Well, I’ve been vacationing, and while I’ve been away, you guys haven’t been playing nice 
The Ramirez rumor doesn’t seem to have much to it, but it was nice while it lasted. Regardless of how much he would’ve cost (in all ways), at least he actually has talent and produces.
And as for the Giants being competitive in the NL West, even if you think Mia and I are nuts, there’s at least one writer that agrees with us:
…. For this staff to win with this offense, everything needs to go right for the pitchers. (italics, mine)
…. The Giants pitchers Marcel the Monkey Projections work) out to a 4.02 ERA for the group. Since 89 percent of runs are earned, that ERA translates to 4.52 runs per nine innings. Assuming the bullpen pitches at the same level, we can look at the graph and see that the Giants will need to score about 5.2 runs per game to reach 92 wins.
Reaching that level will be difficult with their current offense. The Lineup Analysis Tool at my website, Baseball Musings, estimates runs scored for a batting order. The current group of hitters rates at 4.2 runs per game.
Using the Pythagorean projection, 4.2 runs scored and 4.5 runs allowed per game works out to a .464 winnings percentage, or 75 team wins.
…. The Giants could work on the offensive side as well. Manny Ramirez is available, and with him in the lineup, their runs scored per game goes up to 4.5, bringing the Giants to .500.
At that level, the Giants may be able to compete in a weak division. The Dodgers took the West with just 84 wins in 2008. With a little luck, a .500 team can easily win 85 or 86 games. Given the lack of improvement among their contenders, that might put them on top.
Don’t look for Giants starters to be a cheap source of wins, however. They are a long way from being true contenders, and even Lincecum is likely to be down after his impressive ‘08 season.
How many ways does this piece reflect everything I’ve been saying?
Let’s see….
1. We have nothing even remotely like a conteders level of offense.
2. If the addition of a true superstar like Ramirez only adds .3 runs per game to our team, and something like 10 wins, the of course, expecting Edgar Renteria could make any kind of impact whatsoever is laughable.
3. Planning a season based on the premise that a substantial number of our pitchers will be as good or better than they were last season is absurd.
4. And even Tim Lincecum is all but certain to regress, at least a little.
But –in at least one way– all of you optimists have your day; in that even the venerable David Pinto thinks that the team could be one player away from contending in a terrible division, (if that player is the very best hitter available, and just about every other player on the team meets or exceeds expectations).
15 Backtalkers
Okay, sure, well, first, that information comes from the internet, so it’s wrong, as per Mia. Pointy headed pot-addled truffle-morons, or somesuch. Or maybe because it’s from the Sporting News, which of course is on the cutting edge, it’s true, because those mainstream writers… they’re the best. I think we all can agree on that. They hire the best, because they want to sell the most advertising – oh wait, that doesn’t fit the scenario. Providing entertainment for the purpose of getting money is not the same as providing entertainment for the purpose of getting money. From what I understand, through all the scalloping.
One assumes that in all things in life, they get worse, they stay the same, or they get better. I guess the foregone conclusion is that everything will get worse then. As I understand it, based on the following:
So the pitching staff will be worse, and Renteria will hit worse than Visquel, and the cast of thousands will be worse than Durham, and Sandoval will be worse than our Rule 5 pickup, and the young team won’t be any more experienced, and Rowand will definitely hit worse than his career average, and Sanchez won’t pan out, and Cain won’t have his bad breaks turn around, and Johnson will be terrible, and Lowry will be a complete loss, and the other teams in the NL West will be better than last year, which makes things worse because of the unbalanced schedule, and if we had signed Ramirez he would perform at MVP levels, but that isn’t happening, and even if none of that were true, STILL the team won’t win any more games than last year, and NOTHING’S good…. man, that it is pretty bad. And that’s all from what I’ve read here!
You guys sound like Braves fans. Fair-weather fans. Too bad there’s actually a game that gets played, I hear baseball is kinda a cool sport. Some people actually like it.
“You guys sound like Braves fans. Fair-weather fans. Too bad there’s actually a game that gets played, I hear baseball is kinda a cool sport. Some people actually like it.”
I’m not sure we have fair-weather fans here, in fact, far from it. Everybody who is mad at the current situation is simply so because they WANT TO SEE THE TEAM GO TO THE PLAYOFFS! The reason for the pessimistic views are simply the result of a probable sub-.500 team being trotted out. The sub-.500 team would be a little more acceptable if it seemed like there was a youth movement, and thus the team would have a lot of upside. Instead the signings seem like they are coming from a team that is looking to improve it’s 7th and 8th batting slots in contention for a title.
Do I hope for a bunch of lucky breaks and career performances from the entire team so the Giants win the division and go to the playoffs? Of course. Will I listen to a lot of Giants games this year? Of course, although once they’ve knocked themselves out of contention, those may just be games when the young pitching is out.
Summary: Being mad at a poor GM’s poor construction of your favorite team doesn’t make you a fair weather fan, it makes you a passionate one. Being an optimist who goes to every game and hopes for a miracle run works better in the NFL where there are only 16 games (Go 49ers).
Pinto does solid work. But his projections are just that–projections. They look and feel right to me, but that’s because they confirm my existing bias: we aren’t going to score enough runs to win more than we lose, no matter how good our pitching is. Chris at Bay City Ball does very nice work, too, and he projects us as an 82-83 win team! Check it out.
I can live with a bad team if I feel we are developing a cadre of young players to build a new team around. I think the off-season has been pretty good overall. Sabean has surprised me by making relatively cost-effective, short-term deals. Not much of a compliment to say “he didn’t do anything stupid” but that’s where we are with Sabes, eh? We have not added the bats to be a winner, but other than Texeira, I don’t think any of the FAs out there are worth it. At this point, I’m excited about 2009 because we’ll get to see the real value of guys like Lewis, Sandoval, Sanchez, Romo, etc. 2010 should feature Buster Posey and Conor Gillaspie, and we’ll be done with Roberts, Molina, etc. I think 2011 is our first real chance to put a great team on the field. I hope we can draft well and keep stocking the farm clubs, at some point we’ll get some hitters to complement Bumgarner and Alderson.
GO GIANTS!!!!!!!
“We have not added the bats to be a winner, but other than Texeira, I don’t think any of the FAs out there are worth it.”
I probably would have taken Pat Burrell at the 16M dollar 2 year contract the Rays just got him for. Certainly it’s a great signing for the Rays that had a lot to do with a) The Rays viewed as a contender for another playoff run b) Burrell can play DH instead of LF. The Giants didn’t even try, as far as anybody knows. To put this in perspective, he’s cheaper than Edgar, had a fantastic last 4 seasons behind the plate, and he’s cheaper than Edgar.
Yes, Mark, exactly, thank you. We learned enough from the treadmill of Bonds’ last 5 years that chasing after the Ramirez’ of the world just puts the team in a deeper hole. In a couple-three years, we could have a team full of home grown players in their prime, as opposed to being right where we’ve been since 2002. But if you throw rookies on the trash heap for the sake of 1 extra win this year, that’s all you’ll ever get. I do think that Renteria is better for the “win-now!” crowd, but meanwhile, settling for better means you give away the possibility of much better for a tenth the cost.
John, it’s been pretty harsh here. Hopefully spring training will calm that down some.
Pinto’s overall point is good, although I’m wondering why he put Ryan Rohlinger and Dave Roberts into that starting lineup and why he used the Marcels for players without a lot of major league time (Marcels only account for MLB play time, so you need a few years before they’re really good for a player). Then again, the best lineup I could come up with using his Lineup Analysis tool only yielded ~4.4 runs per game (I mostly used the most pessimistic, and in my opinion, realistic, projections I could find, fyi).
So yeah, things have to break well for the team this season, and with the high probability of ManRam re-signing with the Dodgers, I really can’t peg the Giants as the NL West favorites. I’m still looking forward to next season though… can’t come soon enough.
Yeah, the Burrell deal surprised me. But TB has the DH option, and he’s a perfect fit for that. Weak fielding doesn’t hurt good-hitting teams so much–the Phils had more than enough bats to compensate for guys like Burrell and Howard (both great hitters, of course), plus they had a world-class fielder like Utley and solid defenders like Rollins and Victorino and Feliz. Balance, in other words. This is why I don’t like the FAs out there–we aren’t close enough. One bat (even Ramirez!) won’t do it. My new drug is “growing the youngsters” and I’m ready to start mainlining!!!!
Let me join in the Fun. The Following is based on performance and playing time projections from Bill James as found at fangraphs.com and defensive projections from Chone Smith as found at baseballprojection.com.
2009 Giants Rotation Games Innings FIP FipRuns
Tim Lincecum 34 240 2.86 76
Randy Johnson 28 170 3.51 66
Matt Cain 32 213 3.87 92
Barry Zito 31 197 4.56 100
Jonathan Sanchez 24 132 3.63 53
Pat Misch 13 34 4.19 16
Total 162 986 3.68 403
2009 Giants Bullpen Innings FIP FipRuns
Brian Wilson 63 3.70 26
Bob Howry 63 3.99 28
Jeremy Affeldt 77 4.39 38
Sergio Romo 42 3.84 18
Keiichi Yabu 66 4.07 30
Jack Taschner 41 3.93 18
Alex Hinshaw 45 4.35 22
Billy Sadler 53 4.22 25
Merkin Valdez 22 4.39 11
Total 472 4.12 216
Before the effects of defense is added the above Giants pitching staff gives up 619 Runs in 1458 innings (9×162).
Please note that for Romo, Hinshaw and Valdez Marcel Data was used because there was no Bill James Data.
In addition for Valdez his projected innings was reduced from 35 to 22 to make the total innings pitched 9×162=1458.
We will get to the Giants defense last to add (or subtract) their effect on the total runs the Giants allow. But first let’s look at the Giants offense as predicted by Bill James.
2009 Giants Lineup PlateAppearances wOBA wRC
Randy Winn 648 .339 73.5
Edgar Renteria 626 .333 68.2
Pablo Sandoval 566 .365 76.6
Bengie Molina 559 .320 54.7
Fred Lewis 559 .342 65.3
Aaron Rowand 639 .341 73.9
Travis Ishikawa 565 .354 71.3
Emmanual Burriss 621 .302 51.6
2009 Giants Bench PlateAppearances wOBA wRC
Steve Holm 131 .337 14.5
Kevin Frandsen 230 .316 24.5
Eugenio Velez 261 .324 26.4
Nate Schierholtz 190 .354 23.8
Dave Roberts 314 .308 27.6
Pitchers 341 .000 0.0
TOTAL 6250 652
Please Note that I swaped the Plate Appearances Bill James predicted for Travis Ishikawa (190) and Nate Schierholtz (565) since they both have the same projected wOBA (.354) and according to Bruce Bochy Travis Ishikawa is projected to be the Giants starting 1B while Nate Schierholtz is projected to be a backup outfielder. In addition please note that I used Marcel’s plate appearance projections for Kevin Frandsen because they showed him in a reserve role and I went with Burriss as the starter to be conservative since he is projected by Bill James to be worse offensively then the other two potential 2B starters (Frandsen and Velez). Finally note that again to be conservative I assumed the Giants pitchers will be totally inupt on offense and contribute a Zero wOBA and thus Zero wRCs in my projected 341 PAs for them (they had 334 PAs last year and were not a Zero on offense).
Before defense is accounted for Bill James projects the 2009 Giants to score 33 more runs then they give up. 652 runs scored while giving up just 619 runs. No let’s see how many runs the Giants defense is projected to save or add to the runs the Giants pitchers are projected to give up independent of defense (FIP after all is Fielding Independent Performance).
To simplify things I am going to I am going to use the RunsSaved/150Games number for all 8 starters and 1/3 of the RunsSaved/150Games number (RS/50 if you will) for all 5 bench players. Please note that Kevin Frandsen is the only one of these that Chone does not have a defensive projection for but I am going to assume the worst for him and use Velez’s projection.
Starting Player RS/150
Bengie Molina -1
Travis Ishikawa 0
Emmanual Burriss 4
Pablo Sadoval -3
Edgar Renteria -6
Fred Lewis 1
Aaron Rowand 0
Randy Winn 7
TOTAL 2
Bench Player RS/50
Steve Holm -3
Kevin Frandsen -4
Eugenio Valez -4
Nate Schierholtz 1
Dave Roberts 2
TOTAL -8
GRAND TOTAL -6
Therefore being conservative (and almost exclusively because of most likely incorrectly assuming Kevin Frandsen will be as bad on defense as Eugenio Valez) the Giants Defense above is projected to give up an additionl 6 runs on top what the Giants Pitchers are projected to give up. This increases the runs the Giants are projected to allow in 2009 from 619 to 625.
Net of all this projecting is that Bill James’ Offense and Pitching Projections combined with Chone Smith’s Defensive Projections project the 2009 Giants to score 652 Runs while giving up 625. This 17 Run advantage should project to an 83 Win season for our beloved Giants. With a little luck they could do better and thus actually compete for the NL West Title inspite of all the nay sayers here.
Opps! The predicted run differential is 27 (652-625) not 17. This would project to 84 wins rather then 83.
Speaking of FanGraphs, a great site for baseball junkies, Eric Seidman summed it up nicely on 12/29:
If Sandoval really pulls his weight, Renteria shows that last season was a fluke, the bullpen holds fort, and the rotation meets their projections, there is no reason this team could not win the division. In the playoffs, we then are looking at a Lincecum-Cain-Unit rotation that could definitely scare some teams. A few key aspects of player performance will need to come to fruition for the team to surpass 80-wins, but it is not out of the realm of feasibility.
I love the Giants, and usually manage to convince myself every April that we are “going all the way” but I really think we’ll be lucky to get 81 wins. Too many “ifs” and no depth if we get hit with injuries.
Thanks for the analysis. Good stuff.
And an apology to the site for my part in the recent unpleasantness.
Here is some data from 100 runs of a simulator using Hardball Times Projections (which I think but don’t know for sure are Marcel Projections) for 2009. The Giants are projected to be right where I projected them to be between 83 and 84 wins. A couple of big surprises, the Dodgers are projected to finish in 4th place with a below .500 record (or course this is without Manny) and the Rockies are projected to win the NL West with 88 wins. Could the Rockies really be that good?
http://www.replacementlevel.com/index.php/RLYW/direct/extremely_early_projected_standings#When:15:20:00Z
Hello John,
I’m trying to track down your email address but I’m having no luck with the one you have published on your old website.
Here’s what my email would have read had it not bounced back to m:
My name is Brandon Heikoop, I run ‘The Outsiders Look’
(http://theoutsiderslook.blogspot.com) a blog dedicated to all things
baseball.
I am sending you this note to ask if you wouldn’t mind answering a few questions for me regarding the San Francisco Giants. Your answers will be added on my blog as part of a series of previews.
I won’t be doing so until the middle of February, but I wanted to get things
set up now rather then later.
If you don’t think that you would be able to help me out with this, would
you know of any other intensive Giants blogs out there?
Thanks,
Brandon Heikoop
Brandon,
My email is:
john@onlybaseballmatters.com
If you can’t get through, leave me yours here, and I’ll get through to you that way. I’ll delete it asap, if that’s an issue.
Really good work about this website was done. Keep trying more – thanks!