Eastern Conference

Lincecum Snaps Skid; Darren Ford Has Jet Legs; XBH and Andres Torres

admin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:25:00 +0000

There’s been no question that it’s been a tough month for Tim Lincecum. Over his past 8 starts the right-hander has put up a line of: 45 innings, 56 hits, 31 earned runs, 19 walks, and 43 strikeouts. Over that period of time, Lincecum’s BABIP was particularly elevated (.366 compared to .308 career) and hitters hit a combined .306/.379/.503 against the former CY Young Award winner. In what can only be described best as a ‘Pitching Duel’ Lincecum squared off against Ubaldo Jimenez last night and pitched his best game since his shutout against the Mets on July 15th. Lincecum ended his evening with 8 innings of work, 9 strikeouts, 1 walk, and 1 earned run. For Lincecum, it’s got to be a breath of fresh air and a bit of a confidence booster. The Rockies — as they generally do — are a very good hitting team and are a top 10 offense this year.

There’s been a lot talk about Lincecum’s velocity this year and I think it’s gotten to a point where it’s jumped the shark. By most accounts, he’s down by about 1 mile per hour from his 2009 season. Should we freak out? If we assume that he’s healthy, I don’t think it’s as big of a deal as the media has made it out to be. It’s not unusual for a pitcher to lose velocity as he ages. The numbers indicate that Lincecum still has strikeout stuff even if he’s throwing 91 instead of 94. Big radar gun readings are sexy and most fans love to see hitters being blown away with mid-90′s gas, but should we care how hard a pitcher is throwing as long as he’s effective? Lincecum might be more of a 5-6 win pitcher these days than the 7-8 win player he was in his CYA years. If that’s true, the Giants still have a top 15 pitcher in baseball.

I pulled the PFX numbers for 2010 Lincecum starts at home — to remove any stadium bias from the road games — and here’s what we get.

The average fastball for Linecum this year is 90.8 mph. He’s still able to reach back and touch 92-93 when he needs it. I’ll be interested to see how he responds to the conditioning claims next year. The point is: 91-mph-Lincecum is still quite good and a major boon to the Giants’ rotation.

—

I like Darren Ford — bad decisions aside — and it was cool to see him score the winning run last night. If you haven’t seen it, check out this video. Ford had a excellent year in 2009 in San Jose hitting .300/.386/.463. He struggled some this year in AA (.251 /.315/.365) but the Eastern League is a notoriously difficult place to hit. Ford probably won’t hit enough to start in the majors, but his defense in CF — mostly described as plus-plus — and his speed/baserunning — also described as plus-plus — should keep him employed as a 4th OF on any major league roster. It’s worth noting that much like 2009, he struggled a bunch in the first half this year. Post All-Star Break he was hitting .302/.367/.437 for the Squirrels in 126 at-bats.

—

Rounding out today’s post, a graph of the National League Extra-base hits leaders.

Yeah, Andres Torres is having a pretty excellent year. Fun fact: In 2001 Barry Bonds had 107 XBHs — 73 of which were home runs.

Wednesday Graph: Major League Chernoff Faces

admin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:00:00 +0000

The idea behind Chernoff Faces it that you can take data and map it to facial features in order to visually present differences in the numbers. The theory is that humans easily recognize facial features and can notice changes fairly quickly. There’s a lot of debate as to how useful Chernoff Faces are, but they’re a fun diversion and, I think, an interesting take on displaying data sets.

What I’ve done for today’s ‘Wednesday Graph’ is to take 10 statistics — wOBA, K%, BB/K, AVG, OBP, ISO, Speed Score, BABIP, BB%, and FIP — and create Chernoff faces for every major league team. I’ll also note here, to avoid any confusion, that the BB% and K% statistics are based on offense and not pitching.

I would also like to send a huge thank you out to Flowing Data for putting up a tutorial on my request. FD has some of the best tutorials on the web for learning and using R and it’s a daily staple for graph junkies like myself. R is still very new to me and this post wouldn’t be possible without FD.

(Click to enlarge)

Be sure to consult the key above for what features are being displayed by which statistic. For example, the Diamondbacks’ hair is almost horn-like, representing their league worst FIP (4.82). Compared to the league’s best pitching (Padres, Braves) the D-Backs hair looks pretty goofy. We’ve mapped isolated-power (ISO) to the smiling trait. The more the face is smiling, the more power that team has hit for. The Mariners, Astros, and Royals have been a few of the most punch-less teams in baseball this year. Their individual ISOs of .106, .113, and .119 are extremely poor and they look almost depressed. On the other side of things, the Blue Jays (.203!), Red Sox (.185), and the Yankees (.174) boast some of the best power in baseball with their huge grins.

I’ll leave you to read over the graph some more, but if anyone has any questions, or suggestions, please post them in the comments section.

Labwork: ‘Advanced’ Offense Heatmap

admin — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 04:31:00 +0000

(Click to enlarge)

Continuing with the heatmap theme, here is a graph using the same concept but with the more advanced statistics. All numbers are pulled from Fangraphs as of 8/28/10. I cheated and used Excel for this particular graph.

Aubrey Huff: Still pretty darned good.

Friday Visual: Basic Offense Heatmap

admin — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 23:11:00 +0000

A little bit of visual labwork on this Friday. I’ve been playing around with R lately and I’ve been working on ‘heatmaps’. Each square has a number value and that value is ranked within each column by color — ie: all HR’s are compared against other HR totals for that column. White (higher value) -> dark red (lower value). For example, you can see that Aubrey Huff — the Giants’ best player on offense this year — has mostly orange and yellow squares. His only dark colored square — or one with a lower number value — is stolen bases.

(Click to enlarge)

Because the numbers are based on raw totals, some players’ offensive value might be misrepresented . Notice Buster Posey. He is solidly orange across the board. That’s not bad at all, but if he had started the year in the majors — and assuming he would have been this good for the entire year — he would be much closer to Aubry Huff in raw counting totals. Posey hasn’t had the same number of chances (G, PA, AB) to hit those doubles, triples, and homers when compared to some of the other players.

Other things I enjoyed

Torres’ white-hot SB square. The Giants don’t run a lot and Torres has 23 SB all by himself. The next runner up is Aarond Rowand (5 SB) followed by Nate Schierholtz (4).
Batting average isn’t a very important statistic, but I included it in this ‘basic’ heatmap. Rowand’s BA (.239) looks extremely poor. Maybe adding a BABIP column in a more ‘advanced’ heatmap would be helpful. Posey (.332) is leading the Giants in BA.
Molina gets hurt by not being on the team longer — and thus not having the chances to add to his totals — but his string of red squares indicate that he never really hit for the Giants.

I’ll be posting more R experiments as I learn more. Stay tuned.

Giants Get Creamed in Philly and St. Louis; Get Cody Ross

admin — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 03:13:00 +0000

Well, that’s how these things go sometimes. After going 20-8 and in the month of July, the Giants have struggled in August. The team’s current W/L record in August of 9-10 actually downplays just how bad things have looked in the last few series. Errors, poor pitching, and vintage bad hitting have all combined to put a sizable dent in the Giants quest to reach the playoffs.

The bad news: Each day the Giants struggle to play solid baseball, the NL West looks less and less winnable. The Giants currently sit 6 games out of 1st place in the West. And while the team has struggled to win recent games, the Padres have not, going 13-7 in August. Tim Lincecum is still searching for his mojo. His BABIP is nearly 30 points above his career average and it’s possible that he’s getting dunked and dinked more than usual, but the Giants need their ace to pitch a couple of solid games in order to get some sort of balance back. Jose Guillen looks absolutely statue-esque in the outfield and I really, really dislike the outfield defense when Rowand is in CF and Burrell and Guillen are in the corners.

The good news: The wild card. Holy god, the wild card. I will cling onto the wild card until reality forces me to loosen my grip. Did you know the Giants are only 2 games out of the wild card? Ignore the fact that they’ll have to leap over the 2 teams they just played so miserably against — St. Louis and Philadelphia — to win the blasted thing. Yes, the wild card is good. It is great. Where the heck where you in 1993?

The Giants head home to play a 3 game series against the NL Central leading Cincinnati Reds. A tough assignment for any team. The Reds can hit (2nd in the NL in team wOBA, .337) and they’ve been on a roll so far in August (13 wins, 5 losses). I would try and make a bold prediction that the Giants need to sweep this series, but really, the Giants just need to start winning games. Please win, Giants.

—

In an effort to field a team composed solely of outfielders, the Giants have been awarded OF Cody Ross from the Florida Marlins in a waiver claim. A corresponding roster move will need to be made.

The Giants will wait until Monday to announce a corresponding roster move to clear room for Ross, 29, whom they claimed last Friday. San Francisco will be responsible for approximately $1.1 million of Ross’ remaining 2010 salary of $4.45 million.

The 29-year-old Ross is a career .340 wOBA batter and he’s been an average defender in CF over his career. That makes him an above average defender in the corners. I like the pick-up but it’s unlikely the Giants will start him in RF over Guillen. Ross is both a better baserunner and defender when compared to Guillen. He’s also been a much better hitter over the past 2 years than Guillen. Ross will present an interesting question to the Giants. The team is surely better with Ross manning RF, but will the Giants play him as a starter? I wouldn’t hold your breath, but if the Giants are serious about the playoffs, playing Ross over Guillen is the right thing to do. The Marlins get to shed some salary and make room for uber-prospect, Cameron Maybin. The Giants will retain control of Ross for the 2011 season if they wish to do so. Ross will be arbitration eligible again next year. He’s earning $4.45M this year after winning his arbitration hearing with Florida. His current salary will make him an expensive bench player, but he’s decent insurance in a corner OF spot and if Rowand truly sees a reduction in his role as a player going forward, he could get a crack at starting.

I’m ready for this.

Make it so, Sabes.

Update: Baggs tweets that the Giants have DFA’d 2B Matt Downs in order to make room on the 40-man for Ross.

First-Rounder Gary Brown Expected to Sign

admin — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 22:28:00 +0000

From MLBTR:

The Giants agreed to sign first-round pick Gary Brown for about $1.3MM, according to Yahoo’s Kendall Rogers (on Twitter).

I didn’t say much about the Brown draft pick when it went down, but I’m not a huge fan of Brown’s hitting approach. In his last year at Cal State Fullerton Brown hit .438/.468/.695. Yes, notice that batting average, it’s nuts. While that batting average is quite nice, he’s not going to hit .400 in pro-ball. Brown was notorious for just-not-walking — in 210 at-bats he drew only 9 walks. That kind of plate approach will raise a few eyebrows even with the anti-walks brigade. The other quirk with Brown on offense is his batting stance. He quite literally dances about and moves his feet while in the box as evident by his draft day video. Brown’s best tool his is speed and overall athleticism. Reports are slightly mixed on his defense in CF, but most believe that he’ll be a plus-defender there once he gets settled.

The Giants will have to reel in Brown’s approach at the dish if he wants to succeed as a prospect. His bat-on-ball skills seem outstanding, but you can’t survive in pro-ball while walking 4% of the time. The good news is that if Brown’s baserunning and defensive abilities play true to his talents, he’s not going to have to overly excel on offense to be good. He just can’t be a black hole of stink. Then again, expecting the Giants to transform a free-swinger into a more disciplined hitter seems like a lofty proposition.

Recommended Reading on Brown

‘How Few Walks is Too Few?‘ - College Splits
‘An Alternative Look At The Giants’ First-Round Pick‘ - Triples Alley

Giants Do Something Wacky

admin — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 15:05:00 +0000

Oh, that Giants.

Ken Rosethal tweets:

Rival executive says Guillen to #SFGiants is “done,” confirming ESPNDeportes report. #Royals #MLB

You can scroll down for my take on Guillen or read it right here. It hasn’t changed.

* Jose Guillen, OF – I love the idea of picking up an outfielder and moving Huff back to 1B. It improves the overall defense and it should keep Huff fresh. However, Jose Guillen is not the outfielder you are looking for. Guillen has had a resurgent year at the plate (.347 wOBA) after posting a .304 wOBA in an injury plagued 2009 campaign. Despite advanced medical skills, Guillen isn’t a good bet to actually help the Giants. Never a strong fielder, Guillen is more of a DH these days. He’s unlikely to be an upgrade over Burrell and he’ll cost prospects in a trade. Mega-pass on Guillen.

So, yeah. The Giants just traded for Jose Guillen. You’ll also be happy to know that since I posted that quote, Guillen’s wOBA has dropped to .325 — so most of the luster is gone. Unless you’re into dingers and RBIs, then if so, great move! Also, I know that our outfield has rated quite well this year, but remove Andres Torres from the mix and we’ve got Pat Burrell, Aaron Rowand, Jose Guillen, and Aubrey Huff as the primary “defenders” in the outfield. That’s just a tad bit scary.

If Guillen takes on any role that’s larger than pinch-hitting, this becomes terrible news. No word on who the Giants are sending to the Royals.

Update:

Sounds like the player will be a PTBNL. The bigger news is this…

Bruce Bochy confirms Guillen will be the everyday RF and Aubrey Huff will play 1b. #sfgiants

That’s from Jeff Fletcher’s twitter feed. To put it bluntly, the Giants made themselves worse today. Andres Torres is an amazing CF, but playing him between Burrell and Jose Guillen is almost criminal. There’s nothing about this move that makes a lick of sense. Consider this for a second: Torres’ hamstrings kept him out of the lineup yesterday, if he misses time, the Giants OF defense becomes Burrell – Rowand – Guillen. That’s … um … very bad.

That sound you just heard is the pitching staff’s ERA rising.

The Heater, the Change, and the Hook

admin — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 13:02:00 +0000

Your Wednesday graph comes a little late this week. This week’s graph is the seasonal percentage of Lincecum’s pitch-types — and their usage — and his whiff% on said pitch-types.

I’ll note here that I didn’t include Tim’s slider into this discussion. It’s definitely the 4th pitch in his arsenal and something that he’s only throwing 5-6% right now. For the sake of simplicity, I wanted to focus on his three main pitches: the fastball, curveball, and changeup. All pitch-type ID’s are using the MLAB algorithm (meaning I did not classify them myself) and sometimes, as history has shown, they can be a little wonky. Also, I’ve lumped all of his fastballs into one generic category. Tim throws both a 2-seam and 4-seam fastball.

The top graph represents the usage by pitch-type for Lincecum this season. Like most pitchers, Tim works heavily off the fastball — he’s throwing it 57.3% of the time. As you can see, the graph shows a slight uptick in fastball usage as the season has gone on. On 6/16/10 his yearly FB% sat at 51.7%. Over his next 10 starts, Lincecum threw his fastball more and boosted the yearly percentage to the 57.3%. That’s a increase of almost 6%. It appears that Lincecum is making an effort to throw his fastball more. Why? That’s an excellent question. One has to wonder if it’s related to his mechanics.

Our other points of interest are the changeup and curveball. The changeup has become Tim’s #2 pitch and it’s current usage sits at 21.8%. He’s backed off of it’s usage slightly — at 5/31 the yearly percentage sat at 23.5% — but it’s still something he’s going to throw 20%, or slightly more, of the time. It’s for good reason, too. His changeup has become one of the better pitches in baseball. The curveball is interesting. Before I ran the numbers, I expected it’s usage to have a slight uptick as the season has progressed. I seem to recall seeing more curves from Lincecum while watching games on TV, but the usage line for the hook looks pretty steady — ranging from 15-17% for most of the year. Tim’s curveball usage currently sits at 16.6%.

I really like how the Whiff% graph turned out. Whiffs are defined as anytime a batter swings at a pitch and misses (foul tips are included). If you’re interested in what a league average whiff-rate is for certain pitch-types, check out Harry Pavlidis’ extremely useful ‘Benchmarks for pitch types‘ post on The Hardball Times. I will be referencing it a couple of times in this post. Lincecum’s changeup is a monster. It’s yearly whiff-rate currently sits at 42.8%. According to Harry’s benchmarks, the league average CH has a whiff-rate of 30.7%. Lincecum’s changeup is getting whiffs at nearly +12% over the league average changeup. I wondered how the changeup would look with some of Tim’s recent struggles, but the pitch still appears to be an above-average pitch. That should comfort us some since Lincecum’s changeup has grown to be an important part of his success as a pitcher. Just don’t call it a trick pitch and we’ll be fine.

Fastballs rarely get whiffs and, in fact, Tim’s whiff-rate on his fastball of 17.1% is slightly better than the league average 15% for 2-seam/4-seam fastballs. His curveball whiff-rate (20.9%) is below the league average whiff-rate (26.1%) for the pitch.

Looking Forward

It’s still way too easy to freak out over Lincecum’s recent struggles. The good news it that his changeup still looks like a very, very good pitch. It’s one that batters will swing at, and miss, nearly 40% of the time. That’s incredible. Right now, in season, he’s throwing his fastball more and it’s anyone’s guess as to why. It’s easy to panic when Lincecum get’s hit hard by a struggling Cubs team. I think it’s human nature to assume the worst sometimes. But Lincecum is still on pace to break 5 wins this season — in terms of WAR — and maybe even 6. That’s a top pitcher and while it’s not in the 7-8 win range he posted in both CYA years, it’s a huge asset to the team. Let’s just leave it at that for now. He’s a huge asset to this team regardless of velocity or wins or any of the other sports talk radio fodder.

Renteria DL’d, Mike Fontenot Acquired

admin — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 02:42:00 +0000

There’s nothing like the old switcheroo trade. Mike Fontenot started today as a Chicago Cub, but he’ll end it as a Giant. The Giants have traded A-ball outfield prospect, Evan Crawford, to the Cubs in exchange for 2B Mike Fontenot.

Fontenot describes the weirdness of changing sidelines and changing teams before a game.

“It’s been a strange day so far, just coming to the field, getting the work in and everything and coming up from the stairs after hitting, and they brought me in the office after hitting to let me know,” Fontenot said. “I’m excited for the opportunity to play here. I’ve been keeping up with baseball as much as anybody else does and knowing that the Giants are in the thick of it really gets you pumped up.”

As the post title states above, the main reason for acquiring Fontenot was Renteria’s return to the DL. As of today, the Giants have placed Renteria on the 15-day DL with a strained left biceps. This marks Renteria’s third trip to the DL this season — he went through groin and hamstring problems earlier this year in May. Picking up Fontenot should mean that the Giants will go with a combo of Juan Uribe and Emmanuel Burriss at shortstop. This presents a couple of problems. (1) Uribe has been an acceptable fill-in this season at short but he’s battled injuries and hamstring issues as well. It’s uncertain if he’ll be able to play a position like SS full-time. (2) Emmannuel Burriss isn’t very good and not someone a contending team should ever play regularly. If Juan Uribe goes down, or can’t play SS, the Giants are in hot water.

What did the Giants get in Fontenot? The 30-year-old 2B has played in the majors on a part time basis since 2007. He’s a career .330 wOBA batter with a league average walk rate (8.9%). He’s show league average power (.149 ISO) over his career as well. Some of his batting numbers are a little skewed by his 2008 in which he hit .305/.395/.514 (.395 wOBA) in 284 at-bats. In non-’08 years, he’s been much closer to a .320-ish wOBA hitter, making him below average on offense. As a lefty batter, Fontent has hit RHP better than LHP over his career — wOBA’s of .337 vs. 277. The ZiPS rest-of-season projections have Fontenot as a .331 wOBA batter for the rest of the year. His defense has rated well by some of the advanced metrics. He’s logged 1,747 career innings on defense at 2B. UZR has him at +8.5 runs per 150 defensive games, +/- has him at +7 runs.

He’s not a bad bench option to have against RHP but his downside is that, while he does appear to play 2B well, it’s really the only position he can play with any skill. He might get the occasional start to rest Freddy Sanchez, but the Giants should keep him limited to games against RHPs.

What the Giants gave up to get Fontenot seems appropriate. Crawford is a 21-year-old putting up a slash-line of .255/.319 /.366 in his first year of A-ball.

Bottom Line: The Giants deepen their bench a little with this move and if Fontenot has to play the field, he’s not going to hurt you on defense. I’d much rather have Fontenot taking hacks as a PH than Burriss or Whiteside.

Win a luxury holiday for two to watch the Euro Pro PGA Tour Finale at the Aphrodite Hills Resort, Cyprus

admin — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 14:13:00 +0000

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Brief Musings After The Brave Series

admin — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 21:57:00 +0000

Well, that sucked.

1. The offense, while chocked full of league averageness, is still going to be an issue most days. I know that’s going to come as a shock to you, but the offense is going to fluctuate between just enough to get the job done and terrible. Which one will show up today’s game? It’ magic inside! I tend to think that because the Giants’ offense is primarily powered by Huff and Torress — two players having great success at odd times in their respective careers — the foundation is a little shakier than most.

2. Speaking of offense, Pat Burrell has really been a godsend. After struggling in the American League, Burrell has been hitting in the National League. He was one of the few hitters in the Braves series that actually did anything. He went 4-13 with a pair of doubles and couple of walks. Burrell is sporting a wOBA in the .370 range since he joined the Giants. You can deal with his outfield shenanigans as long as he’s hitting. Depending on how he finishes out the year, I wouldn’t mind seeing the Giants offering him a deal in the range of 1-year with an option. Though, with a player of Burrell’s skill-set, you wouldn’t want to go too far down the road in years.

3. Releasing Denny Bautista was a move that needed to be made. Replacing him with Todd Wellemeyer wasn’t. Appearing in his first game since being recalled, Wellemeyer gave up 4 hits and an earned run without retiring a single batter. Wellemeyer is Denny Bautista but without the strikeouts. The Giants bullpen ranks 3rd worst in baseball in walks issued per 9 innings (4.6) and adding Wellemeyer to the mix isn’t going to help matters. He’ll get dubbed the ‘long man’ but the Giants need quality relievers more than they need a pitcher that can throw 2-3 innings in a game. And do you really need a designated long man when you’re carrying 13 pitchers?

4. Anecdotal evidence but Pablo Sandoval looks sluggish at third base. He missed more than one ‘get-able’ play against the Braves. However, the advanced fielding metrics say he’s right around average — slightly up from last season.

5. Torres had a fine series going 6-17 with 2 doubles and 2 stolen bases. Torres has been my favorite Giant this season on offense and defense. He takes amazing routes to the ball, utilizes his speed perfectly, and for a little guy has some solid power. If not for Huff, Torres would have been the biggest surprise on the team this year.

The Giants are heading home to play 4 games against an under-performing Cubs team (47-64 on the year, 8-13 since the All-Star break). The G’s currently sit 1.5 games back of the Padres. A sweep of the Cubs would put the Giants in a great position to pass the Padres when they come into town on Friday for a 3 game series. At worst, the Giants need to split against the Cubs.

Wednesday Graph: Freddy’s Second-Half Slide

admin — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 12:00:00 +0000

Sanchez has been solid on defense this year, but the Giants are going to need a little more oomph out of his bat. His current .302 wOBA — using the original Tango formula and not the FanGraphs’ version — leaves much to be desired. In our graph I’ve also included the league average for wOBA. The league average 2B this year in the NL currently sits at a .328 wOBA. So, it’s hard to make the argument that, positionally, second basemen are worse than the league average hitter. Sanchez owns a career batting line of .268/.313/.319 as a Giant.

Free Competition to win Lyle & Scott fashionable golf wear

admin — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 09:59:00 +0000

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This Buzzin Golf Free Competition ends on 31st August, 2010. The editor will randomly choose one winner. The editor’s choice is final.

The Trade(s)

admin — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 03:50:00 +0000

I’m a bit late on responding to the Giants deadline deals, but I wanted to briefly write a few words about the two relievers the Giants picked up.

Giants Lose: OF John Bowker, RHP Joe Martinez

Giants Get: LHP Javier Lopez

I guess this means the quest for the LOOGY is over. I’ll state up front that I don’t really love this trade for the Giants. My gut reaction is that the Pirates did very well while the Giants got a guy that throws baseballs with his left arm.

First, what the Giants lost: John Bowker has been a bit of a poster boy for the ‘Let the Kids Play’ movement. That’s despite already being 27-years-old — Bowker turned 27 this July, he’s playing in his age 26 baseball season — and never really hitting well over a couple of brief major league stints. Of course, Bowker’s appeal was his revamped hitting approach that he exhibited in 2009 while playing for the AAA Fresno Grizzlies. Yet, he struggled again in this season in less than 90 at-bats. It’s hard to totally write off Bowker at this point and I think the Pirates did well to acquire him. In addition to Bowker, the Pirates netted personal BCB favorite, Joe Martinez. The Pirates always seem hungry for starting pitching and hopefully Joe will get a crack. I think his upside is a +2 win starter in the NL — meaning a league average starter. He’s not a flame-thrower but he’s got good control, some groundball tendencies, and a nice 2-seam fastball. That might not sound glamorous, but if he’s a league average SP it becomes quite valuable. Considering that the Pirates will now control both Bowker and Martinez until 2015, I think it’s a solid pick up.

In return the Giants landed 32-year-old Javier Lopez. Lopez owns a career 4.30 FIP across 8 seasons and 282 innings. He’s a side-arming, baseball slinging specialist. His fastball doesn’t break 86 mph often and he’s primarily a two-pitch guy with a fastball/slider combo. His career walk-rate is 4.17 walks per 9 vs. a strikeout-rate of 5.54 strikeouts per 9. Underwhelmed yet? Lopez, being a LOOGY, is somewhat tough on left-handed batters. He’s held them to a slash line of .242/.336/.350 over his career. Going forward, for better or worse, he’ll be the go-to guy in the bullpen for tough LHBs. Lopez is also a FA at the end of this season, effectively making him a rental.

Bottom line: Can I say meh? Meh. Lopez is a nice addition to the bullpen, but not one that I would give up 4 years of control of both Bowker and Martinez for. Furthermore, I wonder if the Giants really had to trade for a guy with Lopez’s skill-set. Shouldn’t any GM be able to cruise the minor leagues and find a slinging lefty like Lopez on the cheap? I’m not so sure the Giants didn’t already have Javier Lopez in their system in the form of Geno Espineli (a side-arming south paw in Fresno). A quick look-see on minor leauge splits tells us that Espineli has held LHBs to a 3.37 FIP over his minor league career. Run that through the MLE conversion and it comes out to a 3.90-ish FIP against LHBs. Lopez owns a career 3.80 FIP against LHBs in the majors.

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Trade #2

Giants Lose: RHP Daniel Turpen

Giants Get: RHP Ramon Ramirez

Ramirez is a much better reliever than Lopez and the Giants got him for much less. Go figure.

Daniel Turpen was drafted by the Giants in the 8th round of the 2007 First Year Player Draft. Currently pitching for AA Richmond, Turpen has posted a 4.09 ERA to go with a 7.5 K/9 and a 3.4 BB/9. Almost every minor league system has 10 Daniel Turpen’s floating around at any time. He’s the definition of a trade-able, low upside reliever. I’d love to know what the Red Sox saw in him. Ramon Ramirez is a right-handed reliever that works primarily off of a low-90′s fastball and a slider. He had an excellent 2008 with the Royals (2.84 FIP, 71.2 IP) and was then sent to the Red Sox in the Coco Crisp trade. Since joining the Sox, Ramirez hasn’t had the same success. He posted a 4.46 FIP last season and currently has a 4.62 FIP this year. Getting out of the AL East should help Ramirez some and he’s decent insurance for any one of Bautista/Mota/Casilla. The Giants will control Ramirez until 2013, making him a bullpen candidate down the road if he doesn’t crack this year’s ‘pen.

Bottom Line: Not bad. Ramirez is obviously better than Turpen right now and the Giants are in the ‘right now’ mode. It’s also a bonus that they’ll have him under control for a couple of more seasons if they want him.

The Butchermasters: The Top 10 Worst Fielding Seasons in Giants History

admin — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 03:27:00 +0000

*From 1901-2010

I’m in love with the new Baseball-Reference WAR data. WAR, or Wins Above Replacement, is the uber-stat that attempts to encompass the total value of what makes a player, erm, valuable. With the development of FanGraphs and other saber-slanted websites, WAR has become a pretty well known statistic. If you’re new to the game, check out the glossary section of the site for a definition.

One of the components of WAR is fielding. Now that BB-Ref is providing WAR data, I’ve been having a good time running various queries. Best WAR seasons, best baserunning seasons, best fielding seasons — and today’s post, the worst fielding seasons in Giants’ history. A few words before we jump in and have fun. Baseball-Reference’s fielding component for WAR comes in the form of Total Zone. It’s expressed in runs above (or below) average. Also, when considering defense at a position we must realize that a -10 run first baseman isn’t the same as a -10 run shortstop. The shortstop is a much more athletic group when compared to your average group of first basemen. So, we can assume that if we moved a SS to 1B he would be very good, if we moved a 1B to SS, he wouldn’t do so hot.

Now, let’s check out the 10 worst fielding seasons — as measured by the Total Zone component of BB-Ref WAR — in Giants’ history.

A graph plus the data table. Click the graph to enlarge. It looks much better at full resolution.

Rk	Player	Rfield	G	Year	Age	Pos
1	Bobby Murcer	-22	147	1975	29	*9/8
2	Joel Youngblood	-21	134	1984	32	*5/947
3	Harvey Kuenn	-21	120	1963	32	579
4	Ron Hunt	-20	117	1970	29	*45
5	Dick Dietz	-20	148	1970	28	*2
6	Jim Ray Hart	-18	160	1965	23	*57/9
7	Marvin Benard	-17	149	1999	28	*89/7
8	Bill Madlock	-17	140	1977	26	*5/4
9	Johnnie LeMaster	-15	130	1982	28	*6
10	Gary Matthews	-15	156	1976	25	*7

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used

A good mix of Giants past and present. A few words on some of the names on our list.

#1 on our list is Bobby Murcer’s 1975 season which clocks in at -22 runs below average just on defense. Bobby Murcer is known for a few things in his baseball career. First and foremost, from a Giants’ perspective, is that he’s the player the Giants traded for when Bobby Bonds was sent to New York in the offseason of 1974. Bonds went on to have maybe his finest season that year when he hit .270/.375/.512 (151 OPS+). For the Giants Murcer had a fine year on offense batting .298/.396/.432 (127 OPS+) but, as our graph and data table show, his defensive numbers in the outfield were terrible. Oddly enough, Murcer — a gold glove winner in 1972 — scores poorly by Total Zone throughout his career. He owns a career mark of -97 runs below average in the outfield. It’s almost as if the Gold Glove Award doesn’t do a good job of assessing good defense. Hmmm.

Ron Hunt was never considered a strong fielder and his 1970 season and the -20 runs (nearly negative 2 wins) he accumulated on defense was a career worst. Hunt, a career 2B, played primarily 2B in ’70 but he also saw some time at 3B. Hunt — the master of getting hit by pitches– has maybe one of my favorite baseball quotes of all time, “Some people give their bodies to science; I give mine to baseball,” And to back that statement up he ended his career with an astounding 243 HBPs. To this day, he owns the record for most HBP in a single season with 50(!) in ’71 with the Expos. The HBP magnet only played 3 seasons with the Giants from 1968-70.

Maybe my favorite player on the list, Dick ‘The Mule’ Dietz, shows up for his 1970 season and the -20 runs on defense that accompanied it. Dietz’s season is really a tale of two different skill-sets. On offense Dietz was incredible — batting .300/.426/.515 (152 OPS+). It’s probably the best offensive year ever for a Giants’ catcher. However, on defense, Dietz was another story. His -20 runs is damaging, but also consider some of the traditional stats that, I think, tell a story. Dietz made 14 errors, 25 passed balls, and caught only 19% of base-stealers. Dietz gave up 92 stolen bases that year while only throwing out 21 runners. Even more amazing is he was still worth +4.5 wins that year — even docking him nearly 2 wins by defense — he was an All-Star and still remains one of my favorite Giants of all-time. You have to wonder if Dietz would have been moved over to first base if he hadn’t played with McCovey.

Hey look, a Marvin Benard sighting. His -19 runs below average on defense in ’99 is our most recent Giant to make the Butcher List. I have to admit, I’ve got a soft spot for Benard. He was generally acceptable on defense — a career +2 runs by TZ — and he had a couple of average to above-average years (’98, ’99, and ’01) on offense. He was most likely stretched as a CF and the Giants didn’t help themselves by primarily playing him there. He would have most likely done much better in a corner spot.

You’ve got to feel for Johnnie LeMaster. He was futile on offense — career OPS+ of 60 — and his defensive numbers don’t stack up. Since he was a SS, we should note that he was playing in a more athletic peer group than the OF/1B group, but LeMaster scored poorly across the board over his career on defense. In fact, by BB-Ref’s WAR, he’s -7 wins below replacement level for his career. His -15 run defensive season in ’82 was paired with an OPS+ of 51. And yet he still appeared in 130 games and collected 436 at-bats.

An interesting list. Dick Dietz’s season in 1970 in particular is notorious for it’s defensive problems. Total Zone is really handy when we’re trying to examine historical players that fall past the scope of current defensive metrics like UZR.

Comment Starter: Anyone on the list surprise you? Anyone you think should be added to our Top 10?