Since we all know that the normal All Star teams are the equivilent of student body elections - but what would the teams have looked like had they been based soley on players performance in the first half of this year ?

I took the WAR leaders at each position in each lead. I carried one backup player at each position, 6 starters, 6 releivers, and 6 generic OF's.

Here's what I got. Interesting how it deviates from who was actually selected. Players within groups are in order

NL:

Starters: Tim Lincecum, Dan Haren, Javier Vasquez, Josh Johnson, Ubaldo Jiminez, Joel Pineiro

Releivers: Johnothan Broxton, Rafael Soriano, Heath Bell, Brian Wilson, Chad Qualls, Todd Coffey

Catcher: Brian McCann, Yadier Molina

1B: Albert Pujols, Prince Fielder

2B: Chase Utley, Freddy Sanchez

SS: Hanley Ramierez, Ryan Theriot

3B: Ryan Zimmerman, Pablo Sandoval

OF: Matt Kemp, Justin Upton, Raul Ibanez, Colby Rasmus, Ryan Braun, Jason Werth

AL:

Starters: Zach Greinke, Justin Verlander, Roy Halladay, Felix Hernandez, Josh Beckett, Cliff Lee

Releivers: Andrew Bailey, Joe Nathan, David Aradsma, Mike Wuertz, J.P. Howell, Mariano Rivera

C: Joe Mauer, Victor Martinez

1B: Kevin Youkalis, Justin Morneau

2B: Ben Zorbrist, Ian Kinsler

SS: Marco Scutaro, Derek Jeter

3B: Evan Longoria, Brandon Inge

OF: Ichiro Suzuki, Franklin Gutierrez, Carl Crawford, Torii Hunter, Juan Rivera, Nelson Cruz

It has been observed casually that Zito may pitch better w/o Molina behind the dish. I decided to take a look at this and see if there was any merit.

I looked at the last 2.5 years of Zito's career (time/ Giants) and I compared component stats for Molina and Not Molina. I'm not really sure how to post a table unfortuntely... See if this works...

First: Some explaining. Because this data from BBR is by PA, or batters faced - not IP, I had to make an adjustment to get FIP and HR/9. To do so, I divded PA by 4.3 - which is approximately the league average # of batters faced per inning for qualified starters this year. While this probably shouldn't be used to compare these #'s to other IP based #'s, it's perfectly acceptable for comparing to each other - and I think fairly representative of the #'s in general.

What you see is that while the difference in BB% and K% between Bengie and Not Bengie is small,  the difference in HR/9 is profound. This leads to a significant deviation in FIP.

Now, there certainly may be other factors at play - and it's entirely possible that this is all just an illusion - but its also possible that Bengie's pitch calling or some other element of his game is causing Zito to give up more home runs.

This has been observed by the casual fan and is somewhat supported by the statistical evidence. I think there is also a plausible cause for this in that Bengie does have control over pitch type and location.

Thoughts?

EDIT: New Table. Zito, Cain, LIncecum, Sanchez.

Not as bad as it looked.

7 ER in 3.2 innings for a wonderful ERA of 17.18. That looks pretty bad. However, watching the game last night I thought he was generally pitching pretty well - so I decided to look a little deeper.

3 K's, 0 BB, and 2 HR's. FIP of 8.65. Still really bad, but not nearly as bad. Factor in the .770 BABIP and frankly, Zito kinda got screwed. On a night where ATT park turned into pre-humidor Coors field, Zito gave up a pair of gopherballs and got both completely screwed by BABIP as well as sequence of events. After he gave up that last HR, he also looked PISSED... yelling on the mound - etc. I've never seen mr calm and cool like that before.

He didn't walk anyone and he was striking guys out. He was really not noticeably worse in this start than he was on the 24th against Seattle or the 19th against Washington. In fact, Matt Cain had almost as poor of a start on the 9th at Arizona and an even WORSE start on May 2nd at Colorado (10.70 FIP).

So what's my point? Don't flip out. Zito had 6 starts last year that were in the same catagory of suck as this last one, so it's hardly a surprise.

Zito got shelled last night - baseball is a funny sport and these things happen. Johan got shelled the other day, too. I still think Zito is doing pretty well this year.

It would be great if someone can look at pitch F/X and see if there was anything out of whack with his movement/location/velocity, or if he truly just got unlucky.

(Or how I learned to stop worrying and love SSS).

Currently, TI is batting .250/.327/.330 for a whopping OPS of .657 and a OPS+ of 72. The Giants as a whole have an OPS+ of 39 at 1b relative to the rest of baseball.

Ouch. Clearly the blackest hole in the lineup.

So after TI's big game yesterday, I thought I'd look at his detailed stats and see if I could figure out what was going on.

I mainly looked at HR related stuff, because I can remember several deep fly balls that he has hit this year that, if either in a different park OR different conditions would have certainly been out. He's seemed a little snakebit so far this year with the long ball. One in SD in particular was about 2 feet from landing in the short porch, but instead landed in Giles' glove.

I was right. While his FB % is high - 40%... his HR/FB is incredibly low. A measly 3.8%. His K rate and BB rate are essentially the same as last year, as is his BABIP.

In a similarly sized sample last year, TI hit .274/.337/.432. A line I think today we would all be happy with (and combined with his above average defense, a line that might make him close to a league average 1b and certainly not the teams biggest problem.)

If we go ahead and regress his HR/FB rate, it gives us approximately 3 HR's thusfar (which, coincidentally, is how many he had last year w/ approximately the same sized sample, and how many I would think is reasonable based on watching him play.)

If I then pretend that essentially 2 of his deep fly balls had eeked over the fence instead of being caught for outs, his line this year looks like .270/.342/.410.

OPS of .742.

Again, a line I think we would all be a lot happier with. What does this mean? I think Travis is who we thought he was, and his supressed line so far this season is due essentially to a lack of power (everything else looks identical to last year, K%, BB%, OBP%, Etc.).

Because of the size of the sample, his lack of power can be very easily attributed to a little bad luck.

This also means that I am less enthusiastic about making a trade for 1b, because I think TI is probably capable of doing reasonably well there for us, assuming we continue to have faith in him and maybe find a reasonable platoon mate (Jesus?).

Also: Warning on Nick Johnson, benefactor of a .395 BABIP so far this season.

And what makes me a little hopeful for the rest of the season.

cue irrational exuberance:

Patience. Not everyone, all the time - but I saw a lot of good at bats. 5 walks for the game is great, even if it is mostly due to Milwaukee not being able to find the strike zone. I didn't get the sense that we were getting ourselves out, which was prevalent last season. Especially w/ RISP the team as a whole seemed more deliberate.

Bullpen not named Hinshaw throwing strikes: For the most part, we wern't walking guys. Joey Martinez got beat up a little, but primarily because ground balls found holes.

Rowand: Please Rowand, have a big April. Given the # of games this month v. the division, that would do a lot for this team. His swing on that HR looked balanced, and I'm hoping he is about to go on a hot streak.

Sandoval: Looks like he can play 3rd okay, and I loved the heads-up play to nab Cameron trying to advance. Also, still hitting it seems.

Ishikawa: Dude might hit this year. Looked patient and balanced at the plate, and was about 15 degrees in either direction away from a grand slam. Maybe next time, TI. Also looked good on defense out there.

Martinez again: I'm a big supporter of the Joey Martinez: Long Man. Experiment. This might work out really well - dude throws strikes and has good movement. Got unlucky on a few groundballs but that will regress. 

Affeldt: Wilson better look out, because I had no idea Affeldt threw that hard and had stuff that nasty. They could become quite the 8th/9th duo this year.

Bochy: Resisted the urge to PH Aurilia/Uribe/etc. I thought the game was managed well and the right players were used. Going with Martinez on opening day w/ the game on the line was a big vote of confidence in the kid, and I think it worked out pretty well. I'm glad Bochy's veteran love didn't cloud his judgement there. (And way to pick up the kid, Rowand.)

I also was glad he pulled Tim when he did instead of trying to do something stupid like get him through 5. He wasn't pitching well, and his teammates picked him up.  That's why you have the long man. Tim will be fine.

I also liked that he used Wilson in a non-save situation. Hinshaw probably could have gotten out of there fine (Hell, he had a 4 run lead) but at the same time the willingness to use Wilson as he should be used was refreshing.

Points of concern:

Burriss: looked a  little over matched at the plate, but I hope that doesn't last.

Sandoval: had an at bat that I HOPE doesn't become more and more common - striking out swinging on a pitch 3 feet out of the strike zone. He's going to have to adjust, I hope he can.

Hinshaw: Throw strikes, dude. Your curveball is a thing of beauty but if you can't get your fastball over the plate you are going to be back in Fresno faster than you can say Justin Miller.

Grant's marquee topic today brought this to mind - why are we all here? Punch and pie are nowhere to be found. How did you find it and why did you stay?

I found my way to McC at the beginning of the 2008 season. I had actually wanted to start a Giants blog and was going about the process of doing so. I was perusing around other shan't-be-named Giants baseball related websites when I somehow stumbled into this place. Turns out I liked it, I liked it a lot.

In fact, I liked it so much I realized I would be an idiot to try to start my own lame blog and have to fight with this place for readership. In a stroke of brilliant self serving intuition, I decided my eventual goals of writing about Giants baseball and having someone actually _read_ it would be more more readily served here.

So here I am, a year later, still indulging myself in the captive audience of McC. Even with this very post I urinate in the ears (eyes?) of the listeners (readers?) and watch them happily lap it up. 

It also didn't hurt that I started a new job in January 2008 and have a lot of free time at work as a result.

So tell me folks - we are all here for a reason, what is yours?

Also, I was just sent this picture from the meet & greet @ the Brit. I don't know what kinda f'ed up lense the photographer was using, but there's only two recognizable people in the photo, and one of us doesn't have any Cy Youngs on the mantle.