Just after suggesting that the Giants trade some of their older players for up and coming young hitters, the Braves and Pirates announce a trade that, really, the Giants could have, and probably should have been involved in.
The Braves sent a pile of minor league players to the Pirates for Nate McLouth, a former Gold Glove centerfielder. Over at Baseball Prospectus, Joe Sheehan and Christina Kahrl look at the trade, and both suggest that the Pirates did as well as they could given McLouth's real value. Here's Sheehan:
…. Bringing it back to the trade, I see the Pirates as having done all right in it. They traded a player at or near the peak of his value, whose useful career would not extend into their next run of success, for quantity.
…. The most interesting thing to me about this trade is what it says about the industry’s evaluation of defense. The trade works because Nate McLouth was correctly valued, and that value takes into account that he’s not a good defensive center fielder. The Pirates, who would have as good a read on McLouth’s actual value as any team given that not only do they see him every day, but they employ Dan Fox as an analyst, took back a package that clearly did not value McLouth as a “Gold Glove” center fielder. If that deal were out there, if there were a team thinking of McLouth as a defensive stalwart, surely the return on him would have been better.
Aaron Rowand is quite a bit better than McLouth, albeit older, so the return for him certainly would have been better. He's had the one big home run season, just like McClouth. He's won a Gold Glove, just like McClouth. And he certainly won't be around the next time the Giants are contending fo
r a title, just like McLouth won't be around for the Pirate by the time they get their act together. This season, Rowand is better than McLouth in every category but home runs.
So the question remains; why weren't the Giants involved in this trade? The Braves have top quality talent in their minor league system, and are desperate for an outfielder, a center fielder in particular. Gorkys Hernandez or Jair Jurrjens might be out of the question, but how do you know that? How do you know they wouldn't make a move like that for Rowand and a couple of the Giants prospects? Schierholz is turning into dust playing behind Rowand, for what? Rowand absolutely, positively has no business playing everyday on a team that is at least two years away. Schierholz, obviously does.
Oh, and might I mention that he will never again be as valuable as he is right now. He's having a great start to the season, after being pretty fucking mediocre since he got here, and here we see the first move made for a player who is a poor man's version of our guy.
Rowand, Molina, Winn, and yes, even Renteria are all nothing more than trade bait at this point of the season. Watching Molina fall apart –gee what a surprise, our old and slow catcher is suddenly not playing well– reminds me of the end of how Sabean handled Brett Tomko, Jason Schmidt, or any number of on the downside of their career players…. poorly.
When you over value veteran savvy and experience, you will never know when the time has come to move a player, you cannot understand that the last peak of a players career is THE time to strike. Brian Sabean has never known this. He has never been able to understand that simple fact. And don't go bringing up the Williams trade, that was as much luck as anything. If Kent doesn't turn into a Hall of Famer, that trade is as bad as anything he's ever done.
Just a quick note for clarification – I mentioned the 97 Giants (and D’backs) as exceptions to the run differential model of success, not as any something to emulate.
I also didn’t mean to say a team should play (and win) lots of one-run games (though those are often the most exciting). What I meant was that the definition of winning is scoring at least one more run than your opponent. As nice as it is to score lots of runs, it only takes one more than theirs to win.
Checkiong back, I see it was +Mia, not John, who mentioned the need for winning streaks:
“Quality teams are capable of putting together extended winning streaks. The difference between sweeping a 3 game series and 2 out of three is two games in the standings. The Giants longest winning streak in the last 5 seasons is what? Four? Five? Thats brutal. Little league teams do better. If you can’t hit, you cannot put together extended streaks as a rule.”
Who has the longest win streak in the NL so far this year? Padres, no? Nuff said.
Hal,
At the least, your post wasn’t clear:
“First of all, the focus on run differential is tempting, but like most any stat, it can be deceptive. For several years in the ’90s I was convinced that run differential was the key. I was keeping charts of my own stats, and that seemed to be the most telling one. Then along came the ‘97 Giants, who made it to the playoffs despite scoring fewer runs than their opponents. They did it by winning a bunch of one-run games, then getting blown out by 10 (usually by the Expos, who didn’t contend). The D’backs did the same thing more recently.
What really matters in the end is that a team score one more run than its opponents more often than not. The season run differential, or even that along the way, does not always have to be significantly higher than the opponents’ totals for a team to rank high in the standings.”
You sure seem to be saying the ’97 Giants convinced you that using runs differential was flawed as a tool to predict future success.
There is no question that is wrong. The teams that have the highest runs differential year in and year out are the teams that contend. There is no way around that fact. Any exception to the rule is just that, an exception. If you want to contend, you need to outscore your opponents, consistently.
The Phillies had the second highest run differential in all of baseball last season. In 2007, the Red Sox outscored their opponents by 200 fucking runs! In ’06, the Cardinals became one of the worst teams ever to win a title, outscoring their opponents by just 19 runs. In ’05, the White Sox were +95. In ’04, the Red Sox were at +180. In ’03, the Marlins upset the Yankees, who led baseball at +161, the Marlins were just at +59. In ’02, as we all know, the Angels (+207) beat the Giants (+167), both teams led their respective leagues.
Year after year, the runs differential leaders are the playoff teams. The Giants –since 2002– have gone +117, +80, -96, -44, -37, -119, and currently, they are at 0. I’ve said it a hundred times, every bit of the success that this franchise has had over the last 15 years has been almost exclusively due to the superhuman efforts and production of Barry Bonds. The short run of truly contending (2000-2003) now seems like a million years ago, and it certainly appears that luck played as much a role in the team Sabean was able to assemble as anything else, since he has been completely unable to replicate that success.
My point has been that these bad times have been predictable, they have been forseeable, and they have occurred because of a complete lack of understanding about what is valuable on a baseball team by our GM and his staff.
Hal:
I don’t think we disagree on the importance of winning streaks. Let me clarify my point. Or at least the thrust of it. Winning teams are capable of putting together longish winning streaks (greater than 3 games). Winning teams also put up more than a couple of streaks over the season too. Not to imply that crappy teams don’t put together the occasional winning streak just like the Padres did earlier in this 09 season. They do. Even the Giants of 2005 had 3 streaks of 5 or more wins. A lot of this was due to the torrid bat of Winn when he was acquired from Seattle and the unanticipated return of Bonds before their ultimate collapse at the end of September. But that’s superflous to what we really are talking about here.
Here is a breakout of the Giants teams since they moved into the new stadium. Winning streak is 4 or more wins in a row. The numbers below are merely observational, as was the paragraph just quoted.
2000 Giants: streaks of 5-7-8-6-9 = 35 wins. Season 97W-65L
36% of wins came from 5 winning streaks
2001 Giants: streaks of 5-6-4-9-5 = 29 wins. Season 90W-72L
32% of wins from 5 winning streaks
2002 Giants: streaks of 6-7-5-6-4-4-5-8 = 45 wins. Season 95W-66L
47% of wins came from 8 winning streaks
2003 Giants: streaks of 7-6-6-5-9-5-5-4 = 47 wins. Season 100W-61L
47% of wins came from 8 winning streaks
2004 Giants: streaks of 10-4-7-4-6-6 = 37 wins. Season 91W-71L
41% of wins came from 6 winning streaks
2005 Giants: streaks of 6-4-4-6-5 = 25 wins. Season 75W-87L
33% of wins came from 5 winning streaks
2006 Giants: streaks of 5-5 = 10 wins. Season 76W-85L
13% of wins came from 2 winning streaks
2007 Giants: streaks of 8-4-5-6 = 23 wins. Season 71W-91L
32% of wins came from 4 winning streaks
2008 Giants: streaks of 4-5 = 9 wins. Season 72W-90L
13% of wins came from 2 winning streaks.
So I guess you can see that in years in which the Giants won, they had more winning streaks than in years in which they did not win many games. These are not hard and fast of course. Merely one of many indicators of what good teams do. And as I said, crappy teams will put together some win streaks too.
Of course you will find exceptions to this throughout baseball history. But as a rule of thumb, good teams have more winning streaks and longer winning streaks than do bad teams. If a team is going to average 2 out of three games at home and break-even on the road as you suggest as the baseline to “win” that’s going to equate to a 95 win season. As you can see above, 95 win teams, put together lots of winning streaks.
For instance. The 1959 Giants who finished 4 games behind the Dodgers at (83-71) for the pennant, never won more than 4 in a row and they only did that twice. As a result they had no cushion to cover a bumpy stretch at the end of the season when they lost 7 out of their last 8 games after leading the league for much of the season. It was their failure to put together only those two 4 game winning streaks (one for which most of the credit went to pitcher Sam Jones who won three games in a row in starting on July 5 and ending on July 10) that many point to as the single biggest failure of the Giants that season. Even though they allowed the fewest runs in the National League (613) and scored exactly as many runs as the Dodgers–705.
And for the record, I’m still pissed about the way the ’59 season ended. In addition to some rube LA sportswriter scorer robbing a no-hitter from Sam Jones on a groundball error by the notoriously maladroit shortstop Andre Rogers in June, the Dodgers won the series from the White Sox too, only the second year away from Brooklyn. Meanwhile, crabheads and french bread freaks from the old days still await vindication. Alas, is there no justice?
I hate to rub salt in the wound, but in his latest Blog entry on ESPN, Peter Gammons advises us to “[b]eware the Giants the next few years because Brian Sabean, with Dick Tidrow’s advice and consent, is back in judging and developing talent.”
Amen to that, +Mia.
That said, I want to backtrack just a bit, as in the last couple of posts John has made a few remarks and arguments that strike me as dubious at best. You may have noticed that I tend to see the game, and the team, a bit differently than most who post here. I have been appreciating the emergence of +Mia’s fannish impulses lately, though.
First of all, the focus on run differential is tempting, but like most any stat, it can be deceptive. For several years in the ’90s I was convinced that run differential was the key. I was keeping charts of my own stats, and that seemed to be the most telling one. Then along came the ’97 Giants, who made it to the playoffs despite scoring fewer runs than their opponents. They did it by winning a bunch of one-run games, then getting blown out by 10 (usually by the Expos, who didn’t contend). The D’backs did the same thing more recently.
What really matters in the end is that a team score one more run than its opponents more often than not. The season run differential, or even that along the way, does not always have to be significantly higher than the opponents’ totals for a team to rank high in the standings.
A couple of posts ago John said that a team has to put together long winning streaks to contend, which is an even shakier premise. If a team wins two out of three through a season, more often than not they’ll have the best record in baseball, whether they have long winning (or losing) streaks or not.
Yes, that first loss to the Nats was highly unpleasant, but Lincecum didn’t “fail to beat the worst team in baseball.” He had a lead when he left, even though he was off his best game that day. The bullpen blew that one. Also relevant is that the Nats are a perfect example of why offense doesn’t cure all woes. They’ve scored the third most runs in the league and are at the bottom of the standings.
SOMETIMES the conditions John describes as what he wants to see the Giants do can be a winning formula, but just as often not. There are too many variables for any formula to be consistently successful. In the end, it always comes down to which teams are playing the best baseball at the right time, and nobody yet has figured out how to predict that. THAT’S WHY THEY PLAY THE GAMES.
If the current Giants somehow figure out how to play as well on the road as they have at home, there’s actually a decent chance they could make the playoffs. I’m not saying they will, but it’s not an absurd notion. That Rockies team that made it to the series got hot, made a great run at the end, but wasn’t it obvious at the time that they were playing way over their heads? They didn’t have significantly better assets than they have now, but everything clicked at the right time and they kept it going just long enough to get to the series, then lost it. Last year’s Cubbies looked like a juggernaut all season, but gave one of the most embarrassingly awful playoff appearances I’ve ever seen.
I guess what bugs me here is how easy it is to toss out stats and theories that support the conclusions you want to come to, or sell to other readers (I’m not just pointing at John), and to dismiss what doesn’t support those conclusions. And yes, it does often seem like people would rather post after lousy games, so they can keep bitching and moaning. I guess it’s too hard to fit a 5-1 homestand against two decent teams into the premise that the entire organization is hopeless.
From what I’ve seen so far, the current Giants are capable of playing very good baseball – as a team – quite a bit of the time. Yes, the young guys make boneheaded mistakes, as all young players will, and yes, the vets sometimes look like their time is past, but as long as someone steps up and gets the key hit that scores one more run than the other team – and just about everyone has done so at some point – another game is won. Do you want to give back a game because Aurilia won it with a homer?
As for the McLouth trade, I’d sorta prefer to wait and see how it turns out before calling it brilliant, or an example of how idiotic the Giants’ dealings are. Predicting the results of a trade is only marginally more reliable than predicting the results of a draft choice.
One last thing I’ve been meaning to mention for quite a while – since Bonds is gone (and I sure do miss him), I’ve found the crowds at the ballpark are a lot more like they used to be at the Stick. Smaller, but a lot more fun and more into the game. I suspect a lot of season ticket holders are letting their poor relatives use the seats.
Hal,
You make some relevant points…and I agree with much of what you said. But, what is frustrating to most who post here…is that we are fed up with Sabeans style…for lack of a better word. We expect the Gigantes to be better…especially running Cain and Lincecum out every 5th day. I agree to some extent for about run differential…you need to win the one run games…and winning series is more important than long winning streaks. Getting blown out can skew that figure. I do agree it is easy to come up with statistics to support any hypothesis or statement. I’ve done it myself.
I’ve been a proponent for rebuilding from within for years. I’d like to see Schierholz given the same chance as Burriss…and would like to see Bowker get one last shot. Bonds was asked earlier this year what he thought of the 2009 Gigantes…and the comment the caught my attention was that he thought Bowker had the best swing in the organization. Most similar to his.
And yes…people love to vent after a loss.
I actually thought the Gigantes had a legitimate shot at the wild card. Stated it many times this year. But…with Sabean in the background…he challenges the fan in us all. You never know when he’s going to strike again.
Here’s a way to win more one run games.
Affeldt should be the 8th inning set-up guy. Not just for getting a tough LH hitter. Quit running Howry out for the 8th or a tie game in the 9th.
Great to see TI contributing.
+mia said it all…baseball is one of the greatest inventions. Three of four from the Fish…Go Gigantes.
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/ten-things-about-one-run-games/
Run differential has proven to be exceptionally important in deciding a team’s overall record. When building a team – the best run differential possible should be your goal.
As for winning one-run games, the research done suggests your results are mostly uncontrollable. Being a good team will give you a higher expected winning% in one run games, but that should be pretty obvious. Having a good bullpen may make some difference, which also makes sense. As in the article linked, Bill James finds good pitching and small ball can also make a difference in your record in one run games, independant of how good your team is. That said, it’s still mostly a random, uncontrollable event, which is why the focus should be on building a team that can achieve the best run differential possible (in other words, the best team possible).
That said…we play the game for a reason. If the expected outcome was what always happened, we might as well just crown the World Series champion before the season based on the best team “on paper”.
Baseball’s great because the expected outcome doesn’t have to happen – the ’97 Giants or the Diamondbacks a couple years ago getting into the playoffs with a negative run differential, or a guy who always gets that clutch hit over the course of a whole season that leads to a much better record in one run games than expected. Brian Wilson getting a called strike 3 in the 8th with bases loaded…
It was good to see Johnson get #300. I have to say, I’m enjoying the Giants a lot more this year than the last few. Are we a playoff team? Unlikely. It’s June 5th, and we’re 27-25, though. Sure beats the hell out of the 25-35 record we had on this day last year. This is what I was imagining for this team this year – playing some watchable baseball while getting one more year of rebuilding under our belts.
I don’t remember saying a team needed to go on winning streaks to contend.
Lincecum pitched poorly against a team playing out the string in June.
Run differential is as important an indicator of a teams potential to win as any stat there is. Sure, there are lots of variables. Controlling the ones you can is how you manage day to day in any venture. Putting together a team that prevents runs at a high rate is one way to get a good runs differential. The second part you can control is putting together a team that can score. This team cannot score. Vis a vis, this team cannot truly be considered a contender until it does.
A team “figures out” how to win on the road by consistently scoring more runs than they allow.
I didn’t call the McLouth trade brilliant, my point was that if the Braves were willing to give that much for him, we should’ve been able to get more for some of our tradable commodities, notably our over 30 contingent.
One-run wins are useless as an indicator of a teams ability to win and lose. If they weren’t the best teams would always have the best winning percentages in one-run games. In fact, the leaders in one-run wins fluctuate year to year.
Using the ’97 Giants as an example of the kind of team you hope to build is absurd. They were lucky.
I love and respect Gammons as much as the next guy, but there is no question that the next hitter to be drafted by Sabean and develop into a star will be the first.
Other than those couple of points, everything you said is spot on, Hal.
On a happier note
Emmanuel Burriss diving behind the bag on a sure basehit, shoveling the ball to Renteria to start as beautiful a double play as any I’ve ever seen to preserve Randy Johnson’s tenuous lead.
Randy Johnson diving to the ground like a firstbaseman as he sidearms a throw to Ishikawa for a critical out.
Ishikawa and Burriss teaming up for 2 runs…all that would be necessary for Number 300.
Wilson coming in with bags drunk, in bottom of the eighth with the one run lead to strike out Dunn looking on a 3 and 2 count with two outs. Never mind the fastball was at the top of the shins. It was over the middle of the plate and this was about the culminating and final landmark on a 21 year career, and homeplate Tim Timmons was not about to inject himself into the middle of this in a negative way on a rainy night in the Nation’s capital.
The camera shots of the Mrs. and the 4 little Johnsons afterward served to remind why baseball is mankind’s greatest invention. Damn. Twenty one years is a damn long time to pursue excellence. And for the first time since Bonds left, it was excellence in a Giants uniform in a total team effort.
Beautiful.
+mia.
Nice. Best double play I’ve seen in years. Good to see you have a soft spot left for RJ…he is a total class act. Must be that inner fan coming out. I actually took time out to watch the game…first one I’ve watched in over a week. Great stuff. Awesome to see Timmons ring Dunn up on a borderline call…Dunn should be looking to swing away. Timmons wasn’t about to get in the way of history.
Beautiful it was….I’ll savor this one for a while.
Cain once again proved why he should be a lifetime Gigante.
I would take a bottle of Imodium A-D, a roll of toilet paper and a can of air freshener for Rowand.
Agreed. If you take the Imodium…you will not need the toilet paper…maybe the air freshener. B is spot on about not being able to find a GM dumb enough to pick up Rowands salary….and Trevor is accurate in taking McClouth over Rowand. McClouth has far more upside.
Sabean is famous for these heavy loaded back end contracts…totally insane. His behavior is criminal…should be locked up w/o a pen.
Straight salary dump for the Yankees, a la what they offered to do for Jarrod Washburn (!!!!) last season.
Please let it happen D:
Yeah, I have to agree with B.
Of the two players, salary aside, I’d still take McClouth over Rowand right now. McClouth’s got some real upside and Rowand is just starting to hit the back end of his career. This last 2 week stretch has brought Rowand back to respectability, but before that, I think all Giants fans would have been happy getting a dozen baseballs in exchange for ARow.
The Giants Baseball Blog
http://giantsbaseballblog.blogspot.com/
Rowand:
’09 – $8 mil ’10 – $12 mil ’11 – $12 mil ’12 – $12 mil
McClouth:
’09 – $2 mil ’10 – $4.5 mil ’11 – $6.5 mil ’12 – $10.65 mil club option ($1.25 mil buyout)
I’ve love to get rid of Rowand for just about anything at all. Problem is, finding a GM dumb enough to pay that kind of money to Rowand is tough, especially now that the economic climate in baseball has declined, and that’s without even considering getting anything back for him…
That said, we should definitely be open to trade Rowand, Molina, Zito (totally unrealistic obviously), Winn, or pretty much anyone else another team has any interest in.
This is what I was going to point out. The Braves actually frustrate me because they know how to budget their money and not (USUALLY) “overpay” for talent, either with talent or with money.
It appears that I am so fond of my own spam that I figured a way to send it twice