Bay Bridge Baseball

A detailed look at the Giants

Jeff Fletcher | March 31, 2011

Happy Opening Day. Now that I’ve given my picks for the standings and the individual awards, it’s time to take a really hard look at the Giants, and how good they might be. (I’ll do the A’s on Friday, since that’s when they open.) This is all very scientific, as you’ll see.

First, let’s ignore the fact that the Giants won the World Series last year. As Billy Beane so famously said, the playoffs are a crap shoot, and that applies when you win as well as when you lose. (How different might things have been if they hadn’t benefited from a bad call in Game 1 against the Braves and Brooks Conrad in Game 3?) Anyway, let’s just say they were a 92-win team that actually should have been a 95-win team based on their runs scored and runs allowed.

The Giants allowed only 583 runs last year. I think it’s going to be pretty tough to expect them to do better than that. About the only personnel change is having Madison Bumgarner for a a whole year instead of starting with Todd Wellemeyer. But Wellemeyer only made 11 starts last year, so if you combine Wellemeyer’s starts and Bumgarner’s starts, you get a No. 5 starter who had a 3.67 ERA over 30 starts. Yes, Bumgarner had a 3.00 ERA last year, but it doesn’t seem reasonable to think he’d do that over 30 starts. Only 10 pitchers in the majors started 30 games with an ERA of 3.00 or below. If Bumgarner’s ERA goes up to, say, 3.50, then the difference between Bumgarner ’11 and Bumgarner/Wellemeyer ’10 is not that much. Let’s also not forget that Bumgarner went way over his previous innings limit, so it would not surprise anyone if he struggled or got hurt. Truth to be told, all the starters threw a lot of innings, so they’re all candidates for problems.

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Brandon Belt makes it

Jeff Fletcher | March 30, 2011

Well, the Giants are ready for the Brandon Belt era to start right away. I’m a little surprised that they would allow spring training performance to have this much of an impact — as I said, you have to be very careful to avoid over-analyzing what you see in these “games” — but I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised in light of the Cody Ross injury. The hole in the lineup was going to be filled by Belt, Travis Ishikawa, Aaron Rowand or Nate Schierholtz, so in that sense it’s a no-brainer who you want to see.

But Ross isn’t going to be out forever. Maybe just a few weeks. So is Belt here for good? Or is this just an extended tryout while Ross is hurt?

It will be interesting to see what the Giants do when Ross comes back, if Belt is not doing well. (I’m not saying he won’t. Just that there’s no decision to make if he is playing well.)

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Spend your opening day lunch hour with me

Jeff Fletcher | March 30, 2011

I’ll be hosting a little opening day chat at noon on Thursday. The A’s aren’t playing and the Giants don’t start until 5, so you won’t miss anything. You know you won’t be able to focus on your job with the excitement of opening day, so come by here and ask me anything about the Giants, A’s or MLB in general.

Click after the jump and you’ll see a box where you can enter your email address to get a reminder.

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Award predictions

Jeff Fletcher | March 30, 2011

This is even more fun than picking the division winners. Here you get to really go a little crazy.

MVP

NL: Troy Tulowitzki. Since I picked the Rockies to edge out the Giants, I’m going to be consistent. I think Tulo is a major stud, all the good of A-Rod and Derek Jeter, combined. He’s gotta win an MVP some time. Why not now?

AL: Carl Crawford. Again, it’s usually best to stick to the best teams and pick the best player on the best team. Crawford has been under-the-radar in Tampa. Put him in this lineup, in this ballpark, and watch him go.

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A scout’s view of the Giants

Jeff Fletcher | March 29, 2011

Called one of my scouting friends today to get his impressions on the Giants heading into the season. This scout spent his whole spring covering all five NL West teams in Arizona, so he has a pretty solid basis for his opinions.

“The Giants are the strongest team in the division,” he said. “I would pick them to win it going away.”

He said the Rockies would be his No. 2 team, because “their rotation isn’t as good as they think it is.” He picked the Dodgers third, because of the rotation hole left by injured Jon Garland and their front office “turmoil.” San Diego “will probably overachieve again” and their bullpen is good, but “starting pitching will be a problem… and the offense is a problem too.” And Arizona? “They were awful.”

Now, back to more specifics on the Giants.

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Prediction time

Jeff Fletcher | March 28, 2011

I had been planning to do some real research before coming up with my extensive predictions, but then I had this sudden epiphany: My predictions usually suck more when I put more thought into them. There is a point of diminishing returns on baseball knowledge as it applies to baseball predictions. A lot of stuff just can’t be foreseen, so you might as well wing it.

So, here goes, division by division…

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