Your 2025 Giants: Post Mortem

The Giants Front Office did their annual past season (they call it postseason, but I associate that with the playoffs) press conference, which is available on YouTube. Posey doubled down on and reiterated what he said in last year’s press conferences about the Giants strategy:  pitching and defense.  He also said it again in this NBC Sports snippet.  

He said the Giants this offseason will focus on starting pitching, noting how he thought they had SP depth at the start of the season and learned the adage that you never can have enough pitching. He also noted that they will pursue bullpen help as well.  

Hey Zaidi! My Baseball Business Plan: Pitchers Produce more WAR than Position Players

Happy Thanksgiving!  What people don't really realize about WAR is how much is contributed by the good to great pitchers vs. the position players on a per game basis.

Your 2021 Giants Post-Mortem: The Subtle Art of Shoving it up Their Butt

As Clay Bellinger indelicately put it after the Dodgers, ugh, beat the Giants in the 2021 NLDS, the first time the long-time rivals met in the Divisional Playoffs era, Logan Webb "Huge props to Logan Webb ... he shoved it ... up our butt, twice"

Twittter Video Link

Baseball Prospectus Secret Sauce: Their Rationale for Ending It Was Incorrect

[NOTE: wrote most of this up before, just getting around to posting now]

Baseball Prospectus did a study for their great book, "Baseball Between the Numbers", of how teams historically, during the divisional baseball era, got deep into the playoffs, answering the question Billy Beane had, of why his sh!t didn't work in the playoffs.

They found, on an overall basis, that offensive stats was random and all over the place, meaning that it is defensively how teams got deep into the playoffs, that is, pitching and fielding.  They narrowed down the variables to three key metrics:  K/9 for the pitching staff, WRXL for their closer, and their Fielding Defense metric, FRAA.  The only offensive metric that seemed tied to going deep was stolen base attempts, which they attributed to the link of team speed to stolen base attempts.

For a few years, BP published analysis based on their "secret sauce".  But after a number of failures, they decided to end the analysis, making the assumption that the playoffs had changed in some way to make it fail as a strategy.

Your 2020 Giants: Rule 5 Draft Pick, RHP Dany Jimenez

The Giants selected RHP Dany Jimenez (again from the Blue Jays, who they took another pitcher last year) in the Rule 5 Draft, filling in their last 40-man roster spot.  As usual, they need to keep him on their 25-man roster the whole 2020 season, or they'll have to offer him back to the Blue Jays for half what they paid them (I think it's $100,000 to select him, but could be more now).

Here is what Baseball America had to say about him (got it from Hank Schulman tweet):

Fangraphs' Eric Longenhagen wrote: 

Dany Jimenez, RHP (from TOR)
Like Ramirez, Jimenez also signed late, agreeing to his first pro contract just before he turned 22. He also missed most of 2017 due to injury, and those sorts of factors combined to limit him to just 33 innings above A-ball even though he is about to turn 26. He sits 93-95, touches 97, the heater spins at about 2450 rpm, and Jimenez’s vertical arm slot makes it hard for hitters to discern the fastball and his power breaking ball from one another. I think he’s pretty likely to stick in a relief role.

Alex Pavlovic wrote about the pick:

Jimenez has a live arm and better command than you usually see from Rule 5 picks. The Giants will throw him in the bullpen mix but must return him to the Blue Jays if Jimenez is not on their big league roster. 

"We were happy he fell to us," general manager Scott Harris said. "As we talked about all week, we're trying to find talent. We're trying to find new creative ways. This isn't the most creative way but we got an arm we like." 

...

Jimenez has a strong shot at making the opening day roster and has a better shot than most Rule 5 picks of surviving. It's easier to hide a pitcher in your bullpen all year, particularly with the rosters expanding and the Giants able to carry 13 arms throughout the season. Jimenez also has more experience than Bergen did. He reached Double-A last season and dominated, posting a 1.87 ERA and striking out 46 in 33 2/3 innings.  

Harris said Jimenez has a fastball in the upper 90s. He has averaged 11.7 strikeouts per nine innings in the minors and has kept his walk rate on the high end of what's acceptable. That might play in the big leagues, giving the Giants a free reliever at a time when their bullpen is undergoing massive changes. 

The Giants did not lose anyone in the major league portion of the draft, but lost three prospects in the minor league phase:

• pitcher Adam Oller was selected by the Mets
• infielder Manuel Geraldo was selected by the Nationals
• pitcher Miguel Figueroa was selected by the Reds

These players are gone, they do not need to be returned.

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

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

Defense is Playoff Win Effective

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

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

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

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

Defense is Playoff Win Efficient

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2019 Giants Potential

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

Your 2019 Giants: Thoughts On Giants GM Hunt

I've been wanting to post about the firing of Bobby Evans for a while now, but just been busy as heck at work and with life.   But I found a spot of time, and commented the below at a sports watering hole which was discussing the Giants open GM opportunity.  Plus grabbing some stuff I wrote in another post which I had started, part of which follows.  And still, a week or so later...

As you probably heard, Bobby Evans got fired from his Giants GM job, as part of the overhaul of the organization due to two (and a half insists many) years of losing.   The new GM, according to Baer, will continue to report to him, just like Evans did.  Sabean and Bochy have another year on their contract (so did Evans), and apparently will serve it out in 2019.  Evans will be re-assigned somewhere else in the organization; however, not as a special assistant, though, as Righetti was, for example.

In addition, there is going to still be a two-tier organization in the wake of Evans' termination.  As part of the changes, Sabean could be removed from his job as VP of Baseball Operations.  Thus the job search could involve both a new VP of Baseball Operations, as well as a new GM, both reporting in to  Larry Baer.  Sabean will be helping in deciding who will be the new "NextGen" GM, as Baer called the ideal candidate and apparently will stay in a yet to be determined role, should the new hire be the new VP, but appears to maybe keep the job, if the new hire is given the GM title, as I'll discuss in more details below.

Last Refuge for Naysayers: OF Development

The impetus for this post was the ravings of a relatively well-known (notoriously infamous to some) sports media "expert" that the Giants have not produced a starting OF in 30 years and therefore the front office is not doing its job.  Hank Schulman fought the good fight, bringing up basically what I'm writing below, but that's the beauty of having your own blog, I get to rage when I want to on a topic near and dear to me.

I say "expert" because he certainly presents himself that way.  Also, he is smart and seems to be nice, on-air, so I don't know how he can keep on spouting all these "facts" about the Giants and not have one co-worker push back on him, there must be other Giants fans there.  He apparently don't like people who don't agree with him publicly, as he blocked me on Twitter when I made a factual statement to one of his comments, he attacked me, then I calmly explained to him where he got my statement wrong and what exactly I was pointing out.  I was surprised to find out soon afterward that he blocked me, but that's OK, he spouts mis-information about the Giants so much that I can't bear to listen to him talk about the Giants. 

Your 2017 Giants: Post-Mortem and 2018 Thoughts

The Giants had the second worse record in franchise history, going 64-98.  I've seen many in the media, including some talking heads who I don't have a lot of respect for, excoriate the Giants for not planning on pursuing power, necessarily, when the annual post-season press conference was held.  The Giants senior management emphasized improving outfield defense, looking for an upgrade at 3B, and perhaps bullpen help.

FYI, all stats from the great Baseball Reference resource.

Dodgers Calling Up Uber Prospect Urias

The news is LA Dodgers uber prospect Julio Urias is being brought up (already started at the time I'm writing this, getting hit a bit, not the reason I'm writing this, and could make this post moot).

Your 2016 Giants: Cueto Fatigue

Continuing my series of posts on Cueto.  As I have been finding out, Cueto have splits, both by home vs. road, and first half vs. second half.  And those splits hold even when taking the two splits into account, both home and road gets worse in the second half.  The mysteries are two-fold:  why is he so much better in Cincinnati and why is he that much worse in the second half?

I don't think we can ever answer the former (my best guess is that there is something in the background of the stadium that works well with his deceptive pitching motion; there was an analysis long ago of why San Jose Municipal Stadium has a much higher strikeout rate and Giants hitters (including Bowker), noted that there were mountains in the background in CF that hid the ball in some visual haze plus also the sun would set in CF in the second half of the season and the hitter would be looking into the sun, so there was no hitter's eye, making it harder for the hitters to see the ball) but let's take a look at his monthly stats and see what's there.

Your 2016 Giants: Cueto Home and Road, First Half and Second Half, Splits

I had discussed Cueto's stats regarding first and second half previously.  When he had his first start for us in Milwaukee, much was made about his much better results at home vs. on the road.  So I thought I would look into that as well.

Your 2016 Giants: Cueto First Half Magic

A beat reporter noted that Cueto has had great first halves and poorer second halves.  So I commenced analyzing that and seeing why, and perhaps what could be done.

Your 2015 Giants: A Peek at PQS Data

As you may or may not remember, I've been actively keeping track of PQS data the last two seasons, and this season I expanded it to include the actual pitching line for each starter, so that I could build pivot tables and see what the numbers say.

Your 2013 Giants: Pitching and Fielding, Intertwined

I was thinking about the Giants, and how the pitching is having a down year when I realized that defense is also part of the equation.  Could that be part of the problem?

Offense is Offensive in Playoff Success

One of the major linchpins in my discussions about playoff success is the study by Baseball Prospectus that they published in their great book, "Baseball Between the Numbers" in their chapter, "Why Doesn't Billy Beane's Sh*t Work in the Playoffs?".  And I've been waiting to publish some of their work for a while now - had it written up - but now I can't find it after a recent clean-up for friends coming by.  So I'm going to wing it for once.

Scoring Runs Does Not Correlates with Postseason Success

In their study, BP correlated postseason success, using a value system that awarded points based on what a team did in the playoffs ultimately, with various baseball metrics.  The first important result:  while preventing runs correlates with postseason success, scoring runs does not.  They note:

There is literally no relationship between regular-season offense and postseason success in our data set; the correlation is 0.0014 - in other words, it doesn't exist.

Kind of hard to misinterpret that.

They also made the point that, oddly enough, it isn't that hard to detect:

• Since 1972, there have been 27 teams that made the postseason in spite of having below-average offenses.  Of these, seven won the World Series.  All of these seven had excellent pitching staffs.  It's hard to make the playoffs with a below-average offense unless you have an excellent pitching staff.
• Conversely, 20 teams have made the post-season with below-average run prevention.  None of them won the World Series, and only two even played for the championship.  16 of 20 lost their first playoff series.

Not only that, but no offensive measure turned out to have any significant factor, though stolen-base attempts have a slight, but statistically insignificant, positive relationship.

They did not speculate on what this means, but in my mind, there is a number of ways this can tie back to playoff success. To me, I view SBA as a general measure of the team's speed overall. Sure some managers just run, but generally, faster teams steal more, which indicates team speed. And team speed shows up not only in SBA, but in things that are not measured as well, such as baserunning effectiveness (taking extra base regularly), getting to balls as a defender, heck, getting on base more often too, as their BABIP should be higher.

Great Pitching Has Slight Advantage Over Great Hitting

BP studied this by going through baseball history for great pitching but average offense teams that played great offense but average pitching teams. They found that the great pitching team beat the great offense team more than expected, resulting in an extra win 2 to 3 percent of the time. That's not huge, but at least consistent with the above.

In addition, they correlated the top-three starting pitchers VORP and found that there was a higher correlation. This shows that it is especially important to have three great starters in the post-season.   They also did it for all starting pitcher VORP and it was even higher.  They speculate that this makes sense as teams often start four starters today and fifth starters are sometimes useful out of the bullpen.

Other Factoids From Study

• The performance of non-closer relievers is of very little importance in the post-season, generally.
• Highest correlation is opponents' batting average.  
• Avoiding walks doesn't seem to have much relationship with playoff success.  And it makes sense, better to walk the other team's best hitter than give up homer.

Final Results of the Study

BP identified three factors that have "the most fundamental and direct relationship" with playoff success:

• Closer WXRL
• Pitching staff strikeout rate
• FRAA (Fielding Runs Above Average)

These make sense.  As they note, "if you strike a batter out, you'll prevent him from doing any harm."  And striking out hitters becomes particularly important when facing good offenses that one normally see in the playoffs "because good hitters tend to tee off against finesse pitchers while losing some of their advantage against power pitchers who can throw an unhittable pitch."

And when you combine that with great fielding, it can become nearly impossible for opponents to get hits and generate rallies.  Of the 33 teams to win the World Series since 1972, only five had a below-average defense and none were truly bad.

BP did note that this is not a "secret sauce", as the effect of the three accounts for only 11% of playoff success.  As they wrote, "the majority of the time, it's plain old luck that prevails."

However, when a team has all three factors going well, "they can become quite powerful."  They ranked the 180 playoff teams in their study in each of these three categories.  What they found is that the teams that did the best overall in the three categories overall (creating a composite score) not only typically ended up in the World Series, but they also won it.  7 of the top 10 won the World Series.  In fact, two of the losing teams lost to one of the ten in the playoffs.  Taking out those two results would mean 7 of 8 teams won the World Series and all got in.

I had compiled where the Giants would have ranked among the Top 10, and as I noted, I lost my original writing and research.  However, I can say that the Giants were best in the majors in strikeout rate in 2010,  and I know that Brian Wilson was among the leaders in WRXL (though I cannot locate the stat anymore).  I still cannot find FRAA on BP, but using UZR as a proxy for it, the Giants had the best UZR in the majors in 2010, and especially so by UZR/150.  I would surmise that the Giants probably would have made the Top 10 list had I been able to figure out each ranking.

Meanwhile, the worse 10 in composite ranking did not make the World Series once.  They lost in the division series four times and in the championship series six times.  All together, these teams had a 16-35 record in the playoffs.

Giants Thoughts

As I've been noting for many years now, the Giants have been built in a way that maximizes  these factors and thus give them a competitive advantage in the playoffs, even if it is slight according to the study.  Offense gives ZERO advantage.

Thus, a good business person wanting to maximize his chances in the playoffs, and accepts that the BP study gives a blueprint for your strategy, would focus most of his or her energies into obtaining and developing a high strikeout pitching staff, developing a highly effective closer, and focusing on having a good defense.  Offense will be a secondary matter until that pitching is set up nicely.  That is, you focus your scarce resources - your first round draft pick - on pitching, pitching, and more pitching, then select hitters hoping that some develop more often due to good scouting.

That is what the Giants have done.  Sabean has forever focused on having good fielding teams and having a good closer.  The strikeout pitching staff came with the personnel he picked up, Lincecum, Sanchez, Wilson, though Cain and Bumgarner are no slouches either.  And Romo is excellent too.

They have not wasted a lot of first round draft picks on position players until after their pitching staff was full up with great starters and a great closer.  And they still picked up a good pitcher in Zack Wheeler in the draft after selecting Buster .

Instead, they have signed up veterans where they needed them, and left spots for their young position players who showed some potential of becoming a major league starter, whether it was Lance Niekro, Jason Ellison, Fred Lewis, Kevin Frandsen, Pablo Sandoval, Travis Ishikawa, Emmanuel Burriss, John Bowker, Nate Schierholtz.  And they traded away Bengie Molina when they thought that Buster Posey was ready.

Free agents are hit and miss (for example, most fans would have been for the Giants signing Carlos Beltran when he was available, but he's considered a lost contract now to the Mets), but when you have one of the best pitching and fielding teams in the majors, you do not have to generate much offense in order to win with this great defensive team.  So you can sit back and try different things with your offense and still be at least treading water overall, when you have this great pitching and fielding.

I don't know if the Giants offense will ever get started in 2011.  History says that it should, particularly once Sandoval starts hitting, but you never know when history says that these old players will finally hit the wall:  Andres Torres, Aubrey Huff, Pat Burrell, Miguel Tejada.  Even Cody Ross is a possibility there as well.

Impatience Can Cost Us A Better Future

But the point to me is that the Giants are set up nicely for the rest of the decade.  Better to not trade away some of that future in order to get into the playoffs in 2011, as that would hurt multiple years in the future when a young player would contribute value and at a cheaper price.   Just pick up spare parts like Bill Hall and see how they go.

Now, if I were in Milwaukee's shoes, yeah, I can see trading away everything to win now.  They did not plan out their team structure very well, and they were impatient a few years back too and traded away a lot of young players, and their best players will soon either go free agent or go past their prime years.  Their window is closing fast.

But the Giants look great in their pitching staff for the long run and the position players are looking nice as well, in a couple of years.  The team should start to gel, both offense and defense, in a year or two, at which point we could start thinking about a long-term dynasty similar to the late 90's Yankees.   How good is a team that could lose a Tim Lincecum or Matt Cain and not skip too big of a beat?

It's not that I think offense is totally useless, it is just that offense NOW, at the cost of reducing the chances of a great future, is not a tradeoff I would take.  This is just a resource decision that I disagree with, we need the young players for the future, assuming the Giants consider them untouchables.  That tradeoff is a position that people who do not believe in this great future would take, because they just cannot see how great our future can be.

Sticks and Stones

Call me whatever names under the sun, but until I see something LOGICAL and backed by baseball studies, I'm not changing my position.  Sabean may not be perfect, but I'm not looking for perfect.  And any Naysayer clearly outs themselves by pointing out all Sabean's mistakes:  the point of your GM is not to avoid mistakes, it is to put together a great team capable of winning it all, warts, mistakes, and all.  The longer a GM has been in charge, the longer the laundry list of mistakes.  The Big Picture is what the future looks like, in spite of the mistakes along the way (and not all his doing either, like Barry Zito and probably the Pierzynski trade)

I love the makeup of the Giants pitching staff and farm system that SABEAN PUT TOGETHER.  Some parts were luck, undoubtedly, but that's true of anyone then, even Brian Cashman, so I'm not sure what the point is when the Naysayers point that out.  They don't really think through the logical consequences of such a stance (basically their position leads to the conclusion that baseball is all about luck, in which case, why do they bother to watch the players, go play APBA then or a video game version).

Ultimately Sabean is the one who decided to keep them all together and not trade any of them away, as many of his Naysayers been saying he should do for years now.  That's smarts, not luck.

Fan(tasy) vs. Realist(ic)

I see a lot of moaning about the offense, and the fan in me get it, I would love to have a great offense too.  Why waste this beautiful, wonderful, great pitching?  We could be way ahead of the NL right now!  Lets get - insert great hitter - now!

But the realist in me understands that in baseball, as in most parts of life, you have to make choices.  Hard choices because we live in a resource constricted universe.  What people forget is that we would not have this beautiful, wonderful, great pitching right now, if the Giants had built up a beautiful, wonderful, great lineup.

Instead of Matt Cain, maybe they picked Sergio Santos instead.  Instead of Tim Lincecum, maybe they went ahead and trade him for Alexis Rios, as many Giants fans wanted.  Instead of Madison Bumgarner, they pick Jason Heyward (or worse, Beau Mills, or even Matt Dominguez), as many Giants fans wanted.  Instead of Jonathan Sanchez, they went ahead and traded him for Cory Hart.  Heck, instead of Buster Posey, who is out injured, they picked Justin Smoak, as many Giants fans wanted (and in fact argued the Giants made a mistake selecting Posey over Smoak).

But can anyone imagine the Giants winning the World Series with any (or all) of these replacements?  And are these fans, who think they know better, the right people to listen to for what the Giants should or should not do, when they don't even acknowledge that their alternative decisions would have been disastrous for the Giants 2010 World Championship?

I find it delusional that many of these fans think that Sabean was lucky, when I see it as that WE Giants fans are lucky these delusional fans were not in charge as GM.  Maybe Sabean was lucky, but it was his moves that put the Giants in position to take advantage of that luck.  Every World Championship team is built on some luck, no team is going to go all the way without a good modicum of luck.  But it is the teams that put themselves into position to take advantage of the situation that can win it all.  These fans would have traded away essential pieces of the championship team without knowing it at that time.  Sabean keep them all, that is not luck, that is prescience.

Meanwhile, these fans ultimately would have ended up managing the Giants into the non-playoff participating role in 2010, still hoping to win it all in their alternative universe.

The realist in me appreciates what Sabean has done for the Giants.  It is good for the soul to at least take that step and not attribute it all to luck, one, because it was NOT all luck (again, he KEPT all those players that people wanted to trade), and two, to diminish his accomplishment as luck is to diminish the accomplishment of all the Giants who contributed to that championship (again, I dare any of them to say that to a Giants player's face and see what happens) and to basically dismiss all past and future championships as shams because it is based on luck.

That is the logic that these people appear incapable of comprehending, instead, they would rather hurl invectives at me.  To say that 2010 was just luck means that all prior and future championships are luck, as every team in baseball history have elements of what these fans call luck.  And if you really, truly, feel that way, then why bother following baseball?  Roll the dice, draw a card, it is all luck, right?

Rebuilding Takes Time

What these fans also don't realize is that rebuilding takes time, a much longer time than, seemingly, they are willing to accept.  A team cannot rebuild so that one moment it is a loser, then the next moment, it is a winner.  Just like a baby is not a full grown man, one moment to next, there is all that messy in-between development time, where there is a lot of two steps forward and one step back.

And some parts will advance faster than other parts.   Sabean's apparent strategy is to build a strong pitching staff and keep it going, then add on to the offense as available.  With the pitching staff pretty much set a few years ago, the team's draft philosophy shifted and focused more on position players (while still drafting more pitchers than hitters, even though rosters built the other way).

And what people don't realize is that the lineup is coming along great.  Posey at catcher ( or Hector Sanchez or Andrew Susac as eventually replacement).  Brandon Belt at 1B (or Tommy Joseph), Joe Panik at 2B (or Charlie Culberson), Sandoval at 3B, Brandon Crawford at SS (or Nick Noonan or Ehire Adrianza), Thomas Neal in LF (or Francisco Peguero), Gary Brown in CF, Schierholtz in RF (or Rafael Rodriguez or Charlie Jones or Jarrett Parker).  We got a leadoff hitter in Brown, nice #2 hitter in Panik, middle of order presence from Posey, Belt, Sandoval, and maybe even good to great hitting from bottom of order.  And it will be here in a couple of years.  Except in the alternative universe where the fans trade away everyone to win this season.

Big Picture Needed

Fans need to take a good look at the big picture.  With Bill Neukom's wealth (Baggarly reports in his great book, Band of MiSFits, that he has $600M+; must buy book for any Giants fan, FYI) helping to keep most of our pitchers into their free agent years, and great looking arms coming up in Zach Wheeler and Eric Surkamp, the Giants should be set at pitching for the rest of this decade.  And not just set, but set to be one of the top teams in run prevention (they have been #1 or #2 two years in a row in MLB now, and look good for third time this year).

But trading just to get a boost this season, reduces the production we get from that unit going forward (unlike my suggestion that we trade Dirty to get a big bundle of prospects, which would seed our future seasons and make those teams much more winnable).  As I noted in a post before, winning the World Series, even in the best of circumstances, depends on a lot of baseball luck involved to win everything, betting on this season at the cost of future seasons makes sense if you don't think you will be able to win in future seasons.

However, it does not make sense when the Giants are set up like we are to have great pitching for the rest of this decade.   Why cost us a chance to win it all in multiple years in the future on the off chance we win it this season?

Particularly since research, and not just regular research, but from two of our top sabers out there, Baseball Prospectus and The Hardball Times, found that additional offense does not improve your chances of winning in the playoffs.  Thus, what most fans do not realize, which this realist does, is that by trading pitching for hitting, you in essence reduced your chance of winning in the playoffs and winning the World Series, as counter-intuitive as that may seem.  And that is the big picture.

Just Enough

So your first step is to build up a great pitching staff and then keep it humming for as long as you can.  Your second step is to rebuild the offense, piece by piece.  Yes, mistakes have been made, but which team hasn't?  A great pitching staff mitigates mistakes because they are much more efficient in winning games than the average team.

Let's try an example.  A league average team would have a 4.19 RA/G right now.  To be at a .500 record, the would need to score 4.19 runs/game.  The Giants, with a 3.53 RA/G right now, only needs to score 4.03 runs/game to win at a 90-72 winning percentage.  If they can achieve that, they will end up with an 89-73 record this season.

The Giants in 2009 had an overall 4.06 RS/G.  It was achieved with this batting order performance:

Batting 1st:  .258/.312/.404/.717
Batting 2nd: .251/.299/.333/.632
Batting 3rd:  .283/.337/.460/.797
Batting 4th:  .288/.316/.472/.788
Batting 5th:  .252/.321/.377/.697
Batting 6th:  .251/.303/.361/.665
Batting 7th:  .282/.336/.457/.793
Batting 8th:  .254/.307/.373/.680

As we can see, it did not take a lot to score over 4 runs per game.

And even if they continue their low scoring now, they should still end up around 84-78, which in this NL West, would still be competitive for the title and perhaps still win it.

Not More of the Same

And that is where fan veers away from realist:  assuming that what has happened up to now represents what will happen going forward.  That is not realistic given that there are a lot of players who were either missing during large parts of that period (Sandoval, Ross) or will be missing going forward (Posey, Franchez).

A big problem with the offense right now is that most players aren't hitting.  Only guys regularly hitting in June has been Cody Ross and Aubrey Huff, out of the regulars, and Pat Burrell and Bill Hall, among guys who are not regulars.  Really hurting our offense is the catcher, Emmanuel Burriss, Brandon Crawford, and Pablo Sandoval, who has not been hitting that well since coming off the DL, though he had a nice start.  All of them are killing the offense right now.  Even Schierholtz has been holding back the offense a bit, though he's been OK enough to stick in there.

And given Bochy's tone, I expect things to change sooner than later.  There is something up with Andres Torres right now, he is just not hitting right, though taking a lot of walks, which is good.  I think we see more platooning with Cody Ross in CF.  Cody, however, will play in a corner spot when not in CF.  And Burrell and Schierholtz will battle over the rest.

As much as I love Brandon Crawford's defense, hitting .169/.222/.220/.443 so far in June just doesn't make up for that.  I can see Bochy going with Tejada more and more often as Crawford continues to struggle.  And I think Bill Hall is the regular 2B going forward, unless there is a trade (Baggarly reported a rumor that Giants spoke to A's about Mark Ellis; he just came back from injury but they brought up Jemile Weeks, and he has sparked them with great hitting).  I think Burriss saw the writing on the wall and that is why he has been sleepwalking on the field.  Plus, he has got to realize that hitting .216/.256/.216/.473 in June doesn't cut it either.

Lastly, I still believe in Kung Fu Panda.  Sandoval will snap of out his slump in a big way soon, but until he does, the offense will suffer with one of their main guys not hitting, don't matter which team it is, if your middle guy isn't hitting, you will suffer.

Losing the Battle, Winning the War

So I understand the angst about getting swept by the A's.  Hey, I wanted the Giants to do the sweeping.  But you lick your wounds, tip your cap, and understand that baseball works like that, particularly against a poor offense like the Giants have.

But people forget that even our best offense, the 2000 Giants, got shut out by a Mets journeyman pitcher who by rights the Giants offense should have pounded.  It happens.

The realist in me sees that the team is still in great position, leading the NL West still, despite the sweep.  Yes, it will be tough beating the hot Twins, but they have been horrible on the road this season.  And they built their win streak off a long homestand, against some weak teams, plus beat some weak teams before that as well on the road.

Also, their hot streak has been built a lot on the back of one hot player, Michael Cuddyer.  Nobody else has been doing that great, though there are lot of good contributions from Drew Butera, Alexi Casilla, Luke Hughes, Delmon Young.  He will eventually cool, and the Giants got three pitchers who can cool bats in Madison Bumgarner, Ryan Vogelsong, and Tim Lincecum.

Looking beyond, the Giants are still 10 home games behind road games.  Once that balances out, that will improve the Giants record while bringing others down (as most other teams lose more on the road than the Giants do).  They will play 13 of the next 20 at home too, which brings us up to the All-Star break, and even things out (though they go on road for four right afterward and are on the road for 10 of 16).  And while they are ahead of their Pythagorean, they were behind by 2 games last season: some seasons it giveth, others it taketh away.

More importantly, as long as they lead the division or are within spitting distance (5 games), the Giants don't need to do anything more than tweak the team to stay in contention, as long as they have and keep this beautiful, wonderful, great pitching.  Sabean just needs to keep some trade irons hot in the fire, in case they need to make a change to shake things up (like at catcher right now).  And once Torres and Sandoval start hitting more like normal, the offense should perk up.  And betting against Tim Lincecum turning things around is usually a poor bet.

That is what the realist does, assess the current situation, balance the future and present needs, and realize that a baseball team will have hot streaks and cold streaks and that there is no need to cry that the sky is falling every time your team loses a few games.  Because that great pitching is still there and will return, and the hitters will return enough at some point to make that pitching pay off and win.

Though I don't blame it all on the fans.  The media is partly to blame for instilling in the public the tendency for short attention and focusing on the bad.  It is not that interesting to write that the team is doing fine, just hitting a bad patch, or that it is winning it all.  Nor is it as lucrative, either, for if you cater to the crowd, you sell more newspapers, website views, etc.  And drama sells.  Also, it don't take much analysis to say that the Giants are losing games and hammer on the offense, another to say that the team is in good position for doing well this season and making the playoffs and that the offense is still good enough to win the division title this season and make the playoffs.

Consistency in Starting Pitching Key to Repeated Playoff Success

I tweeted a lot of this, and then realized it would be better if I wrote a post on my blog.  :^)

Andy Baggarly tweeted:

Reds were NL's highest scoring team last year. Bumgarner facing their A lineup. And he's thrown 3 perfect innings thus far w/4 strikeouts.

Madison Bumgarner handling Reds easily is prime example of what I've been blogging about for years now, pitching is better than hitting in terms of consistency.

Ace Starting Pitchers' Consistency
That is, for ace level pitchers, consistency is something you can rely on relative to hitters. It goes back to the old metric, the Quality Start, and how many a pitcher gets. I've been studying PQS, Pure Quality Start, a new saber version of the Quality Start created by Baseball Forecaster, on my site, and if you look at starting pitchers, you see that the elite aces consistently (again, relative to hitters) have quality starts. 

Consistently a large percentage of starts, 50% minimum by my eyeball for the best starters, the best, elite Ace starters like Tim Lincecum in the 70%+ range, are quality starts for the best pitchers.  That is the closest you can get to consistency in baseball.  Hitters go on hot and cold streaks, but even the best hitters can have a poor week or two or three.  That is what dogged Barry Bonds reputation for years until 2002's playoffs.  And when a series is over in a week to 10 days, any hitter can be rendered impotent by the opposing team.

Consistency in the short term, however, is much more likely with ace-level starting pitchers like Lincecum, Matt Cain, and looking good for Bumgarner (and hopefully Zachary Wheeler once he develops fully).  When your team can count on you to throw a quality start every 2 out of 3 starts (or 67% dominant starts - DOM - per PQS terminology, only elites do that), even against good scoring teams, that is very good reliability and consistency.  If you have a rotation like that, you can count on a quality start in 3-4 out of 5 games, 4-5 out of 7 games.

And teams compile a great record in DOM games.  Baseball Forecaster compiled stats on DOM and found the ERA to be 2.39.  As you can see in my study (side bar) about pitching wins and losses, the Giants were 65-23 when they held the other team to 3 runs or less and in the NL, 908-278.  It is not like basketball or football, where the best teams can win 90% of the time, but that works out to 74% of the time (65/88) for the Giants, 77% of the time for NL teams, which is dominating for baseball.

Of course, that winning percentage assumes some average to bad pitchers in the mix for the other team, but at minimum, it sets a very high standard for the opposing team to match up with the Giants playoff pitching rotation.  And not many teams lineups will pass through our gauntlet of ace-level starting pitchers easily.

BP Research Confirms Starting Pitcher Dominance
And this is confirmed by Baseball Prospectus' study of Playoff Success in their Baseball Between the Numbers book (for some reason it is out of print already).  When they examined the correlation between having three good starters and winning in the playoffs, it was one of the most significant that they found, among the metrics they examined.  And this correlation was even stronger when the team has a good overall starting rotation:  the only metrics stronger was having a good closer (per their WRXL reliever metric) and yielding a low opposing team batting average (which is best accomplished by having a very high K/9).  Their study shows the competitive advantage of having a great rotation.

And the PQS DOM stats shows the mechanics of how that works out when a team has that advantage.  The top pitchers are much more consistent in throwing a DOM start (yes, we all know this intuitively, but the PQS DOM stats gives a number to it).  When you have a rotation of them, you have a great chance to win roughly two-thirds of those starts.  Again, it is not like football or basketball, but that is dominating for baseball.  Compared to, say, simply a good rotation, where you only get DOM starts in roughly 40% of the starts.

Having such a good rotation won't win you series every season you get into the playoffs.  But it surely improves your chances of advancing greatly when you consistently get DOM starts in 67% (or more) of the starts vs. 40% of the starts for a simply good rotation.

Not Just Great Starts, Avoiding Bad Starts
And it helps not only in terms of more DOM games, but it also helps in reducing DIS (or disaster) starts.  When a pitcher has a disaster start, in their study, they had a 11.19 ERA.  That pretty much guarantees a loss for your team.  Good pitchers still have disaster starts (DIS) sometimes.  Sanchez had 18% last season, Bumgarner had 22%.  Elite pitchers like Lincecum and Cain had  DIS% of 18% and 6%, respectively (Lincecum had off year, had DIS% of 6% in 2009, 0% in 2008).

Thus, by having a good to great starter with high DOM%, you increase your chances of a well pitched start.  But the flip side of that is that also means less starts where you can possibly have a DIS start.  Those who can keep their DIS starts at a below 20% rate are among the best in the majors, and those below 10% are the elite.

PQS analysis, both DOM% and DIS%, helps to explain how having so many good starters in your rotation gives your team a competitive advantage in the playoffs.  Great DOM% makes it easier to win any particular start of the pitcher, but great DIS% also keeps your team in the game by keeping the score close, and giving them the opportunity to win a tight game.  The more DIS starts you have, the more games you pretty much automatically lose.

The Ying-Yang of Dirty:  Why I Wanted to Keep Him
Jonathan Sanchez is an example of how inconsistency, particularly a poor DIS, hurts a starter's ERA.  Over the past three seasons, he has been 45%Dom/31%DIS in 2008 (5.01 ERA), 41%DOM/24%DIS in 2009 (4.24 ERA), and 48%DOM/18%DIS in 2010 (3.07 ERA).  Clearly, progress with reducing DIS starts has helped his ERA, even though his percentage of DOM starts have not really increased.

Here is why I have been a Sanchez supporter over the years when people want to trade him.  In 2008, first half, he was 53%DOM/21%DIS, which put him among the best starters in the majors, before tiring out in the second half.  He screwed up his mechanics early in 2009, but in the second half, when he was going good, he had a 60%DOM/13%DIS.  In 2010, he had no excuse for his poor first half (33%DOM/22%DIS) but he turned it on by walking his talk with a stellar 67%DOM/13%DIS in the second half.  As I noted, 70%+ is what the elite starters do.

If he can do that consistently over a whole season, you got yourself an elite starter to go with Lincecum and Cain.  If he didn't tire out during the playoffs, we might have won series in less total games played.  If he does do that consistently, he would fit right in between Lincecum and Cain in terms of DOM/DIS PQS proportions.

This is why I argued to keep him while people were asking me when we should trade a starting pitcher to get a hitter.  He could be an elite starter, and is for long stretches of the season, though not over an entire season yet.   That makes our rotation that much more powerful a gauntlet for the other team to get through in the playoffs.

Your 2010 Giants Magic Number is 1

What a season, what a great playoff stretch - literally with Huff's red Rally Thong (read about at ExtraBaggs; it is 19-8 so far) - the Giants are on the precipice of making the playoffs for the first time since 2003.  None of the Giants from that team are still on the active roster, though JT Snow is now a special assistant to Neukom and Aurilia does the pre-game show for the Comcast TV broadcasts (and probably does other TV stuff too, I bet, I don't have cable). 

Speaking of ExtraBaggs, there were a lot of good info there, some of which I'll excerpt here, please read the whole post for his great writing, stories, lots of funny stuff, and, most important of all, Giants information:

-  Bruce Bochy has gone with a set lineup recently, but he acknowledged there would be a few changes with a left-hander, Clayton Richard, going today.

-  You probably know that Tim Lincecum will join Randy Johnson and Warren Spahn as the only pitchers since World War II to lead the NL in strikeouts for three consecutive seasons.

Here’s another amazing Lincecum strikeout stat: He has 907 career strikeouts – the most by any player in his first four seasons since 1883.

Dwight Gooden struck out 892 in his first four seasons (in 924.1 innings). Lincecum has more, and in just 811 innings.

And from a team standpoint, the Giants staff has fanned 1,306 this season, breaking the franchise record of 1,302 that was set last season.

-  Here’s the full list of Willie Mac honorees who will gather today when the Giants recognize this year’s winner: Larry Herndon, Darrell Evans, Mike Krukow, Dave Dravecky, Robby Thompson, Mike Felder, Kirt Manwaring, Mark Leiter, Shawon Dunston, J.T. Snow, Jeff Kent, Marvin Benard and David Bell.

The most important attendee, Willie McCovey, will be there, I’m told. After all he’s gone through while recovering from a major, 12-hour back surgery in August, there might not be many dry eyes on the field.

One unfortunate consequence of moving up Matt Cain to pitch today: He might not be able to participate in the ceremony. Cain was last year’s winner.

This year’s team has no shortage of inspirational candidates. Andres Torres, Juan Uribe, Pat Burrell and Huff would seem to be the players who’ve had the biggest influence in the clubhouse or have inspired the most with their attitude and play.

San Diego Series

Giants just need to win one to win the NL West division title and beat cry-baby Mat Latos' 'Dres.  The Giants shuffle rotation to put our biggest gun left against the 'Dres, as San Diego faces our gaunlet of pitchers.

Game 1:  Clayton Richard vs. Cain

MLB Notes:

'Dres:  Richard has been inconsistent in September, going 1-3 in five starts with a 5.27 ERA despite tossing a shutout and six innings of one-run ball during that span. He's 3-1 with a 1.52 ERA in five starts against the Giants this season.

Giants: Cain flirted with a no-hitter in his last outing, a brilliant complete-game win against the Rockies. Cain has faced the Padres four times this season, posting a 1-2 mark with 4.05 ERA, with his lone win coming in an eight-inning gem on Sept. 9.

Despite his great performance against the Giants this season, as I've been noting all season, Richard is more of a middle rotation guy, and he should regress at some point.  Plus, he's never thrown so many innings before, so his arm has got to be feeling some of the effects of that.  Meanwhile, Cain has been aces all season long and even raised it a big notch in September.  Should be a Giants win, which would be nice present for Cain's 26th birthday today.

Game 2:  Tim Stauffer vs. Zito

MLB Notes:

'Dres:  Stauffer continues to shine as a member of the rotation. He allowed one run over seven innings in his last start against the Cubs on five hits. He's allowed seven runs in five starts in September and is pitching as well as anyone in the rotation.

Giants:  The Giants will send out their most experienced arm in the opener of the season's final series against the Padres. Interestingly, Zito has only faced the Padres once this season, giving up three runs in five innings in a 3-2 loss on May 11.

Wow, that is another reason to swap.  Richard vs Zito and Stauffer vs. Cain would have been pretty even.  Cain vs. Richard, as noted above, I would have to give Cain the nod.  And Zito when he's going good could be even with Stauffer.  But I would have to give Stauffer the lean, in a tight battle, because while I think Zito will be OK in this start, Stauffer has been that much better all season.

In any case, hopefully the Giants have already clinched in Cain's start and all would be moot, and the Giants could start resting guys who probably can use it, Posey, Torres, Huff, Burrell, Franchez, Uribe, Wilson, Wilson's beard (read ExtraBaggs for more info on that). 

Game 3:  Mat Latos vs. Sanchez

MLB Notes:

'Dres:  Latos allowed two earned runs (four total) in 5 2/3 IP in his last start against the Cubs. He has won once in his last eight decisions and hasn't been as sharp as he was earlier in the season. The Padres' playoff hopes could well ride on Latos' arm.

Giants:  If the rotation holds true and the race stays tight, this is a very appealing season finale. Earlier this season, Sanchez guaranteed the Giants would sweep the Padres. His guarantee didn't hold. This game could have much more than words on the line.

The Giants really should have clinched by now.  If not, then it will be up to Sanchez to hold to his words of promise last month when he unwisely mouthed off about how the Giants were better and would sweep past the 'Dres.  That has actually happened, but not before the 'Dres spanked the Giants and made this weekend necessary for determining the NL West Division Title winner. 

Latos is also way past his prior innings pitched in a season as well, and he appears to be feeling the effects of that.  Sanchez, meanwhile, has been masterfully handled by Posey when he does not have it - and he's still as wild as he was before, only Buster has been able to help him limit the damage when he puts the runners on base.  Plus, more importantly, he appears to be developing and maturing, being able to handle adversity better.  It should be a close battle, but I would have to lean to Sanchez and the Giants, particularly since Bochy would have a short leash on Sanchez and would bring in the bullpen to take care of things.  And you never know, they could decide to start Lincecum.

Giants Thoughts

The Giant should win the NL West title.  The rotation is lined up nicely, an advantage the Giants could take because they had last Monday off and the 'Dres didn't.  The Giants only need to win one game while the 'Dres would have to sweep.  However, they have played the Giants tough all season until the last series, so you never know. 

There are some wild permutations where the Giants could end up with the wild card and the 'Dres win the NL West, but that is something the Giants would back into by playing pretty terribly in all three games.  Plus even a crazy scenario where there would be a tie between the Giants, 'Dres, and Braves.  But they haven't done terrible that often for a long while now, and certainly not over a three game stretch, so they should win the NL West.

Another issue is who plays Phillies, which most Giants fans want to avoid.  Right now most likely Reds are the lucky team to play the Phillies, as the Giants and Braves most likely will make playoffs, which would force the Reds to play the Phillies since they cannot play Wild Card Braves.   Basically, assuming the Giants make the playoffs, if the Giants win one game and the NL West, they avoid the Phillies in the playoffs.  They would have to fall into the wild card to play the Phillies. 

The pitchers should be there, the question is whether the hitters will do enough to support the pitching in this final series of the season and into the playoffs?  So far, they have done the job very well.  More importantly, a number of players are hitting well now, Posey, Burrell, Torres, Huff, Sandoval, Ross, plus hopefully Franchez is healthy and hitting too.  Plus Uribe socks one out every so often enough to turn a game, so we got that too.

But first, there is the matter at hand, which has been the Giants mantra, it seems, in all the interviews with them, particularly this month:  worry about today's game and focus on that; worry about tomorrow's game tomorrow.  And that really is true, when you are so far back that late in the season, all you can really do is focus on winning today's game, one game at a time, then you can put your head up and see where you are.  And where they are is they are on the brink of winning the NL West division title.

Go Giants!  Return us to the playoffs!

P.S. I think Andres Torres should win the Willie Mac award this season.  His rise to starter after over a decade of minors and journeyman status should be an inspiration to all (well, all except Rowand, I suppose).  Huff and Burrell probably would have won it almost any other season, but I have to give it to Torres.  But if any of these three wins, I don't think it would be that big an upset, they are all worthy.  Maybe a 3-way tie for the 30th Willie Mac?

P.S.S.  I will end by noting that the Giants would have already clinched the NL West title if that stupid and blind umpire had correctly called Ishikawa safe in that Mets game long ago, and not given it to the catcher and the Mets for "good effort".  The baseball fates owe us! (umpires too, maybe they can make it hard for SD pitchers to get strikes while giving the Giants a wide zone;  just a suggestion :^)

Your 2010 Giants are 47-41: The Metropolitans

After that lovely road trip, the Giants get to start the second half with four against the Mets at home, before heading off to the road again (and with no rest until early August).

Game 1:  R.A. Dickey vs. Lincecum

MLB Notes:

Mets:  Dickey will be looking to get back to winning games. The knuckleballer has lost two of his past three starts, and the Mets lost all three times. Dickey had previously won six consecutive outings.

Giants:  Lincecum finished the half on a high note, allowing one run on four hits in seven innings at Milwaukee in a 15-2 victory. The NL leader in strikeouts fanned 10 in the game, marking the fifth time this season he has reached double digits, and the 24th time in his career.

Dickey has been great this season, but better at home (2.00 ERA) than on the road (3.32 ERA), though still pretty good.  A knuckleballer you can't really tell how he's going to do any particular day.  One would think that he would have his way with our free swingers, but you never know.  Should be a tough game for Lincecum, but he got a lot of rest (didn't pitch in the All-Star game) so he should be good to go.  I would call it even with an edge to Lincecum because of his past dominance.

Game 2:  Jon Niese vs. Zito

MLB Notes:

Mets:  Niese has arguably been the Mets' best pitcher since coming off the disabled list on June 5. He let up three runs in 7 2/3 innings against Cincinnati his last time out, but took his first loss since coming back from the hamstring injury.

Giants:  This begins Zito's time of year. He's 75-40 with a 3.42 ERA in the second half during his career, vs. 65-70, 4.18 in the first. He's endured frustration in his past two outings, blowing a 7-1 lead on July 3, then being removed after 4 2/3 innings with a 6-2 lead on July 8.

I think the days off helped Zito cleanse his mental pallette, and he'll, as noted, start his "time of year."  Still, Niese is pretty good himself, so I would call this game a push between the two teams with a lean towards the Mets since Niese has been doing well and Zito has been struggling.

Game 3:  Mike Pelfrey vs. Cain

MLB Notes:

Mets:  After a tremendous start to the season, Pelfrey has failed to complete five innings in each of his past three starts and failed to log a quality start in four of his last five. Pelfrey let up three runs in 7 1/3 innings against the Giants earlier this season.

Giants:  Cain, who takes pride in his durability, has maintained his workhorse status by pitching a club-high 121 1/3 innings. Assuming Cain makes 33 starts, as he did last season, he's on pace for 222 1/3 innings, exceeding his career high of 217 2/3 which he hit in 2008 and '09.

Again, two good pitchers, head to head.  Have to call it even as well.  Pelfrey and Cain have not been doing well in recent starts, been inconsistent.  However, I would give Cain the lean because Pelfrey, during his career, has been horrible on the road, and even this season he is worse on the road, though still pretty good. 

Game 4:  Johan Santana vs. Sanchez

MLB Notes:

Mets:  Santana will bring a streak of 16 consecutive scoreless innings into this game, and he has won each of his past two starts. Santana let up four runs over 7 2/3 innings against San Francisco on May 8.

Giants:  Sanchez is striving to reach double digits in victories for the first time in his career. Last season, he didn't win his seventh game until Sept. 23. Sanchez remains capable of dominance, allowing an average of 7.03 hits while striking out 9.03 batters per nine innings.

I have to give this game to the Mets and Santana.  Not just because he's been one of the best pitchers of the last 10 years.  Not just because of his 2.98 ERA.  Not just because he brings a streak of 16 consecutive scoreless innings.  

I have to give it to Mets because it is Sanchez starting.  Not because his ERA is worse.  Not because he's been inconsistent and hasn't pitched well in recent starts.

But because Santana is Sanchez's idol.  Sanchez screwed up his mechanics last season because he had to imitate his idol's mechanics.  However, because he's several inches taller than his idol, that just screwed him up so bad that he didn't fully fix his mechanics until his no-hitter. 

He will want to do his best against Santana, his hero.  However, Sanchez's history suggests that when the pressure is on, he wilts a lot.  Like starting the home opener this season. 

Have to give this game to the Mets, though since the Giants hit Santana hard last time, there is the chance that with Posey around now, maybe they will hit him harder and we score a lot of runs off him.  But given his history of good pitching, I have to chalk up that bad outing to the luck of the draw, and now they get to face his normal goodness.

Giants Thoughts

The Giants look like they will have a very tough series against the Mets, facing so many pitchers who have pitched well this season.  But the Giants counter with four of their own.  It looks like it will be a pretty even battle, probably ending in a draw, but there is also a chance that we might end up losing 1-3.  I think the Giants need to take 3 out of 4 to make a statement on the second half.  Hopefully they can carry the momentum that they had from the road trip into this series.  Even better would be if Posey could continue hitting bullets.

Sabean on the Giants

Baggarly blogged on Sabean's midseason assessment. Many there were outraged by Sabean's comment about the pitching.

People need to improve their reading skills.

Sabean did not say that the pitching is not good, he said that the pitching has not been as “advertised” and that they have been “disappointing”.

He noted these deficiencies:

“Too many deep counts, we leave the defense on the field too long, too many pitches per inning.”

“We’ve got to throw more strikes. We’ve got to pitch more to contact. One of the things you can do for your defense is get them off the field, and we haven’t been able to do that.” [FYI: I fixed that to say "defense" not "offense"]

“And when you’re going through a spot when you aren’t swinging the bat, you’ve got to have some people putting up zeros or have one- or two-run games. And we haven’t had that. It’s been disappointing.”

He never said that the pitching was not good, just that it didn’t do what he thinks they are capable of. I think that is a fair assessment.

Offensive Improvement


Meanwhile the offense has done a lot better in improving than the pitching/fielding (defense):

Offense 2009: 4.06 runs scored per game (league average 4.43)
Offense 2010: 4.44 runs scored per game (league average 4.39)

Runs Allowed 2009: 3.77 runs allowed per game
Runs Allowed 2010: 3.75 runs allowed per game

A lot of that happened on the road trip, particularly against the Brew Crew, but still, I think it is indicative of the improvement in the team over last season. 

Big Difference for Second Half:  Bumgarner is now Fifth Starter

That said, I think the change to Bumgarner provides a huge boost to the rotation and pitching going forward. The Giants were 4-8 with other 5th starters, but the core group we have now were 43-33. At that winning percentage rate for the rest of the season, we end up at 89 wins, by going 42-32.

I think the change to Posey (and relatedly Ishikawa) will add at least one or two wins (versus what we were getting from Molina before), pushing us to 90-91 wins, if not more considering that our pitching staff has historically pitched better in the second half.

And that does not account for the possibility of Pablo returning to his former goodness, nor that Torres will get relatively more ABs than Rowand going forward. 

If everyone else could just continue doing what they did, and only Huff was really performing above expectations (but still in line with what he has done before, so not that bad an outlier) and many were below, then the Giants should be able to finish the season with 90+ wins.  Whether that will be enough to win the NL West is debatable.  As I have tried to analyze, it appears that LA and SD should fall short of 90 wins if they don't add someone who performs. 

I haven't tried looking at Colorado - and that will have to happen another day - but I noticed in another post that they have a very poor record when Ubaldo was not starting and he's starting to come back to human status in recent starts, which should counter the boost they get when Tulowitski returns to their lineup, but they should get an overall boost from Street returning as well.  They are currently on pace for 90 wins.

What Is Needed to Get Into Playoffs:  At Least 90 Wins


An analysis I did before found that the runner-up to the Wild Card team typically did not have 90+ wins.  In the 14 full seasons with the current playoff format, since 1996, there has only been 4 seasons where the runner-up won 90 games or more.  That seems to be a dividing line.

To win the WC or NL West, that is, to get into the playoffs, an NL West team had to win at least 90 games.  90 wins got you into the playoffs 7 of the 14 times, which is 50% of the time.  91 wins got you in 8 of 14, 92 got you in 11 of 14. 

I think 90 wins seem like the probable ending for the Giants season right now.  And it seems like the other teams will be right around there as well.  They will need some boost to get them over the 90 win hump and into the playoffs.

How The Giants Can Get to 90-92 Wins

First off, if they can just continue doing what they have done, only being more consistent in scoring runs, they can do it.  At 4.44 RS and 3.75 RA, that works out to a 92.5 win season in 162 games, or roughly 92-93 wins.  Their win total now is short of that potential (though mainly, I'll bet, because of the 18 runs the scored on the Brewers; and that appears to be true, without that game, they have a 4.29 RS, which is only a 90 win rate with our current pitching/fielding), and thus regression could bring them back to the 90-92 win pace. 

Other scenarios for the team to get a boost into the playoffs :

• The most likely boost is that our pitchers typically pitch better in the second half, particularly Zito and Cain.  Lincecum, having a down year so far (all relative, of course, to his stellar prior years), could also perk up as well.  Sanchez has been up and down, but has not had a stretch yet where he is totally dominating, which he has had in his past two seasons (in 2008, it was in May/June, if I remember right, in 2009, it was after his no-hitter).  Though these are countered by the fact that Bumgarner could get shut down at some point, resulting in Wellemeyer starting, which would be OK if the spot start is in SF.  Still, he'll be probably starting most of the second half, whereas Wellemeyer was starting most of the first half, so that is a boost in itself.
• Clearly, if Posey can continue to hit at an elite level for the whole second half, that would be a huge boost to the lineup, particularly if Huff continues to hit at an elite level (if Huff doesn't, then Posey would just be replacing Huff's production).  That is not a given, his numbers in the minors do not suggest that he will continue to hit like this.  Still, he has accomplished it so there is some ability to do that at least occasionally, regularly if he can figure out how to do that all the time.  Amy Gutierrez of CSN Sports tweeted (@AmyGGiants)  that "Posey has 25 RBI in 38 gms. Only 2 other SF Giants had at least 25 RBI in 1st 40 gms of their rookie yr..Cepeda & McCovey (Elias)".   Pretty good company and odd that all three are players who played mostly 1B but also at other positions, though eventually Posey will mainly play C.  
• Another possible boost is that the effect of the Molina trade is that we swapped out Molina's .644 OPS for whatever Ishikawa can deliver.  Except for that bad start to the 2009 season going into May 10 (he hit .280/.350/.424/.774 after his early struggles), Ishikawa has been around the high .700 OPS level for his career.  Even with that bad stretch, he still has 14 HR in 510 AB with an OPS of .758 during his career.   If Ishikawa can continue that, that would be a good boost to the team offensively plus his defense at 1B can add a win by itself.  Luckily he wasn't traded or released as some had been agitating for, for years for some.
• A hoped for boost is a return of Kung Fu Panda's bat.  Recent rumors had a possible divorce distracting him, and in any case, his weight has become an issue again.  Bay City Ball had a nice analysis in a recent post, where he found that Sandoval has been walking and striking out at the same rate, as well as swinging and making contact, but it is his ISO and BABIP that took a big hit this season, which has costed him.  That makes a lot of sense.  Whatever is bothering him is causing him to just miss on the pitches, resulting in less force and power.  That means less balls driven to the outfield and dropping for hits, resulting in a lower BABIP (as these balls are caught instead), and less hits that become extra-base hits, particularly homers.  But his underlying skill in judging the strike zone - in his own inimitable Panda way - remained.  If he can figure out how to start swinging for power again, the Kung Fu Panda's mojo - and hitting - would return in full force.  FYI, very insightful analysis there at Bay City Ball, good site to go for advanced sabermetric analysis of Giants issues.  It is the site that I wish I could do, Chris has done a good job there.
• Not as significant a boost, but I think if Chris Ray can return to his former closer goodness, he would settle down the 8th inning set-up situation greatly, and make leads that we carry into the 8th be locked-down wins.  That is something that we mostly had in 2009 with Affeldt doing his thing, but which he's been struggling with until recently.  And if he can return to his prior goodness - and he has a nice string of good outings for a while now - he and Ray and Romo would be a really good bridge from the starter's 6-7 innings to closing for the win by Wilson.
• Not too much mention of Bowker, but he's been hitting up a storm down there in Fresno.  He has suffered from the jitters of thinking too much when he's up in the majors, but if he can figure out how to calm himself down (and this has been Ishikawa's problem as well, which he solved via his faith), he could be a left-handed bat that could help the lineup against RHP that Sabean said we needed.  Schierholtz is another option and he has been getting opportunities lately, but he has not been doing much with his chances.  Still, if he gets hot after the second half starts, he could keep Bowker down in Fresno for the rest of the second half.