Flogging Cain: Analyst's Nice Words About Cain

I've been touting Cain as capable of being the ace for the Giants in 2007 and there have been some naysayers, so it is nice to see that another analyst feels similarly. Patrick Sullivan of The Baseball Analysts had some very strong words about Cain:

He's 22 and one of the most valuable commodities in baseball - a young pitcher with years of cheap service time ahead of him. The San Francisco Giants, and in particular their General Manager Brian Sabean, may have a reputation for assembling old teams but Cain is one of the best young players, position or hurlers, in all of baseball. I look for Cain to be a Cy Young candidate in 2007.

"Cy Young candidate". I haven't gone as far as to say that, partly because I've been accused of being too Pollyanna-ish, but given how well he pitched in the second half, after the all-star game, I don't see how that is being so outlandish: 3.26 ERA, 1.18 WHIP, 2.48 K/BB, 9.0 K/9, 3.6 BB/9.

That ERA would have ranked him 4th in the NL last season and the key thing was that his BB/9 was so low, relatively, for him. Ideally, you want it under 3.0, but when you are striking out 9 batters per 9 IP, getting under 4.0 is perfectly good as well, particularly when he can get hitters to get less hits overall, as his H/9 was only 7.0, when most pitchers struggle to get it to 9.0.

However, I must note that I used Baseball Musing's Day by Day Database and calculated the leaderboard for ERA for the second half of 2006 and Matt was much further down the list: he was 10th with his 3.26 ERA. Still, that's not too shabby a spot to be in, as a starting pitcher. And an even greater place to be when you are only 21 years old. He will be 22 for the 2007 season.

And we got him for another 5 seasons, at the minimum, yippee! Unless, that is, the Giants took my advice in my prior post and offer him a 7 year contract (looking back at that contract I proposed, the Giants probably should make at least one team-option for the final year of the contract, and perhaps the last two years, but you don't want to insult him either).

And as I noted in that same post, hopefully the Giants will be announcing a nice, long (and cheap) contract with Cain sometime in spring training. Go Giants!

Barry Bonds Finally Signs

After what probably seemed like an eternity to some Giants fans, me included, Barry Bonds finally came in to the Giants offices on Monday and got his physical and is now a member of the 2007 San Francisco Giants. He's going to make $15.8M, with $10M paid this year, $5.8M deferred, and another $4.2M in incentives that he can earn (which makes his "I will never, never, ever, accept any incentives!" statement ring hallow; can only believe half of what he says, indeed! :^). I'm guessing that it is games incentive because he said in the press conference (I'm basing most of this info on the Merc's version of the press conference and some from what I gleaned from KNBR this morning) that he wants to play more than the 130 games he played last season. Funny how incentives and light a fire under his "tired" ass.

I'm a little leery, however, of one portion of his answer. The Merc noted "Bonds divulged few specifics about his physical condition - another key issue, given his troubled knees and the left elbow that required arthroscopic surgery in October to remove bone chips. He said that he has 'worked out really hard' but won't know his condition until he gets on the field next month at spring training." How many years have he been playing, 20+? Shouldn't he know how his condition compares to how he felt in the past? Or at least enough to give an educated guess, like, "It has been tougher than in the past because of XYZ, I'm not up to the levels of where I was before, so I'll have a better feel for it in spring training."? Or something? I guess we will see in spring training soon.

Larry Baer on KNBR's Murph and Mac

Mac was not around, else I would have been hoping he might sing a version of the Clash's "Should I stay or should I go now", changed to "Should we sign Bonds or should we go now", but Murph was all over Baer, at least as much as an KNBR host can (one would have thought he was still on the Chronicle's payroll still :^). He asked about Balco and Barry's potential legal problems, which Baer sidestepped with something like, "He's innocent until proven guilty and until all the facts are in, we can only deal with what we do know right now." He also asked Baer about Barry's greenies use reported by the NY Post and Baer said that their research showed that there were great inaccuracies in the Post's account and therefore that is over.

Giants Young Starting Pitchers Is the Future

Baer also noted, in response to a question about getting Bonds, that in their search for a young (is there anything better? :^) cleanup hitter, the other teams always wanted Cain, Lowry, Lincecum, Sanchez, and the Giants said that they are not trading away any of their young pitchers. So, instead of going for a young slugger, they instead signed another young pitcher (Zito) to boost up the rotation (well, that's the gist of it, I couldn't write everything down while driving and my memories been going lately; I recently was given - not asked for but given - the Senior meal discount at a Sizzler lately... :^).

That's been my mantra this offseason, that the Giants young starting pitching is our future, but it is nice to get confirmation of this from someone as high up as Baer. Hopefully that will calm the fans who worry incessantly that Sabean will trade one of our young starters for an old grizzled vet. I assume they are not untouchable - if the other team wants to throw a boatload of great young players at us, the Giants will surely accept - but that's probably not going to happen, and unless it is a no-brainer, like getting an Utley, Wright, or Cabrera, I would be more than happy to see the four of them in Giants uniform over the next 5-6 seasons and see what they can do for us.

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that having a solid pitching staff, especially 1 to 3 or 4 in the rotation, is the best way to make it all the way through the playoffs. Hitting can be neutralized on any day by good pitching by a so-so starter (see Bobby Jones, 2000 playoffs), but if we have a great staff of pitchers starting and in the bullpen, the games will usually be close enough that our team will get a chance to tie or win late in the game.

The Giants Had One of the Most Efficient Starting Rotations in 2006

I found this interesting article on The Hardball Times today about the efficiency of major league starting rotations, in terms of pay and production, using Bill James Win Shares counting stat. According to their analysis, the Giants had the highest Net Win Share Value in the National League, and the third best in the Majors, behind only Detroit and Oakland.

The Giants had an overall NWSV of $16.5M. THT has a calculator you can use to calculate this, here. To get the data you need to fill in the calculator, you need to go here. Amazing how much value even Lowry and Morris generated for the starting rotation, despite all the crap some Giants fans have said about the two, particuularly Morris. Very interesting that Lowry's 2005 was about as good as Schmidt's 2006, in terms of WSAB, which I'll go into in the next part.

Zito Replacing Schmidt: Better

Comparing Schmidt to Zito, I was pleasantly suprised double-fold. First, Zito had a higher Win Share than Schmidt, 18 to 16. Most commentators said the Giants went down a step in switching Zito for Schmidt, but according to this metric, Zito actually contributed to more wins. Second, Zito had a higher WSAB, which stands for Win Share Above Bench. In this glossary entry, WSAB basically is Win Share's version of production above replacement player, except that the author had a problem with the concept of a replacement player versus a bench player. Here, Zito has a 12 WSAB while Schmidt had 11 WSAB. So by this measure, the Giants not only replaced Schmidt, but improved on him by getting Zito.

Of course, the caveat there is that Zito's win shares for 2006 was his high for the past three years whereas Schmidt is about where it was when he was doing better in 2004. The good news is that Zito has been improving for the past three seasons while Schmidt has been wildly up and down. Plus Zito is only 29, heading into his peak physical years while Schmidt is headed into what is normally the starkly declining years for a pitcher, his late 30's. Zito's acquisition looks better and better for the short term - we just need to cross our fingers and toes for the long term.