Thanks for everything, everyone.  With a great lady, a new house, and (hopefully) a career upgrade, the time I have for this hobby has taken a hit.  Overall that's a good thing, but for my role with this site, it's not.  Therefore, I'm going to step away from managing and writing at BtB and leave you in the capable hands of Tommy Bennett and the rest of the writing team.

Thanks to RJ, who brought me on board last August and is one of the best at combining data with convincing, non-numeric arguments.  Thanks to the SBN crew, including Jim, Trei, Chris, Tyler, and Eric, who have many more tricks up their sleeves.  Thanks to the writers who have been part of the ride, you're all even more talented than you think.  Thanks to all of you readers who have spent time commenting at the site -- the discussions have always been my favorite part.  And thanks to Tommy Bennett, who has agreed to take over the managerial reigns.  Tommy's a really smart guy with great ideas, and I expect him to take BtB to the next level.

Where am I going?  Who knows...  I'm not disappearing, but snarky discourse in comment sections around the web are probably my limit for a while.  Feel free to drop me a line to talk baseball any time at skyking162@gmail.com or twitter.com/BtB_Sky.

Play nice.  Ask questions.  Go Pirates.

- Sky

There's some disagreement as to how good the Giants were this year.  For evidence, see any discussion about BtB's Power Rankings, which had the Giants in the bottom third of MLB. BtB saw San Francisco as a 76 win team in terms of talent level, while the team actually won 88 games -- that's the largest disagreement between rankings and actual results for any team.

Over at BtB, I recently offered to have an avatar bet on the Giants 2010 win total, suggesting I'd take the under against most numbers.  So, my question to you all is, what's your best guess as to how many games the Giants will win in 2010, ignoring any potential huge moves.  How good is this team going to be?  Thanks for your input.

I don't really have any analysis to provide, but here's a compilation of the careers of some Hall of Fame candidates I've been discussing on Twitter with @jasoncollette, @tommy_bennett, @Marc_Normandin, @jonahkeri, and others.

Quick summary: I'm not as sold on Rock Raines as some others (who might be a bit homerish), I like Edgar more than most, Albert Belle deserved more consideration, Jeff Bagwell should be a lock, Larry Walker is confusing for everyone, and Jason Collette sticks his fingers in his ears when people point out that Fred McGriff isn't Hall of Fame worthy.

Based on all that, here's a convoluted WAR graph based on baseballprojection.com data.  (Click for a huge version.)

McGriff is obviously better than Baines and Galarraga, falls in Belle's ballpark (depending how you value quality vs. quantity), and is worse than the rest -- we probably need some more comparisons for him.

Walker holds his own and appears to very much be Raines' equal.  (Rally's stats really like his baserunning and fielding skills in addition to the big bat.)

Albert Belle certainly was a stud, but his peak is definitely too short for serious consideration, and I'm saying that as someone who ignores longevity more than most.

What do you notice?  Feel free to add any bits of information you think support or damn a player's candidacy in the comments.  Or links to good articles others have written on these topics.  Or suggest other players worth throwing in the discussion.