Jeff Fletcher | September 2, 2011

Through all the talk about why the Giants’ offense has fared so much worse this year than in their championship season, I think one name has been conspicuously absent: Pat Burrell.

It seems like most Giants fans understand the obvious impact of the loss of Buster Posey and Freddy Sanchez and the struggles of Aubrey Huff and Andres Torres, but it doesn’t seem like anyone ever mentions how much the Giants miss what Burrell did last year.

You know what position produced the highest OPS on the team last year? Left field. Burrell may have spent only four months with the Giants, but he had 18 homers — including seven that gave the Giants a lead — and a .872 OPS. (In almost the same playing time, the deified Posey hit 18 HRs with an .862 OPS.)

(more…)

Category: Giants | No Comments »
Tags:

Jeff Fletcher | August 16, 2011

Prompted by Buster Olney’s suggestion in his blog this morning that the Giants and Cubs ought to consider a Zito-for-Zambrano swap, I threw it out there on the Twitterverse. I also made the caveat that the Giants would have to chip in to even out the money. I got a lot of strong reactions … both ways. (By the way, I really don’t think this is going to happen, so this is just a fun little theoretical debate.)

Here’s the tale of the tape, so to speak…

	Zito	Zambrano
Age	33	30
ERA in '11	5.62	4.82
ERA, '09-'11	4.27	3.99
Remaining salary (starting in '12)	$46M through '14	$18M through '12

As for the salaries, I’m starting with 2012, since obviously they aren’t going to make a trade now, with Zito hurt. I’ve also assumed that Zambrano won’t have his option vest by finishing in the top four in the Cy Young voting in 2012, and I’m assuming that Zito’s 2014 deal will be bought out for $7 million. So that means Zito is guaranteed $46 million and Zambrano $18 million. It’s not quite as even as I thought. The Giants would have to trade Zito and $28 million to the Cubs for Zambrano, to make it a wash.

Based purely on the physical — Zambrano’s age and performance when he’s behaved himself — it seems like you’d be better off with him. However, the behavior thing is a big deal. It’s not just like Barry Bonds clubhouse grumpiness. We’re talking fights with teammates and going AWOL.

Anyway, what do you think?

Category: Giants | 2 Comments »
Tags:

Jeff Fletcher | August 15, 2011

Giants fans have certainly been wondering what the future holds for Jonathan Sanchez. I obviously don’t have a crystal ball, but I was curious about what type of futures pitchers typically have after having numbers similar to Sanchez at a similar age.

For starters, Sanchez is 28 years old and he has a career ERA+ of 98 over 173 big league games, 117 of them starts. That means he’s been a slightly below average pitcher over a significant number of games. His age is also a key number here. He’s not a kid anymore.

So here’s what I did. I somewhat arbitrarily picked 1960 as a starting point so I could have a reasonable number of pitchers in my sample. I used baseball-reference to round up all the pitchers who, through their age 28 season, had made at least 100 starts with an ERA+ of less than 100. I came up with these 182 pitchers.

(more…)

Category: Giants | 1 Comment »
Tags:

Jeff Fletcher | August 6, 2011

First of all, it sure seems like they are lucky, in the larger sense, that they have the record they have, despite the runs they’ve scored and allowed. We all know about the unfortunately named Pythagorean Wins Theorem. (It’s unfortunate it has such a stat-geeky name, when it’s really based on the most basic thing of all: the more runs you score, and the fewer you allow, the better you’ll be.)

But are the Giants unlucky that they have scored so few runs?

I started to think about this when I realized today that their average with two outs and runners in scoring position was — wait for it — .169 with a .553 OPS. That’s just absolutely horrendous. It’s so awful that it’s unsustainable. No team can be that bad. Maybe the Giants were just unlucky that they weren’t getting hits at the right time.

(more…)

Category: Giants | 2 Comments »
Tags:

Jeff Fletcher | August 1, 2011

(UPDATE: Zito went on the DL, with a recurrence of the foot injury that landed him on the DL last time, but feel free to read the following anyway…)

This is total speculation, so let’s get that out of the way. All I know for certain is that Bruce Bochy said before the game that there would be a “change” in the rotation involving Zito, and that he would announce what that meant for Zito later tonight or, at the latest, tomorrow.

The choices are…
1. Someone goes to the DL and Zito go to the bullpen.
2. The Giants go with 13 pitchers.
3. Zito accepts an assignment to the minors.
4. The Giants release Zito.

I think that the Giants had picked No. 1, they would have announced that already, unless they really believe someone is going to get hurt tonight. I don’t think No. 2 is a very good option, because the Giants need all the bench players they’ve got with the number of struggling starters they have.

(more…)

Category: Giants | No Comments »
Tags:

Jeff Fletcher | July 31, 2011

The Giants came up empty in their search for a catcher before today’s trading deadline, but they will certainly keep looking.

The obvious primary target is Ramon Hernandez. I doubt that he’d get through waivers. To be traded, a player doesn’t have to clear all 29 teams, just those who come higher in the wavier priority than the team that’s trying to acquire him. The order of waiver claims goes like this: all the way through his current league, in reverse order of standings, then all the way through the other league, in reverse order of standings. For the Giants to get Hernandez, no team in the NL with a worse record than the Giants could claim him.

(more…)

Category: Giants | 1 Comment »
Tags:

Jeff Fletcher | July 3, 2011

As is to be expected this time of year, a spirited debate is raging about the managers’ selections for the All-Star team. Giants manager Bruce Bochy found himself right in the middle of it after he named three Giants pitchers with his nine selections to fill out the NL All-Star roster. He took Matt Cain, Ryan Vogelsong and Tim Lincecum, leaving out guys like Tommy Hanson and Jordan Zimmerman.

There are two sides to this issue…

Bochy won the pennant last year, so he earned the right to favor his players and reward them for helping winning that pennant.

Yes, that’s true.

But the All-Star Game should go to the most deserving players this year, not as some reward for performance in past years.

Yes, that’s true.

See, what I’m getting at here?

(more…)

Category: A's, Giants | No Comments »
Tags: