NL West Preview: San Francisco Giants

NO WAY that rotation stays as unbelievably healthy as it was in 2010. I would expect Bumgarner to miss some decent time due to overwork from last season, and possibly Lincecum as well. Combine that with Zito’s ongoing bout with acute Suckitis, and it may be a long season in SF (heh).

Hmm…this sounds a lot like the difference between the 2009 and 2010 Rockies, now that I think about it…

The Giants won the World Series last season, in case you didn’t know.

I read it on the Internet – it must be true!
I can now die a happy man.

was bad, but they got Marc Kroon for “depth,” now that is funny.

Does Belt start over DeRosa at first? Hmmmm. We’ll see how it all goes.

and the Giants would be forced to trade Travis Ishikawa, Nate Schierholtz or Aaron Rowand (ha!).

Crocodile tears for Rowand – 2.

A nod of the Frankentopper to the site source of that .gif
Despite our differences I maintain that you’re awesome in your humor and insight.

The right side of the infield is hobbled constantly, and aside from center field, the defense has question marks at every spot.

Maybe it’s just because he’s always making semi-spectacular plays that get Kruk and Kuip excited out here in SF, but my impression has always been that Sandoval was definitely an above average third baseman.

Go Rockies!

Not really.

I’m not even going to bother checking the 2007 Rockies to see if they were the same as the 2010 Giants, but here’s why the 2011 Giants didn’t “stand pat” as all the brainiacs have been writing. First, if Sandoval is back to 2009 form, and from all indications, he is (plus he was in 2009 during 2010, when he wasn’t dealing with extremely personal issues that affected his hitting). Second, full season of Bumgarner vs. half season of Wellemeyer. Third, full season of Posey as catcher vs. half season of Molina. Fourth, Belt made the 25-man roster and starting spot and should be a good addition offensively and defensively. Fifth, the only relievers to play all season in 2010 was Wilson and Romo, the rest either missed time on DL (Affeldt) or came on later (Casila, Mota, Ramirez, Lopez). Even with bad stats from the other relievers, the Giants bullpen in 2010 had a sub-3 ERA, but in 2011 the bad relievers are gone and only the good remain. Sixth, Torres gets to start for the full season, he missed roughly a third of the season. Seventh, Cody Ross should get all the ABs that Rowand got in 2010, nuff said. Eighth, and most people forget this one, but Lincecum had a down season for himself, about 1 run worse than his Cy Young years. He added a slider late 2010 season, so the 2011 Lincecum might be even better than his 2008-9 Cy Young self.

In other words, the team they ended as World Series Champions in 2010 was not the same as the team throughout much of the 2010 season. The team they have now was roughly together the second half of the season, and that team’s winning percentage over 162 games puts them in the mid-to-high 90’s wins for a full season. I think low 90’s is good enough to win NL West division, again.

FYI, not big deal, but for completeness, Waldis Joaquin refused assignment with White Sox, became a free agent, and then resigned with the Giants.

Starting 8 is now set with Belt at 1B and Huff apparently in RF. Ishikawa is gone.

In any case, DeRosa is not starting at 1B with Ross out, don’t know where you get that information, but none of the Giants blogs have been saying that, and certainly Bochy hasn’t made that clear yet. From Bochy’s statements, DeRosa is not sniffing a regular start at any position, but will be a super-utility guy all over infield and perhaps outfield.

About the regression, you might as well not list any names and just say “old guys regress” as that seems to be the theme that I always see. Huff, however, had performed well in 2008 and 2010, and if you examine his hitting peripherals, while there is some decline, it has been pretty much the same all through his career. Now, given that he had a career high type season in 2010, yeah, you will see some regression, but I think he should be able to perform at a low 800 OPS level, which would be just fine for the lineup.

Speaking of the lineup, I took the lineup calculator and the various projections out there and the team rates out to a 4.5 to 4.7 RS lineup, using Ross in RF. That plus what they did in terms of RA in 2009 (3.77 RA) puts them roughly around mid-90s in wins. The fact is, people point out the offense as a problem, but forget that the GIants have 4 guys likely to hit over 800 OPS plus 2 (Burrell and Ross) who are possibles. Sure Tejada won’t be that great offensively, but if he’s legitimately batting 8th, that is still a darn good 8th batter.

You say the rotation is perhaps the best in the game, but then mention health concerns for the starters. Frankly, you can say that about almost any rotation in baseball. Here is the scary thing for the rest of baseball: we’ve seen how the 2011 rotation would roughly do if they lost someone. The Giants in 2009 had roughly the same rotation, personnel-wise, but had a fifth starter conga line, going from Johnson, to Sadowski, to Martinez, and finally to Penny, who finally did well. They had a collective 4.57 ERA, which is not that good, but combine part of a good season from one of our starters and adding a back-end starter, should get around 4.57 ERA, should get around 3.77 RA that they had in 2009.

Meanwhile, you throw that at us, but it is not like having injuries in 2010 buys Colorado a get out of DL card. How about Ubaldo? He’s piled up the innings too, and he’s been healthy so far, knock on wood. Plus, he sure fell off the cart in the second half, I wouldn’t bet on a repeat of the first half. Sad fact, but the Rockies don’t have one other starter who threw a full season in 2010, pitcher injuries tend to be a sign of the future, don’t know what injuries they had, but when you have to put the “IF” sign to the rest of your rotation, the odds don’t look good.

And it wasn’t like the team wasn’t affected by injuries. Molina was hitting very well when a foul tip dropped his hitting. DeRosa was out for the whole season and was expected to see significant ABs. Franchez missed a month, and Torres basically did with his appendectomy. Lincecum wasn’t injured but poor conditioning led to his horrid August. Rowand was hitting well again (he starts every season hot so far for Giants) before his inevitable injury (Dodgers hit him in the head). Sandoval was mentally injured, dealing with his divorce, child custody, and mom’s near-death experience. Affeldt was injured as well.

And I hate this whole “they snuck in by one game” line of reasoning. If anything, they were lucky to be put in that position. First off, the umpire called Ishikawa out at home in a Mets game in May, because “the catcher made a good effort” to tag him out. Replays clearly showed he was safe. With a win there, the division would have been settled before the final SD series. Second, while Latos is good, Richards and LeBlanc were not considered ace-level pitchers: they both pitched that well in the first half, plus Jon Garland. Both Richards and LeBlanc regressed badly in the second half. Without that, again, the Giants would have won much sooner. Third, the Giants according to baseball-reference.com’s pythagorean, the Giants were minus 2 games: with those two games, they would have won before that final weekend. Fourth, the Giants and Paders had roughly even records, but the Padres won the series 12-6. Again, one of those losses to Padres turned to wins, the Giants would have won earlier. Had the series ended 9-9, the Giants would have won by 8 games over SD. There were plenty of bad luck that resulted in the Giants squeezing in, otherwise they might have run away with the division instead.

And how do you get the Rockies above the Giants? The Rockies have even more question marks than the Giants, and don’t forget, finished 9 games behind. I don’t see anyone saying that Colorado is standing pat, but they basically are like the Giants, doing that. I understand that because they have a young lineup, there is upside, plus they have Troy Tulowitzki and Carlos Gonzalez. Same for the rotation and pitching staff in whole.

However, they are depending on both Tulo and CarGon to hit like that again, plus lost Miguel Olivo, who hit much better than Iannetta, so the rest of the lineup will have to make up for that. Still, Todd Helton isn’t getting younger either, if people are going to blast the Giants older vets.

And the pitching is relying on starters who either need to rebound or prove that 2010 wasn’t a fluke. Jason Hammel and Aaron Cook had pretty bad years, yet to match the Giants rotation (probably Zito and Bumgarner), both would have to do much better PLUS Ubaldo Jimenez would have to repeat his year, which he couldn’t even do in the second half: 2.20 ERA first half, 3.80 ERA second half.

And as well as Jhoulys Chacin did, his K/BB isn’t as superlative as his 3.28 ERA, suggesting some regression in 2011. Looking at his splits, he had a 4.09 ERA with .299 BABIP in the first half, 2.24 ERA with .278 BABIP in the second half, but virtually identical K/BB of 2.29 and 2.23, respectively. In other words, his great season was largely the result of a lowered BABIP in the second half, and he will have to prove that he’s one of the rare pitchers who can do that consistently. Obviously, the odds are against him.

On top of that, only Jimenez pitched a full season in 2010, though Hammel was close with 30 starts. The rest will be stretched in 2011 to pitch a full 32 game season. And their #3 starter, Jorge de la Rosa, is roughly equal to Barry Zito, arguably the worse starter in the Giants rotation. And he has only pitched a full season in 2009 plus 2010 was his best season ever in six seasons, career 5.02 ERA, so he would be hard pressed just to match Zito in 2011 most probably.

On top of that, they need to make up 8 wins in performance when you look at Pythagorean. The Giants were at 94 while the Rox were at 86. As good a crop of young players they got, they stood pat needing to make up 8 wins, while assuming repeat peak performances and that the older players don’t decline drastically.

And forgot to mention your big money player, CarGon. Much of his improvement in 2010 was due to his high BABIP of .384, which is roughly 50 points higher than what he has done in his career, both minors and majors. If you take away that 50 points from his batting average, you are looking at more of a season like 2009, which, while good, is not over the top good as he was in 2010. And, in any case, that means that the rest of your lineup suddenly needs to make up that 100 points in OPS just to tread water. And looking at your projected lineup, while you have Tulo and CarGon, nobody else looks likely to break 800, whereas the Giants have 800 OPS hitters up and down the lineup, only Sanchez and Tejada look sure to end up below 800 OPS, and the Giants look to have Posey, Sandoval, Belt, Huff, in the mix for the middle of the lineup plus Torres leadoff.