Articles and Informations: Jeff Samardzija

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Your 2016 Giants: Playoffs

I don't have a lot of time to write before the start of the playoffs with the Cubs, so I took a comment I left on baseball monk a few days ago, and repurposed here, of course, with new edits, as I was also writing in reply to the original article.

ogc thoughts

I agreed with baseball monk about the starting rotation, that it is the best in baseball. This is the reason why I loved the Giants signing Smardzija and Cueto, and then trading for Moore. As baseball monk noted, it is arguably up there with the rotation of 2010, which he felt was better because they got it done. baseball monk compared the two staffs:

#1: Lincecum vs. Bumgarner
#2: Cain vs. Cueto
#3: Sanchez vs. Moore
#4: Bumgarner vs. Samardzija

#1: Lincecum vs. Bumgarner

I think for #1, knowledge of the future, as well as SSS, were clouding some of the analysis. Lincecum was coming off two straight years of Cy Young-ness, and had another magnificent year. At that point, he had always had a month of meh-ness sprinkled in, and his in-season implementation and execution of the changeup in August 2010 suggested that he had years more of dominance.

And who had a 3.79 ERA, pitching so bad that he had his start skipped in the middle of the playoffs? Bumgarner pre-2014. So was 2014 a fluke or his 6.00 ERA in 2012?

Still, comparing each point in time, I agree you have to go with Bumgarner in 2016, solely because he has had success in the playoffs, and Lincecum up to then, had a history of tightness in his first time experiences, which could haunt him in the playoffs (didn’t, probably because September was like one long month of playoffs) and World Series (did).

#2: Cain vs. Cueto

I think for #2, in addition, you are also mixing in known performance vs. possible. Cueto has had a history of clear dominance in the regular season over the past few years. Cain in 2010 was considered a good but not great starter. I think baseball monk was counting his great playoff run to 2012 into the equation.

Based on regular season work, Cueto is head and shoulders above what Cain had done up to 2010, and Cain had no playoff experience at that point, whereas Cueto right now has a playoff history, though, frankly, it’s been spotty to poor, even last season. Though Cain was inexperienced entering 2010 and Cueto is experienced, it is because Cueto has been such a mixed bag that I would rate Cain above Cueto for #2, because he was so steady all those years leading up to 2010 playoffs (of course, Bumgarner was a mixed bag after two playoff seasons, and we all saw how great he was in his third one, in 2014). So again I agree, Cain 2010 was better.

#3: Sanchez vs. Moore

For #3, first, I would have compared Bumgarner with Moore, not Sanchez, because he was arguably better already, but maybe baseball monk was going with Bochy’s rotation, which had it Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez, Bumgarner in the Braves and World Series, and Sanchez got the call for #2 in the Phillies series, and based on that, I can see the point. That’s a quibble on my part, I admit.

I think it’s clearly Moore over Sanchez, mainly because Moore has had a much better pedigree and acknowledgement in the league than Sanchez ever had. He might have similar wildness, but 2010 was Sanchez’s one and only good year, and while Moore has a similar spotty record, he has had a much better projection profile than Sanchez ever had. Plus I got a Jason Schmidt type of feel coming from Moore.

And as baseball monk aptly noted, Moore already has playoff experience (relatively good), and is a more mentally stable player than Sanchez ever was. Moore is definitely better here, and I would say better than Bumgarner had he been the comparison point, because 2010 was Madison's first year, he was a very unknown quality at that point (though us Giants fans loved him to pieces, that didn't mean that he would necessarily turn out to be as great as he turned out to be), whereas Moore has a lot more history.

#4: Bumgarner vs. Samardzija

For #4, Bumgarner vs. Samardzija, I mostly agree with what baseball monk wrote. Mostly because of the Shark’s up and down season, along with his up and mostly down career as a starter. So I see why he had the comparison as a toss-up.

One thing that tips it to Samardzija’s side, for me at least, is that mid-season, while in his down period, it was revealed that for some inexplicable reason, he dropped his curve when he converted from the bullpen to the starting rotation, which is the complete opposite of any other reliever-starter conversion, as generally you want more pitches as a starter than when a reliever, and that last incredible up you noted was the result of him adding his curve back into his repertoire (plus I think Fangraph analyzed his pitches, and found that he also dropped a pitch that wasn’t working for him). For that reason, I rate him above 2010 Bumgarner.

2016 NL Playoffs

I would also add in the fact that Samardzija has a history of being a great closer, and Bumgarner’s great relief game vs. KC, and those, plus the above rotation comparisons tips the rotation in 2016 as being better than the 2010 rotation, at least in my eyes. And I just realized, looking through the four comparisons, that the individual comparisons for baseball monk and myself add up to 2016 being a better rotation, as well as being the best rotation in the NL playoffs.

As good as the Cubs are in 2016, the Nats were considered similarly good in 2014, and the Giants arguably played better in the regular season than they did, and it was the bullpen blown saves that cost us there. As I've tried to show over the years with PQS, it is great pitching that overpowers great hitting, no matter how great they are, in a general sense. Our rotation might not have been great in 2014, but they were good enough for DOM starts when we needed them, outside of Bumgarner. And Madison carried us on his back in the World Series, his relief appearance would have qualified for a DOM start had he started.

On top of that, the Giants took on the Cubs, Nats, and Dodgers OK this season. Basically broke even. And each of these other team has problems with LH starters, and we got two of them, plus a number of lefties in the bullpen. On top of that, I think the offense was returning to normal in the last week of the season.

The offense won't look great in the playoffs, but generally, better pitching will dictate that. They just need to be relatively better against the opposition, then the opposition is against our pitchers. And all of our starters are capable of whipping out a double digit strikeout start and go deep into the game while giving up only a handful of hits. I like our chances of flying through the playoffs and not having to face elimination at any point.

I think we'll have the most problems with Chicago, both because they are good, as well as because it is a five game series and they got home advantage. While I like our chances, it will not be easy, so Go Giants!

Note: Giants Roster for Cubs Series:

The position players for the NLDS: Posey, Brown, Belt, Crawford, Gillaspie, Nunez, Panik, Tomlinson, Blanco, Hernandez, Pagan, Pence, Span. Nunez replaced Adrianza.

The Giants went with 12 pitchers: Blach, Bumgarner, Casilla, Cueto (Game 1 starter), Kontos, Law, Lopez, Moore, Romo, Samardzija, Smith, Strickland. Blach replaced Okert. Moore took Parker's spot, as the Giants go for more speed off the bench (and in the lineup, apparently, both Hernandez and Tomlinson are starting game 1, while Span and Panik sits).

The starting pitching matchups:

Cueto vs. Lester
Samardzija vs. Hendricks
Bumgarner vs. Arrieta
Moore vs. Lackey

We are pretty evenly matched in each game. As uneven Cueto has been in playoffs, so has Lester. Meanwhile, Hendricks was not that good last year, though to be fair, he's been a much better pitcher this season over last. Samardzija has nothing much of a playoff record (played for Cubs, A's and White Sox) but has been pitching really great since rediscovering his curve. And while Arrieta had DOM starts, he didn't pitch well enough in 2 of 3 starts last season, when he had his great season, whereas he regressed this season. While facing Bumgarner, who he publicly said is "beatable". And Lackey has been up and down over the past few seasons as well, while Moore has been up and down in previous playoff stints. So other than Bumgarner's game, we look pretty evenly matched, so it should be a good series, with Bumgarner being the edge for us, potentially, once again.

2016 Giants: August PQS

This post has the Giants Pure Quality Start scores for the month of August 2016, PQS as defined in Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster annual book and they published the details here (unfortunately, they removed the article; this link gets you at least to the PQS definition, read down to middle for details). I wrote on this first in 2006 (wow, 11th year of this! 10th anniversary!) and have compiled their stats on a regular basis, so I'm continuing it this season for continuity and historical comparison (there is the "PQS" label that you can click to see the old posts on this). Regular readers can skip to the next section.

This is the Quality Start with a sabermetric DIPS twist, and it gets really easy to calculate once you get used to it. I don't think it's the end all or be all, but then nothing really is that. It is, as I like to say, another piece of the puzzle. A dominating start is scored a 4 or 5 and a disaster start is scored a 0 or 1. DOM% is the percentage of starts that are dominating, DIS% is the percentage of starts that are disasters (any start under 5.0 IP is automatically a 0, or disaster).

What's Good and What's Not

From my observations, a DOM at or above the 40% mark is indicative of good pitching; above 50% is great; above 70% is elite. A low DIS is also indicative of good pitching, just look at the table in the link above showing DOM% and DIS% on the axes.

Basically, you want to see a pitcher's DOM% to be over 40% and ideally over 50%, and you want their DIS to be under 20% and ideally under 10%. For example, Johan Santana has a 76% DOM and 3% DIS in 2006 (2.77 ERA), whereas Orlando Hernandez had a 52% DOM and 28% DIS (4.66 ERA), and Adam Eaton had a 31% DOM and 31% DIS (5.12 ERA). Read the link (unfortunately, they removed the article and thus the table is no longer available, sorry), as I noted, there's a nice chart there showing the combination of high DOM% and low DIS%, and there you can see particularly how a low DIS% is so important to a low ERA.

If you had to chose a high DOM% or a low DIS%, pitchers tend to have a lower ERA when you have a low DIS% vs. a high DOM% (obviously if you combine both, you have a much better chance of having an elite pitcher). But I think when the DOM% is high enough, you win more by choosing a high DOM% over a low DIS%, as there are more high quality games pitched overall.

I wholeheartedly recommend buying Baseball Forecaster and learning more about their methods of analyzing baseball. It has been greatly illuminating for me, and if you want to get a taste for it without paying full price, they used to sell their old editions of their annuals on their website for half price or less (plus shipping); but that was before he sold the company off, and I haven't checked recently.

Giants Starters' PQS for 2016 Season

Madison Bumgarner- (75% DOM, 0% DIS; 21:0/28): 2, 5, 2, 5, 5/5, 5, 4, 5, 5, 5/5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 2/5, 5, 3, 5, 5/2, 5, 5, 3, 3, 5/

Matt Cain- (27% DOM, 40% DIS; 4:6/15): 4, 0, 0, 3, 3/0, 5, 5, 5, X//0, 2, 3/3, 0, 0/

Johnny Cueto - (63% DOM, 7% DIS; 17:2/27): 4, 4, 5, 3, 5/3, 4, 4, 5, 4, 5/3, 5, 5, 5, 2/4, 5, 1, 5, 2/4, 2, 3, 3, 5, 0/

Jake Peavy - (48% DOM, 29% DIS; 10:6/21): 3, 0, 2, 4, 0/3, 3, 5, 0, 4, 4/4, 4, 5, 4, 0/5, 0, 4, 3, 0//

Jeff Samardzija - (67% DOM, 19% DIS; 14:4/21): 3, 4, 3, 4, 4/5, 4, 4, 5, 5, 3/1, 0, 4, 0, 2/3, 5, 2, 1, 2/4, 2, 5, 5, 5/

Albert Suarez - (43% DOM, 29% DIS; 3:2/7): //4, 3, 0, 4, 3/5/0/

Matt Moore - (83% DOM, 0% DIS; 5:0/6): ////4, 4, 4, 3, 5, 4/

X - Cain had a disaster start, but was dealing when hamstring went out, not counting in PQS stats

Giants Season overall - 58% DOM, 15% DIS out of 104 games counted (60:16/104)
Giants Month of April - 48% DOM, 16% DIS out of 25 games counted (12:4/25)
Giants Month of May - 79% DOM, 7% DIS out of 28 games counted (22:2/28)
Giants Month of June - 56% DOM, 19% DIS out of 27 games counted (15:5/27)
Giants Month of July - 46% DOM, 21% DIS out of 24 games counted (11:5/24)
Giants Month of August - 52% DOM, 14% DIS out of 27 games counted (14:4/27)

August continued the slide in the rotation that had started in June, with our two horses, Bumgarner and Cueto faltering, and without the addition of Moore providing a huge boost, it would have been a pretty bad month, worse than July, and probably worse in my tracking of these stats.

Moore led the way with 5 DOM starts, followed by Samardzija with 4 DOM. Bumgarner only had 3 DOM, Cueto only 2 DOM. Cain and Suarez both had 0 DOM (to be fair, Suarez only had one start, Cain three).

Samardzija continued to turn things around some, at least. Instead of the 3 DIS starts he had in June, he only had the one in July and zero in August, plus boosting his DOM to 4 in the month.

Cain led the staff with 2 DIS starts, and Cueto and Suaraez also had 1 DIS start each. Everyone else had 0.

The stories of the month were Bumgarner, Cueto, Moore, Shark, Cain.

Bumgarner because he sputtered some. Most SP would love to have a 50% DOM month with 0% DIS, but he got BABIPed some and ended up with a 4.14 ERA. With a 9.0 K/9 and 2.85 K/BB, he did well in his peripherals, so he should be good to go, but still, in terms of the standards he has set, this was a poor month for him, as we needed someone to get us out of the post-All-Star funk, and he didn't deliver.
Cueto because he continued to sputter. It appears that he has started his second half downward trend that I had posted on previously, based on this and continuation of this into August. He at least turned it around some by the end of the month, and continued it into September with a string of 3 DOM starts in 4 starts. Still, he had a 4.38 ERA for the month. But a 7.8 K/9 and 4.00 K/BB shows that his peripherals are doing OK.
Moore helped save the month for the Giants starting staff, coming in with 5 DOM starts out of 6. Unfortunately, his wildness early - most likely due to nerves of the trade and wanting to impress his new boss and teammates - cost him with a LOT of walks. Still, 5 DOM starts led to his sterling 3.16 ERA, so it didn't cost him that much, only resulting in his poor 1.71 K/BB, but he had a great 8.8 K/9, and he was only one out away from a no-hitter in one of his starts.
The Shark continued to improve and, not only that, reached the heights of where he was at the beginning of the season. Per an article during the month, he credited it to him returning to using a curveball again. Incredibly, when he moved from the bullpen to the starting rotation, unlike other pitchers who would add a pitch to his repertoire, he actually dropped the curve from his. The Giants had him add it back into the mix. He would have led the staff in DOM starts if not that Moore had more, but did lead the staff with a 2.76 ERA. However, he only had a 7.2 K/9 and 2.60 K/BB.
Cain could not find his bearings in the minors, after getting DLed, and continued to struggle to find his form in the majors. It was not his stuff, he had a 9.9 K/9, but he was very wild, leading to only a 2.14 K/BB in spite of that high K/9, leading to a very bad 7.23 ERA. Then he got DLed again, but this time, upon his return, he ended up in the bullpen instead. Many were down on the Cainer, but he unfortunately needed spring training to get back his throwing form, and he was still searching when he got placed in the bullpen. I think he should be fine with a full winter's rest and 2017 spring training to get in shape again (barring another injury, natch). It could be his last season, as it's the last season on his contract, though there is a buyout and it is large enough that the Giants could decide to keep him around longer. It depends on a number of factors: 1) of course, how he does in 2017; 2), how Cueto does and whether he opts out of his contract, and if the Giants then re-sign him or not; 3) how our SP prospects do. With Bickford traded, Beede is the most likely to ascend in 2018, but Blackburn, Andrew Suarez, and perhaps Blach, could also pressure to get a SP spot. At least the Giants got Bumgarner, Samardzija, and Moore signed (well, I think Bumgarner will have the team pick up his option in 2018, and perhaps instead sign some sort of long term deal, in place of it).

August 2016 Comments

I will keep it shorter, since September is almost half over as it is. Work has been very busy this summer, on top of everything else, so I've been putting in even more overtime. Plus, I'm not worried, like I was not worried in 2014, as while the Giants have been doing up and down, I know that the Giants were not going to keep on winning so much and was glad they were putting wins in the bank. I didn't expect such a huge collapse, especially when there were not that many injuries this summer, but with injuries setting back Panik, Pagan, and Pence, and Span's and Belt's hot and cold streaks, it was enough along with the SP overall struggles for the team to hit bottom.

It did not help that our two co-aces, Bumgarner and Cueto had mediocre months, Cuetio in particular, as Bumgarner was affected by bad BABIP hurting him. You can't expect good results when your two top guys get a 4.2+ ERA together, the Giants went 3-3 with Bumgarner and 2-4 with Cueto.

But the offense hurt chances by not winning games when Samardzija and Moore were pitching. The Shark gave up 3 ER or less in 4 of 5 starts and the Giants went 2-3 with him, losing 4-3 and 2-0. With Moore, the team was 3-3, losing a game 2-0, else they would have been 4-2 with him starting.

Still, the offense averaged 4.44 runs per game, so it was more the pitching that cost the Giants in August, that's more than enough to win a lot of games, not go 11-16. Per Pythagorean, they should have been more like 14-13 or even 15-12, so they didn't win as much as they should have. Just winning those games for Shark and Moore would have turned the month to 14-13, still in the NL West title race instead of games behind now. Plus we got nothing from our fifth starters, to go with the poor co-ace production, for most of the month, only turning things around late in the month.

While the starting rotation appears to be heading into 2010 shape, with at least 3-4 of them dealing in each rotation turn (though we don't have a Zito-type holding up the end, surprising how useful he really was, unlike what a lot of naysayers were saying, neither Cain nor Suarez have delivered anything from the #5 spot so far), the bullpen has been a source of frustration due to a number of blown saves.

Bullpen Transition

While I appreciate the angst about the screw ups, that's part and parcel of this transitional year for the bullpen, that started in ernest with Affeldt's retirement, but really started during last season with Affeldt's struggles and the bullpen's DL stints during that season. We had Strickland, Osich, Broadway, Hall, and Guerrin make their auditions to hold a spot in the bullpen last season, and that process continued this season. And, needless to say, when we got young prospects up here, you are going to have struggles now and again, as they are not proven, like Affeldt, Lopez, and Ramirez was when we acquired them, or BWills by the 2010 season. And perhaps we were spoiled by how quick Romo and Casilla came in and dominated, from the get go.

It should be getting better next season. It is getting pretty close to a new Core Four, especially with the remaining Core Four contracts ending after this season, with Romo, Casilla, and Lopez ending. Right now, we got Kontos, Strickland, Smith, Law, Osich, Guerrin pretty much locked in for next season, the only questions being Law's health and Osich's health/performance. Osich's hiccup this season is probably what precipitated the Smith trade, though that hole really opened up last season with Affeldt's poor season.

So the question then becomes, who, if any, of the Core Four gets resigned? I expect Lopez to be gone. He hasn't been effective this season against LHP, which could be due to SSS, even more so for a Loogy, but he's old too. He wants to pitch next season, so I assume he's moving on. Romo could be signed, but he got $9M this season, and if he wants that again, he's gone too. Plus together, that's $14M saved off the budget, probably gets us back under the penalty threshold for the budget. Casilla is still throwing heat, so if he's OK with what he's been getting, we will probably sign him to a 2 year, $12M deal again, else I think he'll be gone.

So who gets that last spot? Casilla most probably, but I'm not aware of who is a free agent this season, so perhaps they kick a tire here and there. I'm hopeful that if Lincecum is OK with a minor league deal and with being a reliever, that he might return here, but I just don't really see him coming back to the Giants, given the lack of space for another reliever plus the number of good arms in the minors, like Okert and others. I think he will seek out Seattle first. But I expect him to return here at some point, the Giants seem to bring back vets frequently enough that it seems probable.

Will Smith Has Done Well Overall

Speaking of the bullpen, how about Will Smith? Some might look at his stats with us and see a 4.50 ERA reliever and get mad about losing all those players for him. Take away his first appearance, though, when he admitted to nerves, and you got a 3.09 ERA reliever in 17 appearances, 11.2 IP, 9 hits, 8 walks, 16 K's, 2.00 K/BB, 12.3 K/9 14 scoreless appearances, unscored upon in his last 10 appearances. That's what we got him for, for the most part, except for all the walks.

I'm still excited to have him in our bullpen, still OK with the trade (when viewed in context of what we gave up to get Smith, Moore, Nunez; still weird to me that Bickford was in this trade and not the Moore trade). I'm only frustrated that he's clearly an Affeldt type reliever who handles both RHH as well as LHH, but Bochy has used him more as a Loogy so far. Might even have even better stats with us had Bochy done that, as he's been better against RHH this year than LHH. Hopefully he will be used in a greater role if we get into the playoffs, which, at the moment, we got a wild card spot.

Moore is More, More or Less

Speaking of trades, how about Moore? The worry when we got him was that we gave up a lot for him if he pitches like he has mostly pitched since he returned from TJS, but is a bargain if he can return to how he pitched in his one great season. He had a 3.16 ERA in August, striking out a lot, and, overall, if not for the blip in Colorado, which does that to even the best pitchers, he would have a much better ERA with us than his 4.05 ERA with us suggests. His ERA hides the fact that he has pitched well or better in 6 of his 8 starts for us, with only two starts with more than 3 ER, and 6 DOM starts out of 8. So far, he has been far worth the gamble, he was basically our best starter in August, and we would have been even further in the hole in the division race had we had Peavy pitching instead of Moore.

Nunez Good Defense at 3B

Lastly, the Nunez trade. I've been curious how he would do defensively for us. Because he has been mostly horrible as a fielder for the Twins, except for a brief stint in LF before (by both DRS and UZR). We always hear about how our coaches work with guys and how their analytics team provide info on how to position for hitters, but it is one thing to hear about it, another for it to show up in the stats. Not that Duffy was horrible at third, but he was only OK defensively at SS by reputation, and he was a great defensive 3B for us. And, really, Pablo before him, he had his really good moments, especially when he was fit enough and not over weight.

And so far, Nunez's been pretty good defensively, per Baseball-Reference.com, 2 DRS so far, which works out to 8 DRS over a full season, or nearly a win added. SSS, which really affects fielders, but a good start, you gotta start somewhere. Plus, he has had good stretches there before, in 2013 and 2015, so it is not totally usual for him, he has done well defensively at 3B previously. Perhaps getting to stay at one position will help him gain the repetition that enhances his defense. Plus, it can't hurt that Crawford is next to him, Brandon can probably get to balls Nunez misses, and still get the out.

And perhaps his poor play previously hid how good he could be. Per UZR, he's been roughly average over the past three seasons, across all the positions he has played, if you look at his defensive WAR contributions, -0.7 over the past three seasons, or average of -0.233 per season. That is roughly a loss of 2 runs per season. Part of that is that most of his OF play has occurred in the past three seasons, though nothing this season. And he actually did very well for the Twins at SS per UZR in 2015, but he was just horrible before. So he looks like he can be decent defensively in the infield and outfield, per the most recent stats.

And I can see him being used in a utility role next season, much as he was with the Yankees and Twins before. The Giants recognize the value of rest and been looking for a super-utility guy to handle that, plus be a good replacement should the usual injuries crop up across the lineup. Particularly since he can be a good leadoff guy, with speed and OBP, plus be speed off the bench, as well as provide some decent double-digit power as well.

So who starts at 3B then? While I think that's his role, I see the position being open for competition next season, between Nunez and Kelby Tomlinson, with Adrianza also getting a good chance as well, with the caveat about his health, and perhaps Green and Pena if they are still around. They could always sign a free agent, take a gamble on a player with a good history, but poor 2016. But I would not bet against Christian Arroyo being a dark horse competitor who could win the position.

Arroyo had a poor 2016 season overall, per his batting line of .274/.316/.373/.689, but his very poor hitting at home (which is a poor hitter's park) is causing people to overlook his .315/.348/.438/.786 batting line on the road, with only 38 strikeouts in 260 AB. He was not getting fooled as an under-aged hitter there, it is a sign of a good prospect to make AA by age 22, and he is only 21, more than holding his own there on the road, where the average hitter hit .259/.328/.389/.717 in the league and the average pitcher's age is 24.5 YO.

I would also add that Nunez could also be in competition to start in LF as well. He has been very good defensively there so far, and Pagan will most likely not be re-signed. I expect the Giants to let there be a competition there, between Nunez, Parker, and Williamson. Plus Slater, Cole, and Duggar did well in AA, so they will probably get a look too, and Hernandez, assuming he's still around, I see him being a replacement for Blanco next season, as Gregor's contract is up as well, and he will probably get more than the Giants will offer, from another team. Another transition we will have to go through, as the players who helped us win in 2010, 2012, and 2014 move on.

Other than those, we are set elsewhere in the starting lineup: Posey, Belt, Panik, Crawford, Span, Pence.

Bench Shuffle

While our bench could be much different, depending on what the Giants decide. Posey was severely overused this season, part of it seems to be that Belt was healthy and playing, instead of DLing and giving Posey a lot of time at 1B, and the other part was that Brown was not that great with the pitchers. Part of that was that he got a lot of starts with Cain, Peavy, and Suarez, the worse starters in our rotation this season. But Cueto and Moore did not do that well with Brown starting either.

As noted, Blanco could be gone, and Parker or Williamson could win the starting LF role. And Adrianza could finally be cut loose if the Giant tired of his brittle frailness, he's been very Fragile. Nunez could start but he could just as easily be a super-utility player. Tomlinson could also be on the bench as well, but with one last option, he could end up in AAA once again. And then there is Gillaspie, Green, and Pena as possible bench players as well.

As a sign that it might just be the Giants that help guys be good fielders, Gillaspie has been horrible on defense per DRS, he has never had one season at any position with a positive DRS, and only 3 with 0 DRS, but covering a total of 10.0 IP, so nothing really at all, but this season, he is very positive for both 1B and 3B with good amount of playing time at both. His OPS would even be a high for him this season, if he can keep it up, for any season with at least 180 PA. That with some power and good batting eye, as he don't strike out that much (oddly, though, he has a very low BABIP, even though he hits hard enough for a good ISO; get his BABIP up 20-30 points and he would be a very productive bench player), leads to a relatively productive bench player for the Giants. So he might stay around for another season on the bench, assuming he is not a free agent after the season, he still has two more arbitration years, so we got him if we want him.

2016 Giants: July PQS

This post has the Giants Pure Quality Start scores for the month of July 2016, PQS as defined in Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster annual book and they published the details here (unfortunately, they removed the article; this link gets you at least to the PQS definition, read down to middle for details). I wrote on this first in 2006 (wow, 11th year of this! 10th anniversary!) and have compiled their stats on a regular basis, so I'm continuing it this season for continuity and historical comparison (there is the "PQS" label that you can click to see the old posts on this). Regular readers can skip to the next section.

This is the Quality Start with a sabermetric DIPS twist, and it gets really easy to calculate once you get used to it. I don't think it's the end all or be all, but then nothing really is that. It is, as I like to say, another piece of the puzzle. A dominating start is scored a 4 or 5 and a disaster start is scored a 0 or 1. DOM% is the percentage of starts that are dominating, DIS% is the percentage of starts that are disasters (any start under 5.0 IP is automatically a 0, or disaster).

What's Good and What's Not

From my observations, a DOM at or above the 40% mark is indicative of good pitching; above 50% is great; above 70% is elite. A low DIS is also indicative of good pitching, just look at the table in the link above showing DOM% and DIS% on the axes.

Giants Starters' PQS for 2016 Season

Madison Bumgarner- (82% DOM, 0% DIS; 18:0/22): 2, 5, 2, 5, 5/5, 5, 4, 5, 5, 5/5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 2/5, 5, 3, 5, 5/

Matt Cain- (33% DOM, 33% DIS; 4:4/12): 4, 0, 0, 3, 3/0, 5, 5, 5, X//0, 2, 3/

Johnny Cueto - (71% DOM, 5% DIS; 15:0/21): 4, 4, 5, 3, 5/3, 4, 4, 5, 4, 5/3, 5, 5, 5, 2/4, 5, 1, 5, 2/

Chris Heston - (0% DOM, 0% DIS; 0:0/0): //

Jake Peavy - (48% DOM, 29% DIS; 10:6/21): 3, 0, 2, 4, 0/3, 3, 5, 0, 4, 4/4, 4, 5, 4, 0/5, 0, 4, 3, 0/

Jeff Samardzija - (48% DOM, 19% DIS; 10:4/21): 3, 4, 3, 4, 4/5, 4, 4, 5, 5, 3/1. 0, 4, 0, 2/3, 5, 2, 1, 2/

Albert Suarez - (50% DOM, 17% DIS; 3:1/6): //4, 3, 0, 4, 3/5/

X - Cain had a disaster start, but was dealing when hamstring went out, not counting in PQS stats

Giants Season overall - 58% DOM, 15% DIS out of 104 games counted (60:16/104)
Giants Month of April - 48% DOM, 16% DIS out of 25 games counted (12:4/25)
Giants Month of May - 79% DOM, 7% DIS out of 28 games counted (22:2/28)
Giants Month of June - 56% DOM, 19% DIS out of 27 games counted (15:5/27)
Giants Month of July - 46% DOM, 21% DIS out of 24 games counted (11:5/24)

July continued the slide in the rotation that happened in June, and returned the rotation to the bad old days of April. Only Bumgarner was able to hold steady his PQS, the rest faultered in some ways.

Bumgarner lead the way in DOM, nailing 4 DOM starts, with Cueto just behind with 3 DOM starts. Peavy had 2 DOM starts, Samardzija and Suarez only had 1 DOM start (though Suarez only had that one start), and Cain had 0 DOM starts.

Samardzija, however, did turn things around some, at least. Instead of the 3 DIS starts he had in June, he only had the one in July. Peavy led the staff with 2 DIS starts, and Cueto and Cain also had 1 DIS start.

The stories of the month were Cueto, Shark, Peavy, Cain, and Suarez.

Cueto because he continued to sputter some. It appears that he has started his second half downward trend that I had posted on previously, based on this and continuation of this into August: he has a 4.84 ERA in the 6 starts since the ASG (though his K/9 and K/BB are great) plus 6 HR given up, and in the 9 starts since his slide began at the end of June, 4.71 ERA with 9 HR given up. The Giants were at least still 3-2 in his starts, but that's because of the offense. Not going to win a lot of games with that ERA.
The Shark continued to do poorly as well, but at least wasn't as bad as he was in June. He stabilized significantly, greatly reducing the number of DIS starts from 3 to 1, but was unable to deliver multiple DOM starts, as we need from the #3 spot. Unfortunately, the offense sputtered in July, perhaps under the pressure of the starting pitching overall collapse, and the Giants only went 1-4 with Samardzija in July, a reversion to mean vs. what he did in June, when he actually pitched worse, but the Giants won more games.
Peavy was unable to continue his upward swing that began in May. He had pulled off a second half surge of DOM starts for us in previous seasons, but was unable to this time, and his decline, leading to 2 DIS starts in his last 4 starts, ended his time in the rotation, with the Giants trading for Matt Moore, a much younger pitcher with the potential to be a good starter for us for years. He's now in the bullpen, taking Suarez's long relief role.
Cain returned to the rotation, in place of Suarez, after the ASB. He clearly wasn't ready in his first start, but had a very classic Cain-like start in his last July start: no hits, 4 walks, 5 K's in 5 IP. His key going forward is building on that and getting back to the form he had before he went on the DL, when he had 3 straight DOM starts, something he hasn't done consistently since the season he had the Perfecto. So far in August, he has not delivered a DOM start, but did well to strike out a lot of batters in his last start. The rotation can survive a couple of pitchers scuffling, but not 3 or 4, so he needs to get back to his better performances, and fast.
Suarez did great taking over for Cain. He has been as effective as Petit was in being a spot starter, compiling three DOM and only one DIS in six starts, which is what good pitchers do. Unfortunately, the team only went 3-3 in his starts for Cain. Due to the Moore trade and Peavy demotion, in spite of his good work, Suarez got sent down to AAA. Not that I'm complaining, that's baseball sometimes, good performers get sent down because there's no space in the majors. And I think Peavy has contributed enough, particularly in 2014, to earn the right to see how he can do as a reliever for us, instead of being unceremoniously DFAed, as some fans had hoped, particularly since, with rest, he could become like he was before, a shutdown pitcher, but only over 2-3 innings instead of 5-6 innings.

July 2016 Comments

I will keep it shorter, since August is half over as it is. Sorry everyone, but my heart is just not as in it as in previous seasons. I think the death of my sister has hit me harder than I have realized. But I want to at least keep these going, so there is that.

The team went into a free-fall after the ASB, with the starting rotation sputtering and the starting lineup sputtering. After starting the month 7-2, the Giants ended it 4-11. Their 6.5 game lead at the break dissipated, with the Dodgers catching us for one day, in August. The scary part is that they are doing it with Kershaw on the DL, and potentially out for the season.

It was quite day and night in July:

Before the ASB: in 9 games, the Giants averaged 4.56 RS per game, while averaging only 3.00 RA per game, a great formula for winning a lot of games.

After the ASB: in 15 games, the Giants averaged only 3.27 RS per game, while averaging 4.53 RA per game, a great formula for losing a lot of games. The poor offense of May returned, heck it was even worse, along with the poor pitching of April, which resulted in the poorest stretch of playing baseball all season long.

No need to go into details for July, as it was bifurcated into two parts, one where the Giants did really well, and one where the Giants did really poorly. There was nothing to really point out, besides Bumgarner, who while doing very well overall, as usual, the Giants were still only 1-4 because they weren't scoring much for him.

They have stabilized some in August, helped greatly by the addition of Moore coupled with the subtraction of Peavy in the starting rotation. And the offense has improved a lot, though it is still not good enough yet to win the division with the pitching we got.

Overall, our bullpen continues to have it's growing pains, which was to be expected when you are giving young prospects, who are still unproven, a lot of opportunities. Especially with the rotating door of injuries pushing more experienced pitchers out, and less experienced pitchers in. Though Law in his first season is becoming the revelation that we were hoping he would be a few seasons ago before he went down needing TJS. And Will Smith, who we traded for, should be a boost once he settles down some, and rack up a long string of scoreless appearances, as Law has done (he is up to 19 appearances now).

It does not help that our remaining Core Four relievers - Lopez, Romo, Casilla - has not been as locked down as they were in the past. Lopez has not been himself, it is looking like this might be his last season with the Giants, though he said earlier in the season that he intends to continue pitching at least another season. Romo dealt with his injury, and returned to perform great in July, but has been struggling more than usual in August.

And Casilla already has 4 losses, the most he's had in any season since Wilson was our closer, the highest ERA he has had, by far, as a Giant, and 6 blown saves, which is already tied for his career high for any season where he was a primary closer. So by a number of measures, Casilla looks like he's having a down season.

Part of the reason, it seemed, though, is that he has been placed in a lot more leveraged situations than he had been in the past, resulting in a much higher aLI of 2.40 (previous high was 1.87 last season) and a 31:5 HiLev/LoLev ratio, vs. 29:21 ratio last season, and vs. his previous high point in 2012 of 37:14. That is a function of the Giants offense being so up and down this season, keeping games closer than in other seasons, and leaving Casilla in situations he has not faced as much in prior seasons. One could think that more high leverage should result in poorer results overall.

I then decided to dig into his appearances this season, and, oddly enough, he actually has a 2.28 ERA in his high leveraged starts (I counted the ones 2.00 and higher). He has a 3.75 in 13 low leverage starts (where I counted all the ones at 1.00 and lower). It was the medium ones that has done him in this season, only 8 appearances, 6.43 ERA, where he blew two saves, and lost one game.

So it wasn't high leverage games that caused his stats to decline, but a pair of 3 ER appearances that kills his stats in leverage type. That one loss in the medium was the Orioles loss on Sunday, before that, he had a 3.00 ERA. And even among the low leverage, in those 13 starts, he gave up runs in only 3 appearances, including a 3 ER game. Taking out these two appearances would probably drop his ERA back down to his normal range, suggesting that his struggles this season has been more of an anomaly than a decline. Particularly since his K/9 is up, his BB/9 is down, and both leads to his K/BB being the best it ever was.

2016 Giants: June PQS

This post has the Giants Pure Quality Start scores for the month of June 2016, PQS as defined in Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster annual book and they published the details here (unfortunately, they removed the article; this link gets you at least to the PQS definition, read down to middle for details). I wrote on this first in 2006 (wow, 11th year of this! 10th anniversary!) and have compiled their stats on a regular basis, so I'm continuing it this season for continuity and historical comparison (there is the "PQS" label that you can click to see the old posts on this). Regular readers can skip to the next section.

This is the Quality Start with a sabermetric DIPS twist, and it gets really easy to calculate once you get used to it. I don't think it's the end all or be all, but then nothing really is that. It is, as I like to say, another piece of the puzzle. A dominating start is scored a 4 or 5 and a disaster start is scored a 0 or 1. DOM% is the percentage of starts that are dominating, DIS% is the percentage of starts that are disasters (any start under 5.0 IP is automatically a 0, or disaster).

What's Good and What's Not

From my observations, a DOM at or above the 40% mark is indicative of good pitching; above 50% is great; above 70% is elite. A low DIS is also indicative of good pitching, just look at the table in the link above showing DOM% and DIS% on the axes.

Giants Starters' PQS for 2016 Season

Madison Bumgarner- (82% DOM, 0% DIS; 14:0/17): 2, 5, 2, 5, 5/5, 5, 4, 5, 5, 5/5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 2/

Matt Cain- (44% DOM, 33% DIS; 4:3/9): 4, 0, 0, 3, 3/0, 5, 5, 5, X/

Johnny Cueto - (75% DOM, 0% DIS; 12:0/16): 4, 4, 5, 3, 5/3, 4, 4, 5, 4, 5/3, 5, 5, 5, 2/

Chris Heston - (0% DOM, 0% DIS; 0:0/0): //

Jake Peavy - (50% DOM, 25% DIS; 8:4/16): 3, 0, 2, 4, 0/3, 3, 5, 0, 4, 4/4, 4, 5, 4, 0/

Jeff Samardzija - (56% DOM, 19% DIS; 9:3/16): 3, 4, 3, 4, 4/5, 4, 4, 5, 5, 3/1. 0, 4, 0, 2/

Albert Suarez - (40% DOM, 20% DIS; 2:1/5): //4, 3, 0, 4, 3/

X - Cain had a disaster start, but was dealing when hamstring went out, not counting in PQS stats

Giants Season overall - 61% DOM, 14% DIS out of 80 games counted (49:11/80)
Giants Month of April - 48% DOM, 16% DIS out of 25 games counted (12:4/25)
Giants Month of May - 79% DOM, 7% DIS out of 28 games counted (22:2/28)
Giants Month of June - 56% DOM, 19% DIS out of 27 games counted (15:5/27)

As great as May was, June went back to where we were in April, only other pitchers scuffled. Again, both Bumgarner and Cueto led the way, Bumgarner with 5 DOM starts, Cueto with 3, though Cueto not as much as before, bringing his seasonal DOM down. Peavy also did well, with 4 DOM start, and Suarez did well in his role as back-up starter, with 2 DOM starts in June. Unfortunately, the scuffler was Samardzija, who only had 1 DOM start in June.

And scuffle he did, he had 3 DIS starts out of 5 in June. The only other ones were by Peavy and Suarez, one each. This resulted in the overall 19% DIS, which was very similar to what we had in April when Peavy and Cain were scuffling. And in spite of how well Bumgarner, Cueto and Peavy pitched, Samardzija brought down the staff to merely good status in June.

The stories of the month were Cueto, Shark, Peavy, and Suarez.

Cueto because he had two MID starts, which is what he had in April/May. Could he be starting his second half downward trend that I had posted on previously? We'll see. But as noted my the media, the Giants were 16-2 in his starts (Bumgarner had more team losses just in April, and after a team win streak of 10 straight starts, the team has lost three of his last five, for a total of 13-6 record with Bum in the saddle).
The Shark showed why his seasonal stats could be so up and down. In spite of great pitching from him in April/May (8 DOM in 11 starts, that's premiere ace level stuff, like his 2014 season), he lost it in June, with only one DOM, one MID, and three DIS, though, somehow, the team went 3-2 in his starts, winning two of his DIS starts. Still, the Giants were 11-7 in his starts.
Peavy continued into June his upward swing that started mid-May (though, looking ahead, he faltered, ending the first half with two DIS in three starts), with 4 DOM in 5 starts.After all those early losses, the Giants are 8-3 in his last 11 starts, and the team is now 10-8 in Peavy starts.
Suarez did great taking over for Cain. He has been as effective as Petit was in being a spot starter, compiling two DOM and only one DIS in five starts, which is what good pitchers do. Unfortunately, the team only went 2-3 in his June starts.

June 2016 Comments

I will keep it shorter, since July is basically half over as it is (and I mean it this time). The team continued to win, even though the starting pitchers were not as dominant as they were in May and slightly better than in April. The key was that in April, while there were a number of MID starts, Cain and Peavy just were missing spots in key situations, resulting in more runs than would be expected given the number of DOM/MID starts. So while the pitchers allowed 4.84 runs per game in April, they only gave up 4.04 in June.

Which is not really that good, generally. The reason the team went 17-10 in June was because they scored runs in bunches, averaging 5.37 runs per game in June, which was even more than they did in April, when they had 4.96. And the offense was plenty cold in May, only averaging 3.93 runs per game, but because the pitching and fielding were superlative, allowing only 3.24 runs per game, which was beyond elite, they went 21-8 in May.

The offense soared even though half the lineup was on and off the DL (or had to take extra days off) during June: Pence, Pagan, Blanco, Panik, Crawford, Duffy, Tomlinson, Posey. It helps when four starters are hot - Belt, Pagan, Posey, Crawford - plus one of the replacements, Parker, hit pretty well too (.914 in 67 PA; who would have thought he would be the one to do well in the majors, instead of Brown? I certainly missed it). Other replacements also did well in smaller spurts, but contributors nonetheless: Pena, Williamson, Gillaspie, Green.

Also in spite of Span's poor 2016 so far. Unlike Aoki, he started off semi-slow and has not been as advertised. However, he was actually very good early on with his OBP (more middling for OPS and ISO-P), justifying his leadoff status, but his June was crushingly bad. I would blame his hip injury that he had on May 27, but he was still hitting well in the games after, so the results are not exactly direct. However, pretty soon after that, right on June 1st, he started his decline and basically has been free falling since, for the most part, though he's been OK at least, in his last six games (interrupted by a brief period of rest after another injury). So perhaps it was a cumulative thing where his body finally gave up after a few games of pounding from those baseball games.

And June would have been better if not for so many blown saves. After 2 in April and 3 in May, there were 7 of them in June, surpassing the total for the first two months. Get back 4 of those blown saves in June, and the Giants would have been 21-6 instead (they were 21-8 in May).

This just shows the great potential for this baseball team, something I was writing about in the pre-season. They can beat you with pitching, even if there is not much hitting, as what happened in May. They can beat you with hitting, even if there is not much pitching, as what happened in June. What they can't handle is when their starting pitching is off some, as they were in April, and put the team too far out of it for the offense to pick them up. That's their Achilles' Heel, that and the bullpen in June. Both we will need to watch going forward.

2016 Giants: May PQS

This post has the Giants Pure Quality Start scores for the month of May 2016, PQS as defined in Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster annual book and they published the details here (unfortunately, they removed the article; this link gets you at least to the PQS definition, read down to middle for details). I wrote on this first in 2006 (wow, 11th year of this! 10th anniversary!) and have compiled their stats on a regular basis, so I'm continuing it this season for continuity and historical comparison (there is the "PQS" label that you can click to see the old posts on this). Regular readers can skip to the next section.

This is the Quality Start with a sabermetric DIPS twist, and it gets really easy to calculate once you get used to it. I don't think it's the end all or be all, but then nothing really is that. It is, as I like to say, another piece of the puzzle. A dominating start is scored a 4 or 5 and a disaster start is scored a 0 or 1. DOM% is the percentage of starts that are dominating, DIS% is the percentage of starts that are disasters (any start under 5.0 IP is automatically a 0, or disaster).

What's Good and What's Not

From my observations, a DOM at or above the 40% mark is indicative of good pitching; above 50% is great; above 70% is elite. A low DIS is also indicative of good pitching, just look at the table in the link above showing DOM% and DIS% on the axes.

Giants Starters' PQS for 2016 Season

Madison Bumgarner- (82% DOM, 0% DIS; 9:0/11): 2, 5, 2, 5, 5/5, 5, 4, 5, 5, 5/

Matt Cain- (44% DOM, 33% DIS; 4:3/9): 4, 0, 0, 3, 3/0, 5, 5, 5, X/

Johnny Cueto - (82% DOM, 0% DIS; 9:0/11): 4, 4, 5, 3, 5/3, 4, 4, 5, 4, 5/

Chris Heston - (0% DOM, 0% DIS; 0:0/0): //

Jake Peavy - (36% DOM, 27% DIS; 4:3/11): 3, 0, 2, 4, 0/3, 3, 5, 0, 4, 4/

Jeff Samardzija - (73% DOM, 0% DIS; 8:0/11): 3, 4, 3, 4, 4/5, 4, 4, 5, 5, 3/

Albert Suarez - (0% DOM, 0% DIS; 1:0/2): //

X - Cain had a disaster start, but was dealing when hamstring went out, not counting in PQS stats

Giants Season overall - 64% DOM, 11% DIS out of 53 games counted (34:6/53)
Giants Month of April - 48% DOM, 16% DIS out of 25 games counted (12:4/25)
Giants Month of May - 79% DOM, 7% DIS out of 28 games counted (22:2/28)

The month of May for PQS was stupendously brilliant! I don't have time to go through past stats, but I'm 99.9% sure that 79% DOM is the best month ever! Mainly because Zito was a big part of the past rotations and he was rarely this good at delivering the DOM starts, then Lincecum in recent years was up and down.

Bumgarner, as he has in recent years, get into high gear after early season issues (seems to happen most years than not; he actually said that he was still not feeling it into late May) and led the staff with 6 DOM starts out of 6. Both Cueto and Samardzija followed closely with 5 DOM starts. And both Peavy and Cain delivered as well, with 3 DOM starts.

And the great thing about throwing so many DOM starts is that there is fewer starts for the DIS starts that are basically guaranteed losses (the Giants were 0-6 in DIS starts to EOMay, 0-2 in May). There were only two in May, leading to a stellar 79% DOM/7% DIS, which led to a stellar 21-8 record in May, in spite of the offense only averaging 4.07 runs per game. This zoomed the Giants into first place, until they took over on May 15th and kept on building since. In 8 days, they pushed it to 4.5 games ahead, then was amazingly matching the Dodgers to the end of the month, staying exactly 4.5 games ahead, win or lose (it helped that they went 5-2, as well).

With the great DOM came great stats. Bumgarner had a 1.05 ERA for May, with a 3.75 K/BB, 9.5 K/9 and 0.961 WHIP. Cueto was next with 2.03 ERA, 4.33 K/BB, 7.9 K/9, 0.992 WHIP. Samardzija started having results to go with his good PQS stats, 2.08 ERA, 5.00 K/BB, 8.3 K/9, 0.969 WHIP.

Cainer was finally starting to feel back to pre-Perfecto form, with 3 DOM in 4 starts, compiling a 3.38 ERA, 4.25 K/BB, 5.7 K/9, and 1.275 WHIP. Still giving up more hits and homers than usual, but keeping the walks down helped, clearly. Too bad he had the injury hiccup with the strained hamstring, he was starting to feel it good.

Peavy was still getting crushed when he was on, in spite of his good PQS for the month. He had a 4.73 ERA, 2.36 K/BB, 7.2 K/9, and 1.268 WHIP.

Still, great month for the starters overall, stupendous, really. They collectively pitched as if they were the best pitcher in baseball, pitching in every start, with that 79% DOM and 7% DIS. And we should have been even better in the win column. Had we gotten some better offense, that would have really put some distance between us and the NL West. Though, really, had we gotten better bullpen pitching (3 blown saves), specifically Casilla, we could have been 24-4 instead. But this is getting picky, all in all, the Giants starting pitching was great in May.

May 2016 Comments

I may keep it shorter, since June is basically half over as it is (but I yam whut I yam...). As bad as April was (relatively, by Giants past standards), May was that good. The offense that saved them in April with 4.96 runs scored per game, helping them get to 12-13 in spite of all the bad pitching in the back of the rotation, was stagnant, averaging only 4.07, and it won't get much better with Hunter Pence missing big parts of the coming months (hopefully to return by start of August).

The biggest difference between the months is that while only Span and Duffy did not hit well in April, more did poorly in May, with a bifurcation in the offense in May. While Tomlinson, Pence, Belt, Posey, Crawford, and Span were hitting well, Parker, Blanco, Duffy (still...), Gillaspie, Panik, Williamson, Brown, and Pagan were not. Parker at last was hitting for power, so his OPS was .686, which is where Span and Duffy roughly was in April. All the rest from Blanco on down, ranged from Blanco's .628 OPS to Pagan's .439 OPS (probably already showing the effects of his hamstring issues, half of what he did in April). And none of the OF options has done well enough to justify given them more AB's.

But when a defense (pitching and fielding) can keep runs allowed to the 3.24 average in May, it covers up a lot of offensive ills. It allowed the team to go 7-0 in one-run games, pushing the team up to 15-7 in one-run games.

And the good news is that May is greatly improved over April and look, at the moment, closer to the true talent level of the rotation. Peavy is reaching his regular second half peak that he's been doing for us the past two seasons. Cain was dealing until his hamstring, but Suarez did well in taking two starts for Cainer, keeping the line moving in the rotation. With Bumgarner, Cueto, and Samardzija looking relatively dominant, all we need is one of Peavy and Cain to do well in order for the Giants to continue winning more than they lose. In addition, nobody on the team is striking out a ton, so the poor OPS for many of these players could just be a case of BABIP hurting them. In particular, Duffy, Panik, and Pagan all have BB/K ratios above or very near to 1.0, and generally those hitters hit for a much higher BABIP.

As noted last month, the Giants were below Pythagorean last month, and they regressed to the mean by playing above Pythagorean in May. They should have been 17-12, but ended up 21-8, 4 games above. And in April, they should have been 13-12, but ended up 12-13.

Most sabers would then say that the Giants should regress back to .500, because of May, but as my research showed, Bochy has been able to maintain a +4 games above .500 record over his managerial career, until the past two seasons. So 2016 could be his career-wide regression to his talent mean, meaning 15-7 (+8 and higher has been attained by Bochy in nearly 40% of his career managerial seasons) could just be Bochy managing to his talent level.

Lincecum Era Over (For Now)

Unfortunately, the Angels had a rash of injuries in their starting pitcher, so they offered Lincecum a starting job, roughly in the $4M range (but pro-rated), so he didn't get a lot of money, but that wasn't his goal, he just wanted the opportunity to start.

I still think that Lincecum will be very good when he come back and have a very good season, setting him up nicely for a free agent contract after the season. Will he stick by the Angels because they gave him the opportunity?

Perhaps, but, at least in the past, when he was an amateur and in his early years in arbitration, his agent would try to get what they thought he was worth. He could have been an Indian all these years had they given him the $1M he wanted when they drafted him the year before (only offered $400K). And he held out for $200K more from us when we drafted him. He and the Giants had the widely different arbitration numbers during those years.

The Giants will see Peavy's contract ending this season, opening up a spot in the rotation. Nobody so far is making the Giants management say that they should be starting in the majors instead. Blackburn had his early struggles, though Giants Prospect Talk noted that high altitude was a factor in that. And he has an 0.66 ERA since returning from the majors. And Cain's contract ends after 2017 (plus Cueto most probably opts out), so openings in the rotation are available, should the Giants decide to pursue Lincecum in the off-season.
Will they? First, we have to see how Lincecum does, but if he does as well as I think he can, he can probably get a pretty big one-year contract (I just don't see anyone giving him a long-term big money contract based on one year, plus he seems to favor shorter terms than having the weight of a huge contract on his conscience). And the Giants probably would be very fine with such an arrangement, going year to year. But so would other teams, if he's as good as I think he is.

Your 2016 Giants: The Shark Fin Is Circling, Senses Blood In the Water

A couple of good recent articles on Samardzija. One was a Beyond the Box Score analysis of how he has been able to pitch so well this season after last season's abomination, pointing out that he was returning to his prior form, using the pitches that are his best pitches, his sinker and his cutter:

That cutter and sinker are back up to where they need to be to induce more grounders. The sinker, in particular, returning back to where it was in previous years represents an encouraging trend. And as such, his groundballs per ball in play are back to looking like exactly what they should look like...

This return to form, although not necessarily a "resurrection", is taking place across the board. He hasn't experienced any sort of real velocity change, but the fact that he's able to utilize all of his pitches is allowing those strikeout numbers to creep back up. After a 6.86 K/9 season last year, he's currently at 7.69 in 2016, with a swinging strike rate up a touch (9.8 to 10.4) from last year. His walks are also down, at 1.82 per nine thus far. The rest of his statistics across the board feature a 2.66 ERA, a 2.77 FIP, and a WHIP down at 1.03. Not only are these numbers vastly improved from last year, but these are some of the best figures that Shark has posted in his career. As a veteran pitcher,, and having spent a previous year in baseball purgatory, Samardzija appears to have the look of a guy who knows exactly what works for him and what doesn't and the Giants are allowing him to roll with it.

What might seem like a simple, and perhaps even obvious, change for him has led him down the path to not only earning that $90 million contract, but perhaps even justifying it as a bargain at some point.

This is matched up with professional observation by Mike Krukow, from his KNBR show, as reported by CSNBA:

"He's simplifying things," Krukow started. "A lot of times, guys have four or five things they can do with the ball. They feel compelled that they have to throw all of them.

And I think what (Dave) Righetti and (Mark) Gardner have done with this guy, is they've simplified it, and said 'Wait a second. Let's take a look at what your true strengths are.

"Your true strengths are your fastball ... and your cut ... so you've got two different types of movement, one going away from the other. And it's late movement. Why not let's focus on being able to corner pitch with it. To locate.

"We'll introduce a slider, we'll throw it out there, and we'll work on an offspeed pitch to give you an eventual third speed.' That's what they've done."

"His mechanics are impeccable and he's got great finish with the crack of the whip," Krukow added. "He's in command so that maximizes velocity, movement and location capabilities. He's got all that going.

"And I think because of his athleticism he's able to repeat this stroke of the arm with great consistency."

"It gets back to Dave Righetti. If you're a pitcher, and you've got abilities, whatever type of athlete you are, you're going to get better around him," Krukow declared. "You're going to get better around Mark Gardner. They're the best at what they do. This is just another example of it."

Krukow closed the topic by making a bold prediction.

Samardzija's "not a finished product. He is a work in progress. I think when he masters that third speed, that changeup, you're gonna see a guy who's gonna be a perennial All-Star and he'll challenge for the Cy Young. I do believe he has that type of ceiling."

ogc thoughts

This was the sort of stuff I was hoping the Giants would be doing with Samardzija once they got their hands on him.

To build on top of what was noted in the Beyond the Box Score (surprised the author didn't point out this chart): Fangraph Samardzija Pitch Values. While this has limited predictive value, it is a descriptive stat, showing how good he has been in the season.

Surprising the Cutter Has Been So Good

Amazingly enough, he had not had a lot of success with his cutter in the past (and part of the value shown in this table is the sequencing that happens for the pitcher, based on the circumstances he happens to be in for each instance, making a pitch more or less valuable, depending on how the sequencing is), his only year was way back in 2011, yet the Giants keyed on that pitch, had him simplify to using mainly his fastball along with the cutter. Yet, despite his lack of success before (remember, sequencing matters), they have found the right sequencing to enable him to create a lot of value with this pitch, something none of his pitching coaches nor team scouts ever realized.

Slider Has Always Been His Plus Value Pitch

Plus the slider is his most often used third pitch this season, which has always been a very valuable pitch in the past. Apparently by paring back the usage of the slider to key situations, he has been able to create even more value than ever before with his slider, despite not using it as much (and we are only nearing the one-third point of the season).

Now Slider is Keyed with Cutter

Likewise, the Giants keyed on his cutter, which he didn't use as much before in his career. They have nearly doubled the usage of the cutter in 2016, from 20.2% in 2015 (and roughly 10-13% before) to 39.4% currently. They still use his four-seamer a lot, but dropped that a lot from before, from roughly 30-ish in last few years to 22.8% this season. Two-seamer has been reduced too, from the 24.1% in 2014, his most successful year by far (and only one previously, really). The splitter has been almost eliminated, down to 5.4%. Even the usage of the slider was down, from the 20-ish he was at before, and it seems like the Chicago White Sox realized that and tried to double down on that, pushing his usage up to 24.4%, but the Giants now only employ it 15.1%, and in spite of the lessened usage, he has almost created as much value with this pitch as any other season he has used it.

Resulting in Success in 2016 Unlike 2014

And this season is totally unlike his most successful season in 2014. In 2014, he created his value with his fastball, slider, and split-finger fastball, with most of it from his fastball. For the Giants, most of the value is created with the cutter and slider, with some from the fastball. It is totally counter-intuitive, because Samardzija is known for his fastball, and yet he is creating most of his value from the other two pitches in his repertoire.

Maybe someone can explain to me, but Beyond the Box Score used Brooks and noted his usage of the sinker, but PitchFX has no sinker to speak of, so I don't know how to reconcile the two sources of pitch type data. Based on the up and down, it appears that the two-seamer is what Brooks is calling the sinker, but while Brooks has that around 28%, FG has it around 17%. And FG has the cutter at 39.4% while Brooks has it at around 32%.

And Success with Slider Exponentially Increased

In any case, a lot of additional value is being derived by whatever the Giants are doing with Samardzija. Looking at the "/C" values, which rates the value of each pitch per 100 pitches, his slider's value has leapt from the 1.0-1.5 per 100 pitches value range to 3.07 per 100 so far this season. And showing how screwed up Samardzija was with the White Sox, after easily creating value in the 5-8 range previously, he was actually -6.7 with the White Sox. His cutter value was returned to what it was long ago, in 2011, when he was still a reliever. And while his fastball value is not that high, on a per 100 pitch basis, is his best since 2014's 0.50, as it is at 0.38.

Despite Plus Plus Velocity, Success With It Has Been Spotty

Despite his plus plus velocity, none of his pitching coaches or teams have ever had him produce value regularly with his fastball. No wonder Samardzija, according to Baer, told the Giants that he really wanted to join the Giants, and when told that the Giants were busy with Greinke, but would sign him if that fell through, he purposefully stalled negotiations with other teams in order to see what happens. And once that fell through, that is why the Giants signed him so quickly.

The Giants success with the Shark has come faster than I had hoped. I thought maybe half to a whole season, then he'll be ready to take over for Cueto before Cueto leaves after two years and opting out. With a three headed monster, all we need are average back of rotation starters to have a great season. And Cain's recent stretch of good pitching shows what can happen when you get four good starts in every turn of the rotation.

Giants look good to run away with the division, but, again, injuries to the lineup is the Achilles Heel. We've already lost Pagan, and aches and pains have took out Panik, Pence, and now Span. Continued health is what we need to keep the good times going.

2016 Giants: April PQS

This post has the Giants Pure Quality Start scores for the month of April 2016, PQS as defined in Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster annual book and they published the details here (unfortunately, they removed the article; this link gets you at least to the PQS definition, read down to middle for details). I wrote on this first in 2006 (wow, 11th year of this! 10th anniversary!) and have compiled their stats on a regular basis, so I'm continuing it this season for continuity and historical comparison (there is the "PQS" label that you can click to see the old posts on this). Regular readers can skip to the next section.

This is the Quality Start with a sabermetric DIPS twist, and it gets really easy to calculate once you get used to it. I don't think it's the end all or be all, but then nothing really is that. It is, as I like to say, another piece of the puzzle. A dominating start is scored a 4 or 5 and a disaster start is scored a 0 or 1. DOM% is the percentage of starts that are dominating, DIS% is the percentage of starts that are disasters (any start under 5.0 IP is automatically a 0, or disaster).

What's Good and What's Not

From my observations, a DOM at or above the 40% mark is indicative of good pitching; above 50% is great; above 70% is elite. A low DIS is also indicative of good pitching, just look at the table in the link above showing DOM% and DIS% on the axes.

Giants Starters' PQS for 2015 Season

Madison Bumgarner- (60% DOM, 0% DIS; 3:0/5): 2, 5, 2, 5, 5/

Matt Cain- (20% DOM, 40% DIS; 1:2/5): 4, 0, 0, 3, 3/

Johnny Cueto - (80% DOM, 0% DIS; 4:0/5): 4, 4, 5, 3, 5/

Chris Heston - (0% DOM, 0% DIS; 0:0/0): /

Jake Peavy - (20% DOM, 40% DIS; 1:2/5): 3, 0, 2, 4, 0/

Jeff Samardzija - (60% DOM, 0% DIS; 3:0/5): 3, 4, 3, 4, 4/

Giants Season overall - 48% DOM, 16% DIS out of 25 games counted (12:4/25)
Giants Month of April - 48% DOM, 16% DIS out of 25 games counted (12:4/25)

The month of April for PQS was worse than we have been used to from our starting pitchers for a long time now, but common for the past year, unfortunately, and hence why we acquired Cueto and Samardzija. (FYI, all of this commentary is about their 5th Rotation Turn as well, as it worked that way this season)

And that has been a great success, as Cueto led the rotation in DOM starts in April with 4, followed by Bumgarner and Samardzija with 3 DOM. Both Peavy and Cain only had 1 DOM start. And this is mirrored in DIS starts, with Peavy and Cain having 2 DIS starts each, and the rest of the rotation had none.

Again, with Bumgarner as our ace, he got off to a slow start, but without DIS starts as in prior seasons. First three starts, he had only one DOM. It should be noted, however, that he was suffering from the effects of the flu in these first three starts, something he would not cop to, but it should still be noted. He actually did note that he's been struggling to find his mechanics and so far hasn't.

Despite the slow start, and like last season, he righted himself by mid-month and has a streak of 5 PQS starts, including the first start of May. But unlike last season, he lost to the Dodgers twice, unable to out-duel Kershaw as he did last season. He actually did beat Kershaw in his first matchup, but the bullpen coughed up the win. The second time, he was just out pitched (again, I note that he was suffering the effects of the flu in this start).

Being at .500, there were a lot of losses to spread around, as well as wins. And that is reflected in the SP ERA of 4.81 overall. Most of the pitchers were good, though. Cueto led the staff with 2.65 ERA, with Bumgarner at 3.00 ERA, not far behind. Samardzija did his thing: in spite of his great 60% DOM/0% DIS, he had a 3.86 ERA.

However, Peavy and Cain have stunk it up for the most part, so far. 8.61 ERA for Peavy, 7.00 ERA for Cain. Both had K/BB which had been good before but with the strikeout explosion, their 2.43 and 2.33 K/BB, respectively, isn't all that good anymore. Samardzija was only at 2.60 himself, but Bumgarner had a 3.80 K/BB and Cueto a 6.60 K/BB.

From what I've read, it sounds like Cain is physically sound, but is searching for some extra stamina. His delayed spring training seems to have put him behind everyone more than had been thought or represented through the media.

I had thought it would be easy for him once healthy, but clearly I was very wrong. Physically, he seems fine, and he was reported to be throwing easy in the low 90's in his recent starts, so the velocity is there. And the start of games have gone well for him, it's when he gets to the middle innings that things have gone bad for him, and that is very encouraging, seems like once he gets over the hump, he could be the Cain of old that we all love and respect.

But his inconsistencies would be more tolerable if Peavy had been at least pitching well, but it is arguable who has been worse, Cain or Peavy. As well as the top three has been pitching, you can't have two starters who are pitching like 5th starters and do well overall, as there will be times our top guys get out-pitched, or not get supported by the bullpen, or just plain not do well, it happens, they aren't robots.

And Peavy again disappoints to start off the season. Seems to be a pattern for him, when we got him from Boston, he had a horrible start to the season, and he basically blamed it on their catchers, raving about how great our catchers were, including the backups. But here we are, two seasons later, same pattern, start off the season pretty bad. The only great thing is that sometime mid-season, he finally gets right and is pretty much great, until he gets into the playoffs, where something just goes wrong for me (my guess is that he just gets too ramped up to be his good self).

Not that it's entirely their fault. Brown has a much higher ERA than Posey does, though Buster has a huge advantage in that he catches all of Bumgarner's starts. Plus, Cain's ERA is doable at 4.96 with Brown, but 10.12 with Posey. But for Peavy, he's bad with both, 7.58 ERA with Posey, 13.50 ERA with Brown.

But the pattern holds for the better pitchers too (obviously, since Brown overall has been worse). With Cueto, he has a 2.37 ERA with Posey (though that will change greatly with the Cincy start) vs. 3.86 ERA with Brown. And for Samardzija, he has a 3.32 ERA with Posey and 4.61 ERA with Brown. This is probably why Bochy has been mostly having Brown catch whoever happens to be pitching (besides Bumgarner), to spread the pain instead of forcing Brown on one or two other starters.

And, of course, all of this is SSS.

April 2015 Comments

I'm sure that there are fans very disappointed with the results so far, but I think things will look better going forward. In spite of all the bad pitching, the Giants were 12-13 in April because our offense averaged 4.96 runs scored per game. And that was with Posey and Crawford, our two top RBI guys from 2015, hitting pretty poorly with RISP so far (they were a combined 5 for 40 in RISP up to the game on May 2nd, when Crawford got a couple of big hits). If most people stay healthy - and we've already lost some time for Posey, Panik, and now Pagan (again!) - the offense should continue to stoke the fire in the engine.

Although their record is reflective of their Pythagorean (124 runs scored vs. 121 runs allowed), the Giants underperformed in April. A 48% DOM/16% DIS is actually good, and the dichotomy is shown when examining the Giants record by performance. Of course, when they get a DOM start they win a lot (10-2) and when they get a DIS start they lose a lot (0-4). Their problem has been the MID starts: 2-7.

Normally, MID starts are usually somewhere in the middle, around .500: .521 winning percentage in 2015, .455 in 2014. Of course, the problem is that the MID starts so far has resulted in 6.12 ERA, which tells the bigger story about why they are 2-7 in such starts: because they have been disaster results. They had a 4.45 ERA in MID starts in 2015.

And a lot of this can be attributed to very high BABIP for our starters, as that is where Peavy and Cain have suffered in terms of PQS, in addition to not lasting at least 6 IP (need 6 IP to get 1 PQS added, need hits equal to IP or less than to get another added; without those two, best can get is 3 PQS or less). Cain had a .357 BABIP while Peavy had a .440 BABIP. Lots of problems solved if they both can regress to the .300 BABIP mean.

However, bad pitchers eventually are just hittable, BABIP mean or no BABIP mean. So we don't know yet whether this is a blip that they can pitch out of or a sign of end times. Peavy is third in the rotation in strikes thrown (64.3%), edging out Samardzija (63.9%), with Cain last but not that far behind Samardzija (63.5%). Cain is actually third on the team in strikes thrown looking (17.51%), edging out Samardzija (17.48%), but Peavy is a whole percentage point less (16.50%). However, for swinging strikes, Peavy almost leads the team with 11.0% (Bum had 11.3%), and Cain brought up the rear with only 7.6% (Samardzija didn't get a lot of swing throughs either, only 9.1%). So it looks like they might be just missing spots right now, but their arms are relatively accurate, or at least not any worse than what Samardzija has been doing.

Given how powerful it is to outpitch the other starter, I've started calculating how many PQS wins and losses (and ties) that happen in starts. Per that, the Giants should be around 17-8, not 12-13. This is further supported by the poor results in MID starts and lack of wins in DIS starts, which should have ended up around 15-10.

However, per Game Score (also something new I can calculate and play around with), they are basically where they should be: average 49 Game Score. As some might remember, I took at look at Game Score for an analysis of Kyle Crick's performances, as PQS don't work so well when the pitcher rarely makes even 5 IP, let along 6 IP, and linked to some good studies in there. As I noted in that post, Game Score can be used in a similar way as PQS, in terms of wins (DOM starts), losses (DIS starts), or "ties" (MID starts), so to be clear, here is my view on PQS vs. Game Score: Game Score tells you how well the pitcher did, PQS tries to tell you how well the pitcher did sabermetrically. Kind of like the different between Baseball-Reference.com and Fangraphs.

Thus, Game Score is a nice stat to use to examine how well a pitcher did, plus give a much finer tool for comparing pitcher's best games, but misses when it is a matter of the baseball bouncing the wrong way in the game, which PQS catches better, I believe. For example, a team could get two great 60 Game Scores, but then a 30, and that averages out to simply a 50 Game Score. A team should have a great season doing that in every series, but according to Game Score, the team is simply average.

That is the granularity (or lack thereof) that I love about PQS over Game Score. A bad game is just a bad game, it does not make other good games look bad, as this example did. It is kind of like how a bad ERA is not always indicative of how well a pitcher had done, one really bad start will plump up the ERA, even if all the other starts were good. Still, even if we look only at Game Score Wins and Losses, the Giants are still under .500 (9-11, with 5 ties; I don't really like the term "ties" in this context, as it suggests what the other team did, I would prefer "coin toss" but that's not as short and sweet...). So by Game Score, the Giants rotation has not been doing that well overall.

Still, the pitching has been great for the top 3. Cueto was at a great 80% DOM in April, and both Bumgarner and Samardzija were at 60% DOM. Plus all three were able to avoid a DIS start, which is key to keeping your overall ERA on the lower side. In other words, 60% of our rotation is doing well, and I think that means we are in a good spot as long as they continue pitching well. And our back end starters start to pitch better.

Overall, this just goes to show what can happen in SSS. The Giants are currently 14-13, and that works out to .571 winning percentage at home and .462 winning percentage on the road. Given that the goal every season is to be .600 at home (49 wins) and .500 on the road (41 wins), they are not that far behind goal, which would put them at 15-12 right now if they were on goal. Just one win instead of a sweep in Colorado would put us there. I would like things to be better, but I'm OK with where we are now, we are in pretty good shape overall, I think.

Should There be Changes to the Rotation?

With Lincecum scheduling his showcase (finally), there are the same reported 20 teams who are interested (making me suspect this number might just be thrown out there by Lincecum's reps), and thus there could be an alternative, as none of our closest SP prospects are doing all that great right now.

I still think Lincecum should be a reliever and not a starter now, that is best for his longevity and results. However, I think there is some chance that he could still be a very effective starter, especially with reports that his velocity is back into the low 90's (90-91 reported by Heyman, who appears to be Lincecum's agent's mouth piece). And the Giants are attending, as they have stated their interest a number of times, and he has stated a number of times how he would love to be back with the Giants, but he really wants to be a starter.

Here is how I think the Giants should play it.

First off, if any team offers more than $5M to start, let him go. Under that, I think it's worth a shot to try to get him.
If all the teams want him for a reliever, then the Giants should be in like crazy, he would be great as our long reliever/super utility guy.
If a team wants him as a starter for under $5M, then I think the Giants should seriously consider pushing Peavy either onto the DL (he was like Hudson this spring, when asked how he's feeling, he never said straight out that he's feeling good, he said he felt better than last spring - and who wouldn't, his back was out and he still tried to pitch - so I think he could use some additional rest and rehab to get into playing shape, seems to take him 2-3 months) or make him the long reliever (but also kind of super-utility, bringing him in high leverage situations every once in a while) and insert Lincecum in the rotation. Scenarios:

Lincecum does well: that's obviously good
Lincecum tires out like he did in previous seasons: put Peavy back into rotation, make Lincecum long reliever/super utility
Lincecum does OK, just middling: Up to Giants, but I would put Peavy back in as he was great last season after returning, and make Lincecum the long reliever/super utility guy.
Lincecum does poorly: we gave it a shot, put Peavy back into the rotation, and the Giants could try Lincecum in long relief, but if he continues to struggle, we DFA him. I've seen some people worry about doing something like that to a great icon like Lincecum, but I don't think it taints anything, he tried, he failed, we gave it a shot. That's life.

Given how well, as I've documented here, Lincecum has actually done before either tiring out or losing his mechanics, I think he's worth a shot. Has nothing to do with his past other than that I think he has done well if used right in recent seasons and we can use a long reliever, and if he can start, all the better, and $5M is pocket change for an MLB team in today's game.

It's worth a try to get the Lincecum the reliever we got in the 2012 playoffs. THAT is a weapon. And with his rubber arm, he can pitch often and in different roles. Plus he's still young, and he could be a linchpin in the bullpen for the next decade, if he's good (and I doubt he'll showcase himself if he's at least throwing strikes). And our bullpen is in flux anyway, perhaps he can help steady it.

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