Eric's Giants Blog

It's only April...

I wish I had Jayson Stark's job, mostly because of his access to historical stats and people to crunch them for him. He's gone through and run an analysis that I would have liked to run if I had the tools, but since he's done it I'll just quote a bit from it here.

Note that the Giants were 10-14 coming out of April, and were 5 games behind the Dodgers.

Stark tells us that of the 120 playoff teams since 1982, only four (or 3.3 percent) finished April more than three games under .500. He also tells us that only three of those 120 playoff teams (or 2.5 percent) finished April more than 4½ games out of a playoff spot.

Does this mean that the Giants aren't going to make the playoffs? No, we already knew that. What this tells us is that April matters. The baseball season isn't like an NCAA pool, where the games at the end matter more than the ones at the beginning. Every game counts the same, and generally a team that plays poorly in April isn't going to make it to the postseason. Not every time, of course - just most of the time.

Those who wish to believe more than they wish to know will probably take umbrage with all of this. "The Dodgers and Padres are playing over their heads", they'll tell me. "The Giants are turning things around, and Pierzynski, Alfonzo and Tucker are starting to hit" they'll add.

There's some truth to that. Neither LA nor San Diego really have the pythagorean numbers to support their current records. Of course, the Giants are currently a game over their pythagorean projection as well, but that's neither here nor there. I think those claims are still specious. There are some crazy things going on in San Francisco too. Barry Bonds is hitting nearly .500 after a month of play and his OPS is still closer to 2.000 than 1.500. Grissom is still playing over his head (when he plays). And Ray Durham, the second-best hitter on the deal, is hurt for at least a month. The other thing, though, is that as maligned as they've been, check out some things about the San Francisco bullpen:

The three-headed lefty monster of Christianson, Eyre and Franklin has a combined ERA of 2.53. Is this going to last? No, not unless Damaso Marte, Eddie Guardado and JC Romero are currently wearing Christianson, Eyre and Franklin jerseys.
Matt Herges, despite an ERA of 4.70 and a WHIP of 1.50 has converted 9 of his 10 save chances (90%, for those who are really bad at math). Last time I checked, closers with those kinds of peripherals don't convert saves at a 90% clip for a whole season.
Jim Brower has an ERA of 2.93 and is on pace to appear in 101 games this year. Unless we really have the Brower twins who take turns appearing as Jim Brower on The Giants Show, he's going to have problems pitching this much.

I've said before that there are things this team could do to actually make the playoffs this year, but with Durham out the lineup is going to feature two of Neifi Perez, Deivi Cruz and Brian Dallimore (who it should be pointed out is likely to be better than either of them, and not just because he hit a grand slam in his first AB), Pedro Feliz every day and the now-familiar platoon-like object in right field, with Grissom playing CF most of the time except when Hammonds plays it. Unless the bullpen continues to sparkle and Rueter, Tomko and whoever is pitching in the 5-spot get a LOT better, a couple of wins in a row at the end of April and on May 1 don't make me really *believe* any more than I did this time last week.

Oh - and Barry Bonds (noted selfish player who doesn't care about the team) is currently projected to appear in 155 games this year, as he's put himself back into the lineup for a couple of games he'd ordinarily take off. I applaud him in more ways than I can list here, but after seasons of 130 and 143 games played the last two years, one of the few things I don't think he can do is play 155 games.

posted by Eric @ 8:54 AM