Can The Giants Catch The Bums?

With about a third of the season in the books the Giants sit in second place, 8.5 games back of the Los Angeles Dodgers. But is it realistic to expect San Francisco to make a run at LA for the division title?

48 games into the season the Giants have scored just 188 runs. That means after 30% of the season they are on pace to score only 626 runs this year. They are on pace to allow 643 runs. If San Francisco continues their current level of play, we can expect them to finish with a .487 winning percentage and a 79-83 record.

Conversely, the Dodgers are expected to score 901 runs this season, while allowing about 640 runs by the years end. This would give them a pythagorean record of 108-54, a winning percentage of .665.

It kills me to say this but the Dodgers have a realistic shot at winning 100 games this season. The NL West is horrible, their pitching is almost as good as the Giants, and they're loaded up and down the lineup.

The people who are clamoring for San Francisco to trade for a bat and make a run at the playoffs are delusional. Adding a hitter will not make up the 29 game difference between the Giants and the Dodgers expected records. No player can win 29 games for a team by himself.

San Francisco doesn't need a hitter, it needs a whole new lineup. And guess what, we already have that lineup. It's in the minor leagues developing. Guys like Villalona, Posey, and others of their ilk should give us hope for the future. A future that should not be traded away just to make a half-assed run at the wildcard.

For now we should enjoy watching guys like Lincecum, Cain, and Sandoval excel at the major league level. Brian Sabean has taken baby steps this year towards the youth movement most Giants fans have been clamoring for. Do you really want him to go out and get a guy like Adrian Beltre, Corey Hart, or Russell Branyan? I'm sorry but those players are not the answer to San Francisco's problems.

Can the Giants catch LA and win the NL West? Sure it's possible, but it's highly unlikely. Do yourself a favor and stop looking at the standings and just enjoy the games.

Giants Pitching Report

Before the start of the season many believed that the Giants would have one of the best staffs in the National League. 43 games into the season is that really the case?

Here's how the Giants compare to the rest of the National League in some important pitching metrics (click on the links to see a definition of the metric):

• 4.14 FIP (5th)
• 7.87 K/9 (3rd)
• 4.09 BB/9 (14th)
• 1.42 WHIP (11th)

A 4.14 FIP is nothing to sneeze at, especially considering that's more than a run better than the defending world champion Philadelphia Phillies FIP of 5.34.

But San Francisco ranks in the bottom half of the National League in WHIP, well off the 1.29 pace set by the league leading Dodgers. ::yuck:: This means that the Giants have had a lot of extra base runners and have had to pitch out of some tight spots to avoid giving up runs.

The G-men are in fact leading the league by stranding 75% of the base runners they allow. This ability to strand runners stems from their high strikeout rate (7.87 K/9).

Part of the problem with having a lot of strikeout pitchers on the staff is that they tend to walk a lot of batters, and that is exactly what has happened this year. San Francisco's 4.09 BB/9 is not very good at all and it is certainly not an improvement on last year's 4.07 mark.

So how are the Giants able to get by while allowing so many base runners? Are they just lucky? Not really, their staff is actually set up to function this way. The majority of the pitchers on this staff are fly ball/strikeout pitchers, as evidenced by San Francisco's league leading 39.2% fly ball rate.

I expect the Giants to continue walking people and allowing extra base runners, but they should still finish near the top of the league in runs allowed and that's all that really matters right?

5-3 Loss to That One Team

This was an ugly game to watch as a Giants fan. So many missed opportunities for the orange and black. And while bad defense and baserunning errors may have cost San Francisco this game, Bruce Bochy sure didn't help.

In the bottom of the 7th the Giants were down by one, 2-3. Nate Shierholtz led off the inning with a pinch hit. Fred Lewis came up to bat next with a runner on first and nobody out. At this point the Giants had a win expectancy of 44.5%.

Lewis managed to work the count to 3-2, at which point the manager had a decision to make. Should he put Shierholtz in motion or have him stay put and let Lewis swing away? Unfortunately for San Francisco fans, Bochy decided to start the runner and the bums ended up with a double play. The Giants were left with nobody on and two outs, and a win expectancy of just 28.4%. That one play made them 16.1% less likely to win the game.

The guys on T.V. hinted that the play might turn out poorly before it happened, and indeed it did. Sending the runner in this situation was a bad idea for a couple of reasons. First, Lewis has been striking out a lot. His strikeout rate is 39% so far this season, and he has now struck out six times in the last two games.

This problem was exacerbated by the fact that according to The Book, putting a runner in motion lowers the wOBA of the batter by 22 points on average. This made it even more likely that Lewis would in fact strikeout.Which is what ended up happening, and Shierholtz was subsequently thrown out at 2nd base.

While the Giants did end up tying the game in the 8th, this play was an example of bad strategy on the part of Bruce Bochy.

Giants Lineup According to The Book

About a week ago I went ahead and bought The Book: Playing the Percentages In Baseball. If you are interested in baseball strategy, sabermetrics, and/or how to improve your criticism of your favorite team's manager, I highly recommend reading this book. It's written by three noted sabermetricians: Tom M. Tango, Mitchel G. Lichtman, and Andrew E. Dolphin. While the writing style can be a bit stale at times, you can tell they've wasted a majority of their adult lives on baseball statistics and it has resulted in some great content for the rest of us.

One of my favorite chapters is the one on optimizing a batting order. They managed to fill thirty pages discussing the batting order in all its gory detail, a feat that is both sick and beautiful at the same time. I will not go into the great detail they do, mostly because you should buy it and read it for yourself, but I've decided to make a lineup for the Giants based on some of the principles laid out in The Book.

Here are the main points that I used to put this lineup together:

We want our three best hitters to bat somewhere in the #1, #2, and #4 slots. The cleanup hitter gets his value in his SLG, the leadoff hitter leads the team in OBP, and the #2 hitter is somewhat more balanced. The #3 and #5 hitters are the same quality, with the #3 hitter having more HR than the #5 hitter (p 144).

Try to put your good baserunners in front of good hitters, especially if those hitters are predominantly singles or doubles hitters (p 140).

The second leadoff hitter theory exists. You can put your pitcher in the eighth slot and gain a couple of extra runs per year (p 149).

Now onward with the lineup!

1. Fred Lewis - Lewis is our best OBP guy and draws the most walks. This makes him ideal for the leadoff spot. He is also a good baserunner and potentially a good basestealer.
2. Randy Winn - Winn is not a big power hitter, but he certainly has been one of our top three hitters over the bast few seasons. He will probably finish the season with an OPS in the top 3-4 on the team. He is also a good baserunner.
3. Aaron Rowand - Rowand is one of the better hitters on the team. He is probably the second best slugger behind Molina, which means he should go in the three hole.
4. Bengie Molina - Molina continues to be the biggest offensive threat on the Giants. He is the best slugger and RBI guy, so he should stay in the cleanup spot.
5. Edgar Renteria - Renteria is a professional hitter and should be one of the top offensive performers for the Giants. He will not SLG as much as Rowand though so he bats fifth in this lineup. I could see switching Renteria and Winn.
6. Emmanuel Burris - Burriss has been our top basestealer so far. This is a good spot in the lineup for a basestealer, because Pablo Sandoval is a good hitter but will probably not hit for much power.
7. Pablo Sandoval - Excellent contact hitter. One problem with him in this spot is that he has been hitting a lot of groundballs (52%), which could lead to a lot of double plays. Still I think he is a better hitter than Ishikawa so he gets the nod for the seventh spot.
8. Pitcher - Sucky no matter where they bat (Unless they're batting against Randy Johnson).
9. Travis Ishikawa - So far the worst hitter on the team. He has struggled with major league pitching throughout most of his career.

Keep in mind that the improvement you gain from optimizing your lineup according to sabermetric principles is relatively small. We're talking like 50 runs over the course of the season, which is equal to about five wins. So it's not like our lineup would all of a sudden turn into the Cardinals or the Red Sox lineup. But for a team like the Giants that's fighting to stay at .500, those five wins could prove to be tremendously important.