Your 2010 Giants: Big 6 Questions

This is my annual exercise on what the Giants big questions for the season are.

1. Is Panda Real or Not?

This is the critical question because he is the offensive linchpin to whatever offense the Giants will put up this season. I believe he is.

Even though he was not highly touted, he showed coming up the farm system that he had a great eye and the bat speed to make contact, as his strikeout rate was good. The big question was the lack of walks and his body. But he's much more athletic than he appears, as anyone who saw him score on either of those bang-bang plays at home plate in late 2008. And people forgot that he was young relative to any league he was in and inexperienced. He busted out in 2008 at age 21, and last year learned how to hit for HR power.

He continued to show his great ability to make good contact with the pitch in the majors that he showed in the minors (nobody has ever discussed this that I've seen, but I believe that his learning how to be ambidextrous, able to throw accurately with either arm, helped with his control of the bat), and that supports him continuing to do well.

In addition, I recently read that only three other hitters had a better batting average in their first full season in the past 40-50 years (don't remember period or where I read it but it was a long period). That's not really something you do by accident.

Plus, even if there is a drop off there, he started hitting for homers in June last season, meaning that there was two months of a low amount of homers, so as long as he hits for homers consistently in 2010, that should make up for any loss in batting average by boosting up his SLG.

Furthermore, he was making progress at the end of last season in terms of taking more walks. He also spoke with our new hitting coach, Bam Bam Meulens, about working to avoid pitches out of the strike zone because, even if he can hit that well for a hit, getting into a better pitch count could force the pitcher to throw a strike that he could hit even more authoritatively.

And along those lines, it was discovered over the off-season that he needed glasses. Now, he said in the interview about this, he can see the pitches clearly whereas before they were blurry. The ability of hitting the baseball improves with the ability to see the baseball. It was rumored that Ted Williams was far-sighted and that helped him recognize pitches earlier. Imagine that: Panda did as well as he did last year hampered by his vision but he is unimpaired this season.

Most projections have him regressing "to the mean". But the mean they are using are based on faulty data. First, it considers to some extent this stats before he figured out how to hit in the minors. Second, it includes stats before he figured out how to hit for homerun power. Third, he was hampered by his poor vision last season. I think he should not only match what he did, but he should be able to improve on it.

2. Can Lincecum Compete for a Third Straight Cy Young?

I say compete because there are so many factors into winning the award, but first he has to have the stats great enough to compete for it. I understand doubting it. Nobody had won a Cy Young in their first two seasons, so winning a third would be even more unprecedented. Plus, there is the article about Lincecum dealing with less top shelf velocity.

But in his last outing of the spring, Lincecum said that he's ready. His pitches were in the 93-95 MPH range. Baggarly quoted him, "Definitely. I felt like I had the right stuff.
The breaking balls, both of them, were good. Change-up was good. Fastballs feel like they're getting the life on it. I feel ready for the season."

The more important thing is that he is not experiencing any pain. The human body will eventually result in lessening functionality, and luckily, Lincecum has experience dealing with finding another edge against batters, due to all those doubts brought to his attention. That will help him find the way to do well and get in position to compete for another Cy Young.

And the Cy Young is not what is important, but rather that he performed well enough to be considered again. I think the Giants pitching rotation's performance will depend greatly on how well he does. Not that Zito and Sanchez don't have to take another step forward and duplicate their great late 2009 season surge for the whole 2010 season, or that Cain don't have to keep up his improvement from 2009 into 2010 (which will be hard because his FIP is much higher), but if Lincecum does have a poor season, I think that will be a domino fall that affects the other pitchers, pressuring them to do better.

3. Can Renteria Return to Prior Goodness?

Some may not consider this a key, and scoff, but since he is batting in the #2 position, he will need to do well there to set up the hitters in the middle for RBIs. And he was actually a plus hitter previously, with a good OPS period, and great for a SS.

The #2 hitter is key because an out here would result in: 1) no advancement of any base runners most times, 2) two outs facing the #3 hitter, wasting his AB's potential for scoring, and 3) even one out limits the potential, whether the first hitter got on or not. One study of lineup creation maximizing found that you would want your best hitter batting #2. If Renteria is hitting like he used to, one of better hitters would be batting there (only Sandoval beat that last season for the Giants).

This is also key because if he does poorly, then the Giants will have to play Uribe more at SS to get offense. And he's really not a good hitter, 2009 notwithstanding. Then SS would become a sinkhole offensively, another hole in the lineup, like it was in 2009.

Also, if Renteria is hitting, then we have good hitters 2, 3, 4, and 5, maybe 6 with Molina, creating a good mass of hitting ability to generate runs more regularly. Else, then we are looking at only 3, 4, and 5, realistically.

4. Can Jonathan Sanchez Be Consistently Good Over a Full Season?

This is important because one of the keys to last season's good standing was not just our top guys doing well, but our back of the rotation guys beating the asses off the other teams' rotations. Even though Lincecum and Cain pitched well in September and Zito actually kind of poorly, they had poor W/L records for the month while Zito won a lot of games. Penny too. That was because they pitched well enough to beat the back of rotation guys that the other teams threw at us.

Sanchez is our #4 starter this season, and as my PQS study showed, he can be very dominating a pitcher when he is on, as good as any front-line pitcher on any team. However, he's our #4 starter, so it could be lambs being brought out for slaughter pitting him against the lousy starters that other teams have in the back of their rotation.

My experience with fantasy baseball finds that most pitchers lineup to face their fellow rotation order buddies, as long as everyone is on a 5 man rotation. As our #4, he will get to face mainly #4's plus some #3 and #5, and a smattering of #1 or #2 performances when you have breakout performances. If he is pitching well all season long, he should be in the conversation for the Cy Young because he should be winning a lot of games, in the upper teens, which usually catches the eyes of the Cy Young voters. With 5 votes instead of 3 this season, he could be in the conversation with a strong season.

5. Can Rowand Return to Prior Performance Levels?

I was wrong with Rowand's possible performances the past two years, he has not hit anywhere near where I thought he might. He underperformed by a lot.

However, now that he's gotten himself into shape, he can help himself greatly, both offensively and defensively. He has been a hitting god this season. As we have seen the past two seasons, he can be totally on as a hitter, but once he tires or injures himself, then he's pretty bad. He reportedly has worked hard this offseason to improve his overall fitness and not have that second half lag that he had the past two seasons.

Meanwhile, reports are that with the weight loss, he is running more effortlessly in CF. That would improve his range a lot, meaning that he would get to a lot more balls in the OF, improving our OF defense overall, as he was a weak link last season. (Both DeRosa and Schierholtz have been plus OF defensively, by a large margin)

And we will need both types of improvement. His defense because we greatly rely on our pitching to beat other teams. His offense because he is going to be leading off for us again. His hot streak last season leading off helped the Giants go on a nice winning streak in the middle of the summer (that and Panda's HR emergence). Both at his prior goodness would be a great boon to our team, either at the reduced levels of the past two seasons, could sink us.

6. Can Huff Be Enuff at 1B and Cleanup?

It is all interlinked. If he is not good enough defensively, then it don't matter if he hits as well as he did before, they will have to play Ishikawa. If he is not good enough offensively, then they will have to play Ishikawa or worse be tempted to start Posey there. In any case, then Bochy could be tempted to bring back the Bengie Molina Clean-up Experience if Huff is out. That would not be good news for our offense, I think Molina did all he could there but he really hurt us there offensively due to his low OBP as well as his inability to run even averagely.

Giants Thoughts

I think the Giants will have enough good answers that they will be competitive in 2010. I think they can win 90+ wins, and with all the question marks facing our NL West competitors regarding key players in their plans (Manny and the Divorse, Street, Webb), we have as good a chance of winning the division as anybody else.

I expect both Posey and Bumgarner to come up in the early August timeframe. Posey will become our backup catcher and platoon at 1B with whoever is starting at 1B, Huff or Ishikawa, giving us a great bat off the bench and a potential DH if we get to the World Series. Bumgarner will be a reliever at minimum, starter if Wellemeyer isn't doing that well again (he didn't really do that well in 2008 either, his FIP was much higher).

I am hopeful that one or both of Bowker and Schierholtz will hit well enough to win a starting position in the outfield. I think Panda will take another leap forward this season and bring the Giants with him. I think the bullpen will make our starting rotation that might more airtight, and that will have a positive feedback loop into the starters relaxing more and pitching better. I think the defense will be enough to enable the pitching to be the best in the majors in 2010, topping what they did in 2009.

I think the Giants, once they get into the playoffs, are capable of getting to the World Series, and with Posey as a potential DH, would have a good chance of winning it, if they can survive the gauntlet that is the MLB playoffs, as it is structured against a better team winning a majority of the time. So the key will be having a pitching staff that is dominant in terms of PQS, which will result in more games for the Giants where there is a great pitching performance, giving their offense more chance to score and win a game.

In any case, I think that we will have a great season, one that we will long remember, for good or bad. I think we are on the cusp of a recurring playoff team that will do damage deep into the playoffs, and finally win that elusive World Series championship we all long for. This is just year One.

Go Giants!

Your 2010 Giants: Big 6 Prospects

I am selecting, in honor of the Big 6 himself, Christy Mathewson, the top 6 prospects of the Giants farm system, in my estimation. I would rather focus on the ones who are most likely to do significant damage for us up at the major league level at some point in the future, with some plus factor for doing it sooner than later.

As far as methodology goes, I don't really care to predict the players most likely to contribute this particular season, as that usually include players who make a utility contribution; most teams do not get a significant contributor (like a new starter) from the minor leagues each season, let alone 6, 10, or 11 of them.

In years past, it would have been hard to fill out the list without people who don't really deserve to be on the list. There would usually be a number of them who was a huge question mark on what type of contribution they will make at the major league level ever. And that is not a knock on the Giants farm system in the past, per se, the general rule of thumb is that the farm system at any time has four players who will make a mark in the majors in their career, 2 starters, 2 utility/relievers, but the Giants were even having problems with even 2-3 who look like sure things at times.

But 2010 is different again, just like 2009, and we have a lot of players. We are starting to built up a lot of depth in the system and that will impact the majors over the next 2-4 seasons. The Giants were able to accomplish this because it had a lot of high picks in 2007 to boost this up, and made a number of astute selections in 2008, as if they had high picks, in selecting Gillaspie, Kieschnick, and Crawford, players who at some point were expected to fall in the first round, some early in the first. And 2009 had a number of excellent early picks in Wheeler, Joseph, Dominguez, and Stoffel.

This year, it was pretty clear who the top 3 were but like last season, there were a lot of prospects who could make one of the final three spots, and I will list them in an honorable mention section.

2010 Big 6 Giants Prospect

Here are the Big 6 I've selected for 2010:

1. Buster Posey: Just showed everything he was expected to be (unfortunately on the defensive side) plus more power than expected. He looks on track to be our catcher from 2011-2016 and hopefully with some more development, he will be ready to be one of our best hitters in our lineup, maybe hitting 3rd and Sandoval cleanup.
2. Madison Bumgarner: Disappointing season only because his velocity went down. Still, despite that, he was still able to strike out major league hitters at a high rate for us in September. I think even if he don't recover his velocity, he can become an ace-quality starter for us. If he does get the velocity, Lincecum and him would pair off as one of the best righty-lefty combo the majors have seen in my lifetime, harking back to the D-gers Koufax-Drysdale combo.
3. Zach Wheeler: Always hard to say with someone who has not thrown an officially recorded professional pitch yet, but all the reports I've seen on him plus rankings, make me comfortable in saying he's third. He's a high schooler who can already reach mid-90's easily and already shows three plus pitches at times: fastball, breaking ball, changeup. However, he'll be 20 YO for this season, as it appears he was held back a year and didn't graduate until he was 19. Still, he projects as a(nother!) front-line potential pitcher, and is more advanced than Bumgarner was coming out of high school.
4. Tommy Joseph: Some had Neal here but as nicely as he did in San Jose last season, that doesn't translate to a great major leaguer, at least not yet. Joseph's bat is seen by some as good enough for 1B, which is a high threshold, so he is highly regarded, particularly for his power. Add to that, he's playing at premium position, catcher, which makes his hitting that much better. However, he, like Posey, is new to catching, so he probably has a lot to learn, though at least he has a great arm. In an ideal scenario, he works his way up the Giants minors, one level at a time, starting with Augusta this season, and by the time he's ready to play in the majors, maybe he and Posey can swap off catching duties while sharing 1B, or if Panda is there by then because of his size, Posey probably could start at almost any other position (3B?) while Joseph would catch most games with Posey as backup and Sandoval as third backup.
5. Thomas Neal: Had a breakout year in San Jose after missing almost the whole 2007 season due to injury and only doing OK in 2008. He has some power and can take a walk, though he also strikes out too much still and don't have any speed, and thus range in the OF. A great year in Richmond AA this season would vault him into the Top 3, though that is partly because Posey and Bumgarner most probably will not be eligible for the list next season, Posey for sure, Bumgarner maybe.
6. Rafael Rodriguez: Like last season, this was tough to chose, but I went with RafRod. He is a 5-tool guy with plus plus power potential and plus speed and defense, and he knows how to take a walk. One book thinks that he could become a CF, which is a premium position to have both hitting and power, especially plus power. That is a tough package to beat. He did OK in rookie league, hitting .299/.392/.362/.754, with the only negative being a tick too many strikeouts and no power, but given all the walks, I think as he catches up in age and experience to others, he should be able to reduce his strikeouts, and at 6' 5" already, his power will eventually come as he fills out. Like Villalona and Noonan before, he'll be a young buck in Augusta, only 17 officially for the season (turns 18 in July), so he might again strikeout a bit, but I think he will do better than Villalona and Noonan in that regard, I just wonder if any power will show up.

Honorable Mentions

I still want to note other names, plus maybe a comment or three, because we have so many players who could become something but have obstacles of some sort:

• Dan Runzler: Looks like he can be a good closer eventually, his main problem is giving up too many walks. Our bullpen should be golden with Wilson, Affeldt, Romo, and him.
• Nick Noonan: He is the dark horse I would recommend people keep an eye out for. His main knock has been his lack of plate discipline, his one big skill when he was drafted, but he apparently was just a tick behind the pitchers until the last two months of last season, when suddenly he went from striking out 20+ times a month to keeping his BB/K ratio over the 1.0 ratio you want to see from a good hitter and his K-rate comfortably under 10%. That plus using his speed to get more stolen bases, and he should be ready to take over 2B when Sanchez's contract is over.
• Ehire Adrianza: He's already considered good enough to field SS in the majors, the main question is his bat. With no power, his ticket will be getting on base and stealing a lot of bases. He hasn't shown the SB-ability yet, but he has been good at taking walks and not striking out a lot, just a tick more than we would like to see, but he was 19 facing mostly 21-23 YO in Augusta last season. Giving his advanced understanding of the strike zone, he should continue to rise as he catches up with the pitches physically and experientially. These three could have been 6th (if not higher) easily almost any other year.
• Roger Kieschnick: Great first pro season, but he just strikes out so much that I'm worried that will be his downfall in higher levels. If he solves that, he'll be a five-tool guy who could hit in the middle of the lineup for us. Even if he doesn't, if he can continue to hit like that at every level, he'll be a great 5th or 6th hitter for us.
• Brandon Crawford: He's also considered good enough to field SS in the majors, and the Giants came out and called him the SS of the future. He was en fuego in San Jose last year but totally lost in AA after his promotion. He'll probably be there this year, and perhaps playing in a better park in Richmond will help him do better, Connecticut's Dodd Stadium could screw with a player's head, particularly one where power is a strong part of his offensive game. Still, strikes out way too much, something he must solve to make the majors.
• Waldis Joaquin: Until his TJS, he was rated a potential #2 starter, but now he's probably a setup/closer. With mid-90's heat, he definitely got the chops to be closer-worthy at some point. He walks a little too much, but strikes out a heck of a lot. He will be in the bullpen equation the next few years. He had a great spring and is battling for the final relief spot.
• Henry Sosa: He's also battling for the final relief spot with his great spring. He was a top rated prospect a couple of years ago, but injuries have held back his progress and potential. Still, he throws mid-90's heat, and did not walk that many batters the last two seasons, a good sign. A bad sign was his greatly reduced K/9 in 2009, perhaps the only thing to keep him from the majors.
• Jason Stoffel: Our steal in the 2009 draft, he did not disappoint last season, with a great fastball. A college closer, I'm not sure that he'll be able to do that in the majors, but he doesn't walk much while striking out a lot, which is good no matter what in the bullpen, and he should rise fast.
• Darren Ford: Never thought I would write about him here, because last season was his third in just Advanced A, and he's done poorly but he had a great second half of 2009 and a great spring with us. Defensively ready (an oft-repeated characterization for Giants prospects) for MLB CF, he has plus plus speed that he can utilize for SB when he is able to get on base. As he is already 24, he will have to continue hitting like that in AA Richmond Flying Squirrels to keep it going - unlikely because even while hitting well, his strikeout rate was still very high and his BABIP was very high too, though I would note that he used to have high BABIP early in his career too, it only got low in Advanced A the prior two seasons. Still a very high BABIP though, so he'll probably falter somewhere up the ladder, but if he can solve it like he did last season, he could be ready soon.
• Angel Villalona: His murder trial is now at least scheduled to be reviewed by a judge this month. His potential is still there and he's only 20 YO, so this could just be a very horrific bump in the road. It will never be known by outsiders what exactly happened, so as long as he is found not guilty or the trial is dropped, he should be able to continue his career in the U.S., though hopefully he will move his family to Californy, though not to Beverly Hills, hopefully some place like San Jose, CA, since that is probably where he should go back to if he returns back to professional baseball. Unless there is something stronger than a "he said, she said" situation - and there has been no news about finding the weapon or any connection between Angel and the weapon, other than they both were at the bar - he should be released by the judge for insufficient evidence or the trial would be relatively quick.

How I Stopped Worrying About the Budget: the Intersection of the Internet and the A's

El Lefty Malo has been writing (latest here) about the payroll problem that has been building up with all the extensions signed over the past week plus the existing contracts and expected raises owed to arbitration eligible players over the next few years, including in particular Lincecum and Sandoval, as well as Sanchez. These are valid concerns but I'm not as up in arms as he is for a couple of big reasons.

BAM! MLBAM!

One reason is the MLB Alternative Media (or MLB AM) organization. Equally owned by all 30 teams, it has been an unadulterated success, beyond their wildest dreams. Expected to take a four years to repay the costs of creating it, it covered the costs in less than two and has been delivering $3-5M to each team (The Biz of Baseball had that covered here, with an in-depth look here).

It has been my hope that MLBAM will the linchpin towards reducing the disparity in revenues between the Yankees and the rest of the majors. Their advantage has come from their local broadcast rights, but as everything is moving to the Internet, it is my hope that MLBAM will eventually steal away most of the viewers of Yankees broadcast, thus sharing all those revenues with every team (since every team gets 1/30th). Don't know if there is a loophole somewhere or what, but given the simple view of this situation, MLBAM appears to be the trojan horse that brings down the Yankee's revenue advantage over all other teams. That could be why the Yankees got their new stadium built, to make up for potential future revenue shortfalls.

In addition, MLBAM has been much more successful than any other sport's on-line venture, and thus they have been handling the on-line ventures for other sports like golf (they run tigerwoods.com and used to run MLS's operations) and recently won a contract to handle ESPN's on-line technology infrastructure and customer support. They are a leader in streaming live video. Contracts like this plus expansion into other products, like the Bloomberg baseball stats analytics service, plus other gaming products, should contribute further growth.

There is also talk about an IPO, valuing the company at over $2B, which would roughly value each team's share at over $70M. These are all ways the Giants can generated additional cash to help pay for re-signing players.

San Jose A's

The A's are hoping to move down to San Jose, but the rights belong to the Giants right now. Similar to how the Orioles were compensated by the move of the Expos to Washington D.C., a nearby location in the area controlled by the Orioles, I have believed that the Giants and A's were on a course towards such a resolution. Hence the hard line by the Giants management since this came up, yet the rumors persisted until the A's requested the rights. Mark Purdy covers a lot of the issues in his recent column. Biz of Baseball also covered it, though not as biz as I would have liked, there was no clear final dollar amount.

Frankly, South Bay Giants fans are not going to change their allegiance just because the A's are close, though they might go there to get their fill of MLB baseball. Those going to games will still go. Corporate season ticket buyers will probably buy down there, but as long as the Giants have had a winning product, they have always been able to draw the fans into the park, they have always opened up their wallets to get their fix.

Now we are heading into the stretch. Bud Selig is reportedly considering the proposition - FYI, he and the A's owner were former COLLEGE ROOMMATES and long-time old buddies - and will report on this soon. He brokered/ordered the concessions made to the Orioles to allow the Washington Nationals to come into existence, and I expect that to happen again in this situation. And I expect the price tag to be pretty high, at least $20M, if not more (the Orioles got all sorts of cash and income, plus guarantees, which I assume the Giants will want on their 3M attendance - roughly - up to now, plus majority ownership of a sports network, which won't work for the Giants, so I expect some sort of cash buyout, over time).

Other Sources of Cash to Pay for Contracts

There are a number of other ways for the Giants to generate money for increases in their payroll. First, they own a percentage of the Bay Area sports network that was set up by Comcast. That could be sold and generate money to pay for players. Second, their mortgage ends in 2017 if I remember right. That is $20M in additional money right there, every year. They could use that to fund borrowing additional money now to help pay for player salaries today, and with the low interest rates, would not result in much discounting in terms of net present value. Third, they had been funding $5M per year in recent years to cover Barry Bonds's deferred payments, but it should be over by this year or next. That will be $5M more available.

Lastly, there is the old fashion and time proven way to get more cash: find more investors to pony up more money into the Giants. Neukom had been buying out other owners over time to get to his position, he has a lot of Silicon Valley and Redmond connections and networks that he should be able to tap into to find people willing to invest in the Giants.

Plus, he's not getting younger - he was older than Magowan when Magowan stated he was stepping down to spend more time with his grandchildren - and could bring in the next owner of the Giants. And Larry Ellison is a local billionaires with billions of dollars burning a hole in his pocket, and with his win in America's Cup, wouldn't the Giants be a great place to bring his sports obsession to, particularly with our history of no World Series championships in SF? He has reported kick the tires on acquiring the 49er's, and when rebuffed, looked into the LA football expansion possibility, and recently was noted as interested when Chris Cohan said that he's open to selling the Warriors (particularly since the IRS said there was mistakes made regarding his sale of his family's cable company that funded his purchase of the Warriors, and thus he owns millions to the IRS now).

And I've been beating the drums for Larry Ellison's purchase of the Giants since Sabean/Magowan noted that they basically passed up looking into getting Vladimir Guerrero because of finances, back when I was fanatical and not obsessed. :^) We need someone with deep pockets for the Giants to get our championship. The Angel's were helped by their billionaire owner opening up his pockets and the Giants could use similar deep pockets, particularly those as deep as Ellison.