Good News: Lincecum and Cain Trade Would Be Shocking

I'm a little late to this but what the heck. At a conference yesterday where Sabean announced a passel of new advisors, he answered some questions about the Giants plans. There are reports on that conference call at the Chronicle, the Mercury, and the Bee, that I've read.

Of course, as my long-time regular readers know, I've complained repeatedly that each reporter seems to have a different take on what was said in the conference call, or leaves out what I think is important information that another reporter fortunately saw fit to publish. That's why I wish the Giants would still post their press conferences on-line at their website so that people like me can hear what was said and get all the information.

There are great takes on it at McCovey Chronicles and El Lefty Malo. And I posted some stuff at both sites, of course.

The main takeaways are these, which I rank in order, that's about the main value I can provide over what's been done already:

First and foremost, Lincecum and Cain isn't going anywhere unless Sabean is "shocked" with a tremendous offer. Miguel Cabrera was asked about and he ripped the Marlins for asking for the moon for him. He basically complained that any team approaching the Giants ask for Cain or Lincecum and, reading between the lines, he's tired of them until they are ready to put up a blockbuster package. From the reports, Cabrera was not blockbuster enough because he's probably not signing an extension and would leave in two years, and neither was Delmon Young blockbuster enough. Our two ace pitchers are virtually untouchable because of "what their future brings".

Good, that's the way I feel too. It sounds like that Sabean is trying to work on other teams to give up a 3B and/or impact bat for young players other than Cain and Lincecum, and he speculates that once the winter meetings are over, the price might go down for such a player. He thinks he will get this player(s) via trade most probably, rather than free agency, and he has "about a half dozen" deals that he is working on.

Second, the Merc's account notes that Sabean said that he wouldn't shy away from acquiring players for major roles who haven't proven themselves at the major league level. That's quite a departure from past tactics and would open up the team to more trade possibilities. Andy Marte is mentioned in the accounts, and the Chron went through a laundry list, though I must say here that no NL West team is going to trade off a good prospect that they have to us, it can come back to haunt them repeatedly if they lay an egg in the trade.

I cannot remember the last position player we did that with during Sabean's tenure. In fact, I don't think that's ever happened, the closest would be obtaining Jeff Kent, who played a lot but wasn't a starter (that is, hadn't played a full season; he did start a lot of games so he wasn't untested or unproven, just wasn't ever given the opportunity to play a full season) when we got him. He's probably also the youngest non-starting player we obtained to become a starter too, heck, he's probably the only non-starter acquired to become a starter.

In addition, the Chron's version notes that they are open to hitters who play any position, even ones that currently seem filled. Sabean noted, "We're smart enough to know that whenever the iron strikes, you have to make the adjustment." I don't particularly like this because I'm afraid he might pick up another OF when we have so many OF prospects who 1) have done well in short stints with the Giants and 2) have done well in the minors, enough to earn a chance to show what they can do up here. But I guess a Delmon Young would have been nice, though still I would like to see Schierholtz get a shot in RF.

Third, Rajai Davis is not considered ready for CF, and more importantly, the Giant are thinking of moving Winn back to CF and, depending on which version you read, RF would go to Schierholtz or he and Lewis will compete for it. As nice a story and history that Lewis has had, I think Schierholtz has the bigger potential and hopefully he will become the starting RF for the Giants in 2008. That would provide a nice middle of the line-up bat right there.

The cloud in the coffee on this feel-good story is that the Giants are still considering free agents for CF and as noted above, they will acquire regardless of players we already have. It sounds like they will be among the bidders if Andruw Jones is willing to go with a 1-2 year contract. Plus they have apparently contacted Aaron Rowand's agent. And who knows who else they might be "kicking the tires" with.

The Merc's account also noted that the Giants has tried shopping Roberts, Durham, and Aurilia but found no buyers. It also noted that they were not looking to move Molina either. And Winn I think he still has a no-trade until sometime next year, maybe mid-season.

The main rumor out there for these vets has been Molina to the Mets, but that seems to be a false rumor now because the Mets just today traded for Brian Schneider, late of the Nats, because he is a strong defensive catcher and not much of a hitter, and the articles stated that they were looking for a defensive catcher so that they can possibly non-tender Johnny Estrada, who they just received in a trade and who is not known for his defense either, he's known for his offense. Molina is acceptable defensively in some quarters, not so much in most others. His main value is his bat relative to his position.

Fourth, the Chron's version includes a quote from Bochy that I found interesting. It followed Sabean's answer to the question of what happens if the Giants don't acquire someone, which was that he would focus on making "our pitching stronger" (so they'll acquire more pitchers?). Bochy said, "It's always good to have an impact player, but they [Arizona] didn't have an impact player. They didn't have one guy. We've talked about a different brand of ball, everybody contributing and not leaning on one guy or waiting for a guy to hit a three-run homer. Sure, they are great to have, but there are teams that win without them."

That's a view I've been hewing to in my statement, though not explicitly stated, that we could be competitive offensively with what we have. In 46 games where Bonds did not start, the team averaged 4.7 runs per game according to a post-season article in the Merc. Admittedly small samples, but still, that's not a small amount of games either, that's almost a third of the season plus it was sprinkled all across the season for the most part until the very end. There was that big scoring game where they scored 15 runs, and taking out that outburst drops it to 4.5 runs per game. The team allowed 4.44 runs per game in 2007 and I expect it to be better in 2008, due to improvements in the starting rotation (full season Lincecum, Cain more consistent, Zito over jitters) and the bullpen (Wilson and Walker should help improve the bullpen greatly), so that's a .500 record right there.

The main thing, whether it's starting Ortmeier at first and Frandsen at third as I've been pushing for, or Zito, Lincecum and Cain improving on what they did last season, is that we give it a shot and see what happens. That's the bottom line, you cannot get much cheaper than Ortmeier at 1B without trading away some valuable pitching to get an alternative at 1B, and there's no guarantee that we can get a good 1B or 3B for Lowry or any other package. And even if you get a better 1B prospect (again at the cost of a good pitching prospect like Sanchez), there is no guarantee he's going to be any good either, and even if he is good, it doesn't make us good enough to compete for the division title, unless we get the second coming of Morneau, Howard, or Fielder.

So give the youngsters a chance, it is not like the Giants are going to be that competitive in 2008. Worry over cost/benefit don't really fit in when the cost is giving up good pitching prospects to get a valid 1B prospect versus giving Ortmeier a chance at 1B. At worse, if he fails, Aurilia can take over, or perhaps we can trade for someone mid-season, just as suggested now by others. Why not give Ortmeier a chance to start and see what happens, we can always get that suggested player mid-season instead.

Fifth, the Bee's version quotes Sabean as saying that Frandsen could play 3B if the Giants can't talk Feliz into another one year contract. I know that there are people who don't want to see Frandsen at 3B, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm worried less about defense than giving our young prospects a chance and seeing what they got. But he doesn't have the starting job sewn up, Aurilia was mentioned too.

Apparently Feliz's agents are asking for a 3 year deal - as good as his defense has become, and Baseball Musing's PMR shows him as one of the best in the majors, getting 30+ more outs than expected for the number of balls handled, his offense is equally horrid - so good luck with that, I will put this demand up there with Aurilia's agents asking for 4 years, $32M initially when he went free agent with the Giants. Not. Going. To. Happen.

Seeing that Feliz was so good defensively according to PMR, I can swallow it if the Giants do sign him to another one year deal (but I won't be happy, it'll be like taking nasty medicine, like cod liver oil). But still, we need to see how Frandsen can do as a starter. So whether it's we just give him 2B, we give him 3B, or we trade Durham and give him 2B, we must give Frandsen a chance to do what he has done in the minors, and prep for 2009. It will be nice if we are competitive in 2008 (much like it would have been nice to be competitive in 1997, after Matt Williams was traded away; fortunately we were more than that) but I say again that our focus should be on 2009 and beyond, if we punt 2008, so be it, if some youngsters come through, hurrah and let's celebrate.

The Value of Base Running

As all good Giants fans should know, Brian Sabean for the past few years has been preaching that the game is changing, as it has in the past back and forth, from an emphasis on power to an emphasis on speed. That has led to his fascination with speedsters like Joey Gathright, who the Giants were rumored to be chasing after for a while a few years back, the pickup of Eugenio Velez from Toronto's scrap heap, the drafting of speedsters like Fred Lewis, Marcus Sander, Emmanuel Burriss, Antoan Richardson, Mike McBryde, and Wendell Fairley, and the signing of Dave Roberts, who is a base-stealing machine who learned at the feet of one of the greats, Maury Wills.

Baseball Prospectus recently had an article on whether baserunning is a skill, so I thought I would discuss what was said in the article, since this is something the Giants appear to be moving towards as a team philosophy. First, baserunning is a persistent ability. I know, Duh!, but this is shown statistically by correlating a players (BP metric) EqBR year to year. Second, when they correlated a player's Speed score with his (BP metric) EqBR, they found that speed is the most significant factor in his EQBR, again, Duh!, but it's nice to know stats confirm these no-brainers.

I found the last finding to be most interesting to Giants fans and hence I will quote it here:

The last question, of course, is how much baserunning really matters. And the general rule of thumb is that it can make about a win’s worth of difference at the extremes: a really fast/skilled baserunner will produce about 8-10 extra runs for his team on a going-forward basis as compared with a really slow/terrible baserunner. Or, if you prefer, a great baserunner will produce about an extra half-win for his team (4-5 runs) per season versus an average
baserunner.

This is nothing to sneeze at. Baserunning is another in that category of things that might be overrated by the mainstream media, but has nevertheless been underrated by sabermetricians.

I have to note it again: A great baserunner will produce an extra half-win for his team every season over an average baserunner. That's from taking the extra base as well as stealing bases, they all add up during a season.

That's why I've been pushing for Dan Ortmeier to get a chance at 1B. Even if he might fall short of 1B standards in terms of OPS - and he actually hit well in limited play in 2007 in the majors, his OPS+ was 107, or slightly better than average - he could make up for some of that shortfall with his baserunning skills. He has a big body that belies his keen baserunning skills that have allowed him to reach high teens in stolen bases every year since he started playing full season ball. Based just on his small sample in 2007, he would have stolen 8-9 bases in the majors at the rate he stole at.

And most firstbasemen are not even average baserunners, they are usually pretty terrible baserunners, and great baseruners add about a win over a poor baserunner, though admittedly Ortmeier is not great, merely good, so maybe he's only three-quarters of a win better. Still, in any case, his baserunning savvy would give him additional value over an average firstbaseman baserunner.

In addition, if a GM can build a team of speedburners, they can add 3-4 wins per season over what they can do as hitters. That's about what we need right now to get back to .500, based on last season's team, and as allfrank has been reminding me, the starting rotation should be improved over last year's overall version, with Cain improving, Lowry steady, Zito over his jitters, Lincecum learning and developing, and whoever is the 5th starter should be better than what Morris and Ortiz put together last season, moving forward.

Obviously 2008 will not feature a lot of speedburners, but we do have Roberts, Davis, and Vizquel, plus Lewis and Ortmeier, and perhaps Velez, on the bench at minimum, perhaps sometimes starting, so there could be lineups where there are a lot of speed in there.

Giving Thanks for Cain and Lincecum

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your loved ones!

This post originally was at El Lefty Malo, in a discussion on the merits of trading Tim Lincecum for David Wright (as if that was possible; a poster there suggested that). I've been thinking about this from different angles for a while so that post got me to get off my butt and finally put some of my thoughts together, putting together bits of info I've been collecting and writing about for the past few years now. Following is basically what I posted, but, yeah, I tweak:

Given the stats you provided, yes, it would seem to be a no-brainer, you go with David Wright.

I think the problem with this analysis is that it focuses mainly on winning during a season, not winning when you are in the playoffs.

I think we can all acknowledge that when you have a good pitcher, there are many games he can dominate and control, and with a great one, he can dominate a signficant percentage of his games.

I see your geek stat [Note: Lefty used WARP] and present The Baseball Forecaster's P.Q.S. (Pure Quality Starts) which takes the quality starts concept and updates it for the sabermetric era. For each start, a pitcher gets one point each for doing something that sabermetrically shows that he pitched well, whether it be pitching over 6 innings, giving up hits equal or less than IP, striking out within 2 of IP, striking out double or more walks given up, and giving up less than 2 HR.

Thus a start can range from 0 to 5, with a score of 4 or 5 denoting a dominating game. Then they calculate the percentage of starts a pitcher dominates.

Good pitchers dominate over 40% of their starts. Elite pitchers dominate 50-70% of their starts. The best dominate over 70% of their starts. Most pitchers are under 40%.

I've kept this stat the past two seasons on my blog for the Giants and Cain dominated 52% of his starts in 2006, 56% in 2007. However, Lincecum dominated 67% of his starts in his first season.

Now, I don't know the stat for players this season, but in 2006 the only pitchers over that were over 60% while starting most of the season were:

Chris Carpenter 66%
Roger Clemens 68%
Francisco Liriano 69%
Pedro Martinez 70%
Mike Mussina 75%
Brett Myers 65%
C.C. Sabathia 68%
Johan Santana 76%
Curt Schilling 71%
Ben Sheets 76%
John Smoltz 74%
Brandon Webb 64%
Carlos Zambrano 70%

Pretty exclusive company, eh?

So in his first season, he dominated the league as well as pitchers who took years to reach that level of dominance.

I won't even mention that he was even better once he got over his rough patch in his second month. Or that he should be even better next season as he figured things out: he had a 4.62 ERA in the first half of his season, 3.39 ERA in the second half. This is someone who had obvious deficiencies in his pitching repertoire in college, and worked at it until he developed his secondary pitches so that he could reduce his weaknesses. He's going to get better.

In a short series, when you have tough pitchers like Cain and Lincecum going at the other team, particularly when winning three games cinch the first round with them starting 3-4 of those games, that improves the odds greatly don't it?

Same with 7 game series, when they get to start 4 of the first 6 games.

Having a dominating pitcher helps things, but can you see that having two of them provides a tipping point where it greatly influences a team's chances of winning in a short series, particularly when you can set the rotation to begin with them?

And can you see how powerful it would be if one of our young pitchers come through in the next year or three and join the two of them in the rotation, how powerful THAT TRIO would be?

But having a David Wright does not do as much for us if the other team walks him all the time like they did Bonds. They can help neutralize his offense by pitching to our lesser players. And where will we pick up the protection for Wright in the lineup, trade Cain after trading Lincecum?

I think traditional sabermetrics ignores the significance of how much a pitcher can affect a game. It is really the only time in a baseball game when one player can dominate the other team simply by being good to great regularly. A home run every 10-20 AB is great but that's only 1-2 homer in a short series and you need more offense to win a game, let alone win a series. As we saw in 2002, you can have one of the best series in the history of the game like Barry did and we still lose. A pitcher can dominate a game, and when you have two or more of them, you can dominate series.

THAT is the future of the Giants, not trading off our unique situation for a great offensive talent. Sure, Lincecum can become injured, pitchers are more prone to that that position players. But you don't trade that off either, just because of that. We have a good situation here with Cain and Lincecum, I would rather see what happens with the two of them, then try my chances by trading one to get an offensive talent that I think would just be a band-aid on the offense, we need more than one great offensive player to win with an OK pitching staff, I think last season showed that. But if Cain and Lincecum can continue to develop, they can become great starting pitchers and we can have a great pitching staff, and we won't need that offensive player to win.

People forget that we don't need a great offense to win, we just need a good enough offense if the pitching is that good. And having a great offense didn't do much to help us in 2002 either, did it? And getting one good offensive player won't make our offense suddenly great either, even if we got David Wright through some miracle, our offense will still be sucky, we would still need to stick our fingers in the dam to stop the leaking.

We need to have a season take a bullet, we need to treat 2008 as a re-building year where we assess what we got and how much further we need to get. Getting a great offensive talent for Lincecum (or Cain) will not suddenly make us contenders, we are too far gone for that. We need to see what we got with Frandsen, Lewis, Schierholtz, Davis, Ortmeier, maybe others like Ishikawa, Bowker, Timpner.

Once we get a better sense of that, then we can think of a drastic thing like trading away a future Cy Young winner like Lincecum might be. Yes, his WARP is less than a top hitter like Wright, but in tandem with a pitcher like Cain, we can dominate short series. THAT is the key to future playoff success, not a shiny bauble like David Wright. If I recall right, the Mets had him and they didn't even make the playoffs either, and they have Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, and Carlos Delgado. Wright helps you win the battle that is the season, but Cain and Lincecum can help you win the war that is the playoffs.