Heard Sergio Romo on KNBR yesterday morning. Keywords: Fun; Energy; Good Vibes. Loyalty.
ogc thoughts
I'm on jury duty for at least another month more (already served about a month too!) so I probably won't be writing much until after this trial. So I got to do the morning commute once again and I'm listening to KNBR when I'm not listening to Jim Gaffigan (I was close to either becoming depressed or going insane until I started laughing to his routines again. Bacon!) Yesterday, I got the great pleasure of listening to a Sergio Romo interview.
I heard one of his first interviews in his rookie season and he won a fan in me for life. Down to Earth guy, fun loving, good natured, all around nice guy, that was all clear in that early interview. And better still, that vibe came through loud and clear once again in this KNBR interview, neither MLB success nor millions have changed him one whit.
SO I felt the need to highlight one of the true good guys in baseball, Sergio Romo. Thanks Sergio for all the great performances and, especially this season, all the loyalty, as he took less years to return to the Giants.
Sabers Just Don't Understand
Sabers just do not understand the value of keeping relievers who can provide good performances more often than not. They are playing the odds in what they recommend, ignoring the reality that teams sometimes only have that one window of success to achieve their lifelong dream to win the World Championship. Sure, closers are available out there, but how long would it take to finally find that one guy (teams are not going to give you something you need for nothing), and will it be in time to save the good work done so far in that season or will it waste a lifetime of hard work?
Sabers are like the college professors who are said to live in Ivory Towers, ignoring what happens in real life. They also suffer from selection bias, looking only at situations where closers rise and succeed, ignoring the difficulties teams find in reality when forced to search. Giants fan were innoculated when they got a snootful of the bad that can happen, after losing Nen, searching, searching, searching, suffering, suffering, suffering, until BWill finally rose and claimed that mantle many years later.
Seemingly cognizant of this difficulty, Sabean and the Giants have built up a CoreFour including guys who could close if necessary in Affeldt, Romo, and Casilla. There is value in having multiple interchangeable pieces for an important function like closing and setup. Just like there is value in having multiple aces on the starting staff, as I've shown in my PQS studies and my business plan. But sabers so far has been as close minded as the baseball lifers they berate as being close minded.
2014 showed the value of each. By mid-2014, our three aces were down to one, Bumgarner. But he rose to dominate mostly by himself during the playoffs (but some people forget that without the other guys, we don't beat the Nats, so we should always give it up to the other starters as well). That's the model I've been selling over the years, the Koufax example I gave for why it's good to have more than one ace on the staff, that one ace could win it for you, but if you got a staff of them, there can be the expected failures of health (Cain) or performance (Linecucum), and yet you still end up champs (Bumgarner).
And look at the CoreFour situation. Affeldt is good enough to close, but Bochy has wisely kept him in set-up so that he can shut down the typically more dangerous situations that crop up late in the game, at any point, as saber logic has said is the best way to do things: have your best pitcher take care of these situations. Casilla and Romo both have their pluses and minuses, but being the closer, as sabers have noted, are often not that stressful a situation, where you don't need the best, you just need good. And that is why Bochy has been able to go from one to the other and back, they have zero ego (Bochy's training) and a team mentality, going with the one who is going well at that time.
That's why you saw Bochy put in Affeldt early in game 7, he knew Jeremy would take care of things, but then let Bumgarner finish the game, even though both Casilla and Romo were both available and ready. Having all these interchangeable parts have enabled Bochy to bring in guys quickly when someone doesn't have it one day or another.
Showing posts with label Sergio Romo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sergio Romo. Show all posts
Thursday, March 05, 2015
Monday, December 22, 2014
Your 2015 Giants: Romo Anvil AnVil and Scutaro Probably Peavyed
As reported by various outlets (Mercury's Pavlovic reports on Romo and Scutaro), Romo's return meant the Giants needed to clear a spot on the 40-man, and the one getting the axe was Angel Villalona, who was outrighted to the minors. Not sure of the consequences (seems to imply he was sent to minors with no recourse, nor danger of being claimed; tried to research, could not work out legalese) regarding Giants control of AnVil.
In addition, Scutaro finally got the surgery to fuse his spine, which will make life more comfortable for him going forward, but unfortunately, his career is now in severe doubt, as fusion generally has meant the end of an athletes career, from what I remember about the news report speculating on this mid-season. With a 4-6 month recovery period, at which point they can then start to evaluate whether he can even return to baseball, and the past prior record, it does seem like the end of Scutaro's baseball career.
ogc thoughts
As I noted in my other post, I'm happy to have Romo back. I had thought (wrongly) that his family might have pressured him to sign up with LA (OK, maybe not wrongly, but not as strongly as I had speculated), but he said the right things in the press conference today about returning to his gang of four (Affeldt, Casilla, Lopez), his band of brothers, and that he can't imagine not working with them or this organization that gave him his big break. He noted that he got other offers, including possibility of closing, but noted that the way he views it, anytime he's coming in, he's closing anyway, it's pressure time. Of course, we'll never know exactly what went down exactly, but he did note disappointment of not getting a third year, but is happy to make money that will take care of his family.
I was surprised that AnVil was outrighted, though not totally. He had a poor year in the upper minors and that is usually a deathknell to a prospect's career as he gets up there in experience, but I still thought that Heston and Parker would have been lower on the totem pole. I have a feeling once I learn more about the technical aspects of what it meant to outright him will help explain why him and not others. I still have hope for him, but right now it is looking like Duffy will start at 3B in AAA and Duvall start at 1B, so AnVil will probably be in Richmond again.
Thanks for the Rain Dance Marco
Looks like Scutaro's career, at minimum with the Giants but most probably his career, is over, so I would like to once again thank him for his contributions to the 2012 Championship. You can't say this all the time, but truly, without him being "Blockbuster" (his nickname with his teammates at the time, denoting how he was the blockbuster trade for the Giants given how well he hit for them), we don't win that championship. Invaluable component.
Some people like to point out that his contract was a waste (much like Huff's), but, really, there were no better alternatives at that time who looked like better replacements, but players notice when teams take care of their own or if they screw them in the back at the first chance (cough, Miami), and a team with a reputation of dumping their players (as the Niners got) will find it harder to keep their players, I think, or attract other players.
It's funny, but in our country, Wall Street is excoriated for being all about money and maximizing by dehumanizing the regular population, but I find that a lot of fans are like that as well. As well, they don't think about the consequences.
Sure, the Giants could have counted their lucky stars that Huff played up to his potential for us in 2010, and kicked him to the curb once we got that great production from him without paying him much. But he produced 5.6 rWAR for us, roughly around $23M per metrics, and that is exactly what we paid him, which is a great return on any free agent because the sad fact is that most do not even break even, most fall very short. And had he been dumped, who would the Giants have signed instead who could even dream of producing 5-6 WAR in 2011 without asking for a Brinks Truck to back up to their house? Fans would have been mad at the Giants.
Same with Scutaro. He produced 4.1 rWAR, or roughly $21M and that is roughly what we paid him during his time with us. And it was not like it was a massive overpay over the market, the Cards reportedly offered him roughly the same money, but the Giants went to three years with a little more money. And Scutaro produced a lot while playing for us in 2012, had his health held up, he would have been in the 2.5-3.0 WAR range.
If he had produced 2+ WAR in 2014 and 2015, his contract would have been considered one of the better free agent signings by the Giants, as he would have been paid under half of what he produced. As it was, the team roughly broke even, overall, and we ended up with a championship because of his contributions.
People can be very hard-nosed sometimes, I don't see why they would begrudge him his contract, given what he produced, and in this case, it was not his fault that his body broke down (I would point my finger at Holliday's slide starting the bad process in the spine). Or that Huff's mind broke down from the pressure of his contract.
So thanks Marco, and I hope you have as healthy and comfortable a life as you can, and thanks again for the contributions, especially towards winning the championship.
Peavy Needs a Spot Too
When Peavy is signed soon, he will need a 40-man spot as well. As I noted, Heston and Parker are probably the next ones to go when a spot is needed, but with the announcement of Scutaro's surgery, they most probably will waiver him instead, knowing that no team will pick up his contract, knowing that he won't be back until mid-season at the earliest, and possibly never again.
In addition, Scutaro finally got the surgery to fuse his spine, which will make life more comfortable for him going forward, but unfortunately, his career is now in severe doubt, as fusion generally has meant the end of an athletes career, from what I remember about the news report speculating on this mid-season. With a 4-6 month recovery period, at which point they can then start to evaluate whether he can even return to baseball, and the past prior record, it does seem like the end of Scutaro's baseball career.
ogc thoughts
As I noted in my other post, I'm happy to have Romo back. I had thought (wrongly) that his family might have pressured him to sign up with LA (OK, maybe not wrongly, but not as strongly as I had speculated), but he said the right things in the press conference today about returning to his gang of four (Affeldt, Casilla, Lopez), his band of brothers, and that he can't imagine not working with them or this organization that gave him his big break. He noted that he got other offers, including possibility of closing, but noted that the way he views it, anytime he's coming in, he's closing anyway, it's pressure time. Of course, we'll never know exactly what went down exactly, but he did note disappointment of not getting a third year, but is happy to make money that will take care of his family.
I was surprised that AnVil was outrighted, though not totally. He had a poor year in the upper minors and that is usually a deathknell to a prospect's career as he gets up there in experience, but I still thought that Heston and Parker would have been lower on the totem pole. I have a feeling once I learn more about the technical aspects of what it meant to outright him will help explain why him and not others. I still have hope for him, but right now it is looking like Duffy will start at 3B in AAA and Duvall start at 1B, so AnVil will probably be in Richmond again.
Thanks for the Rain Dance Marco
Looks like Scutaro's career, at minimum with the Giants but most probably his career, is over, so I would like to once again thank him for his contributions to the 2012 Championship. You can't say this all the time, but truly, without him being "Blockbuster" (his nickname with his teammates at the time, denoting how he was the blockbuster trade for the Giants given how well he hit for them), we don't win that championship. Invaluable component.
Some people like to point out that his contract was a waste (much like Huff's), but, really, there were no better alternatives at that time who looked like better replacements, but players notice when teams take care of their own or if they screw them in the back at the first chance (cough, Miami), and a team with a reputation of dumping their players (as the Niners got) will find it harder to keep their players, I think, or attract other players.
It's funny, but in our country, Wall Street is excoriated for being all about money and maximizing by dehumanizing the regular population, but I find that a lot of fans are like that as well. As well, they don't think about the consequences.
Sure, the Giants could have counted their lucky stars that Huff played up to his potential for us in 2010, and kicked him to the curb once we got that great production from him without paying him much. But he produced 5.6 rWAR for us, roughly around $23M per metrics, and that is exactly what we paid him, which is a great return on any free agent because the sad fact is that most do not even break even, most fall very short. And had he been dumped, who would the Giants have signed instead who could even dream of producing 5-6 WAR in 2011 without asking for a Brinks Truck to back up to their house? Fans would have been mad at the Giants.
Same with Scutaro. He produced 4.1 rWAR, or roughly $21M and that is roughly what we paid him during his time with us. And it was not like it was a massive overpay over the market, the Cards reportedly offered him roughly the same money, but the Giants went to three years with a little more money. And Scutaro produced a lot while playing for us in 2012, had his health held up, he would have been in the 2.5-3.0 WAR range.
If he had produced 2+ WAR in 2014 and 2015, his contract would have been considered one of the better free agent signings by the Giants, as he would have been paid under half of what he produced. As it was, the team roughly broke even, overall, and we ended up with a championship because of his contributions.
People can be very hard-nosed sometimes, I don't see why they would begrudge him his contract, given what he produced, and in this case, it was not his fault that his body broke down (I would point my finger at Holliday's slide starting the bad process in the spine). Or that Huff's mind broke down from the pressure of his contract.
So thanks Marco, and I hope you have as healthy and comfortable a life as you can, and thanks again for the contributions, especially towards winning the championship.
Peavy Needs a Spot Too
When Peavy is signed soon, he will need a 40-man spot as well. As I noted, Heston and Parker are probably the next ones to go when a spot is needed, but with the announcement of Scutaro's surgery, they most probably will waiver him instead, knowing that no team will pick up his contract, knowing that he won't be back until mid-season at the earliest, and possibly never again.
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Your 2015 Giants: Romo Rolling Home, Signs with Giants
Per MLBTR, where I linked to their photo above (just seems appropriate for this post), he signed for 2 years, $15M, with some incentives, up to $1M based on games finished (in case he becomes closer again, I assume).
ogc thoughts
Wow, did not see that coming. Thought for sure that he was going down to LA, which I assume his family - still die-hard Bridegroom fans - has been getting on him to do. Plus there was the Colletti-Giants connection, though that part died the moment Sheriff Ned got bounced upstairs. That's why I've not mentioned him much, other than that the Giants still professed interest.
Honestly, I thought that he was gone. Giants typically get their guys signed quickly, and when not, the players are usually pretty open about wanting to return but wanting to test out the free agent waters. Romo didn't say anything about wanting to return, that I saw. Plus, being a closer was something I knew that was important to him, and thus I also assumed that he wanted to get a closer's job somewhere than be a set-up guy here. Or at least get closer-like money.
And perhaps he did, but after all this time and the Winter Meetings over, perhaps there weren't any interested in him being their closer or at closer money, and if he's going to be a set-up guy anywhere, why not return to where he's loved, respected, and comfortable? And the Giants typically pay well to boot, and they did, going above what they had paid to Casilla and Affeldt previously.
Feeling Good
Overall, I'm happy. It probably means Strickland will be pitching in AAA in 2015 - I assume Kontos, barring a horrible spring, got the Gutierrez (and last) spot in the bullpen - and I was kind of looking forward to how he does. But it really makes our bullpen strong in that there are a lot of good to great duplicate pieces in Casilla, Affeldt, and Romo, each with their own skills and strong points, and gives Bochy the luxury of going to another one quickly if one should happen to have a bad appearance. Plus as healthy as Romo has been in his career, his elbow has always been achy and could breaky at some point.
Plus, now Strickland can be in reserve in AAA in case anything happens to the Big Three of Casilla, Affeldt, Romo, particularly since they are all on the bad side of 30 and getting older, as our bullpen is getting on the old side. He would also get more experience as the closer in Sacramento. And perhaps upgrade our bullpen should we make the playoffs again, taking over for Machi perhaps or the 5th starter, as the case goes.
Now the bullpen is Casilla, Affeldt, Romo, Lopez, Machi, Petit, and probably Kontos, though perhaps Strickland (Kontos has no more options and would be lost, though, if he were not on our 25-man, and he's been good enough that I don't think the Giants would do that, trade him).
I'm also happy because I think that Romo is a good guy with a good head on his shoulder. I can still remember the interview he gave to CSNBA the year he came up, he earned a fan for life at that point (unless, of course, he ends up being a Bridegroom). And the Giants bullpen has been deadly in the playoffs with them.
BWeez Begone
Brian Wilson was just DFAed by the Bridegrooms, $9.5M thrown away. I wonder if his crazed historonics with the Giants prevent his return here. Then again, he'll probably want to live closer to home and perhaps join the up and coming Padres, who can face both the Giants and Dodgers.
Friday, October 31, 2014
Your 2015 Giants: The Hot Stove Is Heating Up
Basking in the afterglow of the Giants third championship in five seasons, it would be easy to forget the reality that a number of our players on this wonderful, wonderful, team are free agents who could chose to move on.
These are the free agents:
These are the free agents:
- Pablo Sandoval
- Jake Peavy
- Michael Morse
- Sergio Romo
- Ryan Vogelsong
Friday, July 19, 2013
Your 2013 Giants: Bobby Evans' News on Players
Evans was interviewed, Schulman tweeted info, blogger covered the news
and gave his views. I think he did a nice job and a great service to
Giants fans: http://aroundthefoghorn.com/2013/07/19/vp-bobby-evans-on-siriusxm-on-vogey-pence-brown-and-a-note-on-romo/?utm_source=FanSided&utm_medium=Network&utm_campaign=Trending
ogc thoughts
Vogie starts rehab in AA, shoot for return in early to mid August. To me, that is big news, it is not that far from now potentially, the start of August is only 13 days away. At that point, the Giants will have an interesting decision to make: who losses their starting rotation job?
Before it was easy to say Gaudin, as we need a long man, but he has one really well for us. I agree with covechatter that it might be Zito, though my speculation on my blog was that he could be DFAed at that point, as we are still at a full 40-man and Vogie is on the 60-day DL and someone would have to be cleared off the island to bring back Vogie. If Zito is DFAed, then I think Kickham would come up and be our long relief guy.
About Pence, I took it the opposite of the author, I viewed it as more that Evans hoped that we don't go south and have to consider such an issue. But I agree that it was a non-comittal to Pence.
I think the Giants are still on the fence, Pence's cold streak lately hasn't helped his cause, if he were still hitting like he were in April/May, I think it would be likely the Giants do pursue Pence, with QO at minimum, but I think they have a price in their head that they won't go over, and are willing to let free agency determine whether another team overpays for him or not.
I still hope the Giants pursue Pence and be in the mix, but I don't want to pay him the market value that his arb awards portend, which is $17M per year. Astros really screwed up with him on his arbs, set a bad precedence, I think. But a 3-4 years deal in the $13-15M per year range is OK with me, as we need at least two good bats in the middle, Posey is clearly one, but Sandoval's weight and injury issues makes him iffy, and Belt, while he could be that bat for us someday, I don't know if he'll reach that point by the end of the season.
About Brown, that's been the Giants position with all prospects that they expect to play a significant role on the team in the near future, they have said that about Wilson, Bumgarner, Posey, at minimum that I remember. They want them getting a lot of playing time and focused on improving themselves.
About Romo, I didn't take that to be a not solid commitment to Romo. I view that more as an organizational stance, much like how Beane thinks closers are fungible and easily replaced. This to me confirms that the Giants do not share Beane's (or saber's) view that closers can be easily replaced. This to me means that the Giants, once they found their closer, will hold onto him as long as possible (and productive). So I did not view that as a slight to Romo relative to Sabean's statement about LincecuCame here to share this link: http://aroundthefoghorn.com/2013/07/19/vp-bobby-evans-on-siriusxm-on-vogey-pence-brown-and-a-note-on-romo/?utm_source=FanSided&utm_medium=Network&utm_campaign=Trending
Evans was interviewed, Schulman tweeted info, blogger covered the news and gave his views. I think he did a nice job and a great service to Giants fans.
Vogie starts rehab in AA, shoot for return in early to mid August. To me, that is big news, it is not that far from now potentially, the start of August is only 13 days away. At that point, the Giants will have an interesting decision to make: who losses their starting rotation job?
Before it was easy to say Gaudin, as we need a long man, but he has one really well for us. I agree with covechatter that it might be Zito, though my speculation on my blog was that he could be DFAed at that point, as we are still at a full 40-man and Vogie is on the 60-day DL and someone would have to be cleared off the island to bring back Vogie. If Zito is DFAed, then I think Kickham would come up and be our long relief guy.
About Pence, I took it the opposite of the author, I viewed it as more that Evans hoped that we don't go south and have to consider such an issue. But I agree that it was a non-comittal to Pence.
I think the Giants are still on the fence, Pence's cold streak lately hasn't helped his cause, if he were still hitting like he were in April/May, I think it would be likely the Giants do pursue Pence, with QO at minimum, but I think they have a price in their head that they won't go over, and are willing to let free agency determine whether another team overpays for him or not.
I still hope the Giants pursue Pence and be in the mix, but I don't want to pay him the market value that his arb awards portend, which is $17M per year. Astros really screwed up with him on his arbs, set a bad precedence, I think. But a 3-4 years deal in the $13-15M per year range is OK with me, as we need at least two good bats in the middle, Posey is clearly one, but Sandoval's weight and injury issues makes him iffy, and Belt, while he could be that bat for us someday, I don't know if he'll reach that point by the end of the season.
About Brown, that's been the Giants position with all prospects that they expect to play a significant role on the team in the near future, they have said that about Wilson, Bumgarner, Posey, at minimum that I remember. They want them getting a lot of playing time and focused on improving themselves.
About Romo, I didn't take that to be a not solid commitment to Romo. I view that more as an organizational stance, much like how Beane thinks closers are fungible and easily replaced. This to me confirms that the Giants do not share Beane's (or saber's) view that closers can be easily replaced. This to me means that the Giants, once they found their closer, will hold onto him as long as possible (and productive). So I did not view that as a slight to Romo relative to Sabean's statement about Lincecum.
And speaking of Lincecum, if anything, Sabean's statement could be construed like the Pence statement, said in a different way. In any case, I think the Giants feel that they will be close enough to battle to late in the season for relevancy, and they can't do that without Lincecum (or somebody in his place) pitching well enough, plus there is the potential for Lincecum to have a really nice second half, much like he did in 2012 when he led the rotation in ERA until his last two bad starts, where his stamina issues finally took over. So it is very unlikely to see him traded, I think.
Plus, I think the Giants still hope to work out something with Lincecum, depending on what the market bears for Tim. They are not going to go crazy, but if the other teams make reasonable offers, I can see the Giants upping the contract value to resign Tim.
Plus, top relievers are getting $14-15M per year right now. The Giants could structure the deal to pay him, say, $16M per year, with $1M added on for each IP threshold that he makes, so that he makes, say, $22M per year if he's starting, but making good money for a reliever if not. Maybe starting with the 25th start to the 30th start.
I believe that he can be a great super-reliever once he transitions over from starting. We could have a closer, like most teams, but Tim would pitch based on what the team needs at the moment. If they need a long man in the 2nd, he'll pitch that game. But maybe the next day, they need someone to come in the 5th, and he can bridge to the setup relievers if necessary. But maybe the setup guys are struggling to shut down things in the 7th or 8th, and like how the Giants used to bring in Wilson in the 8th to get 4 or 5 outs, he could do that as well. Or if the closer is struggling, bring in Timmy as needed, depending on how Bochy and Rags assess the situation. He could also be our extra innings guy, going 3-4-5 innings, as long as necessary to get that extra innings win, shutting down the other team.
ogc thoughts
Vogie starts rehab in AA, shoot for return in early to mid August. To me, that is big news, it is not that far from now potentially, the start of August is only 13 days away. At that point, the Giants will have an interesting decision to make: who losses their starting rotation job?
Before it was easy to say Gaudin, as we need a long man, but he has one really well for us. I agree with covechatter that it might be Zito, though my speculation on my blog was that he could be DFAed at that point, as we are still at a full 40-man and Vogie is on the 60-day DL and someone would have to be cleared off the island to bring back Vogie. If Zito is DFAed, then I think Kickham would come up and be our long relief guy.
About Pence, I took it the opposite of the author, I viewed it as more that Evans hoped that we don't go south and have to consider such an issue. But I agree that it was a non-comittal to Pence.
I think the Giants are still on the fence, Pence's cold streak lately hasn't helped his cause, if he were still hitting like he were in April/May, I think it would be likely the Giants do pursue Pence, with QO at minimum, but I think they have a price in their head that they won't go over, and are willing to let free agency determine whether another team overpays for him or not.
I still hope the Giants pursue Pence and be in the mix, but I don't want to pay him the market value that his arb awards portend, which is $17M per year. Astros really screwed up with him on his arbs, set a bad precedence, I think. But a 3-4 years deal in the $13-15M per year range is OK with me, as we need at least two good bats in the middle, Posey is clearly one, but Sandoval's weight and injury issues makes him iffy, and Belt, while he could be that bat for us someday, I don't know if he'll reach that point by the end of the season.
About Brown, that's been the Giants position with all prospects that they expect to play a significant role on the team in the near future, they have said that about Wilson, Bumgarner, Posey, at minimum that I remember. They want them getting a lot of playing time and focused on improving themselves.
About Romo, I didn't take that to be a not solid commitment to Romo. I view that more as an organizational stance, much like how Beane thinks closers are fungible and easily replaced. This to me confirms that the Giants do not share Beane's (or saber's) view that closers can be easily replaced. This to me means that the Giants, once they found their closer, will hold onto him as long as possible (and productive). So I did not view that as a slight to Romo relative to Sabean's statement about LincecuCame here to share this link: http://aroundthefoghorn.com/2013/07/19/vp-bobby-evans-on-siriusxm-on-vogey-pence-brown-and-a-note-on-romo/?utm_source=FanSided&utm_medium=Network&utm_campaign=Trending
Evans was interviewed, Schulman tweeted info, blogger covered the news and gave his views. I think he did a nice job and a great service to Giants fans.
Vogie starts rehab in AA, shoot for return in early to mid August. To me, that is big news, it is not that far from now potentially, the start of August is only 13 days away. At that point, the Giants will have an interesting decision to make: who losses their starting rotation job?
Before it was easy to say Gaudin, as we need a long man, but he has one really well for us. I agree with covechatter that it might be Zito, though my speculation on my blog was that he could be DFAed at that point, as we are still at a full 40-man and Vogie is on the 60-day DL and someone would have to be cleared off the island to bring back Vogie. If Zito is DFAed, then I think Kickham would come up and be our long relief guy.
About Pence, I took it the opposite of the author, I viewed it as more that Evans hoped that we don't go south and have to consider such an issue. But I agree that it was a non-comittal to Pence.
I think the Giants are still on the fence, Pence's cold streak lately hasn't helped his cause, if he were still hitting like he were in April/May, I think it would be likely the Giants do pursue Pence, with QO at minimum, but I think they have a price in their head that they won't go over, and are willing to let free agency determine whether another team overpays for him or not.
I still hope the Giants pursue Pence and be in the mix, but I don't want to pay him the market value that his arb awards portend, which is $17M per year. Astros really screwed up with him on his arbs, set a bad precedence, I think. But a 3-4 years deal in the $13-15M per year range is OK with me, as we need at least two good bats in the middle, Posey is clearly one, but Sandoval's weight and injury issues makes him iffy, and Belt, while he could be that bat for us someday, I don't know if he'll reach that point by the end of the season.
About Brown, that's been the Giants position with all prospects that they expect to play a significant role on the team in the near future, they have said that about Wilson, Bumgarner, Posey, at minimum that I remember. They want them getting a lot of playing time and focused on improving themselves.
About Romo, I didn't take that to be a not solid commitment to Romo. I view that more as an organizational stance, much like how Beane thinks closers are fungible and easily replaced. This to me confirms that the Giants do not share Beane's (or saber's) view that closers can be easily replaced. This to me means that the Giants, once they found their closer, will hold onto him as long as possible (and productive). So I did not view that as a slight to Romo relative to Sabean's statement about Lincecum.
And speaking of Lincecum, if anything, Sabean's statement could be construed like the Pence statement, said in a different way. In any case, I think the Giants feel that they will be close enough to battle to late in the season for relevancy, and they can't do that without Lincecum (or somebody in his place) pitching well enough, plus there is the potential for Lincecum to have a really nice second half, much like he did in 2012 when he led the rotation in ERA until his last two bad starts, where his stamina issues finally took over. So it is very unlikely to see him traded, I think.
Plus, I think the Giants still hope to work out something with Lincecum, depending on what the market bears for Tim. They are not going to go crazy, but if the other teams make reasonable offers, I can see the Giants upping the contract value to resign Tim.
Plus, top relievers are getting $14-15M per year right now. The Giants could structure the deal to pay him, say, $16M per year, with $1M added on for each IP threshold that he makes, so that he makes, say, $22M per year if he's starting, but making good money for a reliever if not. Maybe starting with the 25th start to the 30th start.
I believe that he can be a great super-reliever once he transitions over from starting. We could have a closer, like most teams, but Tim would pitch based on what the team needs at the moment. If they need a long man in the 2nd, he'll pitch that game. But maybe the next day, they need someone to come in the 5th, and he can bridge to the setup relievers if necessary. But maybe the setup guys are struggling to shut down things in the 7th or 8th, and like how the Giants used to bring in Wilson in the 8th to get 4 or 5 outs, he could do that as well. Or if the closer is struggling, bring in Timmy as needed, depending on how Bochy and Rags assess the situation. He could also be our extra innings guy, going 3-4-5 innings, as long as necessary to get that extra innings win, shutting down the other team.
Friday, February 08, 2013
Your 2013 Giants: Pre-Fanfest News
News from Chron and Merc.
Posey Extension Openness
Biggest news for me is that the Giants and Posey stated publicly that they are open to discussing a long-term contract this spring. Of course, that don't mean that they will come to an agreement, but it is good that it is at least out in public, the Giants generally don't talk about such stuff unless they are serious about getting it done (like with all of Cain's extensions, Lowry's, Sandoval's, Bumgarner's).
Posey Handling Affects Belt
Meanwhile, the Giants plan to keep on keeping on: their 2012 handling of Posey will continue into 2013. He will continue to see a lot of time at 1B, and given how well Belt played last season, the Giants plan on moving him to LF a lot of those times if he continues to earn it. So Blanco should not get too comfortable starting out there in LF.
I still think the Giants should just make Belt the LF, so that he gets acclimated to playing there full-time, and sign someone who can play 1B well and hit well enough to play there most games. I always thought Ishikawa would be perfect for that, but there must be other lefties who play defense well at 1B while hitting OK. Besides, we know that either Sandoval or Posey will end up starting at 1B some day, so Belt's hold on the position is tentative at best, anyway, in the long run.
No Extension for Lincecum
I was hoping maybe for something, but this made the most sense. Sabean does not envision a contract extension for The Kid (see his new look? check this link) before the season ends. Lincecum is in poor negotiating position due to his poor 2012 and thus his side will not be as interested in talking unless you are ignoring his 2012 and acting like it never happened. The Giants, meanwhile, don't want to give him a big contract if 2012 is a precursor to Tim's future performances, as his seasonal performances have been in a downtrend. But if he has a good season, and he needed to get into great shape this off-season to do that, I think, the Giants probably would kick the tires with him at the end of the season, in order to try to sign him during the period they have exclusivity to talk with him.
Given how he was about money before, though, I expect him to test the free agent waters and get $25M+ per season from some team for 4-5 years, I can't see any team giving him that big a contract to his age 35 (which a 6 year contract would do). I don't see the Giants doing that. But I hope they offer him a big short term deal, he claims to like short term deals more, around $27M for 2 years plus an option (let's say $26M for 2014 and $27M for 2015), see if we can entice him to stay that way.
Unfortunately Pablo Needs to Slim Down
This is such an old story. Sounds like they are playing nice in the press and saying that they think that he can slim down in time for the regular season. I'm just glad he has no more hamate bones to break, though I'm no Doctor, is there another bone in the hand that can break from swinging a bat?
Romo IS the Closer... Unless He's Not
Bochy made it clear that Romo will be the closer in name and function during the 2013 season, this is his position as he earned it with his performance down the stretch and in the playoffs. There will be no closer by committee, which his new contract paid him like.
That said, the Giants will handle him with care because he has had physical issues previously in his career, plus the extra throwing he did in the playoffs. On top of that, he's going to throw in the WBC as well, away from the Giants coaches and thus could be handled in a way the Giants would not appreciate. So if you have an extra spot on your fantasy pitching staff in 2013, you might want to grab Affeldt or Casilla to get the occasional extra save, particularly if you have Romo on your team.
Bumgarner Figures It Out
Madison had late season struggles (much like Lincecum) but whereas Tim's problem was with his conditioning (I really hope he fixed that this off-season, why didn't the writers ask him that?), Bumgarner said his was due to fatigue that was due to poor mechanics. He worked on his mechanics over the winter and feels that he did all he could to fix things.
He talked about how much he learned about his mechanics over the past few years early last season. He noted that he just threw when he first became a pro, and had very little idea on why and when he was successful. He has learned since turning pro when he is throwing right and when he is not, and this interview suggests that he knows himself very well now, and thus he pronounced himself fixed for 2013. We will see.
Zito Wants to End his Career With Giants
Wow, given how poorly he's been treated here by fans, that's a shocker. But he does love working in the Bay Area, it seems, and I think he recently moved up here, with his new wife, if I recall right. If he gives us a great deal to make up for his current contract, I would be open to it (say $3-5M per season for 5 years?). Otherwise, I think our young guys coming up should be ready enough by 2015 to take over for Zito in the rotation, unless he wants to turn to relieving in the bullpen.
Theriot Turns the Turnstile
Looks like he won't be back. He wants more playing time than he can expect to get here in SF. The Giants spoke to him at the Winter Meeting and never heard back from him. Honestly, I would not mind this as it leaves an opening for Nick Noonan to maybe make the team sometime during the season and probably places an Asian on the team again (Japan League vet Tanaka is in camp battling for MI position; he said he wants to start eventually, but did he know about Scutaro's contract?). Probably Arias and Tanaka are the two MI to begin the season, but Scutaro is old and Holliday is still playing for the Cards, so you never know what happens to the 2B.
Surkamp on Track
LHP Eric Surkamp had TJS last July and hopes to return this July. He's throwing at 90 feet, so I assume that is good since the mound is 60 feet 6 inches from home plate (did you know that the reason for this distance is that in the original schematics, 0 inches was written in, but I guess he curled it and the guy laying out the field read it as 6 inches. FACT!).
TJS today is so routine and many players return to not only throw as well as before, but some could throw even harder. But it is no sure thing so I'll keep my fingers crossed for Eric, he seems like a nice guy from the interviews I've read. Some are OK after a year, but some require two years to fully recover. Since he did not rely on his velocity before, I would guess that he can return sooner than later in terms of matching prior performance.
Brett's Earned It
Sabean on right-hander Brett Bochy, who will be in camp: “He’s earned it. He had a real nice season going last year until fatigue set in. We’ll have to watch him in the beginning. All these relievers, whether a prospect or somebody trying to make the team, half the bullpen is pitching in the WBC so they’re going to get a chance to be out there.” Nice of Sabes to praise his buddy Bruce's little boy! :^)
Spring Training Next Week
Go Giants!!! Defend your World Championship!!!
Posey Extension Openness
Biggest news for me is that the Giants and Posey stated publicly that they are open to discussing a long-term contract this spring. Of course, that don't mean that they will come to an agreement, but it is good that it is at least out in public, the Giants generally don't talk about such stuff unless they are serious about getting it done (like with all of Cain's extensions, Lowry's, Sandoval's, Bumgarner's).
Posey Handling Affects Belt
Meanwhile, the Giants plan to keep on keeping on: their 2012 handling of Posey will continue into 2013. He will continue to see a lot of time at 1B, and given how well Belt played last season, the Giants plan on moving him to LF a lot of those times if he continues to earn it. So Blanco should not get too comfortable starting out there in LF.
I still think the Giants should just make Belt the LF, so that he gets acclimated to playing there full-time, and sign someone who can play 1B well and hit well enough to play there most games. I always thought Ishikawa would be perfect for that, but there must be other lefties who play defense well at 1B while hitting OK. Besides, we know that either Sandoval or Posey will end up starting at 1B some day, so Belt's hold on the position is tentative at best, anyway, in the long run.
No Extension for Lincecum
I was hoping maybe for something, but this made the most sense. Sabean does not envision a contract extension for The Kid (see his new look? check this link) before the season ends. Lincecum is in poor negotiating position due to his poor 2012 and thus his side will not be as interested in talking unless you are ignoring his 2012 and acting like it never happened. The Giants, meanwhile, don't want to give him a big contract if 2012 is a precursor to Tim's future performances, as his seasonal performances have been in a downtrend. But if he has a good season, and he needed to get into great shape this off-season to do that, I think, the Giants probably would kick the tires with him at the end of the season, in order to try to sign him during the period they have exclusivity to talk with him.
Given how he was about money before, though, I expect him to test the free agent waters and get $25M+ per season from some team for 4-5 years, I can't see any team giving him that big a contract to his age 35 (which a 6 year contract would do). I don't see the Giants doing that. But I hope they offer him a big short term deal, he claims to like short term deals more, around $27M for 2 years plus an option (let's say $26M for 2014 and $27M for 2015), see if we can entice him to stay that way.
Unfortunately Pablo Needs to Slim Down
This is such an old story. Sounds like they are playing nice in the press and saying that they think that he can slim down in time for the regular season. I'm just glad he has no more hamate bones to break, though I'm no Doctor, is there another bone in the hand that can break from swinging a bat?
Romo IS the Closer... Unless He's Not
Bochy made it clear that Romo will be the closer in name and function during the 2013 season, this is his position as he earned it with his performance down the stretch and in the playoffs. There will be no closer by committee, which his new contract paid him like.
That said, the Giants will handle him with care because he has had physical issues previously in his career, plus the extra throwing he did in the playoffs. On top of that, he's going to throw in the WBC as well, away from the Giants coaches and thus could be handled in a way the Giants would not appreciate. So if you have an extra spot on your fantasy pitching staff in 2013, you might want to grab Affeldt or Casilla to get the occasional extra save, particularly if you have Romo on your team.
Bumgarner Figures It Out
Madison had late season struggles (much like Lincecum) but whereas Tim's problem was with his conditioning (I really hope he fixed that this off-season, why didn't the writers ask him that?), Bumgarner said his was due to fatigue that was due to poor mechanics. He worked on his mechanics over the winter and feels that he did all he could to fix things.
He talked about how much he learned about his mechanics over the past few years early last season. He noted that he just threw when he first became a pro, and had very little idea on why and when he was successful. He has learned since turning pro when he is throwing right and when he is not, and this interview suggests that he knows himself very well now, and thus he pronounced himself fixed for 2013. We will see.
Zito Wants to End his Career With Giants
Wow, given how poorly he's been treated here by fans, that's a shocker. But he does love working in the Bay Area, it seems, and I think he recently moved up here, with his new wife, if I recall right. If he gives us a great deal to make up for his current contract, I would be open to it (say $3-5M per season for 5 years?). Otherwise, I think our young guys coming up should be ready enough by 2015 to take over for Zito in the rotation, unless he wants to turn to relieving in the bullpen.
Theriot Turns the Turnstile
Looks like he won't be back. He wants more playing time than he can expect to get here in SF. The Giants spoke to him at the Winter Meeting and never heard back from him. Honestly, I would not mind this as it leaves an opening for Nick Noonan to maybe make the team sometime during the season and probably places an Asian on the team again (Japan League vet Tanaka is in camp battling for MI position; he said he wants to start eventually, but did he know about Scutaro's contract?). Probably Arias and Tanaka are the two MI to begin the season, but Scutaro is old and Holliday is still playing for the Cards, so you never know what happens to the 2B.
Surkamp on Track
LHP Eric Surkamp had TJS last July and hopes to return this July. He's throwing at 90 feet, so I assume that is good since the mound is 60 feet 6 inches from home plate (did you know that the reason for this distance is that in the original schematics, 0 inches was written in, but I guess he curled it and the guy laying out the field read it as 6 inches. FACT!).
TJS today is so routine and many players return to not only throw as well as before, but some could throw even harder. But it is no sure thing so I'll keep my fingers crossed for Eric, he seems like a nice guy from the interviews I've read. Some are OK after a year, but some require two years to fully recover. Since he did not rely on his velocity before, I would guess that he can return sooner than later in terms of matching prior performance.
Brett's Earned It
Sabean on right-hander Brett Bochy, who will be in camp: “He’s earned it. He had a real nice season going last year until fatigue set in. We’ll have to watch him in the beginning. All these relievers, whether a prospect or somebody trying to make the team, half the bullpen is pitching in the WBC so they’re going to get a chance to be out there.” Nice of Sabes to praise his buddy Bruce's little boy! :^)
Spring Training Next Week
Go Giants!!! Defend your World Championship!!!
Wednesday, February 06, 2013
Your 2013 Giants: Romo Signs for Two Years
Chron and CSNBA reports that Sergio Romo signed for two years, but no financials given (yet). He asked for $4.5M and the Giants offered $2.675M. The deal covers his last two arbitration years.
ogc thoughts
Romo's ask is equivalent to $7.5M free market salary, which is roughly League money. Giants offer was equivalent to $4.458M, which is roughly what they gave him last year ($1.575M = $3.94M plus 10% raise). I would guess that the Giants might have signed him for $3.3M (or $5.5M) for 2013 and $4.5M for 2014 ($5.625M). That's roughly what the Giants are paying Affeldt and Casilla, plus a 10% bump up because he does close some, like Affeldt and Casilla. Bochy's language so far is clearly about the bullpen as a committee again in 2013.
And that makes sense. Romo's a fragile guy, he's been very open about pitching with pain and getting the job done, plus he's been shut down in prior years for tender elbow. His key pitch is the slider, which is hard on the elbow. So Bochy splits the load during the regular season among the gang, then go to Romo in the playoffs, when it's time to put the pedal to the metal, and floor it.
They could go as high at $6M free market (or $3.6M and $4.8M) but I don't see them going higher. But you never know...
Also, Ramon Ramirez has been signed to a minor league contract and will compete for a bullpen spot. That's after negotiations with Brandon Lyon went south, he wanted more clarity about the late innings opportunities.
ogc thoughts
Romo's ask is equivalent to $7.5M free market salary, which is roughly League money. Giants offer was equivalent to $4.458M, which is roughly what they gave him last year ($1.575M = $3.94M plus 10% raise). I would guess that the Giants might have signed him for $3.3M (or $5.5M) for 2013 and $4.5M for 2014 ($5.625M). That's roughly what the Giants are paying Affeldt and Casilla, plus a 10% bump up because he does close some, like Affeldt and Casilla. Bochy's language so far is clearly about the bullpen as a committee again in 2013.
And that makes sense. Romo's a fragile guy, he's been very open about pitching with pain and getting the job done, plus he's been shut down in prior years for tender elbow. His key pitch is the slider, which is hard on the elbow. So Bochy splits the load during the regular season among the gang, then go to Romo in the playoffs, when it's time to put the pedal to the metal, and floor it.
They could go as high at $6M free market (or $3.6M and $4.8M) but I don't see them going higher. But you never know...
Also, Ramon Ramirez has been signed to a minor league contract and will compete for a bullpen spot. That's after negotiations with Brandon Lyon went south, he wanted more clarity about the late innings opportunities.
Friday, January 18, 2013
2013 Giants: Arbitration Deadline Deals
As reported by Half/MLB.com and Pavlovic/Merc, the Giants have signed a number of players to deals in order to avoid arbitration. The Giants under Sabean has worked assiduously to avoid arbitration, prefering to avoid the combative atmosphere that generally creates, with only A.J. the only one to go into arbitration (and he won, mainly because Colletti put the Giants offer way too low, not that I knew, but the media was reporting a much higher number than what the Giants offered and A.J. got his high number because it was closer to that media number. From what I recall, AJ asked for $3.5, the Giants offered $2.25 and the media was quoting $3M range, but more under than over).
I have to think that Romo's side is asking for closer type money and the Giants are balking. Though it could also be that they might be working on a deal to cover his two remaining arb seasons and go into his free agent years, much like Casilla. His arb salary last season placed his market value at $3.9M. Assuming he values himself closer to a Brandon League $7.5M deal, for a quasi closer, that works out to a $4.5M salary for 2013. Maybe we can get him signed to a deal close to but above Casilla's 3 year, $15M deal, like $16.5M, extra half mil per season.
I have been wanting to see the Giants sign Posey to a long term deal and the media reports that the Giants are trying to get a deal done. At $25M per, that works out to $10M in 2014, $15M in 2015, $20M in 2016 (total of $45M). Assuming some discount for giving him guaranteed money now, versus risking that he get injured and not earn any of these amounts, maybe $9M in 2014, $12M in 2015, $15M in 2016, $20M in 2017 plus mutual option year for 2018. That works out to a $56M deal. Throw in a $4M buyout of the 2018 option, that works out to 4 year deal with option for $60M. Add another year for $20M, that is a 5 year deal for $80M. Both seems fair to me, given 2011. I would lean more towards a longer contract than shorter with him. I view him as our Jeter, someone to keep here for his career.
- Hunter Pence: $13.8M, which is basically where he should be. His prior arbitration amounts worked out to roughly low $17M market value (based on the 40%/60%/80% of market value rule of thumb that is used by many sabers). This amount works out to $17.25M. Media reports that there is not likely to be a long-term deal to be worked out in spring, and I can see why. $17M is a lot to pay Hunter, frankly, the Astros screwed things up by giving him that much so it has stuck. I can see the Giants letting him go into free agency where his offers will determine what his true market value is, and then swooping in to sign him to a long-term deal. Given how much he seems to love it here, I can see him giving the team a final try to beat whatever offer comes his way. I would be mildly surprised if he gets that much, but with so much new money coming into the league, it is hard to get shocked by any salary nowadays.
- Buster Posey: $8M. Not sure if there's ever a rule of thumb on a Super-Two. I've used 30% before, and that would work out to a $26.667M market value, and if you used the 40%, you get $20M. Looking at the two, roughly $25M works for me. That's close to Howard's $10M that he got in arbitration (he did not work out a deal, so he asked for $10M and got it, while the Phillies offered $7M).
- Jose Mijares: $1.8M. For a first timer, that works out to $4.5M, which seems fair for what he did in 2012. That is right around but under what the Giants signed Affeldt, Lopez, and Casilla to.
- Gregor Blanco: $1.35M. For a part-time starter, that's not too bad. This values him at $3.25M, and if anything, I think that might be on the low side, as he did start a lot of games. Still, that's not a sure thing in 2013, with Torres around and probably competition from Kieschnick and/or Peguero at minimum. And he was up and down last season.
I have to think that Romo's side is asking for closer type money and the Giants are balking. Though it could also be that they might be working on a deal to cover his two remaining arb seasons and go into his free agent years, much like Casilla. His arb salary last season placed his market value at $3.9M. Assuming he values himself closer to a Brandon League $7.5M deal, for a quasi closer, that works out to a $4.5M salary for 2013. Maybe we can get him signed to a deal close to but above Casilla's 3 year, $15M deal, like $16.5M, extra half mil per season.
I have been wanting to see the Giants sign Posey to a long term deal and the media reports that the Giants are trying to get a deal done. At $25M per, that works out to $10M in 2014, $15M in 2015, $20M in 2016 (total of $45M). Assuming some discount for giving him guaranteed money now, versus risking that he get injured and not earn any of these amounts, maybe $9M in 2014, $12M in 2015, $15M in 2016, $20M in 2017 plus mutual option year for 2018. That works out to a $56M deal. Throw in a $4M buyout of the 2018 option, that works out to 4 year deal with option for $60M. Add another year for $20M, that is a 5 year deal for $80M. Both seems fair to me, given 2011. I would lean more towards a longer contract than shorter with him. I view him as our Jeter, someone to keep here for his career.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Your 2012 Giants Are World Champions!!!
Epic!
Wow, what a game! What a series! What a season!
If ever there was a team effort for World Series MVP, this was it. Sure, Pablo Sandoval gave the Tigers a gut punch in the first game with his homers and hit well all through the series, but what got lost among all that is that Barry Zito pitched a great game, to go with his other great game. Without Zito, the march to being the World Champions would have ended seven games ago.
And while Pablo won the game for us in game 1, it was Hunter Pence who scored the first run in the following three games, and without those runs, who knows if we would have scored the runs to win those games, and he drove in the second run in game 2, and the Tigers would have won in regulation in game 4. And Buster Posey, delivering a key homer once again, that kept the game alive into extra innings. Of course, Marco Scutaro again was in the middle of the action, driving in the winning run, and I thought it was apropos that he drove in Ryan Theriot, the guy he replaced at 2B, the guy who hit well for us starting at 2B after he healed up on the DL, and helped us bridge from Freddy Sanchez to Scutaro. And back to the start again, Sandoval stout hitting in the series helped make that happen, as the Tigers had to pitch to Scutaro or face Sandoval with two runners on base.
And what about the defense? Even though they did not hit particularly well in the World Series, both Angel Pagan and Gregor Blanco were making big plays in the outfield over and over again. Brandon Crawford and Brandon Belt as well in the infield, as well as Scoots. And, in any case, when they did get hits, they got them in key situations, and really, when you are winning games by 1-2 runs, every run is critical and key.
What about the bullpen? Tim Lincecum was so dominant in middle relief, probably the best middle reliever ever. Jeremy Affeldt and Santiago Casilla were great in setup. Sergio Romo was great in closing out games, closing out the finale in exclamation with a called strike three on AL MVP Cabrera! And that struck out the side.
And, despite little usage in the World Series, George Kontos and Javier Lopez, without their work in the NL series, we would not have been here, at the end, Champions once more. For those who didn't see the importance of spending $10M on both Affeldt and Lopez should see what happened to the Tigers with their bullpen, to see why we spent that money on proven players who the team's management knew, and could trust and rely on proven performance.
Most of all, the starting pitching: Barry Zito, Madison Bumgarner, Ryan Vogelsong, Matt Cain. We got three DOM starts in the World Series, and as I noted in my research before, it is DOM starts by pitchers that helps their team win over 70% of the time. They had 8 DOM starts between the NLCS and the World Series, helping the Giants win the World Championship. Not that the Tigers fell down like the Cards did - only one DOM start in the seven games - as the Tigers also had DOM starts, in the last three games, but that is where the hitters come in as well as our pitchers, we scored just enough to win each game. Hitting, pitching, fielding, everyone contributed their necessary contribution to enable the championship, nothing was too small to be of importance, each was necessary for that glorious second championship in three seasons.
San Francisco Giants: Team of the 2010's Decade
I've been saying this since the late 2000's, that the Giants had the makings of the Team of the 2010 Decade. Of course, there is the lovely and great starting pitching to start with, Lincecum, Cain, and, clearly, Bumgarner coming up. Then Sabean has been great at putting together a great bullpen, as he has been able to for much of his time as GM, when the team is good, he is able to pull the trades to build up a great bullpen. And they have been almost picture perfect for what Baseball Prospectus' study on success in the playoffs found: high strikeout pitching staff (check!), great closer (check!), and great fielding defense also (check!).
But you still need some sort of offense. Before this season, we had to accept imperfections because it took time to develop an offense after concentrating on the pitching for so long. Talent does not come into any baseball system quick enough via the draft and international free agents to fuel a championship. The Giants, to their credit, has supplemented well in finding gems among the minor free agents, with Andres Torres, Santiago Casilla, Ryan Vogelsong, Gregor Blanco, and Joaquin Arias coming in and contributing significantly from 2009 to 2012. That is the to the credit of the Giants scouts.
Meanwhile, the Giants picked up offensive gems along the way, Sandoval, Posey, then Belt, Crawford, and Hector Sanchez. These they grew along the way, while also picking up pieces like Theriot, Pagan, Blanco. Then traded for the final pieces to this Epic Championship team, Scutaro and Pence, and they were what drove the offense to the championship, as they outscored the Cards and Tigers by a total of 36-7 in the last seven game, averaging 5.1 runs per game while holding the other team to 1.0 run per game in that stretch, keeping the opponents to 3 runs or under in each of the games in the stretch, reminiscent of their streak in late in the 2010 season.
The Giants, by winning their second World Series Championship in three seasons, has laid strong claim on this decade. If ownership and management can keep this core going forward, this should not be the last of their championships, and hopefully just the beginning. We should have the core players to at least mid-decade, and if the money can be ponied up, into the latter half of the decade as well.
Thank You Brian Sabean and Bruce Bochy!
And we have Brian Sabean and Bruce Bochy to thank for this. Of course, they could not do it without their top advisers like Dick Tidrow and John Barr, Dave Righetti and Mark Gardner, Tim Flannery and Ron Wotus. Still, they are the ones who get the public scrutiny.
Sabean, what a masterful job he has done, putting together all the pieces, first with the great pitching staff, then now with the great lineup. Bochy, what a masterful job he has done, balancing the present and the future while steering the team to another playoff berth, then switching to cut-throat managing, managing as if each game, each win, was necessary to prevent elimination. And, of course, that paid off in both the Reds and Cards series, as they faced six games of elimination and swept them all. Hopefully the Naysayers can now see that it is not luck that the Giants won, but through excellent decision making on the parts of Sabean and Bochy.
I am thankful that we have the two of them employed for the Giants and hope that the Giants first moves of the off-season be to sign the two of them to another joint extension. They have earned it, in spades.
Then I hope the next moves after that, in no particular order, be to sign Posey (ok he should be first), Pence, Pagan to long term contracts. Plus sign Scutaro, Sandoval, Lincecum, and Affeldt to two year extensions. I would not mind a long term deal for Belt if possible, Crawford too.
And there is money coming in to fuel all these contracts. Remember, the new ESPN deal doubles the revenues delivered to teams, adding over $11M to each team's coffers each year. And revenues from MBLAM has been growing each year, it is one of the great Internet e-commerce success stories so far. And season ticket holders should expect prices to go up again, as well. Plus there is usually a windfall from being in the playoffs as well. Lastly, I'm still hoping the A's will pay at least $100M for the South Bay rights, which will pay for a lot of long-term player contracts.
Congratulations again to the 2012 World Champs, Go Giants!
Wow, what a game! What a series! What a season!
If ever there was a team effort for World Series MVP, this was it. Sure, Pablo Sandoval gave the Tigers a gut punch in the first game with his homers and hit well all through the series, but what got lost among all that is that Barry Zito pitched a great game, to go with his other great game. Without Zito, the march to being the World Champions would have ended seven games ago.
And while Pablo won the game for us in game 1, it was Hunter Pence who scored the first run in the following three games, and without those runs, who knows if we would have scored the runs to win those games, and he drove in the second run in game 2, and the Tigers would have won in regulation in game 4. And Buster Posey, delivering a key homer once again, that kept the game alive into extra innings. Of course, Marco Scutaro again was in the middle of the action, driving in the winning run, and I thought it was apropos that he drove in Ryan Theriot, the guy he replaced at 2B, the guy who hit well for us starting at 2B after he healed up on the DL, and helped us bridge from Freddy Sanchez to Scutaro. And back to the start again, Sandoval stout hitting in the series helped make that happen, as the Tigers had to pitch to Scutaro or face Sandoval with two runners on base.
And what about the defense? Even though they did not hit particularly well in the World Series, both Angel Pagan and Gregor Blanco were making big plays in the outfield over and over again. Brandon Crawford and Brandon Belt as well in the infield, as well as Scoots. And, in any case, when they did get hits, they got them in key situations, and really, when you are winning games by 1-2 runs, every run is critical and key.
What about the bullpen? Tim Lincecum was so dominant in middle relief, probably the best middle reliever ever. Jeremy Affeldt and Santiago Casilla were great in setup. Sergio Romo was great in closing out games, closing out the finale in exclamation with a called strike three on AL MVP Cabrera! And that struck out the side.
And, despite little usage in the World Series, George Kontos and Javier Lopez, without their work in the NL series, we would not have been here, at the end, Champions once more. For those who didn't see the importance of spending $10M on both Affeldt and Lopez should see what happened to the Tigers with their bullpen, to see why we spent that money on proven players who the team's management knew, and could trust and rely on proven performance.
Most of all, the starting pitching: Barry Zito, Madison Bumgarner, Ryan Vogelsong, Matt Cain. We got three DOM starts in the World Series, and as I noted in my research before, it is DOM starts by pitchers that helps their team win over 70% of the time. They had 8 DOM starts between the NLCS and the World Series, helping the Giants win the World Championship. Not that the Tigers fell down like the Cards did - only one DOM start in the seven games - as the Tigers also had DOM starts, in the last three games, but that is where the hitters come in as well as our pitchers, we scored just enough to win each game. Hitting, pitching, fielding, everyone contributed their necessary contribution to enable the championship, nothing was too small to be of importance, each was necessary for that glorious second championship in three seasons.
San Francisco Giants: Team of the 2010's Decade
I've been saying this since the late 2000's, that the Giants had the makings of the Team of the 2010 Decade. Of course, there is the lovely and great starting pitching to start with, Lincecum, Cain, and, clearly, Bumgarner coming up. Then Sabean has been great at putting together a great bullpen, as he has been able to for much of his time as GM, when the team is good, he is able to pull the trades to build up a great bullpen. And they have been almost picture perfect for what Baseball Prospectus' study on success in the playoffs found: high strikeout pitching staff (check!), great closer (check!), and great fielding defense also (check!).
But you still need some sort of offense. Before this season, we had to accept imperfections because it took time to develop an offense after concentrating on the pitching for so long. Talent does not come into any baseball system quick enough via the draft and international free agents to fuel a championship. The Giants, to their credit, has supplemented well in finding gems among the minor free agents, with Andres Torres, Santiago Casilla, Ryan Vogelsong, Gregor Blanco, and Joaquin Arias coming in and contributing significantly from 2009 to 2012. That is the to the credit of the Giants scouts.
Meanwhile, the Giants picked up offensive gems along the way, Sandoval, Posey, then Belt, Crawford, and Hector Sanchez. These they grew along the way, while also picking up pieces like Theriot, Pagan, Blanco. Then traded for the final pieces to this Epic Championship team, Scutaro and Pence, and they were what drove the offense to the championship, as they outscored the Cards and Tigers by a total of 36-7 in the last seven game, averaging 5.1 runs per game while holding the other team to 1.0 run per game in that stretch, keeping the opponents to 3 runs or under in each of the games in the stretch, reminiscent of their streak in late in the 2010 season.
The Giants, by winning their second World Series Championship in three seasons, has laid strong claim on this decade. If ownership and management can keep this core going forward, this should not be the last of their championships, and hopefully just the beginning. We should have the core players to at least mid-decade, and if the money can be ponied up, into the latter half of the decade as well.
Thank You Brian Sabean and Bruce Bochy!
And we have Brian Sabean and Bruce Bochy to thank for this. Of course, they could not do it without their top advisers like Dick Tidrow and John Barr, Dave Righetti and Mark Gardner, Tim Flannery and Ron Wotus. Still, they are the ones who get the public scrutiny.
Sabean, what a masterful job he has done, putting together all the pieces, first with the great pitching staff, then now with the great lineup. Bochy, what a masterful job he has done, balancing the present and the future while steering the team to another playoff berth, then switching to cut-throat managing, managing as if each game, each win, was necessary to prevent elimination. And, of course, that paid off in both the Reds and Cards series, as they faced six games of elimination and swept them all. Hopefully the Naysayers can now see that it is not luck that the Giants won, but through excellent decision making on the parts of Sabean and Bochy.
I am thankful that we have the two of them employed for the Giants and hope that the Giants first moves of the off-season be to sign the two of them to another joint extension. They have earned it, in spades.
Then I hope the next moves after that, in no particular order, be to sign Posey (ok he should be first), Pence, Pagan to long term contracts. Plus sign Scutaro, Sandoval, Lincecum, and Affeldt to two year extensions. I would not mind a long term deal for Belt if possible, Crawford too.
And there is money coming in to fuel all these contracts. Remember, the new ESPN deal doubles the revenues delivered to teams, adding over $11M to each team's coffers each year. And revenues from MBLAM has been growing each year, it is one of the great Internet e-commerce success stories so far. And season ticket holders should expect prices to go up again, as well. Plus there is usually a windfall from being in the playoffs as well. Lastly, I'm still hoping the A's will pay at least $100M for the South Bay rights, which will pay for a lot of long-term player contracts.
Congratulations again to the 2012 World Champs, Go Giants!
Thursday, October 11, 2012
EPIC!!! Your 2012 Giants Win the NLDS!!! Makes History!!!
"We will see you tomorrow" Hunter
EPIC!!!
The Giants set history by winning the NLDS!!! First NL team (out of 22) to come back from 0-2 to win a 5 game series!!! First time any MLB team has come from behind 0-2 in a 5 game series to win three on the road to win the series!!! The Giants are just the fifth team to come back from 0-2 to win the playoff series!!!
(got gif link from a comment on MCC)
Barry Zito ended up on the good side of history this time, as his A's were the loser in the last two times this situation has come up, losing to the Yankees in 2001, Red Sox in 2003, but now winner with the Giants in 2012. They survive the gauntlet to see each other for another day, another series. They will, indeed, see each other tomorrow.
The Giants set history by winning the NLDS!!! First NL team (out of 22) to come back from 0-2 to win a 5 game series!!! First time any MLB team has come from behind 0-2 in a 5 game series to win three on the road to win the series!!! The Giants are just the fifth team to come back from 0-2 to win the playoff series!!!
(got gif link from a comment on MCC)
Barry Zito ended up on the good side of history this time, as his A's were the loser in the last two times this situation has come up, losing to the Yankees in 2001, Red Sox in 2003, but now winner with the Giants in 2012. They survive the gauntlet to see each other for another day, another series. They will, indeed, see each other tomorrow.
Wednesday, August 08, 2012
Your 2012 Giants: Closer by Committee (or Moving Back One Inning?)
Wow, changes were even more drastic than I originally thought. As reported by all the usual suspects in the SF Bay Area media (here's Schulman's since he originally broke the implications of Affeldt closing first), Santiago Casilla is out as part of the closer by committee scheme that was the apparently impetus for Schulman's spot-on speculation that the Mijares move was tied to having Affeldt being put in closing situations.
The reasoning is still the same, that blister issues is affecting Casilla's effectiveness, but his issues apparently are worse than initially mentioned because he warmed up early in yesterday's game (7th) and was almost immediately shut down due to the blister issue. I would guess that maybe once he gets healthy, he'll be moved into a more prominent role, but for now, they are resting him as much as possible without DLing him so that he can get healthy while still being available occasionally for bullpen duties.
Instead, for the closer-by-committee scheme, Bochy will now mix and match Jeremy Affeldt, Sergio Romo, and Javier Lopez in the 8th and 9th, with Casilla, Hensley, Kontos, Penny, Mijares handling 6th and 7th, mostly (though clearly getting some late game work, for Penny was seen warming up in last night's game in the 9th). They say (that is, Affeldt spoke for everyone) that once Bochy explained things, they understood their roles and is behind this closer by committee situation (even though Affeldt had said at the start of this season that he wasn't sure how it works).
The way it works is by matchups, so depending on who is coming up, Bochy might use Romo first one night, Affeldt first another night, Lopez first on some nights, and the mix and matching begins.
The reasoning is still the same, that blister issues is affecting Casilla's effectiveness, but his issues apparently are worse than initially mentioned because he warmed up early in yesterday's game (7th) and was almost immediately shut down due to the blister issue. I would guess that maybe once he gets healthy, he'll be moved into a more prominent role, but for now, they are resting him as much as possible without DLing him so that he can get healthy while still being available occasionally for bullpen duties.
Instead, for the closer-by-committee scheme, Bochy will now mix and match Jeremy Affeldt, Sergio Romo, and Javier Lopez in the 8th and 9th, with Casilla, Hensley, Kontos, Penny, Mijares handling 6th and 7th, mostly (though clearly getting some late game work, for Penny was seen warming up in last night's game in the 9th). They say (that is, Affeldt spoke for everyone) that once Bochy explained things, they understood their roles and is behind this closer by committee situation (even though Affeldt had said at the start of this season that he wasn't sure how it works).
The way it works is by matchups, so depending on who is coming up, Bochy might use Romo first one night, Affeldt first another night, Lopez first on some nights, and the mix and matching begins.
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.
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!
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Yea! Sergio Romo returning on Friday
Chris Haft has a nice post on Sergio Romo, with some interview quotes. Romo sounds like a really great guy, I saw an interview he did last season, and he was just as self-effacing and down to Earth. I've been a Romo Rooter since then.
One of the good things his return would do is to make a good bullpen even better. Affeldt, Miller, Medders, and Valdez have been good, Howry has been on and off but OK overall, and Wilson has had some growth pains, but still good overall as the closer (his ERA is bad, at 4.72, in save situations but he's been the victim of back luck, as he has posted 13.1 IP, with 11 hits and 4 walks, striking out 14 for a 3.5 K/BB, and his HR/9 is a bad 1.35 but should go down to prior levels, his peripherals are fine when in a save situation; again, like last season, he doesn't pitch well at all in non-save situations, but hopefully he can learn to do that, but maybe he can't get the adrenaline up for those situations...).
If Romo can return to close to his performance level of last season, when he had a 2.12 ERA in 29 games, 34.0 IP, 16 hits, 8 walks, 33 strikeouts, our bullpen can basically shut down the other team for the most part, until our lineup can beat up on the other team's bullpen. Most bullpens have someone the other team can beat up on, and if our relievers can shut down the other team, we will eventually reach that bottom dweller. Plus, with him around, we should be able to close out more leads into wins, allowing Bochy to bring in relievers sooner, before the starter tires and give back some or all of the lead.
Go Romo! If he is back to last year's form, that should help the team keep winning streaks going longer, and help stop losing streaks sooner, helping to keep early leads that is lost by starters going too long. Obviously, we got a streak started with Atlanta, but once he's back starting the next series, I think his addition will get us back on the winning track we were on for a while.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Baseball America's Giants Top 10 Prospects
Baseball America changed up their schedule and instead of doing the Giants last, like they usually do, they released it today here, with some commentary. The Top Ten:
The most interesting thing about Andy Baggarly's list is that Ehire Adrianza was ranked 6th in the farm. That's pretty good for limited play in rookie ball and not that much of a bonus given him (I didn't hear about his signing, so I assume it wasn't for a large amount). He had some nice stats - .275/.367/.391/.758, and very importantly, only 7 K in 69 AB plus 9 BB.
That is excellent plate discipline, both avoiding strikeouts and getting more walks than strikeouts. And he must be plenty fast because his groundball rate is high (49%), line drive rate is very low (13%), and fly ball rate low too (37%). In addition, he had 5 doubles in those 69 AB (that's around 40 doubles with 560 AB) and I believe he was 18 year old for the 2008 season, so he still has some growing to do, physical maturity. According to Baseball-Reference.com, he is 6' 1", 155 pounds.
Also of note is that Henry Sosa did not make the list. He did have a pretty horrible 2008 season so I can see that happening, though other prospect lists did include him. I think he should have still made the list given how well he did the year before.
Another interesting thing was Scott Barnes making 9th. He was just dominating in his short pro career so that would explain that, but his skills are not considered that plus, from most reports I've seen, so I wonder what BA saw that made them think that he can continue to do well as he rises.
Lastly, it was nice to see Sergio Romo get recognized in the list. He gets on because he's a reliever who didn't play in the majors all season, and thus don't have the innings to be ineligible. He's had a nice couple of seasons, so good for him making the list, can't take that away from him.
I had the same Top 4 on my list, but placed Rodriguez and Ishikawa higher (I only gave a Big 6). I think most people acknowledge that Noonan is the best of the next tier, followed by Gillaspie, but don't know what to do with Rodriguez. But basically you don't give the guy $2.5M unless you think he's a Top 5 type prospect, so I gave that to them.
I think Ishikawa will hit 15-20 homers and keep 1B cheaply and competently warm with a platoon buddy until Villalona makes the big show.
- Madison Bumgarner
- Buster Posey
- Angel Villalona
- Tim Alderson
- Nick Noonan
- Ehire Adrianza
- Conor Gillaspie
- Rafael Rodriguez
- Scott Barnes
- Sergio Romo
- After the 162-game experiment ran its course, the Giants identified a few players—Fred Lewis, Sergio Romo, Pablo Sandoval, Brian Wilson—who could be part of their next contender.
- There's hope deeper in the system and the Giants might not be down for long. First-year scouting director John Barr redirected the club's former pitching-heavy philosophy and took college bats with his top four draft picks. None made a bigger statement than catcher Buster Posey, Baseball America's College Player of the Year and the Golden Spikes Award winner, who signed at the Aug. 15 deadline for $6.2 million.
- Most of the system's top talent is at least a year or two away, however...
- Magowan approached his role from a fan's perspective, often making impetuous moves such as the Zito contract. Neukom, the former chief legal mind at Microsoft, plans to take a measured, analytical approach while prioritizing player development and a "Giants Way" of competing both on and off the field.
- Neukom said he expects San Francisco to be competitive in 2009 and contend the following season, all while bringing his "Microsoft meritocracy" to the front office. Even if the Giants show improvement, Neukom could decide he wants a baseball architect with a more modern perspective than Sabean, who isn't known to squint at a laptop screen.
The most interesting thing about Andy Baggarly's list is that Ehire Adrianza was ranked 6th in the farm. That's pretty good for limited play in rookie ball and not that much of a bonus given him (I didn't hear about his signing, so I assume it wasn't for a large amount). He had some nice stats - .275/.367/.391/.758, and very importantly, only 7 K in 69 AB plus 9 BB.
That is excellent plate discipline, both avoiding strikeouts and getting more walks than strikeouts. And he must be plenty fast because his groundball rate is high (49%), line drive rate is very low (13%), and fly ball rate low too (37%). In addition, he had 5 doubles in those 69 AB (that's around 40 doubles with 560 AB) and I believe he was 18 year old for the 2008 season, so he still has some growing to do, physical maturity. According to Baseball-Reference.com, he is 6' 1", 155 pounds.
Also of note is that Henry Sosa did not make the list. He did have a pretty horrible 2008 season so I can see that happening, though other prospect lists did include him. I think he should have still made the list given how well he did the year before.
Another interesting thing was Scott Barnes making 9th. He was just dominating in his short pro career so that would explain that, but his skills are not considered that plus, from most reports I've seen, so I wonder what BA saw that made them think that he can continue to do well as he rises.
Lastly, it was nice to see Sergio Romo get recognized in the list. He gets on because he's a reliever who didn't play in the majors all season, and thus don't have the innings to be ineligible. He's had a nice couple of seasons, so good for him making the list, can't take that away from him.
I had the same Top 4 on my list, but placed Rodriguez and Ishikawa higher (I only gave a Big 6). I think most people acknowledge that Noonan is the best of the next tier, followed by Gillaspie, but don't know what to do with Rodriguez. But basically you don't give the guy $2.5M unless you think he's a Top 5 type prospect, so I gave that to them.
I think Ishikawa will hit 15-20 homers and keep 1B cheaply and competently warm with a platoon buddy until Villalona makes the big show.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Baseball Prospectus's Giants Top 11 Prospects
BP nicely provides their Top 11 list on-line here. The list:
- Madison Bumgarner (Five Star prospect)
- Buster Posey (Five Star prospect)
- Angel Villalona (Five Star prospect)
- Tim Alderson (Four Star prospect)
- Rafael Rodriguez (Three Star prospect)
- Conor Gillaspie (Three Star prospect)
- Nick Noonan (Three Star prospect)
- Travis Ishikawa (Three Star prospect)
- Henry Sosa (Three Star prospect)
- Sergio Romo (Three Star prospect)
- Roger Kieschnick (Two Star prospect)
Just missed were Ehire Adrianza SS, Wendell Fairley OF, and Joseph Martinez RHP.
Kevin Goldstein notes:
Additional comments on other prospects in the comment section:Bumgarner is an obvious number one, but Posey isn't all that far behind him.
Some might flip-flop Villalona and Alderson at three and four, but I can't see
either player ranked lower that those two slots. Where Rodriguez slots in is
really a matter of your evaluation philosophy, but after that, it's anything
goes for the remaining six—Adrianza was the only player close enough to almost
make the list.
- Ehire Adrianza: "Absolutely outstanding defensive prospect, but there are tons of questions about his bat."
- Wendell Fairley: "The jury is still out on Fairley. He's toolsy as all get out, but a long way from being a baseball player."
- Scott Barnes: "I'm perfectly fine with somebody calling him a sleeper. It's not a huge surprise that he ripped through some low levels because of his polish, but the stuff is hardly pedestrian. He's solid across the board with an average-to-plus fastball and decent secondary stuff and he knows what he's doing out there. He could exceed expectations."
- Pablo Sandoval: "I really think 1B is his only option, to the point that he might fit a bit better on a AL team. I do think he can hit enough to be an every day first baseman, certainly at least on this team.".
Giants Thoughts
That was my Top 5 but I had Ishikawa 6th while he had Gillaspie 6th and Ishikawa 8th. I basically agree with what he wrote, based on what I've read about the prospects and their career data, as available.
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