noticed, but the non-Giants baseball writers wouldn't. Schierholtz could start for other teams and the Giants will want to harvest that value rather than put him on waivers and lose him for essentially nothing.
As I've made clear in recent posts, I would rather keep Schierholtz around for 2012, because we have question marks regarding the outfield - Burrell age, Torres age/legs, Ross age - and might need him as a starter. Thomas Neal probably will be ready by next season, but I think Schierholtz could be good for us as a starter, providing superlative defense in RF while also providing power and speed. And I think he'll eventually be a good enough hitter as well. However, unless the Giants either trade or release Rowand, Fontenot, Burrell, Ross, or DeRosa, Schierholtz is the one who will go.
But the good thing is that Belt most probably won't be coming up until June-July, and by that time, things will be much clearer about who is performing and who is not, plus there could be an injury to keep a spot open. In addition, with Aaron Rowand hitting so well, I can see him continuing to get regular starts, particularly against LHP with Torres sitting, and by then the Chicago White Sox might be ready to trade for Rowand, who they still like, in a deal similar to the deal that brought them Juan Pierre, with the Giants taking on most of Rowand's salary in 2011 and another, say, $4M so that they only pay $8M in 2012 and getting an OK prospect back in return. Pierre has not been hitting, so they might want the upgrade offensively in LF. Long shot, I know, but I think is still a possibility since the ChiSox has clearly not been adverse to odd deals, like them picking up Alexis Rios when he looked liked a dead contract too.
About the rotation, between putting Vogelsong in the Pirates series or skipping and inserting into 5th spot later, I think either rotation works. The main difference is that inserting Vogelsong now results in Cain getting two starts against Colorado in our next three series (to June 5th) while Lincecum gets two starts if they skip.
Regarding this series, the Giants look like they can handle their pitchers. But can our pitchers handle their hitters? Much will depend on how Bumgarner and Vogelsong pitches, obviously, and we are not sure what we will get out of them. Could be two good games, could be two bad, could be mix, can't really say. Plus, this being a lefty park, look for Sandoval and Huff, and maybe Posey (since he hits opposite field bombs) to lead the way offensively if we are to win the series.
But clearly the Giants need to get back on their winning ways, though I must say that this season is turning out a bit like last season's, where things went up and down, two steps forward, one step back, and so forth.
And it is tough without one of the big reasons for last season's results, Andres Torres up top of the lineup, out on the DL.
Plus Aubrey Huff has scuffled - again - in the early season. This was around when he started heating up seriously last season, though he is a little late heating up, but with the cold weather lingering, maybe that is why his poor hitting lingers? His homers looked like him re-heating, then he went Oh for 12 in a three game stretch. He has only hit .286/.395/.371/.767 in Pittsburgh, though, in 11 games, 9 starts there. However, with forecasts for rain in Pittsburgh, it should not be any warmer there.
Then again, the offense has actually been producing, it has been the pitching and fielding that has been letting the team down, as you can see in the team's W/L performance in the box off to the right. The team will probably not take off until the pitching starts coming through, they have not been delivering the 3 runs or less defense that we had last season, while the offense has been producing more often than not, despite missing Torres.
Last Series Preview For At Least a While
Lastly, I will note for those who like my series summaries that I will stop doing them for at least a while. Just haven't been up for them this season. Part of it is that I'm still seeing the brainiacs who think they are smarter than the Giants management continue their attacks on him, and that saddens me like I can't explain. And if they were making sense, I could accept it, but sadly, I'm not seeing it, it is the same old crap as before.
Also, I think the Giants World Championship has taken away a bit of the urgency I felt before. Not that it's a sure thing, but knowing that the team is in pretty good shape overall makes each series matchups not as important at the moment. Particularly knowing that the team is battling short right now, as Torres and Zito are out and Bumgarner is struggling. I will probably start it up again as we get closer to the playoffs and there is more urgency to each series, but I'm just not feeling it (though perhaps it is also because I've been battling bugs for a while now and am just run down).
The only urgency I can sense right now is that Miguel Tejada is struggling defensively and thus many have already given up on him. I am OK with him in there, as long as we are not that far behind, maybe if we get to 10 games back it would seem like more of a problem. But as we saw last season and prior seasons, a team could start their run in the June-July timeframe and still end the season well and get into the playoffs.
I think the Giants are willing to let him play for May and if he's still going poorly defensively, then I think the Giants would look to make a move for a trade for a better fielding SS and DFA him in the mid-season timeframe. The Giants are only 1.5 games behind the wildcard leader, the Cards, so there is plenty of time before they have to make a move. For example, had Bumgarner been pitching the way we expected, we would be in fine shape in the win column at the moment.
ADDENDUM: I will continue to post whenever I feel the need to. Heck, I might end up posting more posts, as I've been waiting for the previews to voice some opinions.
Now the Giants get to go on a 10 game road trip. I'll bet the home "series" probably felt more like a road trip than being at home, because you fly in and you fly out. They will face the Pirates, Nats, and Mets, in that order, 3-4-3. They are 9-12, 10-10, and 9-13, respectively.
The Giants are playing three beatable teams and thus need to play up to their potential and come out of this trip at least 6-4, if not 7-3 since they got swept.
First, the Giants need to board the Pirates and hijack the games. Obviously, ideally sweep the series but at this point, should just focus on winning series, 2-1, 3-1, than sweeping. Most of all, the pitching needs to straighten up. However, amazing how teams seem to straighten up against the Pirates.
Game 1: Cain vs. Morton
Matt Cain: Cain struggled through his first bad start of the season in his last outing, giving up six runs on nine hits in 4 2/3 innings. He allowed three runs and 14 hits over his first 19 innings of the year.
Charlie Morton: After throwing a complete game against the Reds on April 15, Morton struggled mightily against the Marlins in his latest start. The 27-year-old allowed six runs on 10 hits over five innings to earn his first loss of the season.Matt Cain has been stellar in a park that favors LHB homers, probably because he does so well at neutralizing flyballs. 3 starts, 20.1 IP, 20 K's and 5 walks, only 20 hits, 1 HR. Somehow they bunched them and he only has a 3.98 ERA in Pittsburgh, but his peripherals says that he has been dominant here before. And he has, he has had 3 DOM starts - PQS 5, 4, 5 - here against the Pirates in 2007, 8, 9. And against current Pirates, he has mostly shut down the hitters he has faced previously, only Garrett Jones has given him real trouble, most either have never faced him much or not done well.
Morton has pitched twice against the Giants in Pittsburgh, with a 2.08 ERA in 13.0 IP, 12 K's and 4 walks. However, he's been beaten pretty badly in SF, and while no batter has more than maybe 3 games against him, Rowand, Tejada, Whiteside, Huff, Burrell, and Fontenot all have OPS of over 1.000 against him. But it looks like he might have turned a corner last season, he was much better in the second half of the season with a 57% DOM, and appears to be continuing it into this season, though it also looks very flukey so far, his 3.33 ERA, because he only has 12 K's in 27.0 IP against 15 BB's, a horrible ratio no matter how you look at it.
I think Cain should win this game, he has been remarkably steady in delivering DOM starts and avoiding bad starts and since he had a bad start in his last outing, I have to think that he should have another good outing in Pittsburgh, whereas Morton, while he has a good ERA this season, looks like a train wreck waiting to happen, he has lucked out with a .250 BABIP so far this season.
Game 2: Vogelsong vs. McDonald
Madison Bumgarner (my take): After having a much improved start in his third start of the season, he imploded in the third inning of his fourth start after getting squeezed by the umpires, for seemingly the umpteenth time this season. He has been mediocre and lousy this season, up and down, and needs to get himself together. He needs to loosen up and chillax.
James McDonald: Despite working on his mechanics, McDonald's early struggles continued in his last outing. The right-hander gave up eight runs on six hits over just three innings in a loss to the Marlins.As was hinted by Bochy earlier, by noting that Vogelsong will get the 5th starter spot, Bumgarner pitches this game and Vogelsong the next. Bumgarner gets the easier assignment facing McDonald, who has been struggling a lot, while Karstens has not. Bumgarner probably needs the lack of pressure so that he can let go and not try to force the matter with his pitching, as he appears to be trying to strike out batters 1-2-3 strikes yer out with each pitch (the pitcher's equivalent of a hitter trying to hit a 5-run homer).
Bumgarner has no history in Pittsburgh but as a LHP, has an advantage here in suppressing LHB power, as this park boosts LHB's power and hitting, while suppressing RHB's power and hitting. So this could be the park to get him out of his funk this season, as he and the Giants struggle to figure out what is wrong with their wunderkind, who already has 2 DIS starts out of 4.
McDonald has a 10.13 ERA in 4 starts, 12 K's vs. 12 BB's in 18.2 IP, 25 hits, 5 HRs, so far in 2010. He has a career 4.00 ERA against the Giants in Pittsburgh (and maybe also LA, hard to tell easily). He has struggled to stay in the majors and continue to struggle, obviously. Any other team, and he might be gone already and still might be soon, depending on how he handles the Giants. Lots of guys with OPS over 1.000 against McDonald, albeit in 1-2 starts against him: Sandoval, Schierholtz, Franchez, DeRosa, Posey, Rowand, plus Ross good.
Have to think that Bumgarner would normally be able to take down McDonald in this start, and the Giants win. But we really have no idea whether he's back to normal or still the struggling starter, and thus it would be a toss of the coin for this game with a strong lean towards Bumgarner because of his success in the majors last season, whereas McDonald is struggling for his major league life in this start.
Game 3: Vogelsong vs. Karsten
Ryan Vogelsong: Vogelsong has been great in the short time he's been in the majors with the Giants this season. He has earned this starting assignment and looks good for a good start, given how well he pitched in AAA and majors so far.
Jeff Karstens: This will be Karstens' third spot start for Ross Ohlendorf. Karstens was strong in his last outing, giving the Pirates six efficient innings in a win over Washington. The only concern is that Karstens tends to tire when his pitch count gets near 75.Andy Baggarly has a great article on Ryan Vogelsong today. Great story, was traded from Giants to Pirates in Jason Schmidt trade, and after a long journeyman's journey which included a 3 year stay in Japan, he returns like a prodigal son to the Giants, the team he wanted to be with now because he enjoyed the organization when he was here before. That is why he did not ask for an out option when he signed, he wants to stay here, unlike Suppan. And he has pitched great and the comments by Bochy is that Vogelsong has learned to become a pitcher rather than a thrower.
Karstens has not been that good a pitcher in the majors, so what he has been doing this season is a bit of a surprise, though obviously over two games, anything can happen. However, his peripherals last season was much better than his ending 4.92 ERA, as he had 72 K's vs. only 27 BB's, but unfortunately he had 122.2 IP and those balls fell in last season, 146 of them, including 21 HRs, and .311 BABIP. And what people have to remember is that while generally pitchers mean BABIP is around .300, borderline pitchers like Karsten might legitimately have a higher BABIP than the mean. FYI, his BABIP this season is also .311, though his career BABIP is .295 so far. And if he's out by 75 pitches, the Giants get into their bullpen.
Hard to call this game. Vogelsong vs. Karstens could go so many different ways. Just call it even and see how it goes.
Giants Thoughts
First, I have to point out a columnist's complaint against the Giants over the weekend. I like his prose, so I won't out him, but he basically complained that the Giants showed Brandon Belt no patience whereas it took them all season to sit Pablo Sandoval in 2010. Of course, the HUGE difference, clearly to me, is that Sandoval had a monster year in the majors in 2009 and thus earned the creds and respect to be kept up in 2010, whereas Belt has no experience at all in the minors and we don't know how well he will eventually do in the majors. Had Sandoval started out in the majors in 2008 as Belt did, he would not have been given the starting job in 2009 nor given all year in 2010 to figure things out. And as I showed with my analysis previously, he was still good in spurts during the 2010 season.
Second, I've seen some article questioning whether Sandoval is back because he was good in April 2009 as well and then sunk down in performance. Again, it appears clear to me that Sandoval was affected by personal issues last season, and his ups and downs in the second half, against publicly known personal issues (flying down to sign divorce papers, his mother's close brush with death) shows that he is unable to put such issues aside. Still, that's my analysis against others.
However, one good indicator that this is the old Pandoval and not the Sadoval of 2010 is his homers. In 2009, he had 25 homers, and according to HitTrackerOnline.com, 10 of those homers were No Doubts homers. And remember, he didn't start really hitting them in bunches until June 2009, so the total number is suppressed by him only really hitting homers in 4 of the 6 months, and he averaged roughly 2-3 No Doubts per month. He still was tied for 7th in No Doubts homers in the NL in 2009; prorating would have put him either in the lead or tied for 2nd.
In 2010, he only had 3 No Doubts homers, out of 13 total homers. He was way down the list for both, as a result. And he didn't even average one No Doubts per month, he had one in April, one in June, and one in August, about two months apart.
In 2011 so far, only 21 games, he already has 3 No Doubts homer, which matches what he had last season after only 21 games, and he reached that #3 on April 19th. That is exactly like what he was accomplishing in 2009, and nothing like his 2010. And I don't recall my stats exactly, but I'm sure that the odds are very low that someone whose true talent is 0.5 No Doubt homers per month, as he was in 2010, could randomly produce 3.0 No Doubt homers as he did this April. Sandoval is back, no question.
Third, there is the rumor about Nate Schierholtz being on the trading block and thus may be DFAed when Torres returns. This is why you don't want to listen to rumors from non-Giants analysts or Giants fans who are not analysts. Schierholtz has been on the block since spring training, that rumor has been out there for a long time. Somebody is just refreshing that rumor.
To anyone who has paid attention to the Giants 25 man roster situation and analyzed the consequences of Brandon Belt being promoted, it has been clear since off-season that there is a 25-man crunch this season. We saw that first with Ishikawa, there was no space for him to start the season had Ross been healthy, and the Giants instead used Ross's injury as an opportunity to kick the tires on Belt and see if he was ready or not (turned out not).
And when Belt is ready again for his promotion, four of the spots will be taken by Whiteside, DeRosa, Fontenot, and Rowand, and the fifth will be taken by who ever sits when Belt comes up, either Huff (1B), Burrell (LF), or Ross (RF). The Giants could put him in a platoon because Ross was clearly a platoon player by his 2010 performance, and Burrell doesn't play a full season in LF anyway. And that would push Schierholtz off the 25-man roster at that point.
That is why the Giants have been looking to trade Schierholtz since spring training, something any Giants close observer would have noticed, but the non-Giants baseball writers wouldn't. Schierholtz could start for other teams and the Giants will want to harvest that value rather than put him on waivers and lose him for essentially nothing.
As I've made clear in recent posts, I would rather keep Schierholtz around for 2012, because we have question marks regarding the outfield - Burrell age, Torres age/legs, Ross age - and might need him as a starter. Thomas Neal probably will be ready by next season, but I think Schierholtz could be good for us as a starter, providing superlative defense in RF while also providing power and speed. And I think he'll eventually be a good enough hitter as well. However, unless the Giants either trade or release Rowand, Fontenot, Burrell, Ross, or DeRosa, Schierholtz is the one who will go.
But the good thing is that Belt most probably won't be coming up until June-July, and by that time, things will be much clearer about who is performing and who is not, plus there could be an injury to keep a spot open. In addition, with Aaron Rowand hitting so well, I can see him continuing to get regular starts, particularly against LHP with Torres sitting, and by then the Chicago White Sox might be ready to trade for Rowand, who they still like, in a deal similar to the deal that brought them Juan Pierre, with the Giants taking on most of Rowand's salary in 2011 and another, say, $4M so that they only pay $8M in 2012 and getting an OK prospect back in return. Pierre has not been hitting, so they might want the upgrade offensively in LF. Long shot, I know, but I think is still a possibility since the ChiSox has clearly not been adverse to odd deals, like them picking up Alexis Rios when he looked liked a dead contract too.
About the rotation, between putting Vogelsong in the Pirates series or skipping and inserting into 5th spot later, I think either rotation works. The main difference is that inserting Vogelsong now results in Cain getting two starts against Colorado in our next three series (to June 5th) while Lincecum gets two starts if they skip.
Regarding this series, the Giants look like they can handle their pitchers. But can our pitchers handle their hitters? Much will depend on how Bumgarner and Vogelsong pitches, obviously, and we are not sure what we will get out of them. Could be two good games, could be two bad, could be mix, can't really say. Plus, this being a lefty park, look for Sandoval and Huff, and maybe Posey (since he hits opposite field bombs) to lead the way offensively if we are to win the series.
But clearly the Giants need to get back on their winning ways, though I must say that this season is turning out a bit like last season's, where things went up and down, two steps forward, one step back, and so forth.
And it is tough without one of the big reasons for last season's results, Andres Torres up top of the lineup, out on the DL.
Plus Aubrey Huff has scuffled - again - in the early season. This was around when he started heating up seriously last season, though he is a little late heating up, but with the cold weather lingering, maybe that is why his poor hitting lingers? His homers looked like him re-heating, then he went Oh for 12 in a three game stretch. He has only hit .286/.395/.371/.767 in Pittsburgh, though, in 11 games, 9 starts there. However, with forecasts for rain in Pittsburgh, it should not be any warmer there.
Then again, the offense has actually been producing, it has been the pitching and fielding that has been letting the team down, as you can see in the team's W/L performance in the box off to the right. The team will probably not take off until the pitching starts coming through, they have not been delivering the 3 runs or less defense that we had last season, while the offense has been producing more often than not, despite missing Torres.
Last Series Preview For At Least a While
Lastly, I will note for those who like my series summaries that I will stop doing them for at least a while. Just haven't been up for them this season. Part of it is that I'm still seeing the brainiacs who think they are smarter than the Giants management continue their attacks on him, and that saddens me like I can't explain. And if they were making sense, I could accept it, but sadly, I'm not seeing it, it is the same old crap as before.
Also, I think the Giants World Championship has taken away a bit of the urgency I felt before. Not that it's a sure thing, but knowing that the team is in pretty good shape overall makes each series matchups not as important at the moment. Particularly knowing that the team is battling short right now, as Torres and Zito are out and Bumgarner is struggling. I will probably start it up again as we get closer to the playoffs and there is more urgency to each series, but I'm just not feeling it (though perhaps it is also because I've been battling bugs for a while now and am just run down).
The only urgency I can sense right now is that Miguel Tejada is struggling defensively and thus many have already given up on him. I am OK with him in there, as long as we are not that far behind, maybe if we get to 10 games back it would seem like more of a problem. But as we saw last season and prior seasons, a team could start their run in the June-July timeframe and still end the season well and get into the playoffs.
I think the Giants are willing to let him play for May and if he's still going poorly defensively, then I think the Giants would look to make a move for a trade for a better fielding SS and DFA him in the mid-season timeframe. The Giants are only 1.5 games behind the wildcard leader, the Cards, so there is plenty of time before they have to make a move. For example, had Bumgarner been pitching the way we expected, we would be in fine shape in the win column at the moment.
ADDENDUM: I will continue to post whenever I feel the need to. Heck, I might end up posting more posts, as I've been waiting for the previews to voice some opinions.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Your 2011 Giants: Projected 25-man Roster
With the Cactus League portion of Spring Training over, Andy Baggarly posted his projected 25-man roster and I thought I would comment.
Giants Thoughts
A major issue facing the Giants is fitting 26 major league players on a 25 man roster, plus there are players like Brandon Belt and Dan Runzler who deserve to be on the roster, sooner or later. Plus there is Guillermo Moto, who was a good reliever for us in helping the Giants win the 2010 World Series Championship.
Baggarly projects that Mota and Travis Ishikawa will win the last positions. That means that he expects Brian Wilson to be ready by opening day and that Nate Schierholtz will be gone, probably traded since that is the rumor out there.
The roster Baggarly projects:
SP: Lincecum, Sanchez, Cain, Zito, Bumgarner (5)
RP: Wilson, Affeldt, Romo, Lopez, Casilla, Ramirez, Mota (7)
IF: Posey, Whiteside, Huff, Ishikawa, Sanchez, Fontenot, Tejada, Sandoval, DeRosa (9)
OF: Burrell, Torres, Ross, Rowand (4)
That fits what the Giants have said in the past week or so. One is that they intend to carry 12 pitchers, which brought to a head the issue that there are currently 14 position players signed, and apparently the rumor of trading Schierholtz appears to be real and he'll be the one gone. There is also the news that Mota had provisionally made the 25-man roster (not sure what exactly that means other than he's on the roster as of right now, but that things could change, though unclear what that change could potentially be).
Consequences of Mota winning the last bullpen spot is that Suppan and Kroon (only Schulman has reported this, Baggarly has not yet) have already said that they won't accept a AAA assignment, while Vogelsong said this organization is where he wants to be and Runzler has another option they can use.
Should Wilson's injury recur, they could hold onto Suppan or Kroon longer, until Wilson returns. I would bet on Kroon, one, because Suppan has not been that impressive, either in spring training or the past few seasons, while Kroon has been a top closer in Japan. To my view, I think this would then buy time for Kroon to prove his worth over others in the bullpen, such as Mota or even Ramon Ramirez, as once Wilson returns, someone will have to leave.
However, I am most disappointed that Schierholtz is projected to be the one going first. The most obvious position player to go, in my opinion, is Ishikawa, which is hard for me to say because I've been one of the few Giants fan supporters of Ishikawa over his career. Belt looks like the 1B long term, plus Sandoval, among other possible replacements, are in the system, ready to take over 1B.
In an ideal world, I think the Giants want to keep Ishikawa because he proved to be a valuable left-handed power bat off the bench, plus is great defensively at 1B, but that position looks to be covered pretty well going forward. If they hadn't brought him up early, he might still have an option to be sent down to AAA and brought back in 2012, but unfortunately, they did. But that's water under the bridge, and the reality is that he's the guy to go first.
As I noted on El Lefty Malo, the Giants should try to keep Schierholtz. Like Rowand, he is injury prone but when healthy, he was a very productive hitter, a great RF. We don't know how the OF will look in 2012 and I would prefer to keep him as a cheap potential starter. Both Ross and Burrell are free agents, and both have to prove that they can continue to hit well, to boot, in 2012. Torres, as great a story as he is, will be 34 for the 2012 season. Huff is probably the LF by then, but he, like Burrell, also has to prove that 2010 was not a fluke season plus he'll be 35, just like Burrell. Age and fluke results are big question marks with these potential starters for us in 2012, and Ross is not yet signed for that season either, although he expressed his strong interest in sticking around.
If Schierholtz is traded, that suggests that the Giants don't think that he'll get over the injury hump and/or that the outfielders coming up the system - Thomas Neal, Francisco Peguero, Gary Brown, Roger Kieschnick - will be ready enough, plus maybe that they are banking that one or two of the older players will still be performing at their high level still. And that certainly is a possibility, I was thinking more of the worse case scenario with respect to the 2012 OF situation.
Rowand Not As Bad As People Think
As much as people point to Rowand as a sunk cost, they forget that he starts each season hot, when some sort of injury takes him down. As late as August 2008, his OPS was still near 800, which is pretty good offensively for a CF. Same with 2009. Both years, a horrible September ends a season which otherwise was relatively productive for a CF, but a mitigating factor is that he started off each season with some sort of injury, which we don't know whether it affected him later in the season or not. It could also have been that he was out of shape, as he finally started trying to get in shape before the 2010 season, though only via mountain bike riding, so I don't know how that improves his overall baseball fitness, hopefully it does or he'll be doing it for nothing. We all know 2010, but forget that he took a pitch off his head. He started off hot when he returned but was not productive eventually, and I think that head injury, plus part time play affected his overall performance.
Overall, he has been above the average OPS for a CF for that season in 10 out of the 18 months he has been a Giant. So he has not been that bad, just not good enough, and given that his defense is not as good as advertised, he was still rated slightly above average by both Fangraph's UZR, as well as Baseball-Reference.com's Rdrs. That plus his offense being slightly below average (in terms of OPS) makes him an average player, and average players are worth something in baseball.
Of course, I understand that Rowand is not worth $12M per year, which is not what an average players gets, but he's not an unrecoverable cost either when he is about an average player. He is nothing like Russ Ortiz when the D-backs dropped him, he was having all sorts of injury problems and wasn't even an average starter. Rowand at least was average, with the caveat that when he's good, he's very good, but when he's bad, he's been very bad. And that is the impression he leaves with most Giants fans because he ends the season on the steep downside, even though, if you examine his time with the Giants, he's been a valuable player about half the time. I think injury and lack of conditioning contributed to his problems as a Giant.
Ideal Scenario: with Ross out, Rowand hits like he has before, forcing himself into the outfield rotation with Burrell, Torres, and Ross when he comes back, plus then Huff should Rowand still be around when Belt is ready to come up. With Rowand hitting well (hopefully) but healthy because he's playing less often, by mid-season a team will be desperate enough to trade for Rowand to be their starting CF, with the Giants chipping in $9M of the roughly $18M left on his contract. At which point, the Giants can bring up Brandon Belt.
Or, if Rowand is not hitting well, then the Giants finally release him, knowing that they gave Rowand a good shot to prove himself, and wash their hands by releasing him and bringing up Belt.
Still, ideally, I would rather keep Schierholtz around because I think he can be an average producing RF, even if his HR power does not come, he can produce a lot with hits even though he don't walk much, and, once again, fans fall into the trap that just because he's not a good player, he's not a valuable cog of the team. Not every starter is average, the way the MLB is set up, it is extremely hard to have every single starter on your team be above average, there will always be players below average. That is why an potentially average starter like Schierholtz holds value for me.
Ishikawa, while I think he can be a very useful starting 1B for certain teams which gets their offense from other positions, is replaceable by Belt and a number of other players. He is a useful player off the bench, but the 25-man roster crunch is so severe that if the Giants are unable to unload Rowand, even if he is hitting well, they would lose both Ishikawa and Schierholtz anyway. I think you try to hold onto Schierholtz, who is relatively more valuable than Ishikawa for the Giants right now, first.
The Giants should hold onto at least one of them, in any case, because they can be valuable power bats off the bench, plus both have been good baserunners in seasons past, particularly Schierholtz, giving the Giants a power/speed/defense lefty combo off the bench. Frankly, if I had the choice, I would think strongly about whether the Giants really want to hold onto Fontenot, although that would make it very hard for DeRosa to make it into games since an injury to either MI once he is in would force the Giants to play an OF as an MI.
But as the Cody Ross injury shows, sometimes things sort themselves out before you have to make a decision. In any case, I'm excited that the season will start in a few days.
Go World Champion Giants!!!
Giants Thoughts
A major issue facing the Giants is fitting 26 major league players on a 25 man roster, plus there are players like Brandon Belt and Dan Runzler who deserve to be on the roster, sooner or later. Plus there is Guillermo Moto, who was a good reliever for us in helping the Giants win the 2010 World Series Championship.
Baggarly projects that Mota and Travis Ishikawa will win the last positions. That means that he expects Brian Wilson to be ready by opening day and that Nate Schierholtz will be gone, probably traded since that is the rumor out there.
The roster Baggarly projects:
SP: Lincecum, Sanchez, Cain, Zito, Bumgarner (5)
RP: Wilson, Affeldt, Romo, Lopez, Casilla, Ramirez, Mota (7)
IF: Posey, Whiteside, Huff, Ishikawa, Sanchez, Fontenot, Tejada, Sandoval, DeRosa (9)
OF: Burrell, Torres, Ross, Rowand (4)
That fits what the Giants have said in the past week or so. One is that they intend to carry 12 pitchers, which brought to a head the issue that there are currently 14 position players signed, and apparently the rumor of trading Schierholtz appears to be real and he'll be the one gone. There is also the news that Mota had provisionally made the 25-man roster (not sure what exactly that means other than he's on the roster as of right now, but that things could change, though unclear what that change could potentially be).
Consequences of Mota winning the last bullpen spot is that Suppan and Kroon (only Schulman has reported this, Baggarly has not yet) have already said that they won't accept a AAA assignment, while Vogelsong said this organization is where he wants to be and Runzler has another option they can use.
Should Wilson's injury recur, they could hold onto Suppan or Kroon longer, until Wilson returns. I would bet on Kroon, one, because Suppan has not been that impressive, either in spring training or the past few seasons, while Kroon has been a top closer in Japan. To my view, I think this would then buy time for Kroon to prove his worth over others in the bullpen, such as Mota or even Ramon Ramirez, as once Wilson returns, someone will have to leave.
However, I am most disappointed that Schierholtz is projected to be the one going first. The most obvious position player to go, in my opinion, is Ishikawa, which is hard for me to say because I've been one of the few Giants fan supporters of Ishikawa over his career. Belt looks like the 1B long term, plus Sandoval, among other possible replacements, are in the system, ready to take over 1B.
In an ideal world, I think the Giants want to keep Ishikawa because he proved to be a valuable left-handed power bat off the bench, plus is great defensively at 1B, but that position looks to be covered pretty well going forward. If they hadn't brought him up early, he might still have an option to be sent down to AAA and brought back in 2012, but unfortunately, they did. But that's water under the bridge, and the reality is that he's the guy to go first.
As I noted on El Lefty Malo, the Giants should try to keep Schierholtz. Like Rowand, he is injury prone but when healthy, he was a very productive hitter, a great RF. We don't know how the OF will look in 2012 and I would prefer to keep him as a cheap potential starter. Both Ross and Burrell are free agents, and both have to prove that they can continue to hit well, to boot, in 2012. Torres, as great a story as he is, will be 34 for the 2012 season. Huff is probably the LF by then, but he, like Burrell, also has to prove that 2010 was not a fluke season plus he'll be 35, just like Burrell. Age and fluke results are big question marks with these potential starters for us in 2012, and Ross is not yet signed for that season either, although he expressed his strong interest in sticking around.
If Schierholtz is traded, that suggests that the Giants don't think that he'll get over the injury hump and/or that the outfielders coming up the system - Thomas Neal, Francisco Peguero, Gary Brown, Roger Kieschnick - will be ready enough, plus maybe that they are banking that one or two of the older players will still be performing at their high level still. And that certainly is a possibility, I was thinking more of the worse case scenario with respect to the 2012 OF situation.
Rowand Not As Bad As People Think
As much as people point to Rowand as a sunk cost, they forget that he starts each season hot, when some sort of injury takes him down. As late as August 2008, his OPS was still near 800, which is pretty good offensively for a CF. Same with 2009. Both years, a horrible September ends a season which otherwise was relatively productive for a CF, but a mitigating factor is that he started off each season with some sort of injury, which we don't know whether it affected him later in the season or not. It could also have been that he was out of shape, as he finally started trying to get in shape before the 2010 season, though only via mountain bike riding, so I don't know how that improves his overall baseball fitness, hopefully it does or he'll be doing it for nothing. We all know 2010, but forget that he took a pitch off his head. He started off hot when he returned but was not productive eventually, and I think that head injury, plus part time play affected his overall performance.
Overall, he has been above the average OPS for a CF for that season in 10 out of the 18 months he has been a Giant. So he has not been that bad, just not good enough, and given that his defense is not as good as advertised, he was still rated slightly above average by both Fangraph's UZR, as well as Baseball-Reference.com's Rdrs. That plus his offense being slightly below average (in terms of OPS) makes him an average player, and average players are worth something in baseball.
Of course, I understand that Rowand is not worth $12M per year, which is not what an average players gets, but he's not an unrecoverable cost either when he is about an average player. He is nothing like Russ Ortiz when the D-backs dropped him, he was having all sorts of injury problems and wasn't even an average starter. Rowand at least was average, with the caveat that when he's good, he's very good, but when he's bad, he's been very bad. And that is the impression he leaves with most Giants fans because he ends the season on the steep downside, even though, if you examine his time with the Giants, he's been a valuable player about half the time. I think injury and lack of conditioning contributed to his problems as a Giant.
Ideal Scenario: with Ross out, Rowand hits like he has before, forcing himself into the outfield rotation with Burrell, Torres, and Ross when he comes back, plus then Huff should Rowand still be around when Belt is ready to come up. With Rowand hitting well (hopefully) but healthy because he's playing less often, by mid-season a team will be desperate enough to trade for Rowand to be their starting CF, with the Giants chipping in $9M of the roughly $18M left on his contract. At which point, the Giants can bring up Brandon Belt.
Or, if Rowand is not hitting well, then the Giants finally release him, knowing that they gave Rowand a good shot to prove himself, and wash their hands by releasing him and bringing up Belt.
Still, ideally, I would rather keep Schierholtz around because I think he can be an average producing RF, even if his HR power does not come, he can produce a lot with hits even though he don't walk much, and, once again, fans fall into the trap that just because he's not a good player, he's not a valuable cog of the team. Not every starter is average, the way the MLB is set up, it is extremely hard to have every single starter on your team be above average, there will always be players below average. That is why an potentially average starter like Schierholtz holds value for me.
Ishikawa, while I think he can be a very useful starting 1B for certain teams which gets their offense from other positions, is replaceable by Belt and a number of other players. He is a useful player off the bench, but the 25-man roster crunch is so severe that if the Giants are unable to unload Rowand, even if he is hitting well, they would lose both Ishikawa and Schierholtz anyway. I think you try to hold onto Schierholtz, who is relatively more valuable than Ishikawa for the Giants right now, first.
The Giants should hold onto at least one of them, in any case, because they can be valuable power bats off the bench, plus both have been good baserunners in seasons past, particularly Schierholtz, giving the Giants a power/speed/defense lefty combo off the bench. Frankly, if I had the choice, I would think strongly about whether the Giants really want to hold onto Fontenot, although that would make it very hard for DeRosa to make it into games since an injury to either MI once he is in would force the Giants to play an OF as an MI.
But as the Cody Ross injury shows, sometimes things sort themselves out before you have to make a decision. In any case, I'm excited that the season will start in a few days.
Go World Champion Giants!!!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)