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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-237352452017-01-21T07:17:27.882-08:00obsessivegiantscompulsiveThese are just my opinions. I cannot promise that I will be perfect, but I can promise that I will seek to understand and illuminate whatever moves that the Giants make (my obsession and compulsion). I will share my love of baseball and my passion for the Giants. And I will try to teach, best that I can. Often, I tackle the prevailing mood among Giants fans and see if that is a correct stance, good or bad.obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-73684283579669514352017-01-19T22:32:00.000-08:002017-01-19T22:32:14.423-08:002016 Giants: September and Final PQSThis post has the Giants Pure Quality Start scores for the month of September 2016, as well as final PQS, PQS as defined in Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster annual book and they published the details here (unfortunately, they removed the article; this link gets you at least to the PQS definition, read down to middle for details). I wrote on this first in 2006 (wow, 11th year of this! 10th anniversary!) and have compiled their stats on a regular basis, so I'm continuing it this season for continuity and historical comparison (there is the "PQS" label that you can click to see the old posts on this). Regular readers can skip to the section on "Why PQS?".

This is the Quality Start with a sabermetric DIPS twist, and it gets really easy to calculate once you get used to it. I don't think it's the end all or be all, but then nothing really is that. It is, as I like to say, another piece of the puzzle. A dominating start is scored a 4 or 5 and a disaster start is scored a 0 or 1. DOM% is the percentage of starts that are dominating, DIS% is the percentage of starts that are disasters (any start under 5.0 IP is automatically a 0, or disaster).

What's Good and What's Not

From my observations, a DOM at or above the 40% mark is indicative of good pitching; above 50% is great; above 70% is elite. A low DIS is also indicative of good pitching, just look at the table in the link above showing DOM% and DIS% on the axes.

Basically, you want to see a pitcher's DOM% to be over 40% and ideally over 50%, and you want their DIS to be under 20% and ideally under 10%. For example, Johan Santana has a 76% DOM and 3% DIS in 2006 (2.77 ERA), whereas Orlando Hernandez had a 52% DOM and 28% DIS (4.66 ERA), and Adam Eaton had a 31% DOM and 31% DIS (5.12 ERA). Read the link (unfortunately, they removed the article and thus the table is no longer available, sorry), as I noted, there's a nice chart there showing the combination of high DOM% and low DIS%, and there you can see particularly how a low DIS% is so important to a low ERA.

If you had to chose a high DOM% or a low DIS%, pitchers tend to have a lower ERA when you have a low DIS% vs. a high DOM% (obviously if you combine both, you have a much better chance of having an elite pitcher). But I think when the DOM% is high enough, you win more by choosing a high DOM% over a low DIS%, as there are more high quality games pitched overall, which is the obviously true key to winning.

I wholeheartedly recommend buying Baseball Forecaster and learning more about their methods of analyzing baseball. It has been greatly illuminating for me, and if you want to get a taste for it without paying full price, they used to sell their old editions of their annuals on their website for half price or less (plus shipping); but that was before he sold the company off, and I haven't checked recently.

Why PQS?

Everyone knows that a well pitched game is key to winning, that's nothing new. What most analysts don't seem to acknowledge is that there are pitchers who, year in, year out, are good at throwing quality games regularly. Or maybe it's just accepted by some, but they are unhappy with the traditional definition of a quality game, which, way in the past, when starters were expected to throw complete games, it was giving up 3 runs or less in 7 or more innings, but with the bullpen revolution, is only 3 runs or less in 6 or more innings, which works out to a 4.50 ERA if 3 in 6 IP, which is why people had problems with this definition. It should really be 2 or less in 6 or 3 or less in 7, but that complicates what used to be a dimple definition.

Another tool that some use is GameScore, which was invented by the legendary Bill James. I've used it to look at prospects before, because PQS punishes the rating when the pitcher does not go at least 5 IP and key to getting a good PQS is pitching at least 6 innings: prospects are often pulled before reaching 6 innings. While it appears to be a better tool, and in particular, more precise tool (since it can vary, theoretically, from 0 to 100 - it has gone over 100 before though), it was created long ago, before many of the newer saber facts were discovered. What hurts it's usability, in my opinion, is that it takes into account when runs are scored on the pitcher, valuing results over process.

What is PQS?

PQS As I noted above, PQS is quality starts with a sabermetric twist. It's really easy to do once you learn the system, and even easier if you pull the game data and have a spreadsheet calculate everything for you. It looks at the process of pitching and rewards a quality start based on how the pitcher was able to control the inputs - IP, hits, walks, strikeouts, homeruns - and not on the outputs - runs - which the pitcher does not always have control over, as it could just be random luck of when the hit happens and/or random luck of whether the reliever keeps the inherited runners from scoring.

For example, you could have two starting pitchers with the exact same pitched game, exact same order of ball, strikes, hits, everything exactly the same. However, while the reliever for the first pitcher was able to stop the rally by stranding the bases loaded, the reliever for the second pitcher gave up a grand slam homer. This reduces the game score drastically for the second starter: drops it 12 for Bill James version, 9 in Game Score 2.0 that Fangraphs uses. So for the first pitcher, who, say, had a nice 59 Game Score, which is good, the second pitcher got 47 with Bill James, 50 with 2.0, which is a roughly average score. Per a detailed analysis of Game Score, a 59 game resulted in a win 62% of the time, which results in a 100 win season if the staff can do that every start, whereas a 47 game resulted in a win 51% of the time, which is an 82-83 win season. Huge difference, but each pitcher had the exact same start.

So I like PQS more than I like Game Score. Not that PQS is perfect, but this has been my stance with the Giants for many years now, I would rather focus more on the process than the results. Perhaps the trade or signed player did not work out. But the key thing to me is whether those were the best choices/decisions facing Sabean at the time he made it. Sometimes you just have to sign the best player available, or trade for the best guy other teams are willing to give up for your non-prospect (since the Giants under Sabean has rarely traded away a prospect that they really like). But results are important too, at some point, and three championships are pretty good results, showing that his process has been pretty good over the years.

And I like the analysis of games versus overall results more because each game started by a pitcher is different, but the results within a game, are often related. Perhaps he woke up wrong that day. Perhaps everything clicked. And do more starts click or more starts suck? Or are just mediocre.

That helps to understand a prospect starting out in the majors. Brad Hennessey came up with pretty good minor league ERA, in spite of a pretty poor strikeout rate, and was able to maintain an OK average-ish ERA in the majors for a number of years. But that was mainly because he was good enough to avoid disaster starts. Meanwhile, he was unable to generate many dominant starts. That showed that he was at best a mediocre major league pitcher unless he could figure out how to strike out more batters. He wasn't able to.

Like I try to convey, trying to understand players is like putting together a puzzle. PQS is a piece of the puzzle, albeit an important piece, in my opinion. So is strikeout:walk ratio and strikeout rate (which should lead to a high PQS score often), plus scouting reports on what the pitchers can do and which are their best pitches, and which are better than average. I've liked quality start as a measure since following Fergie Jenkins' career, and PQS really clicked with me since it was sabermetrically derived.

It is not a well-known measure, but that's OK, just like there is a Baseball-Reference.com that focuses on results and Fangraphs that focuses on process, Game Score is focused on results and PQS on process. To be perfectly frank, I'm more of a results guy, because I think Sabers think that they know more than they really do about how baseball works, and that hubris leads to too many poor conclusions (like the disavowal of clutch performances), but I like the simplicity and ease of calculation that PQS provides, and the results from the metric over the years have convinced me of the utility of this metric.

Giants Starters' Final PQS for 2016 Season

Madison Bumgarner- (76% DOM, 0% DIS; 26:0/34): 2, 5, 2, 5, 5/5, 5, 4, 5, 5, 5/5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 2/5, 5, 3, 5, 5/2, 5, 5, 3, 3, 5/5, 4, 4, 5, 4, 3/

Matt Cain- (24% DOM, 41% DIS; 4:7/17): 4, 0, 0, 3, 3/0, 5, 5, 5, X/0/0, 2, 3/3, 0, 0//

Johnny Cueto - (66% DOM, 6% DIS; 21:2/32): 4, 4, 5, 3, 5/3, 4, 4, 5, 4, 5/3, 5, 5, 5, 2/4, 5, 1, 5, 2/4, 2, 3, 3, 5, 0/5, 5, 5, 3, 4/

Matt Moore - (75% DOM, 25% DIS; 8:2/12): ////4, 4, 4, 3, 5, 4/0, 4, 2, 0, 5, 5/

Jake Peavy - (48% DOM, 29% DIS; 10:6/21): 3, 0, 2, 4, 0/3, 3, 5, 0, 4, 4/4, 4, 5, 4, 0/5, 0, 4, 3, 0//

Jeff Samardzija - (56% DOM, 16% DIS; 18:5/32): 3, 4, 3, 4, 4/5, 4, 4, 5, 5, 3/1, 0, 4, 0, 2/3, 5, 2, 1, 2/4, 2, 5, 5, 5/0, 5, 4, 3, 5, 4/

Albert Suarez - (25% DOM, 42% DIS; 3:5/12): //4, 3, 0, 4, 3/5/0/3, 1, 1, 3, 0/

Ty Blach - (50% DOM, 50% DIS; 1:1/2): /////0,5/

X - Cain had a disaster start, but was dealing when hamstring went out, not counting in PQS stats

Giants Season overall - 57% DOM, 17% DIS out of 161 games counted (91:28/161)
Giants Month of April - 48% DOM, 16% DIS out of 25 games counted (12:4/25)
Giants Month of May - 79% DOM, 7% DIS out of 28 games counted (22:2/28)
Giants Month of June - 56% DOM, 22% DIS out of 27 games counted (15:6/27)
Giants Month of July - 46% DOM, 21% DIS out of 24 games counted (11:5/24)
Giants Month of August - 52% DOM, 14% DIS out of 27 games counted (14:4/27)
Giants Month of September - 57% DOM, 23% DIS out of games counted (17:7/30)

September (really, Sept/Oct) had its ups and downs. Ultimately, while it was one of the best months for DOM%, it was also the worse for DIS%, with 7 in the 30 starts. Had the Giants had, say, only 4 DIS instead, that could have gotten them to 89-90 wins. And with the 9 blown saves in September by relievers, just changing that (there were only 2 in August, 1 in July, 6 in June, 3 in May, 3 in April) should have won the division for the Giants, and then they face the Nats instead of the Cubs. And given how closely the Giants played the Cubs in a five game series, who knows how they would have fared in a seven game series instead in the NLCS.

As noted, it was one of the better months for DOM. Bumgarner led the way again with 5 DOM starts, followed by Cueto and Samardzija with 4 DOM starts each. Moore had 3 DOM and Blach had his brilliant DOM start as well.

As also noted, it was the worse month for DIS. Suarez, unfortunately, was not up to the task, and had 3 DIS starts out of five starts. Moore was also shaky with 2 DIS starts out of 6. Blach and Samardzija had 1 DIS start each.

Now, this is a good month showing how sometimes the DOM/DIS profile does not always translate into ERA results. In spite of all the DIS starts, overall, the starters still had a good 3.40 ERA. This was mostly because Suarez, in spite of 3 DIS starts, only had a 4.13 ERA. Normally, his ERA should be much worse, for example, Moore with 2 DIS, had a 5.17 ERA in spite of his 3 DOM starts. In fact, Suarez's ERA was not much worse than Bumgarner's 3.92 ERA for the month, in spite of Bumgarner's 5 DOM starts, showing the other end of the spectrum, where DOM does not lead to good ERA. Dominance does not always end up with good results, hence why my playoff studies showed an 80%, roughly, win rate when you have DOM starts, because even if you pitch really well, the ball sometimes bounces the wrong way for you.

Still, most of the time, DOM = good ERA. Cueto with his 4 DOM/0 DIS month had a 1.78 ERA. Samardzija with his 4 DOM/1 DIS month had a 2.95 ERA.

Similarly with DOM/DIS, K/W and K/9 are key indicators, generally, of good ERA. Bumgarner led the way with 8.80 K/W and 10.2 K/9, but his ERA was average. Still, Cueto was second in K/W with 5.00 and he had a very high 8.9 K/9 and Samardzija was third with 4.20 K/W and first with 10.3 K/9. Moore was actually pretty good overall with a 3.00 K/W and 9.5 K/9. This was a very dominant top 4 starters and why I am very enthused about our chances in 2017.

Ultimately, I think Suarez's poor DIS performance with OK ERA reflected more a managerial decision to shut him down before things got bad. His K/W was horrible, only 1.29, and that was because his K/9 was horrible, only 3.4.

2016 Comments

Overall, the staff did well with 57% DOM/17% DIS. Remember, 60% DOM is very good for a starting pitcher and our staff almost did that as a group. And 17% DIS is OK too, you want it under 20%.

Bumgarner led the way with 76% DOM/0% DIS. The Giants were 20-14 in his starts. A pattern for him during his career is a slow start, and this season was no different, as he had two MID starts out of three to start. And I know that many laud his ability to throw many innings, especially the Giants, but once he got warmed up, he had 15 DOM (all but 1 were 5 PQS too, mind you) out of 17 starts (88% DOM/12% MID), but then ended the season's last two months with only 8 DOM out of 12 starts (67% DOM/33% MID, with 3 of 8 being 4 PQS DOM starts). So he was still very good, but qualitatively, he went from Superman to Superiorman. And he ended up with good but not great 2.74 ERA, though great 4.65 K/W and 10.0 K/9.

Cueto was not far behind with 66% DOM/6% DIS. Even better, the Giants were 23-9 in his starts, as he pitched better than his stats often. He also wore down during the season in terms of performance. In the first half, he had 13 DOM starts in 16 starts (81% DOM), similar to Bumgarner , with a 2.42 ERA. But in his second half, Cueto had 8 DOM/2 DIS starts in 16 (50% DOM/13% DIS), which is good, but just barely there good, though his ERA was still good at 3.19. So he was still better than many pitchers and overall, a 2.79 ERA with 4.40 K/W and 8.1 K/9, but his second half was worse.

This is why I've been advocating for a 6th starter during the month of August. Generally, there are only two days off in that month (oddly, the Giants were scheduled with few days off early, and ended up with 4 days off in August this year; but they only had two days off in 2015, 2013, 2012, & 2011, three days in 2014 & 2010) and the starting pitchers get slammed with less rest during the month. Especially if we already have a long reliever on the roster, you put him in so that there is an extra rest day during the week, whether from an actual day off or the day the long reliever starts. That only takes away one or two starts from the starters (depending on how many off days there are in the month), though from Bumgarner and Cueto, the #1 and #2 starters (since there are 162 starts in a season). It gets harder if a starter has to be brought up from the minors, which means someone gets sent down, but, again, it helps ease off some of the work our top starters are getting, and hopefully leads to less of a drop in the second half, in terms of performance.

Samardzija was the next step down with 56% DOM/16% DIS. The Giants were only 15-17 in his starts though, and that was reflected by his average 3.81 ERA overall. He had two halves as well, as the Giants went 10-6 in his first half, 5-11 in his second half. And for him, it wasn't really halves, he had a poor 13 start streak there in the middle (only 2 DOM/3 DIS), sandwiched between a 8 DOM out of 10 starts and a 7 DOM/1 DIS out of 9 starts, both dominant streaks. He was basically lost for a couple of months there, before turning things around. That's ERA of 2.54, 5.83, and 2.70, covering the three parts of the season for him. He had a good 3.09 K/W and a nice but not good 7.4 K/9.

As I noted in the pre-season, I figured that this would be a learning year for him and the Giants coaching staff, and it turned out that way. In that first part, he had a nice 61 K in 71.0 IP, but when he was lost, only 45 K in 75.2 IP. More importantly, he ended with a strong 60 K in 56.2 IP. Anything above 9 K/9 is excellent. So it worked out the way I was hoping, Samardzija was dominant at times, but he had his learning moments as well, so having Cueto to buffer him there in the middle of the rotation was perfect on the part of the Giants. And had the offense been better in the second half - Giants only went 3-6 in the Shark's last 9 starts, even though he had a 2.70 ERA, which should have been more a 6-3 stretch and would have put us one game behind the Dodgers instead of four, plus we would have won other games - we probably would have won the division.

Peavy was the fourth starter and pitched liked it, though his results were more like a fifth starter. He had a 48% DOM/29% DIS for a horrible 5.47 ERA, though good 2.73 K/W and OK 7.5 K/9. In spite of that bad ERA, the Giants were 11-10 in his starts. Peavy started out poorly, but got it kicked up nicely, in the middle, but ended poorly, and why the Giants had to trade for Moore to take over his spot.

He's probably a fifth or spot starter at this point of his career. I like him as a pitcher, but as I noted when the Giants signed him, I didn't think that the Giants should have signed him back, I would have been happier giving our prospects the opportunity to win and hold a spot or signing another pitcher to a 1-2 year contract. Heston did well in 2015, and we could have signed a Wellemeyer/Fister type either year to cover other contingencies, or even brought up Blach sooner in 2016, or brought up Blackburn in 2015 while he was doing well in AAA, maybe his poor 2016 was due to a letdown getting sent back down to AAA or to a new stadium to pitch in. But, still, he was a good Giant, and I wish him well trying to make back the money he lost due to his advisor stealing $35M or so from him, it looks like the Padres might sign him for a second time around with them.

Those were the starters who got most of the starts (at least 20 starts). Out of the rest, you got a lot of mixed but mostly poor results.

Cain had a 25% DOM/44% DIS for a poor 5.81 ERA, 2.13 K/W, and 7.1 K/9. The Giants were 7-10 in his starts.

Suarez had a 25% DOM/42% DIS, but as noted, was pulled before things got too bad, so he had an OK 4.28 ERA, but his poor 2.05 K/W and 5.8 K/9 reflected his poor PQS results. The Giants were only 3-9 in his starts, which was reflective of his poor PQS.

Blach had a 50% DOM/50% DIS, but great 1.64 ERA as he had that great start against the Dodgers, while getting pulled quickly in his poor first start (well, more middling than poor, could have gotten a 2 PQS if Bochy had let him continue, but he was probably amped up in his first MLB start). Still, decent 2.25 K/W and 7.4 K/9.

Overall, these 5th starters were a collective 8:13/31 for a 26% DOM/42% DIS, 4.91 ERA, and 11-20 Giants record. If the Giants were 16-15 in those games instead, they would have won the division.

Last but not least, I wanted to cover Moore with more than a bullet. Moore replaced Peavy as the fourth starter and had extremes in his starts, resulting in no MID starts and a wonderful 75% DOM and poor 25% DIS. In spite of the 75% DOM, he had an average 4.08 ERA, and that poor result, relatively, was reflected in his average 2.16 K/W. His great 9.1 K/9, though, means that poor K/W was due to very high walk rate. Still, the Giants were 7-5 in his starts, which might not seem like much, but over a season that's a 94 win rate or a 19-13 record over 32 starts.

I think this demonstrates how stats can be skewed when you look at less than a full season of starts, where one or two bad starts can really mar the overall record. In particular, he had a horrible start in Colorado. Removing that outlier would reduce his ERA to a very nice 3.43 ERA and better 2.43 K/W. Of course, somebody has to pitch in Colorado, and his result is his result, but the point of this exercise is to get a better view of how well Moore actually did, as that one very bad Colorado start colored his 12 starts greatly, whereas had he pitched that one bad Colorado start out of 32 starts instead, it would not have skewed his results as badly.

2017 Rotation Thoughts

I'm very excited about the Giants 2017 rotation. We potentially could have four ace-type starters with Bumgarner, Cueto, Moore, and Samardzija taking four of every five starts. Bumgarner and Cueto just needs to do what they can do, Moore and Samardzija need to do what they were doing for us in the last two months. They could have a collective ERA of under 3 if they can put together a full season of what they showed that they can do.

Of course, there will always be glitches. I would be surprised if Bumgarner and Cueto don't have good seasons overall. But Bumgarner will probably have his poor start again, plus wear down at the end. And Cueto will have his Jekyll and Hyde first and second halves that he has had during his career. Samardzija seems to be a Lincecum type: dominating most of the time, but will just lose it for stretches of time. Hopefully, like Lincecum, Samardzija can learn to minimize the stretch of games where he is lost, and hopefully the Giants coaching can help him get straightened out quickly too. That's the key to a good season from him. Moore looks like he will do great for us, and having him makes it less likely that the Giants will try to re-sign Cueto after the 2017 season.

I think it all depends on what happens with the 5th starter. Cain is expected to compete with Blach for the 5th starting spot, with Suarez, Beede, Stratton, and Blackburn providing some additional competition. Perhaps the other Suarez in our system as well, Andrew Suarez appears to be a Rueter type of starter, similar to Blach as well.

I think Cain can put it together for a number of starts, like he was doing just before his hamstring went: he had 3 straight 5-PQS DOM starts (you don't do that by accident) before his hammy broke the streak. In those three starts, against good competition in Toronto, D-backs (in AZ), and Cubs, he had a 1.71 ERA, 21.0 IP (7.0 IP in each start), 17 K vs. only 4 BB, only 2 HR and 19 hits, and a .253/.284/.387/.671 composite batting line against him. Basically, because he missed much of spring training, his early starts were his spring training, and he got himself straight but then went down.

In 2017, he should have a normal off-season and normal spring training. So I expect him to get back to Cain-like standards. But the question is how long can he maintain it, before injury? The hammy could have been because of the poor off-season and spring training, but it could also been because of his body starting to get old at 31 YO, many players fall down the cliff in their 30's. Still, most long time pitchers continue to do well enough to be good in their 30's, and that 3 start stretch last season gives a hint that he has not lost it, but rather is close enough to do as he once did, making longevity the issue instead.

If he can get back to his past, the Giants could have the best record in the NL, let alone the NL West. The Giants have not had such a dominant rotation in recent years other than in 2011, when Zito was replaced by Vogelsong. However, 2017 could be a very dominant rotation in that every starter has the potential to be above average in K/9 and K/W. That along with how good the Giants offense has been, could lead to a 100 win season.

As far fetched as that might seem to some, the Giants Pythagorean was 90 wins in 2016. Just looking at the fifth starters, we got 11-20 from them in 2016, and if we actually got an ace starter, that could easily be a 20-11 record (see Bumgarner's and Cueto's team record, Moore's too), which would put our Pythagorean at 99 wins for 2016 (or high 90's at the least) and thus it would not take much more for the Giants to reach 100 wins in 2017.

2017 Bullpen Thoughts

And in particular, we should have much better results from the closer with Melancon. As closer, Melancon saved 47 out of 51 in 2016, 51 out of 53 in 2015 for 98 out of 104, or roughly 94% save rate. Casilla saved 31 of 40 in 2016, 38 out of 44 in 2015, for 69 out of 84, or roughly 82% save rate and a poor 78% in 2016. Just in the 40 saves opps that Casilla blew, replacing him with what Melancon did in 2016 would have resulted in 6-7 more saves, which would have won the division for us, putting us at 93-94 wins. Plus there were the save opportunities in September that Casilla did not get since he was removed from the closer role, which was iffy too, and probably would push the Giants to at least 95 wins with Melancon, as those opportunities would have been his to save.

And that don't include the positive contributions that the addition of Melancon would deliver to the bullpen, not just in the improvement in the closer role. Per the media, there were a lot of grumbling among relievers about the lack of clarity regarding their role. So having Melancon around should give clarity that should ease the grumbling.

Though it should be noted that whatever their problems might have been, the relievers actually did pretty well, among those who should have roles in 2017:

Law: 2.13 ERA

Kontos: 2.53 ERA

Smith: 2.95 ERA

Strickland: 3.10 ERA

Okert: 3.21 ERA

Guerrin: 4.28 ERA

Osich: 4.71 ERA

I thought I should point out that Guerrin and Osich should not be dismissed as difference makers in 2017 based on their poor 2016 ERA.

Guerrin was skewed by pitching with his arm troubles that got him DLed in July. He had a 2.97 ERA in his first 40 appearances. Taking out that bad appearance that got him DLed drops him to a more palatable 3.59 ERA overall. Also, he wasn't quite ready when he came back off the DL, with three bad appearances. If you look only at the appearances after those three, he had a 1.86 ERA. If you remove just that first bad appearance, as well as the one that caused his DL, his overall performance in 2016 would have been a 3.23 ERA. That shows his skill level better, and why he has been touted as Romo's replacement since he joined our bullpen.

Osich just had a bad season overall, but even then, some skewing. He had a really bad appearance in Colorado, which if it were removed, dropped him to a 4.29 ERA. He also had a bad stretch before getting DLed, but unfortunately, he has a long history of getting injured, so there will probably be stretches where he's bad before he's DLed. But, as highlighted by Fangraph analysis on the best pitches in the majors in 2016, Osich was on the Top 15 list (15th but still) with his 96 MPH sinker, which has Top Ten movement in both directions. He also had a problem with his knee that got operated on after the season, so that should be improved as well. So I would not count him out for 2017.

Of course, as I noted before, there is a crunch in the bullpen in 2017, even with the loss of Romo, Casilla, and Lopez. With seven spots (usually), Melancon takes one as a the closer, and presumably the loser between Cain and Blach will be the long reliever (assuming no DL for either), that leaves five open spots for seven skilled players. Smith isn't going anywhere, and Guerrin, Kontos and Strickland are out of options, I believe. That would leave Law, Okert, and Osich fighting for the last spot.

If Cain is as good as I think he should be, that could give the Giants another option: keep Blach in AAA, which would allow the Giants to keep two of the last three on the roster. If everyone is pitching well and thus into the 7th and beyond regularly, the relievers won't be used as much, and the need for a long reliever is lessened, where Bochy could ham and egg the relievers to cover six relief innings, say. If they go this route, this then probably limits the competition to Okert vs. Osich, as both are lefties, and Law was being treated as a future closer in the waning days of the 2016 season, and in fact, was the first pitcher used in that fateful 9th inning against the Cubs.

It is a good problem to have, and gives us good backup in AAA in case anything should happen to anyone, as most of them have had arm problems before, and many of them had problems just in 2016, with Law, Guerrin, and Osich had issues in 2016. Plus we have Slania, Gregorio, Stratton, Suarez, Cory Taylor, and Rodolfo Martinez waiting in the wings, potentially. Slania looks like he could b ready, and Martinez is probably on the fast track because of his 100 MPH talent. Ray Black also tantalizes with 100 MPH talent, but has been way to wild to hope for the moment, but does deserve some mention. Some learn to let go of some of that speed and gain enough control to go with high 90's heat to make the majors.

On the starters side, we would have the loser of Cain/Blach as the next starter should anything happen. Then Beede, per the recent Top 10 Prospect list by Baseball America, the Giants believe that he's ready for the majors in 2017. Stratton and Blackburn has some recent AAA success to point to, plus there are Gregorio and Suarez probably waiting next, if not passing these two, as both are now Top 10 prospects, 7th and 5th, respectively. Plus, there are the various former MLB pitchers who the Giants have invited to spring training or signed to minor league deals that could be additional depth (you never know, that's how we got Vogelsong and Petit), like Josh Johnson and Ricky Romero (and I'm sure the Giants will add others along the way to Opening Day). obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-73283840594250486472017-01-17T21:03:00.000-08:002017-01-17T21:03:01.949-08:00Your 2017 Giants: Arbitration Finalized (As Usual)The Giants once again, under Sabean, was able to avoid the sting of arbitration. Over his long tenure, only one player has ever taken the Giants to arbitration (he who must not be named, AJP), and mainly because the idiot in charge of arbitration then (and rumored instigator of the trade), Sheriff Ned, low-balled offered (even The Sporting News knew beforehand what the range should be, and he went under it) and AJP smartly was just on the edge of reasonableness, and so the Giants under Sabean lost their one and only time ever in arbitration (though it should be noted that Lincecum and Belt came close to going into arbitration, Lincecum famously sitting outside the meeting place before his agent pulled him away at the last second to secure a deal with Sabean; I believe that Belt traveled to the city but wasn't sitting waiting to go in when he signed).

Per the various news reports (here is Haft and MLB.com), here are the contracts signed to avoid arbitration:

Conor Gillaspie: $1.4M (estimated $900K by Matt Swartz)

George Kontos: $1.75M (estimated $1.7M)

Eduardo Nunez: $4.2M (estimated $4.4M)

Will Smith: $2.5M (estimated $2.3M)

ogc thoughts

This closes things out for the Giants, they have their 40 man roster signed up for the 2017 season (well, except for pre-arb guys who will get near-minimum pay; I've assumed similar salaries as last season plus a bump up). The total payroll is $171.6M, and the total payroll for the CBA is $200.8M, passing the threshold by roughly $5.8M. Since it is for the third time in three years, a 50% tax on the overage is exacted on the $5.8M, which will cost the Giants $2.9M in tax penalties.

I had already calculated the Giants payroll using Swartz's estimated arbitration eligible salaries, and the Giants ended up paying roughly $500,000 more than estimated. That's basically the extra that they paid Gillaspie. Swartz was way off here.

I was surprised that he got that much more from the Giants than estimated, as Swartz has usually been in the ballpark with his estimates. They must have really appreciated his performance last season. Not that he wasn't good, but he got a 56% raise. And thus they, as they have done during the Sabean era, paid Gillaspie more than might have been expected, based on market trends, which Swartz uses in his analysis.

I was originally thinking that this signing does not mean that he will make the roster, much like how Ishikawa getting $1M contract did not mean that he would make our roster either, but given the magnitude of the raise that they gave him, they appear to expect him to perform well again next season.

Perhaps even battle for the starting 3B position, especially since that would work out better for the Giants bench, as Nunez could play more positions (or at least has experience at more, as I've noted before, he hasn't shown OK defense at any position other than LF until he did well at 3B for the Giants in 2016) and be a truer superutility player for the Giants on the bench than Gillaspie could. However, Nunez probably is our best leadoff hitter based on what he did (and Span didn't do) in 2016. So it will be interesting what happens here.
obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-77686366756735708432017-01-05T23:23:00.002-08:002017-01-05T23:23:13.082-08:00Sabean Avoiding the AwfulThere was an interesting article on Fangraphs recently about "avoiding the awful". It was about teams (and their GM's) avoiding players with negative WAR (however, he didn't include pitcher's negative WAR would be fair). The Giants were sixth, and with one random bad game, could have been fifth, as they were only 0.1 more negative than the Orioles. This covered the 2014-2016 three year period.

This was a follow-up analysis of what the author had done two years ago. That one covered 2012-2014. The Giants were 10th in that one.

Unfortunately, he didn't do a table on 2012-2016, which would have combined the data between the two studies/articles. Knowing that 2014 is double counted, the Giants were 4th when the stats from the two studies were added (I included all the teams in the top 10 in each study to get totals), so they were at worse probably no farther back than 5-6.

Also, he didn't follow up on his note in his first article about the Dodgers getting their new GM, and how they would improve because Friedman did so well in Tampa. The Dodgers went from near last to near the top, even though it included one year with Colletti. In spite of his ups and downs with Tampa, it appears that he has been good at avoiding the awful too.

ogc thoughts

This has been my contention over the past dozen or so years I've been writing about the Giants and, in particular, Brian Sabean: that he can identify talent. His trades have been good in both dimensions: getting talent while not giving up young talent. Sure, not every trade got us talent (nor good free agent), but that's hard to do from afar, when you don't have all the information, plus, nobody is perfect (and oftentimes you just need a player so you sign the best available, which he generally has, except when there are budgetary limitations). Hence why I have preached this for a long time now: take a look at the big picture, mistakes are bound to happen, so what is the results overall?

What he has had is information about Giants prospects and from that evaluation, he has not given up very much in trades over the years while getting a lot of value in return for them. And what has been more important, he has kept the players worth keeping: Cain, Lincecum, Lowry, Sanchez, Sandoval, Wilson, Posey, Bumgarner, Belt, Crawford, Panik, Law, Okert, Osich.

Sure, injuries and declines happens, especially on our dime, but that's how the MLB works, you need to sign them long-term knowing that at some point, the contract will stink. As a GM, you need to balance out the roster so that you don't have too many stinkers at the same time, plus develop enough prospects that they make up for the lack of production by the bad contracts.

Who has done well since leaving the Giants? For a long while, it was minor prospects like Keith Foulke, Bobby Howry, Carlos Villanueva, then Francisco Liriano did well, but the injuries that haunted him as a Giants prospect continued while he was a Twin, costing them some of the best years of Morneau and Mauer, and lately, Zack Wheeler, Dan Otero, Adam Duvall, Joe Biagini (I feel like I missed some). While many have been good complementary players, none has really broke out as a core player, though Duvall has the marings of it with his first great season with the Reds.

While that's a lot of good complementary players, when it comes to the trade ledger, the balance tilts decidedly to the Giants during the Sabean era, for when you look at the big picture for trades, we got players like Jeff Kent, Jason Schmidt, Hunter Pence, JT Snow, Randy Winn, Angel Pagan, most of whom were key players for key teams during the Sabean era.

Overall, Sabean has been excellent at identifying talent when they are in his control, and good at trading for players using the prospects and players that he did not think were as good as the talent he kept. Hard to find a stinker of a Sabean trade, only the player who must not be named (OK AJP) was a bad one (and some, including me, suspect that it was a Colletti trade, not a Sabean trade). obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-6766378306204876702016-12-31T18:28:00.003-08:002016-12-31T18:28:58.234-08:00Your 2017 Giants: Odds and Ends at New YearsHappy New Year! Wanted to cover some moves the Giants have made to add to their bench position player options for the 2017 season.

The biggest move was signing Jimmy Rollins to a minor league contract, with a $1M MLB base contract, if he makes the roster. He grew up an A's fan, but started going to Giants games as a teenager, and became a fan during the Will Clark, Matt Williams, Royce Clayton era. He seems excited and energized to be with the Giants.

He could have signed with the Giants last season, who pursued him with a similar contract, but he wanted to start so he ended up with the ChiSox. However, getting dropped early in the season, and not getting any interest made him realize that it's time to be a reserve, and so he took up the Giants offer from last season for this season. Oddly, they did not discuss his role for this season when he signed, he stated in an interview that he assumes that the Giants intentions must be the same as it was last season, when they tried to sign him, which was to provide a veteran presence off the bench in the infield.

Other significant major leaguer signings included:

Mike Morse: After missing most of the past two seasons - due to injury in 2015, due to being DFA and not picked up in 2016 - he reached out to the Giants and signed a minor league deal with them.

Justin Ruggiano: Good hitter against LHP, he's strictly a platoon player. Also hasn't played much in the past few seasons, hardly at all last season.

Tim Federowicz: Will be battling for the backup catcher position with a minor league contract. He spent most of his MLB career playing backup for the Dodgers, but last season played for the Cubs briefly. He's been mostly a good defensive player, poor hitter, though per Baseball-Reference.com, last season he was not good defensively. He's the youngest of this group at 29 YO next season, Ruggiano is 35 YO, Morse is also 35 YO, Rollins is 38 YO.

ogc thoughts

Despite being the oldest of the group, Rollins probably has the best chance of winning a spot. He'll be battling with Ehire Adrianza, Kelby Tomlinson, Conor Gillaspie, and others for the, most probably, two infield bench spots (with a 25-man roster, and a 12-man pitching staff, that leaves five bench spots, with one for backup catcher, and generally two infield and two outfield spots, though it has varied for the Giants over the years, depending on need).

In spite of what his overall stats show, he's actually still a good hitter vs. LHP: .277/.344/.418/.762 over his past three seasons, which is slightly higher than his .747 OPS. Which happens to be a weakness for our starting SS, Crawford. And his defense, while no longer above league average, is only slightly below average at SS in the past two seasons. I can see Bochy pinch-hitting for Crawford late in the game, after the other team brings in a lefty to face BCraw, allowing Rollins to get the platoon advantage in a higher leverage situation (else, why would the other team bring in a lefty reliever).

The only problem with that scenario is that Adrianza hit .353/.353/.500/.853 against LHP last season. Ehire's critics always focus on his lack of success in the majors, but forget that he was actually pretty good as a hitter in the minors when one considers that he was always so young for the league. Unless he flops totally in spring, this plus his better defense should win the day for him over Rollins.

However, I suspect that this might not matter. Right now, I think the Giants are headed for a bench with Rollins, Adrianza, Gillaspie, and the loser for LF between Williamson and Parker (I'm betting on Williamson winning LF), with Gorkys Hernandez and Kelby Tomlinson ending up in AAA as first line backups. Not that things are set in stone, I think that this is what they are aiming for, but the players still need to earn their spots.

Morse, most likely, is battling Conor Gillaspie for one of the infield spots, since he was reported as a firstbaseman. Morse is a dark horse contender for a LF bench spot, given his injury history, lack of defensive prowess in LF, and stated position as 1B. Krukow also mentioned how Morse most likely will be a coach in the future, and thus would be a good addition just for the knowledge he would provide to the younger players in spring training, even if he don't make the team. In addition, Gillaspie provides a good LH bat off the bench, which pairs nicely with Parker who provides good LH power bat off the bench.

Justin Ruggliano will probably be battling with Mac Williamson, Jarrett Parker, and Gorkys Hernandez for an outfield bench spot. He's a pretty good hitter, but below average against RHP in his career (roughly .700 OPS) while hitting like a superstar against LHP. However, the Giants have not had a lot of problems against starting LHP last season, going 30-22 against them and only 57-53 vs. RHP. The Giants have carried defensively challenged bench players before (like Mark Sweeney and Travis Denker, and Conor Gillaspie last season), so I see Morse and Ruggliano as guys to most likely is battling Conor Gillaspie for a spot on the bench.

The way I see the battles working out is the following:

First, backup catcher is probably Trevor Brown, but the Giants are probably kicking Federowicz's tires because he was so good defensively before, whereas Brown was merely adequate offensively and defensively, providing value in each per Baseball-Reference.com. The Giants have leaned more on good defensively backups previously. But Federowicz will have to hit better to beat out Brown, defense can only go so far. He has struck out at a way too high rate in the majors so far. But in the minors, he showed some skill in getting walks, so there is some batting skills in him. Maybe the Giants think they can fix his problems?

Williamson and Parker will be battling for LF starting spot (and perhaps another signing in Jan/Feb, a Huff-level cheap flyer). The loser of the two will be the backup LF (and if a vet is signed, the loser will get optioned to AAA, I think both still have options, though for Parker it is probably his last one). Hernandez will be in the mix as well, so neither of them should feel like they have made it as a major leaguer, he could beat out one of them for a bench spot. That's two bench spots.

The last three spots are going to be a big battle. Gillaspie and Adrianza will need to fight off the challengers. Rollins, Tomlinson, Morse, Ruggiano, and Ramiro Pena, who re-signed after the season will also be battling for a bench spot.

Also, Orlando Calixte, who was signed and placed on the 40-man roster will also be in the mix. He must be a good glove man since his hitting in the minors is not that great.

The Giants also signed Chris Marrero, a Morse-type position player (mostly 1B, but could play LF in a pinch), a power hitter with some batting skills (when he's doing well, he walks a lot while making good contact). He is still young-ish, only 28 YO: some players who reach their prime age period and showed some batting skills before, finally put it all together, along with experience and physical maturity, this is a move Beane has made often (Sabean and the Giants too), potential lottery tickets that other teams drop on the floor. The Giants have made a lot of finds over the years - Torres, Casilla, Blanco, Petit, Gillaspie last season - so it's worth wading through the names of these players whose stats don't look so good before (though some, like Blanco, look good, but for some reason nobody saw that he had been very good at getting on base and defense).

Speaking of which, Blanco, if he's unsigned by the time spring training comes around, could be signed by the Giants to a minor league deal, and battle for a spot on the bench as well. His defense, however, has sagged in recent years, as he lost a step as he entered his 30's, and he had a bad offensive season last season, so that's probably why he's still unsigned. He's one of those players where his batting skills disappears when he's under some pressure, so we will see what he can do in 2017.

Thoughts on 2017 Giants

As I stated before, the Giants are in good shape for 2017. They have a nice lineup. For all the whining about the offense, the Giants were roughly NL league average at 4.41 runs scored per game (NL average was 4.44). That's a 5 run difference, which should be made up for by Panik returning to career norms, or Pence returning to full season health, or Nunez instead of Duffy for the full season. We lost Pagan's bat, but hopefully either Williamson or Parker can match that, or Span can revert to his career numbers. The offense, while not great, is at least league average.

For, as I showed in my baseball business plan (link on the side), the way the Giants have been structuring their team during this golden era, has been to have good pitching and good defense paired up with enough offense to win enough games to make the playoffs. They have not won the division as much as I had thought that they would, but the wild card has been to our advantage as long as we have had Bumgarner around to pitch in that game. The Giants were 4th in the NL with a 3.90 runs allowed average in 2016, which, per Pythorean, should have resulted in a 90 win season, not 87 wins.

The closer situation alone explains the 3 win shortfall, and signing Melancon should fix that up great. In addition, having Moore instead of Peavy in the rotation for the full season should help drop the RA some more: Peavy had a 5.47 ERA as a starter in 21 starts last season for us, while Moore had a 4.08 ERA for the Giants in 12 starts. That's a 42 ERA improvement if Moore just repeats this rate (he could be better), which would drop the team's RA by about 0.25 runs, which would be 3.65 RA, which would have made the Giants a clear 2nd in RA, behind only the great Cubs pitching staff. If the offense stays roughly the same, as well as the rest of the pitching staff, that leads to a 95 win season per Pythagorean.

Of course, as the baseball gods have done in the past, they have usually made a mockery of any projections of upcoming seasons. Injuries, unexpected declines, unexpected career seasons, plus trades can and will make the numbers not work out. But that's life.

What we can take some comfort, for now, is that the Giants are in pretty good position right now. They have the players to keep the good times rolling, a 95 win potential buys a lot of downside in performances. The offense should be good enough, barring injury. The pitching staff should be improved, both by the additions of Moore and Melancon, and the maturation and added experience of our young relief staff with Strickland, Smith, Law, Okert, Osich. In baseball, nothing is guaranteed, but at least the Giants are starting off from a pretty good base.

Go Giants in 2017!

obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-33987866073831418862016-12-19T21:33:00.001-08:002016-12-19T21:33:22.799-08:00Your 2017 Giants: Mac Attack!Interesting The Hardball Times study on metrics related to MLB flyball length, and therefore, homerun power. He looked for predictive signals within batted ball data and hope to uncover a couple of otherwise unknown potential power hitters. The data was sourced from the MiLB pitch-by-pitch gameday files and are subject to recording bias and human error. He did not attempt to clean the data (probably a huge job, and this was a first effort at looking at what the data said; if the data analysis ends up being predictive, future efforts undoubtedly will look to clean the data as well).

It ended with a projection table of AA and AAA hitters who has not had extensive experience in the majors yet, and Mac Williamson was 21st on the list. His MLB projection was nearly 300 feet, based on his MiLB pitch-by-pitch stats. He was nearly 18 feet behind the leader, but a much closer eleven and a half feet behind the second player, and only four feet away from a top ten placing. There was no indication of what the standard deviation was, but four feet out of 300 seems like it would be within range of error.

However, he was one of the oldest players on the list, one of three (out of 26) born in 1990, and power comes with age, so if adjustments were made by age, he would fall further down the list relative to his younger colleagues on the list. Still, he made a list of possible upper minor's power hitters.
ogc thoughts

Mac Williamson has been an interesting pick from the time the Giants selected him third in the 2012 draft. Considered a poor man's alternative to Richie Shaffer, a first rounder of the Rays that draft, the Giants picked him up in the third round with the 115th pick, even though Baseball America (236 out of 500, putting him more in the mid-to-late 7th round talent) had him much lower on their list. In spite of this divergence, the Giants tried to get him to sign to a much lower bonus, in order to free up bonus to spend on a high schooler that they had drafted in the 30's (that's the way their draft has evolved in recent years, the 30's are fliers they take mostly on high schoolers who fell due to signability issues, like John Riley, one of the few big signs that they have done so far, that far back in the draft, with this strategy), but he held out for just short of the slotted amount (which ended up being paid almost exactly to another draft pick signed at the same time, Martin Agosta, who has so far fizzled out as a prospect, but there is still hope that perhaps he could be a reliever).

Mac has hit well most of the way up the farm system, starting to come back down to regular hitting in AA and AAA, but even there, he has hit around .800 or better, even though he has mostly been on the younger side for the league (but never young for the league until he reached AAA and the majors, when he was around 3-4 years younger). He has handled AAA OK, so it was not a surprise that his first try in the majors wasn't that great.

And in the majors, he has actually been OK. While he has not hit well for average, he was able to get a lot of walks as well as hit for power, resulting in OK batting line of .223/.315/.411/.726, with a very good ISO of 188. His main problem is striking out so much, but he's actually OK if he's the 7th batter in the lineup, where in the NL, the average 7th place hitter hit .248/.315/.388/.705. So, in spite of all the complaints about his hitting, and the demand for a good free agent LF, Williamson, if he can continue to hit like he did in 2016, but over a full season, would be an above average contributor to the Giants lineup.

On top of that, per Baseball-Reference.com, he added 0.2 dWAR last season. His Rtot/YR was 27 and Rdrs was 45 (anything over 0 is above average, anything above 0.5, I would say is good, at 10, that means you are adding one win per season, and the best seasons are in the 20-30 range generally). So there is some possibility that he'll be good defensively, though small samples tend to be be wildly erratic (he was negative in 2015, for example). But he has had a good rep for defense that I can remember, with an especially strong arm, plus good speed, that should result in good comparisons for him defensively in LF, as that is the position that teams normally put weak arms and slower players.

The only hitch is that Jarrett Parker has also been hitting well too, even better (but he is older, so that is an advantage for him). He's also got an arm, plus speed, and could play CF in a pinch even better than Williamson. So while it would be better for Williamson to get all the ABs he can get, the team will probably prefer to play whoever is playing better.

Should be an interesting season for one or both players in 2017, I feel good that at least one of them will do well. Plus, there is Gorkys Hernandez, who could also play LF if necessary, he's probably going to be the backup CF, he did well for the Giants last season. obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-47139490027284827862016-12-12T21:44:00.000-08:002016-12-12T21:44:00.741-08:00Your 2017 Giants: Arbitration-Eligible Players OfferedHere is the news as reported by Pavlovic:

The Giants tendered contracts to all six arbitration-eligible players on Friday, agreeing to one-year contracts with two of them.

Right-hander Cory Gearrin will get $1.05 million and infielder Ehire Adrianza will receive $600,000, per Jon Heyman of MLB Network.

The Giants will exchange figures with George Kontos, Will Smith, Eduardo Nunez and Conor Gillaspie. They traditionally have avoided going to actual arbitration hearings.

Gearrin, Kontos and Smith will make up a chunk of the bullpen next season, while Nunez is expected to start at third base. Gillaspie, the postseason hero, should see more playing time and Adrianza is currently slated to return in his familiar bench role.
MLBTR published again their annual estimates of arbitration salaries for all eligible players:

Adrianza: $508K (actual: $600K)

Gearrin: $1.1M (actual: $1.05M)

Gillaspie: $900K

Kontos: $1.7M

Nunez: $4.4M

Smith: $2.3M

As this illustrates, their estimates are pretty close and the estimated overall so far ($1.608M) is close to the actual overall ($1.65M). Errors in estimation tend to be random, and cancel each other out in the final summation.

ogc thoughts

This was as expected. The three relievers are the vets now making up the bridge to Melancon. Strickland is nearing vet status and his spot is secure. Law, Okert, and Osich will battle for the final two bullpen spots, but really it is Okert and Osich finding for the final spot, as Law pretty much as a spot as long as he is healthy and performing.

Furthermore, if there is a long reliever in Cain or Blach or Suarez, that takes another bullpen spot, and two of the relievers will be shuffled off to Sacramento instead. Since these three have options, you never know how things work out, both health-wise and performance-wise. For example, Brian Wilson was a shoo-in in spring training but was a hot mess and didn't get a spot. In addition, with the new 10-day DL, there will probably be more DL's used to give a starting pitcher or a relief pitcher a blow during the season.

Given the payroll situation (basically any salary added on going forward will cost 50% more because of the tax on any additions), there is unlikely to be any veteran added to challenge Nunez, and thus the spot is pretty much his. Adrianza and Gillaspie will provide nominal competition, but I don't see how either could unseat Nunez other than by injury for Nunez or massive regression in performance.

This holds true for any potential LF the Giants might pursue, that there would be a 50% tax on any additional salary there. That's why JD Martinez won't happen without a flip of a similar contract to the other team. And given that the only deadweight contract on the roster is currently Matt Cain, who has not performed in years, most teams are not interested in taking on his contract.

However, I still think that Cain can come through for us, if he can stay healthy. He was starting to return to prior goodness before he strained his hamstring last season. This season he will have the full spring training to get into playing shape, and will be that further away from his surgery. He could give us one last good season before being let go (though that's not an absolute given: with a $7.5M buyout, it would only cost $14M to retain him, so it will depend on how ready Blach and/or Beede are ready to take the last rotation spot in 2018, and how well Cain performs in 2017; if he can be average, he would be a good at that price).

There is also talk that the Giants want to add a power bat on the bench, but this tax restraint holds for that as well. We will see how things go, as it will depend on who is available on free agency in early 2017. An Aubrey Huff type available then would probably be interesting to the Giants, as his $3M contract would be $4.5M with the tax. I would say that this is the upper bounds for how much they would spend on someone then. obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-50455921544820057302016-12-05T19:11:00.000-08:002016-12-05T19:11:02.974-08:00Your 2017 Giants: Melancon signed to 4 years, $62M contract to be CloserIt has been tweeted by a number of places, here is the link to MLBTR which captures all the twists and turns, and details of the deal: 4 years, $62M. Detail of the contract, per Jeff Passan tweets: $17M first two years, with player opt-out after two seasons, and it is front loaded with $20M signing bonus, $12M upfront ($8M second year), and guaranteed $34M ($4M and $10M salaries) over first two years. And if he opts into last two years, they are at $14M each (low, so if he's still closing well, he most likely will opt out). I'll place more in the comments if there are any more. Of course, pending his passing a physical with the Giants, but this is generally a gimme, it is generally a done deal by this point.

This easily breaks the record 4 years, $50M that Papelbon got as a closer, but will be easily beat by both Chapman and Jensen when they sign their contracts. Also, it will put the Giants over the new $195M spending threshold, meaning a third year of overage, which equals a 50% tax on the overage. I'll calc what my spreadsheet says about this, but this seems about right, there was not a lot of space left in the budget, hence why the Giants are talking about going with Williamson and Parker in LF. Plus, if a good enough LF in the $1-3M range falls to them in Jan/Feb, I assume that they will take a flier, like they did with Huff in 2010.

I'll pass along some info on Mark Melancon from MLBTR, as they also has a profile, from which I'll quote some interesting tidbits. He has made three All-Star stints in the last four years and had a sub-2.00 ERA during that stretch. Here are his strengths per MLBTR:

Melancon doesn't flash the gaudy velocity of fellow free-agent closer Aroldis Chapman, nor does he boast Kenley Jansen's ludicrous strikeout totals, but he's turned in a better ERA than either one of them since the start of the 2013 season (1.80) and has also pitched the highest number of innings of any of the three in that time (290).

... Melancon has averaged 8.3 K/9 against a minuscule 1.4 BB/9 rate in that four-year stretch. Melancon uses his cutter to rack up grounders at an enormous rate; he's 22nd of 222 qualified relievers with a 57.4 percent ground-ball rate dating back to 2013 and has actually been more effective against lefties than righties due to that pitch, so he doesn't come with platoon worries. Those ground-ball tendencies and his excellence, even when hitters hold the platoon advantage, are among the reasons that it's so difficult to leave the yard against Melancon. Since 2013, his 0.31 HR/9 rate trails only Wade Davis among qualified relievers. He's given up just 10 homers in those 290 innings.

... He's never been on the disabled list in either the Major Leagues or in the minors, and he's averaged 74 appearances and 72 innings per season over the past four years.
Weaknesses:

Melancon will turn 32 years old next March, making him the oldest of the "big three" closers on the free-agent market this year. His consistency and durability mitigate some of the concern that stems from his age, but the fact that a long-term deal could run through his age-35 season isn't something that'll be lost on teams as they negotiate with his representatives.

It hasn't shown up much yet in his bottom-line results, but Melancon's contact rate and swinging-strike rate have trended in the wrong direction in each of the past two seasons, and he's also seen the rate at which hitters chase out-of-zone pitches against him decline in that time. He's down from averaging a strikeout per inning in 2013-14 to averaging 7.7 K/9 in the past two seasons. His K-rate did bounce back a bit in 2016, but this past season represented the lowest swinging-strike rate and chase rate as well as the highest contact rate that Melancon has allowed since 2013.

As one might expect for a pitcher that recently entered his 30s, Melancon's velocity isn't quite what it once was. He averaged 91.9 mph on his oft-used cutter and 92.7 on a more seldom-used four-seam fastball in his first season with the Bucs, but those marks sat at 90.9 and 91.8, respectively, in 2016.

This isn't necessarily his fault, but Melancon hasn't proven much in terms of pitching multi-inning stints recently, and the 2016 postseason showed a perhaps-increasing trend in that direction. Melancon has just nine multi-inning appearances over the past four years, with his longest 2016 outing being a two-inning stint late in the season. Certainly, it's not up to him to determine how managers Clint Hurdle and Dusty Baker have deployed him, but some lengthier outings might've done his stock a small favor.
MLBTR predicted a contract in the $52-56M range, over 4 years, so they were off only slightly, pretty good estimate.

ogc thoughts

While he doesn't have as much strikeout power as the other two relievers, I like that his ERA is lower than Jansen and Chapman. Chapman was hindered by GAB, but Jansen benefited from Dodger Stadium, and Melancon pitched in a pitchers park in Pittsburgh, so the move to SF and AT&T could help mitigate the negatives noted above by MLBTR. Plus, even if the K's go, he's been a groundball machine, and with our great infield defense, that should help him out a lot.

While he's older, guys who rely on velocity hit their decline at a steeper downward velocity angle (see Lincecum) once it does go away, and power guys don't usually last into their mid-to-late 30's either. And (again Lincecum), sometimes once they pass 30, which is the first milestone age hurdle good players usually has to make over. And, again, because he has been able to induce a lot of ground balls, that will help in his transition to slower pitches.

Another key thing is that his walk rate is minuscule at 1.4 BB/9, so even as he regress with age, his K/BB ratio should still be pretty good. Arodis is at 3.6 BB/9 over his past 5 seasons, so even though he has crazy K-rates, his K/BB at 4.30 over that period is lower than Melancon's 5.96; and BB/9 regresses higher with age, while K/9 regresses lower. Jansen however, has been almost as great in limiting walks, while also striking out a lot of batters like Chapman: 2.1 BB/9 and 6.35 K/BB, which is slightly better than Melancon. However, Kenley took things to a whole different level in the past two seasons: 1.4 BB/9 and 9.68. Still, Melancon can get hitters in multiple ways: low walks, low hits, low HR, leading to low OPS, plus high K/9 and high groundball rate.

Jansen's got a few issues that I think hurt him in the Giants eyes. First of all, he got a qualifying offer, which he turned down; Melancon and Chapman both were traded mid-season and thus would not cost the signing team any draft pick. The Giants is slated to get either pick 20 or 21, or better if any team in teens lose their draft pick (which a number of them did last season). Second, while he is much younger than Melancon (only 29 YO vs. 32 YO for 2017 season), he most likely will get at least a 5 year contract (Chapman is asking for 6 years), which would take him to age 33 (34 if he gets a sixth year like Chapman). More years is more risk. Thirdly, he had a serious heart condition that he previously battled, an irregular heartbeat, which caused him to miss significant time in 2011 and 2012, before getting surgery to fix that after the 2012 season. He's been healthy, but still, it was his heart, and it's a long and costly contract. If you'll recall, Nen's contract after he was injured, was an anchor on our roster for a couple of years, resulting in our couple of weird years of closer of the moment (remember Dustin Hermanson?).

Lastly, as a lesson as to how relievers grow into their role, Melancon had his first good full season in his 26 YO season (his breakout year was in 2010 with Houston, when he was 25 YO), but came into his own in his 28 YO season. Strickland and Osich will be 28 YO next season, Law 26 YO, Okert 25 YO, plus Will Smith will be 27 YO. Blach and Stratton will be battling for a spot as well, and both will be 26 YO next season. Evans said in an interview that Blach is considered the incumbent for the #5 starter's spot, which means that Cain will be battling Blach for that spot, along with Heston and perhaps Stratton. And Suarez will probably be battling Blach, Stratton, and perhaps Cain for the long relief role.

Time's Running Shorter for Core: Giants Decide Its Time to Go All In (Again)

Overall, while I'm leery of any contract of this size, particularly for a closer, the Giants clearly needed to get someone to shore up the back-end, as they just as clearly has all the pieces linked up from middle relief to setup. I thought that they were going to muck around with the big three to drive up their prices, and then sign Greg Holland (apparently the Dodgers are now kicking Holland's tires, which is a red flag on Jansen's future health), as he would only cost us a one year contract at a reasonable price. But given that he was out last season, that apparently was too high a risk for the Giants to take. Particularly, now that I think about, since our core players are now in their baseball middle ages, and about to break 30. So the Giants went all in again, like they did last season in picking up Cueto, Samardzija, and Span.

So they clearly have decided to make sure to capitalize on their chances now rather than to take a chance again that the relievers would cost us like they did last season. Seems to line up with the Giants preference last season too, as Melancon was the guy they wanted the most, and then second-guessed themselves after the season, whether they tried hard enough to trade for him, as he could have been the key to a long post-season run through the playoffs. And they gave another player opt-out to attract a good player to play for a couple of years. Wonder when that will bite them in the rear, but hopefully not his time.

I like that he's got the key things you want in a reliever: low walks, high strikeouts (or high enough in his case), and low HR/9 (especially impressive since he was pitching in Pittsburgh, which has a park that favors HR's). Plus he's experienced, and never been injured, and he has a cutter, his money pitch, that isn't that hard on the arm always (see Mariano) but it depends (see BWeez). The contract is meh, as most contracts are of this size, as you never know (see Ray Durham), but it's not my money. But it could hamper them should it not work out.

He's definitely a guy who fits the bill, an experienced closer, and it only cost us money, versus prospects or draft picks, and if they can keep him healthy for two years, he'll be gone, just like Cueto most likely will be gone after 2017, barring injury (Beede most likely ready by then to take over). Lots to like about getting him, feeling excited about our chances to win the division title with him, and then to go deep into the playoffs. We played Chicago pretty closely in the playoffs, so it could have gone either way. And they won't have Chapman next year unless they pony up and get him re-signed, which is still possible, but you have to think that the Yankees really want him back too.

2017 25-man Roster

It is pretty much set now, it seems with a few question marks here and there.

Rotation is Bumgarner, Cueto, Moore, Samardzija, plus fifth starter. Evans said that Blach has the incumbents role right now, but Cain will be pressuring him to get back his spot. The loser is probably the long reliever, so Albert Suarez could be the 40-man DFA to clear a spot for Melancon (Crick too, but I think the Giants aren't ready to give up on him yet; but this is probably his last year). Heston and Stratton might also contend. Have to think Heston is traded sometime this season if he's not pitching in the majors, just to extract some value since he did so well in the majors in 2015.

Bullpen is Melancon, Smith, Strickland, Law, Guerrin, and the final spot (assuming the usual 7 bullpen spots) is going to be a battle between Okert and Osich. Both still have options (though I think it's the last one for Osich).

Lineup is likely to be composed of Posey, Belt, Panik, Nunez, Crawford, LF, Span, and Pence, with Williamson battling Parker for the spot, and the other being the 4th OF. I doubt anyone will be signed to start in LF, as that would add to the penalty tax (50% tax on overage) plus then Williamson would probably be sent to AAA to start, and we won't know if he can start or not if he don't start. But with the aging core, they could decide that they need to sign someone on the cheap.

Bench will be similar to last season, with Brown as the backup catcher, Gillaspie as the good bat off the bench playing 1B and 3B, with the LF loser taking #4 OF spot, and Gorkys Hernandez being the 5th OF who can play CF well and spell Span as needed. Last spot will be MI utility guy, and that is probably Ehire Adrianza. That will be playing on the edge, since only Adrianza can play SS (though Brown had played 2B previously, and Nunez probably can play there in a pinch, but hopefully not, as 3B has been his only steady spot. obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-47135613665996573322016-11-25T23:35:00.003-08:002016-12-07T10:31:05.794-08:00Your 2017 Giants: 40 Man Roster Additions to Protect from Rule 5 DraftHope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving!

Catching up on news, the Giants added five players to their 40-man roster. Per the Giants website, they added five players to protect them from the Rule 5 draft:

RHP Chase Johnson

RHP Reyes Moronta

RHP Dan Slania

INF Miguel Gomez

Infielder-outfielder Orlando Calixte, who they had recently picked up as a free agent

As reported:

Johnson, 24, was rated San Francisco's 18th-best prospect by MLBPipeline.com. He finished 1-4 with a 3.27 ERA and five saves in 24 appearances (seven starts) for Double-A Richmond last season.

Moronta, ranked 24th among the organization's prospects, struck out 93 batters and walked 20 in 59 innings for Class A Advanced San Jose last season. The 23-year-old went 0-3 with a 2.59 ERA in 60 appearances.

Slania, 24, performed at three classifications last season: Class A Advanced, Double-A and Triple-A Sacramento. His combined record was 11-8 with a 2.93 ERA in 34 games (16 starts), including 111 strikeouts and 35 walks in 119 2/3 innings.

Gomez, 23, batted a combined .330 in 109 games at Class A Augusta and San Jose. He totaled 17 home runs and 67 RBIs while compiling an .882 OPS.

Calixte, 24, performed for Texas' Double-A affiliate and Kansas City's Triple-A outpost last season before the Giants acquired him. He batted a combined .274 with 19 stolen bases in 28 attempts.
These moves filled up the Giants 40-man roster.

ogc thoughts

Interesting that the Giants filled the 40-man roster given that they are expected to make a big move to get a top notch closer and would need a spot for him. If they sign a free agent, they will need to DFA one of the players on the 40-man or trade him to another team.

Perhaps they are thinking that a trade is much more likely at this moment, with a trade of a bundle of 40-man roster players, starting with Heston and Crick, and perhaps one of the relievers filling the roster right now. That would clear up some of the logjam that they currently have on the 40-man, which was always on the edge of having to DFA someone interesting during the 2016 season. And we did end up losing Joe Biagini and Jake Smith during the season (and I believe someone else, but don't recall name).

As I noted in my other post, Johnson and Slania were interesting prospects, and DrB noted in the comments that Gomez was another interesting prospect. Moronta had interesting stats last season, so I can see why the Giants decided to put him on the 40-man. Calixte was the surprise, as he did not do that great offensively with Texas and KC, so the Giants must see a lot to like with his defense. Seems like another Ehire Adrianza type, so it'll be interesting to see if they got Calixte as the replacement for Ehire in our system, as Adrianza has been on the edge of the majors for a number of years now, and had been DFAed twice, but remained with the team, as nobody wanted to take a chance on him before. With no options, if the Giants feel the need for bats on the bench, they could decide to finally let him go.obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-43687875070550819872016-11-11T23:11:00.000-08:002016-11-11T23:11:05.714-08:00Your 2016 Giants: The Three Ami-Gold GloversAs reported by various news outlets (Haft, Pavlovic, Schulman; I would include Baggarly, but since the SJ Mercury changed to no RSS feed, it's not easy to grab, as these three were), three Giants won Gold Gloves: Buster Posey, Brandon Crawford, and Joe Panik.

Schulman reported: "The winners were announced on ESPN on Tuesday afternoon. Posey, Crawford and Panik were selected in a vote of National League managers and coaches who could not choose their own players, in combination with a defensive index created by the Society for American Baseball Research."

As Pavlovic reported, this is the first time since 1994 that the Giants won 3 Gold Gloves in a season. Bonds, Lewis, and Williams won it that year. As Haft noted, this is the most since 4 Giants won gold gloves in 1993: Bonds, Manwaring, Williams, Thompson. And Schulman noted that the Giants and Rangers were the only teams to win three in 2016, and that 1993, 1994, and 2016 are the only seasons the Giants won 3 or more Gold Gloves.

This is Posey's and Panik's first Gold Gloves. Posey's win broke Yadier Molina's eight year streak and he was the first Giants catcher to win it since Matheny won it in 2005. Panik won in spite of only playing 127 games (and starting only 118, per Schulman), which suggests that, with health, he could put up a streak at 2B. However, one of the guys he beat out, DJ LeMahieu, had won in 2014 and, per Schulman, is "widely viewed as the best defensive second baseman in the league." He and Robby Thompson are the only Giants secondbasemen to win a Gold Glove (no Tito?).

This was Crawford's second Gold Glove, which was made easier when his top competitor, Andrelton Simmons, was traded to the AL, but he got a new strong competitor in Addison Russell, who the A's stupidly traded away to the Cubs. Pavlovic: "This season he had to hold off Cubs rookie Addison Russell, who tied Crawford with 19 Defensive Runs Saved and led in SDI. Crawford had the support of opposing coaches and managers who have spent years watching him pull outs from thin air. "

Schulman noted: "Crawford and Panik compose the first double-play combo to win in the NL since the Cardinals' Edgar Renteria and Fernando Viña in 2002."

Pavlovic provided numbers that backed Posey: "He led all catchers with 12 Defensive Runs Saved and was a runaway winner in the SABR Defensive Index, which makes up about a quarter of the vote. Posey finished with 15.2 SDI, far ahead of second-ranked Yasmani Grandal (5.9) and Molina (0.7)." He noted that the Giants were disappointed that Posey did not win last season, but it has historically been hard to unseat the incumbent, especially someone like Molina, who won for so many years. These numbers could no longer deny the breakthrough for Posey.

Similarly for Panik: "Panik got a boost from SDI, finishing at 8.5, two points ahead of the next best second baseman."

This adds to the trophy case for Posey and Crawford, and starts one for Panik:

Pavlovic: "The award is the first major one for Panik and gave Crawford two to go along with his 2015 Silver Slugger Award. Crawford said he was happy to hear Posey added another item to an overflowing trophy case. "I think it was the one award that he hadn't won," he said. Through eight big league seasons, Posey has an MVP, three Silver Slugger Awards and a Rookie of the Year Award. Like Panik, he finally has that coveted Gold Glove, too. "

All three noted that they had always focused on defense, from their earliest days. Which is not surprising given that they all three started out as SS, which is a position that most coaches drill into their heads to be good defensively.

ogc thoughts

Looks like this could be the start of another Golden era, like we had in 1993-94. Posey probably will win again next season, barring injury. Panik most likely should win again, as he won it while only starting 118 games. Then again, this SI article on the Gold Gloves noted that while he led in SDI, he didn't lead in any of the components other than TZ, where he tied (good article, covers Posey and Crawford as well; but based on the tone, 2016 might be one and done, except for Posey). Wong actually led more, so he must have come up horrible in other components. Crawford looks like he's up against a tough young competitor in Russell, however, so we'll see there, but advanced defensive stats are notoriously up and down as well, so Russell will have to repeat to see whether he'll be Crawford's next thorn.

Perhaps Belt Will Get the Call in 2017?

I would also add that Brandon Belt has been considered to be a good defensive first baseman. And he had 10 DRS per baseball-reference.com, 9 per Fangraphs, in 2016. Rizzo, who won the award, had 11 DRS, Goldschmidt 4 DRS, and Myers, the last finalist, 7 DRS. Plus, Belt killed it in SDI in 2015, so I'm not sure why he wasn't a finalist in 2016: he had 11.1, Goldschmidt 9.4, A-Gon 8.3, Rizzo 4.2. Per this SI article, Belt was very comparable but only played 117 games.

Oh, now I know, his 2016 SDI was not as good in 2016: only 3.5, vs. Rizzo's 8.6 and Myers 6.6. He was fifth and by a lot. Wow, what a drop! He must have fallen a lot in the other components.

Looking at another component for Belt, UZR, he was third with 5.8, behind Myers 8.8 and just ahead of Rizzo's 5.0. So he had another good showing. He must have really sucked, then, in the other three defensive analytics: Runs Effectively Defended (RED) from Chris Dial, Defensive Regression Analysis (DRA) from Michael Humphreys, and Total Zone Rating (TZ) from Sean Smith. I've never heard of any of these other metrics, though I'm aware of Chris Dial as a baseball analytics guy. I'll have to research these other ones.

Though that SI article nicely noted the Sean Smith TZ connection, and there we have it, a reason why Belt's SDI fell like a rock. He was -0 in that stat in 2016, this after two stellar years in 2014-15 in TZ. And per DRA, available at the Baseball Gauge website (here's Belt), he had a really down year in 2016: after steadying increasing DRA from the start of his career to 2015, he had his worse full year results ever in 2016. So that's two different metrics where Belt got really crushed in the index, he will need to fix whatever problem this was, and return to his prior goodness. Had he not suffered this decline with these two stats (both are derived from play-by-play data, so that's where he was hurt), he probably would have been among the leaders again.

In any case, maybe next year Belt will return to his 2015 goodness (I mean really, he led by a lot in 2015, 11.1 vs. 9.4) with improvement particularly in his play-by-play (not sure how those metrics work; just ordered Humphrey's book) and help to bring at least three Gold Gloves to the Giants in 2017.

Other SDI rankings

Bumgarner 9th with 1.4

Cueto 14th with 0.7

Samardzija was actually negative! Moore just squeaked above 0 in AL.

Duffy was actually third with 6.3 at 3B, with full season probably would have challenged for lead with Arenado.

OMG, Adam Duvall actually led with 9.1 in LF. Looks like Giants made a mistake in letting him go, both offensively and defensively. A rare miss in the Sabean era, but it seems like they are missing more lately: Biagini, Duvall, Otero, among others. Though part of me wonders if Hamilton being in CF helped Duvall out by taking over some of his area of coverage.

Span was next to last with -9.2; surprisingly, McCutchen was last with -15.5. We need a better defensive CF, perhaps the Giants could trade Span given that Nunez could take over leadoff. Hernandez could be good defensively there (he had nice time with SF, but SSS, but horrible time in CF with Miami in 2012), but obviously we don't know about his offense, though, again, SSS, but he had nice time with us. Span's down year hurts his value, though. However, part of his down was a bad BABIP year, down 27 points from last season and 25 points from his career. However, at 33 YO next season, and recovered from hip surgery that happened last off-season, could be reasons why this continues.

Pence was 9th out of 13 with -1.0. As much as fans love him, defensive stats have been "meh" about him, particularly advanced stats.

obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-31237827757928506102016-11-06T21:51:00.003-08:002016-11-06T21:51:49.706-08:00Your 2017 Giants: Post Cubs World Series ChampionshipWow, the Cubs ended 108 years of misery, winning their first championship in most likely all of their current fans' lifetimes (unless there is a 115 year old or so fan out there). Congrats to the new Champs!

With that comes the first rush of business that the Giants took in the post season. They signed three players to minor league contracts, two oldies, one newbie: Kyle Blanks, Ricky Romero, and Jason Johnson (the newbie). Romero and Johnson had been All-Stars not that long ago, but are recovered from injuries and hoping to return to their careers. In particular, Johnson is being viewed as a potential reliever (Schulman). Plus, they released Tony Sanchez, outrighting him to AAA, freeing up a 40-man spot.

There currently are 35 spots taken, assuming all the free agents on the list leaves: Casilla, Lopez, Romo, Nathan, Beckham (I think he's a free agent), Blanco, Pagan. I believe we still control Suarez and Hernandez. I'm not sure who are the five players who will be added out of the prospects, but the Rule 5 draft happens in early December, at the Winter Meetings, if I remember right, so the news will be out in a couple of weeks.

More importantly, they quickly picked up Matt Moore's option for 2017 at $7M (Pavlovic; Schulman; SFGiants). We still have options for 2018 at $9M and 2019 at $10M. He will be 28 YO for the 2017 season (Bumgarner is 27).

Lastly, Greg Holland, who had been amazing as a closer for the Royals from 2011-2014, until TJS at the end of the 2015 season knocked him out for the 2016 season. He's having a showcase soon, in time for free agency (unlike Lincecum's long delayed showcase), and Evans said that the Giants are interested and attending, as will other teams (Pavlovic). He's 31 YO. Evans also noted that closer is his major goal for the off-season (Haft) and that it is great that the Giants have so many options available, both in terms of free agents, as well as one-year and two-year trade options available.

ogc thoughts

The Cubs are in a real good position to be The Team of the 2010 Decade, with their 2016 title and all the good young players and prospects they have. And they won in spite of Jason Heyward's colossal collapse as an offensive player. But the Giants are not that far off either from continuing to be good, now that they have a rotation of Bumgarner, Cueto, Moore, and Samardzija. If Cainer can consolidate the progress he made in 2016 - he had a nice stretch of dominant starts just before his hamstring injury, the first good stretch that he had had in years - or if Blach shows that his great pitching at the end of the season wasn't a fluke (but remember how we all felt after Heston's great 2015, to help temper those feelings), the Giants should make the playoffs again and be capable of pushing it to the World Series again.

Closing the Deal

But it's going to take a closer to seal the deal. The bullpen is actually in pretty good shape. We have a lot of good pitchers who might actually be closers in the future: Law, Strickland, Okert, Osich (plus Smith, Guerrin, and Kontos). But Cueto is only here for another year, potentially, and so we need a closer for 2017.

Holland would be an interesting choice if he's anywhere near what he was before. Heck, even if he's not quite what he was before, that would still be better than our closer situation that we have had since BWeez, probably, he was that good (1.86 ERA from 2011-2014; even including 2015 his ERA was a stupendous 2.15 ERA). Given that he's just recovered and hasn't pitched against live MLB hitters in a game that matters, he most likely will be facing a "prove it" one year deal (which he'll want to leverage into a long term deal), and that's exactly what the Giants would love to get, as that allows them to try him out for 2017, and if he's good, they can try to sign him long-term, and if not (or he's too expensive), it's just one year and our young relievers will have another year of experience under their belt and perhaps ready for more responsibility in the bullpen (particularly Law and Okert).

I could also see a trade happening, particularly for a one-year rental/tryout (a la Nen). We have some trade pieces that could be valuable to other teams, including Heston, Blach, Nunez, relievers with MLB experience, and a ton of pitching prospects. Much like how we bundle some current value (Susac, Duffy) along with potential (Bickford, Fox, Santos), that is how the Giants could get a "proven" closer in the trade market for 2017.

Moore is More

Matt Moore was a steal to me when the trade happened, and it continues to be. Some may point out his poor 4.08 ERA, but in 12 starts, SSS, it was skewed greatly by having to pitch in Colorado, which skews most pitcher's numbers. Of course, everyone will need to pitch there at some point, but for this exercise, we are trying to see what his real value as a starter is, without a random Colorado bad start messing up his overall stats. In his other 11 starts, the results were as good as expected: 3.43 ERA, 9.3 K/9, 2.62 K/BB, .306 OBP, .300 SLG, and .606 OPS, with a very average .294 BABIP. Just like we need to view Belt's stats in light of the fact that AT&T depresses his production, we need to see how Moore normally produces to appreciate his full value.

And, as I stated before, this is nothing against the players we gave up in the trade: Duffman, Lucius Fox, or Michael Santos. Duffman will produce good cheap value for the Rays for at least his defense, and perhaps with his offense, particularly since they might be playing him at SS. But given that he was not that highly valued as a prospect, I feel like the Giants sold high on him. Fox is the $12M prospect (Giants paid him $6M and about $6M in penalties to get him), struggling with his first season as a pro, but most do, and he still has his superlative speed and good bat skills that might still greatly develop. But the window is now, and Fox most probably is at least 3-5 years away from producing, and we need good players now, while our core of Bumgarner, Posey, Belt, Crawford, Panik, and now Moore and Smith, are still young and/or in their prime, and not on their downside (though that could be coming soon, as Posey and Crawford are 30 YO next season, and Belt is 29). Same for Santos, he's a few years away, at best, and given his lack of pedigree, may never develop into MLB value.

For that bundle of average production, potential and long off value, we get a SP in Moore who could become ace level performance (he's done it once before, in 2013, and showed that potential with the Giants). In the 12 games he started for us, he had a 67% DOM/17% DIS, which is nearly elite level production (I've defined 70%+ plus under 20% as elite), as well as his 9.1 K/9. He also delivered a DOM start in the playoffs.

He walks more than one would like, but that is mainly because he's pulling a Rueter by avoiding RHH power, which trades off a lot of walks to RHH, but reducing their SLG from league average of .413 to .389, and ISO from league average of 159 to 147, over his career (and I'm using NL league averages even though most of his stats is AL). With the Giants, his SO% was 23.9%, high for his career, average 21.7%, and 22.3% in his best season (2013). And groundballs galore: GB/FB of 0.72 with Giants, vs. 0.64 career, vs. 0.66 in 2013; GO/AO of 0.85 vs. 0.80 career, vs. 0.87 in 2013.

Lots of strikeouts (9+ K/9) plus a good number of ground outs (though that could be improved some; perhaps Righetti can do his magic with Moore like he has with the Giants staff for years now, as Fangraphs noted how the Giants team, even with adjustments, prevents homers at a greater rate than the mean of 10% HR/FB that every pitcher is supposed to regress to) is what you want to see from a pitcher, especially a starting pitcher. And he's equally good vs. both sides of hitters:

RHH: .242/.325/.389/.714, 147 ISO, .295 BABIP, 32.6 HR/AB

LHH: .241/.315/.364/.678, 123 ISO, .278 BABIP, 37.1 HR/AB

That is great to have in the #3 spot, and most teams would love to have that in their #2 spot. Our rotation should be close to the great 2011's rotation, particularly if Cain or Blach comes through. 2017 is very promising just from this standpoint.

Rule 5 Draft

Unlike recent years, when the Giants lost players either to Rule 5 (Biagini) or DFA (Smith, Hall), there is not a lot to lose, it seems, this season. From what I understand, college players drafted in 2013 and high school players drafted in 2012 are eligible to be drafted via Rule 5 if not on the 40 man. The only names that caught my eye are Dan Slania, Chase Johnson, and Tyler Rogers, who is in the AFL, as there were no HS draftees in 2012 who are interesting. In fact, the only HS draftee retired after the 2015 season (Shilo McCall). Martin Agosta, Jake McCasland, Tyler Horan, and Chase Johnson are other possibilities, but no sure things in this bunch, and probably unlikely.

I think Slania is a sure thing, and Johnson and Rogers are strong possibles, and the others are possibles, but unlikely because the Giants need at least one spot for a closer to sign/trade, plus perhaps another spot for a reliever, and another spot for a veteran LF to compete with Williamson and Parker for starting LF position. With Slania and one of the other two, there goes the five spots open on the 40-man roster.obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-72133382634092555142016-10-20T22:23:00.004-07:002016-10-20T22:23:32.936-07:00Your 2016 Giants: Post-Season PresserThe Giants post-season press conference was held last Thursday after the last playoff game on Tuesday. Reports from the beat writers:

Andy Baggarly and Mercury News: closer; coaches; power

Hank Schulman: closer and other news; coaches

Chris Haft: free agents; bullpen and other news; coaches

Alex Pavlovic: free agents; closer; coaches; injuries and other news

Unfortunately, Tim Kawakami did not provide a transcript of the press conference, as he has done in prior years - sorry, memory going, not sure when is the last time he did it, I'm pretty sure he didn't do it last year. It saved me the trouble of transcribing them myself, as, often, each would interpret what was said, and we get a Realm of the Senses reenactment of a baseball he said, no he said, situation.

ogc thoughts

Honestly, this used to be my first thing I would do after Giants seasons end, be prepared to hear the press conference and transcribe as much of it that I could. Some years they would post the audio or video, and I would start and stop it a million times to catch every word and syllable. I frankly forgot about it this year.

I haven't been that uptight about the Giants since the 2014 season. I didn't worry all through the battle to get into the playoffs, didn't worry through any of the playoff series. I just enjoyed each as baseball games played by my favorite team. And this season, after my sister passed away, even less angst over how bad the Giants were playing, and they were playing pretty bad in the second half.

I guess part of the reason for not feeling the urge to blog has also to do with my original reasons for starting up my blog. I felt that I had a different voice than what I was seeing. I soon was one of the few who had a positive view of the Giants future, whereas most were dystopian views of 100 game loss seasons, I was talking about the Giants having the core players who we could build a Team of the 2010 Decade. And they did.

Now, not that many arguments about how good Sabean is as a GM. Whereas I was booed mercilessly when I celebrated his signing a two year contract, every two years, most people understand that he's actually pretty good at what he's been doing, which is evaluating baseball talents. Free agents he has no control over what's available, sometimes you just need to sign the best of the bunch, and pick your poison. But when he has had the prospects in his hands, or picked up prospects tossed away by other teams, he has been very good about keeping the good ones and trading away the ones who at least had trade value. And his mantra for most of his tenure has been pitching, pitching, and more pitching.

And that is going to be important now, because the changing of the guard that started with Sandoval leaving, then Lincecum leaving, will now be accelerated by the number of free agents who has rings who most probably will not be with the Giants in 2017, and it will be important for Sabean and gang to be able to figure out who to keep and who to trade.

Changes, they are a-coming

The Giants have six free agents and, most likely, none of them are coming back: Peavy, Casilla, Romo, Lopez, Pagan, Blanco. Blanco has the greatest chance of returning, since he's stated that he's willing to take less in order to "stay home". However, his defense has slipped a lot in the past two seasons, into below average territory, and Gorkys is like a younger version of him, and delivering above average defense, at least for the Giants. Romo has the next best, as he still has skills, but is not very likely to return, due to his salary level, the iffiness of his right elbow, and Roogy tendencies. I only fear that he'll join the Dodgers. Peavy has no spot in the rotation, Casilla appears to have lost all of Bochy's confidence, hardly being used late in the season, and not at all in the fateful 9th in the last game, and Pagan was slated to be gone at least a season or two ago because of his injury proneness, and while he had a nice season, missing the two most important games of the season because of his back was probably the last straw for the Giants. That's 14 rings going away, but the argument can be easily made that it's for the best. More importantly, thanks to all for their contributions to this golden era!

Among the arbitration eligible players, most of them are expected to be kept, but the only sure ones are Nunez and Smith: Adrianza, Nunez, Gillaspie, Smith, Kontos, and Gearrin. Adrianza is in the mix again for utility infield, along with Gillaspie and Tomlinson.

Lots of Infield Bench Options

Honestly, I was surprised by the Giants first signing Gillaspie, then bringing him up, then keeping him up all season, until he started hitting a storm at the end of the season. I would be surprised if he's not kept, for while Nunez appears likely to be the starting 3B, Gillaspie I expect will back up both 1B and 3B, and could start at 3B, with Nunez playing super utility and giving everyone regular rest.

Adrianza, like previous seasons, is out of options, so if Tomlinson plays well and Gillaspie wins a bench spot (and given his bat, he probably will), Kelby could end up winning a bench spot - which, remember, is limited to one backup catcher and four fielders, and usually two infielders and two outfielders - and Adrianza would be DFAed, as many seem to want, unless the Giants go with only one backup outfielder.

I still like Ehire, he shows potential when given the chance to play regularly, plus he's the only true defensive SS on the bench, but I'm losing my patience as he has gotten injured every time he starts to play well, losing many opportunities to win a spot, whether 2B (won by Panik) or 3B (won by Duffy). He actually bats well when starting regularly - enough to be a complementary bat - but then gets some sort of injury. This is probably his last year to show something more before I give up on him.

But good SS fielding plus good contact bat with some power, hard for me to give up on that. Still, Tomlinson would provide speed and OBP off the bench, hard to give that up as well. Going to be tough choices again, will be interesting who the Giants chose to keep.

I put Gillaspie in a similar spot as Ishikawa a couple of years back, except that whereas Ishi was behind both Belt and Posey at 1B, Gillaspie could battle for the starting position at 3B. But with the Giants carrying at least 12 pitchers on the roster, the bench is limited to four position players beyond the backup catcher, who you must have. So generally the two infield utility players are middle infielders who can play the corners as well, which generally means a poorer bat is involved. Hence why I was surprised to see Gillaspie last all season on the bench. So he'll definitely get a contract, especially since he's only a arbitration player, and probably will make the roster, but if, say, Adrianza and Tomlinson's bat suddenly show up in spring training, he could be odd man out, as well. The bench choices could go a lot of ways.

And there could even be another way things could work out. Gordon Beckham was with the team for basically a week, and he'll be a free agent as well. The Giants could give him a minor league deal, similar to what Gillaspie got last season, and give him more of an extended look next season. Unlike Gillaspie, he can play 2B as well as 3B, and probably a passable SS, as he was a SS in college. And he has better power potential than any of these players.

Bullpen Probably Won't Change Much; And Don't Need To

In the bullpen, some have called for an overhaul, but Evans said that would be a "tremendous overstatement." He believes the bullpen would be fine with a big add that clarifies the roles for everyone in the bullpen, saying:

"We've got to do everything we can to be clear on who is finishing our games," Evans said. "The bullpen performs at a much higher level when you know who the ninth-inning guy is. It puts everybody at ease. It helps Boch as he defines roles. Ambiguity creates tension and unknowns that can ... detract to performance and ultimately lead to struggles."

And that makes sense, we have a lot of good pieces that we should keep, perhaps too many, and so somebody will be taking the Sacramento express in 2017.

Among the arbitration guys, Smith is clearly going to be kept, and Kontos and Guerrin look like they are pretty close to being locks as well. We traded some big assets to the Brewers to get Smith, so I don't see how they could let him go for nothing (though they did do that to AJP). And even though Smith was clearly an Affeldt replacement, able to handle RHP as well as LHP, Bochy used him mostly as a Loogy. Hopefully this will be changed in 2017 and beyond, but not so much in his usage so far. Hopefully Bochy just wanted to see how the young right-handed relievers could handle things.

Part of me wonders if Bickford and Susac, along with another prospect, could have been enough to secure one of the available closers in the trade market, Melanson in particular. Sabean noted, however, that in some of the deals, the Giants were already told that they didn't have enough, and the conversation ended. And Evans openly brought up whether he should have offered more, in hindsight. I think we had to trust that our guys could come through, they had before, and for many years, and usually the wheel don't fall off the reliever in the middle of the season, like it did with Casilla, but it did, for whatever reasons. Maybe the pressure of having no contract, and seeing the Giants bullpen full of the young guys unnerved him and got him thinking too much in the 9th. He was great in the 9th before, but just lost it.

Kontos should be kept, at least into spring training. Even with the loss of the remaining Core Four, our bullpen could be full (and hence why it is likely none of them are returning): Smith, Law, Okert, Strickland, Osich, Guerrin, and Kontos. That's seven relievers and only six spots (assuming one spot is giving to a long reliever, either Suarez, Cain, or Blach), and hence why it does not look likely that any of our free agent relievers are returning.

Osich looks most likely to be the one ending up in AAA (though it was just revealed, on CSNBA, that Osich had suffered a torn tendon early in the season, which just got operated on; that probably was a good reason his 2016 was nothing like his 2015), as both Smith and Okert appear to be ahead of him on the depth chart, but I think he could still beat out Okert with a good spring, since Okert has options. Then again, so does Osich (and Law).

Then, assuming the Giants either sign or trade for a closer, that would mean another RP need to be let go (or traded, perhaps thrown into the deal to get the closer). As noted, Smith and Okert appear to be the lefties in the bullpen. Guerrin by most accounts is taking Romo's spot. Law is considered the best of the bunch as possible future closer. Strickland has been a good reliever, still relatively young, and throws triple digit heat, which is what most teams want today. That leaves Kontos as the odd man out, as he is the relative old guy of the bunch, doesn't strike out a lot, and probably cost the most as well (though really pocket change in the grand scheme of things), so he seems to be the odd man out if the Giants do sign a closer.

Given our experience with Benitez, the high price tag that comes with signing one of the elite closers, and this bullpen squeeze with so many viable relievers, part of me wonders if the Giants talk of getting a closer is just that, talk, to placate the fan base, so that later they can say, after not signing anyone, that there just wasn't any matches, no rose to be given. Just speculation on my part.

Coaches Gone: Giants Old-Timers Moving Up?

In addition, the Giants fired two long time coaches, our 3B coach, Roberto Kelly, and our 1B coach, Bill Hayes. Both could be exploring new roles within the team or could be gone, it was not clarified. Flannery, from all reports, is enjoying his gig with CSNBA, so he's already told the media that he's not coming back. Steve Decker, currently assistant hitting coach, and AAA manager Jose Alguacil, who has been highly praised for his work in the minors, are potential replacements, but they will explore outside as well.

Here are some notes from Baggarly:

Triple-A Sacramento manager Jose Alguacil has earned raves for his upbeat attitude and baseball acumen. He is a strong candidate to join the major league staff, which lost its only fluent Spanish speaker with Kelly's firing.

Assistant hitting coach Steve Decker, who replaced Kelly for a few games this season, is hyper-aware and has experience as a base coach, should the organization decide to shift his duties.
I can see both moving into the two jobs. Alguacil both because they probably want a fluent Spanish speaker, but more importantly, a leader who probably managed most of the younger guys at one point or another, in the minors, to be a reference for the other coaches. Decker they have liked for a while now, and clearly wanted a better look, so they made up a new position as "assistant hitting coach" so that he could spend time up here.

I view these two to be getting an audition for taking over for Bochy when he's ready to go. He's signed to 2019, and has had a couple of heart related issues in the past couple of years. I would have to think his wife would like him to start enjoying the fruits of his success, as well as spending more time with her in semi-retirement (he'll probably still have some advisory role with the Giants, though more honorary than official). I don't think that they will go with Ron Wotus, who has interviewed for years for a variety of open manager's jobs and not gotten any, as I think that the head brass will want someone young to take the team and lead it for 10-20 years, as long term stability has been a hallmark of the organization.

Better Than Last Year

Despite the changes coming, Larry Baer expressed his opinion that the Giants are in better shape now than they were in when they held the 2015 presser. Despite the additional age of the core and other players returning, I would agree just from the fact that our rotation right now is Bumgarner, Cueto, Moore, Samardzija, and Cain/Blach/Suarez with Beede as a dark horse candidate.

Plus, we still have a good core of position players in Posey, Pence, Belt, Crawford, Panik. They are older but other than Pence who will be 34 next season, the rest are 30 YO or younger, still in their prime of their career. And one could argue that we are better off, because Crawford did it again, and it was his best season for BA, Belt had ups and downs, but still, his best season ever, and elite .868 OPS, and Pence and Posey had good though not great seasons.

Only Panik had a poor season, but given his good contact rate and high walk/strikeout ratio, it's pretty clear that 2016's batting line was a huge fluke that was probably related to his concussion screwing up his timing. Plus, he ended the season on an uptick, hitting .241/.329/.407/.736, which is not too bad at 2B when combined with good defense.

At the other positions, I see Span as an improvement over Pagan, just from health issues, though his drop down to platoon status was not encouraging. And Nunez, while not as good as Duffy, is at least comparable, and given his speed, could be the new leadoff hitter, which would be an upgrade as well, given his good speed. Plus, he's not so good that when Arroyo is ready to play in the majors in 2017-2018, he won't be blocking Christian's promotion.

At the moment, the Giants feel that Arroyo, while still on the rise, still needs to improve some, based on his batting line in AA last season, which wasn't the greatest (though it should be noted that Arroyo was young for the league, so that is part of the reason), and is expected to start the season off in AAA. He's probably the top position prospect, and will battle Beede for top prospect in the system, now that Bickford is out of the picture.

In LF, I expect the Giants to keep the spot open for Parker and Williamson to battle over, the Giants do like to keep a spot in the starting lineup for prospects. The Giants mentioned in the conference that they expect more power from the two as they become more experienced, and had projected both to have more power than Adam Duvall, who hit 33 for the Reds this season.

Plus, Gorkys Hernandez looks like he's good enough offensively as well as defensively (Blanco was a disaster this season, and already on the decline previously) that he could battle for the starting LF spot, while getting spot starts in CF to rest Span. While not as good as Pagan when he is healthy, he's never really been healthy in a full season except in his first season with us.

Then there is the possibility that the Giants could sign a good hitter who falls through the cracks and take a one season deal in Jan/Feb. Another option would be to just carry Parker and Mac, and use Nunez as a LF when necessary (shifting Parker or Mac to RF or CF as necessary; Bochy has played them in CF before and Nunez has played LF, and that's been his best defensive position as a utility player), which would free a spot for Gillaspie and allow the team to keep both Adrianza and Tomlinson on the 25-man roster.

On the bench, probably a push, perhaps an improvement. After 2015, it was: Adrianza, Tomlinson, Blanco, Parker, and Susac. After 2016, it is currently: Adrianza, Tomlinson and/or Gillaspie for two spots, Hernandez, Parker, and/or Williamson for two spots, and Brown. One could argue that 2016 is better because Gillaspie seems to be a proven enough hitter, and Hernandez appears to be a better player than what Blanco was after 2015, for those assuming a regression to the mean in 2016 from Blanco due to his very good season in 2015. Plus, Tomlinson showed that his 2015 was a fluke, but improved in his 2016 by not striking out as much, while keeping his BA up high, and a low 700 OPS for a bench player is pretty good, especially for a MI.

The bullpen one could argue is worse now, as we still had the good version of Casilla, Romo, and Lopez in our minds after 2015. It was definitely better based on experience. But it wasn't like the new guys in Law, Okert, Smith, and Guerrin weren't pretty good in their own way, though. Only Osich and Guerrin of the group had ERA over 4, and Guerrin was just very unlucky (or unsupported) as his FIP was a great 3.28, compared to his 4.28 ERA. If we combine the stats for Smith, Kontos, Law, Strickland, Okert, Osich, and Guerrin, the ERA would be a great 3.21 among this group. I would take that any year.

Can Still Spend To Get Better

Baer stated that they will up the budget if the Giants see the need to spend on a free agent or two, in order to get better. Here is what he said:

"We have every commitment to 2017 to return to a championship-caliber club. Resources will be expended as necessary to get us there."

And this is the right stance to take, our core players are not getting younger, as the cliche goes, and our window to win with them is probably 2-4 years, so the window could be closing soon.

According to my math, they are roughly a little more than $150M right now, but for the purposes of the cap, they are basically right at the prior penalty threshold of $189M (due to nearly $30M in benefits added), meaning that any substantial free agent (and a closer would be) would push them into the penalty. However, the CBA is being renegotiated again this off-season, and the threshold is expected to be bumped up, and whatever that boost is - I would guess an additional 10-15% or $38-57M, though hopefully it will be an escalating one rather than a static one, as in the last CBA - that will be a ceiling on how much the Giants are willing to spend in this off-season.

Given my calculation that we are already near the threshold, with the new CBA allowing the only cushion, that would explain their plans to mostly do nothing on the free agent market and to not sign any of their free agents back, as they don't have much leeway right now in the budget and threshold. At minimum, the threshold will probably rise enough for them to sign a closer ($10-15M range), which is the only area that they said that they will try to address potentially with a free agent (they also noted trades as a possibility). If the threshold is higher than that, then they'll have more to pursue other free agents.

But given the current salary situation, it does not look like the Giants have that much money to spend on free agents, no matter what you have read from other sources, as the penalty threshold includes additional spending on benefits (almost $30M), and most do not calculate the ACP, as I'm doing here. And that is the budget limitation we need to pay attention to, now that we are approaching that penalty threshold. The CBA will allow some spending, but nobody knows how much right now. It seems likely that they'll have enough space to get a closer, but anything beyond that would have been speculative, which is probably why they did not mention any other possible free agents. Perhaps they might pivot by getting an Affeldt type: a closer-like performer who would help firm up the back end of the bullpen, even if he's not that anointed closer.

Bum Extension

Short and Sweet: Giants have told Bumgarner's agents that they are ready to talk when Madison is ready to talk. Giants still have sweet and cheap team options on Bumgarner, covering 2017-2019, but are probably looking to incorporate them into a big long term contract. To my thinking, that is so that he can claim a big contract, but since the Giants have him already signed, technically, for the team, it is just an extension of 3 less years than whatever he eventually signs for (Kershaw got a 10 year deal, and that would cover Bumgarner to 37 YO).

Team of the 2010 Decade

The Giants are still in pretty good shape to get called the Team of the 2010 Decade. With 3 championships out of 7, they are ahead of every other contender in wins, obviously, but also appearances: Rangers have two, Cards have two, Royals have two. And with LA, Chicago Cubs, Cleveland Indians, and Toronto Blue Jays, the remaining teams, someone with a long drought will win the championship (I'm rooting for Indians and Cubs, in that order - I would never root for the Dodgers).

Furthermore, we had a pretty good team this season and basically have all the best pieces returning in 2017. Hard to blame any one particular group in baseball, as there is generally a mix of reasons why, but it was our bullpen that let us down, over and over again, during the season and ending things appropriately with a massive bullpen let down in that fateful 9th inning, with a 3 run lead where the team with the lead had won, like, 829 times and lost only 3 times. Now there are 4.

While a tremendous overstatement that the bullpen needs an overhaul, it still flamed up pretty massively at inopportune times. I think the Giants need not only a new closer, but another guy to shut down the 8th inning, the way it was when we had Affeldt and Romo to shut down things in that inning.

Is Will Smith that guy? I thought so, given what they gave up and what he has accomplished so far in his career, but Bochy did not use him like that in the regular season or even in that 9th inning - had he trusted Will, he would have kept him in to face at least another hitter if not get out of the inning with the lead. I'm still hopeful he will get that role in the 2017 regular season, by earning it in spring training.

But teams always have things to fix up, even the latest champion, and needing to fix that is actually not that bad, and another sign that we are in better shape after 2016 than 2015. Our rotation is pretty set, and if Cain somehow disappoints again because of injury, I feel pretty good that we have Blach, Heston (people seem to have forgotten him already; maybe we can trade him for another reliever at the trading deadline next year, if we aren't using him in the majors, he should have some trade value), Suarez, and Beede, waiting in line. And who knows, maybe Cain could be that closer we need, he pitched well in stretches, maybe he just can't stay healthy pitching so many innings, but can be effective in short stints.

Our lineup looks pretty good too: Nunez, Panik, Posey, Belt, Pence, Crawford, LF, Span, with Span sometimes batting 9th, like Pagan did in 2016. Span is the weak link after last season (even if Mac or Parker is in LF), but he hit better in prior years, so we'll see what happens in 2017.

Unfortunately, while it is pretty good when looking at the baseball card back, injuries seem to trip up our lineup pretty badly, as well as steep ups and downs, such as that we had with Belt again (but you live with that when you get .868 OPS.

I have seen dreams of getting Cespedes in LF, but as I tried to show above, we don't have a lot of spending window, unless the threshold is set up about $35M higher than it is now, so the lineup is probably what it is, unless we get a $5-8M contract fall to us in Jan/Feb with a "prove it" season that gets him a better contract after the 2017 season.

Bochy's Decline

One stat that I've been following on Bochy has been his career long ability to be at least 4 wins above .500 in one-run games, and, in fact, be among the leaders in the NL, with at least 8 wins above .500. He first did it in his second season as manager. But the last time he was able to do that was in 2012, when he was 10 games over .500 for the Giants.

And in his career, he never had two consecutive years of negatives (i.e. more losses than wins) until 2014-2015, the last two seasons. And in his career, the longest stretch he had where he didn't win at least 8 more over .500 was two seasons, 1999-2000, 2002-2003, and 2009-2010: 2016 is his four straight season with out winning at least 8 more one-run games. Prior to 2013, in 18 seasons, he had 9 seasons with 8 or more, or 50% of his seasons, and as just noted, this is four straight seasons without one. He was actually up around +8 sometime mid-season, obviously before the All-Star game, when the Giants had one of the best records in the majors. A lesser manager might have been fired for a collapse as great as the Giants had this season. And this has been the pattern in 2011, 2013, 2015, the Giants were actually battling for the playoffs, but injuries would kill our chances, but could this be part of the overall reasons for the decline?

In addition, this is the first time Bochy has had consecutive seasons with a record that is negative relative to what the team should have done per Pythagorean. In fact, he only had two of these with San Diego, he beat Pythagorean most years as a manager of the Padres. He now has four in ten years with the Giants. These have generally occurred when he was new to the team, and perhaps when there is a transition going on in the bullpen (like 2010 and 2015-16). It would seem to be significant if he has another poor season in this regard in 2017.

I have studied managers, good and bad, on how Pythagorean relates to them, and generally, the acknowledged better managers were generally good at beating Pythagogean, while lesser ones don't. Interestingly, managers like Lasorda and LaRussa did not beat Pythagorean. But talent is part of the equation too, Joe Torre wasn't all that good, horrible really, in his prior managerial stints, but was a genius with the Yankees, per Pythagorean.

Bobby Cox had a similar career pattern, during Bochy's early career: Cox was winning a lot more games in one-run games than he was losing, but then at some point, he stopped being good at doing this. So one has to wonder if Bochy might have reached the point where he stopped being good at it too. Something to monitor for Bochy.

Another thing I should check when I have time: Bochy's career in one-run games when Flannery was his 3rd base coach and when Flan was not. SD forced him to fire Flan during parts of his SD tenure: I think he actually did well, but since the last two has not been good, I should check, just to see.obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-91813322122888539422016-10-11T17:15:00.000-07:002016-10-11T17:15:15.117-07:00Your 2016 Giants NLDS: Game 4: Lackey is Perhaps LackingMy thoughts on Game 4 of NLDS after that miraculous Game 3. Wow, both Gillaspie and Panik (and Crawford), Law and Blach. Bochy's gambit of carrying Blach pays off!

ogc thoughts

Funny thing so far is that the Cubs vaunted offense has actually been pretty silent, it was a trio of flukey hits by pitchers (albeit, big blasts off Arrieta and Wood's bats, and Wood is actually a decent hitter in his career, maybe as good as Bumgarner; Hendricks was really lucky) who contributed most of the Cubs offense so far.

Lackey Has Been Good But Not Ace, Especially On the Road

We have some chance against Lackey, despite 2002, as he's not a young guy anymore. Since he's a righty, as usual, LHH hit him better than RHH, so we have some advantage in that way. He's also been worse on the road in his career, and by a lot (4.37 ERA this season, 4.18 for his career, 4.58 last 7 seasons). And he has given up 8 ER in 9.0 IP in his last two road playoff starts.

However, he's been good in SF, but that was in 2006 and 2009, when he was a younger and a bit better pitcher, plus the last time he pitched in SF, the Giants scored 4 runs off him in 6.0 IP in playoffs two years ago. Plus, most Giants have not hit well against him, and only Nunez has a lot of AB as well as great OPS (1.044) but he's probably not playing. Everyone else has done poorly, but in one or two games.

And while he has a mixed bag in terms of playoff pitching, overall, 3.11 ERA is pretty darn good. Still, 4.00 ERA on the road in the playoffs, and, as noted already, Giants scored 4 runs in 6.0 IP against him in SF for the Cards in game 3 of 2014 NLCS. And that repeats his career pattern of home vs. road, he just does not do as well on the road.

Moore Has Some Good Points

Moore's 2016 Giants ERA is not comparable, but he has a 3.16 ERA in AT&T this season, with 3.0 K/BB and 8.8 K/9, which is comparable. LHH do hit him better, but I think more of the Cubs lineup is RHH. And per PQS, he had 4 DOM starts out of 6, for great 67% DOM.

ESPN noted that he wasn't as good since his near no-hitter vs. LA, but that was skewed totally by 1) his bad start in Colorado, which skews a lot of pitchers, and 2) his poor start vs. LA in LA, when he might have been nervous, probably one of the biggest starts in his career. Take out only COL, and he had a nice 3.44 ERA since that near no-hitter, so he most probably wasn't all that affected by his 133 pitches in the near no-hitter. And in any case, still had 66% Strike thrown percentage since, which is very good.

On top of that, he had a lot of up and down pitching at home at the start of his Giants career, but in his last two starts of the season: 1.15 ERA, 15.2 IP, 17 K vs. 2 BB, only 9 hits, 71% STR%, .400 OPS, against Rockies and Dodgers, and both at home. He's hopefully peaking at the right time. A similar game should put us in the win column.

Today's Game: Lackey is Perhaps Lacking

So my take: Lackey is going to be tough, but so will Moore, most likely. Both have had mixed results in the playoffs, but Moore's was possibly because his arm was already hurting as he got his TJS at the very start of the next season. But Moore has limited experience either way, but still, at least he has gotten over his first time jitters, hopefully.

While Lackey is a good pitcher, he has been bad on the road, particularly in the playoffs, and we have good LHH in Panik, Belt and Crawford (also Gillaspie), plus Pence and Posey hit RHP pretty well too. Still, we do better against LHP, not RHP. However, we have many of the 2014 lineup back, except Pablo and Ishikawa, and possibly Blanco, depends on Pagan's back today. Gillaspie has been making a good impression of Ishikawa's 2014, but Span is no Pablo. And while he's been good against our hitters, he has generally been average to bad on the road, and that should kick in some today.

On top of that, aside from the pitcher's driving in runs, the Giants pitching has been handling the Cubs offense with pretty good ease. Their offense has scored only 5 runs in the 3 games against us, if you take away the pitcher's 6 RBI's. Sure, pitchers do get runs sometimes, but even during the regular season, their pitchers had 26 RBI's, good for third in the NL (Giants were first). Bumgarner and Samardzija each had 9 RBI's, and Cueto and Cain each had 5 RBI's (Cubs leader were Arrieta and Hammel with 7 RBI, Lester with 6 RBI, so Hendricks and Wood were flukes, and that HR was a fluke, as well).

Not a sure win - and, of course, none of them ever are - but I think we have as good a chance of winning as the Cubs do, given Lackey's lacking on the road, plus we have home advantage. And if we win, that's a rematch of Lester vs. Cueto in Chicago.

Good Fortune: Baloney!

The beauty of the ways the Giants win is that while pitching and defense can dominate a game, it results in beautiful randomness where one hitter or another, not the stars, delivers. That gives the illusion that the Giants are lucky, with guys like Ross, Ishikawa, and Gillaspie delivers, that it is good fortune. (if you haven't guessed, I got into it with someone on this, on Twitter)

And sure, there is a lot of randomness in baseball. But given that the Giants had good fortune THREE times in five years, per their argument, it strains incredulity that they got lucky so many times. Unless, of course, you want to take the lame way out as Billy Beane does and say that it's all random luck in the playoffs.

And what wasn't random is how the Giants have been run in the Sabean era. They have planned for the structure of their roster and trading M.O. They have focused the vast majority of their drafting bullets on pitching. Both in terms of first round picks, and in terms of total number of pitchers drafted in each draft. They have also used that pitching to make judicious trades over the years, netting us players like Nen, Livan, Schmidt, Snow, Winn, Pence, Lopez, Pagan, Peavy, among others.

More importantly, the Sabean Brain Trust has been excellent in deciding who to trade and who not to trade. Wheeler is probably the best SP to get away, Foulke the best reliever (Nathan is an asterisk because he was actually a good reliever for us when he was traded, and we did get a good left-handed defensive and offensive catcher in return), and now Duvall might be the best hitter to get away. Look at the list of players we got in trade for pitching prospects, top of all is Schmidt, but also players like Pence, Nen, Livan, Peavy, who have done well for us.

There has been articles over the years discussing how you don't want to trade with Sabean. Making great calls over the years, until the drafts started paying off, once they started losing and getting good to great draft position, netting us Lincecum, Bumgarner, and Posey in consecutive years (and Wheeler in the following year; he netted us a rental of Beltran). Then building a variety of core strengths mostly through player development during this golden championship period.

We have basically had three cores supporting recent good times, overlapping, of course. First core was our starting pitching - Lincecum, Cain, Bumgarner, Sanchez - covering 2009 to 2012. The second core was our bullpen: Affeldt, Romo, Casilla, and Lopez; which covered 2010 to 2014. Third core was our hitters: Posey, Pence, Belt, Crawford, and Sandoval, 2012 to 2014. The common denominator among most of them: they were prospects the Giants developed, with 9 of 13 being home-grown, two free agents, two trades.

And change has been afoot. The starting pitching has gone through a transition, and we are set for at least 2016-17 with Bumgarner, Cueto, Moore, and Samardzija, perhaps longer if Cueto stays with us. The bullpen core started breaking up with Affeldt leaving after last season, and all three are with no contract after this season. I can see Casilla being resigned, not as much Lopez (age and effectiveness) or Romo (probably too expensive contract, he got $9M this year, he would have to take a big cut to stay). Unsure who the new core is, but right now it is Strickland, Law, Osich, Okert, Guerrin, and Blach probably pitched his way into at least long relief, and perhaps into the #5 pitching slot, though if Cain is anywhere healthy and relatively effective, he'll get that final slot given his $20M contract. Some Giants fans like to complain about Cain's contract, but we got all that value from him before he was a free agent, plus also had signed him to a lower long-term extension pre-free agency, so we saved there too. Panik is now part of the hitting core, starting in 2014. It is hoped and assumed by many that Arroyo will join the team sometime in 2017 as starting 3B.

Good fortune that was the result of planning and execution of the plan over the years, building up a strong pitching and fielding team almost every year, supplementing via trade and free agency. Around the main core of Posey and Bumgarner.

And I think people suffer from cognitive bias too. Nobody notices that the team won due to an error or bench player's hit when the pitching is bad enough that instead of winning 3-2 or 2-1, you lose 6-3 or 5-2. That's the flaw in analysis people get stuck on when they push off the Giants feat as "good fortune". Plus they focus on the "luck" of Gillaspie hitting a triple off of Chapman, but how about Arrieta hitting a 3-run homer off Bumgarner? How about that luck? Take away the two plays and the Giants won in a 9 inning game, no crying about luck and good fortune.

So remind me not to engage people on social media. That's what got me into the dark pit with the tweeter. Social media is the opposite for me, I just run into all this bad thinking or just bad (I was just looking at tweets that a lame-boy in Chicago tweeted that were sexually offensive to my of the tweeters I follow, and then he blamed his 15 year old cousin for them; apparently he's on an anti-bullying committee, and realized that those bad tweets might get him let go, but he forgot about all the other tweets ("jokes") that exhibited the same type of sexual offensiveness that dot his twitter timeline for years) and I find myself wanting to be less social. I guess that's why Twitter is sinking while Facebook is growing.obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-23604095766538383012016-10-07T17:15:00.000-07:002016-10-07T17:15:11.197-07:00Your 2016 Giants: Playoffs I don't have a lot of time to write before the start of the playoffs with the Cubs, so I took a comment I left on baseball monk a few days ago, and repurposed here, of course, with new edits, as I was also writing in reply to the original article.

ogc thoughts

I agreed with baseball monk about the starting rotation, that it is the best in baseball. This is the reason why I loved the Giants signing Smardzija and Cueto, and then trading for Moore. As baseball monk noted, it is arguably up there with the rotation of 2010, which he felt was better because they got it done. baseball monk compared the two staffs:

#1: Lincecum vs. Bumgarner

#2: Cain vs. Cueto

#3: Sanchez vs. Moore

#4: Bumgarner vs. Samardzija

#1: Lincecum vs. Bumgarner

I think for #1, knowledge of the future, as well as SSS, were clouding some of the analysis. Lincecum was coming off two straight years of Cy Young-ness, and had another magnificent year. At that point, he had always had a month of meh-ness sprinkled in, and his in-season implementation and execution of the changeup in August 2010 suggested that he had years more of dominance.

And who had a 3.79 ERA, pitching so bad that he had his start skipped in the middle of the playoffs? Bumgarner pre-2014. So was 2014 a fluke or his 6.00 ERA in 2012?

Still, comparing each point in time, I agree you have to go with Bumgarner in 2016, solely because he has had success in the playoffs, and Lincecum up to then, had a history of tightness in his first time experiences, which could haunt him in the playoffs (didn't, probably because September was like one long month of playoffs) and World Series (did).

#2: Cain vs. Cueto

I think for #2, in addition, you are also mixing in known performance vs. possible. Cueto has had a history of clear dominance in the regular season over the past few years. Cain in 2010 was considered a good but not great starter. I think baseball monk was counting his great playoff run to 2012 into the equation.

Based on regular season work, Cueto is head and shoulders above what Cain had done up to 2010, and Cain had no playoff experience at that point, whereas Cueto right now has a playoff history, though, frankly, it's been spotty to poor, even last season. Though Cain was inexperienced entering 2010 and Cueto is experienced, it is because Cueto has been such a mixed bag that I would rate Cain above Cueto for #2, because he was so steady all those years leading up to 2010 playoffs (of course, Bumgarner was a mixed bag after two playoff seasons, and we all saw how great he was in his third one, in 2014). So again I agree, Cain 2010 was better.

#3: Sanchez vs. Moore

For #3, first, I would have compared Bumgarner with Moore, not Sanchez, because he was arguably better already, but maybe baseball monk was going with Bochy's rotation, which had it Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez, Bumgarner in the Braves and World Series, and Sanchez got the call for #2 in the Phillies series, and based on that, I can see the point. That's a quibble on my part, I admit.

I think it's clearly Moore over Sanchez, mainly because Moore has had a much better pedigree and acknowledgement in the league than Sanchez ever had. He might have similar wildness, but 2010 was Sanchez's one and only good year, and while Moore has a similar spotty record, he has had a much better projection profile than Sanchez ever had. Plus I got a Jason Schmidt type of feel coming from Moore.

And as baseball monk aptly noted, Moore already has playoff experience (relatively good), and is a more mentally stable player than Sanchez ever was. Moore is definitely better here, and I would say better than Bumgarner had he been the comparison point, because 2010 was Madison's first year, he was a very unknown quality at that point (though us Giants fans loved him to pieces, that didn't mean that he would necessarily turn out to be as great as he turned out to be), whereas Moore has a lot more history.

#4: Bumgarner vs. Samardzija

For #4, Bumgarner vs. Samardzija, I mostly agree with what baseball monk wrote. Mostly because of the Shark's up and down season, along with his up and mostly down career as a starter. So I see why he had the comparison as a toss-up.

One thing that tips it to Samardzija's side, for me at least, is that mid-season, while in his down period, it was revealed that for some inexplicable reason, he dropped his curve when he converted from the bullpen to the starting rotation, which is the complete opposite of any other reliever-starter conversion, as generally you want more pitches as a starter than when a reliever, and that last incredible up you noted was the result of him adding his curve back into his repertoire (plus I think Fangraph analyzed his pitches, and found that he also dropped a pitch that wasn't working for him). For that reason, I rate him above 2010 Bumgarner.

2016 NL Playoffs

I would also add in the fact that Samardzija has a history of being a great closer, and Bumgarner's great relief game vs. KC, and those, plus the above rotation comparisons tips the rotation in 2016 as being better than the 2010 rotation, at least in my eyes. And I just realized, looking through the four comparisons, that the individual comparisons for baseball monk and myself add up to 2016 being a better rotation, as well as being the best rotation in the NL playoffs.

As good as the Cubs are in 2016, the Nats were considered similarly good in 2014, and the Giants arguably played better in the regular season than they did, and it was the bullpen blown saves that cost us there. As I've tried to show over the years with PQS, it is great pitching that overpowers great hitting, no matter how great they are, in a general sense. Our rotation might not have been great in 2014, but they were good enough for DOM starts when we needed them, outside of Bumgarner. And Madison carried us on his back in the World Series, his relief appearance would have qualified for a DOM start had he started.

On top of that, the Giants took on the Cubs, Nats, and Dodgers OK this season. Basically broke even. And each of these other team has problems with LH starters, and we got two of them, plus a number of lefties in the bullpen. On top of that, I think the offense was returning to normal in the last week of the season.

The offense won't look great in the playoffs, but generally, better pitching will dictate that. They just need to be relatively better against the opposition, then the opposition is against our pitchers. And all of our starters are capable of whipping out a double digit strikeout start and go deep into the game while giving up only a handful of hits. I like our chances of flying through the playoffs and not having to face elimination at any point.

I think we'll have the most problems with Chicago, both because they are good, as well as because it is a five game series and they got home advantage. While I like our chances, it will not be easy, so Go Giants!

Note: Giants Roster for Cubs Series:

The position players for the NLDS: Posey, Brown, Belt, Crawford, Gillaspie, Nunez, Panik, Tomlinson, Blanco, Hernandez, Pagan, Pence, Span. Nunez replaced Adrianza.

The Giants went with 12 pitchers: Blach, Bumgarner, Casilla, Cueto (Game 1 starter), Kontos, Law, Lopez, Moore, Romo, Samardzija, Smith, Strickland. Blach replaced Okert. Moore took Parker's spot, as the Giants go for more speed off the bench (and in the lineup, apparently, both Hernandez and Tomlinson are starting game 1, while Span and Panik sits).

The starting pitching matchups:

Cueto vs. Lester

Samardzija vs. Hendricks

Bumgarner vs. Arrieta

Moore vs. Lackey

We are pretty evenly matched in each game. As uneven Cueto has been in playoffs, so has Lester. Meanwhile, Hendricks was not that good last year, though to be fair, he's been a much better pitcher this season over last. Samardzija has nothing much of a playoff record (played for Cubs, A's and White Sox) but has been pitching really great since rediscovering his curve. And while Arrieta had DOM starts, he didn't pitch well enough in 2 of 3 starts last season, when he had his great season, whereas he regressed this season. While facing Bumgarner, who he publicly said is "beatable". And Lackey has been up and down over the past few seasons as well, while Moore has been up and down in previous playoff stints. So other than Bumgarner's game, we look pretty evenly matched, so it should be a good series, with Bumgarner being the edge for us, potentially, once again.
obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-5029222136655813762016-10-07T07:56:00.005-07:002016-10-07T07:56:56.661-07:00Your 2016 Playoffs: Rooting Against OrderWhen I remember, I rank the playoff teams in order of who to root most to win it all. Of course, the Giants are the one up top, but how do the other teams rank, should the horrible happen and the Giants not win it all this season? I decided to include the teams that lost the Wild Card games too.

ogc thoughts

Here is my order, while many teams we don't really have anything against, there are some who Giants fans have some ire with:

Nationals - The Giants don't have much against the Nats. They gave us a nice reliever in exchange for Livan Hernandez. And Dusty is their manager, so why not give him a bone, 2002 is no longer bothering me now that we got 2010, 2012, 2014. We also got Felipe Alou from them, where he established himself as a manager, returning him to his Giants heritage. We did trade Speier for Foli when they were the Expos, and that hurt some. But they have never won, and missed their best chance because of the strike in 1994.

Cubs - Well, if we can't win it all, part of me would wish them well, especially since they haven't won since 1908, which I can sympathize with, especially all the close calls and long time in between good times. Plus we crushed them in 1989. But they crippled us last season with the sweep, killing our chances in an odd year, and nearly cost us this season with some comebacks. And they are getting all the love from the media this year, getting the SI cover shot and prediction (which usually is a jinx anyway).

Rangers - We beat them in 2010 for our first title in SF. They also have a long history of never winning in their franchise as well.

Indians - We beat them long ago in humiliating fashion in 1954, but that's not as recent as the Rangers. And they haven't won in a long time as well. But they do have a bad mascot that they should probably change or work with Native Americans to make it more acceptable.

Orioles - We stole Jon Miller from them, so there's that. Plus, we're the true Orange & Black. And I never cared for their owner.

Blue Jays - They gave Melky Cabrera a two year contract even after he cheated so badly, rewarding him.

Mets - That hideous playoff series we lost to them in 2000 will also stick in this Giants fan's craw. So this Wild Card was a nice payback, which the Giants have been doing in each playoff cycle this decade. They did buy King Kong Kingman off us, instead of giving us prospects, but did give Willie Mays another chance to make the World Series (unfortunately, he was a shadow of his former self).

Red Sox - They are a contender for Team of the 2010 Decade, which the Giants hold pretty securely right now with 3 titles, but if they win, they will have 2, just one behind. Part of me feel sorry for them for signing Pablo, but that's on them

Dodgers - Of course, they are last, they're the Bridegrooms. Part of me want the Giants to face them in the NLCS, just so we can beat them, but they have not been able to get past the first round in recent memory, for while they have been able to come up big during the season, they haven't been able to in the playoffs. And that's OK by me, any time they get kicked out of the playoffs is great, whether by the Giants or any other team.

Go Giants!
Go Team of the 2010 Decade!!!
obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-13180304879242384132016-10-04T22:04:00.000-07:002016-10-04T22:04:14.165-07:00Your 2016 Giants: Wild Card Playoff Game vs. MetsOn Wednesday, the Giants will face the Mets on the road in NY: Bumgarner vs. Thor.

ogc thoughts

Mano-a-mano, obviously, anything can happen. Starting pitchers can make magic happen at any time. It should be a good battle between Syndergaard and Bumgarner.

Thor's Achilles' Heel

However, Noah "Thor" Syndergaard, while a great pitcher, has some flaws that the Giants can take advantage of. First off, LHH hit him a lot better than RHH:

LHH: .250/.305/.398/.703, 3.46 K/BB

RHH: .222/.255/.334/.589, 8.04 K/BB

Lefties in our lineup should be Span, Belt, Crawford, Panik, Gillaspie, and Pagan, with righties Posey and Pence, both of whom are OK vs. RHP. In addition, while Noah has the fastest stuff in the majors, the Giants lineup is full of hitters who can hit 95+ MPH pitches for homers. However, the Giants are only 57-53 against RHP (while 30-22 against LHP) so that negates that to some extent.

Plus, he's much better at home (2.68 ERA) than on the road (3.13 ERA). However, the Giants against him in NY, in two games, 6.17 ERA: 4 runs in 6 IP in 2015, 4 runs in 5.2 IP in 2016. He shut them out in SF though, in his last start against them. Also, he has been not as good in the second half: 2.77 ERA first half, 3.01 ERA second half, while compiling a 3.32 ERA in the playoffs last year (3.50 ERA as a starter), but all three starts were DOM starts.

Bumgarner's A Man

Meanwhile, Bumgarner looks pretty good against the Mets. First off, they are only 19-18 vs. LHP, 68-57 vs. RHP (hence why Bumgarner and not Cueto starting, just for this reason). However, he's better at home than on the road, 2.74 ERA vs. 3.22 ERA on the road.

And one thing some have mentioned is that Bumgarner has not had a good ERA to end the season, as he had a 4.66 ERA over his last 9 starts (most only noted his poor September, but it goes back further than that). However, if you look at the overall numbers, he looks like he's just been having bad luck with the long ball: 9 starts, 56.0 IP, .293 BABIP, great .683 OPS, only 11 walks vs. 62 strikeouts, but what killed him during that period was the number of HR he gave up, 8, which works out to 1.3 HR/9, very high for him. So the long ball would be a sign that this Bumgarner is pitching and not the lumberjack who runs roughshod over the competition.

But the best factor of all is Bumgarner in 4 starts against the Mets in NY: 0.62 ERA, 29 IP (avg 7+ IP per start), 9.6 K/9 and great 3.44 K/BB. And there is also his 0.91 ERA over his last 8 playoff appearances, 59.2 IP (over 7 IP even counting the 5 IP in relief), only 8 walks, 53 strikeouts, only 3 HR given up.

Giants Chances Look Good

I think the Giants look good for winning this game. Bumgarner has pitched great against the Mets in NY all his career so far, as LHP does a number on the Mets strengths. Thor's weakness is that LHH hit him a lot better than RHH do, and Posey and Pence are the only RHH, and both hit RHP pretty well still. But when you get great pitchers going against each other, especially experienced guys - Thor had his hiccup in his first playoff start last season - you just about have to flip a coin as to who wins. Still, Bumgarner has had the Mets number, as do many LHP, and LHH has Noah's number (relatively to RHH), which seems to tilt things in favor of the Orange & Black, though, unfortunately, our LHH has not done that well against Thor, both Posey and Pence have the best OPS against him.

Go Giants!

obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-76925166905014191972016-10-03T22:03:00.000-07:002016-11-10T07:40:53.386-08:00My Current Baseball and Giants Blog LinksIntro: this post has some of the links I used to have on the side of my blog content.

Ugh, Blogger just did something to lose all my links. But it didn't remove the widgets that shows posts, so I'm going to post the links in this post, and widget this post. While this is slower to get to, I don't really think that many of you are using my links anyway to get to places, I assume most of you are savvy enough to have them bookmarked somewhere so that you can get to what you want when you want. In addition, I can't remember every link I had, so I'm going with the ones I can remember, for the most part. But let me know if you prefer links on the side and I'll think about complying.

This was last updated October 3, 2016.

Giants Links

These are the ones that I go to nowadays when I want a Giants blog fix, and I don't want to get into an argument:

baseball monk: like me, a focus on strategy of the Giants; does weekly recap
Cove Chatter: good for prospect talk, starting to cover Bill James GameScore analysis
El Lefty Malo: old-timer like me, talks (infrequently now; life!) about all things Giants
Raising Matt Cain: good for day-to-day commiseration
When the Giants Come to Town: DrBGiantsfan's good site for team and great prospect talk
Wrenzie Blogs Giants: good for prospect talk
You Gotta Like These Kids: Shankbone's good site for prospect and Giants talk

For the Giants own content, here are the links to their leagues:

SFGiants.com
Sacramento River Cats (PCL)
Richmond Flying Squirrels (EAS)
San Jose Giants (CAL)
Augusta GreenJackets (SAL)
Salem-Keizer Volcanoes (NWL)
AZL Giants (AZL)
DSL Giants (DSL)

Giants Player Blogs:

Brandon and Brandon (Belt and Crawford)
White Shark (Gregor Blanco)

Giants Beat Writers:

CSN Bay Area (Pavlov)
Haft Baked Ideas (blog)
MLB.com (Haft et al)
San Francisco Chronicle (Schulman et al)
San Jose Mercury (Baggerly et al)

Baseball Links

For baseball data content:

Baseball Prospectus (have to subscribe for top-line data, like PECOTA, their projects)
Baseball-Reference (best for minor league info)
Clay Davenport (produces projection data before every season)
Cot's Baseball Contracts
FanGraphs (best for advanced saber stats along with regular stats)
Homerun Tracker (esoteric home run stats)
MLB
Probable Pitchers
Stat Corner (good for advanced saber stats for majors and minors)
The Baseball Cube (only one that includes college stats with pro stats)

For baseball prospect content:

Baseball America (lots of good draft mocks prior to the draft, and good prospect lists after the season)
Forbe's MLB Valuations (updated annually; Giants #4 in 2016)
Jim Callis (MLB.com, prospect and draft info, mock draft too)
Jonathan Mayo: Big, Bald, and Beautiful (MLB.com, prospect and draft info, mock draft too)
Minor League Ball - Sickels (lots of good prospect and draft info, plus annual mock draft project)
MiLB (Official Minor League's website)
MLB.com Pipeline Prospects (Mayo and Callis; links to Top Prospect lists)
MLB.com Pipeline Giants Prospects (Mayo and Callis)
Perfect Game USA (sometimes makes mock draft available)

For baseball data analysis writing:

Baseball Prospectus (subscribe for latest content; free content one year or older, plus some free weekly)
Eno Sarris (enjoyed his analysis for long time at Fangraphs; seems to follow the Giants too, to boot!)
FanGraphs
Matt Swartz (consulting for Nats now; wrote lately for Fangraphs and, before that, BP previously)
Russell Carlton (currently writing for BP; also know as Pizza Cutter)obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-9056160130419119702016-09-13T18:19:00.000-07:002016-09-13T18:19:06.031-07:002016 Giants: August PQSThis post has the Giants Pure Quality Start scores for the month of August 2016, PQS as defined in Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster annual book and they published the details here (unfortunately, they removed the article; this link gets you at least to the PQS definition, read down to middle for details). I wrote on this first in 2006 (wow, 11th year of this! 10th anniversary!) and have compiled their stats on a regular basis, so I'm continuing it this season for continuity and historical comparison (there is the "PQS" label that you can click to see the old posts on this). Regular readers can skip to the next section.

This is the Quality Start with a sabermetric DIPS twist, and it gets really easy to calculate once you get used to it. I don't think it's the end all or be all, but then nothing really is that. It is, as I like to say, another piece of the puzzle. A dominating start is scored a 4 or 5 and a disaster start is scored a 0 or 1. DOM% is the percentage of starts that are dominating, DIS% is the percentage of starts that are disasters (any start under 5.0 IP is automatically a 0, or disaster).

What's Good and What's Not

From my observations, a DOM at or above the 40% mark is indicative of good pitching; above 50% is great; above 70% is elite. A low DIS is also indicative of good pitching, just look at the table in the link above showing DOM% and DIS% on the axes.

Basically, you want to see a pitcher's DOM% to be over 40% and ideally over 50%, and you want their DIS to be under 20% and ideally under 10%. For example, Johan Santana has a 76% DOM and 3% DIS in 2006 (2.77 ERA), whereas Orlando Hernandez had a 52% DOM and 28% DIS (4.66 ERA), and Adam Eaton had a 31% DOM and 31% DIS (5.12 ERA). Read the link (unfortunately, they removed the article and thus the table is no longer available, sorry), as I noted, there's a nice chart there showing the combination of high DOM% and low DIS%, and there you can see particularly how a low DIS% is so important to a low ERA.

If you had to chose a high DOM% or a low DIS%, pitchers tend to have a lower ERA when you have a low DIS% vs. a high DOM% (obviously if you combine both, you have a much better chance of having an elite pitcher). But I think when the DOM% is high enough, you win more by choosing a high DOM% over a low DIS%, as there are more high quality games pitched overall.

I wholeheartedly recommend buying Baseball Forecaster and learning more about their methods of analyzing baseball. It has been greatly illuminating for me, and if you want to get a taste for it without paying full price, they used to sell their old editions of their annuals on their website for half price or less (plus shipping); but that was before he sold the company off, and I haven't checked recently.

Giants Starters' PQS for 2016 Season

Madison Bumgarner- (75% DOM, 0% DIS; 21:0/28): 2, 5, 2, 5, 5/5, 5, 4, 5, 5, 5/5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 2/5, 5, 3, 5, 5/2, 5, 5, 3, 3, 5/

Matt Cain- (27% DOM, 40% DIS; 4:6/15): 4, 0, 0, 3, 3/0, 5, 5, 5, X//0, 2, 3/3, 0, 0/

Johnny Cueto - (63% DOM, 7% DIS; 17:2/27): 4, 4, 5, 3, 5/3, 4, 4, 5, 4, 5/3, 5, 5, 5, 2/4, 5, 1, 5, 2/4, 2, 3, 3, 5, 0/

Jake Peavy - (48% DOM, 29% DIS; 10:6/21): 3, 0, 2, 4, 0/3, 3, 5, 0, 4, 4/4, 4, 5, 4, 0/5, 0, 4, 3, 0//

Jeff Samardzija - (67% DOM, 19% DIS; 14:4/21): 3, 4, 3, 4, 4/5, 4, 4, 5, 5, 3/1, 0, 4, 0, 2/3, 5, 2, 1, 2/4, 2, 5, 5, 5/

Albert Suarez - (43% DOM, 29% DIS; 3:2/7): //4, 3, 0, 4, 3/5/0/

Matt Moore - (83% DOM, 0% DIS; 5:0/6): ////4, 4, 4, 3, 5, 4/

X - Cain had a disaster start, but was dealing when hamstring went out, not counting in PQS stats

Giants Season overall - 58% DOM, 15% DIS out of 104 games counted (60:16/104)
Giants Month of April - 48% DOM, 16% DIS out of 25 games counted (12:4/25)
Giants Month of May - 79% DOM, 7% DIS out of 28 games counted (22:2/28)
Giants Month of June - 56% DOM, 19% DIS out of 27 games counted (15:5/27)
Giants Month of July  - 46% DOM, 21% DIS out of 24 games counted (11:5/24)
Giants Month of August  - 52% DOM, 14% DIS out of 27 games counted (14:4/27)

August continued the slide in the rotation that had started in June, with our two horses, Bumgarner and Cueto faltering, and without the addition of Moore providing a huge boost, it would have been a pretty bad month, worse than July, and probably worse in my tracking of these stats.

Moore led the way with 5 DOM starts, followed by Samardzija with 4 DOM. Bumgarner only had 3 DOM, Cueto only 2 DOM. Cain and Suarez both had 0 DOM (to be fair, Suarez only had one start, Cain three).

Samardzija continued to turn things around some, at least. Instead of the 3 DIS starts he had in June, he only had the one in July and zero in August, plus boosting his DOM to 4 in the month.

Cain led the staff with 2 DIS starts, and Cueto and Suaraez also had 1 DIS start each. Everyone else had 0.

The stories of the month were Bumgarner, Cueto, Moore, Shark, Cain.

Bumgarner because he sputtered some. Most SP would love to have a 50% DOM month with 0% DIS, but he got BABIPed some and ended up with a 4.14 ERA. With a 9.0 K/9 and 2.85 K/BB, he did well in his peripherals, so he should be good to go, but still, in terms of the standards he has set, this was a poor month for him, as we needed someone to get us out of the post-All-Star funk, and he didn't deliver.

Cueto because he continued to sputter. It appears that he has started his second half downward trend that I had posted on previously, based on this and continuation of this into August. He at least turned it around some by the end of the month, and continued it into September with a string of 3 DOM starts in 4 starts. Still, he had a 4.38 ERA for the month. But a 7.8 K/9 and 4.00 K/BB shows that his peripherals are doing OK.

Moore helped save the month for the Giants starting staff, coming in with 5 DOM starts out of 6. Unfortunately, his wildness early - most likely due to nerves of the trade and wanting to impress his new boss and teammates - cost him with a LOT of walks. Still, 5 DOM starts led to his sterling 3.16 ERA, so it didn't cost him that much, only resulting in his poor 1.71 K/BB, but he had a great 8.8 K/9, and he was only one out away from a no-hitter in one of his starts.

The Shark continued to improve and, not only that, reached the heights of where he was at the beginning of the season. Per an article during the month, he credited it to him returning to using a curveball again. Incredibly, when he moved from the bullpen to the starting rotation, unlike other pitchers who would add a pitch to his repertoire, he actually dropped the curve from his. The Giants had him add it back into the mix. He would have led the staff in DOM starts if not that Moore had more, but did lead the staff with a 2.76 ERA. However, he only had a 7.2 K/9 and 2.60 K/BB.

Cain could not find his bearings in the minors, after getting DLed, and continued to struggle to find his form in the majors. It was not his stuff, he had a 9.9 K/9, but he was very wild, leading to only a 2.14 K/BB in spite of that high K/9, leading to a very bad 7.23 ERA. Then he got DLed again, but this time, upon his return, he ended up in the bullpen instead. Many were down on the Cainer, but he unfortunately needed spring training to get back his throwing form, and he was still searching when he got placed in the bullpen. I think he should be fine with a full winter's rest and 2017 spring training to get in shape again (barring another injury, natch). It could be his last season, as it's the last season on his contract, though there is a buyout and it is large enough that the Giants could decide to keep him around longer. It depends on a number of factors: 1) of course, how he does in 2017; 2), how Cueto does and whether he opts out of his contract, and if the Giants then re-sign him or not; 3) how our SP prospects do. With Bickford traded, Beede is the most likely to ascend in 2018, but Blackburn, Andrew Suarez, and perhaps Blach, could also pressure to get a SP spot. At least the Giants got Bumgarner, Samardzija, and Moore signed (well, I think Bumgarner will have the team pick up his option in 2018, and perhaps instead sign some sort of long term deal, in place of it).

August 2016 Comments

I will keep it shorter, since September is almost half over as it is. Work has been very busy this summer, on top of everything else, so I've been putting in even more overtime. Plus, I'm not worried, like I was not worried in 2014, as while the Giants have been doing up and down, I know that the Giants were not going to keep on winning so much and was glad they were putting wins in the bank. I didn't expect such a huge collapse, especially when there were not that many injuries this summer, but with injuries setting back Panik, Pagan, and Pence, and Span's and Belt's hot and cold streaks, it was enough along with the SP overall struggles for the team to hit bottom.

It did not help that our two co-aces, Bumgarner and Cueto had mediocre months, Cuetio in particular, as Bumgarner was affected by bad BABIP hurting him. You can't expect good results when your two top guys get a 4.2+ ERA together, the Giants went 3-3 with Bumgarner and 2-4 with Cueto.

But the offense hurt chances by not winning games when Samardzija and Moore were pitching. The Shark gave up 3 ER or less in 4 of 5 starts and the Giants went 2-3 with him, losing 4-3 and 2-0. With Moore, the team was 3-3, losing a game 2-0, else they would have been 4-2 with him starting.

Still, the offense averaged 4.44 runs per game, so it was more the pitching that cost the Giants in August, that's more than enough to win a lot of games, not go 11-16. Per Pythagorean, they should have been more like 14-13 or even 15-12, so they didn't win as much as they should have. Just winning those games for Shark and Moore would have turned the month to 14-13, still in the NL West title race instead of games behind now. Plus we got nothing from our fifth starters, to go with the poor co-ace production, for most of the month, only turning things around late in the month.

While the starting rotation appears to be heading into 2010 shape, with at least 3-4 of them dealing in each rotation turn (though we don't have a Zito-type holding up the end, surprising how useful he really was, unlike what a lot of naysayers were saying, neither Cain nor Suarez have delivered anything from the #5 spot so far), the bullpen has been a source of frustration due to a number of blown saves.

Bullpen Transition

While I appreciate the angst about the screw ups, that's part and parcel of this transitional year for the bullpen, that started in ernest with Affeldt's retirement, but really started during last season with Affeldt's struggles and the bullpen's DL stints during that season. We had Strickland, Osich, Broadway, Hall, and Guerrin make their auditions to hold a spot in the bullpen last season, and that process continued this season. And, needless to say, when we got young prospects up here, you are going to have struggles now and again, as they are not proven, like Affeldt, Lopez, and Ramirez was when we acquired them, or BWills by the 2010 season. And perhaps we were spoiled by how quick Romo and Casilla came in and dominated, from the get go.

It should be getting better next season. It is getting pretty close to a new Core Four, especially with the remaining Core Four contracts ending after this season, with Romo, Casilla, and Lopez ending. Right now, we got Kontos, Strickland, Smith, Law, Osich, Guerrin pretty much locked in for next season, the only questions being Law's health and Osich's health/performance. Osich's hiccup this season is probably what precipitated the Smith trade, though that hole really opened up last season with Affeldt's poor season.

So the question then becomes, who, if any, of the Core Four gets resigned? I expect Lopez to be gone. He hasn't been effective this season against LHP, which could be due to SSS, even more so for a Loogy, but he's old too. He wants to pitch next season, so I assume he's moving on. Romo could be signed, but he got $9M this season, and if he wants that again, he's gone too. Plus together, that's $14M saved off the budget, probably gets us back under the penalty threshold for the budget. Casilla is still throwing heat, so if he's OK with what he's been getting, we will probably sign him to a 2 year, $12M deal again, else I think he'll be gone.

So who gets that last spot? Casilla most probably, but I'm not aware of who is a free agent this season, so perhaps they kick a tire here and there. I'm hopeful that if Lincecum is OK with a minor league deal and with being a reliever, that he might return here, but I just don't really see him coming back to the Giants, given the lack of space for another reliever plus the number of good arms in the minors, like Okert and others. I think he will seek out Seattle first. But I expect him to return here at some point, the Giants seem to bring back vets frequently enough that it seems probable.

Will Smith Has Done Well Overall

Speaking of the bullpen, how about Will Smith? Some might look at his stats with us and see a 4.50 ERA reliever and get mad about losing all those players for him. Take away his first appearance, though, when he admitted to nerves, and you got a 3.09 ERA reliever in 17 appearances, 11.2 IP, 9 hits, 8 walks, 16 K's, 2.00 K/BB, 12.3 K/9 14 scoreless appearances, unscored upon in his last 10 appearances. That's what we got him for, for the most part, except for all the walks.

I'm still excited to have him in our bullpen, still OK with the trade (when viewed in context of what we gave up to get Smith, Moore, Nunez; still weird to me that Bickford was in this trade and not the Moore trade). I'm only frustrated that he's clearly an Affeldt type reliever who handles both RHH as well as LHH, but Bochy has used him more as a Loogy so far. Might even have even better stats with us had Bochy done that, as he's been better against RHH this year than LHH. Hopefully he will be used in a greater role if we get into the playoffs, which, at the moment, we got a wild card spot.

Moore is More, More or Less

Speaking of trades, how about Moore? The worry when we got him was that we gave up a lot for him if he pitches like he has mostly pitched since he returned from TJS, but is a bargain if he can return to how he pitched in his one great season. He had a 3.16 ERA in August, striking out a lot, and, overall, if not for the blip in Colorado, which does that to even the best pitchers, he would have a much better ERA with us than his 4.05 ERA with us suggests. His ERA hides the fact that he has pitched well or better in 6 of his 8 starts for us, with only two starts with more than 3 ER, and 6 DOM starts out of 8. So far, he has been far worth the gamble, he was basically our best starter in August, and we would have been even further in the hole in the division race had we had Peavy pitching instead of Moore.

Nunez Good Defense at 3B

Lastly, the Nunez trade. I've been curious how he would do defensively for us. Because he has been mostly horrible as a fielder for the Twins, except for a brief stint in LF before (by both DRS and UZR). We always hear about how our coaches work with guys and how their analytics team provide info on how to position for hitters, but it is one thing to hear about it, another for it to show up in the stats. Not that Duffy was horrible at third, but he was only OK defensively at SS by reputation, and he was a great defensive 3B for us. And, really, Pablo before him, he had his really good moments, especially when he was fit enough and not over weight.

And so far, Nunez's been pretty good defensively, per Baseball-Reference.com, 2 DRS so far, which works out to 8 DRS over a full season, or nearly a win added. SSS, which really affects fielders, but a good start, you gotta start somewhere. Plus, he has had good stretches there before, in 2013 and 2015, so it is not totally usual for him, he has done well defensively at 3B previously. Perhaps getting to stay at one position will help him gain the repetition that enhances his defense. Plus, it can't hurt that Crawford is next to him, Brandon can probably get to balls Nunez misses, and still get the out.

And perhaps his poor play previously hid how good he could be. Per UZR, he's been roughly average over the past three seasons, across all the positions he has played, if you look at his defensive WAR contributions, -0.7 over the past three seasons, or average of -0.233 per season. That is roughly a loss of 2 runs per season. Part of that is that most of his OF play has occurred in the past three seasons, though nothing this season. And he actually did very well for the Twins at SS per UZR in 2015, but he was just horrible before. So he looks like he can be decent defensively in the infield and outfield, per the most recent stats.

And I can see him being used in a utility role next season, much as he was with the Yankees and Twins before. The Giants recognize the value of rest and been looking for a super-utility guy to handle that, plus be a good replacement should the usual injuries crop up across the lineup. Particularly since he can be a good leadoff guy, with speed and OBP, plus be speed off the bench, as well as provide some decent double-digit power as well.

So who starts at 3B then? While I think that's his role, I see the position being open for competition next season, between Nunez and Kelby Tomlinson, with Adrianza also getting a good chance as well, with the caveat about his health, and perhaps Green and Pena if they are still around. They could always sign a free agent, take a gamble on a player with a good history, but poor 2016. But I would not bet against Christian Arroyo being a dark horse competitor who could win the position.

Arroyo had a poor 2016 season overall, per his batting line of .274/.316/.373/.689, but his very poor hitting at home (which is a poor hitter's park) is causing people to overlook his .315/.348/.438/.786 batting line on the road, with only 38 strikeouts in 260 AB. He was not getting fooled as an under-aged hitter there, it is a sign of a good prospect to make AA by age 22, and he is only 21, more than holding his own there on the road, where the average hitter hit .259/.328/.389/.717 in the league and the average pitcher's age is 24.5 YO.

I would also add that Nunez could also be in competition to start in LF as well. He has been very good defensively there so far, and Pagan will most likely not be re-signed. I expect the Giants to let there be a competition there, between Nunez, Parker, and Williamson. Plus Slater, Cole, and Duggar did well in AA, so they will probably get a look too, and Hernandez, assuming he's still around, I see him being a replacement for Blanco next season, as Gregor's contract is up as well, and he will probably get more than the Giants will offer, from another team. Another transition we will have to go through, as the players who helped us win in 2010, 2012, and 2014 move on.

Other than those, we are set elsewhere in the starting lineup: Posey, Belt, Panik, Crawford, Span, Pence.

Bench Shuffle

While our bench could be much different, depending on what the Giants decide. Posey was severely overused this season, part of it seems to be that Belt was healthy and playing, instead of DLing and giving Posey a lot of time at 1B, and the other part was that Brown was not that great with the pitchers. Part of that was that he got a lot of starts with Cain, Peavy, and Suarez, the worse starters in our rotation this season. But Cueto and Moore did not do that well with Brown starting either.

As noted, Blanco could be gone, and Parker or Williamson could win the starting LF role. And Adrianza could finally be cut loose if the Giant tired of his brittle frailness, he's been very Fragile. Nunez could start but he could just as easily be a super-utility player. Tomlinson could also be on the bench as well, but with one last option, he could end up in AAA once again. And then there is Gillaspie, Green, and Pena as possible bench players as well.

As a sign that it might just be the Giants that help guys be good fielders, Gillaspie has been horrible on defense per DRS, he has never had one season at any position with a positive DRS, and only 3 with 0 DRS, but covering a total of 10.0 IP, so nothing really at all, but this season, he is very positive for both 1B and 3B with good amount of playing time at both. His OPS would even be a high for him this season, if he can keep it up, for any season with at least 180 PA. That with some power and good batting eye, as he don't strike out that much (oddly, though, he has a very low BABIP, even though he hits hard enough for a good ISO; get his BABIP up 20-30 points and he would be a very productive bench player), leads to a relatively productive bench player for the Giants. So he might stay around for another season on the bench, assuming he is not a free agent after the season, he still has two more arbitration years, so we got him if we want him. obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-39831807237562783732016-08-16T12:43:00.000-07:002016-08-16T12:43:01.957-07:002016 Giants: July PQSThis post has the Giants Pure Quality Start scores for the month of July 2016, PQS as defined in Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster annual book and they published the details here (unfortunately, they removed the article; this link gets you at least to the PQS definition, read down to middle for details). I wrote on this first in 2006 (wow, 11th year of this! 10th anniversary!) and have compiled their stats on a regular basis, so I'm continuing it this season for continuity and historical comparison (there is the "PQS" label that you can click to see the old posts on this). Regular readers can skip to the next section.

This is the Quality Start with a sabermetric DIPS twist, and it gets really easy to calculate once you get used to it. I don't think it's the end all or be all, but then nothing really is that. It is, as I like to say, another piece of the puzzle. A dominating start is scored a 4 or 5 and a disaster start is scored a 0 or 1. DOM% is the percentage of starts that are dominating, DIS% is the percentage of starts that are disasters (any start under 5.0 IP is automatically a 0, or disaster).

What's Good and What's Not

From my observations, a DOM at or above the 40% mark is indicative of good pitching; above 50% is great; above 70% is elite. A low DIS is also indicative of good pitching, just look at the table in the link above showing DOM% and DIS% on the axes.

Basically, you want to see a pitcher's DOM% to be over 40% and ideally over 50%, and you want their DIS to be under 20% and ideally under 10%. For example, Johan Santana has a 76% DOM and 3% DIS in 2006 (2.77 ERA), whereas Orlando Hernandez had a 52% DOM and 28% DIS (4.66 ERA), and Adam Eaton had a 31% DOM and 31% DIS (5.12 ERA). Read the link (unfortunately, they removed the article and thus the table is no longer available, sorry), as I noted, there's a nice chart there showing the combination of high DOM% and low DIS%, and there you can see particularly how a low DIS% is so important to a low ERA.

If you had to chose a high DOM% or a low DIS%, pitchers tend to have a lower ERA when you have a low DIS% vs. a high DOM% (obviously if you combine both, you have a much better chance of having an elite pitcher). But I think when the DOM% is high enough, you win more by choosing a high DOM% over a low DIS%, as there are more high quality games pitched overall.

I wholeheartedly recommend buying Baseball Forecaster and learning more about their methods of analyzing baseball. It has been greatly illuminating for me, and if you want to get a taste for it without paying full price, they used to sell their old editions of their annuals on their website for half price or less (plus shipping); but that was before he sold the company off, and I haven't checked recently.

Giants Starters' PQS for 2016 Season

Madison Bumgarner- (82% DOM, 0% DIS; 18:0/22): 2, 5, 2, 5, 5/5, 5, 4, 5, 5, 5/5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 2/5, 5, 3, 5, 5/

Matt Cain- (33% DOM, 33% DIS; 4:4/12): 4, 0, 0, 3, 3/0, 5, 5, 5, X//0, 2, 3/

Johnny Cueto - (71% DOM, 5% DIS; 15:0/21): 4, 4, 5, 3, 5/3, 4, 4, 5, 4, 5/3, 5, 5, 5, 2/4, 5, 1, 5, 2/

Chris Heston - (0% DOM, 0% DIS; 0:0/0): //

Jake Peavy - (48% DOM, 29% DIS; 10:6/21): 3, 0, 2, 4, 0/3, 3, 5, 0, 4, 4/4, 4, 5, 4, 0/5, 0, 4, 3, 0/

Jeff Samardzija - (48% DOM, 19% DIS; 10:4/21): 3, 4, 3, 4, 4/5, 4, 4, 5, 5, 3/1. 0, 4, 0, 2/3, 5, 2, 1, 2/

Albert Suarez - (50% DOM, 17% DIS; 3:1/6): //4, 3, 0, 4, 3/5/

X - Cain had a disaster start, but was dealing when hamstring went out, not counting in PQS stats

Giants Season overall - 58% DOM, 15% DIS out of 104 games counted (60:16/104)
Giants Month of April - 48% DOM, 16% DIS out of 25 games counted (12:4/25)
Giants Month of May - 79% DOM, 7% DIS out of 28 games counted (22:2/28)
Giants Month of June - 56% DOM, 19% DIS out of 27 games counted (15:5/27)
Giants Month of July  - 46% DOM, 21% DIS out of 24 games counted (11:5/24)

July continued the slide in the rotation that happened in June, and returned the rotation to the bad old days of April. Only Bumgarner was able to hold steady his PQS, the rest faultered in some ways.

Bumgarner lead the way in DOM, nailing 4 DOM starts, with Cueto just behind with 3 DOM starts. Peavy had 2 DOM starts, Samardzija and Suarez only had 1 DOM start (though Suarez only had that one start), and Cain had 0 DOM starts.

Samardzija, however, did turn things around some, at least. Instead of the 3 DIS starts he had in June, he only had the one in July. Peavy led the staff with 2 DIS starts, and Cueto and Cain also had 1 DIS start.

The stories of the month were Cueto, Shark, Peavy, Cain, and Suarez.

Cueto because he continued to sputter some. It appears that he has started his second half downward trend that I had posted on previously, based on this and continuation of this into August: he has a 4.84 ERA in the 6 starts since the ASG (though his K/9 and K/BB are great) plus 6 HR given up, and in the 9 starts since his slide began at the end of June, 4.71 ERA with 9 HR given up. The Giants were at least still 3-2 in his starts, but that's because of the offense. Not going to win a lot of games with that ERA.

The Shark continued to do poorly as well, but at least wasn't as bad as he was in June. He stabilized significantly, greatly reducing the number of DIS starts from 3 to 1, but was unable to deliver multiple DOM starts, as we need from the #3 spot. Unfortunately, the offense sputtered in July, perhaps under the pressure of the starting pitching overall collapse, and the Giants only went 1-4 with Samardzija in July, a reversion to mean vs. what he did in June, when he actually pitched worse, but the Giants won more games.

Peavy was unable to continue his upward swing that began in May. He had pulled off a second half surge of DOM starts for us in previous seasons, but was unable to this time, and his decline, leading to 2 DIS starts in his last 4 starts, ended his time in the rotation, with the Giants trading for Matt Moore, a much younger pitcher with the potential to be a good starter for us for years. He's now in the bullpen, taking Suarez's long relief role.

Cain returned to the rotation, in place of Suarez, after the ASB. He clearly wasn't ready in his first start, but had a very classic Cain-like start in his last July start: no hits, 4 walks, 5 K's in 5 IP. His key going forward is building on that and getting back to the form he had before he went on the DL, when he had 3 straight DOM starts, something he hasn't done consistently since the season he had the Perfecto. So far in August, he has not delivered a DOM start, but did well to strike out a lot of batters in his last start. The rotation can survive a couple of pitchers scuffling, but not 3 or 4, so he needs to get back to his better performances, and fast.

Suarez did great taking over for Cain. He has been as effective as Petit was in being a spot starter, compiling three DOM and only one DIS in six starts, which is what good pitchers do. Unfortunately, the team only went 3-3 in his starts for Cain. Due to the Moore trade and Peavy demotion, in spite of his good work, Suarez got sent down to AAA. Not that I'm complaining, that's baseball sometimes, good performers get sent down because there's no space in the majors. And I think Peavy has contributed enough, particularly in 2014, to earn the right to see how he can do as a reliever for us, instead of being unceremoniously DFAed, as some fans had hoped, particularly since, with rest, he could become like he was before, a shutdown pitcher, but only over 2-3 innings instead of 5-6 innings.

July 2016 Comments

I will keep it shorter, since August is half over as it is. Sorry everyone, but my heart is just not as in it as in previous seasons. I think the death of my sister has hit me harder than I have realized. But I want to at least keep these going, so there is that.

The team went into a free-fall after the ASB, with the starting rotation sputtering and the starting lineup sputtering. After starting the month 7-2, the Giants ended it 4-11. Their 6.5 game lead at the break dissipated, with the Dodgers catching us for one day, in August. The scary part is that they are doing it with Kershaw on the DL, and potentially out for the season.

It was quite day and night in July:

Before the ASB: in 9 games, the Giants averaged 4.56 RS per game, while averaging only 3.00 RA per game, a great formula for winning a lot of games.

After the ASB: in 15 games, the Giants averaged only 3.27 RS per game, while averaging 4.53 RA per game, a great formula for losing a lot of games. The poor offense of May returned, heck it was even worse, along with the poor pitching of April, which resulted in the poorest stretch of playing baseball all season long.
No need to go into details for July, as it was bifurcated into two parts, one where the Giants did really well, and one where the Giants did really poorly. There was nothing to really point out, besides Bumgarner, who while doing very well overall, as usual, the Giants were still only 1-4 because they weren't scoring much for him.

They have stabilized some in August, helped greatly by the addition of Moore coupled with the subtraction of Peavy in the starting rotation. And the offense has improved a lot, though it is still not good enough yet to win the division with the pitching we got.

Overall, our bullpen continues to have it's growing pains, which was to be expected when you are giving young prospects, who are still unproven, a lot of opportunities. Especially with the rotating door of injuries pushing more experienced pitchers out, and less experienced pitchers in. Though Law in his first season is becoming the revelation that we were hoping he would be a few seasons ago before he went down needing TJS. And Will Smith, who we traded for, should be a boost once he settles down some, and rack up a long string of scoreless appearances, as Law has done (he is up to 19 appearances now).

It does not help that our remaining Core Four relievers - Lopez, Romo, Casilla - has not been as locked down as they were in the past. Lopez has not been himself, it is looking like this might be his last season with the Giants, though he said earlier in the season that he intends to continue pitching at least another season. Romo dealt with his injury, and returned to perform great in July, but has been struggling more than usual in August.

And Casilla already has 4 losses, the most he's had in any season since Wilson was our closer, the highest ERA he has had, by far, as a Giant, and 6 blown saves, which is already tied for his career high for any season where he was a primary closer. So by a number of measures, Casilla looks like he's having a down season.

Part of the reason, it seemed, though, is that he has been placed in a lot more leveraged situations than he had been in the past, resulting in a much higher aLI of 2.40 (previous high was 1.87 last season) and a 31:5 HiLev/LoLev ratio, vs. 29:21 ratio last season, and vs. his previous high point in 2012 of 37:14. That is a function of the Giants offense being so up and down this season, keeping games closer than in other seasons, and leaving Casilla in situations he has not faced as much in prior seasons. One could think that more high leverage should result in poorer results overall.

I then decided to dig into his appearances this season, and, oddly enough, he actually has a 2.28 ERA in his high leveraged starts (I counted the ones 2.00 and higher). He has a 3.75 in 13 low leverage starts (where I counted all the ones at 1.00 and lower). It was the medium ones that has done him in this season, only 8 appearances, 6.43 ERA, where he blew two saves, and lost one game.

So it wasn't high leverage games that caused his stats to decline, but a pair of 3 ER appearances that kills his stats in leverage type. That one loss in the medium was the Orioles loss on Sunday, before that, he had a 3.00 ERA. And even among the low leverage, in those 13 starts, he gave up runs in only 3 appearances, including a 3 ER game. Taking out these two appearances would probably drop his ERA back down to his normal range, suggesting that his struggles this season has been more of an anomaly than a decline. Particularly since his K/9 is up, his BB/9 is down, and both leads to his K/BB being the best it ever was. obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-16872134098923026662016-08-03T12:56:00.000-07:002016-08-04T14:12:00.407-07:00Your 2016 Giants: Trade Deadline Deals: Goodbye Duffman!(Apologies for the delay, been battling headache every afternoon since last week; I wrote most of this before it was announced that Peavy was moved to the bullpen, and finished up the Moore trade discussion today)

Wow, go on a short break and things just fall apart: the Giants have been stumbling greatly since the ASB. I was going to write on the decline of both Cueto and Samardzija as the season progressed, but given the trades made, to address this great decline overall for the team, I felt that took precedence.

The trades made:

Eduardo Nunez, utility infielder for the Twins, was acquired for LHP Aldaberto Mejia

Will Smith, LHP reliever for the Brewers, was acquired for RHP Phil Bickford and C Andrew Susac

Matt Moore, LHP starter for the Rays, was acquired for 3B Matt Duffy (Duffman!), SS Lucius Fox (Batman!), and RHP Michael Santos

The Giants control Nunez until 2017 (will probably sign him to a 2-3 year deal after the season, I would bet, something like the one Blanco signed before), and Smith and Moore to 2019. Even better, Moore is signed to an extension deal giving the Giants team options of $7M, $9M, and $10M, so he's a relatively cheap SP option for us, and rounds out our rotation.

ogc thoughts

A series of stunning trades made it imperative for me to write on this although I have had a splitting headache in the afternoon for days now. I'm going to take a few different perspectives on the trades, both individually and on the whole.

Big Picture

The big picture is that the Giants boosted three key areas with these moves:

Lead-off: you know Nunez, the new starting 3B (but he could be moved to LF, or around the diamond as a super-utility guy, in 2017), will get the leadoff spot sooner or later, he's been hitting well, as well as stealing a lot more bases than either Span (who was acquired to do this) or Pagan (who used to do this). Bochy does not tolerate non-performance now that we are entering the stretch run, and once Nunez earns Bochy's trust, he'll be up there. And he fits the mode of players the Giants acquire in recent years: makes good contact, which keeps their BA pretty high, plus they can take walks, leading to high OBP.

LH relief: I love Osich, but he's been up and down, plus now on the DL once again. The Giants have missed Affeldt's steady goodness that they had had since 2009, plus Lopez has had a down year. They had to get a LH reliever to fill the void. Will Smith does that in spades, in a way that modern bullpens are made today: in the three seasons where he has been established as a reliever, he has a 11.9 K/9 and 3.11 K/BB, great numbers all around.

Starting Pitching: It has not been made clear yet whose spot Moore takes over (wrote this before announcement), but I'm pretty sure it is Peavy, who has not really pitched well since his June 24th start, 6.14 ERA in 6 starts. Historically, he would stumble in the early part of the season, then become a quality start (per PQS) machine for most of the second half. Whether it be the distraction of the theft of some $30-40M from his investments by a crooked investment advisor, or old age, or both, the Giants couldn't sit on that while Cueto (4.26 ERA in last 6 starts; I warned of over working him at start of season), Samardzija (6.29 ERA in last 11 starts; 7.09 ERA in last 7 starts), and Cain (who just got back off DL, had two poor starts before a Cain-esque start) also have their ups and downs. I assume Peavy becomes the new long reliever, but we'll see. Plus, given his way of throwing, being able to give his all in 1 IP vs. 5-6 IP might give him enough extra gas to make him a very effective reliever, as he's already good at keeping his walks down.

In addition, all three are under 30, and the Giants control the pitchers to 2019, and Nunez to 2017, but probably they will sign him to a 2-3 year deal after this season, and use him as a rover around the diamond eventually.

To get these players, we gave up only one major leaguer, Matt Duffy, who has been having a sophomore slump type of year, but I had noticed that he had a very high BABIP last season (.336), which players with speed and/or hard contact can keep aloft, but the question was whether he was enough of either. So far this year, not so much. I feel sad as a fan, but part of me feels that the Giants sold high on him.

We also gave up Andrew Susac, who lost his backup MLB job both to injury and poor performance. I felt bad for him because he grew up a Giants fan, but now he gets the chance to see whether he can be an MLB starting C for the Brew Crew. And no one can ever take away his World Series ring he won in 2014, nor his memories of it (Frandsen just missed out because he sulked his way off the team).

We also lost three pretty good prospects in Bickford, Fox, and Mejia. While I like the three (OK, Mejia I've never been that warm to), I didn't view any of them to be sure things in the majors, at this moment. While surprising that Bickford was not the key future piece in the Duffy trade, looking at the trades overall, only Bickford appears to be one to put a pit into Giants fans' stomachs, but given the commentary that Bickford is viewed by many as a future reliever, that could ease much of that pain. And again, overall, to get a good MLB middle rotation starter at a great cost-controlled contract for 3+ years, you would expect to give up someone like Bickford.

That he wasn't part of that particular trade, isn't germane in the big picture, in my view. I would shuffle the trades in this way to make more sense: Nunez for Susac; Smith for Fox and Mejia; Moore for Duffy, Bickford, Santos. This don't make as much sense for the Brewers, but just in terms of value given up for value received, from the Giants fans' viewpoint, these, I think, were better matches, in terms of making sense.

I like the trades, I like the upgrades. As Kuiper said about the Duffy trade, to get something good, you need to give something good. I like Duffy and Susac, plus the prospects, but I think Nunez gives us a leadoff hitter as well as defensive flexibility in that he can play SS, 2B, 3B, and I read LF somewhere as well, Moore upgrades the rotation for the next 3+ years, and Smith replaces what we've lost in handling lefties.

Individual Trades

Nunez for Mejia: I've never liked Mejia much as a prospect, though I was warming up to him this season because his K/9 went up some, leading to pretty good K/BB ratios. But if you look over his seasonal stats, his high point in IP is 108 back in 2014, though he's about to pass that up this season. For one reason or another, he has never been able to stay in uniform long enough to get his IP high enough to become a major league starter. Given how cautious most teams are, he won't get up past 180 IP for another 2-3 seasons (assuming he has another stumble in health or stupidity with drugs along the way). So the best we could hope from him near-term is relief.

For that, we got Nunez, who has been a good contact hitter, learning his way in the majors, and has speed, and some pretty good power as well. He's going to be great anywhere we play him, at least offensively. Defensively, he's horrible in the infield, but he's been average in the OF (probably because of his speed). So he could be our LF next season, and be a pretty good player for us, who could play infield for us, in a pinch, as needed. Or he could finally be the super-utility guy the Giants have been looking for (though his very poor infield defense hurts his value in this usage).

Great trade, as well as Mejia has done this season, he still looks, at best, to be a back of rotation starter by most estimations, and still not for a number of years yet, and for that, we got someone who not only could be our lead-off hitter for the next few years, but can play a number of positions, though ideally he's our LF, from a defensive value viewpoint, in 2017 and beyond. That would mean that Mac and Jarrett will be our bench OF next year as well, and perhaps the Giants have made that call already, will be interesting to see what happens.

Smith for Susac and Bickford: Smith has beautiful stats for a reliever. Last 3 seasons, 3.28 ERA, 3.07 FIP, 11.9 K/9, 3.11 K/BB, his main problem is he walks too many, at 3.8 BB/9, but a high K/9 leads to a high K/BB, so that is totally tolerable. He's been OK against RHH, good against LHH, and really good against RHH the past two seasons, while so-so against LHH, but that could be due to SSS that happens 1) to relievers and 2) facing LHH. As much as I like (love?) Osich, Smith gives us a steady Loogy type we can go to, and the hybrid proto-closer set-up man that Affeldt excelled in. If Osich can figure things out, and more importantly, stay healthy, we could have two of them.

We gave up a lot, but nothing critical. Susac has been injured so much, I'm ready to move on, and wish him all the best getting to start for the Brewers, hopefully some day. Bickford I was surprised by because of how well he's been doing for us in the minors. Given the Giants history of being pretty good at keeping the good pitchers and trading the rest, have to think that this means that the Giants do not think that Bickford will figure out enough pitches to become a starting pitcher in the majors, that he'll be no more than a great reliever, in a couple of years or so. Even if he were able to figure it out and be a starter, he wouldn't reach the majors for at least another two years, if not three, by which time, he'll be still only 24YO.

Fair trade, giving up value now (Susac as starting C) and later (Bickford as good reliever, perhaps starter) to control a very good asset, who I suspect will essentially become our new Affeldt-type of set-up LH reliever who can shut down both RH and LH batters. Anyone who appreciates what Affeldt had done for us from 2009 to 2014 should appreciate this deal.

Moore for Duffy, Fox, Santos: Moore had been a good pitcher for a couple of years, interrupted by his TJS. His stats are not overwhelming, however, given his status, prior to injury, as Ace of the Rays staff. And really, that status was a bit overblown, as his one great year, 2013, was totally driven by his extremely low and unsustainable .263 BABIP that he had that year (career BABIP of .289 suggests that he mostly regresses to the mean as a pitcher).

I think the positives are multi-fold though. One is that even with his poor pitching over the past two seasons, his career ERA+ is still good at 101. I think his 2012 season and 3.81 ERA is representative of his skill set, and I would view most of his struggles since TJS to the adjustment pitchers need to do after TJS. Another is that with a 3.88 ERA in the AL, his ERA should drop into the 3.6's in the NL, and perhaps better since he faced the high offenses in the AL East more often, plus AT&T helps out LHP much more than RHP, all that combined should improve his stats here with the Giants. An oft mentioned benefit is that the Dodgers have not done well at all against LHP, and with Moore being slotted in after Cueto, pushing Samardzija into Peavy's #4 spot, ensures that at least one LHP will face LA in each series we play against them (I believe there are 3 more series left).

Some have mentioned his low ERA recently, but that's with extreme low BABIP (.220-something) that is not sustainable. I think the view should be that we are getting someone who slots in the middle of the rotation well, with the upside that his contract is very cost-controlled for what he can do and now that he's in Righetti and Gardner's hands, what they can do with his skill set, as a lefty with recent 93 MPH stuff and only 27 YO (though still 2 months older than Bumgarner).

This is an indictment, however, of the SP prospects that we currently have in the minors, since Moore takes the opening of one spot that would open up after Peavy's contract ends after this season. The next rotation spot opening would be Cain's and perhaps Cueto's after the 2017 season. It appears that the Giants have determined that there are probably not one prospect SP who would be ready to take a rotation spot for the 2017 season (meaning they don't think Blackburn, Beede, Blach, Mejia, Bickford, or Stratton are near ready yet), and this move punts the decision forward to 2018.

This is also an indictment, in my opinion, of Fox's abilities to make an impact in the majors. He has done horribly so far in Augusta, albeit, it is only his 18 YO season per Baseball-Reference. One respected analyst feels that there are still a lot of positives to Fox as a prospect, and that is probably a large part of the story line selling this deal to Rays fans, getting the $6M (nearly $12M considering the penalty) bonus baby but one rumor notes that the Rays supposedly will throw in money to cover some of his bonus). But the Giants under Sabean has very rarely traded away a prospect who then became a very good player, they have mostly known who to keep and who to trade (their infamous "Do Not Trade" list that Sabean has supposedly been keeping on our prospects). Nobody's perfect, but ultimately, I wouldn't bet against Sabean.

Michael Santos, to me, is a throw-in SP to balance out getting an All-Star ace like Moore. They had to get a replacement of some sort, even if off in the future. He's a nice SP prospect, but he's not a strikeout machine, he's a control pitcher who has been excellent in keeping his BB/9 low (very low this year), and each step up the ladder will be that much harder. That is why he was kept in Augusta this season even though he did OK last season, his K/9 was woefully low, and even this season, not that high, given that he still needs to get through Advanced A, AA, and AAA to reach the majors.

Duffy is the piece that makes losing Moore palatable to the Rays and their fans. He's the value to make up for giving up Moore, mostly, with Fox being the possible shiny golden future for this deal. He will be the starting SS for the Rays when he's back from rehabbing from his injury. That makes him a more valuable trade piece in the Rays eyes then, than getting him as a starting 3B (and, you know, Longoria), although this is just a trial to see how he handles being the starting SS, nothing is set in stone.

The question is whether he's the Duffy of 2015 (and his upper minors performances) or the Duffy of 2016, who has improved in some key ways, but not in the way of overall OPS performance, particularly in terms of power. In any case, he produced a lot of value already this season from his defense at 3B, and defense is a more reliable value producer, so he is the main get for the Rays to replace Moore's expected value. He guarantees some significant value back to the Rays in this deal, and was key to this deal being made.

And on the Giants side, Nunez can handle 3B for the rest of the season, but Arroyo has been doing well enough in the minors, particularly in the last month. Not that Christian is ready to jump to the majors from AA, but the Giants can ham and egg it at 3B until Arroyo is ready: perhaps Adrianza can keep up his nice hitting this season and, more importantly, avoid the DL going forward, and hold the spot warm for Arroyo.

This is a good trade overall. I still believe in Duffy, but he has some question marks, which are still unanswered. Fox is the nice lottery ticket for the Rays that their fans can dream on to make up for losing their ace, but he's all potential right now, hard to squint and see any sure MLB value yet. Santos could be a nice replacement for Moore down the line, in terms of being a back-end starter, but we need a starter now. So the Giants gave up some nice pieces, but nothing critical to us winning in the near-term.

Moreover, Moore clamps down a rotation spot for the next 3+ seasons, along with Bumgarner and Samardzija, with Cain's contract ending after 2017 and Cueto's too if he takes his player option (and hopefully he will, because that would mean that he pitched great for us in the two years we have him), with the upside that if his arm is back to prior goodness (he's only recently back to 93 MPH, which is where he was in 2013, before his TJS in 2014) that Righetti and gang can figure out how to bring out better performances.

This move was pushed up from the coming off-season (since Peavy's contract was due to expire) to now, I believe, because of the struggles of Cueto, Samardzija, Peavy, and Cain. I was surprised to see all the rumors of chasing SP, but now that I dug into the SP stats, it was clear that they needed to do something. Moore is rightfully the #3 in the rotation based on the past couple of months. And, as to who lost their spot, mostly due to contract size, but also because Cain had a nice last start and showing something, Peavy was the odd man out.

Beyond all that, Peavy made the most sense out of the pitchers not named Bumgarner. While Samardzija has the most relieving experience by far, the Giants invested 5 years and $90M in him to be a SP, not part-time reliever. Plus what it would do to his psyche and ego, if he were sent to the bullpen, as well, has to be a consideration. Cueto has been worse, but not horrible like the others. Cain has been just as bad, but had a very Cain-esque start in his last outing and was Cain-esque before going on the DL, too much promise there to put in the bullpen.

Peavy, on the other hand, in addition to being the only starter not signed to a contract for next season, is the oldest in the bunch and age could be finally getting to him. It is not a good sign that after years of great second half finishes, he's struggling mid-season. On top of that, in recent years, he's been mostly good only in the first time or two around the lineup, it is the third time that gets to him often. In fact, this season, they have been getting to him even earlier, in their second AB. Relieving would eliminate the 1.024 OPS he is giving up in second AB's, and leave the great .685 OPS that he's been dealing to batters in their first AB. On top of that, relieving usually gives the pitcher a 1-2 MPH boost, as he don't need to save some for later anymore, which will help him further. For all those reasons, Peavy made the most sense to go into the bullpen.

Overall View

All in all, Evans added three key elements that the Giants were missing for a long while. Seems pretty clear now that the Nunez trade was made to facilitate the Moore trade, as probably the Rays were asking for either Panik or Duffy, and the Giants were not moving Panik, so then it became an issue of how to replace Duffy if he's the one going. Nunez allowed the Giants to pivot and make the Duffy-Moore trade.

Whether that is enough to win the NL West, yet to be seen, as the A's helped out the Dodgers by trading Reddick and Hill to them (but wow, Puig optioned to minors! Another Cuban bites the MLB dust!). Still, very good adds, lets see if they can ignite themselves, from these big trades, and get back their big lead, which has dwindled down almost to nothing.

It was at a severe cost - Duffy and Susac from the sentimental view, Bickford, Mejia, and Fox from the prospect view - but if you believe in Sabean and Gang's ability so far to discern who are the must keeps and who are OK to trade (and I do), these are three good trades, nothing blockbuster, but all added key pieces that we have been missing for a long while, good complementary pieces to our core players of Bumgarner, Posey, Pence, Belt, Crawford, Panik, while not giving up the farm to get them. But it will hurt for a long while to lose Duffman.obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-68931808614459693822016-07-15T18:10:00.000-07:002016-08-15T09:35:50.665-07:002016 Giants: June PQSThis post has the Giants Pure Quality Start scores for the month of June 2016, PQS as defined in Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster annual book and they published the details here (unfortunately, they removed the article; this link gets you at least to the PQS definition, read down to middle for details). I wrote on this first in 2006 (wow, 11th year of this! 10th anniversary!) and have compiled their stats on a regular basis, so I'm continuing it this season for continuity and historical comparison (there is the "PQS" label that you can click to see the old posts on this). Regular readers can skip to the next section.

This is the Quality Start with a sabermetric DIPS twist, and it gets really easy to calculate once you get used to it. I don't think it's the end all or be all, but then nothing really is that. It is, as I like to say, another piece of the puzzle. A dominating start is scored a 4 or 5 and a disaster start is scored a 0 or 1. DOM% is the percentage of starts that are dominating, DIS% is the percentage of starts that are disasters (any start under 5.0 IP is automatically a 0, or disaster).

What's Good and What's Not

From my observations, a DOM at or above the 40% mark is indicative of good pitching; above 50% is great; above 70% is elite. A low DIS is also indicative of good pitching, just look at the table in the link above showing DOM% and DIS% on the axes.

Basically, you want to see a pitcher's DOM% to be over 40% and ideally over 50%, and you want their DIS to be under 20% and ideally under 10%. For example, Johan Santana has a 76% DOM and 3% DIS in 2006 (2.77 ERA), whereas Orlando Hernandez had a 52% DOM and 28% DIS (4.66 ERA), and Adam Eaton had a 31% DOM and 31% DIS (5.12 ERA). Read the link (unfortunately, they removed the article and thus the table is no longer available, sorry), as I noted, there's a nice chart there showing the combination of high DOM% and low DIS%, and there you can see particularly how a low DIS% is so important to a low ERA.

If you had to chose a high DOM% or a low DIS%, pitchers tend to have a lower ERA when you have a low DIS% vs. a high DOM% (obviously if you combine both, you have a much better chance of having an elite pitcher). But I think when the DOM% is high enough, you win more by choosing a high DOM% over a low DIS%, as there are more high quality games pitched overall.

I wholeheartedly recommend buying Baseball Forecaster and learning more about their methods of analyzing baseball. It has been greatly illuminating for me, and if you want to get a taste for it without paying full price, they used to sell their old editions of their annuals on their website for half price or less (plus shipping); but that was before he sold the company off, and I haven't checked recently.

Giants Starters' PQS for 2016 Season

Madison Bumgarner- (82% DOM, 0% DIS; 14:0/17): 2, 5, 2, 5, 5/5, 5, 4, 5, 5, 5/5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 2/

Matt Cain- (44% DOM, 33% DIS; 4:3/9): 4, 0, 0, 3, 3/0, 5, 5, 5, X/

Johnny Cueto - (75% DOM, 0% DIS; 12:0/16): 4, 4, 5, 3, 5/3, 4, 4, 5, 4, 5/3, 5, 5, 5, 2/

Chris Heston - (0% DOM, 0% DIS; 0:0/0): //

Jake Peavy - (50% DOM, 25% DIS; 8:4/16): 3, 0, 2, 4, 0/3, 3, 5, 0, 4, 4/4, 4, 5, 4, 0/

Jeff Samardzija - (56% DOM, 19% DIS; 9:3/16): 3, 4, 3, 4, 4/5, 4, 4, 5, 5, 3/1. 0, 4, 0, 2/

Albert Suarez - (40% DOM, 20% DIS; 2:1/5): //4, 3, 0, 4, 3/

X - Cain had a disaster start, but was dealing when hamstring went out, not counting in PQS stats

Giants Season overall - 61% DOM, 14% DIS out of 80 games counted (49:11/80)
Giants Month of April - 48% DOM, 16% DIS out of 25 games counted (12:4/25)
Giants Month of May - 79% DOM, 7% DIS out of 28 games counted (22:2/28)
Giants Month of June - 56% DOM, 19% DIS out of 27 games counted (15:5/27)

As great as May was, June went back to where we were in April, only other pitchers scuffled. Again, both Bumgarner and Cueto led the way, Bumgarner with 5 DOM starts, Cueto with 3, though Cueto not as much as before, bringing his seasonal DOM down. Peavy also did well, with 4 DOM start, and Suarez did well in his role as back-up starter, with 2 DOM starts in June. Unfortunately, the scuffler was Samardzija, who only had 1 DOM start in June.

And scuffle he did, he had 3 DIS starts out of 5 in June. The only other ones were by Peavy and Suarez, one each. This resulted in the overall 19% DIS, which was very similar to what we had in April when Peavy and Cain were scuffling. And in spite of how well Bumgarner, Cueto and Peavy pitched, Samardzija brought down the staff to merely good status in June.

The stories of the month were Cueto, Shark, Peavy, and Suarez.

Cueto because he had two MID starts, which is what he had in April/May. Could he be starting his second half downward trend that I had posted on previously? We'll see. But as noted my the media, the Giants were 16-2 in his starts (Bumgarner had more team losses just in April, and after a team win streak of 10 straight starts, the team has lost three of his last five, for a total of 13-6 record with Bum in the saddle).

The Shark showed why his seasonal stats could be so up and down. In spite of great pitching from him in April/May (8 DOM in 11 starts, that's premiere ace level stuff, like his 2014 season), he lost it in June, with only one DOM, one MID, and three DIS, though, somehow, the team went 3-2 in his starts, winning two of his DIS starts. Still, the Giants were 11-7 in his starts.

Peavy continued into June his upward swing that started mid-May (though, looking ahead, he faltered, ending the first half with two DIS in three starts), with 4 DOM in 5 starts.After all those early losses, the Giants are 8-3 in his last 11 starts, and the team is now 10-8 in Peavy starts.

Suarez did great taking over for Cain. He has been as effective as Petit was in being a spot starter, compiling two DOM and only one DIS in five starts, which is what good pitchers do. Unfortunately, the team only went 2-3 in his June starts.

June 2016 Comments

I will keep it shorter, since July is basically half over as it is (and I mean it this time). The team continued to win, even though the starting pitchers were not as dominant as they were in May and slightly better than in April. The key was that in April, while there were a number of MID starts, Cain and Peavy just were missing spots in key situations, resulting in more runs than would be expected given the number of DOM/MID starts. So while the pitchers allowed 4.84 runs per game in April, they only gave up 4.04 in June.

Which is not really that good, generally. The reason the team went 17-10 in June was because they scored runs in bunches, averaging 5.37 runs per game in June, which was even more than they did in April, when they had 4.96. And the offense was plenty cold in May, only averaging 3.93 runs per game, but because the pitching and fielding were superlative, allowing only 3.24 runs per game, which was beyond elite, they went 21-8 in May.

The offense soared even though half the lineup was on and off the DL (or had to take extra days off) during June: Pence, Pagan, Blanco, Panik, Crawford, Duffy, Tomlinson, Posey. It helps when four starters are hot - Belt, Pagan, Posey, Crawford - plus one of the replacements, Parker, hit pretty well too (.914 in 67 PA; who would have thought he would be the one to do well in the majors, instead of Brown? I certainly missed it). Other replacements also did well in smaller spurts, but contributors nonetheless: Pena, Williamson, Gillaspie, Green.

Also in spite of Span's poor 2016 so far. Unlike Aoki, he started off semi-slow and has not been as advertised. However, he was actually very good early on with his OBP (more middling for OPS and ISO-P), justifying his leadoff status, but his June was crushingly bad. I would blame his hip injury that he had on May 27, but he was still hitting well in the games after, so the results are not exactly direct. However, pretty soon after that, right on June 1st, he started his decline and basically has been free falling since, for the most part, though he's been OK at least, in his last six games (interrupted by a brief period of rest after another injury). So perhaps it was a cumulative thing where his body finally gave up after a few games of pounding from those baseball games.

And June would have been better if not for so many blown saves. After 2 in April and 3 in May, there were 7 of them in June, surpassing the total for the first two months. Get back 4 of those blown saves in June, and the Giants would have been 21-6 instead (they were 21-8 in May).

This just shows the great potential for this baseball team, something I was writing about in the pre-season. They can beat you with pitching, even if there is not much hitting, as what happened in May. They can beat you with hitting, even if there is not much pitching, as what happened in June. What they can't handle is when their starting pitching is off some, as they were in April, and put the team too far out of it for the offense to pick them up. That's their Achilles' Heel, that and the bullpen in June. Both we will need to watch going forward.obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-24764244023535801372016-06-23T23:41:00.000-07:002016-06-23T23:41:11.054-07:00Your 2016 Giants: Peavy Rough Start and TurnaroundIt was just reported that Jake Peavy had something heavy on his mind throughout spring training and the season: a crooked financial advisor stole around $15M from his investments.
ogc thoughts

I wondered if it might have distracted him much, so I looked at his game by game stats, and it broke down evenly into 7 games each, suggesting that he was bothered in some way:

First 7 starts: Giants 2-5, 8.47 ERA in 34.0 IP, 52 hits, 13 BB, 31 K, 1.067 OPS, .405 BABIP

Next 7 starts: Giants 5-2, 2.82 ERA in 38.1 IP, 30 hits, 9 BB, 28 K, .556 OPS, .264 BABIP

He actually struck out more per IP in his first seven starts where he did very poorly, than he did when he was very good. Perhaps the theft gave him anger and he was overthrowing, much like him in the playoffs. Overall, his ERA is 5.47, and given that, 7-7 Giants record is pretty good then.

His average GameScore would suggest that he didn't do that well, as he averaged 46.7. And that matches up with his 5.47 ERA. Using the GameScore W/L methodology, Peavy was 6-6-2 ties, and that matches up with how the team did.

However, looking at PQS, overall he has a 50% DOM vs. 21% DIS, which is good (DIS could be lower, but that's tolerable, especially for a back of rotation starter). And in his last 7 starts, he had 6 DOM and 1 DIS, which is excellent. What this suggests is that he has pitched better than his results so far.

And empirically that seems right to me. He was having a bad Timmy start to the season. He would be doing well then suddenly it's batting practice and a crooked number is on the scoreboard. And that could come from not having the best focus, say, if you just lost a ton of money to someone you had trusted, and wondering what you are going to do now, and so you throw mostly well, but then lose that key pitch at a key time.

So his numbers would look good in some ways, horrible in others, particularly BABIP and OPS. A 31 K/13 BB ratio is actually OK. And his K/9 was around 8, which is pretty good. But 7 HR in 7 games will hurt when you only pitch on average less than 5 innings per game, as he did in that first seven starts. He only gave up 1 HR in the next 7 starts, and while his K went down, his BB went down even more, for an even better 28 K/9 BB ratio.

That has been his pattern the past number of years: start off the year badly, like it's the end of his career time, then suddenly the light goes on and he's dominating and winning a lot of games for us. If he can continue that 2.85 ERA for the rest of the season, combined with what Bumgarner, Cueto, and Samardzija has been doing, we should be in very good shape. And when Cain returns, if he can find his form like he did before injuring himself, we should be in great shape. obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-30248838809440063472016-06-21T22:52:00.000-07:002016-06-21T22:52:00.873-07:002016 Draft: Giants Make Up For Loss of First Round PickThis is probably the first draft in a decade where I didn't prepare by capturing mock drafts, know exactly when I need to start monitoring the draft, and follow along in some way, whether radio, internet, social media, or some combination. Part of it was the loss of the first round pick for signing Samardzija. Part of it was just a lot of overtime for work. Part of it was feeling pretty good about our crop of prospects. Mostly, I guess it was too much a combination of life intruding on my blog life, just didn't really have time for it this year.

The MLB has their usual list, available here. Tops picks are (links are to the MLB videos):

Round 2: Bryan Reynolds, CF

Round 3: Heath Quinn, RF

Round 4: Matt Krook, LHP

Round 5: Ryan Howard, SS

ogc thoughts

The feelings about the draft is that the Giants had as good a draft as they could had they not lost their first round pick. Out of the BA 500, the Giants ended up picking up 15 of them; if split among the 30 teams, the average would be 16-17. However, the Giants ended up selecting 4 of the top 90 (average 30), so they got quality in the draft, they only lost out at the far end. In fact, the 15 were selected from the Top 411, albeit skewing to the two ends (four of them in the 400's).

This is another sign of a John Barr draft. Reynolds we got with the 59th pick. But he was 31st in the BA 500, and they had him 17th in the March BA 100, and 11th in the BA 100 College in January. MLB had him 23rd in their Top 200. Krook was only 87th in the BA 500 (similarly, 92nd per MLB Top 20; he was the 125th pick overall), but 18th in the March BA 100, and 9th in the BA 100 College in January. That's similar to Crawford, who was a Top 10 in the pre-season but fell a lot because he didn't perform as expected in his junior year. And we basically picked up two of them with Reynolds and Krook.

Thoughts on Krook and Reynolds

Now, I have a few ideas on what Krook did (or didn't do) to fall so much. Part of it was that he is getting over the TJS surgery that he had two years ago, this is his first season back. Mostly, though, he has huge issues with command, which would be a deadly issue (see Crick) if he can never figure it out. I guess it was bad enough that teams just didn't want to deal with it. But he was good enough as a high schooler to be drafted 35th overall (I actually remember his name!) and most pre-season rankings put him high up in talent, so clearly the Giants are hoping to help him back to health and get his command straightened out. The Giants can't fix everyone, but they at least have some experience and success. Excellent pick.

Reynolds also had issues, though he was still highly regarded when the draft happened, as the BA 500 had him 31st, and he made it into a number of the mock drafts which covered the first 34 picks, covering the first round and the supplemental first round picks. The scuttlebutt I got from reading is that his problems with striking out spooked a lot of teams (or really, all the teams other than the Giants) as he fell deep into the second round, meaning most teams passed on him at least twice already before the Giants picked him. But he did things the Giants like a lot (Cape Cod; collegiate national team; led Vanderbilt offensively to World Series), and while he didn't have any standout tool, is good in a number of areas. And if they get him to hit reduce his strikeouts, he'll be a very solid player, which is all we need when we have players like Posey, Belt, Crawford, Panik, and Duffy in the lineup. Another excellent pick.

Slot Thoughts

The Giants bonus pool was just short of $3.495M, and with the 5% max overslot allowed, that is nearly $175K that the Giants can go over. They have already signed Quinn for slot, and Krook for slightly over, at exactly $500K. They signed both Howard and Barengar to much lower deals, most likely negotiated beforehand, and together the Giants saved nearly $146K against the bonus slots that they can now spend on getting Reynolds and other draftees like Brusa, Heyward, Williams. Altogether, the Giants currently have almost $390K to play with in terms of overslot bonuses.

A good chunk will probably go to Reynolds. His pick is slotted for $1.090M. Had he been selected 31st, as per his BA 500 ranking, he would have been slotted for almost $2M. Depending on how important it is to him to get what he might have gotten (or even what he thinks he should have gotten; remember, that is how we got Lincecum, he thought he was worth $1M but the Indians only went to $400K in the draft before us getting him).

Not sure how it will go with signing Reynolds. Thus far, both Quinn and Krook took roughly slot to sign, they did not insist on what might have been (Krook got a little bump up, people just love round significant numbers). The counter to that is that while Mac Williamson was a huge overdraft, he held out for slot, and eventually the Giants yielded (they were probably hoping to save money on him in order to sign one of the 30's round draftees, which seem to be their M.O. under the current draft rules). I'm only pretty sure that the Giants will sign him, because they haven't missed on anyone in the first ten rounds in a long time (can't remember the last one not to sign), just not sure to what. Anyone have any thoughts?

I'm probably going to write up Reynolds and Krook when I get the chance to, but, again, been busy, so it'll be a while. Plus, may as well wait for Reynolds to sign before spending the time writing him up. I might get to Quinn at some point, but I'm leaning towards the two above because both were ranked highly at some point, whereas Quinn has been no higher than 48th in any of the lists I found him in.
obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-73182382234177442252016-06-14T21:45:00.000-07:002016-06-14T21:45:21.035-07:002016 Giants: May PQSThis post has the Giants Pure Quality Start scores for the month of May 2016, PQS as defined in Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster annual book and they published the details here (unfortunately, they removed the article; this link gets you at least to the PQS definition, read down to middle for details). I wrote on this first in 2006 (wow, 11th year of this! 10th anniversary!) and have compiled their stats on a regular basis, so I'm continuing it this season for continuity and historical comparison (there is the "PQS" label that you can click to see the old posts on this). Regular readers can skip to the next section.

This is the Quality Start with a sabermetric DIPS twist, and it gets really easy to calculate once you get used to it. I don't think it's the end all or be all, but then nothing really is that. It is, as I like to say, another piece of the puzzle. A dominating start is scored a 4 or 5 and a disaster start is scored a 0 or 1. DOM% is the percentage of starts that are dominating, DIS% is the percentage of starts that are disasters (any start under 5.0 IP is automatically a 0, or disaster).

What's Good and What's Not

From my observations, a DOM at or above the 40% mark is indicative of good pitching; above 50% is great; above 70% is elite. A low DIS is also indicative of good pitching, just look at the table in the link above showing DOM% and DIS% on the axes.

Basically, you want to see a pitcher's DOM% to be over 40% and ideally over 50%, and you want their DIS to be under 20% and ideally under 10%. For example, Johan Santana has a 76% DOM and 3% DIS in 2006 (2.77 ERA), whereas Orlando Hernandez had a 52% DOM and 28% DIS (4.66 ERA), and Adam Eaton had a 31% DOM and 31% DIS (5.12 ERA). Read the link (unfortunately, they removed the article and thus the table is no longer available, sorry), as I noted, there's a nice chart there showing the combination of high DOM% and low DIS%, and there you can see particularly how a low DIS% is so important to a low ERA.

If you had to chose a high DOM% or a low DIS%, pitchers tend to have a lower ERA when you have a low DIS% vs. a high DOM% (obviously if you combine both, you have a much better chance of having an elite pitcher). But I think when the DOM% is high enough, you win more by choosing a high DOM% over a low DIS%, as there are more high quality games pitched overall.

I wholeheartedly recommend buying Baseball Forecaster and learning more about their methods of analyzing baseball. It has been greatly illuminating for me, and if you want to get a taste for it without paying full price, they used to sell their old editions of their annuals on their website for half price or less (plus shipping); but that was before he sold the company off, and I haven't checked recently.

Giants Starters' PQS for 2016 Season

Madison Bumgarner- (82% DOM, 0% DIS; 9:0/11): 2, 5, 2, 5, 5/5, 5, 4, 5, 5, 5/

Matt Cain- (44% DOM, 33% DIS; 4:3/9): 4, 0, 0, 3, 3/0, 5, 5, 5, X/

Johnny Cueto - (82% DOM, 0% DIS; 9:0/11): 4, 4, 5, 3, 5/3, 4, 4, 5, 4, 5/

Chris Heston - (0% DOM, 0% DIS; 0:0/0): //

Jake Peavy - (36% DOM, 27% DIS; 4:3/11): 3, 0, 2, 4, 0/3, 3, 5, 0, 4, 4/

Jeff Samardzija - (73% DOM, 0% DIS; 8:0/11): 3, 4, 3, 4, 4/5, 4, 4, 5, 5, 3/

Albert Suarez - (0% DOM, 0% DIS; 1:0/2): //

X - Cain had a disaster start, but was dealing when hamstring went out, not counting in PQS stats

Giants Season overall - 64% DOM, 11% DIS out of 53 games counted (34:6/53)
Giants Month of April - 48% DOM, 16% DIS out of 25 games counted (12:4/25)
Giants Month of May - 79% DOM, 7% DIS out of 28 games counted (22:2/28)

The month of May for PQS was stupendously brilliant! I don't have time to go through past stats, but I'm 99.9% sure that 79% DOM is the best month ever! Mainly because Zito was a big part of the past rotations and he was rarely this good at delivering the DOM starts, then Lincecum in recent years was up and down.

Bumgarner, as he has in recent years, get into high gear after early season issues (seems to happen most years than not; he actually said that he was still not feeling it into late May) and led the staff with 6 DOM starts out of 6. Both Cueto and Samardzija followed closely with 5 DOM starts. And both Peavy and Cain delivered as well, with 3 DOM starts.

And the great thing about throwing so many DOM starts is that there is fewer starts for the DIS starts that are basically guaranteed losses (the Giants were 0-6 in DIS starts to EOMay, 0-2 in May). There were only two in May, leading to a stellar 79% DOM/7% DIS, which led to a stellar 21-8 record in May, in spite of the offense only averaging 4.07 runs per game. This zoomed the Giants into first place, until they took over on May 15th and kept on building since. In 8 days, they pushed it to 4.5 games ahead, then was amazingly matching the Dodgers to the end of the month, staying exactly 4.5 games ahead, win or lose (it helped that they went 5-2, as well).

With the great DOM came great stats. Bumgarner had a 1.05 ERA for May, with a 3.75 K/BB, 9.5 K/9 and 0.961 WHIP. Cueto was next with 2.03 ERA, 4.33 K/BB, 7.9 K/9, 0.992 WHIP. Samardzija started having results to go with his good PQS stats, 2.08 ERA, 5.00 K/BB, 8.3 K/9, 0.969 WHIP.

Cainer was finally starting to feel back to pre-Perfecto form, with 3 DOM in 4 starts, compiling a 3.38 ERA, 4.25 K/BB, 5.7 K/9, and 1.275 WHIP. Still giving up more hits and homers than usual, but keeping the walks down helped, clearly. Too bad he had the injury hiccup with the strained hamstring, he was starting to feel it good.

Peavy was still getting crushed when he was on, in spite of his good PQS for the month. He had a 4.73 ERA, 2.36 K/BB, 7.2 K/9, and 1.268 WHIP.

Still, great month for the starters overall, stupendous, really. They collectively pitched as if they were the best pitcher in baseball, pitching in every start, with that 79% DOM and 7% DIS. And we should have been even better in the win column. Had we gotten some better offense, that would have really put some distance between us and the NL West. Though, really, had we gotten better bullpen pitching (3 blown saves), specifically Casilla, we could have been 24-4 instead. But this is getting picky, all in all, the Giants starting pitching was great in May.

May 2016 Comments

I may keep it shorter, since June is basically half over as it is (but I yam whut I yam...). As bad as April was (relatively, by Giants past standards), May was that good. The offense that saved them in April with 4.96 runs scored per game, helping them get to 12-13 in spite of all the bad pitching in the back of the rotation, was stagnant, averaging only 4.07, and it won't get much better with Hunter Pence missing big parts of the coming months (hopefully to return by start of August).

The biggest difference between the months is that while only Span and Duffy did not hit well in April, more did poorly in May, with a bifurcation in the offense in May. While Tomlinson, Pence, Belt, Posey, Crawford, and Span were hitting well, Parker, Blanco, Duffy (still...), Gillaspie, Panik, Williamson, Brown, and Pagan were not. Parker at last was hitting for power, so his OPS was .686, which is where Span and Duffy roughly was in April. All the rest from Blanco on down, ranged from Blanco's .628 OPS to Pagan's .439 OPS (probably already showing the effects of his hamstring issues, half of what he did in April). And none of the OF options has done well enough to justify given them more AB's.

But when a defense (pitching and fielding) can keep runs allowed to the 3.24 average in May, it covers up a lot of offensive ills. It allowed the team to go 7-0 in one-run games, pushing the team up to 15-7 in one-run games.

And the good news is that May is greatly improved over April and look, at the moment, closer to the true talent level of the rotation. Peavy is reaching his regular second half peak that he's been doing for us the past two seasons. Cain was dealing until his hamstring, but Suarez did well in taking two starts for Cainer, keeping the line moving in the rotation. With Bumgarner, Cueto, and Samardzija looking relatively dominant, all we need is one of Peavy and Cain to do well in order for the Giants to continue winning more than they lose. In addition, nobody on the team is striking out a ton, so the poor OPS for many of these players could just be a case of BABIP hurting them. In particular, Duffy, Panik, and Pagan all have BB/K ratios above or very near to 1.0, and generally those hitters hit for a much higher BABIP.

As noted last month, the Giants were below Pythagorean last month, and they regressed to the mean by playing above Pythagorean in May. They should have been 17-12, but ended up 21-8, 4 games above. And in April, they should have been 13-12, but ended up 12-13.

Most sabers would then say that the Giants should regress back to .500, because of May, but as my research showed, Bochy has been able to maintain a +4 games above .500 record over his managerial career, until the past two seasons. So 2016 could be his career-wide regression to his talent mean, meaning 15-7 (+8 and higher has been attained by Bochy in nearly 40% of his career managerial seasons) could just be Bochy managing to his talent level.

Lincecum Era Over (For Now)

Unfortunately, the Angels had a rash of injuries in their starting pitcher, so they offered Lincecum a starting job, roughly in the $4M range (but pro-rated), so he didn't get a lot of money, but that wasn't his goal, he just wanted the opportunity to start.

I still think that Lincecum will be very good when he come back and have a very good season, setting him up nicely for a free agent contract after the season. Will he stick by the Angels because they gave him the opportunity?

Perhaps, but, at least in the past, when he was an amateur and in his early years in arbitration, his agent would try to get what they thought he was worth. He could have been an Indian all these years had they given him the $1M he wanted when they drafted him the year before (only offered $400K). And he held out for $200K more from us when we drafted him. He and the Giants had the widely different arbitration numbers during those years.

The Giants will see Peavy's contract ending this season, opening up a spot in the rotation. Nobody so far is making the Giants management say that they should be starting in the majors instead. Blackburn had his early struggles, though Giants Prospect Talk noted that high altitude was a factor in that. And he has an 0.66 ERA since returning from the majors. And Cain's contract ends after 2017 (plus Cueto most probably opts out), so openings in the rotation are available, should the Giants decide to pursue Lincecum in the off-season.
Will they? First, we have to see how Lincecum does, but if he does as well as I think he can, he can probably get a pretty big one-year contract (I just don't see anyone giving him a long-term big money contract based on one year, plus he seems to favor shorter terms than having the weight of a huge contract on his conscience). And the Giants probably would be very fine with such an arrangement, going year to year. But so would other teams, if he's as good as I think he is. obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-19282801733748273752016-05-29T22:40:00.002-07:002016-05-29T22:40:51.339-07:00Your 2016 Giants: The Shark Fin Is Circling, Senses Blood In the WaterA couple of good recent articles on Samardzija. One was a Beyond the Box Score analysis of how he has been able to pitch so well this season after last season's abomination, pointing out that he was returning to his prior form, using the pitches that are his best pitches, his sinker and his cutter:

That cutter and sinker are back up to where they need to be to induce more grounders. The sinker, in particular, returning back to where it was in previous years represents an encouraging trend. And as such, his groundballs per ball in play are back to looking like exactly what they should look like...

This return to form, although not necessarily a "resurrection", is taking place across the board. He hasn't experienced any sort of real velocity change, but the fact that he's able to utilize all of his pitches is allowing those strikeout numbers to creep back up. After a 6.86 K/9 season last year, he's currently at 7.69 in 2016, with a swinging strike rate up a touch (9.8 to 10.4) from last year. His walks are also down, at 1.82 per nine thus far. The rest of his statistics across the board feature a 2.66 ERA, a 2.77 FIP, and a WHIP down at 1.03. Not only are these numbers vastly improved from last year, but these are some of the best figures that Shark has posted in his career. As a veteran pitcher,, and having spent a previous year in baseball purgatory, Samardzija appears to have the look of a guy who knows exactly what works for him and what doesn't and the Giants are allowing him to roll with it.

What might seem like a simple, and perhaps even obvious, change for him has led him down the path to not only earning that $90 million contract, but perhaps even justifying it as a bargain at some point.
This is matched up with professional observation by Mike Krukow, from his KNBR show, as reported by CSNBA:

"He's simplifying things," Krukow started. "A lot of times, guys have four or five things they can do with the ball. They feel compelled that they have to throw all of them.

And I think what (Dave) Righetti and (Mark) Gardner have done with this guy, is they've simplified it, and said 'Wait a second. Let's take a look at what your true strengths are.

"Your true strengths are your fastball ... and your cut ... so you've got two different types of movement, one going away from the other. And it's late movement. Why not let's focus on being able to corner pitch with it. To locate.

"We'll introduce a slider, we'll throw it out there, and we'll work on an offspeed pitch to give you an eventual third speed.' That's what they've done."

"His mechanics are impeccable and he's got great finish with the crack of the whip," Krukow added. "He's in command so that maximizes velocity, movement and location capabilities. He's got all that going.

"And I think because of his athleticism he's able to repeat this stroke of the arm with great consistency."

"It gets back to Dave Righetti. If you're a pitcher, and you've got abilities, whatever type of athlete you are, you're going to get better around him," Krukow declared. "You're going to get better around Mark Gardner. They're the best at what they do. This is just another example of it."

Krukow closed the topic by making a bold prediction.

Samardzija's "not a finished product. He is a work in progress. I think when he masters that third speed, that changeup, you're gonna see a guy who's gonna be a perennial All-Star and he'll challenge for the Cy Young. I do believe he has that type of ceiling."

ogc thoughts

This was the sort of stuff I was hoping the Giants would be doing with Samardzija once they got their hands on him.

To build on top of what was noted in the Beyond the Box Score (surprised the author didn't point out this chart): Fangraph Samardzija Pitch Values. While this has limited predictive value, it is a descriptive stat, showing how good he has been in the season.

Surprising the Cutter Has Been So Good

Amazingly enough, he had not had a lot of success with his cutter in the past (and part of the value shown in this table is the sequencing that happens for the pitcher, based on the circumstances he happens to be in for each instance, making a pitch more or less valuable, depending on how the sequencing is), his only year was way back in 2011, yet the Giants keyed on that pitch, had him simplify to using mainly his fastball along with the cutter. Yet, despite his lack of success before (remember, sequencing matters), they have found the right sequencing to enable him to create a lot of value with this pitch, something none of his pitching coaches nor team scouts ever realized.

Slider Has Always Been His Plus Value Pitch

Plus the slider is his most often used third pitch this season, which has always been a very valuable pitch in the past. Apparently by paring back the usage of the slider to key situations, he has been able to create even more value than ever before with his slider, despite not using it as much (and we are only nearing the one-third point of the season).

Now Slider is Keyed with Cutter

Likewise, the Giants keyed on his cutter, which he didn't use as much before in his career. They have nearly doubled the usage of the cutter in 2016, from 20.2% in 2015 (and roughly 10-13% before) to 39.4% currently. They still use his four-seamer a lot, but dropped that a lot from before, from roughly 30-ish in last few years to 22.8% this season. Two-seamer has been reduced too, from the 24.1% in 2014, his most successful year by far (and only one previously, really). The splitter has been almost eliminated, down to 5.4%. Even the usage of the slider was down, from the 20-ish he was at before, and it seems like the Chicago White Sox realized that and tried to double down on that, pushing his usage up to 24.4%, but the Giants now only employ it 15.1%, and in spite of the lessened usage, he has almost created as much value with this pitch as any other season he has used it.

Resulting in Success in 2016 Unlike 2014

And this season is totally unlike his most successful season in 2014. In 2014, he created his value with his fastball, slider, and split-finger fastball, with most of it from his fastball. For the Giants, most of the value is created with the cutter and slider, with some from the fastball. It is totally counter-intuitive, because Samardzija is known for his fastball, and yet he is creating most of his value from the other two pitches in his repertoire.

Maybe someone can explain to me, but Beyond the Box Score used Brooks and noted his usage of the sinker, but PitchFX has no sinker to speak of, so I don't know how to reconcile the two sources of pitch type data. Based on the up and down, it appears that the two-seamer is what Brooks is calling the sinker, but while Brooks has that around 28%, FG has it around 17%. And FG has the cutter at 39.4% while Brooks has it at around 32%.

And Success with Slider Exponentially Increased

In any case, a lot of additional value is being derived by whatever the Giants are doing with Samardzija. Looking at the "/C" values, which rates the value of each pitch per 100 pitches, his slider's value has leapt from the 1.0-1.5 per 100 pitches value range to 3.07 per 100 so far this season. And showing how screwed up Samardzija was with the White Sox, after easily creating value in the 5-8 range previously, he was actually -6.7 with the White Sox. His cutter value was returned to what it was long ago, in 2011, when he was still a reliever. And while his fastball value is not that high, on a per 100 pitch basis, is his best since 2014's 0.50, as it is at 0.38.

Despite Plus Plus Velocity, Success With It Has Been Spotty

Despite his plus plus velocity, none of his pitching coaches or teams have ever had him produce value regularly with his fastball. No wonder Samardzija, according to Baer, told the Giants that he really wanted to join the Giants, and when told that the Giants were busy with Greinke, but would sign him if that fell through, he purposefully stalled negotiations with other teams in order to see what happens. And once that fell through, that is why the Giants signed him so quickly.

The Giants success with the Shark has come faster than I had hoped. I thought maybe half to a whole season, then he'll be ready to take over for Cueto before Cueto leaves after two years and opting out. With a three headed monster, all we need are average back of rotation starters to have a great season. And Cain's recent stretch of good pitching shows what can happen when you get four good starts in every turn of the rotation.

Giants look good to run away with the division, but, again, injuries to the lineup is the Achilles Heel. We've already lost Pagan, and aches and pains have took out Panik, Pence, and now Span. Continued health is what we need to keep the good times going. obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-23735245.post-88246336512489611172016-05-27T18:04:00.003-07:002016-05-27T18:04:31.819-07:00Dodgers Calling Up Uber Prospect UriasThe news is LA Dodgers uber prospect Julio Urias is being brought up (already started at the time I'm writing this, getting hit a bit, not the reason I'm writing this, and could make this post moot).

ogc thoughts

I'm not terribly afraid of Urias coming up. Not that he isn't a great pitching prospect, not that I don't expect him to do really well as a SP for LAD. It's because he's not going to be around for all that long. His previous high in innings pitched before this season is 87.2 IP. He's already at 41.0 IP.

The Giants have gone way beyond the rule that Tom Verducci has been promulgating since he talked with former A's pitching coach, Rick Peterson, that a young pitcher should not increase the number of innings he throws in a season by more than 25-30 innings. He writes about this almost every year, and the article I linked to is the one he wrote after Bumgarner added 46.2 IP in 2014. The Giants have jumped beyond that limit frequently, doing that with Cain, Sanchez, Lincecum, and Bumgarner.

For examples, Cain leaped 84.2 IP in 2004, another 33.1 IP in 2005. Bumgarner 72.2 IP in 2010, then 46.2 IP in 2014 (I wrote about this when it happened, this don't apply as much for Madison because he used to throw a heck of a lot in between starts, so much that when he came to the majors in 2009, he found out major league pitchers throw a lot less, and so he thought he might back off some, which I doubt he did).

Urias Most Likely Won't Pitch That Many Starts This Season

Let's say they let Urias get to 137.2 IP. That's another 96.2 IP, maybe 15-20 starts, which would stop him down the stretch (roughly 23 starts left in the season), when a playoff contending team would presumably need him most. That was the issue with young pitchers like Strasburg and Harvey, when their teams thought about taking them out of the rotation and shutting him down for the season.

However, LAD is run by a sabermetric oriented front office. And most sabers are much more worried about pitch count and PAP, much like Verducci. If he is limited to 30 IP jump, then that is only 10-15 starts left to pitch, which could mean he would be taken out of the rotation by the ASB. And given that he's being hit hard right now, got took out before he could end the 3rd inning. Not an auspicious start, so this post could be moot, or it could just be nerves and he'll be better in his next start. In any case, I don't see how he can pitch that many games for them.

Or course, maybe they just want to use him as a bridge to acquiring a veteran pitcher by mid-season, that's possible.

In any case, another thing that bothers me, if I were a Dodger's fan, is that they actually stopped him from pitching more innings in 2015. They jumped him 33.1 IP in 2014, so if they had done that again in 2015, then he would have been at 121.0 IP last season, and could reach roughly 155 IP this season. There could have been some physical reason why they did that, and if so, then that's another more important reason why they should take it easy on him in terms of IP jumps, because an injury usually portends future injuries, not if, but when. obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com