One of the tactics that Zaidi has been executing well in his first off-season running the Giants, is his extreme version of what I call, Waiver Roulette.
Showing posts with label baseball strategy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label baseball strategy. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 27, 2019
Tuesday, March 26, 2019
Your 2019 Giants: Paralysis by Zaidi-nalysis by Blind Men
Wow, how much action that Zaidi has done in the on-rush of teams needing to finalize 25-man rosters? All those trades and moves, rapid action, in the closing days of spring training, as the rostering looks clear, then hazy once again, has been dizzying. First it was Waiver Roulette, picking up guys, then dropping them, to see if they can pass through waivers, and become a trade piece for him, given the depleted farm system that he needs to rebuild.
It has been interesting reading people's comments about Zaidi and what he's doing, and I found that, for the most part, even for myself, the conclusions being made were all biased by what they believe the Giants should be doing. It is much like the old story of 6 blind men who grasping one part of an elephant, and each telling their impression of the impressive beast (for example, the one holding his nose thinks it is much like a snake). Analyzing his moves can be paralyzing.
I was not immune to this phenomenon myself, so I thought I would sit down and write about what we can really say about Zaidi based on the moves and decisions made this off-season, and what we can't.
[NOTE: with all the moves he's making, I felt the need to just get this out before another move happens, had to update everything regarding Stratton, for example, and had to add Kratz earlier; watch, something's happening just as I'm publishing this, after all, Bochy told the media that they'll understand soon why the rotation hasn't been named, and nothing has happened yet...]
It has been interesting reading people's comments about Zaidi and what he's doing, and I found that, for the most part, even for myself, the conclusions being made were all biased by what they believe the Giants should be doing. It is much like the old story of 6 blind men who grasping one part of an elephant, and each telling their impression of the impressive beast (for example, the one holding his nose thinks it is much like a snake). Analyzing his moves can be paralyzing.
I was not immune to this phenomenon myself, so I thought I would sit down and write about what we can really say about Zaidi based on the moves and decisions made this off-season, and what we can't.
[NOTE: with all the moves he's making, I felt the need to just get this out before another move happens, had to update everything regarding Stratton, for example, and had to add Kratz earlier; watch, something's happening just as I'm publishing this, after all, Bochy told the media that they'll understand soon why the rotation hasn't been named, and nothing has happened yet...]
Monday, January 07, 2019
The Zaidi Fallacy
Christmas has come and passed and many Giants fans feel like they got a coal in their stockings because Next Gen Leader, Farhan Zaidi, has not done much so far, with the biggest acquisitions being signing L/RHP Pat Venditte and picking up Mike Gerber off waivers. Then there were the two Rule 5 pickups, LHP Travis Bergen (from Blue Jays) and OF Drew Ferguson (from Astros). And the recent purchase of multi-positional Breyvic Valera (from Orioles). Since surprising by leaving six 40-man roster spots open, and creating some excitement for significant movement, five marginal players have been picked up, leaving only one spot open on the 40-man roster (at the moment).
Leading some to wonder: if this is all the Giants were going to do, then why fire Evans?
Leading some to wonder: if this is all the Giants were going to do, then why fire Evans?
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
The Hidden Game of Baseball: What Makes Teams Win
Long time readers will know that one focus of my blog has been on research of how teams win. A long-time classic sabermetric book, The Hidden Game of Baseball, by John Thorn and Pete Palmer, had been out of publishing, like, forever, until recently having another printing with a new Foreword and Preface added, and I just got my copy the other day. I am going to go over the chapter on what makes teams win in this post.
Wednesday, January 04, 2012
A's Fire Sale Exposes Beane's Incompetence
A recent column by Monte Poole of the San Jose Mercury (sorry, no link, they only provide a 7 day window of access to their articles) boldly proclaiming that the A's "Fire sale exposes baseball's talk about integrity as fraudulent." I have an alternative, more accurate view: it exposes Billy Beane's mismanagement of the talent on the A's and A's ownership's pocketing of over $100M in EBITDA in the past six seasons.
Click title to read more
Click title to read more
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Offense is Hygiene, Defense is Core Competencies
I posted the below in response to a complaint about the Giants SS solutions since the Aurilia era.
Click on title of post to see the full post
(why does Blogger provide a jump break function but then does not let the reader know that they need to click something to see the full post, I wonder how many people thought I forgot to write my post. I'm almost at the point of stopping using this "feature")
Click on title of post to see the full post
(why does Blogger provide a jump break function but then does not let the reader know that they need to click something to see the full post, I wonder how many people thought I forgot to write my post. I'm almost at the point of stopping using this "feature")
Monday, July 12, 2010
Columnist Show Lack of Savvy
A local columnist wrote a column denigrating the Giants (as well as the A's, but I don't care about the A's), saying that the Rangers and Padres show savvy that the Giants lack. But she showed her lack of understand long-term business management, nor of the baseball product lifecycle (I would link except it's only available in the newspaper version right now).
Strategies Are Different
She praised the Rangers' acquisition of Cliff Lee, but she ignored the consequences of such actions. They lost a lot of their future in those trades. She made it seem like they didn't give up much in trade, noting, "so they gambled some of their future..." Smoak is not just some of their future, he is a highly accomplished and regarded hitter, who has struggled in his time in the majors, but has been starting to figure things out recently, blasting homers and driving in a bunch of runs.
She points out how low their payroll is, but then ignore the fact that if it is that low, then they most probably would not be able to re-sign Lee when he goes free agent on them after this season, at which point they will get draft picks for him that won't pay off for another 5-7 years, if ever. But she lays out hope for the Rangers' fans by writing that they "possibly [have] a chance of paying Lee to stick around." There is a reason why their payroll is low right now. Nobody is showing up at the turnstiles, and without that revenue, they won't be able to afford Lee for the huge contract demands that caused the Phillies to let him go to the Mariners in the first place.
True, they have other young talents in the farm system, but many of them have been in the majors already and struggled mightily to become valuable players. They may never do it. But they traded off their one most likely to succeed candidate in Smoak. They also lost upside potential by giving up those pitchers to the Giants for Molina.
They are going for it all this season. The Giants are trying to build for the next 5+ seasons, something she ignored, yet she claims the Rangers are "savvy" for doing this move. Well, the equivalent move would have been the Giants trading Posey. I don't think Giants fans would be happy with that move right now, just a guess on my part.
She also claims that they got what they needed, implying that the Giants didn't. Last I checked, Posey hit 6 homers on this road trip. Just what the offense ordered. Bumgarner has been outstanding in the rotation. Just what the rotation ordered. Chris Ray has stabilized the set-up man role. Just what the bullpen ordered. The Giants got a lot of new pieces in the last month and a half, and they are starting to gel together, there is a lot of season left.
Season Not Over
And no wonder some fans are ready to give up on the season, when the media is the lead lemming, heading over the cliff. She wrote that the "Padres have ... robbed the Bay Area of midsummer hope." Last I checked there is still 74 games to be played (75 when she wrote her column). And the Giants were only 4 games back at that time (still only 4 games back).
Has she ever seen and followed a baseball season? As a newspaper writer, she presumably has. But 4 games behind is nothing at the All-Star Break. The Jeopardy game show familiar tune has not even started to play yet. No wonder some fans want to commit hari-kari on the Giants season, when the newspaper media is feeding this lunacy to them, one tree at a time.
Ranger's At Different Point of Life-Cycle Than Giants
In addition, the Rangers is in a different part of the baseball product life-cycle, that is, in rebuilding a pennant contender. The Giants may have a lot of older players, but most of their key players for the future are still young, Jonathan Sanchez at 27 and Brian Wilson at 28, are the oldest. Lincecum is 26, Matt Cain 25, Bumgarner is only 20, Posey is only 23, so is Pablo, and, while not key yet, but potentially so, Schierholtz, Bowker, and Ishikwaka are all 26.
The older guys help greatly but are not key to our future success. With the offense, they are not key, except for maybe Huff and Uribe, but Uribe is 30, old for our group, but he would, as you will see, fit right in with the Rangers. Zito is 32, but anything he contributes will be additional to what the core young players contribute. Most of our key players are very young, we are starting our upward arc.
For while the Rangers do have some young players blended in, their key players are all near, at or past their prime. Ian Kinsler is 28, Mike Young is 33, Josh Hamilton is 29, Nelson Cruz is 29, Vlad Guerrero is 35, David Murphy is 28, even their hot young pitcher, Colby Lewis is already 30, closer CJ Wilson is 29, and Cliff Lee is 31. If they don't win now, who knows if they will ever have a chance again, particularly with the lead they have now.
They have a lot of question marks over their future. All of their stars and players they are counting on this season could either start declining or leave as a free agent within the next couple of years. Lewis could just be having a fluke season, Kinsler has been injury prone his whole career, Young is not young anymore, Hamilton is a loose cannon, Vlad is having a nice season but it is his first in a number of seasons. There are a lot of question marks.
If they don't win this year, another chance might not come. The Angels have a lot of money and will usually be dominating the division. The Oakland A's are up and comers. Even Seattle has a nice core of young players with King Felix leading the way and now Smoak on their team. The Rangers saw that even if they had Smoak, he probably would not be enough - given how poorly all their other young prospects have done - to lead the Rangers in the future to success, so they sold him now in hopes that Cliff Lee can help them win it all this season, but for them, it is all or nothing this season.
Meanwhile, the Giants are young and have a lot to look forward to. The cost of selling off some of that youth in order to win this season could jeopardize the Giants chances of having a dynasty over the next 5-10 seasons. We have a lot of good young players, but we still need Posey and Bumgarner, Sanchez and Cain. Trading them now to fix a hole in the lineup would only put holes elsewhere. Better the angel you know than the devil you don't know.
Missing the Point
She is also mis-analyzing the 'Dres success. They did not slap together "an ark" of an offense. They improved their runs scored from 3.96 to 4.22, which is an increase of 0.26 runs. The Giants improved their runs scored from 4.06 to 4.43, which is an increase of 0.37, which is greater than what the 'Dres did, whether by number of runs or percentage increase. Either way, the Giants did better than the 'Dres in increasing their run scoring.
She talks about their running on the bases to do all that they can to score and win games. But, as you can see from the number above, their offense is even worse than our offense, the Giants are averaging 4.43 runs per game, which is above average for the NL, while 'Dres are averaging 4.22 runs per game, which is 0.18 runs per game less than average. How is running a lot that much better when the Giants are outscoring them?
The key to San Diego's success has been a rotation that has been just as superb as the Giants, only better as we had to suffer with Wellemeyer as our 5th starter and their worse starter is a whole half run better than Wellemeyer is. Their bullpen has also been better as well, which helps their rotation be better as well.
The Giants recently added a 5th starter who not only equalizes things but put us above them, in my opinion: you may have heard of Madison Bumgarner. You know, pretty fair hurler of the white ball with red stitching, great ERA so far, who has shut down some pretty good offensive teams so far.
Getting Molina Was Not Mistake
She also made the point that getting Molina was a mistake. It was not a mistake. Posey struggled, relatively, to hit in AAA in April. His MLE was in the low 700's. Molina's OPS until he took the foul tip off his arm in mid-May was in the high 800 OPS, which is very good for any hitter, let alone the catcher. He was a good offensive contributor up to then. And while he wasn't that good anymore after that, the Giants were able to flip him for a good reliever with closer experience to solidify our set-up man situation plus pick up a very nice prospect with potential.
We would not have been able to buy either one from another team at this point of the season, nor would we have won as many games as we did in April and May had we had Posey behind the plate instead of Molina, just based on offense. Who knows if Posey would have continued to struggle, much like Matt Weiters has struggled, without the Giants being able to ease him into the job, first in AAA, then at 1B in the majors, before promoting him to starting catcher. We do know that he struggled in April to hit AAA pitchers, let alone MLB pitchers, based on his MLE. And we basically bought another good prospect with a lot of potential in Main, they like pitchers like him who throw hard. Molina was a good investment, the only thing that went wrong was the foul tip that ruined his hitting stroke after mid-May, but otherwise, we got good production early on then picked up two good pitchers for him/money.
Faulty Analysis
That is the problem I have with most baseball analysis: they look at the season or situation as a single point in time and the implicit assumption is that what has gone on before will continue to go on in the future. Just as the Rangers' season is now different because they acquired both Molina and Lee, the Giants season is now different because Posey and then Bumgarner joined the team, and again once Posey became the starting catcher, as Molina is now gone and other players are starting at 1B or other positions because Molina is gone.
Of course, the error with assessment of the 'Dres success is another problem. Their success is built on the success of their young starters plus the addition of Jon Garland. They have done a great job with that. As I noted in the other post, their young pitching will be headed into unknown territory in terms of inning pitched, because they have never reached that level ever before. To expect all three of them to not experience any bumps in the road in terms of performance before the end of the year is unrealistic. Yet, that is what has driven a lot of their success so far.
San Diego's Rotation Projection: Worst Second Half Performance
Digging deeper into the pitchers, other potential problems crop up that suggest that they will have a tougher second half of the season, much worse in some cases, but still worse for most of them. And I have to assume that there is no accounting for potential worsening due to fatigue, analysis has not gotten that far yet. This is just based on how they have done so far this season and their history of performing.
Clayton Richard's season's success is built up by his abnormal HR/FB rate of 7.5% (most pitcher's regress to 10%, though he should regress lower due to pitching in San Diego's pitcher's park). ZiPS has him at 4.03 FIP for the rest of the season and that is what xFIP has his performance for the first part of the 2010 season, which, while still good, is not as good as his 3.33 ERA thus far this season.
Mat Latos has been pitching well as well, but he's also been benefiting from a low HR/FB rate of 8.1%. He has an ERA of 2.45, which ZiPS forecasts increasing to 3.53 in the second half, with a FIP of 3.45. His FIP is 3.20, xFIP is 3.52. Any way you slice it, he has not performed at an elite level of performance, though still certainly good, as he has benefited from a lot of good luck in his performances so far, and his BABIP appears to be lucky as well, with a .246 average this season, better than his .257 from last season, and better than his whole minor league career, though it is entirely possible he is a pitcher who can achieve that, we just won't know for certain for another 6 seasons of additional performance. For now, clearly, he's been lucky in his HR/FB rate and BABIP, resulting in an ERA a whole run better than his peripherals would suggest.
Wade LeBlanc is forecasted for the biggest fall of all the starters and he currently has a great ERA of 3.30. However, his FIP is 4.60 and his xFIP is 4.69, even his tERA is 4.35, all indications that he has been extremely lucky with his overall ERA thus far. His strikeout rate is very low, but he has a relatively high walk rate. He has been unlucky with his HR/9 rate, but his BABIP is right on target at .302. He doesn't even get a lot of groundballs, he is actually a flyball pitcher the past couple of seasons. His performance so far is that of a middle rotation starter, somewhere in the mid-4's, than the good pitcher his 3.30 ERA would suggest. He has the furthest to fall of these three young starters.
And while I'm at it, Jon Garland is also benefiting from extended good luck. 3.56 ERA so far, 4.51 FIP, 4.49 xFIP, 4.38 tERA, projected 4.15 ERA for the rest of the season, BABIP of .279 when his career is .290, his HR/FB is right at his career rate, so that appears to be on target, but somehow he has elevated his groundball rate to 50.0%, much higher than his 44.8% career rate. He is also projected to suffer a decline in performance level in the second half.
The only good news for SD is that Kevin Correia is not projected to be as bad in the second half. He is expected to be much improved in the second half as he has had some bad luck even though his peripherals have been OK. He has been the one hard luck starter in the rotation in 2010, but who should be much improved in the second half.
All in all, they look to suffer from a big fall in starting pitching in the second half. The pitching look poised to suffer a worse second half. It might have already began, they are 5-5 in July while they won a number of games more than they lost in April, May, and June. They have been extremely lucky in one run games this season, going 19-12 so far, and most teams regress to .500 (though not necessarily in the same season, so this could persist for the rest of the season). Their hitting has improved in July, but their pitching has regressed a lot already in July, 4.45 ERA vs. 3.00 in April, 3.08 in May, 3.30 in June.
And there is no one performing well among position players in their upper minors who look like they can jump to the majors and help boost up their offense, certainly no Buster Posey level pospect, but not even anyone hitting as well as John Bowker has done, who we could still bring up (though Jedd Gyorko has been hitting up a storm in A-ball, could possibly get a late season call-up, but not anytime soon). And their top pitching prospects are already up here, they have been up in previous seasons and appear to be starting to put things together, but their farm system is depleted, their top pitching prospect was only 6th on Baseball America's Top 30 list for 2010 season, and only one, Cory Luebke, is doing well this season, and he's in AA. Nice K/BB, but very low K/9.
The Giants, on the other hand, has not had any pitcher over performing. Each has shown the capability to do what they have been doing, and Lincecum could be even better. They are all experienced, except for Bumgarner, but he's the #1 pitching prospect in all of baseball, none of the San Diego starters have that pedigree, they have all been nice prospects, but only Latos was expected to do so well in the majors, both Richard and LeBlanc were considered, at best, back of rotation starters, not top line starters, as their current ERA would suggest, and none of them made BA's Top 100 prospect lists.
Misunderstanding Bill James and Baseball In General
The writer also shows her lack of understanding of baseball and sabermetrics by claiming that Bill James' "bible" states that "A walk is as good as a hit." I think even little kids in Little League knows that is not true. A hit is clearly better than a walk as you can drive in runs with a hit. Shouldn't her editor have caught that one? Or does no one at her newspaper understand baseball?
Huh?
She also analyzed San Diego's situation incorrectly as well, opining that the 'Dres pitchers "don't have to cope with the deflating experience of routinely throwing great games, only to see a slovenly offense burp up a loss." As I shown above, the Giants are actually scoring MORE runs per game on average than San Diego, which of course means that the 'Dres have been routinely not scoring a lot of runs, which puts just as much pressure on their pitchers, if not more so. And they were forced to run, because none of their hitters were hitting, it was their last hope, I was following their team then because I had a number of their players on my fantasy team briefly.
In addition, she also spent about a quarter of her column bemoaning Jonathan Sanchez's 1-hitter loss, 1-0, to San Diego, talking about how they "undoubtedly got a lot out of that win." Yes, so much that 3 days later, their pitchers threw a combined 3-hitter and lost 1-0 to the D-gers.
In fact, since that "fateful" game where they beat us 1-0, they have been 29-27 since then, while the Giants were 29-26. They sure showed us, didn't they? They got so much out of that win, clearly, so much that they were only 2 games above .500 since then. With inspiration like that, the Giants won't need to do much in the remaining part of the season to catch up with and pass them.
Giants Thoughts
Comparing the Giants with the Rangers and 'Dres is foolhardy. Texas is at the end of their product life-cycle and this could be their last good chance to win it all. Their strategic imperative is different from the Giants, who are still in the early stages of their life-cycle and is much younger than the Rangers in terms of their key personnel. San Diego's performance is an illusion because their peripherals do not support them being so good, they should be headed to a regression as their overall ERA catches up with what their true talent level is, and, in any case, is not the result of them converting their "running" into wins.
Of course, in baseball, teams do overperform over an entire season. The 'Dres might be able to keep it up all season. However, the key thing for them is to keep their success going against the Giants all season.
They may be 14 games above .500, but 6 of those games is a result of them being 7-1 against the Giants. If the Giants could have split the games and were 4-4 against them, then they would be tied with D-Rox atop the NL West at 49-38, 1 game ahead of LA and 2 ahead of SD.
At 44-36 against the rest of the league, assuming they continue that, that would mean that they would finish 35-29 in those remaining 64 games, making them 86-66 overall. With 10 games left against the Giants, 4 at home and 6 on the road (2 3-game series), they will need to go 4-6 against us to finish at 90 wins, which looks to be the minimum necessary to win the NL West.
Different Giants Now
But the Giants are a different team now. They have added Posey and Burrell since then, and Huff started hitting great, since they swept us in three games twice. And we will have Bumgarner in the rotation, not Wellemeyer. And Ray in the bullpen.
They most probably will be different too. Their pitching is probably going to be worse and could be tired out by then. That is what happened to Jonathan Sanchez in his first full season as a starter, he was great for the first half of the season, but then pooped out in the second half, his performances started varying wildly and his ERA began to climb up, as he stopped throwing consecutive DOM starts and started throwing many more DIS starts as well as less DOM starts.
Their offense is perking up in July, but their pitching has regressed to where their FIP suggest that they should be, around low-to-mid 4 ERA. And they are only 5-5 for the month, showing that their pitching regressed much more than their offense has improved. And, again, they have no young prospect who look ready to come up and give the team a charge, either on offense or on their pitching staff.
The Giants have already added Posey and Bumgarner, and while they don't have anyone ready to make the jump yet (though Belt might be ready by September, the way he just keeps on hitting at every level), they did acquire Michael Main in the Molina trade, and he could be traded like Alderson was, for a major league hitter who might contribute to the team this season and next season.
And, in any case, we don't know how well the Giants will play overall going forward, now that Posey and Bumgarner are both performing to their potential. So the Giants play before? While pertinent for overall season standing, this is a new Giants team, which should lead to better results if Posey and Bumgarner continue to play as well as they have so far. And we are not that far behind.
And if Sandoval ever figures out how to hit, even like he did before he started hitting homers when he first came up, we would have quite a formidable middle of lineup in Posey, Huff, Sandoval. In any case, Posey and Huff is pretty good for now. By mixing and matching in the lineup, Bochy has been able to cobble together a consistent enough offense that should get us to 90 wins, which should put us in the thick of things when the season ends.
Strategies Are Different
She praised the Rangers' acquisition of Cliff Lee, but she ignored the consequences of such actions. They lost a lot of their future in those trades. She made it seem like they didn't give up much in trade, noting, "so they gambled some of their future..." Smoak is not just some of their future, he is a highly accomplished and regarded hitter, who has struggled in his time in the majors, but has been starting to figure things out recently, blasting homers and driving in a bunch of runs.
She points out how low their payroll is, but then ignore the fact that if it is that low, then they most probably would not be able to re-sign Lee when he goes free agent on them after this season, at which point they will get draft picks for him that won't pay off for another 5-7 years, if ever. But she lays out hope for the Rangers' fans by writing that they "possibly [have] a chance of paying Lee to stick around." There is a reason why their payroll is low right now. Nobody is showing up at the turnstiles, and without that revenue, they won't be able to afford Lee for the huge contract demands that caused the Phillies to let him go to the Mariners in the first place.
True, they have other young talents in the farm system, but many of them have been in the majors already and struggled mightily to become valuable players. They may never do it. But they traded off their one most likely to succeed candidate in Smoak. They also lost upside potential by giving up those pitchers to the Giants for Molina.
They are going for it all this season. The Giants are trying to build for the next 5+ seasons, something she ignored, yet she claims the Rangers are "savvy" for doing this move. Well, the equivalent move would have been the Giants trading Posey. I don't think Giants fans would be happy with that move right now, just a guess on my part.
She also claims that they got what they needed, implying that the Giants didn't. Last I checked, Posey hit 6 homers on this road trip. Just what the offense ordered. Bumgarner has been outstanding in the rotation. Just what the rotation ordered. Chris Ray has stabilized the set-up man role. Just what the bullpen ordered. The Giants got a lot of new pieces in the last month and a half, and they are starting to gel together, there is a lot of season left.
Season Not Over
And no wonder some fans are ready to give up on the season, when the media is the lead lemming, heading over the cliff. She wrote that the "Padres have ... robbed the Bay Area of midsummer hope." Last I checked there is still 74 games to be played (75 when she wrote her column). And the Giants were only 4 games back at that time (still only 4 games back).
Has she ever seen and followed a baseball season? As a newspaper writer, she presumably has. But 4 games behind is nothing at the All-Star Break. The Jeopardy game show familiar tune has not even started to play yet. No wonder some fans want to commit hari-kari on the Giants season, when the newspaper media is feeding this lunacy to them, one tree at a time.
Ranger's At Different Point of Life-Cycle Than Giants
In addition, the Rangers is in a different part of the baseball product life-cycle, that is, in rebuilding a pennant contender. The Giants may have a lot of older players, but most of their key players for the future are still young, Jonathan Sanchez at 27 and Brian Wilson at 28, are the oldest. Lincecum is 26, Matt Cain 25, Bumgarner is only 20, Posey is only 23, so is Pablo, and, while not key yet, but potentially so, Schierholtz, Bowker, and Ishikwaka are all 26.
The older guys help greatly but are not key to our future success. With the offense, they are not key, except for maybe Huff and Uribe, but Uribe is 30, old for our group, but he would, as you will see, fit right in with the Rangers. Zito is 32, but anything he contributes will be additional to what the core young players contribute. Most of our key players are very young, we are starting our upward arc.
For while the Rangers do have some young players blended in, their key players are all near, at or past their prime. Ian Kinsler is 28, Mike Young is 33, Josh Hamilton is 29, Nelson Cruz is 29, Vlad Guerrero is 35, David Murphy is 28, even their hot young pitcher, Colby Lewis is already 30, closer CJ Wilson is 29, and Cliff Lee is 31. If they don't win now, who knows if they will ever have a chance again, particularly with the lead they have now.
They have a lot of question marks over their future. All of their stars and players they are counting on this season could either start declining or leave as a free agent within the next couple of years. Lewis could just be having a fluke season, Kinsler has been injury prone his whole career, Young is not young anymore, Hamilton is a loose cannon, Vlad is having a nice season but it is his first in a number of seasons. There are a lot of question marks.
If they don't win this year, another chance might not come. The Angels have a lot of money and will usually be dominating the division. The Oakland A's are up and comers. Even Seattle has a nice core of young players with King Felix leading the way and now Smoak on their team. The Rangers saw that even if they had Smoak, he probably would not be enough - given how poorly all their other young prospects have done - to lead the Rangers in the future to success, so they sold him now in hopes that Cliff Lee can help them win it all this season, but for them, it is all or nothing this season.
Meanwhile, the Giants are young and have a lot to look forward to. The cost of selling off some of that youth in order to win this season could jeopardize the Giants chances of having a dynasty over the next 5-10 seasons. We have a lot of good young players, but we still need Posey and Bumgarner, Sanchez and Cain. Trading them now to fix a hole in the lineup would only put holes elsewhere. Better the angel you know than the devil you don't know.
Missing the Point
She is also mis-analyzing the 'Dres success. They did not slap together "an ark" of an offense. They improved their runs scored from 3.96 to 4.22, which is an increase of 0.26 runs. The Giants improved their runs scored from 4.06 to 4.43, which is an increase of 0.37, which is greater than what the 'Dres did, whether by number of runs or percentage increase. Either way, the Giants did better than the 'Dres in increasing their run scoring.
She talks about their running on the bases to do all that they can to score and win games. But, as you can see from the number above, their offense is even worse than our offense, the Giants are averaging 4.43 runs per game, which is above average for the NL, while 'Dres are averaging 4.22 runs per game, which is 0.18 runs per game less than average. How is running a lot that much better when the Giants are outscoring them?
The key to San Diego's success has been a rotation that has been just as superb as the Giants, only better as we had to suffer with Wellemeyer as our 5th starter and their worse starter is a whole half run better than Wellemeyer is. Their bullpen has also been better as well, which helps their rotation be better as well.
The Giants recently added a 5th starter who not only equalizes things but put us above them, in my opinion: you may have heard of Madison Bumgarner. You know, pretty fair hurler of the white ball with red stitching, great ERA so far, who has shut down some pretty good offensive teams so far.
Getting Molina Was Not Mistake
She also made the point that getting Molina was a mistake. It was not a mistake. Posey struggled, relatively, to hit in AAA in April. His MLE was in the low 700's. Molina's OPS until he took the foul tip off his arm in mid-May was in the high 800 OPS, which is very good for any hitter, let alone the catcher. He was a good offensive contributor up to then. And while he wasn't that good anymore after that, the Giants were able to flip him for a good reliever with closer experience to solidify our set-up man situation plus pick up a very nice prospect with potential.
We would not have been able to buy either one from another team at this point of the season, nor would we have won as many games as we did in April and May had we had Posey behind the plate instead of Molina, just based on offense. Who knows if Posey would have continued to struggle, much like Matt Weiters has struggled, without the Giants being able to ease him into the job, first in AAA, then at 1B in the majors, before promoting him to starting catcher. We do know that he struggled in April to hit AAA pitchers, let alone MLB pitchers, based on his MLE. And we basically bought another good prospect with a lot of potential in Main, they like pitchers like him who throw hard. Molina was a good investment, the only thing that went wrong was the foul tip that ruined his hitting stroke after mid-May, but otherwise, we got good production early on then picked up two good pitchers for him/money.
Faulty Analysis
That is the problem I have with most baseball analysis: they look at the season or situation as a single point in time and the implicit assumption is that what has gone on before will continue to go on in the future. Just as the Rangers' season is now different because they acquired both Molina and Lee, the Giants season is now different because Posey and then Bumgarner joined the team, and again once Posey became the starting catcher, as Molina is now gone and other players are starting at 1B or other positions because Molina is gone.
Of course, the error with assessment of the 'Dres success is another problem. Their success is built on the success of their young starters plus the addition of Jon Garland. They have done a great job with that. As I noted in the other post, their young pitching will be headed into unknown territory in terms of inning pitched, because they have never reached that level ever before. To expect all three of them to not experience any bumps in the road in terms of performance before the end of the year is unrealistic. Yet, that is what has driven a lot of their success so far.
San Diego's Rotation Projection: Worst Second Half Performance
Digging deeper into the pitchers, other potential problems crop up that suggest that they will have a tougher second half of the season, much worse in some cases, but still worse for most of them. And I have to assume that there is no accounting for potential worsening due to fatigue, analysis has not gotten that far yet. This is just based on how they have done so far this season and their history of performing.
Clayton Richard's season's success is built up by his abnormal HR/FB rate of 7.5% (most pitcher's regress to 10%, though he should regress lower due to pitching in San Diego's pitcher's park). ZiPS has him at 4.03 FIP for the rest of the season and that is what xFIP has his performance for the first part of the 2010 season, which, while still good, is not as good as his 3.33 ERA thus far this season.
Mat Latos has been pitching well as well, but he's also been benefiting from a low HR/FB rate of 8.1%. He has an ERA of 2.45, which ZiPS forecasts increasing to 3.53 in the second half, with a FIP of 3.45. His FIP is 3.20, xFIP is 3.52. Any way you slice it, he has not performed at an elite level of performance, though still certainly good, as he has benefited from a lot of good luck in his performances so far, and his BABIP appears to be lucky as well, with a .246 average this season, better than his .257 from last season, and better than his whole minor league career, though it is entirely possible he is a pitcher who can achieve that, we just won't know for certain for another 6 seasons of additional performance. For now, clearly, he's been lucky in his HR/FB rate and BABIP, resulting in an ERA a whole run better than his peripherals would suggest.
Wade LeBlanc is forecasted for the biggest fall of all the starters and he currently has a great ERA of 3.30. However, his FIP is 4.60 and his xFIP is 4.69, even his tERA is 4.35, all indications that he has been extremely lucky with his overall ERA thus far. His strikeout rate is very low, but he has a relatively high walk rate. He has been unlucky with his HR/9 rate, but his BABIP is right on target at .302. He doesn't even get a lot of groundballs, he is actually a flyball pitcher the past couple of seasons. His performance so far is that of a middle rotation starter, somewhere in the mid-4's, than the good pitcher his 3.30 ERA would suggest. He has the furthest to fall of these three young starters.
And while I'm at it, Jon Garland is also benefiting from extended good luck. 3.56 ERA so far, 4.51 FIP, 4.49 xFIP, 4.38 tERA, projected 4.15 ERA for the rest of the season, BABIP of .279 when his career is .290, his HR/FB is right at his career rate, so that appears to be on target, but somehow he has elevated his groundball rate to 50.0%, much higher than his 44.8% career rate. He is also projected to suffer a decline in performance level in the second half.
The only good news for SD is that Kevin Correia is not projected to be as bad in the second half. He is expected to be much improved in the second half as he has had some bad luck even though his peripherals have been OK. He has been the one hard luck starter in the rotation in 2010, but who should be much improved in the second half.
All in all, they look to suffer from a big fall in starting pitching in the second half. The pitching look poised to suffer a worse second half. It might have already began, they are 5-5 in July while they won a number of games more than they lost in April, May, and June. They have been extremely lucky in one run games this season, going 19-12 so far, and most teams regress to .500 (though not necessarily in the same season, so this could persist for the rest of the season). Their hitting has improved in July, but their pitching has regressed a lot already in July, 4.45 ERA vs. 3.00 in April, 3.08 in May, 3.30 in June.
And there is no one performing well among position players in their upper minors who look like they can jump to the majors and help boost up their offense, certainly no Buster Posey level pospect, but not even anyone hitting as well as John Bowker has done, who we could still bring up (though Jedd Gyorko has been hitting up a storm in A-ball, could possibly get a late season call-up, but not anytime soon). And their top pitching prospects are already up here, they have been up in previous seasons and appear to be starting to put things together, but their farm system is depleted, their top pitching prospect was only 6th on Baseball America's Top 30 list for 2010 season, and only one, Cory Luebke, is doing well this season, and he's in AA. Nice K/BB, but very low K/9.
The Giants, on the other hand, has not had any pitcher over performing. Each has shown the capability to do what they have been doing, and Lincecum could be even better. They are all experienced, except for Bumgarner, but he's the #1 pitching prospect in all of baseball, none of the San Diego starters have that pedigree, they have all been nice prospects, but only Latos was expected to do so well in the majors, both Richard and LeBlanc were considered, at best, back of rotation starters, not top line starters, as their current ERA would suggest, and none of them made BA's Top 100 prospect lists.
Misunderstanding Bill James and Baseball In General
The writer also shows her lack of understanding of baseball and sabermetrics by claiming that Bill James' "bible" states that "A walk is as good as a hit." I think even little kids in Little League knows that is not true. A hit is clearly better than a walk as you can drive in runs with a hit. Shouldn't her editor have caught that one? Or does no one at her newspaper understand baseball?
Huh?
She also analyzed San Diego's situation incorrectly as well, opining that the 'Dres pitchers "don't have to cope with the deflating experience of routinely throwing great games, only to see a slovenly offense burp up a loss." As I shown above, the Giants are actually scoring MORE runs per game on average than San Diego, which of course means that the 'Dres have been routinely not scoring a lot of runs, which puts just as much pressure on their pitchers, if not more so. And they were forced to run, because none of their hitters were hitting, it was their last hope, I was following their team then because I had a number of their players on my fantasy team briefly.
In addition, she also spent about a quarter of her column bemoaning Jonathan Sanchez's 1-hitter loss, 1-0, to San Diego, talking about how they "undoubtedly got a lot out of that win." Yes, so much that 3 days later, their pitchers threw a combined 3-hitter and lost 1-0 to the D-gers.
In fact, since that "fateful" game where they beat us 1-0, they have been 29-27 since then, while the Giants were 29-26. They sure showed us, didn't they? They got so much out of that win, clearly, so much that they were only 2 games above .500 since then. With inspiration like that, the Giants won't need to do much in the remaining part of the season to catch up with and pass them.
Giants Thoughts
Comparing the Giants with the Rangers and 'Dres is foolhardy. Texas is at the end of their product life-cycle and this could be their last good chance to win it all. Their strategic imperative is different from the Giants, who are still in the early stages of their life-cycle and is much younger than the Rangers in terms of their key personnel. San Diego's performance is an illusion because their peripherals do not support them being so good, they should be headed to a regression as their overall ERA catches up with what their true talent level is, and, in any case, is not the result of them converting their "running" into wins.
Of course, in baseball, teams do overperform over an entire season. The 'Dres might be able to keep it up all season. However, the key thing for them is to keep their success going against the Giants all season.
They may be 14 games above .500, but 6 of those games is a result of them being 7-1 against the Giants. If the Giants could have split the games and were 4-4 against them, then they would be tied with D-Rox atop the NL West at 49-38, 1 game ahead of LA and 2 ahead of SD.
At 44-36 against the rest of the league, assuming they continue that, that would mean that they would finish 35-29 in those remaining 64 games, making them 86-66 overall. With 10 games left against the Giants, 4 at home and 6 on the road (2 3-game series), they will need to go 4-6 against us to finish at 90 wins, which looks to be the minimum necessary to win the NL West.
Different Giants Now
But the Giants are a different team now. They have added Posey and Burrell since then, and Huff started hitting great, since they swept us in three games twice. And we will have Bumgarner in the rotation, not Wellemeyer. And Ray in the bullpen.
They most probably will be different too. Their pitching is probably going to be worse and could be tired out by then. That is what happened to Jonathan Sanchez in his first full season as a starter, he was great for the first half of the season, but then pooped out in the second half, his performances started varying wildly and his ERA began to climb up, as he stopped throwing consecutive DOM starts and started throwing many more DIS starts as well as less DOM starts.
Their offense is perking up in July, but their pitching has regressed to where their FIP suggest that they should be, around low-to-mid 4 ERA. And they are only 5-5 for the month, showing that their pitching regressed much more than their offense has improved. And, again, they have no young prospect who look ready to come up and give the team a charge, either on offense or on their pitching staff.
The Giants have already added Posey and Bumgarner, and while they don't have anyone ready to make the jump yet (though Belt might be ready by September, the way he just keeps on hitting at every level), they did acquire Michael Main in the Molina trade, and he could be traded like Alderson was, for a major league hitter who might contribute to the team this season and next season.
And, in any case, we don't know how well the Giants will play overall going forward, now that Posey and Bumgarner are both performing to their potential. So the Giants play before? While pertinent for overall season standing, this is a new Giants team, which should lead to better results if Posey and Bumgarner continue to play as well as they have so far. And we are not that far behind.
And if Sandoval ever figures out how to hit, even like he did before he started hitting homers when he first came up, we would have quite a formidable middle of lineup in Posey, Huff, Sandoval. In any case, Posey and Huff is pretty good for now. By mixing and matching in the lineup, Bochy has been able to cobble together a consistent enough offense that should get us to 90 wins, which should put us in the thick of things when the season ends.
Friday, September 04, 2009
Giant's Great Rotation: What I've Been Saying
I wrote most of this on ELM (I'm a tweaker), but thought I should post it here too, as I discuss my theories about how the Giants having a great rotation, top to bottom, is an advantage:
You can bet that the Phillies are starting to sweat now and hope the Rockies win the wild card, because the Giants could be facing the Phillies (though the Cards have charged past them and currently would be the team playing the wild card team) at some point in the playoffs. They have beaten them 4 out of 5 games and now has Lincecum on the mound today.
I would think any team we face would have to sweat now. Even if they avoid Lincecum, they get to face Cain, or they can miss Zito, but they get to face Sanchez. The hope for other teams would have been that Penny would be the Bad Penny from Boston, instead of the Bad-Ass Penny from LA/Florida, but it looks like the Giants got the latter. Now even if you avoid Cain, you could end up facing Penny, Lincecum, Zito or Sanchez, Penny, Linecum.
Any way you slice it, you get to face 3 tough pitchers when you face the Giants in September 2009. You might tough out the first game, but to face such good pitching, day after day, has to be hard on their confidence as hitters. Even the best hitters has their fears, that is why some come up with Lincecum flu whenever he pitches against them. They have their insecurities too.
So this series is a strong message to the rest of the NL, the rest of the majors. The Phillies are one of the top offensive teams in the majors, and particularly in their bandbox ballpark, and boast great hitters in Rollins, Victorino, Howard, and especially Utley, plus Werth and Ibanez has been great too. 1 run in 18 innings. And while they have a pretty safe lead, teams have lost 7 game leads before in September, so you don't want to be throwing away games yet, you are still playing hard. 1 run in 18 innings and now they get to face a well rested Lincecum, who pitches better with more rest. And they did this facing the Giants #4 and #5 pitchers. And no one is blinking an eye that they did that, these pitchers are capable of such good outings. 1 run in 18 innings. Other teams can't look at that without shaking their heads and being glad that they don't have any more games with the Giants because those facing them has to feel it.
Not that other teams will lie down and roll over for the Giants, but there is no gimmes in any series for the rest of the season against the Giants. You missed Lincecum, whew!, but now you face Zito, Cain, Sanchez, or Cain, Sanchez, Penny. You get a Cy Young candidate and a guy who threw a no-hitter, either way. If you miss Cain, you get Sanchez, Penny, Lincecum or Penny, Lincecum, Zito. You get last year's Cy Young winner and contender for this season, plus a rejuventated Penny.
Or you could face Lincecum, Zito, Cain. It was not that long ago that such a series would not be considered that bad. Zito was the gimme and Cain always seemed to give up just enough runs to lose, so it's OK to face Lincecum since you got the other two. Now, Zito is the one to be feared right now, Cain has raised things a notch this season, and you still have to face Lincecum.
And that's what the Rockies face in our last series with them. We will probably be one or two games behind them at that point, needing to sweep them again to catch up. And we'll have the pitching to do that again.
And the Dodgers get to face Cain, Sanchez, Penny in our first series, then Sanchez, Penny, Lincecum in our second series. Penny is going to want blood there. And it would not surprise me if Sanchez pitches a complete game in one of those starts (his only other one is his no-hitter, I believe).
The Brewers are sinking fast and get to face Zito, Cain, Sanchez. And later Chicago gets to see Penny, Lincecum, Zito, and Cain, missing Mr. No-hitter.
Advantage of the Great Rotation
This, is what I've been saying for years now about where the Giants are headed. Building a rotation full of good to great pitchers, having teams bow down to us like the animals do in the jungle when the army ants come through. When you have great pitching like that, it won't take much offense to win with that. Adding a good pitcher, as Penny appears to be now, gives us a glipse of future, of what it'll be like when Bumgarner then (hopefully) Wheeler join the rotation.
And once you get into the playoffs, that will give you the advantage once again: like the lineup where there are no easy outs, this is a pitcher rotation where there are no easy game. Each game will be a grind, a test of their hitter's mental strength, and each game is wildly different, from Lincecum's fastball and changeup, to Zito's soft stuff and nasty curveball, to Cain's fastball, to Sanchez's quirky lefty fastball, to now Penny's heat, sinkers, and stuff.
Great hitters, when they can concentrate, can hit great, but by late season, it is getting harder and harder to keep that concentration going. To keep it up for a 5 or 7 game series chould wear out most hitters except for the best. We got that rotation to do it now.
You can bet that the Phillies are starting to sweat now and hope the Rockies win the wild card, because the Giants could be facing the Phillies (though the Cards have charged past them and currently would be the team playing the wild card team) at some point in the playoffs. They have beaten them 4 out of 5 games and now has Lincecum on the mound today.
I would think any team we face would have to sweat now. Even if they avoid Lincecum, they get to face Cain, or they can miss Zito, but they get to face Sanchez. The hope for other teams would have been that Penny would be the Bad Penny from Boston, instead of the Bad-Ass Penny from LA/Florida, but it looks like the Giants got the latter. Now even if you avoid Cain, you could end up facing Penny, Lincecum, Zito or Sanchez, Penny, Linecum.
Any way you slice it, you get to face 3 tough pitchers when you face the Giants in September 2009. You might tough out the first game, but to face such good pitching, day after day, has to be hard on their confidence as hitters. Even the best hitters has their fears, that is why some come up with Lincecum flu whenever he pitches against them. They have their insecurities too.
So this series is a strong message to the rest of the NL, the rest of the majors. The Phillies are one of the top offensive teams in the majors, and particularly in their bandbox ballpark, and boast great hitters in Rollins, Victorino, Howard, and especially Utley, plus Werth and Ibanez has been great too. 1 run in 18 innings. And while they have a pretty safe lead, teams have lost 7 game leads before in September, so you don't want to be throwing away games yet, you are still playing hard. 1 run in 18 innings and now they get to face a well rested Lincecum, who pitches better with more rest. And they did this facing the Giants #4 and #5 pitchers. And no one is blinking an eye that they did that, these pitchers are capable of such good outings. 1 run in 18 innings. Other teams can't look at that without shaking their heads and being glad that they don't have any more games with the Giants because those facing them has to feel it.
Not that other teams will lie down and roll over for the Giants, but there is no gimmes in any series for the rest of the season against the Giants. You missed Lincecum, whew!, but now you face Zito, Cain, Sanchez, or Cain, Sanchez, Penny. You get a Cy Young candidate and a guy who threw a no-hitter, either way. If you miss Cain, you get Sanchez, Penny, Lincecum or Penny, Lincecum, Zito. You get last year's Cy Young winner and contender for this season, plus a rejuventated Penny.
Or you could face Lincecum, Zito, Cain. It was not that long ago that such a series would not be considered that bad. Zito was the gimme and Cain always seemed to give up just enough runs to lose, so it's OK to face Lincecum since you got the other two. Now, Zito is the one to be feared right now, Cain has raised things a notch this season, and you still have to face Lincecum.
And that's what the Rockies face in our last series with them. We will probably be one or two games behind them at that point, needing to sweep them again to catch up. And we'll have the pitching to do that again.
And the Dodgers get to face Cain, Sanchez, Penny in our first series, then Sanchez, Penny, Lincecum in our second series. Penny is going to want blood there. And it would not surprise me if Sanchez pitches a complete game in one of those starts (his only other one is his no-hitter, I believe).
The Brewers are sinking fast and get to face Zito, Cain, Sanchez. And later Chicago gets to see Penny, Lincecum, Zito, and Cain, missing Mr. No-hitter.
Advantage of the Great Rotation
This, is what I've been saying for years now about where the Giants are headed. Building a rotation full of good to great pitchers, having teams bow down to us like the animals do in the jungle when the army ants come through. When you have great pitching like that, it won't take much offense to win with that. Adding a good pitcher, as Penny appears to be now, gives us a glipse of future, of what it'll be like when Bumgarner then (hopefully) Wheeler join the rotation.
And once you get into the playoffs, that will give you the advantage once again: like the lineup where there are no easy outs, this is a pitcher rotation where there are no easy game. Each game will be a grind, a test of their hitter's mental strength, and each game is wildly different, from Lincecum's fastball and changeup, to Zito's soft stuff and nasty curveball, to Cain's fastball, to Sanchez's quirky lefty fastball, to now Penny's heat, sinkers, and stuff.
Great hitters, when they can concentrate, can hit great, but by late season, it is getting harder and harder to keep that concentration going. To keep it up for a 5 or 7 game series chould wear out most hitters except for the best. We got that rotation to do it now.
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Good Pitching vs. Hitting: Why I've Been Touting Pitching
I've been talking about the benefits of having an excellent rotation for a while now, but I don't think that people in general get it yet, why it's better to have dominant pitchers vs. dominant hitters, on your team. And I'm talking to all you people out there who ever advocated we trade Cain or Lincecum for a good hitter. I am also talking to all you people out there talking about trading Bumgarner for a good hitter.
The last two games give a good microcosm of what I'm talking about.
When Pitchers Dominate
The other day, Lincecum was absolutely dominant. Not only did he 2-hit the Cards, he struck out 8 and walked none, while only throwing 95 pitches. He's becoming what I've been hoping that he become, a Big Daddy Rick Rueschel-type pitcher, who can strike out a lot if need be, but keeps the pitch count low by getting hitters to swing early in the count at lousy pitches.
And it's not just for one game, as I've been showing in my PQS study, Lincecum can dominate 70-80% of the time, when merely good starters dominate around 40% of the time. And Cain is an elite pitcher in that he dominates 50%+ of the time. Only Lincecum can make him look ordinary. But Cain has raised things a notch this season, reducing his number of disaster starts, and it showed with his record between losses: he was 7-0 with a 1.87 ERA in nine starts between losses. If you have a rotation of them, then a team like the Giants can dominate any short series.
When Hitters Dominate
Albert Pujols was dominating yesterday. Two homers, three RBI, a walk, 2-for-3. However, Johnson was able to dominate the rest of the batters - 5 for 28, no HR - and came away with the win, despite sub-par pitching (luckily his relief, particularly Jeremey Affeldt, the star acquisition of the off-season, was sterling, again).
We saw this over and over again during the Barry Bonds era. Bonds would be totally on in a game, but many others were not, and we would end up losing, games, series, seasons. Having a dominant hitter is no panacea for an offense. And, frankly, for all the talk about how hitters contribute in every game, they only truly dominate in a game much, much less, probably on par with the number of times a starting pitcher contributes a dominant starting performance.
Improving the Odds
What people don't always get is the series sensitivity to the outcome of the first game of the series. If you have a pitcher like Lincecum who can dominate almost every game he pitches, you can almost put a W in your pocket for the first game. Suddenly it goes from a winning 3 out of 5 series to a winning 2 out of 4 series. Might not seem a lot, but that is huge. Assuming that the two teams are roughly equal (and most are in the playoffs), you go from 50% chance of winning a series to 60%.
If you have two strong pitchers in your rotation (which I have been advocating for a while now, in the mode of Johnson and Schilling for the D-backs in their World Series), if you win the first two games, now you have 75% chance of winning the series. And I didn't even account for Lincecum pitching again in the 5th game, which increases the odds to roughly 86%.
A similar process happens for a 7 game series. Clearly, having a dominating pitcher greatly increases the odds of winning any series and having two of them in the rotation, that much more so.
Add in a third one (Johnson when he is on for us) and again, the odds increase greatly.
Bullpen is Key Too
As Tom Tippett's studies at Diamond Mind in the early to mid-2000's showed, having a strong bullpen is key to being a playoff team. In today's environment of almost no starters completing games, that makes a strong bullpen key to improving your odds in short series. Because, no matter how dominating a starter can be, unless he can finish what he starts, the bullpen will have to consistently be strong enough to save the game, either the win in relief for the starter or keep the score close so that the offense can hopefully battle back and come from behind.
I think that is what will be an ace in the hole for the Giants should they make the World Series, most likely Lincecum will start games 1 and 4 and thus probably not pitch game 7 (if necessary). However, given his arm, he can probably come in, just like Randy Johnson did in his World Series and give some good innings in relief.
Here I advocate, much like the Twin Ace at the top of the rotation strategy, a Twin Closer in the bullpen, though one would be the closer and the other his regular set-up guy. I think we have one with Wilson as the closer and Affeldt as the set-up man. Often, the critical batter is not coming up in the 9th inning, but earlier, in the 7th and 8th, with men on base after the starter (or another reliever) falters and put men on base, threatening to score. If you have two closers, you have one to take care of the early fires, one to shut down the last inning fires.
In fact, we might even have more because both Romo and Valdez has been lights out for us in relief so far. This is what has been helping us win games, having a relief corp that can shut down the other team for 3-4 innings at the end of the game. The D-gers had a strong bullpen like this last season (and this one thus far, amazingly, given their minor league performances) and it helped them greatly.
Pre-Season Worries Overblown
And most Giants fans were worried in the pre-season about the Giants lack of offense. They are still just averaging only around 4 runs per game (4.09 to be exact), but with their superlative pitching, they have been winning. With the nice bump up in offense in June - they averaged 4.37 runs scored per game, which is about what was predicted for them in the pre-season based on the individual players' projections - they have been winning hand over fist, 17-10 in June, the best winning month since September 2004, their last winning season. At 7 wins above .500, it is the best for the period since September 2004, and not only that, the second best was only 2 wins above .500, achieved in four different months; mostly the Giants were at .500 or much below .500 during that roughly 5 year period since then.
And I'm not saying that the offense can't be improved. It can. What I've been more importantly saying is that with our good pitching, even our poor offense can win a good number of games. And that's the most important stat of all, not your runs scored per game, not the poor number of HR you have hit, it is the W's that you put in the win column. In that regard, the Giants offense has been good enough.
Effect on Series
Since I'm talking about series, I thought I would look at each starter.
The Giants, in series where Lincecum started one game, has been 9-4-2, and is in good shape to win an 10th, against the Cards.
Johnson: 10-3-2
Cain: 10-4-1
Zito: 7-6-2
Sanchez: 7-4-2
Sanchez benefitted from having Lincecum following him, I think.
The last two games give a good microcosm of what I'm talking about.
When Pitchers Dominate
The other day, Lincecum was absolutely dominant. Not only did he 2-hit the Cards, he struck out 8 and walked none, while only throwing 95 pitches. He's becoming what I've been hoping that he become, a Big Daddy Rick Rueschel-type pitcher, who can strike out a lot if need be, but keeps the pitch count low by getting hitters to swing early in the count at lousy pitches.
And it's not just for one game, as I've been showing in my PQS study, Lincecum can dominate 70-80% of the time, when merely good starters dominate around 40% of the time. And Cain is an elite pitcher in that he dominates 50%+ of the time. Only Lincecum can make him look ordinary. But Cain has raised things a notch this season, reducing his number of disaster starts, and it showed with his record between losses: he was 7-0 with a 1.87 ERA in nine starts between losses. If you have a rotation of them, then a team like the Giants can dominate any short series.
When Hitters Dominate
Albert Pujols was dominating yesterday. Two homers, three RBI, a walk, 2-for-3. However, Johnson was able to dominate the rest of the batters - 5 for 28, no HR - and came away with the win, despite sub-par pitching (luckily his relief, particularly Jeremey Affeldt, the star acquisition of the off-season, was sterling, again).
We saw this over and over again during the Barry Bonds era. Bonds would be totally on in a game, but many others were not, and we would end up losing, games, series, seasons. Having a dominant hitter is no panacea for an offense. And, frankly, for all the talk about how hitters contribute in every game, they only truly dominate in a game much, much less, probably on par with the number of times a starting pitcher contributes a dominant starting performance.
Improving the Odds
What people don't always get is the series sensitivity to the outcome of the first game of the series. If you have a pitcher like Lincecum who can dominate almost every game he pitches, you can almost put a W in your pocket for the first game. Suddenly it goes from a winning 3 out of 5 series to a winning 2 out of 4 series. Might not seem a lot, but that is huge. Assuming that the two teams are roughly equal (and most are in the playoffs), you go from 50% chance of winning a series to 60%.
If you have two strong pitchers in your rotation (which I have been advocating for a while now, in the mode of Johnson and Schilling for the D-backs in their World Series), if you win the first two games, now you have 75% chance of winning the series. And I didn't even account for Lincecum pitching again in the 5th game, which increases the odds to roughly 86%.
A similar process happens for a 7 game series. Clearly, having a dominating pitcher greatly increases the odds of winning any series and having two of them in the rotation, that much more so.
Add in a third one (Johnson when he is on for us) and again, the odds increase greatly.
Bullpen is Key Too
As Tom Tippett's studies at Diamond Mind in the early to mid-2000's showed, having a strong bullpen is key to being a playoff team. In today's environment of almost no starters completing games, that makes a strong bullpen key to improving your odds in short series. Because, no matter how dominating a starter can be, unless he can finish what he starts, the bullpen will have to consistently be strong enough to save the game, either the win in relief for the starter or keep the score close so that the offense can hopefully battle back and come from behind.
I think that is what will be an ace in the hole for the Giants should they make the World Series, most likely Lincecum will start games 1 and 4 and thus probably not pitch game 7 (if necessary). However, given his arm, he can probably come in, just like Randy Johnson did in his World Series and give some good innings in relief.
Here I advocate, much like the Twin Ace at the top of the rotation strategy, a Twin Closer in the bullpen, though one would be the closer and the other his regular set-up guy. I think we have one with Wilson as the closer and Affeldt as the set-up man. Often, the critical batter is not coming up in the 9th inning, but earlier, in the 7th and 8th, with men on base after the starter (or another reliever) falters and put men on base, threatening to score. If you have two closers, you have one to take care of the early fires, one to shut down the last inning fires.
In fact, we might even have more because both Romo and Valdez has been lights out for us in relief so far. This is what has been helping us win games, having a relief corp that can shut down the other team for 3-4 innings at the end of the game. The D-gers had a strong bullpen like this last season (and this one thus far, amazingly, given their minor league performances) and it helped them greatly.
Pre-Season Worries Overblown
And most Giants fans were worried in the pre-season about the Giants lack of offense. They are still just averaging only around 4 runs per game (4.09 to be exact), but with their superlative pitching, they have been winning. With the nice bump up in offense in June - they averaged 4.37 runs scored per game, which is about what was predicted for them in the pre-season based on the individual players' projections - they have been winning hand over fist, 17-10 in June, the best winning month since September 2004, their last winning season. At 7 wins above .500, it is the best for the period since September 2004, and not only that, the second best was only 2 wins above .500, achieved in four different months; mostly the Giants were at .500 or much below .500 during that roughly 5 year period since then.
And I'm not saying that the offense can't be improved. It can. What I've been more importantly saying is that with our good pitching, even our poor offense can win a good number of games. And that's the most important stat of all, not your runs scored per game, not the poor number of HR you have hit, it is the W's that you put in the win column. In that regard, the Giants offense has been good enough.
Effect on Series
Since I'm talking about series, I thought I would look at each starter.
The Giants, in series where Lincecum started one game, has been 9-4-2, and is in good shape to win an 10th, against the Cards.
Johnson: 10-3-2
Cain: 10-4-1
Zito: 7-6-2
Sanchez: 7-4-2
Sanchez benefitted from having Lincecum following him, I think.
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