tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-95557622024-03-13T19:00:22.743-07:00Biased Giants FanaticBiased not for the Giants but for reality and facts. I want to understand exactly where the Giants stand, good or bad, so that my expectations are set correctly. These are just my opinions; I just want to share my love for the Giants and hopefully learn something back from others. Plus most of all have some fun talking with other Giants fans. Go Giants!!!obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.comBlogger306125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9555762.post-1141729938096416312006-03-30T03:30:00.000-08:002006-11-04T20:33:07.108-08:00Phoenix Reborn: I'm Now ObsessiveGiantsCompulsiveI am taking the unusual step of abandoning my Biased Giants Fanatic nom de plume and taking on a new one: <a href="http://obsessivegiantscompulsive.blogspot.com/">ObsessiveGiantsCompulsive</a>. I will be switching all my IDs around the place to reflect this new ID but I might either forget one or another or have a technical glitch.<br /><br />I am doing this for a number of reasons. One is that I've found that people get a bit confused about my intentions and motivations when they see the "biased" part of the name. Hence my having to try to explain it in my description. I try (don't always succeed, but try) to be fair in my logic and rationale in assessing the Giants but I'm human and I make mistakes - I just try my honest best. I find my greatest pleasure not in seeing my team with rose-colored glasses, but in knowing how good or bad my Giants are and setting my expectations accordingly. Hopefully I'm succeeding more times than not. In any case, my new ID reflect my mind-set more aptly.<br /><br />Two, I'm not proud but I've gotten into some flame wars with this ID on a discussion board. I try and try to have a civil discussion with certain board members but for some unknown reason they decide to pick a fight. The first few times I took the high road and let them go, but eventually it came to this old proverb: fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.<br /><br />I decided to defend myself because the moderators there were either weak or a friend of these people who sink down to name calling and insults when their logic is not sound enough to convince anyone of their position (one sunk low enough to use my dead father to try to insult me). But this left me feeling all negative and life is too short for that type of stuff. Plus the moderators' lack of discipline and tolerance for these baseless insults grew tiring as well. I decided to leave for other discussion boards, it wasn't the only one in town, and it was good for my mental health.<br /><br />Three, I think this name has served its purpose and has outlived its origins. The BGF moniker was a lark that started when I volunteered to help out somebody who started up their Giants website on Yahoo and was looking for contributors - so I had to have a name for my column and came up with Biased Giants Fanatic, which was funny to me because I try so hard to not be biased, but you know how good (NOT!) inside jokes are, that other people don't get.<br /><br />Initially, I just did that column on an irregular basis. But I ended up posting articles pretty regularly. Then soon I was helping out with farm system reports, which evolved the next year into contacting the Giants farm clubs for interviews. It just grew from that and eventually became my online identity and I dropped my prior on-line ID that I had at that time.<br /><br />However, soon my publisher left and one of my tormenters from the board took over. I decided then to try out blogs and publish via both channels. I found that I enjoyed the freedom of blogging plus my work would go out the day I'm done, not delayed because there was a queue of other articles ahead.<br /><br />Of course, the thought of working under this person made my skin crawl but I felt I owed it to the former publisher, who was very nice, to still post there so that her baby could live under the new publisher, instead of leaving them high and dry because I was the only one regularly writing stuff beyond the usual game recaps plus doing original research. But, when I thought they were ready to fly on their own, I just stopped sending articles.<br /><br />I am for the better for the experience of helping out with that website because I know so much more about the Giants (and baseball in general) today than I ever did before. I love swimming in numbers and there are numbers galore on the Internet and I love to analyze things. But now it's time for me to move on.<br /><br />Last, but most importantly, I've found an ID that fits me to a T and I am very happy with it. I have thought about this move for a long time now, since the dark days of my on-line battles. But it never felt right to change my ID plus I never found a name I wanted to move to. Until now.<br /><br />And while I like this BGF ID - as it feels like it has become a part of me, weirdly enough - it recently reminded me of the bad times when I was getting into battles when that person came back into my life and I hated the feelings that was engendered by that. So I've made the difficult decision to stop using this ID and switch to another.<br /><br />To get a clean start. To be re-born. I won't forget the abuse nor the illogic of these people. I was going to list and provide links to the stupid advice this person had put out there, but I've decided that going forward from this point on, now that I got this off my chest, I will finally try to move on from all that. (But I was really tempted to post the links - really, keeping Snow at $6.5M was better than getting Vlad?!?)<br /><br />So I'm going to switch to a new ID and hopefully it has a better karma but I really like this new ID and feel real good about this move. Take care and hope to see you at my new blog: <a href="http://obsessivegiantscompulsive.blogspot.com/">ObsessiveGiantsCompulsive</a>. (And sorry to those who have to switch their RSS links, I know what a pain that is, I had to redo all my RSS in switching IDs plus having to redo my whole format of myYahoo for my new ID)obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9555762.post-1143373613878935052006-03-28T18:48:00.000-08:002006-11-04T20:33:11.313-08:00Your 2006 Giants: The Wright Man for the #5 StarterI could have done this earlier. I've written extensively on why I think Jamey Wright should be the 5th starter and with each successful outing that he has had in the spring, he pretty much pitched great, winning the position, as Hennessey has been so-so this spring and while Correia has done well too, Wright has been that much better plus has the "seasoned vet" status that Sabean appears to love so much, so I guess I can put up this post now.<br /><br />Here are other posts on Wright:<br /><br /><ul><li><a href="http://biasedgiantsfanatic.blogspot.com/2006/01/giants-doing-wright-thing.html">http://biasedgiantsfanatic.blogspot.com/2006/01/giants-doing-wright-thing.html</a>: covers most of the arguments I am making for Wright as #5 starter for the Giants in 2006, particularly his success on the road, how there were aberrations in 2005 that made his road stats look worse than usual, and the need to give Hennessey every chance to have a breakout year in 2007 because he proved to be so dominating but not in a consistent manner.</li><li><a href="http://biasedgiantsfanatic.blogspot.com/2006/02/article-on-wright-in-chron_114092823767679317.html">http://biasedgiantsfanatic.blogspot.com/2006/02/article-on-wright-in-chron_114092823767679317.html</a>: has interesting comments on Wright from his former catcher in Colorado who happens to be our leading candidate for backup catcher this season.</li><li><a href="http://biasedgiantsfanatic.blogspot.com/2006/03/rueter-retires-and-wright-speculation.html">http://biasedgiantsfanatic.blogspot.com/2006/03/rueter-retires-and-wright-speculation.html</a>: speculation that Wright would be in line for long relief if he don't make starter, seems like that would be one too many relievers or that means only one of the three rookie relievers from last season will make this season, most probably Munter. But it looks like Correia is now up for this long relief role, which makes sense given how poorly Fassero did as a starter in 2005 plus the need to leave Hennessey alone in AAA to mature and learn to be consistently as dominating as he showed he could be in 2005, but would follow up with very poor outings.</li><li><a href="http://www.mccoveychronicles.com/comments/2006/3/7/153944/0953/3">http://www.mccoveychronicles.com/comments/2006/3/7/153944/0953/3</a>: in addition I posted on McCovey Chronicles, which has become my blog home away from blog home, that when you look at Ron Shandler's PQS rating for Wright's starts in 2005, while he was a mediocre 30% DOM overall, when you looked only at his road games, it was a sterling 47% DOM with only 7% DIS, both very good rates from top of the rotation guys, not something you would expect out of a bottom of rotation guy. </li><li><a href="http://www.mccoveychronicles.com/comments/2006/3/28/171936/410/4#4">http://www.mccoveychronicles.com/comments/2006/3/28/171936/410/4#4</a>: I got my elevator speech on Wright down pat, this one repeats much of the first post, plus I threw in a new twist: since he is an extreme groundball pitcher, he should get more doubleplays probably. If you subtract his DP/GS from his BR/9 figure, oops, I should have used his DP/9 rate of 1.2 instead of the 0.8 DP/GS rate - I quoted a reduction to a 1.42 WHIP but it should have been reduced to 1.38, which is a good WHIP rate for a starter. Also, I noted that given his road numbers and potential at AT&T, he should do no worse than the various #5's we have trotted out over the past few years - Jensen, Foppert, Moss, Hennessey - while giving Hennessey a chance to concentrate on getting himself ready to take a rotation spot in 2007, because when he is going good, he is dominant, but unfortunately he was inconsistent the past two seasons, going from bad to great to back to bad in successive starts. We need to harnest his strengths and maximize his potential. As I noted in another thread above, 77% of all minor league starting pitching prospects fail when they come up without a full year of AAA pitching, whereas only 33% fail with a full year, or looking at it the other way, without a full year, only 16% do well, with a full year, 56% do well. Compelling numbers to just keep Hennessey in AAA in 2006 and get him ready for 2007.</li></ul><strong>2006 Wright</strong><br /><br />He has shown the stamina and ability to throw 180-200 IP in a season, which will be good for saving the bullpen, though he has not done it often, so I don't know if it was stamina/injury or just poor pitching that stopped him, though I've read that he has had an injury history (according to Baseball Prospectus' team health report, fee but most of it is readable for free). With a low 4 ERA lifetime on the road and potentially under 4 ERA pitching at AT&T Park in 2006, he may be able to get his overall ERA into the high 3's and perhaps better, depending on how much of an advantage he gets from pitching in AT&T Park. But at worse, he should be as good as any of the #5 starters we have had over the past few years.<br /><br />He's not going to get a lot of strikeouts but it should be decent enough rate (5-6 K/9) and his walks will be horrendous, but he gets an extraordinary number of ground balls to fly balls, his GB rate is 10 percentage points better than Schmidt and he had a similar looking chart to what Matt Morris did his last four seasons, that should deliver a lot of double plays and force outs. His past DP/9 rate reduces his WHIP nicely into the 1.3 range, which is good for any pitcher, let alone #5 pitchers. Plus he keeps his H/9 down around 9 or one per inning, which helps a lot with his high W/9 rate. He seems like Rueter in that way, Kirk would rather walk you than give up a hit.<br /><br />He could potentially pitch as well as Morris did last season on an overall basis, making Wright the new Kirk Rueter of the rotation: high walks, low strikeouts, somehow gets batters out enough times to keep the score close enough for the team to win eventually. I wouldn't be surprised if he has a W/L record like what Rueter used to put up for the Giants regularly. At worse, he will be an adequate #5 starter and won't harm the Giants playoff ambitions, though he won't help either if this occurs. At best, he could put up Rueter-like number of wins with horrible other stats, looking like he did it with mirrors. His sinker and groundballs will be the keys to his success or failure. I think most of the signs point to him succeeding and possibly doing very well for us in the starting rotation, assuming he can stay healthy.obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9555762.post-1143439091992116732006-03-27T19:32:00.000-08:002006-11-04T20:33:11.522-08:00Your 2006 Giants: Vizquel and Matheny, Hidden Icebergs of Disaster But Relief/Rest ArrivesVizquel and Matheny were considered to have had a better offensive year for the Giants than expected. However, if you look at their monthly performances, they just had a really good first half of the year for the Giants before settling in to the poor performance that Giants fans were fearing. Vizquel hit the following pre and post ASG, but his 2005 season was about spot on his career numbers:<br /><br />Period - AVG - OBP - SLG - OPS<br />Pre-ASG - .305 - .359 - .397 - .756<br />PostASG - .229 - .318 - .292 - .611<br />2005 - .271 - .341 - .350 - .691<br />Career - .274 - .341 - .358 - .698<br /><br />Matheny main drop was in his sharp drop in HR power he showed in his first 3 months, many in SBC, but his numbers were much improved in power overall relative to his career:<br /><br />Period - AVG - OBP - SLG - OPS<br />Pre-ASG - .245 - .305 - .455 - .760 with 9 HR in 233 AB (26 AB/HR)<br />PostASG - .238 - .283 - .352 - .635 with 4 HR in 210 AB (52.5 AB/HR)<br />2005 - .242 - .295 - .406 - .701 with 13 HR in 443 AB (34 AB/HR)<br />Career - .239 - .293 - .344 - .638 with 64 HR in 3717 AB (58 AB/HR)<br /><br />So which player will we get, the pre-ASG or the post-ASG? Is this a sign that the player is losing ground vs. the competition and pitchers were finally figuring out how to get him out, i.e. is this a sign of his age decline? Or will he do better under different circumstances despite his age and difficult position?<br /><br /><strong>2006 Vizquel</strong><br /><br />Vizquel had a bookends of the season that matches his career somewhat in a backward way. He hit as well as his recent career numbers in the first half of the season but ended the season hitting as well (that is as poorly) as he did early in his career. In fact, he was great in April and June, with OPS in the low 800's, which is great for his position, but then from July on, his OPS tumbled down the stairs: .819 in June, then .708, .642, .534. There was probably some correlation with the trade of Deivi Cruz and Felipe feeling the need to play Vizquel more, resulting in him playing 25 games, 25, 27 in the final 3 months, whereas in the two months Vizquel ruled, he only played in 23 and 24 games (he played in 26 games in May and had an OPS of .617). Perhaps giving Vizquel enough rest will help him out in 2006 so that he can play near his peak vs. near his end.<br /><br />Vizcaino will certainly help with that. With a career .664 OPS, and recent OPS in that range, which is not good but looks great compared to Vizquel's post-ASG stat-line, Vizquel has a replacement who will not bring the offense down too much taking Vizquel's place. So hopefully Felipe will feel confident resting Vizquel more frequently in 2006 in order to keep Vizquel's bat potent and his legs - which stole 24 bases, much more than recent SF teams have been able to muster - fresher.<br /><br />In addition, Vizquel suffered from a malady that hits most new SF Giants hitters: trying to figure out how to hit at SBC. Some conquer it fast but most struggle with it to some extent during their first year with the team. Vizquel hit much better on the road, in fact, it was better than for his career, which is a good sign that his hitting ability was still sharp on the road:<br /><br />Place - AVG - OBP - SLG - OPS<br />Home - .252 - .333 - .307 - .640 with 0 homers in 274 AB<br />Away - .289 - .348 - .391 - .739 with 3 homers in 294 AB (98 AB/HR)<br />Career- .272 - .339 - .359 - .699 with 39 homer in 4247 AB (109 AB/HR)<br /><br />Assuming he gets some uplift from figuring out how to hit at AT&T and from getting more rest from an adequate replacement like Vizcaino, Vizquel should be able to counteract whatever decline he might experience due to his age and position, and do at least as well as he did in 2005, and perhaps a bit better. He has kept his body in very good shape from all the accounts I have read about him so that will help as well.<br /><br />In addition, for his career, he has hit better with men on base than with the bases empty:<br /><br />Career - AVG - OBP - SLG - OPS<br />Empty - .260 - .333 - .337 - .670<br />Runner- .294 - .351 - .387 - .737<br />RISP - .279 - .337 - .374 - .711<br />Loaded - .278 - .272 - .451 - .723<br /><br />And, frankly, he probably came up too often with no one on base as the season went on. The Giants didn't really have a good leadoff hitter, after Ellison took over from Durham who was moved lower to help protect Moises Alou, until Winn came in and was on fire. This season, Winn should be on base a lot when Vizquel comes up to bat.<br /><br /><strong>2006 Matheny</strong><br /><strong></strong><br />While Matheny had a second half fall-off, it was relative to the lofty heights he reached earlier in the season. His hitting after the ASG, while bad, was more in line with his career numbers, his first half was the aberration. In addition, looking at his monthly stats, it is clear that he started to tire by the end of the season. His OPS was steadily in the mid-700 range for the first four months of the season, with him playing 19-22 games each month, but then after Torrealba was traded away for Winn, Alou didn't trust Haad, so Matheny played 24 and 26 games, respectively, in August and September, driving his OPS to .699 in August and .560 in September. Again, a few extra games played appear to sap the strength out of Matheny, just like Vizquel in 2005.<br /><br />With an established backup catcher in Todd Greene this year, Matheny should get plenty of rest to keep his hitting up. In addition, he apparently loves hitting at SBC/AT&T, particularly for power via a homerun rate double that of his career, than at Busch and he loves hitting in the NL West more than he did hitting in the NL Central, regarding divisional rivals he played most of his away games against. So Matheny should do no worse than he did last season, and there is every reason to hope that he might do better, given proper rest.<br /><br />In addition, he hits much better with men on base than without, just like Vizquel:<br /><br />Career - AVG - OBP - SLG - OPS<br />Empty - .226 - .272 - .335 - .610<br />Runner- .256 - .318 - .356 - .674<br />RISP - .261 - .339 - .369 - .708<br />Loaded - .319 - .340 - .451 - .790 (about 100 PA)<br /><br />Not sure how that will pay off for Matheny since, while Alou will bat 5th and get on base a lot, then Feliz and Niekro will follow. If they both start walking more and hitting better, as I think they will, then Matheny will face more of the key runners on situations and hit better overall, but if the two of them fall back to how they did in 2005, then Matheny's hitting will probably suffer as well, creating a domino effect at the bottom of the lineup and perhaps affecting into the top of the lineup with Winn and Vizquel at the top.obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9555762.post-1143434425942346532006-03-26T21:30:00.000-08:002006-11-04T20:33:11.423-08:00Your 2006 Giants: Worrell and Kline, Two Setup Men, Not Settling ForTim Worrell and Steve Kline came to the Giants with poor performances in 2005. Worrell had personal problems that took him out in the early 2005 season and Kline just never adjusted to his new team and league. Some Giants fans question the acquisitions of these two relievers, particularly since Hawkins is pretty good against LHP, reducing the need for a LOOGY like Kline plus they gave up cash as well. But there were extenuating circumstances in both cases.<br /><br />In Worrell's case, after he resolved his personal issues, he pitched well, compiling 2.55 ERA, 1.27 WHIP, .261 BAA, 6.9 K/9, 2.3 W/9, 3.0 K/W, and 1.3 HR/9. This was very good and in line with his performances over the previous past 6 seasons. It was particularly good since he pitched at a hitters park like the BOB (now Chase). <br /><br />In Kline's case, he had been a good reliever for 7 seasons prior to his poor year in 2005, with ERA's in the low 3's or lower and WHIPs under 1.40, plus strong strikeout rates and low HR rates, his main problem had been walks. But in Baltimore, where not only was he not very happy, but he publicly let that be known and the fans rightly crucified him for it, and he didn't know the hitters or the parks, which all added up to a horrible year all around for him. His return to career norms is not as assured as Worrell but he did do better the last two months of the 2005 season, compiling a 1.96 ERA and 1.17 WHIP, with low 2.7 W/9 though very poor 2.7 K/9 and 1.2 HR/9. However, Felipe Alou was his manager when he first did well and Kline has expressed confidence that Alou will know how to use him to best effect - often and in key situations.<br /><br /><strong>2006 Worrell</strong><br /><br />He's been like the energizer rabbit for the most part over the past 7 seasons except for his personal problems early last season - hopefully he is over them and from his record afterward, he was. He may be old but he's never relied on a blazing fast ball nor been injured in the recent past. He's happy to be back - he didn't want to leave in the first place he said then and now and is glad to be back - and as noted he pitched well after he returned to action, so there's no reason to believe that he won't continue to do as well as he has over the past 7 seasons, he'll be a bulldog in the bullpen like he was when he was here with the team his first time around.<br /><br /><strong>2006 Kline</strong><br /><br />He was very good for 7 seasons, with dominance in 2 of the prior 4 seasons for the Cardinals, but then stunk up the joint in 2005? And he's only 33 years old. We know how unhappy he was in Baltimore plus he started finally coming around the last two months of the season for the Orioles and now he's back in the league and hitters he is most familiar with plus the catcher he had his biggest successes with in Matheny plus a manager that he first enjoyed success with and who he is looking forward to relieving for because he believes that Alou knows how to use him best for performance and will use him often, which is the way Kline likes it.<br /><br />In addition, there were flukey elements to his 2005. His HR/FB was 20% whereas the mean that all pitchers show fall to is 10%, so it was a huge outlier in terms of this metric, particularly since he didn't give up that much more flyballs than usual. In fact, his GB/FB ratio actually was pretty high as his LD was down from historic norms. And he actually pitched OK in Baltimore, it was on the road that he was not doing well at all, his BABIP was off the charts when normally it should be in the .300 range (generally plus based on career norms for prior three seasons). Plus he was about normal against RHH but just blew it against LHH, which I would consider to be an aberration given he was still OK vs. RHH, it was just one of those years.<br /><br />The Giants fans complaining about the trade of Hawkins forget that despite the Giants giving up cash in the deal, they saved that much in salary after all is said and done. And that amount is approximately the salary that they paid for Vizcaino over Angel Chavez. So look as it as a trade of Hawkins with Chavez as backup MI to Kline with Vizcaino as backup MI. Plus while Hawkins could be very good at times, even with us he seemed flakey to me, I would not have been comfortable knowing he was coming into a high pressure situation whereas Kline has a history of doing well in pennant situations with the Cardinals.<br /><br /><strong>2006 Setup</strong><br /><br />I think the Giants set up situation is going to be fine in 2006. Worrell and Kline has a history of doing well, with just a poor 2005 season to show for their troubles. I think Kline will replace Eyre's production for the most part, he has had 3 seasons similar to Kline over the previous 7 whereas this was Eyre's first good season so there was no guarantee that even had we retained Eyre that even Eyre would have replaced his 2005 production. He should return to his effectiveness against LHH and do well in AT&T where his groundballs will be gobbled up by a good defensive infield. Worrell will be the ace in the hole should Benitez falter in any way but will be a pillar in the setup role like he was in the past for us.obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9555762.post-1143370937248275952006-03-26T02:13:00.000-08:002006-11-04T20:33:11.217-08:00Your 2006 Giants: Durham and Alou - Got (not enough) Games, a Tale of Two Old MenThat's the irony here, both Durham and Alou "got game" but "don't got games." Both are excellent hitters for their positions, a great addition to any lineup but that's the rub, they have to be in the lineup to contribute. And while Durham did get into the most games in a season as a Giant in 2005, that was a false promise because he played at less effective levels because his power was missing, particularly against LHP, whom he usually killed, pushing his overall hitting from good to average. And Alou missed a boatload of games in his first season as a Giant, which is not unusual for him, as earlier in his career he missed a lot of games each season, it was rarer for him to play a full season than to miss games. So now that he' breaking 40, there's no reason to believe that he will suddenly play a full season, he will be like Bonds, getting rest frequently, to keep him sharp and relatively healthy. Hence the cruciality of Finley returning to his prior form as I noted in my post on Finley.<br /><br /><strong>2006 Durham</strong><br /><br />So there's not much more to say. Durham is in his last year of his contract so he'll be playing for his new contract. With Frandsen and perhaps Sanders pressing for 2B in the next year or two, he probably will not be resigned by the Giants so he will have to make a good show of it in 2006. He changed his conditioning routine before the 2005 season to the one recommended by the Giants training staff because the one he was following didn't really do much for him the two prior years, but he still didn't do it under the staff's supervision so that probably undercut their effectiveness. That's probably why it didn't seem to do much for him, even if he didn't go on the DL, he was still hampered by aches and pains still and missed 20 games still, plus, more importantly, despite playing 22 more games than in 2004, he only got 18 more plate appearances so the extra games were only pinch hit appearances - we don't pay him $7M+ to pinch hit for us.<br /><br />He will probably hit well again for the games he does play but Vizcaino is his backup this year so there will be a big drop off in offense when that happens, and it has basically happened for 40-50 starts each year he has been with the Giants. Hopefully if there is any hint of problems, instead of hobbling through it by keeping him on the bench and hoping, just put him on the DL and bring up Frandsen, if he recovers early great, he can use the extra time off getting into better condition.<br /><br />His hitting vs. LHP should return to normal "killer" heights because his RHP hitting was right in line with his recent career norms, which suggests that the dropoff vs. LHP was just a case of small samples. In addition, over the past two seasons, Durham has been able to curb his strikeouts and has kept his walks high, so he has been in the top 20% of batters in terms of BB/SO ratio, and those are the best hitters. Thus he should hit close to his career norms across the board, because he has been relatively consistent in that way, it is just the number of games he does this in that is the problem. If his hammy squeaks, just bite the bullet and sit him down and let Giants fans see the future with Frandsen called up.<br /><br /><strong>2007 Alou</strong><br /><br />Again, not much to say. 40 year olds - which Alou will join this season - will rarely play over 120-130 games in a season and he only played in that many last season. In addition, they eventually succumb to age and have a decline in production. So expect at most 130 games and hope that he only suffers from a slight decline because all players will eventually have a steep decline in production if they play long enough.<br /><br />He is also in the last year of his contract and has said that he would still like to play another year, even if not with the Giants (hey, if I knew I could make $3-5M, I would play another year too.). So that should help to boost his production, though that did not do anything for Grissom last season. His hitting vs. RHP was in line with his recent career norms and his LHP hitting was in Barry-Land (1.157 OPS), so he played with strength in 2005 and that's a good sign for 2006. However, he had a very slight second half slump so that's a bad sign, though it was so slight, it could just be a hiccup. He also hit much better on the road than at home and he was still very good at home, his power did not suffer much at SBC, except perhaps for homers.<br /><br />The Bill James rule for old players at the end of their careers, and he certainly has passed through that gateway, is that you assume he'll continue to hit well for another year, so I expect something close to what he did in 2005, which was close to what he did for the past three seasons, so there's that continuity and consistency there that is comforting. In addition, looking at his peripherals, if anything, his walk and strikeout rates have been rising over the past few years, the only thing negative I could see was that he had a decline in power vs. RHP in 2005 but that was only in context with how great he did in 2004 vs. RHP, else 2005 would have been in line with previous seasons. <br /><br />There are only two caveats. One is that I would also throw in a slight decline to account for his age. Two is that the main problem, as with Durham, is how many games he will play, though if Finley can hit anywhere close to his recent career norms before his horrendous 2005 season, he (or rather Winn) would be an adequate replacement for Alou in RF, unlike the problem of what happens when Durham is out of the lineup.obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9555762.post-1143236791337800832006-03-24T12:45:00.000-08:002006-11-04T20:33:11.122-08:00Bonds Lawsuit Against "Book of Shadows"Well, the lawsuit the Against-Bonds contingent was been clamoring for has arrived, though probably not in the way that would appease them. Bonds is suing not for libel but for something arcane called, "California's Unfair Competition Law." Sports Law Blog gives their take on it <a href="http://sports-law.blogspot.com/2006/03/barry-bonds-to-sue-game-of-shadows.html">here</a>. Though they say that libel is very hard to <a href="http://sports-law.blogspot.com/2005/05/boston-sportscaster-bob-lobel-sues.html">prove</a> - "Generally, libel is difficult to prove, and as you can tell by their more burdensome standard for proving guilt, public figures have an especially difficult time winning libel suits." - then they say that others have won before, which paints Bonds, to my reading, with a guilty color.<br /><br />I'm not a lawyer, but the two examples given as winners were cases where it can be proven that the defendents were lying. In Carol Burnett's case, all she needed was Henry Kissinger and another uninterested party at that restaurant to attest that she was not "drunk and arguing." In the other case, all the guy needed to do was have a copy of the interview and prove that he was misquoted. Both cases involve incidences where the plaintiff could prove their version of the story.<br /><br />But how does Bonds prove a negative? As I noted in a comment in response to another comment on this on another post, if I ask any guy whether he still beats his significant other, he cannot prove that I'm wrong and being malicious. So it seems to be fallacious for people to demand that Bonds sue for libel, when there is no chance to win against claims that you used an illegal substance because there is no way you can prove that, this is a claim on a continuous length of time, not a pinpoint period of time as in the two cases that were won.<br /><br />In addition, look at the example in the Sports Log Blog of a suit that didn't win. Jerry Falwell sued when Hustler parodied an ad but putting Falwell in there discussing partaking in incest, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it was protected by the First Amendment, no matter how upsetting the satire may be. That was pretty heinous and Falwell couldn't do anything about that, partially because he cannot prove maliciousness, but I would assume there is no way he could prove he was not partaking.<br /><br /><strong>Not a Bonds Believer, But A American System Believer</strong><br /><br />Again, not that I believe that Bonds is innocent. I've been beaten down and agree that it certainly looks suspicious and, in any case, I've always acknowledged that the anti-Bonds side had some good ammo, only that there is now more ammo and bigger. However, there is enough "buts" out there that suggest that that Bonds could do what he did legitimately, so it is not like I believe he is absolutely guilty either, though right now my suspicisions (and that is all they are) is that he is using human growth hormone which is untraceable. In addition, some of the logic people have been using for Bonds could also be applied to Hank Aaron as well and to Ted Williams, so does that mean they were using too?<br /><br />So if we are going to claim he is guilty, we need more conclusive evidence than that provided so far, we need unimpeachible sources. And there is enough issues of impartiality to say that the "evidence" exposed in the books are not actually truths. How do you trust the word of a woman who is scorned and looking for money? Particularly since it has been over a year that she accused him of hiding baseball card signing income and yet the government has not lifted one finger yet to bring Bonds to justice, which would blow a big hole in the only other blockbuster claim that she made about Bonds.<br /><br />And fraud like this is not new. Pete Rose was caught and sent to jail in the early 1990's. Duke Snider and Willie McCovey was caught around the same time and had to plead guilty to tax evasion. This is something the government is experienced in ferreting out and prosecuting famous people for this. And putting them behind bars when necessary.<br /><br />And Bonds, given how fast he got a lawyer just for the steroids controversy, obviously uses experts to guide him when he needs help. Does anyone really think he would risk going to jail to pocket $80K in baseball card income when he was making $10M per year at the time? Especially with old family friend Willie McCovey to warn him to watch out for the government, or he could get thrown in jail like Pete Rose? No, he would get a tax lawyer who will lay it straight for him so that he does everything right and not risk that.<br /><br />How do you trust the word of a man who claims to be a friend but, according to Sheffield, had problems with the way Bonds was treating him - Bonds made him look really bad by correcting his instruction in front of a client - and could have been jealous of his much more successful friend, particularly since Bonds appeared to be stingy with what he paid Anderson for his services.<br /><br />If you are going to accuse someone of such a serious accusation, you need to have more proof than "well, it looks like he did it." You need something that the government can put him in jail for. And they have the perfect opportunity to do it, Bonds testified that he didn't use and the government has all these schedules and other "proof" that is trotted out in the book. If the proof was good, then why isn't Bonds convicted? Why isn't he in jail, they have had this information for years now. That is how our system works, innocent until proven guilty.<br /><br /><strong>Inconsistencies Kills the Story Woven</strong><br /><br />And even if you believe all the stories told, there is a huge inconsistency between the stories. The reporters would have been better off just focusing on the Balco leak, but that wasn't enough so they included the mistress. But she claims that he was totally paranoid and worried about his legacy as a ballplayer. And Sheffield showed that Bonds was not above openly correcting his hired help - and they hated Bonds for it - if he thought they were screwing up plus was a control freak who tried to control Sheffield, who was none too happy about it; his story is probably the most unimpeachible of the three.<br /><br />If you believe those, then how can you believe that Bonds would allow Anderson <a href="http://www.snac.com/images/athletes/15_sm.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 249px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 167px" height="246" alt="" src="http://www.snac.com/images/athletes/15_sm.jpg" border="0" /></a>to have any evidence linking Bonds to drug usage? If I was paranoid and worried about my legacy, I would barge into Anderson's home like a SWAT team and shake everything down to make sure that he wasn't being stupid and leaving evidence. And I would randomly do it too, just to be sure he isn't screwing up - again - and do anything to incriminate me. And I certainly wouldn't allow an invoice to be issued under my name for these drugs, I would force Anderson to buy them under his name and I pay him under the table in small bills over time. In addition, I would have laughed in the face of Conte when he asked me to advertise for his vitamins in a <a href="http://www.snac.com/images/athletes/15_sm.jpg">Happy Happy Joy Joy ad</a>. I took the liberty to put Bonds smiling face here but the link is here if you want to see it as it exists on-line.<br /><br />None of this holds together when you put all the logical implications of the various stories out there together. But when you go into this with the hypothesis that Bonds is guilty, you don't bother to work out the inconsistencies in the stories and just accept what the reporters say, or rather, what the government prosecturos were saying, since they were the ones who leaked the information to the reporters - the reporters would have nothing if they didn't get those illegally released documents.<br /><br /><strong>Prosecutors Not Infallible</strong><br /><br />Also, because the information is from a Grand Jury investigation, it lends weight to the findings because most people believe that our legal system is infallible (I believe in our system but know that it is definitely fallible) . However, the San Jose Mercury recently had this big expose about prosecutors who made all sorts of errors in their trials, particularly in favor of their hypothesis:<br />Here's a opening quote from the <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/stolenjustice/13674876.htm">article</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>The three cases are among hundreds examined in an unprecedented three-year Mercury News investigation of the Santa Clara County criminal justice system<br />that shows a disturbing truth:<br /><br />A dramatic number of cases were infected with errors by prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges, and those errors were routinely tolerated. In dozens of cases, the errors robbed defendants of their right to a fair trial. And in a small number of the very worst cases, they led people to be wrongly convicted.<br /><br />The study reveals "a basic truth about how the criminal justice system operates," said Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor who teaches criminal law and ethics at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. Levenson was one of seven experts in criminal procedures and ethics who reviewed the Mercury News findings. "A lot of sausage gets pushed through that machine. Errors that help the prosecution are common. The uneven nature of criminal justice is a serious concern."</blockquote>I think this shows that prosecutors are not infallible in pursuing their trial convictions and, in particular, their zealousness blinded them to the truth. I don't doubt that there are a lot of prosecutors, even among the ones who committed these errors, who care about justice and who do their best to do what's right, but this article shows that there are problems with the system that need to be fixed. And for a government employee to be unable to prosecute because they didn't have enough evidence, then illegally releasing this information to reporters, shows how zealous he or she was.<br /><br />Also, this paragraph was very eye opening (my bolding): "The review established that in 261 of the appellate cases reviewed -- <strong>more than one in every three of the total</strong> -- the criminal trial had been marred by questionable conduct that worked against the defendant. In only about one in 20 cases did the defendant win meaningful relief -- either a new trial or a significantly reduced sentence -- from higher courts." That is a huge rate of problems! And brings into question how valid these suppositions (not truths) proferred by the authors are given the likelihood that the investigation was compromised by an overzealous government prosecutor.<br /><br /><strong>Taking the Higher Moral Ground</strong><br /><br />In addition, I just heard one of the reporters rationalizing why he had to circumvent U.S. grand jury laws and release the grand jury testimony: to save the children from the scourge of steroids. I had to laugh at that one. It is the news that glorifies and publicizes all this stuff. If the news were operating the way it was in the 1920's, we wouldn't know about Bonds taking steroids, we would just know he was hitting homers at a great pace. We would see him hulk out over time but assume that he earned his muscles the old fashion way.<br /><br />If anything, they will now contribute to widening the use of this. They are laying out what is claimed to be his entire regimen of taking the drugs. Before, kids could wonder if they were doing the right thing, or taking too much. But if they go over the whole regimen in their book - and it is my understanding that they laid that all out according to all the marketing hype I have heard about the book - then they have a ready recipe that a superstar player "reportedly" used to get bigger and stronger and they don't have to worry as much about poisoning themselves, as long as they hold to the recipe and get a clean and reliable source of the drugs.<br /><br />If they don't want to add to the scourge, then stop reporting on baseball games that Bonds play in. F' the readers of your newspaper, you are doing something to save their children's souls, they will thank you later that they are not hulked out loonies using steroids. While they are at it, don't report all the various evils of society that happens on a daily basis, just report news as if we live with Beaver Cleaver as neighbor and "Father Knows Best", because the news just teaches the kids new ways of breaking the law, of how to mis-behave.<br /><br />Also, how does the book discourage the youth of America from using steroids any more than the newspaper articles did? Even with all the proselytizing on how bad Bonds is from this book, I don't see the youth of America being saved in any incremental way by the book over the newspaper articles. There was already all the news about Balco the past two years, the kids would have to be living with their heads in the sand for them not to get the message. In addition, there were the blowups with Palmeiro, Giambi, and Sheffield at various times to further drive the point home.<br /><br />And yet the point is actually being driven another way for some of these youths: these stars probably used, made a lot of money, and they still look pretty healthy to me, just not held in high esteem by society, but remember the millions of dollars. How does that convince kids not to use? It would have been much more effective if they wrote a book discussing all the horrible things that would happen to you if you took steroids. But that don't sell books - however, a tell-all book on Barry Bonds, well, that's a horse of another color!<br /><br />So the only reason to do a book would be to make money as authors, not this high moral ground of saving the youth of America, because there is a lot of other more effective ways of accomplishing this. Not that there is anything wrong with making a buck, but don't make it seem like a noble cause by saying you are doing it for the kids when there are better ways of influencing the youth of America.obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9555762.post-1142987000329171492006-03-23T07:53:00.000-08:002006-11-04T20:33:10.923-08:00Your 2006 Giants: Niekro Just Fine, Maybe Better Than FineAfter a nice long run, JT Snow was let go by the Giants after his road power finally left him, and the Giants gave the 1B job to Lance Niekro. Niekro, who has been in our system since being drafted in 1999, has always been a good for hitting .300 all the way up the minors and just recently the power kicked in and he started pounding them out more often, a lot more.<br /><br />He had a nice start to his MLB career in 2005 but he ended the season on a very poor note, bad enough that the Giants have qualified their support for him as starter. In addition, there is his long history of injury which struck him again last season, and happen to strike right when his stats started declining, so it was not clear whether the injury caused it or if the league happened to finally figure things out around that time. Normally, this bad second half is an indicator that pitchers had figured him out but the injury muddles the analysis enough to make it not clear what happened.<br /><br /><strong>Not Quite Day and Night</strong><br /><br />Like Finley, there are signs either way that he's bad or good. He was hitting .308/.336/.564/.900 with 7 HR in 117 AB when he got injured. After that he hit only .211/.266/.385/.651 with 5 HR in 161 AB. And that does seem abnormal because his minor league stats translated into him being a .250-.270 hitter in the majors. So he did really well early in the season before his injury seemed to put a cramp into his hitting style plus he wouldn't be able to hit .300 in the minors if he couldn't hit RHP to some extent, so perhaps it was a flukey thing in the latter half of 2005.<br /><br />Also like Finley, his injury appeared to affect his hitting vs. the opposite thrower. While his hitting vs. RHP did suffer initially, he was able to hit to his normal level for much of the season until the last month when perhaps fatigue set in since it was his first full MLB season, which is longer than what he did in the minors. Whereas his LHP hitting slowly sunk from the point of the injury. Conversely, however, he starting striking out a lot more, off the charts, against RHP at the end of the season, after being in the good zone most of the season. And he was able to stay pretty good vs. LHP, particularly his ISO, until, again, late in the season.<br /><br />Again like Finley, Niekro's home park did him in. His great start was almost entirely driven by his road numbers. Possibly because he had to leave hitter's havens like Colorado and Arizona, his road numbers fell like a rock. And I don't know if it was a coincident or not but once he had his injury, his road numbers dropped off the clift whereas his numbers at home stayed in the same crappy range. And his strikeout rate just exploded after that on the road, whereas at home it was relatively consistent. He was in the "good" range on the road until around August, same with his ISO.<br /><br />And while he had problems at home, his ISO at home rose from average to good as the season progressed, suggesting that he slowly figured out how to hit at home. This is similar to the struggles that Grissom, Durham, and Alfonzo ran into their first season in SF, there was an interview with Grissom where he talked about the trio's difficulties figuring out SBC/AT&T. So his power stayed, only he couldn't buy a hit, but he started figuring out how to get walks.<br /><br />Other factors that affected his hitting was three things related to his injury. One was that because he started less, it was harder for him to get into a groove and, at the same time, harder to get out of slumps because he wasn't playing as regularly. Problems at the plate tends to weight on players longer that way. In addition, by being on the bench, he had to pinch hit a lot, about 30-35 times after his injury. The pinch-hitting after the injury killed his numbers and masked his adequate peripherals. Spliting it out (I took his game stats and I assumed 3 PA or higher was a start, else PH), I got this (plus I threw in his before numbers too so one can see how much he dropped):<br /><br />his role - OPS - BB% - Contact% - BB/SO - AB/HR<br />Start - .667 - 7.7% - 80.3% - 42.3% - 26.4 AB<br />PHing - .578 - 3.3% - 58.6% - 8.3% - no HR<br />(Before - .900 - 4.1% - 87.2% - 33.3% - 16.7 AB)<br /><br />As you can see his peripherals as a starter were OK, BB% was about average, Contact% was about average, his BB/SO was a little low (50% is min for acceptable major leaguer). Plus his HR rate was still good, 20+ homer pace. But his hitting performance did not truly reflect his OK peripherals. And pinch-hitting just totally killed his numbers in the second half and for the season.<br /><br />Third is that his ISO showed that he had power when he connected, but as his sky-high strikeouts showed, his contact rate went way down, resulting in a huge drop in his fly ball rate. But the good news there is that his fly ball rate returned in the last weeks of the season. And recent research has shown that a batter's HR rate is related to the number of fly balls he hits.<br /><br /><strong>Niekro 2006</strong><br /><br />Given small samples and extremes, his 2006 numbers will probably end up between the extreme of what he was hitting when he got injured (had a .900 OPS) and of what he was hitting after the injury (had a .667 OPS if you exclude all the pinch-hitting). I know, big whoop, it doesn't take much to say this. The significance of this range is that he will be batting 7th mainly for the Giants in 2006. Even if he hits poorly, while that is bad relative to most team's 1Bman, he would fit right in with the other 7th place hitters across the league. The median OPS was .702 for the NL, which is not far from the .667 OPS he had as a starter after his injury. <br /><br />Even a minor uptick from recovering from his injury would cover that difference and put him in the middle plus be better than what the Giants got in 2005. If he can either consolidate what he was learning in the second half regarding walks or hit like he did before the injury, he only needs to hit .713 to be 7th in the NL and only needs to hit at least .800 to be in the top 3 in the NL. However, he needs to avoid the injuries, which, unfortunately, he's already got something this spring, hopefully this gets it out of his system and he can be healthy during the season.<br /><br />And frankly, successful winning teams don't rely on a good hitting 7th place hitter, they are a luxury. The teams with the best 7th place hitters were, for the top half of the NL, were Mets, Brewers, Reds, Cards, San Diego, Florida, Dodgers, and Cubs. Most were .500 or worse teams, only the Cards were much over .500. Out of the other playoff teams, the Braves were 9th, so they were in the bottom half of teams and that was an OPS of .695. And Houston was 16th or last with .610.<br /><br />People are focused too much on Niekro as a weak link because he's a firstbaseman and not hitting like other firstbasemen. While that is of some concern, the Giants have a pretty good top of the lineup with Winn, Vizquel, Durham, Bonds, and Alou, with Finley as an adequate substitute if he bounces back to his previous hitting performance. And Feliz could make it even stronger if he does breakout like I think the indicators appear to be saying. If the other hitters hit like they are suppose to, we don't need Niekro to hit as well as other firstbasemen, though that would make our lineup even better.<br /><br />Lastly, and I think very importantly, he seems to be taking very seriously this opportunity to start. He has made adjustments in his hitting that has been evident even in the small sample spring stats. His dad told him it might be his one and only chance to start, which he appears to have taken to heart. He at least is talking the talk by saying he's working hard to earn 1B, not just take it by default, not just take it because he is being given it. <br /><br />According to this well timed <a href="http://www.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/article.jsp?ymd=20060322&content_id=1359299&vkey=spt2006news&fext=.jsp&c_id=sf">artice</a> on him, he added on 15 pounds of muscle during the offseason. That should help him with hitting with more power and that should help him with lasting deeper into the season, assuming some of his late season decline was related to insufficient conditioning. The article also confirms much of the above paragraph. He noted, "I'm trying to be more selective and find a pitch in the zone." That's straight out of Ted Williams hitting book, which I loved as an instructional for hitting, it tried to make a science of hitting (and coinky-dink enough, that's the title, <em>The Science of Hitting</em>) and helped turn a 90 lb weakling hitter like me into the Pete Rose of our 8-1 intramural college team (FYI: if you just love hitting balls over and over again, I got to do that 25 years ago at Chabot College taking their summer baseball class - there wasn't enough people for a game so the 3-4 of us just fed the hitting machines to each other. Pure joy.) <br /><br />In addition, it noted that he has made adjustments. He has altered his stance so that he's now staying over the ball better, according to the Giants batting coach, and it's a much quicker path to the ball with a lot of power. The coach feels that since he is stronger now, it has given Niekro confidence plus when you are weaker you have a tendency to lose your mechanics quickly. Hopefully that will keep him out of the funk that he admitted affected him greatly, whether lefty or righty. He noted, "there were a couple of pitches they were getting me out on, even lefties, and once they found that spot they started attacking me." And it showed in his stats, with the huge jump in strikeouts at the end of the season. But now it looks like the pitchers will have to adjust back, so it will be a battle this season<br /><br />So when I add that all up, even at his worse, he's around the league middle for 7th place hitters. And if you assume he can hit better than he did in the second half, taking out injury and PHing, then he's pushing above the median. And if he can return to his pre-injury hitting, he'll be one of the top 7th place hitters. And if he can hit in the low .800 OPS, he would be in the middle of the pack among firstbasemen. Lastly, his .900 OPS to start last season would have put him 6th and close to the 4th and 5th spots. He should be fine starting at firstbase for the Giants this season and there are a number of signs that he could be better than fine.obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9555762.post-1143047981067494252006-03-22T08:44:00.000-08:002006-11-04T20:33:11.028-08:00Lefty's Post on SF ProspectsThere is a great post at Lefty Malo's <a href="http://leftymalo.blogspot.com/">yesterday</a>, titled "Temperance Movement," it discusses not the woman anthropologist on the TV show Bones, my favorite new show of the TV season (only because Grey's Anatomy technically started up last season), but how most farm systems normally only hold at any time eight future major leaguers: two position starters, two bench players, two starting pitchers, and two relievers. Or, as Lefty put it, only 4 (or 3%) of the 150 or so prospects will be valuable starters in the majors.<br /><br />This backs up what I've been saying with my draft studies, that it is very hard to draft regular major leaguers. Because if it was so easy or so likely, you would have more than 3% of your farm system be valuable starters in the majors in the future. If I had the time, the corollary study to do would be to see how many players "graduate" to a starter's position in the majors each year. <br /><br />I wish I had a database program, the data is probably available via retrosheet, you just have to pull up each players' first season with X number of games played/Y number of plate appearances, where X is somewhere between 120 and 140, not sure, or Y is 300 or 400 AB, or even Z for PA/game, which is at least 2.5 or 3.0, all these will need to be determined. And for pitchers, it would be the number of games started, 16 (half a season of starts), 24 (3/4 season starts), average over 5 IP per game, again, something to be thought about and determined what's the right criteria, for how do I handle, say, Francoeur, Ryan Howard, and Zach Duke, who clearly were starters at the end of the season, but played less than half. I guess if the database also covered whether they were still eligible for the ROY award, I guess that would be a great delineator.<br /><br />Lefty also had a good discussion starter question: who among the Giants current prospects (excluding Cain and Hennessey) are our future two position starters and two starting pitchers. I chose EME and Marcus Sanders, both have been described in superlative terms that went beyond just themselves as players but to span the minors in Sanders case, cause he was described by one of the prospect services as the fastest prospect in the minors. For pitchers, I went with Valdez and Sanchez, as both have been described in superlative terms, Valdez for his 100 MPH fastball (rare to combine such speed with good results in the minors) and Sanchez as I noted yesterday in the Hiatt interview. I would also throw in Frandsen and Brian Wilson as just missing (assuming Wilson is slated back to starting again since he is now fully recovered from his arm surgery). <br /><br />He also had two other interesting questions. One was who was the last ROY for the Giants who was a position player. I blanked on that until Lyle noted Speier as a possible one. That jogged my memory because I remembered that he started a string of three ROY awards for the Giants, Speier, Gary Mathews Sr., and Garry Maddox, if I remember the sequence right (maybe swap the last two). The only other possible ones would be Clark (Jack that is, Will definitely didn't win) and maybe Matt Williams but I don't really recall either of them winning it, they had nice first years but not outstandingly good ones that I recall, but my memory lately has been pretty bad.<br /><br />The other was the last Giants prospect to make the All-Star Game in a Giants uni. My best guess would be Matt Williams since he challenged Maris' record in the strike year, which is after Clark left, they would be the only ones I would think would have a chance to play in the ASG, because after them, the best Giants position prospects were probably Marvin Benard and Chris Magruder, oh and Armando Rios, and two of them are suspected steroids users. <br /><br />And lastly, technically, you have to count Cain in the mix for the starters, because he's still eligible for the ROY award, I assume the Giants purposefully held off bringing him up in order to give him a chance to win it this year. The Giants farm system looks to be in pretty good shape with so many possibilities, but this is only making up for the multi-decade slump the Giants have been in since the 1970's, with only the Clark/Thompson/Williams/Clayton brief respite we had in the late 80's/early 90's. While I know that they haven't proven to be major leaguers yet, let alone starters, so I might be jumping the gun, I truly think the farm system today is probably the strongest it has been since I started following the Giants 35 years ago, when it had all those ROY awards plus Ron Bryant, John "the Count" Montefusco, Ed Halicki, Jim Barr, coming up.obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9555762.post-1142983526752217482006-03-21T12:45:00.000-08:002006-11-04T20:33:10.830-08:00Hiatt interview on MILB.com: talk about top prospectsThere is an <a href="mms://a1272.v10869e.c10869.g.vm.akamaistream.net/7/1272/10869/v0001/mlb.download.akamai.com/10869/2006/open/teams06/sfn/mlbr/031706_hiatt_jack.wma">interesting interview </a>on <a href="http://www.milb.com/">milb.com </a>with Jack Hiatt, who is the Giants Director of Player Development. Here is the bits of news I got from it for those who don't want to sit and listen through the 10+ minute interview:<br /><ul><li>Cain is ready to step up and be a full-time starter. Giants lucky to have a 20 year old with the mentality of older pitcher. He has great stuff and excellent command of himself, don't get rattled or flustered, which is half the battle for a rookie, being able to adjust to the pressure and the media.<br /></li><li>Valdez came in 100% healthy this spring, unlike past with minor injuries, opening eyes with his good performance and acceptance of relief this spring (I guess he wasn't so accepting of it previously; don't know if that resulted in his poor pitching in relief or if his poor pitching in relief caused his lack of acceptance). He has a 100 MPH fast ball and hard breaking ball and been effective this spring. He's still a young arm, so he will be used as needed. He has the experience to be a starter but has now accepted a short role so that's additional flexibility. Organization always thought he could start, setup, close, so he seems to be fulfilling the team's expectations. Luxury to use as we need.<br /></li><li>About EME, he noted that it wouldn't hurt any of the OF to learn how to play 1B, as that increases their flexibility (that's been a Sabean popular phrase in recent years) - he's been seeing some practice there now. He also pointed out John Bowker and Brian Horwitz (won batting title in two leagues). Also said he is the "finest right-handed hitter since Matt Williams," and got that type of power and impact. He is healthy, strong, a special hitter plus now is healthy. Will have a lot of luck at the major league level. Call him LF/1B for now.<br /></li><li>Apparently it was Nate Schierholtz who pushed for the move to RF, or so Haitt said. He wanted to try it out and ended up loving it, as did the Giants. I recall BA noting that they hoped the Giants would give Schierholtz more of a chance to prove whether or not he'll cut it at 3B and they were disappointed when he moved to RF so fast afterward. He has a plus arm and, because of his great swing, beautiful swing, he will hit. He rounds out a great crop of outfielders coming up: EME, Bowker, Timpner, and himself.<br /></li><li>Marcus Sanders will be headed to the Cal League. Will see if he is able to handle better pitchers and catchers moving up but he has great instincts and unbelievable speed, he can change the game with his speed, the first in the system in a long time. He had a minor operation on his arm during the off-season but he looks great, he's healthy and happy (which means Giants fans are happy, assuming that means he is still a SS prospect).<br /></li><li>Said outside of the usual prospects, we should keep an eye on Jon Sanchez. He's the talk of the camp because he has an excellent arm, above average stuff, which is rare for a LHP, live fast ball, good hard breaking ball, and a nice feel for pitching. He ended by saying Sanchez got all the ingredients and that we might see him in the majors by the end of summer. </li></ul><p>Exciting news overall, hope he's right on most of it.</p>obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9555762.post-1142921111918769332006-03-21T07:59:00.000-08:002006-11-04T20:33:10.644-08:00Your 2006 Giants: Feliz a Hitting Volcano Waiting to Erupt"Happy Pete" as Pedro Feliz is called by come Giants fans is an enigma within a facade. Derided by Giants fans for years for his hack-tastic impatient ways, he was the epitome of what one former sports talk host dubbed "brain-dead" that, while on target, the host unfortunately made crass and unforgiveable by making it racist as well. Pedro was a disappointment for many Giants fans in 2005, including myself (it doubly hurt because he was on my fantasy team) with a second half fade that resulted in many fans going "huh" when it was announced almost immediately after the 2005 season that he's the starting thirdbaseman for 2006. But not all is as it seemed in 2005, fans (including this one) and the host missed some key things.<br /><br /><strong>Feliz's Bad Past</strong><br /><br />On the surface, in spite of the fact that fans felt that Feliz would be an improvement over Alfonzo, fans are still scratching their head and wondering why the Giants don't use their "Maddux" money to get a better 3B. His career, career best, and 2005 season OBP would rank last among 3B in 2005. He was likewise last for 6th place hitters, which is where he is slated to bat in 2006. His OBP was abyssmal.<br /><br />However, it was much better for his slugging, which is where most of the run value is to be gained from a 6th place hitter - most NL teams don't rely on their 7th, 8th, and 9th place hitter to drive in the 6th place hitter. His career and 2005 season SLG would have ranked 8th or 9th, respectively, and his career best would have ranked 5th, which would have been pretty good out of 16 teams.<br /><br />But the OBP dragged down his OPS. His OPS would be 11th or 12th, 9th for his career best. So he looks to be a weak link in the Giants lineup, which was my thoughts going into this post.<br /><br /><strong>Improved Hitting Hidden Under the Surface of Mediocre Results<br /></strong><br />However, looking at his <a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/graphs.aspx?playerid=1112&position=1B_3B_SS_OF&page=0&type=full">FanGraph stats page</a>, a couple of interesting developments were revealed. First, while he is walk challenged, he's not as bad as Giants fans have been depicting him, at least not in 2005. He made a big leap in 2005, as his overall BB% rose to a career best 6.3%, which is above his poor rates of his career and is approaching league average, which is around 8%. In fact, looking at his in-season average, he spent a good portion of the year in the middle of the pack, with some peaks into the good range. It's clear that he took some time working on improving his walk rate, I don't think you can fluke into getting 50% more walks during a full season without consciously working on it.<br /><br />Meanwhile, he kept his strikeouts in the good half of the middle again in 2005 vs. 2004, which resulted in an improvement in his batting eye - BB/SO ratio - again, from 0.19 in 2003, to 0.27 in 2004, to 0.37 in 2005. Still, 0.50 (or 50%) is the minimum for any major leaguer who expect to hit adequately, but at least he's been making progress each year and improving by leaps and bounds - at the rate he has been improving he should be approaching 0.50 in 2006. And there were extended periods in 2005 where his batting eye was good, the first time in his career that he did this. And it is clearly trending higher on an overall basis from season to season the past three seasons. In addition, he spent much of the time from around August 2004 to around August 2005 with his SO% in the good range (top 20%) of hitters, before possibly tiring in his first full season of play or having his play in LF affect his hitting. <br /><br />Looking at his left/right splits, he has shown improving mastery over LHP each year while continuing to have average performance against RHP. His BB% vs. LHP was actually in the Good range for much of the season in 2005 and never once strayed into the Poor range. In fact, his key hitting indicators - BB%, BB/SO, and contact rate (AB-BB/AB) - vs. LHP were all in the good range, even though his overall hitting performance didn't show it. In addition, while his hitting appears to be down overall in 2005, his hitting was much more consistent in 2005, in terms of up and down variance, than it was in previous years. <br /><br />While his SLG went way down the past two years, it was mainly a result of his HR/FB dropping the past two years. But it only marked what appears to be a regression to the mean as he is now down to 10.8% in 2005, which is not far off from the standard 10% HR/FB mean that pitchers are suppose to regress to, so hopefully he won't fall any further, though I don't recall any study that says that batters adhere to this rule of thumb as well. <br /><br />Another positive sign for his power hitting is that his Fly Ball percentage has been going up each year the past three seasons and his GB/FB (ground ball/fly ball) ratio took a big drop in 2005, showing a greater propensity for fly balls. This is usually a sign of coming power development as HR hitting is tied to the number of fly balls you hit. And the reason his batting average took a hit in 2005 was because his line drive percentage has been going down and line drives are more likely to become hits than ground balls or fly balls.<br /><br />Home and away, his hit rates were mainly in the mid-range, rarely in the poor range, and sometimes in the good range over the past two seasons. And his key hitting indicators were all trending upward as well. So these also suggest that Feliz has been improving each year as well, whether at home or on the road, echoing the improvement shown vs. LHP I noted above.<br /><br /><strong>2006 Feliz</strong><br /><br />I didn't realize until I looked in-depth at Feliz's numbers just how poorly he hit in 2005 overall. And yet, when you dig deeper into his numbers, he has never had a better year in terms of key hitting indicators. So what's real, the worse hitting in 2005 or the better hitting indicators?<br /><br />I'm just starting to understand all this but the basic gist of how I understand this stuff is that even hitters with good key hitting indicators will have a widely varying performance in any given year, but in general overall they will hit better than hitters with poor hitting indicators. Not to say that Feliz is at the point where he has good hitting indicators, but he looks like he is ready to become a much stronger hitter vs. LHP whereas before he was relatively even, versus left or right. In addition, he kept his hitting on a relative even keel for much of 2005 whereas he would turn absolute hot, then cold, in previous seasons.<br /><br />So what all this means is that I expect Feliz to have a breakout type of season in 2006, where he will open up some eyes. The factors above certainly indicates this to a great extent, mainly in his hitting vs. LHP, but with average hitting vs. RHP, as he has been able to do previously in his career, that would translate into good hitting overall if you can dominate vs. LHP. In addition, he will get to play the full season at 3B, where he is most comfortable, whereas in 2005 he spent a lot of it in LF, where his defensive struggles may have carried forward and affected his subsequent at-bats. Furthermore, what could be a huge factor is that he becomes a free agent after the season for the first time, so he should be working his butt off to earn his next contract, his first free agent contract.<br /><br />Overall, given the improving hitting indicators, his batting average may go up but shouldn't get worse, and with his improvement in taking walks, his OBP should start approaching league average, which is only around .320, whereas before he was at or under .300, which is bad, very bad. An improved batting average would help improve his SLG and the increasing trend towards fly balls should lead to at worse the same 20-25 homerun range he has been the past two years and perhaps if he can get his HR/FB up again as it was in seasons past, he could go even higher. So, I know this is hard to believe - and I'm hesitant to go on a limb like this given his poor history - but the evidence above suggests that Feliz has generally been improving on his hitting each year he got more playing time and that he is on the brink of becoming a very good hitter vs. LHP, and thus a good hitter overall, in 2006.obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9555762.post-1142634367722404312006-03-18T23:01:00.000-08:002006-11-04T20:33:10.550-08:00Your 2006 Giants: Finley Rebound Key To World SeriesSteve Finley was Giant property finally after years of free agent and trade foreplay when the Giants traded Edgardo Alfonzo for him this past off-season. A trade of expensive contracts and players no longer useful to their former teams, it was haled by Giants fans not for Finley but for ridding the team of Alfonzo, who took the mantle of most hated Giant by Giants fans from Neifi (who inherited it from Marvin Benard). But could Finley also paly a key role for the Giants in 2006?<br /><br /><strong>Sign of Decline or Injury Induced?</strong><br /><br />Finley injured his shoulder diving for a ball in the 2nd game of the 2005 season. He tried to suck it up and play through it but despite a good month in May, he wasn't able to handle it anymore and went on the DL in mid-June. He still could not do anything after coming off the DL until September, when he hit .271/.300/.500/.800 with 3 HR in 48 AB. That would suggest that he finally was healed by the end of the season.<br /><br />So I looked at his <a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/graphs.aspx?playerid=54&position=OF_DH&page=0&type=full">charts</a> on FanGraph, suddenly my favorite analytical tool. Looking at his R/L splits, he appeared to hit LHP as well as before (though small samples he still hit .271/.317/.441/.758 with 3 HR in 118 AB, not far from his career hitting vs. LHP) but his hitting vs. RHP really suffered, particularly his power. So it appears that the injury took away from his abilities to hit RHP. But there is clearly a downward trend, going down over the past three seasons so maybe it is a real trend. However, his BABIP (batting average balls in play) was still normal vs. LHP whereas it was very poor vs. RHP, which suggests that it was just bad "luck" in that balls that normally went for hits became outs instead, as BABIP is a metric that most players fall to the mean. Either way, something affected his hitting vs. RHP, but it appears likely that it was either due to injury or "bad luck bounces" since his hitting vs. LHP appears to be at career norms.<br /><br />Another factor which made 2005 such a bad season was his pattern of reaching his offensive peak during the summer, basically at the time he went on the DL. And it is quite a peak based on past years' data. So that added to his reduced performance overall.<br /><br />Lastly, the move to the Angels hurt him two ways. The Angel's ballpark really did a number on his home stats, obviously sinking his overall numbers. But his away wasn't something to write home about either, though he really truly was terrible at home: home .204/.263/.331/.594 with 3 HR in 181 AB vs. away .236/.278/.409/.687 with 9 HR in 225 AB (or 1 HR in 25 AB, still pretty good power). However, that's not necessarily going to get better with the Giants because our home park affects left-handed hitters like Finley much more than right-handed hitters plus he hasn't historically hit well in SF. Secondly, he has been an NL man, since 1991, and moved to the AL, where his experience with pitchers and defenses is not as useful as it was playing in the NL. Returning should help him in that regard.<br /><br /><strong>World Series Factor</strong><br /><br />I believe that Finley being the hitter he once showed is key to the Giants World Series hopes, presuming they get there first. One, he will be getting a lot of playing time behind the top three outfielders during the regular season. If he can keep pace with their offensive production, overall, then the outfield contribution to the offense will be on a high level; if not, because he'll be seeing so many games (or a lesser replacement), he will drag down the offense.<br /><br />Two, he will be a dangerous PH off the bench for the games he is sitting for veteran presence, hitting savvy, and HR power. That's something we haven't had except when Galarraga was here. In addition, if he's starting, then one of the other OF will be that dangerous presence on the bench. Third, in the 2002 World Series, we were relying on Dunston, Feliz, and Shinjo for DH, but if he's hitting the way he can, he can play LF while Bonds become our DH, which is a win-win there, both offensively and defensively. If we had a good hitter DHing for us in 2002, we would have won it.<br /><br /><strong>2006 Finley</strong><br /><strong></strong><br />Overall, it appears that Finley should return to form if he has recovered from his injury. His September rebound suggests that he returned to health because he could hit for power, which he couldn't do the three months before. In addition, he had a strong year hitting vs. LHP whereas his BABIP vs. RHP was abnormally low, around .220 when his BABIP vs. RHP has bounced around around .300 the previous three seasons, which suggests that he should rebound somewhat towards his established mean, though not necessarily all the way back, given his age plus rebounds don't revert to the mean as fast or as well as fall backs. The main negative is his poor history hitting at SBC, but small samples again.<br /><br />Looking over his L/R splits over the past 10 seasons plus H/A splits, he has been able to do well overall whether hitting poorly at home or hitting poorly on the road. For his career, he has been amazingly similar whether at home or away. His L/R splits, assuming his hitting vs. RHP reverts back, even if he can duplicate his previous worse vs. RHP in the last 10 seasons - .277/.328/.453/.780 with 12 HR in 422 AB - that would be adequate production for a replacement during the season and great if we are good enough (and lucky enough) to make it to the World Series.obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9555762.post-1142473849520874052006-03-17T20:47:00.000-08:002006-11-04T20:33:10.210-08:00Your 2006 Giants: Winn-ing CombinationRandy Winn came to the Giants in a controversial - for some fans still but not me anymore - trade where we gave up Jesse Foppert and Yorvit Torrealba, but then won the fans' hearts with his superlative hitting (he hit 11!!! in September, it was like Bonds was reincarnated!), which earned him getting his option picked up and a 3-year extension at $24M <em><strong>{EDIT: correction per Allfrank; thanks!}</strong></em>. While that $8M per year average appears high, it is basically the same as the A's deal with Kotsay, both getting $8M in salary in 2008 (not including any pro-rated bonus).<br /><br /><strong>Winn's Power Surge: Real or Mirage?</strong><br /><br />Another reason is that I think his power surge is not all mirage and small sampling. I know that this is a bit far out but, as I had posted before but somehow lost most of it, I compared SBC with Winn's other home parks using the MLB.com's Hit Chart feature. This chart shows where each hit and out was made in the ballpark. They appear to be proportioned the same so I printed out the hit charts for each park for all the years available and eyeballed where the hits at his old home park would have landed in SBC.<br /><br />I saw that his homer total would have roughly increased between 50 and 100 percent, meaning that he would have had approximately 20-25 homer power in past years had he been playing in SBC instead of Safeco or Tropicana. And there were a number of hits that were borderline which I did not count, I only counted the ones clearly past the fence outline.<br /><br />In addition, many of the additional homers were in the band of stands in SBC that the fence is inner relative to Safeco; many of his hits ended up being doubles or outs at Safeco instead of homers because of that. So SBC's odd RF wall shouldn't affect his power much, based on the small sample results of the 2005 season - where he blasted a lot of them into RF - and where the hits landed in the comparative hit charts.<br /><br />To check this, I took out Adrian Beltre's hit chart for 2004 Dodgers and 2005 Seattle and compared the home runs changes. If he had been playing in Dodger Stadium instead of Safeco in 2005, there were clearly 4 homers taken away plus 2 borderline ones. He had 23 in LA in 2004 and only 7 in Seattle. He wouldn't have duplicated his LA stats, but he could have had 11-13 homers at home instead of the anemic amount that he had, almost double, to echo what happenned to Winn. Whereas Sexson wasn't affected as much because his old home park, Miller, is actually bigger than Safeco, so if anything he benefitted, as there were around 6 homers Miller would have took away and another 4 borderline ones, so his age and injury reduced his power, but the park gave him enough to make up for that, relative to him hitting in Miller.<br /><br />I think there were a multitude of factors which worked towards him hitting more homers on the road as well as he did at home. One is that part of his surge was just one of those months where everything clicked. In addition, another contributing factor to his surge is that he hits better later in the season and with more power, he either brings it up a notch or he's just better conditioned than the pitchers. Also, he has had one outlier homer month during the season in, I think 3 out of the past 4 seasons. There is just one month every year where everything clicks and he just goes crazy, relatively, homer hitting-wise. Plus, even taking out this year's data, he has normally pushed things up a notch homer-wise previously in his career, not just SLG, averaging 1 every 76 AB pre-ASG vs. 1 every 52 AB post-ASG, or approximately a 50% increase in the homerun rate. With all these factors combined, that added up to one incredible short-run results for the Giants in September.<br /><br />Looking at his homer ratios showed that his homer rate was severely depressed playing in Safeco as he hit only 1 homer in 90 or so AB in the 2005 season at Safeco. Even looking at his career rates, he hit 1 every 65 AB in Safeco, 1 every 58 AB in Tropicana, and 1 every 18 AB in SBC. If the hit chart is correct, he should have been hitting at around double the rate before, or 1 every 30-32 AB or so, which would work out to 20-25 homers per year.<br /><br />In addition, his homer rate on the road vs. NL teams were not really outlandish, giving us hope that his road hitting will continue as a Giant. He has hit homers mainly at homer oriented parks: 2 in Chase, 2 in Turner, 1 in Miller, 1 in Great America. He also has 2 in Dolphins but in 57 AB, 0 in Coors despite 17 AB (so he is due big time), plus 1 in Dodger despite only 10 AB, so those last two could balance out over time. But 0 in PETCO, Shea, RFK, Busch, PNC, which is not unusually either (mostly in 10-25 ABs total) plus they are all harder to hit homers in except for Busch.<br /><br />Overall, I would say, obviously, he won't hit 11 homers every month (else we found Barry's successor! :^), but his improved power is no mirage either. Plus, as was noted in various newspaper articles, he is a fastball hitter who is finally in the fastball league. His aggressiveness showed by his drop in walk rate after joining the Giants (from 8.8% to 4.6%; career 7.7%) plus his striketout rate when up high as well (12.5% to 15.7%; career 16.2%, but previous season was 14.4%)<br /><br /><strong>Hitting Fundamentals Appear to Back His Growth</strong><br /><br />With a 3 year trend of lowering strikeout rates, from slugger rates to hitter rates, until coming to SF, plus a generally downward trend over his career, he has been gradually becoming a better and better hitter. Perhaps Ichiro was rubbing off on him. His contact rate (times he hit the ball into play instead of striking out) has gradually risen from a so-so 80% range to MLB-average 82%, then jumped the past two years to 84.4% and then 86.3% with the Mariners, before dropping back to 83.6% with the Giants. The best hitters have a contact rate of over 85%.<br /><br />In addition, the BB/SO ratio, or batting eye as Ron Shandler's books have coined it, has risen in recent years as well. He was right around the 50% marginal point, below which the batter is considered a poor hitter, and he was under in 2 of 3 years, but again Ichiro appeared to help him out. In his second year with Seattle, he pushed it up to 54.1% then had it up to 68.8% when he came to the Giants, whereupon his reduced walk rate and increased strikeout rate dropped him back down to 29.0%.<br /><br /><strong>Interesting Facts at FanGraphs</strong><br /><br />Looking at <a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/graphs.aspx?playerid=1235&position=LF&page=0&type=full">FanGraphs</a> yielded some interesting facts. His batting average has been above the MLB average for the past five seasons and has been in the good territory for the past four. His OBP has been above the MLB average for the past six seasons, but only in the good area three times in those years. His SLG has been at or above for four seasons, only good last season.<br /><br />His BB% has been basically slightly under the MLB average, he typically is above early in the season, then gets aggressive later, going under but then hitting for more power. His K% has been at or below the average for six seasons, with there being a sharp separation the past two years, showing his progress as a hitter. His BB/K ratio has been basically at the average for the past five seasons. Again, he is in the good area to start the season but then falls below to the average. His RC/G has been sharply above average the past four seasons, showing how valuable a hitter he is.<br /><br />His LD/GB/FB chart (Line Drive/Ground Ball/Fly Ball) shows the spike I was talking about earlier about homeruns. Homeruns are correlated to fly balls and every year he suddenly starts hitting a lot of them, way above average, leading to his homerun spikes every year. Spikes appear to happen more frequently at the end of the season for him.<br /><br />Despite being a natural RHH, he seems to hit better against RHP than LHP. Perhaps it has to do with the preponderance of ABs against RHP. Only in BB/K does he perform better vs. LHP than RHP. He is an unusual hitter in that way, this makes him more valuable than a hitter like Grissom, who mashes LHP but sucks vs. RHP. Being consistent against both LHP and RHP makes our lineup that much better, there's less highs and lows, there's more evenness in the team run scoring distribution, in my opinion (and obviously), if your hitters are able to hit either handed pitchers relatively equally. That was one of the assets of Rich Aurilia, he could hit either relatively well.<br /><br />Looking at Home/Away splits, it is clear that during his time with Seattle, Winn's stats have been depressed by the fact that he is playing at Safeco, which has been a pitchers park, overall, the past few years according to Bill James' Handbook. However, in keeping with the trend towards AT&T/SBC/PBP Park becoming more a neutral park the past few years, his hitting home and away were either close, or even better, at home.<br /><br />In particular, his K% had been slowly getting better and better on the road during his time in Seattle, whereas it was high and all over the place at home, probably because pitchers can challenge hitters better because of the depressive effect it has on homers. However, it got back to his old ways once he came to the Giants, jumping back to where he was about two years back. Also, according to THT stats, he was not swinging earlier in the count in being aggressive while with the Giants, his P/PA according to The Hardball Times was almost identical, in fact, it was higher with the Giants at 3.6 vs. 3.5 with the Mariners, despite having one whole percentage point less combined walks and strikeouts, meaning he hit that much more balls into play than in Seattle.<br /><br />Especially impressive is that his BB/K ratio, which has been so-so for much of his career, it was clearly in the good range for much of the past two seasons on the road, only dipping again to the poor region while with the Giants and mainly in the last month or so. This shows that Winn clearly made a leap in terms of his hitting "I.Q." starting in 2004 but it was masked by his playing half his games in Seattle plus a good number of games against the A's and Angel's, two other tough pitcher's parks the past few years. Shandler's research has shown that hitters in the good zone hit significantly better than other hitters, this is where .300 hitters usually come from. Lastly, his batting average on balls-in-play (BIP) has clearly been in the good range the past three seasons on the road, but either average or poor while at home in Seattle.<br /><br />I think that is the biggest clue to how Winn will do going forward, his BB/K ratio. This has been generally getting higher and higher on the road. This would normally result in him showing much better stats the past couple of years. However, his improvement as a hitter has been masked by Safeco's big park, which then affected how pitchers pitched to him there. Most probably because homers are reduced, they don't worry as much about walking batters since the homers won't cost them and gave less strikes to swing at. Once he got out of that environment to other parks, he was able to do much better at the fundamentals.<br /><br />Now why all these fundamentals left him when he went to the Giants and yet he not only didn't do poorly but actually did great is puzzling. That would suggest that he will revert backwards towards the mean and do worse with the Giants going forward. However, one rule that has made sense to me on players is that once a player has shown an ability, he owns it. He has shown the ability to hit on the road so I think he owns it, you cannot know how to hit on the road then shut it down mentally at home. So I think the end of last year was just a fluke oddity, particularly since it was a small sample, but his hitting ability should be evident to Giants fans going forward and I'm feeling a lot better about his big contract now.<br /><br /><strong>2006 Winn</strong><br /><br />I think he will do better than people think (i.e. his career), though obviously not as good as his career month-long spree when batting with Barry in the lineup - I don't think it is all a Brady Anderson type of fluke. He's been hampered by hitting at SAFECO and Tropicana and thus far he apparently is one of those rare LHH who can muscle up homers in SBC (like Bonds). We need to lock up players like that. He should be good for .290-.310, 20+ homers, 20+ steals, OK defense in CF, and be equally adept at scoring and driving in runs, you know, like what we expected from Durham at lead-off the past three seasons.<br /><br />In addition, offense is a hard commodity to find in the CF position. His road OPS was .824 in 2005, .821 from 2002-2004; that would have ranked 7th in terms of overall OPS after Junior, Andruw, Edmonds, Jose Cruz Jr, Milton Bradley, and Grady Sizemore in the Majors for guys with over 300 PA, 5th if you counted only players who were qualified. Looking only at road OPS, he would have ranked 10th for hitters with significant ABs, 7th for those with over 250 PA.<br /><br />In addition, we don't have much coming up soon in the CF pipeline. Fred Lewis took a step back last season and he was already old as it was for his league. However, he appeared to have been able to figure out what was wrong early in the season and he hit well after his early struggles. And Clay Timpner doesn't deliver much offense already and he just finished high-A league play. He smells like another Calvin Murray type, all defense, all speed, little hitting. So signing Winn guaranteed that CF will be set for the next four seasons, at least if he isn't suddenly injury prone.<br /><br />One thing I don't like is Winn batting leadoff. Vizquel should be batting leadoff. Vizquel has much less power whereas Winn appears to be coming into his own power-wise with the Giants as a happy confluence of a number of different factors. This way, Winn has a better chance of hitting one out with someone on base. In addition, Vizquel apparently tired after the first month because his hitting was not that good after April.<br /><br />Vizqeul has historically hit better leading off, however, so that could help offset whatever weakened him - perhaps it was all the stolen bases he did in April, I think there was a sharp dropoff after that. In addition, it bunches up our best hitters - Winn, Durham, Bonds, Alou - consecutively, so that pitchers cannot relax for an extended period. With Vizquel hitting 2nd, if he hits poorly again, he'll be a resting point separating Winn from the other batters.<br /><br />So I see a good year for Winn in 2006. He should be headed for career highs in a variety of offensive measures. He should be driving our offense from the top of the order, though I would prefer that he hit 2nd. Getting runs early will help our starting pitchers to relax and not worry about having to be too fine in their pitches. We all saw how he drove the offense late last season. And I think, finally, now that I've crunched through all these numbers, that it was a great deal to get Winn and a great deal to sign Winn for a three-year extension. As long as he stays injury free and continues to progress as I've outlined above, the contract could be a deal once everything is said and done.obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9555762.post-1142446134648288572006-03-17T01:02:00.000-08:002006-11-04T20:33:10.114-08:00ESPN Excerpt of Another Book Attacking Bonds<a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2368395&campaign=rss&source=MLBHeadlines">ESPN has a quote from another explosive book </a>on Bonds:<br /><blockquote>On an otherwise ordinary night, over an otherwise ordinary meal, Griffey, Bonds, a rep from an athletic apparel company and two other associates chatted informally about the upcoming season. With Griffey's framed memorabilia as a backdrop, and Mark McGwire's obliteration of the single-season home run record a fresh memory, Bonds spoke up as he never had before. He sounded neither angry nor agitated, simply frustrated. "You know what," he said. "I had a helluva season last year, and nobody gave a crap. Nobody. As much as I've complained about McGwire and Canseco and all of the bull with steroids, I'm tired of fighting it. I turn 35 this year. I've got three or four good seasons left, and I wanna get paid. I'm just gonna start using some hard-core stuff, and hopefully it won't hurt my body. Then I'll get out of the game and be done with it." </blockquote>This is a lot more damning, to me, than the other book, particularly since the author said he got it from multiple sources. At least at the surface it is, that's how these authors seem to suck people in, they make their arguments sounds so authoritative. "We have 200 sources." "I got multiple sources confirming this conversation."<br /><br /><strong>Why Would Bonds Do This?</strong><br /><br />But it got me thinking: would anyone as controlling and paranoid as Bonds has been described by the Chronicle writers' book really discuss taking steroids in front of 3 strangers? From most accounts, it is agreed that Bonds' sense of humor is not always apparent to the ordinary people. Could this be a case of that? And if he was serious, again, would he really talk in front of three strangers?<br /><br />What I find more realistic is that Bonds was joking around with his close childhood friend but was a total boor with the other three and they are pissed at him. He makes a joke about taking steroids, which gets the others attention and maybe they get it but maybe they don't and think Bonds is serious. Either way, they will remember that conversation.<br /><br />Because this is like the "wiping out Babe Ruth" quote all over again. He was kiddingly saying that but a lot of reporters took that to be serious and lambasted him in print all over the U.S. but a reporter here in the Bay Area backed him up on this, that these other people didn't understand Bonds was teasingly saying that, that he was saying it out of respect, not to demean Babe Ruth.<br /><br />So maybe years later, these apparel reps, hearing about all these investigations and thinking they can screw around with Bonds since he was so rude to them, they contact the author and offer their "scoop". How else would an author researching Barry Bonds will run into multiple sources confirming this story, what is the odds that he gets in contact with one of these reps, let alone all three of them. It only makes sense if they coordinated their story together and then contacted the author. At least that is how I imagine the journalistic process working, perhaps I don't understand this part of journalism.<br /><br />But obviously it was these three people who are associated with the athletic apparel company that Pearlman got in contact with and got their end of the story. There is no way I can imagine how Pearlman somehow finds out that Bonds met with three nondescript athletic apparell personnel on an evening almost 7 years ago and record their run-in with Bonds years later.<br /><br /><strong>Why Didn't They Speak to the Grand Jury?</strong><br /><br />Why didn't they come out with this explosive information earlier? I suppose that it would just be their word against Bonds. But how about when the BALCO investigation started? Particularly with the way it was obvious that the government wanted to railroad Bonds. Wouldn't these people realize that the Grand Jury would want to know this? If they can figure out that Pearlman wanted this info, why didn't they step forward then when it could have made the difference in the grand jury investigation? If they wanted their anonymity, the Grand Jury testimony was suppose to be secret, they could have had their say and go, why a book which does nothing but blasts Bonds instead of testifying to the grand jury and really burying him?<br /><br />Oh yeah, you can be prosecuted for lying to the Grand Jury. No, they chose the anonymity of being quoted sources in a book whose purpose is to blast Bonds instead. They do it so that they can get back at him for trespasses, real or imagined, but not have to answer to their testimony.<br /><br />I find their choice to be troubling, why hide behind a book author if you have such explosive information? Why not really zip Bonds and see that he gets in bigger trouble? Particularly by the time Bell testified in 2005, they would have known that Bonds appeared to be in trouble legally.<br /><br />I can see Novitzky starting up the war drums again and trying to pry the names of these people out of the author's hands. I wonder how that would work, legally. I guess Pearlman would protect his source but then get threatened with being jailed over it. I hope Novitzky does it, I wonder if they would still testify to what they told Pearlman, but I'm guessing not else they would have step forward already.<br /><br /><strong>Tired of the Lynch Mob Mentality</strong><br /><br />I just want the truth. All this stuff takes a leap of faith, either you believe or you don't. Most people leap because it is easy to believe that Bonds is everything the authors say he is. I don't necessarily don't believe that he did Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs), but I'm not going to accept other people's words just because they say it, people are motivated to do a lot of stuff they shouldn't, their story has to make sense to me.<br /><br />But I don't see how you can paint someone as being so controlling a personality, a monster really, and he NOT harange Anderson, who he obviously treats as a flunkie, to make sure that there is no evidence of his usage. If he is calling Ms. Bell at all hours, I would see him go over to Anderson's place and say, "let me see all your stuff for BALCO, I'll bet you're messing it up, I want to see what you're doing for them, your records, I don't want anything to get out." And he would be like the TV character Monk, obsessing over this, coming over to Anderson's frequently to make sure he's not doing something stupid.<br /><br />I mean, he openly corrected Anderson on working out in front of people - talk about demeaning him, that's his main job - and in front of a client, Sheffield. Sheffield noted this in his interview with SI. That shows Bonds' contempt for Anderson's abilities and intelligence. If he's like that for something Anderson is suppose to be the expert in, I don't see him going "whatever" regarding the BALCO stuff.<br /><br />I see him going over to Anderson's and demanding to see what he's doing regarding BALCO. "You dumba--, you have a folder with my initials on it <raps>what were you thinking! You also have a bill in my name <raps> - NOT SMART!!!" Some people with the biggest ego in the world might think that that they won't get caught and thus do all the things Bonds is alleged to have done according to these books, but Bell testified that he feared getting caught, which means he should be paranoid about being caught. <br /><br />This puts a big hole (for me) in the foundation of truth across all these stories. After all, he feels that the media is out to get him (and that may not be far from the truth the way the sportwriters in the Bay Area has been piling on top of him) and no one has questioned the sources the way I have. I would like answers for these questionable witnesses and their motivations to lie when testifying against Bonds.<br /><br /><strong>Stories' Logic Not Holding Up</strong><br /><br />Their stories do not feel whole to me, I am seeing all these contradictions. I'm hoping this will get Novitzky to demand the names of these apparel people and force them to testify on the grand jury because I assume they are going to fear getting thrown in jail over what was said, particularly since Griffey doesn't share their version of the story, unlike Bell, who is in the classic "he said/she said" situation and cannot really be caught in a lie regarding what she testified to be true about their conversations (but really, after reading them, anybody with internet search skills could have dug up all that information and testified the same things that she did in 2005). These people who want their anonymity obviously don't want the fame or money involved with their explosive testimony, so testifying will the be a good litmus test whether they are telling the truth or not.<br /><br />I wish someone would ask Griffey specifically whether he recalls that meeting with the athletic apparel company reps or not. He claims to have never heard Bonds speak on steroids, it would be interesting to see if he recalls this meeting and conversation. How many times does he meets Bonds with apparel representatives in Florida in 1999? If he backs up Bonds, that would put a big hole in these guys story because he has a lot more to lose if he is pulled into the grand jury and attest to his version of the story under perjury. If he claims to not remember that meeting, then it will be that much bleaker for Bonds.<br /><br />Even though this is just an excerpt that came out, there are already two people key to the excerpt who say that what's in the book is not true. Ken Griffey Jr., when confronted with this passage, said that he does not recall Bonds speaking on steroids at any time with him. However, he is a close friend from childhood, so there is some bias there, an additional reason, beyond being a fellow baseball player and superstar, to not tell the truth.<br /><br />However, Jay Canizaro, a former Giants prospect, who only came up for a cup of coffee, has a big part in this article as well. Here is what he is claimed to have said, from the <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/15/SPGP6HOD3J1.DTL&feed=rss.giants">Chron</a>:<br /><blockquote>According to the excerpt, Bonds told teammates he used androstenedione, which McGwire admitted to using in '98, and little-used infielder Jay Canizaro estimated as many as 13 players on the '99 Giants were steroid users and that he was sure Bonds was a user because of the signs, including his body size and acne on his back. Canizaro said Bonds' trainer, Greg Anderson, gave him details about Bonds' steroid intake.<br /><br />"The Giants that year were really out of control," Canizaro is quoted as saying.</blockquote>However, he has already come out and said that he didn't say what was attributed to him.<br /><br />Here's another quote from the book:<br /><blockquote>And in Bonds' case, it seemed to be working. According to the Society for American Baseball Research, the peak age for players with at least 200 career home runs is 27. After 30, a noticeable decline begins. At 35, the decline becomes a steep hill. But here was Bonds, at 35, hitting the ball harder and farther than ever. He started the 1999 season on a tear, leading the Giants with an April average of .366. "One of the things I noticed was how fast he was able to put the bat on the ball," says pitcher Russ Ortiz. "He could recognize the pitch well before he had to swing, and then he would get around so fast, so hard." Equally amazing was Bonds' indifference to fatigue. He could lift weights, play, lift more weights, then arrive early the next morning to pump more iron. </blockquote><br />From my research and just general baseball knowledge, I have found at least three other hitters who fits the description that the author notes about after 35 peak: Ted Williams, Hank Aaron, and Darrell Evans. This is true if you measure by HR/AB or if you are going strictly by OPS or OPS+. So is he claiming that these three players were using as well? Or would he be willing to accept that, while most players deteriorate at any early age, Bonds and the others were outliers physically.obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9555762.post-1136939589961800792006-03-15T17:34:00.000-08:002006-11-04T20:33:01.511-08:00Your 2006 Giants: Cain Rising or Bust?<p>Cain is probably the best prospect to come out of the Giants farm system since Will Clark and definitely is the best pitching prospect to come out of the Giants farm system and do well out of the 35 seasons I have followed and enjoyed the Giants. Not that there were a lot of them, Montefusco, Bob Knepper, Scott Garrelts, John Burkett, Jerome Williams, and now Noah Lowry. He had a meteoric rise through the system since he was drafted out of high school, culminating in 7 starts at the end of 2005, to allow management to kick the tires and see how good he really is. Boy, was he good. <grab></p><p><strong>Wunderbar Wunderkind</strong></p><p>Late season, 20 years old, never really pitched into September before, and only two years removed from his season being cut short because of elbow problems, Cain shouldn't have the conditioning to pitch this late in the season, he should have been tiring already. However, he was strong enough to pitch well for 7 games at the MLB level: 2.33 ERA, 0.93 WHIP, extremely low H/9 (4.7), low HR/9 (0.8), but borderline bad W/9 (3.7) and borderline good K/9 (5.8). This after playing well in the hit-happy PCL: 4.39 ERA, 1.31 WHIP, 7.3 H/9, 1.4 HR/9, 4.5 W/9, and superlative 10.9 K/9.</p><p>Not only that, but he also faced Colorado and Arizona twice in those short 7 games and, given that they should have learned something for the second time around plus he should have been even more tired, plus was in Colorado for the second game, he still did well against them the second time around, though just a hair worse:</p><p>1st games: 12.0 IP, 6 H, 3 R/ER, 1 HR, 5 BB, 6 K, 2.25 ERA, 0.92 WHIP</p><p>2nd games: 12.1 IP, 9 H, 4 R/ER, 2 HR, 5 BB, 7 K, 2.92 ERA, 1.14 WHIP</p><p>Lastly, you throw in a masterful 2-hit, 1-walk, 8-K complete game, giving up only 1 run on a homer, and this is against a veteran Cubs team fighting to reach .500, fighting to stay in 3rd place, and fighting to extend a 3 games winning streak into 4 games, but was shut down totally, you have a bunch of giddy Giants fans over their young prospect starting pitcher.</p><p></p><p></p><p><strong>Cain Predictions</strong><br /><br />We'll start with the bad stuff. FIP is not kind. Whereas his actual ERA was 2.33 in 2005 at the MLB level, FIP analysis rates his performance out to be a 4.06 ERA type of performance for the average pitcher and xFIP, which takes into account standardized HR rates, his xFIP is 5.23, where FIP and xFIP are indicators of how well he pitched relative to other pitchers and are better indicators of where his true ERA lies, not his actual ERA. <br /><br />Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster had a better view of Cain. This is because FIP relies only on his short MLB experience whereas his and Bill James systems should account for his AAA performance as well. The Baseball Forecaster sees Cain pitching 160 IP, 148 K, 10-6 record and 3.61 ERA, 1.18 WHIP. Rates predicted were 8.4 K/9 (very good), 3.7 W/9 (so-so, ideally want under 3.0), 2.3 K/W (good, minimum of 2.2 is best), 0.8 HR/9 (under 1.0 is good). They have a propriety Pitching Quality Starts (PQS) system where games are rated and then the games are labeled DOM (for Dominating), DIS (for Disaster), and other - Cain had 57% DOM/0% DIS for the seven games he pitched in the majors. As I had shown in the Morris post, anything over 50% appears to be the elite pitchers, over 70% appear to be the top pitchers.<br /><br />Bill James was very high on Cain for 2006. His book sees Cain starting 30 games for 184 IP, 142 hits and 17 homers, with 74 walks and 181 strikeouts, leading to a 14-7 record and 3.16 ERA and 1.17 WHIP. That translate to 8.9 K/9 (very good), 3.6 W/9 (so-so, ideally want under 3.0), 2.4 K/W (good, minimum of 2.2 is best), 0.8 HR/9 (under 1.0 is good), which are all very similar to Ron Shandler's, which is not too surprising, Shandler is a disciple of James and used James' techniques to start with and went on from there.<br /><br />Not that Shandler's book wasn't also high on Cain. The author, Patrick Davitt, of Cain's description noted, "Walks are a small concern, but he has the stuff to be an elite, high-K, front-of-rotation starter." Music to this Giants' fan's ears.<br /><br /><strong>2006 Cain</strong> </p><p>Hard to say since he hasn't had much MLB experience to extrapolate off of, hence why I include some predictions from a variety of methods. I expect Cain to do well, the only question is how well he will do. A 3 ERA is definite but low-3 or high-3, I could go either way - I won't dare dream of a sub-3 ERA but I think that is a possibility if he can get off to a good start. </p><p>Since he will be pitching lower in the rotation, as long as the top three of Schmidt, Morris, Lowry, do as they are expected, he should not feel too much pressure to be superlative, he should be relaxed enough to just let his talent to shine. Even then, he is finally the first Giants prospects out of the Sabean prospects that have been described to be "mature beyond his years" to actually appear to be "mature beyond his years." He appears to be a dream come true, a prospect who is good but well grounded and polite, confident but willing to learn, humble but confident of his abilities and talents. </p><p>I think the sky will be his limit. And if you point a gun to my head and force me to guess what he will do, I would say that there is a good chance that he will have a better performance than any of the starting 3 of Schmidt, Morris, and Lowry. He is that good, he is that strong, he is that smart, enough to concentrate on just how well he does, not in comparison to anyone else, not to show off anyone, just to build upon, little by little, his expertise. His goals are equally to do well and to learn something, continuously, with every game he pitches. And he has done well at every level of the game he has played at. And he's only 21 for the 2006 season, he should be the leader of the Giants post-Barry period, leading by example. I expect him to be signed to a long term contract covering his arbitration years after the 2006 season, if not during. </p>obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9555762.post-1142365034621270622006-03-15T07:57:00.000-08:002006-11-04T20:33:09.909-08:00Why the bias in the media on steroids? Players' Advisors Share Bigger Blame<em>{Sorry, somehow my save didn't work out right so I've gone through and fixed up obvious errors and tweaked it, nothing substantive but just thought I would point this out.}</em><br /><br />Why is the media so biased in their assessment of the steroid scandal? Obviously you should focus on the cheaters who took steroids. And MLB management has gotten a nice black eye on this as well and rightfully so, they should have brought this issue to the fore much earlier than this, but better late than never. But there seems to me to be this inequality inherent in most of the articles I have read.<br /><br /><strong>Why Bonds and Not McGwire?</strong><br /><br />Some have been calling for Selig to start an investigation along the lines of the John Dowd investigation that was done for Pete Rose. I don't like to use the race card, but where's the equality in outrage for McGwire? He basically admitted that he used steroids in his testimony, or lack thereof, when he could have shown the world, like Palmeiro (oops!).<br /><br />Why no outrage for that? Why no call for investigating that? While I understand that he isn't challenging Ruth's and Aaron's records, he did set the season record before Bonds took it and he also set the rookie HR record as well, and is in the Top 5 of all time homerun hitters, pushing down players like Schmidt and Frank Robinson out of the top.<br /><br />And he was caught with androstenedione, whereas Bonds hasn't been caught with anything yet, it is all hearsay and innuendo thus far, very circumstantial, whereas McGwire basically told the world he took because he took the 5th and the only reason to do that would be that you could be caught in a lie and yet nothing like this happened to him. He is a liar and a cheat too, circumstantially like Bonds, so why no outrage for him?<br /><br /><strong>Why MLB Management and not Players Union?</strong><br /><br />And I don't understand the piling up on the MLB management including Selig. Not that I'm particularly pro-management, nor do I care for Selig, baseball needs a real Commissioner not a puppet like him, but have they seen the last umpteen strikes that have happened? The players are in control, the inmates have control of the prison. I have seen Selig say in public that they tried to get the Players Union to do stiffer drug testing but they refused. All the weak penalties are the work of the Players Union and Donald Fehr.<br /><br />This recent <a href="http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/book-review-in-the-best-interests-of-baseball/">review</a> of a book on Selig's tenure as commissioner backs me up on this. Here is the pertinent quote:<br /><br /><br /><blockquote>And by working in concert with Congress (a large consideration) to get the players' association to open up the collective bargaining agreement not once but twice, a substantive drug testing policy has been implemented, with steroids as the chief target.</blockquote><p>What this all means is that the MLB commissioner and management could not do much of anything to get the players union to agree to a better drug testing procedures and had to work with Congress in order to get the player's union to agree to a much better drug testing policy. </p>Why don't the newspapers attack the Players Union, they have got to know what was happening in their ranks, they have got to know how it would eventually play out (with scandal), why didn't they push for stronger penalties? Why didn't they make a stand? Why did they protect the cheaters?<br /><br />And why don't the newspapers point this out? Probably because they are union too and they watch out for each other, I've seen very little criticism of the Players Union in this mess, all this tsk-tsking of the owners and management but really, the players have had the power, if they wanted stronger penalties and testing, they could have put it in, because management would not have fought that.<br /><br /><strong>Why not Donald Fehr and his Management Team?</strong><br /><br />And why not put bigger shame on the management of the Players Union, particularly on their leader, Donald Fehr? Should they not be looking out for the long term health of their union members? Shouldn't they try to stop destructive behaviors as well as illegal behaviors? Don't they owe it to their membership to make the competitive landscape equal for everyone? Don't they want their players to not feel like they have to take illegal substances in order just to stay even?<br /><br />Oh, wait, the 'roided players make a lot of money now, they're bringing in the dough, they have a lot of say and power now, particularly the agents making all that money, like Scott Boras. Any way you look at it, the players side look even worse than the management side in this whole mess. Does anyone really think that management would turn down strict penalties and a tougher testing regiment if the players agreed to something like that? No, the players' union never did anything like that to stem the rumors and innuendo swirling around the game.<br /><br /><strong>Players' and Their Agents' Complicity Worse Than Management</strong><br /><br />And what about the players' agents? Why doesn't any of the reporters ask why Boras didn't make a big stink before? He has a large percentage of the top baseball players as clients. Shouldn't he want to prevent the use of steroids, because that would make his clients less valuable. Given his renown for extremely detailed work in putting together a free agent player's prospectus, wouldn't he have figured out at some point, given all the speculation that was in the press and discussed among fans and players, that there were significant number of users and that would make his clients worth less in a contract?<br /><br />He would unless HIS clients were taking and thus he stayed quiet because he couldn't kill the golden goose. I have no idea whether any of his players are or were using but given his fanaticism in working for his clients, this seems like a rather big rock that he left unturned in making sure his clients are the best paid in baseball. Why don't the newspapers point this out as well? Why no calling out of this discrepancy?<br /><br />If a prominent agent like Boras made a big stink about this problem, do you think he would be ignored as a crackpot? And he must have known about this problem, he has so many clients, he gets so involved with the training and development of his clients, there must have been one who let him know that either 1) he's a steroid user or 2) he'd seen steroid users and it's not fair or 3) he's heard of steroid use and he's worried about the pressure to use it. Wouldn't an agent hearing stuff like this be pushing hard with the players union to get penalties and testing put in because allowing steroids would make your client significantly less valuable?<br /><br /><strong>Plenty of Blame But Why One-sided to Management?</strong><br /><br />So there is plenty of blame to spread around, only, conspicuously, none of the player's advisors, the people who should be looking after their best interests, whether the union or their agents, have been put on the carpet for this and they are probably the most culpable because they had the power to do something, the worse the owners could do would be to cancel out a whole season, but I don't think that they would get a whole lot out of that one, let alone stiffer drug penalties.<br /><br />Look at how baseball tries to invoke a stiff penalty on Kenny Rogers for his cameraman incident. Did the players union accept that this act was a horrible act and accept the punishment? No, it appeals it and then gets it reduced in arbitration. That's how impotent MLB management is, what a load of hooey reporters are shoveling.<br /><br />The Players Union and their agents are fiduciarily responsible to the players on the whole and to their clients, respectively. If there is anything that damages the people they are representing, whether physically or monetarily, it is their responsibility to protect their client, unlike management who has more of a hands-off relationship with the players. Why aren't the newspapers attacking these people, they were the ship captain on the Valdez oil tanker, driving the ship, MLB management was the flunkie the ship captain delegated the steering to before it crashed.obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9555762.post-1142330758167762632006-03-14T18:15:00.000-08:002006-11-04T20:33:09.811-08:00Your 2006 Giants: Lowry Year to ShineNoah Lowry is the one who finally did it. Unlike the greater heralded starting pitching prospects to come out of the Giants farm system before him - Ainsworth, Williams, Foppert - Lowry was the one who finally made the rotation at the start of the season and had a good year overall. Ainsworth's first season ended with a freak break of his shoulder blade. Williams, after a superb mid-year promotion, was up and down for his first season as a starter, and after a second straight year of not being in good condition coming into spring training, he was traded. Foppert rose like a meteor through the farm system, leaving the rest in the dust, but when he got there, he injured his arm and kept quiet about it until the ligament broke and Tommy John beckoned.<br /><br />Noah outdid them all and he left them in the dust where it counted: in the majors. He had 33 starts in 2005, winning 13 games, with a 3.78 ERA in 204.2 IP and 1.31 WHIP. But it was not all sunshine and flowers everywhere in 2005 for Lowry, he had an ERA of just over 5 after three months, he looked like a pitcher headed for the dreaded sophomore jinx. He didn't have good control and he was giving up too many homeruns. He was lucky there wasn't anyone waiting to come up or he might have been sent down.<br /><br />But then he finally straightened himself out in July. And he followed that up with as dominating a month as a pitcher will ever have in August: going 5-0 with 39.1 IP, giving up only 22 hits and 9 walks, with 33 strikeouts and 0 HR, he had a 0.69 ERA with a 0.79 WHIP and .167 BAA. He then regressed in Sept, but it was still an OK month, just not great.<br /><br /><strong>And 2005 Could Have Been Better</strong><br /><br />There's the old saying, "if it wasn't that I had bad luck, I wouldn't have any luck at all." That was slightly his plight in 2005. While Tomko got 3 starts in LA and 2 in SD, two of the best pitchers parks in the majors and Schmidt got 2 in SD (though 3 in AZ) and even Hennessey got 2 games in LA, Lowry got to enjoy 3 starts in Coors and 2 starts in Chase (though he pitched well at Chase). If he would have gotten only 1 start, pro-rated, at Coors, which is what all the other starters did, removing those stats reduced Lowry's overall ERA to 3.47 and WHIP to 1.26 (from 3.78 and 1.31, respectively) and reduced his road ERA to 3.75 and WHIP to 1.34 (from 4.43 and 1.45, respectively). Suffice it to say, he got his butt whooped pretty good there in 2005 but if he got less starts there in 2006, his overall numbers will look better.<br /><br />In addition, as a pitcher playing in the majors for the first time, he most probably was not conditioned to last a full MLB season. Even the minor league seasons are not as long. And this showed in his September stats. After two months of under 1 hit per IP and low HR rate and high strikeout rate, he gave up more hits in that month than in any other month, even the three months when he was pretty lost at the beginning of the season. And his K9 rate fell to the levels of his first month.<br /><br /><strong>2006 Season</strong><br /><br />Prospect books say that the 2nd half is a good leading indicator of how a young prospect will fare in the intervening years. I hope that is true because Lowry had a great second half of pitching:<br /><br />Period - ERA - WHIP - H9 - HR9 - BB9 - K9 - K/BB<br />Pre-ASG - 5.07 - 1.52 - 9.9 - 1.4 - 3.8 - 7.5 - 2.0<br />Post-ASG - 2.43 - 1.10 - 7.0 - 0.4 - 2.9 - 7.7 - 2.7<br /><br />He improved across the bar, some dramatically so, and was totally dominating. I think a low to mid-3 ERA is within reach, if he can get some lucky breaks and if he could ever figure out how to bottle the stuff, he could get into elite status with an ERA under 3.00. And like Morris and Schmidt, a low to mid 3 ERA should enable Lowry to win a lot of games, somewhere between 15-19. I think the possibilities of the Giants having a formidable 1-2-3 in Schmidt, Morris, and Lowry is very good.obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9555762.post-1142296281815010282006-03-13T22:00:00.000-08:002006-11-04T20:33:07.761-08:00Your 2006 Giants: Morris is HEALED!<em>I'm not a doctor but I play one on my blog.</em><br /><br />Remember when it was a big deal when you were a "6 Million Dollar Man"? It got you a beautiful wife like Farrah Fawcett Majors and powers like you couldn't believe. Well, Morris is the Giants' 9 million dollar per year man and, of course, Giants fans are curious about who we got. What exactly did we get for our money, a bionic man or damaged goods?<br /><br />Obviously, we've gotten a pitcher with an injury history. We also got a pitcher who was a hands down ace once upon a lifetime (for a pitcher) ago, but not quite Tomko-rrific the past two years if you look at his ERA. Are we doomed to his <a href="http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/stats/players/index.php?lastName=Morris">FIP</a> of around 4 ERA? <strong><check></strong><br /><br /><strong>What's Under the Hood?</strong><br /><br />I decided to check his recent history in order to try to read the tea leaves about what type of pitcher we are going to get in 2006. What people (and I include myself in this) sometimes forget is that FIP is an idealized ERA based on his skill components, i.e. everything being equal (and we know they never are) his ERA should look like FIP given his components. But what if his components were compromised? FIP works as an overall, odds favor aggregate basis, but not always on an individualized basis, if there were extentuating circumstances. And I believe there is in Morris' case.<br /><br />Here's the chronology as I see it. He has a number of good years after returning from his Tommy John surgery, relieving for one year in 2000, then starting from 2001 to 2003. But 2004 was a bad season overall for him when it was discovered why he pitched so badly: he got arthroscopic shoulder surgery, where his frayed labrum was cleaned up on November 30, 2004. He then follows with a mediocre (for him; good otherwise) season in 2005 that is marred, however, by a very poor second half after a very strong first half. So which is the real Matt Morris, the first half or the second?<br /><br /><strong>Doctor, Doctor, Give Me the News</strong><br /><br />Here comes the doctor part: I think the first half is closer to the "real" Matt Morris than the second half. I did some research on-line looking for recovery periods for that type of surgery and found that he didn't have a lot of time to build up his muscle afterward. He had nearly 3 months - about 11.5 weeks - before he started throwing on February 19th, 2005. According to one site, the patient is asked to refrain from using the shoulder and arm - even if feels good - for 3 to 4 weeks after the procedure, except for a strict, limited set of exercises. After perhaps 2-6 weeks, when any pain has settled, the resistance can be increased and weight training started, but initially, for the first 2-4 weeks of weight training, only very light weights should be used. It was also noted that recovery would continue over a few months.<br /><br />So the net I get from that is that he couldn't really use his shoulder for anything for one month, then could not do any heavy lifting for another month and a half (6 weeks), meaning that after his shoulder had atrophied for a couple of months, he could start exercising unhindered, meaning he could actually start throwing, in early February.<br /><br />There was no way he got his shoulder back to game shape by spring training given all the restrictions on his usage of his shoulder post-surgery. And I think that was reflected by his needing to be placed on the disabled list to start the 2005 season. So once he started the season, his arm was finally built up enough to match his strength that he had before but, and I think this is a key but, he was not able to build in the endurance that would be necessary to pitch well throughout the season.<br /><br /><strong>Statistical Evidence</strong><br /><br />If you split his season by the point at which it is clear he started his slide down, which is the second game after the All-Star Game (and his first game, while OK, was marked by a large number of hits) which was on July 23rd, here is the difference:<br /><br />2005 Split Point - H9 - W9 - K9 - HR9 - WHIP - ERA<br />Pre-July 23rd - 8.5 - 1.4 - 6.2 - 0.6 - 1.10 - 3.09<br />Post-July 23rd - 10.9 - 2.1 - 4.3 - 1.4 - 1.45 - 5.06<br /><br />However, looking at his game stats closely, there was even another split within, splitting the season into 3 parts. He was very dominating, similar to his post-TJ career, when he started the season, but as the season wore on, his stats got worse, though the last third looks better in some ways but note that his key K9 rate fell by nearly 1 K:<br /><br />2005 splits - H9 - W9 - K9 - HR9 - WHIP - ERA<br />First third - 8.3 - 1.5 - 6.5 - 0.6 - 1.09 - 3.13 (ending Jul 4th; actually nearly half the season)<br />Second third - 11.1 - 2.0 - 4.6 - 1.4 - 1.45 - 5.01 (ending Aug 20th)<br />Last third - 10.3 - 1.9 - 3.8 - 1.1 - 1.36 - 4.43 (ending Sep 27th)<br /><br />An interesting data point that suggests that it was only his arm strength affecting his pitching, he was able to keep his K/W ratio at or above the 2.0 ratio that is the minimum you want to see from your pitcher. So despite his arm strength being so weakened by the end, he was able to keep his control good enough to keep that ratio in good stead.<br /><br />You can see further how up and down 2005 was month by month, as his strength deteriorated during the season:<br /><br />Mon - H9 - W9 - K9 - HR9 - WHIP - ERA<br />April - 6.9 - 1.6 - 10.1 - 0.5 - 0.94 - 2.12<br />May - 8.9 - 1.6 - 6.8 - 1.1 - 1.18 - 4.07<br />Jun - 8.8 - 1.6 - 4.4 - 0.2 - 1.15 - 3.23<br />Jul - 10.1 - 0.8 - 5.7 - 1.4 - 1.21 - 4.36<br />Aug - 11.6 - 1.9 - 4.0 - 0.9 - 1.50 - 4.96<br />Sep - 9.9 - 2.9 - 4.1 - 1.3 - 1.42 - 4.15<br /><br />He was like a battery, though, his strength would ebb and flow through the months. And while obviously there is the small sample effect happening when going by month, particularly for a pitcher, it does show that he was generally trending downward throughout the year as he weakened.<br /><br /><strong>Morris is Healthy</strong><br /><br />Given that he is a veteran starter who has shown the resiliency to bounce back from adversity and continue to do well, the downtrend is more a sign that his shoulder, while now healthy, was not 100% in terms of fitness and it tired as the season wore on, particularly by June. His second half fade, which could be a sign of a pitcher in his 30's starting their path towards retirement, does not appear to be age-related based on how well he did initially in the season. He was dominating those first few starts he had and I find it unlikely that someone who could be so dominant could suddenly find it switched off and start on the downside of his career.<br /><br />I don't know about future years - don't know how soon a labrum fraying would recur - but for 2006, I think Morris is entering into his first healthy year after the shoulder surgery so he should be back to normal. Based on how well he did in the first part of the season, he should be able to return to what he had been able to do from 2001-2003, which was very good.<br /><br />In addition, he has shown an intelligence about his abilities and capabilities, as shown by how he was able to adjust from the flame-thrower he was early in his career to flourishing while a softer thrower, plus learning and mastering a variety of breaking pitches, like a changeup , to help him stay relatively effective. In addition, his problems with the gopherball should be ameliorated because he is now pitching at AT&T Park for him home park. Homers vs. lefties have been a problem and AT&T will help fix that for him.<br /><br /><strong>Morris 2006</strong><br /><br />So I think he should be able to return to the form he had from 2002 to 2003, where he ERA ranged from 3.42 to 3.76 with a mean around 3.60 expected from him. His K-rate might be as high but his walk rate has dropped since then as well, plus pitching at AT&T will help lower his homerun-itis that has afflicted him the past 3 seasons. With a strong offense humming again in SF, he should be winning anywhere from 15-20 games this year while providing good pitching. Schmidt and he will make a good pair at the start of the rotation, quite a contrast in style. <br /><br />I think Morris will be worth the extra money he got over mediocrities who were getting $7M per year in 2006 and will be worth it over the life of the contract if he is able to avoid the injury bug. I am a bit worried that it might rear its ugly head by 2008 but by then hopefully all our young pitching prospects would be ready to take over the mantle at the top of the rotation, Cain, Lowry, maybe Hennessey, Valdez, Wilson, Sanchez, and we won't need Morris to be a top rotation guy, he'll just be overpaid or injured.obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9555762.post-1142283898730840722006-03-13T11:30:00.000-08:002006-11-04T20:33:07.665-08:00Giants Prospect No-Hitter in WBC: Shairon MartisNow that's a name for Giants fans to remember: Shairon Martis. He no-hit the Panamanian team (both teams were 0-2 going into the game) in 7 innings exactly on the 65 pitches he was limited to and the game ended due to the mercy rule, 10-0. MLB description <a href="http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/article.jsp?ymd=20060310&content_id=1343821&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb">here</a>.<br /><br />However, it is a little flukey. One, the Panamanian team is not exactly filled with major leaguers, though they have one or two good hitters. Only major league hitters were, in order of accomplishments, Carlos Lee, Olmedo Saenz, and Ruben Rivera. So, star, journeyman, below-replacement level. Which means all the rest were even worse. And the three only had 5 AB between them (Saenz had the walk so 6 PA) in the 7 inning game. <br /><br />Second, he had ZERO strikeouts plus 1 walk. Apparently they swung at pitches early in the count and got themselves out. Or hit into a double play, which Martis needed in order to finish the game because it came on his 65th pitch with him needing two outs to finish the game. Reminds me of the no-hitter Babe Ruth was involved in. He walks the first guy and gets thrown out for arguing with the umpire. His relief pitcher came in and I think picked off the runner then proceeded to set the rest of the lineup down for a 27 batter no-hitter, perfect for him but imperfect because of Ruth's walk.<br /><br />Martis, a soon to be 19 year old RHP from Curacao, pitched for the Giants' rookie-league Arizona League farm team last season. Baseball America rated him the 10th best prospect in the league. In 34.0 IP, he gave up 28 hits (1 HR) and 9 walks, getting 50 strikeouts, and giving up 10 R/7 ER for a 2-1 record with 1.85 ERA. Not only was his hit rate and HR rate very low, his K-rate was extremely high and he still had a very good BB-rate, around 2.4 per 9IP, which obviously all led to a low WHIP of 1.09. According to this <a href="http://www.insidebayarea.com/giants/ci_3592074">article</a>, he is likely to begin the season at Augusta in the low-A Sally League. <br /><br />Too early to get all that excited about a prospect but still a name to keep your eye out for: Shairon Martis. Maybe in 3-4 years?obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9555762.post-1142246961040324602006-03-13T01:36:00.000-08:002006-11-04T20:33:07.574-08:00Steroids... againTwo items today, both on steroids.<br /><br /><strong>Who Watches the Watchmen?</strong><br /><br />First, I am just flabbergasted by how journalists who say that "I" or "we" who still say that evidence has not been found that Bonds used steroids are blind to his faults when they themselves are blind. Case in point, Susan Slusser, whose writing I normally like.<br /><br />I have to quote from her Sunday <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2006/03/12/SPG67HMSPS1.DTL">article</a>: "Frank Thomas is 52 homers shy of 500, and he is one of the few sluggers of the past decade and a half who is untainted by performance-enhancement speculation. Because he's been a behemoth since his days playing football at Auburn, there hasn't been any sudden weight gain that can arouse suspicion in a player."<br /><br />How could she have written that with a straight face? Hello, all the talk about teenagers taking steroids in high school, he could have gained all his suspcious weight before he played at Auburn. And football in the 80's, steroids were probably all over the place, Lyle Alzado said he was doing it around then. At least she then quote his high school coach as saying that he's always been like that, but really, does she think that middle school students were not taking back then either? This is football we're talking about, not baseball, and they were more likely to be regulars at the gym where you can get your cocktail sans steroid, particularly HGH which appears to be the PED of choice among the smarter ones because it is so far undetectable.<br /><br />And look at Thomas. He has been affected by one injury or another for the past whatever years, very injury prone, his body seems to be failing him. And just because he said that he hasn't used and everything, look at Palmeiro, he said he didn't use either. And not to knock Thomas, he is clean as far as I know, but these are all signs that a non-fan would use to say, "see, there's some smoke there." Same as many has and still do with Bonds.<br /><br />And again, I'm not saying Bonds is clean, I've finally been worn down by everything and think that he probably used, but I'm going to join the lynch mob until I get good proof that I can believe, not stories that a jilted woman who wants money has told to two journalists who was ready to listen to anything that fits their story.<br /><br /><strong>The Logic is Not There</strong><br /><br />One of the interesting facts that I read in the excerpts is one from the mistress, Bell. She said that Bonds was very concerned about his place in history, that he didn't want his "secret" to get out. Well, most people doing something illegal generally don't want the secret to get out, kind of messes things up because, well, they're illegal.<br /><br />OK, add to that this point: raise your hand if you think Bonds is very suspicious and paranoid about the press, and generally angry at them? I think most of us Giants fans would agree that is true. So if he had a secret, he would do anything to keep it from the press.<br /><br />In addition, it appears that Bonds is very controlling. I think the Sheffield interview revealed that Bonds often overruled his trainer, Greg Anderson, or worse, show him up and correct him as he was working with Sheffield. Bell also noted that Bonds was not very happy when she did not do as she was told by him (again, assuming she is telling the truth here).<br /><br />Lastly, most close observers of him have said that he is very intelligent. I would agree, from the interviews I have seen or heard him, he has been articulate, thoughtful, intelligent, very charming.<br /><br />When I mix those together - intelligent, paranoid, controlling, don't want his secret to get out - I don't get a story where Anderson would have a bill naming Bonds purchasing illegal drugs or a folder naming Bonds and his drug schedule or Bonds cheerfully advertising for BALCO or even Bonds telling his mistress about his steroid usage woes. I see Bonds warning Anderson to never have anything remotely associating him with BALCO and the drugs he was taking, I see Bonds warning Anderson to not have a schedule with "BLB" on it, I see Bonds refusing to advertise anything for BALCO, I see Bonds telling his mistress nothing that can ever get out on him, because loose lips sinks ships. That's what a paranoid would do.<br /><br />Not that intelligent people with big egos never make mistakes, some think that they can do anything and get away with it. However, most of these people don't always have journalists coming up to their face and asking you rude (to your sensibilities) questions that is insulting to someone who works out honestly every day to be the best he could be. In this day of paparazzi and journalists who want to be Bernstein and Woodward, breaking the big news, the big scandals, the big secrets, wouldn't an intelligent paranoid be extra secretive?<br /><br />I guess one could say, "he's already cheating with another woman, what is the big deal about him confiding in her his illegal usage." But she herself said that he was very afraid of getting caught. Someone so afraid of being caught wouldn't want any evidence at all at BALCO or Greg Anderson that could finger him. Perhaps Anderson slipped up and thought he didn't need to be careful anymore, he could be the weak link in the chain for Bonds, so that makes some sense. <br /><br />But why would he tell a mistress that he wouldn't even shell out $100K to keep quiet, wouldn't you think he would know that she could squeal about the steroid usage, if she had told him? Again, big ego could do that, but given the explosive information she would have on him, she should be able to get a lot more than $100K off of him without resorting to a very public trial to get $100K out of him. <br /><br />If I were her lawyer - and I'm not a lawyer - first thing I say is "what has he told you in confidence that he would want you to shut up about? I've researched him and he's been accused of using steroids - that would be big news that he would want to shut you up on. If you got that, I can probably get you millions of dollars for that, let along the $100K you want." And if I were Bonds lawyer and she was threatening to do that, I would say, "pay her the $100k and make her go away, sign the damn papers and keep her quiet."<br /><br />Yet here we are, she's the star witness for a personal vendetta by a government official who probably broke the laws of the land releasing grand jury testimony and, oh yeah, she's writing a tell-all book about her relationship with Barry, so it is not like she doesn't have any motivation to embellish her story in certain ways. Bonds has made over $100M just from playing baseball, he's probably kept over half that (taxes you know) plus invested it along the way to make even more money, he could have easily paid shut up money to the tune of $5M, which is more than she'll ever see from her book and claim that it was to protect his family from his shameful dalliance. <br /><br />And yet he wouldn't even pay $100K to make her go away. He knows the press, he knows they wouldn't let it go if she blabbed about anything and everything. He knows that they would believe every word she said. Plus that and the BALCO investigation, it would be a huge mess.<br /><br />Maybe he just didn't care, or his ego thought it wouldn't be any worse than what he was already going through. But given the vendetta that the IRS agent was waging against him, she could become his star witness. Why take that risk if you were a paranoid bent on protecting your legacy? Letting her go out and do this doesn't protect your legacy, it would cheapen it greatly. Ego might make you think you should have to do that, but the controlling paranoid inside him would say that $100K is cheap to keep her relatively quiet, do it, or else there would be this huge PR disaster which will make your legacy in doubt.<br /><br />Not that I would know what a controlling paranoid would do, but that's how I see the logic falling out on Bell's accusations, it doesn't add up for me the actions she claim he did, based on stuff she had said plus other facts known about Bonds.obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9555762.post-1142158715568064222006-03-12T01:48:00.000-08:002006-11-04T20:33:07.484-08:00Nice article on Travis IshikawaThere was a nice <a href="http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/article.jsp?ymd=20060310&content_id=1343477&vkey=spt2006news&fext=.jsp&c_id=sf&partnered=rss_sf">article </a>on Travis Ishikawa on sfgiants.com. I've been following his career closely ever since someone challenged me on my assertion that Ishikawa was a prospect to watch because of his ability to take walks and hit for power; he thought Jason Columbus was a better prospect. Obviously, any prospect getting $1M (or nearly so) in bonus from your team is going to be of great interest to any fan of that team, but that challenge has made me view Ishikawa with a microscope.<br /><br />Not that I think I'm all that great in judging prospects, there are many more qualified people on McCovey Chronicles who could spin me in circles on prospects, but I wanted to see if there is anything about him to justify the other person's logic. Obviously, Travis strikes out a lot. But that is not that great an evil if he can keep his walk rate up and his HR rate up, there are plenty of major leaguers who strike out a lot but make up for it with walks and homers. Plus I had read that he has a great swing ("sweet" I've seen it described; and his stance did remind me of Will Clark when I first saw it) and plays good defense.<br /><br />One reason that I said that Ishikawa should be kept is because he is overmatched at that time because he was facing players who were a few years older than he. I said that most players mature physically to a greater degree during their 18-22 phase and yet he was doing OK despite that disadvantage to him, he would have spurts of dominance followed by a period where he's totally lost. I couldn't get anyone on that board to agree with me or to defend my position, so I thought maybe I was out there on a limb alone. So this quote from the article was sweet music to my ears: <br /><blockquote><p>Although 6-foot-3 and 210 pounds, Lefebvre says Ishikawa has yet to be<br />fully formed physically and mentally. When he does, watch out.<br /><br />"He has a great swing, and I think as he physically matures, there's going<br />to be more power in the swing and a lot of quickness in his bat," said<br />Lefebvre. "And he's real solid around the bag."<br /></p></blockquote><br />So I don't feel as dumb as I did back then, plus more importantly, Ishikawa is sounding like a great prospect who is only going to get better. Niekro better not get too comfortable with 1B; too bad Niekro could not stay at 3B, we don't have any 3B close to the majors and Feliz is probably not going to last much longer with the team, he'll be a free agent after this season and I don't see the Giants signing him for big bucks unless he gives a home discount.<br /><br />I particularly like this quote from him, which ends the article:<br /><blockquote>"I've got the confidence now I can put up numbers -- at times I was scared<br />I was never going to be able to hit," he added. "I'm a perfectionist, and<br />I know I have a lot more room for improvement."</blockquote><br />I like seeing that from prospects. He is confident enough in his abilities and yet humble enough to know that he has a lot more room for improvement. Plus he's a perfectionist, so he's always going to try to improve himself and try to get better, instead of coasting on his abilities and talents. <br /><br />I had no idea when this whole thing started whether Ishikawa was that great a prospect, I just knew that we shouldn't throw the towel in on him so early, it was at the start of the 2004 season. But none of that matters, what matters is that Ishikawa looks like he has a bright future ahead of him and he could be starting for the Giants by 2008-9, if he continues progressing nicely.obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9555762.post-1141784516890090022006-03-10T22:24:00.000-08:002006-11-04T20:33:07.195-08:00Your 2006 Giants: Big 6 QuestionsThe questions are pretty obvious but I gotta make a list, it's in the blogger union guidebook:<br /><br /><ol><li><strong><em>What will Bonds be healthy enough to produce in 2006?</em></strong> While I don't think his presence is necessary to making the playoffs, given our potentially great rotation, good bullpen, and poor divisional opponents (I'm waiting for the Dodgers' injured list to start growing anytime now) I think this should be possible even without Bonds in the lineup as long as the other players hit like they are capable of, I think Bonds is crucial (duh!) to the Giants going all the way. So far, so good, Bonds is happy with his brace means that we Giants fans are happy with his brace. I think all bets are off until he starts playing regularly and putting pressure on that knee.</li><li><strong><em>Which Schmidt will show up, 2004's version or 2005's version?</em></strong> This is probably more important to the Giants NL Division hopes than Bonds, so maybe I should have put it first but Bonds (to steal from Mr. October) is the straw that stirs this lovely orange and black concoction. If he is on and pitching like he has most of his Giants career, then anything Morris, Lowry, and Cain can do is not as critical so then they can pitch with less pressure on them. If he is wildly off like he was in early 2005, then the rotation will depend greatly on Morris, and while I think he is good, he's just not Schmidt good, you know?</li><li><strong><em>Will any of these regulars play without injury or poor performance taking away a lot of games: Alou, Durham,Winn?</em></strong> These players are the key supporting offensive players behind Bonds. If they can hit like they have proven they can hit and stay uninjured, then the offense should be running along nicely enough to win a lot of games, given our potentially strong rotation. Last year, it didn't work out, Alou and Durham missed a number of games, Grissom could only hit very poorly, and Alfonzo, after seemingly returning to his pre-Giants days as a Met for the first two weeks of the season, apparently the fountain of youth stopped flowing and he declined into a year-long hitting funk worse than anything he had before as a Giant (and that's doing some). </li><li><em><strong>Which Finley will show up, 2004's version or 2005's version?</strong> </em>The spector of age and injury in the outfield makes Finley's performance important. He plays a pivotal role on the 2006 team. He needs to be able to hit like he did in 2004 so that the offense won't take such a big hit when Bonds, Alou, or Winn is taking a game off, like it did in 2005 when Ellison or Linden came into the game. If he hits like he did in 2005, then the margin for error for the rest of the hitters is reduced greatly, as he will be getting a lot of at-bats this year in place of the starting outfielders. In addition, he adds a needed left-handed pressence to the bench or the lineup.</li><li><strong><em>Will new regulars Feliz and Niekro play as good as they are capable or as bad as they are capable?</em></strong> As good as the top of the lineup can be with Winn, Vizquel, Durham, Bonds and Alou, the bottom of the lineup can become this big gaping hole if Feliz and Niekro don't hit like they have shown they are capable of doing. Feliz started off the year nicely but perhaps the wear and tear got to him last season and he started fading offensively by the middle of the season. Niekro had a great start but after his injury he was not able to hit at all. Was that the injury's fault or did the league catch up with him? Given that he has been able to hit - and well - all through the farm system, he has shown that he has been able in the past to adjust to the league while the league was adjusting to him and adjust to a new level. </li><li><strong><em>Will the bullpen hold together?</em></strong> Last year Benitez failing and then falling injured, set off a domino effect through the bullpen. None of the relievers expected to pick up the slack was able to, not Brower, not Herges. It fell to Tyler Walker, who was the reliver at the bottom of the totem pole in 2004 to pick up the slack at closer, which of course meant that there were no set-up men to speak of. This year, we have Worrell, who did a admirable job of stepping in a couple of years back plus Munter, Taschner, and Accardo look like they are able to do well in a expanded role on a short term basis if necessary, should any of the big boys - Benitez, Worrell, Kline - falter.</li></ol><p>Sabean felt that depth was one of the big problems with last year's roster composition and he has worked this off-season to correct that. In the starting rotation, the addition of Wright into the mix gives the Giants 6 legitimate starters going into the season - should any of the opening 5 falter or falls to injury, the 6th starter can move into the mix. In the bullpen, the addition of Worrell provides a "proven" closer should Benitez falters again for whatever reason plus Accardo and Munter show signs that they might be able to handle the job as well. In the lineup, Finley provides a good backup should Bonds or Alou succumb to any injury. </p><p>However, there is no equivalent backup in the corner positions of the infield. Vizcaino could man shortstop adequately - offensively and defensively - in place of Vizquel and Kevin Frandsen looks like he might be able to come up and take 2B should Durham be out for an extended period. However, there is no legitimate 1B or 3B in the farm system to come up should Niekro or Feliz, respectively, falters and Vizcaino would be horrendous for the offense if he started at either corner IF position. </p><p>But Sabean can only do so much when you don't have all the money in the world to spend and Benitez, Bonds, Durham, Finley, and Schmidt are taking up $51.1M of their $85M budget and Alou, Morris, and Winn another $15M, leaving about $20M to spend on the rest of the team. And if Niekro does falter, the Giants could always bring up Travis Ishikawa and give him a shot, assuming he is doing well at AA early in the 2006 season.</p><p>Sabean is knocked, and factually so thus far, for not deliverying young players via the farm system. But it is interesting to note that four pre-arb players should be on the 25 man roster when the season start - Cain, Lowry, Niekro, and Munter - and up to five others - Accardo, Ellison, Hennessey, Linden, and Taschner - could make the roster if the numbers game don't work against them. Plus there was previous talk about Eliezer Alfonzo and Angel Chavez perhaps making the team. And some think that Frandsen could play in the majors right now, though he probably wouldn't be a starter. So if things continue to develop well, nearly half the team could be composed of pre-arb players at some time in the not-too-distant future.</p>obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9555762.post-1141910298255028532006-03-09T21:12:00.000-08:002006-11-04T20:33:07.386-08:00Barry Not So Unique A Late BloomerA problem that a lot of fans miss is that Barry is not the only player to have such an unusual jump in homerun power in his late 30's. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, is that two players he is compared with were in this group.<br /><br />Here's a player's AB/HR trend over his career, notice the big jump from when he was 35 to 39:<br /><br />Age - AB/HR<br />20 - 36<br />21 - 22<br />22 - 23<br />23 - 14<br />24 - 20<br />25 - 16<br />26 - 15<br />27 - 18<br />28 - 13<br />29 - 14<br />30 - 24<br />31 - 18<br />32 - 14<br />33 - 15<br />34 - 21<br />35 - 12<br />36 - 14<br />37 - 11<br />38 - 13<br />39 - 11<br />40 - 17<br /><br />Here's a player entering the phase of life when he should deteriorate, age 35, and previous to that he could manage a mid-teen rate on occassion, but then for 5 straight seasons, he not only is consistently hitting in the teens, he pushes it even higher than he's ever done it before, almost double the rate at age 37 and 39 relative to what he was doing in his early 20's.<br /><br />Cheater? His name: Hank Aaron.<br /><br />Darrell Evans and Ted Williams had similar spikes when they reached their late 30's. Of course, their spike was not as extreme as Barry Bonds, but neither were their workout regiment either nor were nutritional science as advanced either or even vitamin science. So do you point your finger at them too or do you acknowledge that there are players who have been blessed by their genetics to do well into their late 30's? And if so, do you acknowledge that it is plausible that Barry did it naturally, via extreme workouts he was documented to go through in Men's Health magazine?<br /><br />Babe Ruth didn't have such a spike at a late age, but he was so good that even though he got a bit worse as he got older, he was able to hit in the low teens up to age 40, basically at the same rate as he was hitting from age 27-31, the so-called peak career years from most research on players' career peaks. So he was a freak too, in some ways, hitting HRs in his late 30's at about the same rate as he was during his "peak" years. Or was he a cheat as well, how could he hit as well at 40 as he could at 30?<br /><br />These other players show that it is possible to end your career on a good note and do more there than you did when you were "at your peak". Barry is not alone in defying age or improving with age, his only proven sins are his problems with the press and his attainment of cherished statistical career marks.obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9555762.post-1141837508944702352006-03-09T03:36:00.000-08:002006-11-04T20:33:07.294-08:00The Elephant in the Room: Book on Bonds' Steroid Use"Hit them when they're up, hit them when they're down" - <em>Dirty Laundry</em> by Don Henley<br /><br />I cannot ignore the elephant in the room: a book exerpt has come out on SI and the book alleges that Barry Bonds has used steroids since 1988 when McGwire and Sosa took the spotlight with their homerun chase. It was written by the Chronicle writers who have been publishing illegally released grand jury documents, probably by the disgruntled IRS agent with an axe to grind with Barry, for some reason. <br /><br />Why he doesn't chase all the millionaires and billionaires who get away without paying any taxes on their riches instead and make our country better, I have no idea why. And if he really had anything on Bonds about card money unreported, Bonds would have been tried in court already and jailed, why do these reporters keep on repeating this "fact", do they think it will suddenly become true? Instead, he illegally releases all these documents to these two reporters, who will now become rich because he gave them the winning lottery ticket, because there are a lot of Bonds haters out there.<br /><br />And if the government really have all this solid evidence as the reporters said they did, then Bonds perjured himself on the stand and it sould be a slam dunk trying him and throwing him into jail - they did it to Martha Stewart. And yet he's still getting ready for the 2006 season, unjailed, and unaccused by the courts. And all this evidence that the reporters claim prove that Bonds did it, it has been in the hands of the government since sometime in 2005, when Bell testified against Bonds, but nothing has been done to Bonds yet, legally. <br /><br /><strong>Steroids is Not Magical Beans</strong><br /><br />I won't pretend to know all the nuances of steroids. There are numerous theories out there about what it can do for you and I admit I don't know all of them nor plan to read up on all of them. I've seen side effects mentioned from a larger head, acne on the back, baldness, shrunken testicles, irritableness, short-temper, and glaucoma. <br /><br />What I think I know is that steroids don't magically make you stronger, you still need to devote your time to build up your muscles, you still need to put the work in. It allows you to work out more often because your body needs less rest time before you exercise again. So basically, you still need to earn your bigger muscles by putting in the work to get them. It is not a magic pill you take that automatically makes you better than someone else who is not taking, you still need the work discipline to apply yourself to make your body stronger and better, with the difference being that you can do more with your body than you could naturally. <br /><br />That's why all these lame players are getting caught using steroids, they think it was a magic pill, they don't apply themselves to baseball like Barry did - plus they didn't have his god-given abilities either. This wouldn't excuse Barry, if he did use, but it is not like there aren't substances available that can be taken and make the player instantly better than he was before taking the substance. Like amphetamines or even caffeine. <br /><br /><strong>Book on Barry's Usage</strong><br /><br />Even if you believe the "facts" that the Chronicle writers "documented" in their book - and really, their whole case appears to be based on Bell's words, a woman who claims to be Bonds mistress and has sued him AND LOST, so she is most definitely disgruntled - and on illegally gotten grand jury testimony, then this means that Bonds was clean from the start of his career in 1986 to 1998 and judging by that portion of his career, he was already a first ballot Hall of Famer. My opinion might change once I hear these tapes and can hear for myself what was being said, but I doubt we'll ever hear them. But even if you believe her, all he did was just gild the lily, he already was a first ballot HOFer..<br /><br />Speaking of the tapes, we keep on hearing about these tapes. And yet, in this age of celebrity sex tapes somehow leaking into the hands of the public and making millions for someone, nothing has been done with these tapes. If she has really juicy stuff about Bonds' alleged usage on them, wouldn't book publishers be lined up with book offers to publish the transcripts of those tapes. I know I would if I were a publisher. And she would make a lot more from a book or tape like that than the $100,000 she was suing for but lost. Anything she says that is not on tape is a "She said/He said" situation that cannot be proved either way and, wait, we know that she wants money from him and as the woman scorned, perhaps by hook or crook, she might do anything. We don't really know much, other than we know that she isn't doing it from the bottom of her heart or for truth and justice, it's all about the Benjamins.<br /><br /><strong>Evidence, Schm-evidence</strong><br /><strong></strong><br />A McCovey Chronicle <a href="http://www.mccoveychronicles.com/story/2006/3/8/165855/4201#5">diary</a> listed the documentation of the sourcing for the book. Suffice it to say, I had a bit to say about that <a href="http://www.mccoveychronicles.com/comments/2006/3/8/165855/4201/5#5">here</a>. I found most of the stuff there not convincing at all, there was only one thing that clearly looked like good evidence, a folder labeled "BLB 2003" with a road schedule and shots scheduled there. But as I noted there:<br /><br /><blockquote><p>I must say that they presented this very authoritatively. That said, most of the information is pretty much circumstantial. There is not one instance where they saw Bonds taking the drug, just that Anderson is getting the drugs purportedly for Bonds. </p><p>What if Anderson SAID that he was getting it for Bonds, in order to get the good stuff for a peon ballplayer who normally wouldn't be in a position to get the good stuff? "Hey, you give me the money, I can get you the stuff only the elite athletes can egt." "Yeah, um, this is for Bonds." Not that I necessarily think Bonds is innocent, either, but there IS another possible explanation for that, particularly since Anderson outed his other clients but said he didn't for Bonds.</p></blockquote><br />What if Anderson screwed his buddy? Wouldn't be the first time that a friend traded on their friend's celebrity to make a buck. Wouldn't be the first time a friend thought, "he's got a lot; I want mine." Particularly if he was treated badly by Bonds (which Gary Sheffield noted at some point in an SI interview - SI wants to bring down Bonds any way they can - but then his bodyguard loved him and Barry loved him back, giving him the stomach staple surgery his friend wanted, as a wedding present, but unfortunately he passsed away on the operating table, he is the guy Bonds was pointing to after homers). So he makes a sale to this peon ballplayer promising him the stuff that he gives to Barry, good stuff, and he tells BALCO that he's dealing Bonds, see, here's my schedule, here's his cash. <br /><br />Or Anderson could be telling his bosses that he's giving it to Bonds but tells Bonds that it's flaxseed oil. I've heard and read people saying that Bonds is intelligent, he knows what's going into his body, but if your good friend gives you a drop of flaxseed oil in your mouth, what are you going to do, say "hey, don't give that to me, where's the bottle, I don't trust you, I want to see the ingredients." Or do you take it and say "so what is this suppose to do for me?" If Bonds was that paranoid to question his friend on what he's being given, he would have an official taster take everything for him. The same goes for a cream.<br /><br />And maybe those are the stories that Bonds and Anderson concocted if they are ever found out, you know, plausible deniability. But we'll probably never know which story is right. My stories are just as good as their story, at least I think so. I don't think I missed an angle, other than I'm not trying to spin it against Barry which is the authors' intent, their hypothesis.<br /><br />I can see the logic of their story, but my story has a logic to it as well. I am at the point where I expect the worse to happen at any point regarding Bonds, and while it's not that I'm being blindly loyal to Bonds, it's more like the motto for Missouri: "Show me." Show me incontrovertible evidence that he used. Show me a confession. All this circumstantial crap is just annoying me, it's like a bad courtroom TV show plot. <br /><br />And I'm tired of the media repeatedly saying that Bonds testified that he took steroids (today, Ralph Barbieri was the latest who got me mad saying that). He never said that, he said he used some stuff and it was the government who is claiming that the stuff he used is the clear and the cream. Bonds has never admitted in court that he is a steroid user. <br /><br /><strong>If True Barry Should Have Tested Positive</strong><br /><br />With all the cocktails that Bonds supposedly took, he should have tested positive by now. According to the book, he took Deca-Durabolin as part of his steroid cocktail. Yet Mike Morse has tested positive 3 times for using that drug, 16 months after taking it the first time. This article outlines some of what's up with that: <a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/mariners/2002479599_morseside08.html">http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/mariners/2002479599_morseside08.html</a><br /><br />Why haven't Bonds tested positive for this? According to the expert in the article, Dr. Charles Yesalis, "These things get in your fat cells and they just hang around forever, seemingly." According to a doping lab doctor, "There's anecdotal reports of 16 months, but we certainly have every reason to believe it could be longer than 16 months. Once injected, it resides in the body for a long period of time." He also added that he believes testing by the MLB, like that of the World Anti-Doping Agency, which regulates the anti-doping efforts of the International Olympic Committee, is too sensitive for Deca Durabolin. "You get findings that don't indicate current use or use with intent to cheat." If it is that sensitive, shouldn't Bonds have been found with that stuff? Or at least they could test to see if he had ever used it before, if, as the doctor noted, "they just hang around forever."<br /><br /><strong>Subverting the Justice System</strong><br /><br />And how do they get away with releasing sealed Grand Jury testimony? Some have defended their release of grand jury testimony as necessary for whistle-blowers. But what's the use of promising protection of your testimony as a part of a grand jury if some over-zealous government worker decides that it is better that your testimony should be released? <br /><br />Where will the line be drawn? Who will decide where the line is drawn? Who will spell this out? What assurrances can you give any potential grand jury testifiers when someone has decided that this particular testimony is OK to release, how can anyone be assured that, really, this time we won't release the information to the public? This cuts out a lot of testimony that you otherwise might not have gotten as well.<br /><br /><strong>You Either Go the Full Monty or You Wimp Out</strong><br /><br />In addition, while I believe that he probably used some sort of PED at some point, whether on purpose or via someone giving it to him unknown to himself, I feel that ballplayers have been using illegal substances since WW II, in particular amphetamines, which I've written about before. "Greenies" was more widely used - Willie Mays was known to keep a jar of "red juice", Pete Rose has reportedly used it, and Jim Bouton wrote extensively about it in his book, Ball Four - so it probably contributed to more career numbers than steroids, on an overall basis.<br /><br />And it didn't require the user to work to earn that advantage, you just take it and "pow" you got an advantage over someone who isn't taking. Not like steroids, which still requires you to put in the work to keep your body in such good shape. So no asterisks is necessary for Bonds records; otherwise, just asterisk anything and everything since WW II, because the use of amphetamines was widespread from all the sources I've seen in print, more so than steroids.<br /><br /><strong>In Conclusion</strong><br /><br />I'm getting tired of this witchhunt by the media. Either show me evidence that Bonds used - none of this circumstantial crappolo provided by a disgruntled mistress and psuedo evidence that can be explained away by another theory that appears to fit the facts gathered thus far - or just shut up already! They spin a nice story in their book from what I gather from the excerpts I've read but that's all it is, a story which has as its main beam of support stories from a disgruntled alleged mistress who is looking for her pound of flesh, her dowry, her payment for services provided. <br /><br />She has claimed on national TV to have never seen Bonds take any Performance Enhancing Drug (PED) but testifies as to when Bonds started taking them and how it hurt his arm and how he got acne. Maybe I'll change my mind if I ever see her testimony details, but from what I've been given thus far, what she has alleged to have testified to could have been said by almost anyone who has been following the allegations that Bonds is taking PEDs. I bet I could have Googled "Bonds steroids" in 2005, when she gave her testimony to the Grand Jury, and pulled up numerous websites and articles and blogs which will recount in excruciating detail the Bonds Haters' reasoning on how Barry cheated and when and where and why he looks like it. I could have trained her myself on what to say and what she could get away with without worry of perjury.<br /><br /><strong>Building Made of Cards</strong><br /><br />Without her, their story starts falling apart. It could be Bonds conspiring with Anderson. It could be a "good" friend taking advantage of his superstar friend's celebrity to make a buck claiming to be selling the stuff that helps Barry do what he does. We don't know, there isn't enough clear-cut evidence. And while the bigwigs at BALCO are saying they supplied Barry, that is what Anderson told them he was doing. It wouldn't be the first time that a, basically, loser want to impress his bosses by "getting" them a whale of a client, his pal, Barry.<br /><br />Barry, as I noted, is pretty smart. Would it be smart to be putting your big smiling face in an advertisement for your pusher? If you are deathly afraid of being revealed to be a fraud, a cheater, as Bell claims he said, wouldn't you stay as far away as you can from tying yourself to your supplier? <br /><br />Furthermore, wouldn't you avoid having a mistress, calling her at all hours, including work, where people who don't really give a damn about Mr. Superstar would know that he is having an affair with her and wouldn't feel like they have an obligation to keep quiet, particularly now that everything is out in the open and public. I can see her collecting taped messages but I've seen how the press works, wouldn't some intrepid reporter show up at Bell's work and ask if Barry was actually calling all the time, as alleged? To corroborate her story? Then we would see that somewhere in print, that, yes, Bonds was calling at all hours. <br /><br />But then some superstars have hubris and think they can do anything and get away with it, so why would Bonds be different? However, Bonds knows he has a bullseye on him. He knows or at least acts like he thinks the press is out to get him. And that's probably true to some extent. He knows that they are going to watch him under a microscope. And he is definitely paranoid of them. <br /><br />So why do something he could be caught at. He might not have realized that the conversations were taped - FYI it is illegal to tape anyone without their prior consent in California, so they are probably not useful in a court of law - but haranguing her at work and controlling her, as she claims he did, that would not be smart, the press would have a field day with that one. Of course a mistress would be another, but that's old hat today with the press whereas harrassing her at work would not.<br /><br />Just give me some real news or shut up already!obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9555762.post-1141696840059334192006-03-07T18:00:00.000-08:002006-11-04T20:33:06.927-08:00Your 2006 Giants: Schmidt's Last StandJason Schmidt is our ace of the staff, he's the one who will drive the success of our rotation by pitching Schmidt-like again. Schmidt pitching like he's capable of will take pressure off Morris (not that he needs it) so that he doesn't press at any point to show the team what he can do plus take pressure off Lowry and Cain from trying to overdo things and just let things happen naturally, as they might press if Schmidt is off.<br /><br />I think Schmidt is ready to lead the way again but just don't expect another year like 2003's 2.34 ERA with lows of H/9, W/9, WHIP. However, I think something along the lines of his other three successful seasons with us (2001, 2002, 2004 with ERA's respectively of 3.39, 3.45, 3.20) is very doable for a number of reasons. The only question is which (not whether) injury will hit him this year and how long will he be out and how long will he be ineffective.<br /><br /><strong>Free Agency Year</strong><br /><br />A reason why he should be able to do well this season is because he becomes a free agent at the end of the season. There have been many players who do well in their year that they go free agent, motivation for that big contract always have been a good motivator for some players. Not that I think Schmidt needs that type of motivation, but that has got to play in his mind a little bit. In fact, in an off-season interview he briefly noted that he kind of wished the Giants didn't pick up his option so that he could have joined in on the riches being passed around, so it is in his mind, somewhere.<br /><br /><strong>Goodbye Mr. Schmidt</strong><br /><br />If I were a betting man, I would bet that Schmidt is gone after this season. As a fan, I want the Giants to sign him to another contract so that he could be with us for the rest of his career (not with just the one contract but 2-3 years then another contract). As a fanatic, I cringe at the thought of signing him to the money that was being handed out like candy this past off-season. If A.J. Burnett can get 5 years at $55M and Kevin Millwood 5 years at $60M, I don't see why Schmidt cannot get 3-5 years at $13-15M per year, perhaps more if the Yankees jump in. And with his injury history (not one season without missing at least one start), it don't look good to throw that much money at one player.<br /><br />In addition, I was leafing through my copy of The Graphical Pitcher 2005 (by John Burnson and published by Ron Shandler's company) and I noticed that most pitchers who reach 3500 pitches (or approximately so) tend to see their skill levels, as measured by their proprietary GOG metric, fall that year or the year afterward, and if they were over 30 at the time, that became a milestone of when their skill levels started declining, either to new lows or a lower skill plateau. Schmidt reached that pitch level in 2004 and you saw what happened to him in 2005. So I would not count on another 2003/2004 and hope that he can plateau at the 2001-2002 level for this year at least, before the decline comes. He could be the unusual player like Randy Johnson or Roger Clemens who can throw 4000 pitches in a season and not blink an eye, but given his injury history, the better bet is that his career has entered or is about to enter his decline phase.<br /><br /><strong>Might Pull a Kent</strong><br /><br />Then again, who says that Schmidt even wants to stay. He hasn't really said anything positive in that way to the press, he has been leaning more towards anger and an inkling towards moving on and away from SF. I think the media helped in making Schmidt less than enamored with Giants management when they were asking him last season what he would do if the Giants management don't pick up his option for 2006 and he reacted as if the Giants didn't pick up his option. Which, obviously, didn't happen but now his feelings are immortalized in print. It's kind of like asking a wife what she would do if her husband beats her, of course she'll be angry, but what if he's not, and never will be, a wife-beater?<br /><br />In addition, he is definitely clearly less than happy with Felipe as manager, especially after that playoff start flap that Felipe started by saying Schmidt backed out of the start. I think the only way Schmidt stays with the Giants is if the Giants win the World Series, Felipe Alou retires with his accomplishment and takes on the full-time role they had envisioned for him in Player Development, perhaps he'll head our Carribean branch to recruit new prospects - he can flash his shiny new ring - and can go fishing anytime he wants plus spend time with his young children in Florida, while the Giants name someone internal, probably Ron Wotus but maybe Dave Righetti as manager, who Schmidt would be happy with, and sign a AJ Burnett-sized contract (which would be a home discount by next off-season...) to stay with the Giants. Unfortunately, no matter what the scenario, the spector of injury will hang like the Sword of Damocles over Schmidt whereever he goes, and his signing team will be praying to whatever God they follow that his arm and body holds together during that contract.<br /><br /><strong>Do the Giants Even Want Him Back?</strong><br /><br />And I'm not sure that signing Schmidt is necessarily something Giants management wants to do, particularly with the injury factor going on there. If 2006 unfolds ideally (and I don't think that this is out of the realm of possibilities), Lowry and Cain will come to the fore as co-aces, making Morris one of the top #3 starters in the majors in 2007.<br /><br />Signing Schmidt in that situation would be gilding the lily when there is the matter of replacing Bonds' production at the plate, whether by re-signing him plus getting a good 4th OF to essentially platoon with him, or getting multiple other players at other positions to do that, and that will take money. But with a top three all pitching well, Wright and Hennessey would then be adequate 4 and 5 starters in 2007. The only reason for the Giants to sign Schmidt in that situation is to have a monster rotation to drive, once more, to get Barry (and the Giants) a World Series Championship in 2007. But given their cautious nature (plus getting burned by Robb Nen's injury), I don't see the Giants re-signing Schmidt unless the whole rotation falls apart, probably literally.<br /><br /><strong>Schmidt in 2006</strong><br /><br />I have no idea how many IP Schmidt will have due to his injury problems. I expect something less than 200 IP but wouldn't be surprised if he threw 180-200 IP. I think his overall stats will be better than his post-ASG stats in 2005, which was:<br /><br />3.66 ERA<br />8.7 K/9<br />4.1 W/9<br />0.6 HR/9<br />2.1 K/W<br />.216 BAA<br /><br />So I'm seeing a low-to-mid 3 ERA (much like 2001, 2002, 2004), high K/9 (over 9.0 again but not in double digits), high but OK W/9 given his K/9 (i.e. good K/W ratio), low HR/9, and low BAA - that is, not as good as his best year but still pretty good for almost any other pitcher. <br /><br />He sounds healthy and if the Giants are ever going to win the World Series with Bonds, this is probably it. Bonds is probably still good enough to produce a lot for a good number of games so having a Schmidt who is pitching well is a very encouranging bit of news towards making a World Series run in 2006. Hopefully Schmidt will hold up enough physically to pitch in the playoffs for us, he was always walking that tightrope of "is he/isn't he" injured badly which didn't really bite us in the rear until 2005 (when Bonds being out also bit us in the rear). We will need his dominating nature to get through the playoff gaunlet.obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9555762.post-1141710621079816062006-03-06T21:11:00.000-08:002006-11-04T20:33:07.018-08:00Rueter Retires and Wright Speculation<strong>Thanks Woody</strong><br /><br />First off, I just want to give a heartfelt thanks to Kirk Rueter for almost a decade of excellent pitching for the Giants - <a href="http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/article.jsp?ymd=20060306&content_id=1336862&vkey=news_sf&fext=.jsp&c_id=sf">he announced his retirement today from baseball</a>. He had a few other offers but the only team he was interested in (besides the Giants, natch) was St. Louis, his boyhood team, and they didn't return the interest. He decided that it's time to devote his life to his wife and two children. And like he said, he'll always be a Giant no matter what.<br /><br />He is one of the greats in the history of the San Francisco Giants, certainly of the time I followed the team. He was the bumblebee of baseball - baseball science couldn't explain how he could win so many games consistently over such a long period of time with as little "stuff" as he had and thus sabers have denigrated his accomplishments - but Giants fans have appreciated his competitiveness and his ability to rise to the occassion when it was crunch time. <br /><br />He was the quintessential competitor and there would have been no limits to what he could have accomplishment if he only had more skills. Still, he finished with a 130-92 record (.586 winning percentage) with a 4.27 ERA by being a cunning pitcher and utilizing all his abilities, particularly his one good skill, keeping his walk rate below 3.0 (good pitchers have rate below 3.0) for most of his good years. Thanks for all the great memories Woody!<br /><br /><strong>Giants Mailbag: Wright Stuff?</strong><br /><br />Rich Draper gave some interesting news in his latest <a href="http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/article.jsp?ymd=20060306&content_id=1337088&vkey=spt2006news&fext=.jsp&c_id=sf">Giants Mailbag</a>, assuming it is true. In it he noted that if Brad Hennessey wins the #5 spot, Jamey Wright will head to the bullpen for long relief or spot starts. "Wright seems assured of sticking." That's shocking news from a number of fronts.<br /><br />I know that Wright has said this spring that he'll do whatever the team wants, start, long relief, whatever, but I took that for spring time exuberance from a newbie because the bullpen is pretty set with Fassero as long relief/spot starter: Benitez, Worrell, Kline, Walker, Fassero, plus two of Munter, Accardo, Taschner for 7 in the bullpen, 5 starting rotation, and 13 position players (8 starters, 5 bench). If Wright gets the long relief position, that probably means Fassero becomes a LOOGY and Taschner's probably out since Alou had raved about Munter before plus, more importantly, you don't really need 3 LOOGY's. <br /><br />The only other option is trading away a reliever. Maybe Sabean is hoping to trade Tyler Walker to a team desperate for a closer after the other team's closer burns out sometime during spring training. That is the only way I see someone traded, no one will touch Benitez with that contract, it wouldn't make sense to trade away Kline again, Worrell just signed and there's probably a rule on trading away a signed free agent, and you can't get much in return for any of the youngsters so you may as well keep them and put them in AAA to start the season.<br /><br />In any case, despite Hennessey doing very well thus far, I still feel that the Giants long term looks better if they stash Brad in AAA this year and let Wright earn his way onto the 2007 rotation. With Schmidt potentially out the door and Morris, Lowry, Cain potentially a great 1/2/3 for the next couple of years afterward, the Giants need a good 4/5 for 2007-8 and if Wright can produce for the Giants what he did on the road for his career (near 4 ERA), he would be a great #4 with Hennessey taking #5. And he would be a great #5, as well, for 2006 if he can produce that. <br /><br />Plus Hennessey would be a great insurance policy in case any of the starters flame out during the season. That is a strong possibility. With Schmidt's and Morris' poor health history in the past and Lowry and Cain still very inexperienced at the major league level, plus who is the real Wright, any of them flaming out would allow Hennessey to come up and the rotation won't miss a beat much.obsessivegiantscompulsivehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11362706004246875823noreply@blogger.com0