Hey Neukom! My Giants Business Plan: Good Enough Offense

After a long break - sorry about that, been busy with things, plus Giants things I wanted to write on, but I did have this written long ago...


Obviously, the Giants have focused more on the pitching side of the equation with their drafts and clearly has had more success there as well. And thus a lot of Giants fanst have been grumbling about the lack of position prospects. Go to any popular Giants watering hole and there will be someone making Sabean another orifice for the team's lack of position prospects.


And that makes sense at many levels. Giants fans are used to great offensive teams led by stars like Mays and McCovey, Bobby Bonds, Jack "The Ripper" Clark, Will the Thrill, Kevin Mitchell, Matt Williams, Barry Bonds, Jeff Kent. We have been blessed with great offensive stars throughout most of SF Giants history, while pitching has really been limited mostly to Marichial and Gaylord Perry, with a nice run by John "The Count" Montefusco, for the vast majority of the team's first 50 years.


BP Study on Playoff Success


As I've been writing, BP's study found that pitching/defense were the only significant factors that contributed success in the playoffs. However, there is a flip side to BP's study: 0ffense doesn't give you any advantage once you get into the playoffs. While defensive metrics were shown to statistically significantly affect playoff success, improving playoff chances, conversely, there was no correlation between any offensive metric with playoff success. NONE, ZERO, NIL, NOTHING.

Even a metric as elemental and simple as Runs Scored - one would naturally assume the higher that is, the greater your odds of winning - had no effect on success in the playoffs. No effect. That means you could be one of the best offensive teams over the past 20 or so years, and according to BP's study, that lineup would confer no extra advantage to your team.

Now this does not mean the converse, that you can just ignore the offense, for even the best pitching staffs still need some level of offensive support to win. But as I showed long ago in my section on great team defense, if you have a league leading pitching staff and defense in terms of keeping runs allowed low, you can get into the playoffs even with an offense around the worse in the league. When you have the best overall pitching/defense, you just need a good enough offense to make the playoffs, then succeed in the playoffs.

Simple Business Strategy: Focus on Scarce Valuable Resources

Still, for those who lament the Giants relative slowness in developing position players, why not focus on those elements of the draft which confers some advantage in the playoffs, which are pitching and defense? Why spent a lot of top picks on position players who most probably are not going to be stars?

When faced with lowered resources (back in the first round draft picks), you could spread your chances everywhere and try to get pitching and offense, but you don't know what you are going to get, whereas if you focused on pitching, you more likely will fill your pitching needs, then fill in the pieces offensively.

And remember, if you hit the jackpot with pitching, you just put in another good starter, another good reliever, improving what we got, whereas you could end up with two good players in the same position and be forced to trade and hope for the best, but that doesn't always work out, like the Indians trading away Kouzmanoff because they wanted Jesse Barfield to fill 2B and had Andy Marte in their system; oops!

They still picked up position players - they have to field full teams at every minor league level - but just didn't spend many of their surer bullets (first round draft picks that are late in the round) on many hitters, they focused mainly on pitching: Kurt Ainsworth, Noah Lowry, Brad Hennessey, Matt Cain, Tim Alderson, etc.

Once the pitching rotation looks pretty good, plus you have some good bullpen pieces, then all you need to do is cobble together a good enough offense to sustain a pennant winning number of victories. Free agency can help you pick up at least one good piece of the offensive puzzle at some point, like how we picked up Aaron Rowand, who has delivered above average offense and defense at a premium position, CF. The International market can help you pick up maybe another good piece or two, like how we got Pablo Sandoval, Angel Villalona and Rafael Rodriguez. Trade could also give you a good piece or two, though the Giants have not pulled that trigger yet.

Finally, once you are deep into your rebuilding and losing enough games, you can pick up a good offensive player or two via a high draft pick, like how we just got Buster Posey and we should get another very good pick (Top 5) in next year's draft. Meanwhile, the players you drafted later in a shotgun fashion, some might turn out good, like Fred Lewis has, and perhaps John Bowker, Travis Ishikawa, Nate Schierholtz, Emmanuel Burriss, Ryan Rohlinger.

That can help you craft together a lineup with a few good hitters, a bunch of average hitters, and a few great defensive players who might not be that good offensively. One that is good enough.

Analysis of Buster Posey on Baseball Intellect

Baseball Intellect recently published his analysis of Buster Posey as a prospect.

Sounds very good overall, but for $6.2M, I would have hoped for more than a B/B+ grading that the author assigned to Buster's potential.

Still, very good skills all around:

• Defense: Buster's athleticism has been touted for a long while, and it is here too. Due to this, he is projected to be at least average defensively with the potential to be plus.
• Ratios and splits stats: walked about twice his strikeouts - the best hitters get one walk per strikeout. So that's pretty good, albeit in college ball. I wonder what it was on Friday, when he typically faced the other team's best pitcher. In that venue, though, he was just about as good, suggesting that he probably walked a lot there too as well. And he hit well against both LHP and RHP (though hard not to do when you hit .463).
• Swing: Good for "moderately-high batting average" plus gap power for a lot of doubles, but not good for huge power. That would be great in AT&T Park. He has a couple of flaws that needs to be fixed; maybe the additional coaches that Neukom wants can help him with that.
• Overall: Sees 35+ doubles and 15-20 HR annually from Posey, with a "solid" batting average, which to me means not .300+ but high .200's, .280 to .290. Those plus the ability to take a walk results in "a pretty good offensive player." That plus playing at a premium defensive position means that he has the potential to be in the Top 5 catchers. And with his overall polish to his offensive game, he thinks Posey can move quickly. Which is good, the Giants need Posey to move really fast, ideally making the majors in 2010 after Molina's contract ends in 2009.

Giants Thoughts

I know this doesn't pertain to the article, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense the bonus amount. The main goal was getting more than Tim Beckham and Pedro Alvarez, or really, anyone, he was the Golden Spike winner, he was just as highly rated as Matt Weiters who got $6M last season, he was the top offensive guy plus played great defense, for college. Obviously, Beckham was a set target since he signed so early for $6.15M, but Alvarez was the stumbling point, what's he going to get?

Given the reports that Posey had already flew in and gotten his physical earlier in the week, I think that he and the Giants had basically agreed to most of the parameters and the Giants were willing to help him get what he wanted, which was the biggest contract, and gave him at least a couple of options, either $6.2M upfront or, if he wants more, the Giants have to go with a major league contract - which allows them to backload the payments - and the total is $7.5M but spread out over a number of years and still $6.2M present value. So the question is, which one is good enough to beat what Beckham got and Alvarez might get, because Boras likes to get the highest contract?

So they waited all week, still Alvarez is not signed, and Buster's negotiating team hit on the idea of leaking the $7.5M figure so that Boras hopefully will wave the white flag and concede. Remember, they were the ones to leak the $12M figure for Buster; and about that, the experts in the media would opine that it was to get to the higher spending clubs and scare off the cheap clubs, but the way I've always seen it is that it has dual purpose: yes, one is to reach a bigger spending club, but there is another reason to move back in the draft, and that's to reach the teams who have a better chance of winning.

Look at the top drafting clubs, do any of them really look like that they have a clue of ever winning regularly? Tampa might be winning this year, but it is the clubs who pick later who have the better chance of winning. Pittsburgh? KC? Orioles? Please, do you really want to get stuck with any of those clubs, given their past record of failures? Sometimes it works, like when Porcello fell to the Tigers. Most times it don't, like when the Orioles picked Weiters.

Anyway, don't know if Boras called to congratulate them and thus both could move on, but somehow the log jam got broken and the contract got signed by Buster for "just" the $6.2M. In any case, I don't think that it is a coincidence that Baggarly was the same person who reported the $7.5M figure plus then noted later that the delay was due to a "pissing contest" between Alvarez's agents and Posey's agents. And the Giants weren't technically "lying", deciding on the final figure of a contract is a huge negotiation point.

Back to the analysis. I would take .280+, 15+ HR, 35+ doubles with good to gold glove defense at catcher anyday. That would be huge to have under control for 6 seasons. I would have preferred seeing an A grade, and I don't quite understand why it wasn't since he can be a top 5 at his position. But, whatever, that batting line about would be great to have, particularly with a lot of walks too. That would be perfect in the #3 lineup spot, would work at #5, would be good #2 as well, since he should get on base a lot plus hits LHP as well as he hits RHP. This solves another spot in the Giants future lineup.

He gives us 3 legit middle lineup guys in Lewis, Rowand and now Posey. Add Villalona into the mix and that, assuming they hit what the appear capable of doing, would be a darn good offense, maybe Posey #2, Lewis #3, Villalona #4, Rowand #5, then we need to find us a good leadoff guy, plus Schierholtz should be OK batting #6 or 7.

And that lineup could happen as soon as 2010 if Villalona can advance like Justin Upton did and if Posey can advance fast, like both Will Clark and Tim Lincecum, two fellow Golden Spike players, did.

Posey Period Pegins: Buster Posey Pens Line for $6.2M Bonus

OK, this is the latest from Andy Baggarly and apparently it came from Baseball America, which, by the way, he is an excellent correspondent for. According to the report, he signs for $6.2M, the largest up-front bonus in draft history, as it is not a major league deal (nor was he a two sport player like Tim Beckham, who had his bonus split), and thus the Giants are paying that full amount immediately instead of spread over a number of years (remember, they ended up reducing their payroll this season from their original mid-90-mil to high 80's, which will just cover Buster's bonus).

So it is both larger than Tim Beckham's bonus and Matt Weiter's bonus, plus, per Baggarly's comment here about how both Alvarez and Posey wanted to have the highest bonus this year, apparently Posey won that battle, as BA reported that Alvarez signed for a straight $6M bonus. It is also higher than any bonus paid over the past four drafts, beating out Weiter's $6M in 2007, Justin Upton's $6.1M in 2005.

I guess Baggarly's source has egg on his or her face, as this was not close to the $7.5M figure he reported. It ended up being pretty close to what I was hoping it would be, I was thinking $5-6M. I'm happy it is only $200K more than that. And I guess Allfrank will be happy too. :^)

All in all, I did sweat some bullets after 9PM passed and there was no news, but it made too much sense for both sides not to make a deal that both sides would be happy with. I heard some yahoo on KNBR suck up to Damon Bruce and scream at the Giants for signing Zito and not overpaying Posey a few millions to get him signed "three months ago (sic)" [not quite right, it was 2.5 months ago], while Bruce yells at the Giants for that as well. (CLICK, turn on my daughter's Camp Rock CD for the umpteen millionth time, anything than hearing the ravings on KNBR at night, I used to love late night sportstalk...).

Well, duh, unlike what many think, Sabean has been pretty smart over the years, certainly it was unquestioned early in his tenure, but given the excellent state of the pitching rotation, I'll forgive any of the trespasses that bothers others. When all is said and done, the Giants now look set at catcher for many years, both offensively and defensively, with Posey, as well as in the pitching rotation and closer spot. Hinshaw looks good thus far for one of the two key setup positions (don't forget how Munter flamed out after one good season though...) and there are a lot of candidates for the other spot, though Walker is starting to look done (however, people forget that he recovered from TJS just at the end of last season, so his arm strength is probably not built up yet, and still forgot how good he was at the beginning of this season, so I have some hope for him next season).

Go Giants!