San Francisco Giants: Don't Hurt the Bandwagon when you Jump on it!
by Hawerchuk on Oct 24, 2010 1:57 PM EDT
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PrintSome of us having been following the San Francisco Giants for more than two weeks - we remember four straight losing seasons (2005-2008), brutal free agent contracts, plenty of awful trades, and Brian Sabean's ill-fated assertion that first round draft picks were so worthless, he was better off giving them away. So how unlikely is it that the San Francisco Giants now find themselves in the World Series?
- Their two highest-paid players, Barry Zito and Aaron Rowand, who combined for over 30% of their payroll, are non-factors.
- Their star catcher, Buster Posey, was intentionally left off the roster to start the season in favor of Bengie Molina, who was ultimately dumped for nothing.
- Their best hitter, Pablo Sandoval, had an atrocious year, and their best free agent pickup, Mark DeRosa, missed most of the season with a wrist injury.
- Their post-season hero, Cody Ross, was on the bench down the stretch so that Jose Guillen (Jose Guillen!) could play.
- Even Tim Lincecum, perhaps the best pitcher in the majors, performed well below expectations this season.
The Giants made the playoffs this season thanks to the collapse of the San Diego Padres, and thanks to contributions from complete scrap heap players: Aubrey Huff, Andres Torres and Pat Burrell. According to Fangraphs, these three players brought the Giants $57M in value this year with their contributions on the field. Their price tag? $3.7M. If you include Juan Uribe in the mix, that's $70M in value for $7M in salary. Normally the only way to get so many wins for so little money is to develop young players and have them turn into superstars before they need to be paid free agent salaries. The odds of signing four free agents to one-year contracts (or less) and having them turn out these kinds of numbers...Well, they're astronomically low. And yet, today, the Giants have no worse than a 45% chance of winning the World Series.
I'm not going to deny that I'm unimpressed by the construction of this team. If we look at Nate Silver's PECOTA projections, there was no established chance that Torres and Huff, at ages 32 and 33, respectively, would turn in performances that placed them in the top 20 in the league. The Giants opening day outfield - Rowand, DeRosa and John Bowker - wouldn't have won them anything. The next iteration - Torres, Nate Schierholtz and Eugenio Velez - reflected desperation more than anything else. You'd have to twist yourself in some serious knots to think that Brian Sabean had any idea a playoff team lurked beneath the surface of this roster.
The Yankees, Tampa, Boston - these are teams with a well-thought-out plan and a chance to win every year (even if things don't necessarily go their way.) Does anyone honestly feel that way about the Giants? Brian Sabean got seriously lucky at the roulette wheel, but don't take it as an indication of future success.
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I can’t call myself a Giants fan, but I’ve been a Lincecum admirer for quite a while. And that’s mostly because we are approximately the same size (but about 50 mph of arm strength apart).
I do have to say that the construction of the rotation has impressed me the most. The combination scouting/development of the pitching talent is even more impressive than Oakland’s a decade ago.
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by Bettman's Nightmare on Oct 24, 2010 3:50 PM EDT reply actions
Future Success?
Who cares about future success when you can succeed now? Seriously though – Sabean built this team on pitching (not pitching and defense). And he did a great job with that. The offense only needs to be good enough to give those pitchers something to work with. 3-4 runs per game. Lo and behold, this offense can do that. I also believed that Huff would have a bounce-back year. Between 2002-2008, his OPS never dropped below .749 and was as high as .912 as recently as 2008 with the sad-sack Orioles. Other than that partial season in Houston, his numbers were put up on crap teams in the mighty AL East. Cody Ross was also always a bit of an underrated asset, good for a slightly above average OPS+ and solid defense. Throw in Posey and a double-dose of lightning in a bottle with Burrell and Torres, and that’s five roster players. Sanchez, Uribe and Sandoval were near average in terms of OPS+, and now you have a potential lineup with no major weak spots. In other words, no Benjie Molina’s here.
Looking forward, well, let’s see who’s brought back.
by ofsticksandbats on Oct 24, 2010 3:54 PM EDT reply actions
This here is what we call “confirmation bias.” Of course you knew Aubrey Huff was going to have by far the best season of his career and be worth $24M. Amazing that you knew something that no general manager in the major leagues knew, and Huff found himself with a one-year $3M deal.
Buster Posey, if you remember correctly, started the season in the minors, costing the Giants a win. Things break a little different, and that win is what puts the Giants one game behind the Padres, not one game ahead.
And Cody Ross? Give me a break. The Giants didn’t even play him. They didn’t even think he was the 3rd-best outfielder on their roster.
It’s nice that you can come up with an explanation after the fact, but next time, trying coming up with one beforehand. And bet on it.
Context
You’re taking me out of context. I said “bounce-back season”, not best season of his career. Huff had an OPS+ (not the best measure, but a good one) of 138. Two seasons ago, he put up an OPS+ of 137 in Baltimore. The biggest change in his game as he has gotten older is that he is now a bit more selective, with an increased walk rate. Not an uncommon development for a power hitter.
I definitely think Posey should have been up earlier, and you’re quite wrong about Ross. The Giants didn’t play him every single game, but most of them. After he was acquired, the Giants had 37 games left in their season. Ross played in 33 of them.
Just because we didn’t personally have this discussion last offseason, doesn’t mean it wasn’t true.
by ofsticksandbats on Oct 24, 2010 5:47 PM EDT up reply actions
Ross was a defensive replacement most of the time. His bat wasn’t part of the plan.
Huff has a 145 wrc+. Every metric rates this as his best season.
by Hawerchuk on Oct 24, 2010 7:24 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
How is this Aubrey Huff’s best season by far? Just two seasons ago he had more HRs, more doubles, more RBIs, a better batting average, less strikeouts, and higher slugging and OPS.
err, I screwed that up. By that I mean, of course it’s not his best season by far… But why would anybody be super-suprised that he had a good season this year? He’s not that old and he was about the same two seasons previous.
Take a look at his advanced stats. This year is his best by far. His offense is slightly better and his fielding is better. And sorry 33 is old. Mlb gms thought he was done
by Hawerchuk on Oct 24, 2010 7:21 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
Not to beat on a dead horse
Gabriel – you’re missing a few subtle points about Huff.
Offensively speaking this is not his best season. He put up equal hitting numbers (albeit with fewer walks between 2002-04. Also extremely similar to his 2008 season. Of course I expect regression next year, but not as much as you might be. Think about why GMs took so long to sign him. A guy who had a crap year making $8M – how much lower would he be willing to take? Do you really think he wasn’t getting low-ball offers as a player who would need to prove himself once more? I would be shocked if he wasn’t. The question is how much regression (offensively) – I’d guess an OPS of 850 next season depending on where he signs.
Now about his defense – you do realize that he has been moved around for most of his career, right? According to BB-Ref, Huff’s played 420 games at 1B, 360 at 3B, 271 in RF and 300+ as a DH. It’s fairly clear that he was never a proper 3B, and he makes Pat Burrell look like a dependable outfielder, but he could be OK at 1B. Not great, but decent. This year’s 100 games at the position are a career high. So naturally this is the most defensive value he has ever provided. Going forward, I expect him to trade off some declining range (age-related) with improved positional play by dint of actually playing there. As a free agent, he may not re-sign with the Giants, but he will be making a fair bit more than the $3M he settled for this year.
by ofsticksandbats on Oct 24, 2010 7:41 PM EDT up reply actions
You gotta back up those assertions about “equal hitting numbers” with some digits:
Batting Runs:
1. 2010 = 35.8
2. 2003 = 32.8
3. 2008 = 30.4
WRC+
1. 2010 = 145
2. 2008 = 137
2003 = 137
4. 2002 = 136
WAR
1. 2010 = 5.7
2. 2004 = 4.6
3. 2008 = 4.0
4. 2003 = 3.5
WARP3
1. 2010 = 6.1
2. 2008 = 4.6
3. 2003 = 4.4
His 2010 forecast:
Pecota: 2.4 wins, weighted mean
Fangraphs: 0.6 wins
These systems all agree that 2010 was Huff’s best year – overall, and with the bat. And they agreed that they expected nothing out of him this season. GMs were on the same page – they thought he was finished. This also wasn’t his best season with the glove – Fangraphs, at least, thinks that was 2004 – there’s no reason to think that moving him to 1st base makes him less of a butcher.
Bottom Line: He put up the best season of his career even though no one expected him to. Brian Sabean got exceedingly lucky with this pickup. There is no denying that – unless you dispute Pecota, which itself was much more optimistic than the Fangraphs voters.
Here’s the thing – I’m not a huge fan of “single number theory” that breaks down everything into one number on a very micro level. They are very useful in tiering players, but, as is often proclaimed by Colin Wyers, subject to a measure of uncertainty. Defensive stats suffer from this much more than do offensive ones.
Finally, to say that no one was willing to give him more than $3M and they thought he was done, are very different propositions.
by ofsticksandbats on Oct 24, 2010 8:41 PM EDT up reply actions
Dude, that is such a cop-out! You quoted OPS and OPS+ at me, and then you said you don’t like “single numbers”. And every single metric has “uncertainty” on it.
Aubrey Huff had the best season of his career. Zero general managers saw it coming, and a one-year, $3M contract is absolute proof of that.
Some of us having been following the San Francisco Giants for more than two weeks
Yeah, some of us have been following since 1988, and with that comes the certainty that this won’t end pretty.
by Arthur from Anaheim Calling on Oct 24, 2010 6:09 PM EDT reply actions
Huff and Torres were a bit of a surprise
And while I think we got lucky with Huff, (he won’t put up monster numbers next year; hopefully, Belt will provide the lineup with a Posey-like jolt midseason), Torres is one of the few players I actually think could remain this good despite his aberration. He had a good year in limited plate appearances in the 2009 season. While SSS are in effect, genuinely good major league numbers from a guy who was a minor league free agent at one point, some of that change is likely to be due a change in true talent level. Combine that with his (genuinely, not best well known player) gold glove level fielding, which is more valuable than average in the Giants home park, I don’t doubt that he will continue to remain one of the most valuable outfielders in the NL.
Huff and torres hit their 99th percentiles or above. Huge huge huge surprise
by Hawerchuk on Oct 24, 2010 7:22 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
That’s my point. If Torres’ true talent level was actually around his historical performances, then the chance of him actually putting up these numbers this year must be ridiculously small.
The total for the game on Thursday is 5.5, which I think is just awesome. Hockey scores, here we come.
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The Giants made the playoffs this season thanks to the collapse of the San Diego Padres,
Let us not exclude the fine efforts of those darlings of the desert the Diamondbacks, who figured prominently in no less than three late – season sweeps: they swept the plummeting Padres, the ascending Rockies, and then offered themselves as victims. To us!
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by victor frankenstein on Oct 25, 2010 1:05 AM EDT reply actions
Their star catcher, Buster Posey, was intentionally left off the roster to start the season in favor of Bengie Molina, who was ultimately dumped for nothing.
Isn’t playing Molina the only reason the Giants are in the world series?
Molina played for two teams this year – the Rangers and the Giants.
There are two teams in the World Series this year – the Rangers and the Giants.
That looks like a pretty high correlation there.
(I hope the sarcasm comes through)
On a more interesting note – how many players have ever played for both teams in the World Series in a given year? That has to be a pretty unique.
Given the way that World Series bonus money is handed out, doesn’t Molina potentially have more to gain from a Giants victory than a Rangers one? (more at-bats and games with the Giants). Could he actually get a World Series ring while playing on the losing team?
What? No Brian Wilson reference? FOR SHAME.
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Oh come on, this is just getting ridiculously nitpicky. When looking at managerial performances you have to compare him to other managers. Not a single major league manager consistently uses his best reliever in high leverage situations. At least Bochy is willing to throw Wilson into high leverage eighth inning situations, which is better than any other manager out there.
Really, you think Bochy is a good manager? IBB to load the bases?
The Giants have a lot of trouble identifying talent too. One of my points here is that a five-year timeline for evaluating the team’s performance is better than a two-week timeline.
Oh I don’t think he’s a good manager, but is he above average? I’d say that’s easily true. There are no good managers in baseball. (And when has he loaded the bases intentionally in the playoffs? There was one IBB to put a man on 1st and 2nd which I thought was stupid. IMO, IBBs are only useful when you can get a pitcher to hit for the 3rd out.) Sabean definitely ought to be fired and replaced with a guy who’ll work around Bochy’s main fault, an over-reliance on veterans regardless of talent level (see Molina over Posey, and Renteria over Sandoval). Unfortunately Sabean won’t be fired; a pennant guarantees that.
I think he’s a very good in game manager (making switches to get defense. Handling his pitching staff etc). But as far as handling players on a day-to-day basis he’s shaky, as the whole Guillen over Ross decision late in the season showed us.
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by Jibblescribbits on Oct 27, 2010 4:34 PM EDT up reply actions
Don’t knock the bandwagon fans. That’s how a lot of teams build a fanbase: have a good year, get everyone involved, and then make them see why that sport or that team is actually worth following over the long haul. I got into hockey that way, and I know many other people have had the same experiences.
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Hey
I’ve been a Giants fan for 2 years (Opening day 09 was when I really became a fan). I had to suffer through all of 09 too. That was brutal.
Your mama so ugly they call her "The Avs Powerplay"
Jibblescribbits: C'mon over and waste some time
by Jibblescribbits on Oct 27, 2010 4:33 PM EDT reply actions
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