I feel it's worth mentioning something that people need to consider when you're using WAR to compare players and also when you're talking about whether to move Sandoval to 1B or not. WAR is calculated using positional adjustments, which are a good way of determining the overall ability of a player or when comparing players who play at different positions. It's very good if you're looking at two players in a vacuum but troubles arise if you'e doing a comparison in a team context.

In the Giants situation that can cause trouble if you're comparing a 1B and a 3B using straight WAR. The reason for this is that 3B get a 1.5 WAR boost over 1B because they can play 3B and so they should. In the Giants situation they have a player who can play 3B (Sandoval) and so the positional effect isn't anywhere near as big.

How big is the effect? Well that depends on how Sandoval's defense rates at the two positions. So far he has a UZR/150 of -3.6 which is only in a small sample size, but seems reasonable. I'll take that as his true level for the moment but you can adjust accordingly if you disagree. In order for the positional 1.5 WAR adjustment to be true, Sandoval would therefore need to be a +11.4 1B. Now that just isn't feasible as no 1B is that good defensively and so the Sandoval will "lose value" at 1B.

Now how good defensively will Sandoval be at 1B? Well he should be pretty decent although i don't think he's going to a league leader defensively. Three examples of well renowned defensive 1B are Adrian Gonzalez, Mark Teixeira and Casey Kotchman, they have career UZR/150 of 0.1, 1.7 and 4.4. They average to around +2 per 150 games and so lets say that Sandoval is above average and can put up a UZR/150 of around 1.4 (as that's a convenient number).

That means that that Sandoval will gain around 5 runs defensively from the move to 1B which is nowhere near the 15 runs the positional adjustment provides. What that means is that if we were to sign a 2B/3B his actual effective WAR (as in how good he'd make the team) is quite possibly 1 WAR less than is actual stated WAR. So a free agent 2B/3B who you think is a 2.5  WAR player might actually only effectively be a 1.5 WAR player when compared to a 2.5 WAR 1B. Or the improvement over Garkokawa might seems like it's worthwile and a 1.5 win improvement when actually it's only a 0.5 win improvement. So a pretty rough rule of thumb is to subtract 1 WAR (or however much you think) from the value of a 2B/3B if you're using WAR, to get their effective value to the team.

Now the numbers aren't exact and you can argue about the specifics but if you're using WAR and the like you've got to consider the effect on the team as a whole and not just on the single players. The Giants may not really understand how moving a player down the defensive spectrum has an effect on the team, and assume that it doesn't matter whether Sandoval plays 1B or 3B but the reality is that the two players you're comparing aren't being compared to the same baseline.

Firstly, I'd like to apologize for the amount of fanposts I've made recently, a quiet couple of weeks with work and the end of the season have meant I've come up with a few ideas. This post nicely links to the one below which discusses the topic of our favourite Giants 1B.

If i were to ask the question "Which position have we got the worst offensive production from (relative to position) over the last 10 years?" I'm sure the majority would say 1B. So this topic is nothing groundbreaking, I'm merely going to investigate whether that's indeed true and the reasons behind it.

Has our 1B production been that bad?

The easiest way to answer this question is to look at the sOPS+ of each position per year. It basically takes the park adjusted OPS and adjusts for the position (so an sOPS+ of 100 is the league average for the position you're looking at in that year). I've taken the numbers from baseball reference and worked out the average for each position over the last ten years. The results are as follows:

1. LF: sOPS+ = 150
2. 2B: sOPS+ = 111
3. C: sOPS+ = 101
4. SS: sOPS+ = 98
5. RF: sOPS+ = 94
6. CF: sOPS+ = 93
7. 3B: sOPS+ = 90
8. 1B: sOPS+ = 81

Overall that works out to be an OPS+ of 102 so we've been slightly above average offensively over the last 10 years (obviously due to an above average first half and below average second half of the decade). On the whole there's not a huge amount of surprise in those numbers. Our LF production was always going to be top due to the fact we had Bonds for a number of years, although it does illustrate just how good Bonds was. The fact that 2B was our next best position again isn't very surprising considering it includes some great years from Kent and some solid ones from Durham.

Clearly by far the worst production came from 1B which is in-line with my expectations at least. To illustrate that point further we've only had one season (2004) in the last 10 years in which our 1B production has been average or above. After the jump I'll illustrate the pretty obvious reason why our production has been so poor from 1B.

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I thought that it'd be useful to contrast my last post with a post about how it's easy to spend a lot of money and make big changes only to find out that it makes no improvement to the team. Again, like last time, this is not a projection of what will happen, merely a look at the performance of the last couple of years.

Corner Infield - Are you really improving the offense?

The following analysis is purely looking at the offensive side of the equation. We all criticize our poor offense and one of the main aims this off-season should be trying to upgrade it. In order to do that though we will have to focus resources on that ares. The following is not meant to suggest that the additions are worthless or that we shouldn't make them, just that the may not actually improve the offense at all.

Ryan Garko. You can argue as to whether he's classed as an incumbent or not but he's the baseline with which I'm going to make comparisons. Over the last two seasons he's been worth 3.7 runs above average (all runs are taken per 500 AB). Over his career he has a wOBA of .347

1. Hank Blalock. I've not heard his name so much on here but it is one name that's come up in the past with regards to the Giants. Over the last 2 seasons he's been worth -1.3 runs above average. For his career he has a wOBA of .340. Difference = - 5 runs (- 0.07 career wOBA)
2. Adrian Beltre. His name often comes up and he's been a player I've been very interested in us acquiring previously. Obviously his value comes from his superb defense. Signing him would move Sandoval to 1B which would cause a drop in value. Over the last 2 seasons he's been worth -0.6 runs above average. For his career he has a wOBA of .335. Difference = - 4.3 runs (-0.012 career wOBA)
3. Chone Figgins. He's one of the bigger names on the free agency market this year and I've seen a few people who want us to bring him in. He's difficult to peg offensively as he's been very streaky over his career and again would involve moving Sandoval to 1B. Over the last two years he's been worth 6.8 runs above average. For his career he has a wOBA of .339. Difference = 3.1 runs (-0.08 career wOBA)

Now obviously the second two have defensive advantages and are better overall players but there's a very good chance that adding any of the above players wouldn't actually improve our offense at all. That's not to say that we should ignore them, but be aware that the money we'd be spending would be on run prevention and not towards improving our offense.

Outfield - Are you actually improving the team?

The following looks at the opposite side of the spectrum, the possibility of signing offensive players who give back the runs on defense. Again it's not to suggest that you don't want to spend resources on offensive players, but you have to be careful of wasting money on players who aren't going to improve the team with regards to winning games.

Fred Lewis. The incumbent example I'm going to use is everyones favourite. Over the last two seasons he's been worth 2.0 WAR (all WAR are taken per 500 AB due to variable opportunities).

1. Vladimir Guerrero. An old favourite. Had a down year offensively this season, but poor defense has hampered him in recent years. Over the last two seasons he's been worth 1.73 WAR (per 500 AB). Difference = - 0.27 WAR
2. Bobby Abreu. Recently turned down an extension with the Angels and a possible free agent. An welcome upgrade offensively but poor defense takes away a good portion of his value. Been worth 1.62 WAR over the last two seasons. Difference = - 0.38 WAR
3. Jermaine Dye. Mentioned often on here (as a player to avoid) as a free agent. Disappointing offense in two of the last three years and terrible defense make him not very valuable. Over the last two seasons he's been worth 0.73 WAR.  Difference = - 1.27 WAR

Obviously improving the offense is important but defense needs considering otherwise the money you're spending may not actually be improving the team at all.

Conclusions

I guess the first important thing to note is not to spend decent money for marginal (or non-existent) upgrades. It's easy to get seduced by a potential offensive upgrade but that upgrade might not be as big as you'd hope (see Dye/Guerrero downturns) and may come with an even bigger cost on defense. The second conclusion to make is to make sure you know what you're paying for. There's nothing wrong with spending money on a Beltre or Figgins in order to help improve the teams run prevention. But also don't be surprised if you end up without upgrading the offense. That's the balancing act that is the tricky part of any of our off-season moves.

In the previous post i set out to investigate whether we under-performed or over-performed our projections both from an individual and team perspective. In this post I'm going to undertake a similar analysis but instead looking at the pitching staff. It's a bit trickier with pitching as there are other factors to disentangle, but to do the analysis, I've looked at FIP.

The projections I've used are an average of the Marcel, CHONE and ZIPS projections again removing Marcel for players with limited major league experience. In order to keep consistent with the previous post, positive run differences correspond to an over-achievement. The pitchers are listed by number of innings.

Outperformed Their Projection

Underperformed Their Projection

• Matt Cain                    FIP = 3.89, projected FIP = 3.74, Run difference =   -3.6
• Jonathon Sanchez:  FIP = 4.17, projected FIP = 3.99, Run difference =   -3.3
• Randy Johnson        FIP = 4.91, projected FIP = 3.97, Run difference =   -9.8
• Bob Howry                 FIP = 3.85, projected FIP = 3.84, Run difference =  -0.1
• Justin Miller               FIP = 4.91, projected FIP = 3.65, Run difference =  -7.9
• Brad Penny               FIP = 4.35, projected FIP = 4.31, Run difference =   -0.2
• Joey Martinez           FIP = 4.86, projected FIP = 4.64, Run difference =   -0.7
• Ryan Sadowski        FIP = 4.72, projected FIP = 4.44, Run difference =   -0.9

A quick look shows that it's more balanced that the offense, with around half under-performing their projections and around half over-performing them. If you total up the difference then you can a over-performance of the projections by around 22 runs. Like in the offensive case, an adjustment is needed when we're talking about the team as a whole. A quick back of the envelope calculation suggests doing so means we outperformed our component statistics by around 9 runs (taking into account defensive numbers from UZR).

That works out to an over-performance of around 30 runs in total. if we were to combine that with the offensive numbers then we performed very similarly (in terms of RA/RS) to what the projections suggested in pre-season. Converting that into an expected win record we ended up winning 2-3 games more than projected.

In the latest post on Extra Baggs, the question is raised as to whether we underperformed on offensive? Now, it's difficult to say whether we underperformed because there's uncertainties over the true talent level. One way of looking into this question is using the pre-season projections to see how well we matched our expectations both individually or as a team.

To do this i'm going to list every non-pitcher who had more than 50 PA's and compare his projection with his performance. To calculate the projections I've taken an average of the Marcel, CHONE, ZIPS and Oliver projections, choosing not to use the Bill James one as it breeds  controversy. For players with minimal experience prior to this year I've taken the average of the last 3 as Marcel doesn't include minor league numbers. The players are listed by PA's and as well as actual and projected wOBA I've also added the corresponding run difference over the amount of Plate appearances that player received.

Outperformed Their Projection

• Pablo Sandoval:     wOBA = .396, projected wOBA = .335, Run difference =  33.6
• Juan Uribe:               wOBA = .351, projected wOBA = .302, Run difference =  18.4
• Andres Torres:         wOBA = .379, projected wOBA = .314, Run difference =  9.6

Underperformed Their Projection

• Randy Winn:            wOBA = .302, projected wOBA = .335, Run difference = -16.9
• Aaron Rowand:       wOBA = .323, projected wOBA = .337, Run difference = -15.4
• Bengie Molina:          wOBA = .308, projected wOBA = .321, Run difference =  -5.9
• Edgar Renteria:       wOBA = .283, projected wOBA = .332, Run difference = -21.5
• Travis Ishikawa:       wOBA = .313, projected wOBA = .329, Run difference =  -5.1
• Fred Lewis:               wOBA = .327, projected wOBA = .334, Run difference =  -2.0
• Eugenio Velez:        wOBA = .309, projected wOBA = .315, Run difference =  -1.5
• Nate Schierholtz:     wOBA = .301, projected wOBA = .346, Run difference = -12.1
• Emmanuel Burriss: wOBA = .258, projected wOBA = .294, Run difference =  -7.9
• Eli Whiteside:           wOBA = .266, projected wOBA = .277, Run difference =  -1.3
• Rich Aurilia:               wOBA = .236, projected wOBA = .318, Run difference =  -9.5
• Ryan Garko:             wOBA = .289, projected wOBA = .342, Run difference =  -5.9
• Freddy Sanchez:     wOBA = .274, projected wOBA = .321, Run difference =  -4.4
• John Bowker:           wOBA = .271, projected wOBA = .320, Run difference =  -3.1
• Matt Downs:             wOBA = .231, projected wOBA = .322, Run difference =  -4.7
• Kevin Frandsen:      wOBA = .182, projected wOBA = .323, Run difference =  -6.6

There are a number of interesting things to note one of which is it's clear than we had more players under-performing (16/19) their projections than over-performing (3/19). If you total up the differences you end up with -62.0 for the team as a whole. If you're dealing with the team as a whole, you have to include the variance in team totals and individual components. According to calculations we outperformed our components by around 30 runs, so that means we under-performed our offensive expectations by around 30 runs.

On the whole a difference of 30 runs over a whole team isn't a huge amount and shows that the projections on a team wide scale were pretty accurate. Of course that tells us how we under-performed our pre-season expectations this year but it doesn't tell us anything about how we'll perform next season. The projections for these players next year will, on the whole be reduced due to their poor performances this year. There will be a lot of changes in terms of personnel and playing time next year and it'll be interesting to see how the projections are when they come out. I'll done a similar analysis for the pitching which I'll post in a day or two.

As this site has seemed a little downbeat recently i thought I'd introduce a fanpost to remind people that whilst our offense is awful, there is hope for change. Firstly, it's easy to forget at a specific moment in time but things change very quickly in baseball.  For example, there's a good chance that only one of the starters on opening day last year (Rowand) will be back on our team next year. So, whilst our offense is poor now there's no guarantee it will be that way forever (cue snarky Sabean comment).

Before i get on to the main part of this post, a disclaimer. This is NOT in any way a projection of what will happen, it is merely a demonstration of how changing around a poor offense isn't a lost cause. As a point of reference the Giants scored 657 runs last season, with the average in the NL being 718. That means, we needed to have scored another 61 runs in order for us to have been league average on offense. The calculations below use the offensive runs above average from Fangraphs and are only very rough & approximate. Below is a number of hypothetical changes to the roster and the effect they would have had on the offense last season.

The "Big Bats"

1. Prince Fielder / Adrian Gonzalez. I've seen reference a few times to the fact that we're not one bat away from a competent offense and I'd like to point out that that's not necessarily true. Fielder and Gonzalez were last season around 75 runs better on offense than our Ishikawa/Aurilia/Garko combination. So adding one "big bat" could very easily have the effect of bringing our offense up to standard. Of course players of that caliber are almost impossible to acquire, but we're talking in hypotheticals here. Difference: 75 runs.
   
2. Matt Holliday / Jason Bay. These are obviously possible targets as they're available in free agency this year. Holliday / Bay were pretty close offensively last season and would have been approximately 50 runs better offensively than Winn was last year. That wouldn't have been enough to bring us up to league average but it would have gone a long way. Difference: 50 runs.

See what effect younger players (Bowker/Posey) could have had as well as the effect our trade targets (Sanchez/Garko) could have had after the jump.

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Often pitchers get categorized into what type of starter pitchers are, whether they're an ace, a fifth starter, or third starter at best! It's one way to try classify pitchers, but often it seems to be used lazily (as are terms like fourth outfielders) and often gets biased by what type of team you're looking at (for example, Giants starters are negatively biased due to our strong pitching).

I noticed, and haven't seen mentioned, an article about this on Lookout landing, attempting to define the boundaries of this categories, using tRA+. If you're unfamilar with tRA+ then there's an introduction here.

With respect to the Giants it implies the following categories for our starting rotation:

Lincecum this year has a tRA+ of 152, which is obviously superb. Unsurprisingly that classifies him as a well above average #1 starter. Last year he had a tRA+ of 139 which would still have placed him as an above average #1 starter.

Cain this year has a tRA+ of 111, which is ok, but classifies him as about an average #2 starter. The interesting thing about Cain though, is though that the previous 2 seasons, he's had a tRA+ of 132 & 133, which puts him as a slightly above average #1 starter. Why his tRA+ is so low this year, i'm not sure, but looking at his numbers it looks to be down to the fact that his LD rate is higher this year (20.7 compared to 16.1/16.2) and his GB rate is lower (32.6 compared to 38.6/39.0)

Sanchez this year has a tRA+ of 113, which is decent, & classifies him as about an average #2 starter. Obviously that's a lot better than his ERA suggests, and Sanchez tends to have underperformed his peripherals quite a lot this year.

Zito has had a tRA+ of 92, down slightly from 96, and that puts him as an above average fourth starter.

Correia has had a tRA+ of 83, which is around the #4/#5 starter barrier. Last year his tRA+ was 140 which is pretty impressive, although obviously he was a reliever for a lot of the year, and it's very inconsistant with his previous performances.

Tthe Giants have renewed their affiliation with the Conneticut Defenders for another two years, so it looks like Alderson & company will be there next year. It's a shame, as i'd have prefered them go to Carolina instead but they're going to stay put. I don't whether the rumours of them moving away from CT are true or whether we chose to stay or were unable to get another affiliation. What are people's thoughts?

Noticed another article about us & Joe Crede (Sorry for inflicting upon you!). It doesn't give any new information about whether the trade will happen or not, but does give info on what both teams may be looking for in the deal & how far apart we seem.

San Francisco, the most likely suitor for Crede, and the Sox have disparate evaluations that carry ramifications for both sides.

A talent evaluator familiar with both teams said the Sox were miffed the Giants' offers for Crede included since-released pitcher Scott Williamson; pitcher Randy Messenger, who was optioned to Triple-A Fresno last week; and veteran outfielder Dave Roberts.

The source said the Giants believe Sox general manager Ken Williams' asking price -- one of the Giants' top prospects and a serviceable young reliever -- was too steep for a 29-year-old infielder coming off season-ending back surgery.

Story from Chicago Tribune

At least we seem to be offering around value for Crede (In other words, garbage) rather than something useful. If the White Sox are really expecting a top prospect & servicable reliever then that's ridiculous & you'd have to think even Sabean isn't that stupid! Knowing him he'll cave & offer up something useful, but hopefully we stick with our offers of garbage or just stop wasting our time.

If we make minimal moves this offseason it won't be the end of the world, and certainly better than making the numerous bad moves that have been mentioned, but there's on thing that i've found irritating about this offseason & that's managements continual policy of risk aversion.

I don't mean trading Lincecum type risks, that's just being foolhardy, but why does this organisation continually value the ordinary & safe option over the higher potential & more risky option?

It permeates everything they do, in front office selection, in managerial choices, in treatment of young players, in free agency, in trades.

We'd rather resign the incumbent Sabean than look elsewhere. We'd rather sign a safe option like Bochy than an unproven like Acta or Black. We'd rather a mediocre veteran like Aurilia than a young player like Frandsen. We'd rather resign Feliz than take a risk on Iwamura transfering to the US. We'd rather buy high on someone coming off a good year like Rowand than buy low on someone coming off a bad year like Andruw Jones or Sexson. We'd rather the known qualities of Hillenbrand & Chulk over the unproven Accardo.

If we continue this policy we're going to struggle as we have recently, because there are others who won't & will gain the rewards. This is unusually negative for me, but i just thought i'd make the point.

To use a terrible & pointless analogy in Soccer, it's like always settling for the safety of a draw over going for a win. The problem is, if you take a risk, win & lose some, you'll end up with more points than just drawing them all, because it's not a linear progression

According to this article:

http://www.torontosun.com/Sports/Baseball/2007/12/06/4710138-sun.html

Seems like a strange match to me, but i'm not sure how much truth there is to it. Also, there's more on the Lincecum/Rios situation, but nothing really new.

As the catchers for next season aren't that divisive i'm adding a discussion for corner infielders as well. Who do people believe should be the starting 1B & 3B for us next year?

Under Contract: Ortmeier, Aurilia
Expiring Contracts: Klesko, Feliz

By other 1B or 3B, it's sensible to be realistic &  think of realistic free agent or trade targets, because we'd all love better corner infielders if possible!

Personally, it depends on what our outfield options are, i'm not overly high on Ortmeier but i'd like to see him get playing time to prove how good he is. If he's not going to get any in the outfield (which he's probably not going to get alot) then i'd like to see him at 1B.

It'd be nice if we could obtain a good young 3B (or 1B) via trade (perhaps for Lowry) but if not there isn't much available in free agency. Neither Aurilia or Feliz would excite me, but either could be ok as reasonable short term stopgaps.

As the season winds down to a disappointing end, obviously thoughts turn to next year. In a way this is a good time of the year as hopes for next year are high, with all the different possibilities, before the practicalities of next seasons roster end up being a let down.

These points have already been discussed in other posts, but i thought it'd be interesting to see what the consensus is, by conducting a poll or two a day to determine next seasons roster & to get peoples thoughts.

The season has been a pretty disappointing one & there's been lots of negatives, but i thought, i'd focus on some the positives that have come out of this season

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