Eric's Giants Blog

The price of a certain strategy

For the entirety of the Sabean era, the Giants have been playing under the same strategy: Draft a lot of pitchers, fill the lineup with veterans, trade for help midseason by dealing away minor-league arms. It appears to have worked fairly well thus far, mostly because so few of those arms have actually developed into major-league pitchers. If the Nate Bumps and Jason Grillis had been turning guys like Josh Beckett and Roy Oswalt, the strategy would, in hindsight, look a lot weaker.

I read the following blurb on a website this morning:

"Felix Diaz is considered the leading candidate for a start this Saturday against Minnesota when the White Sox need a fifth starter."

Remember Felix Diaz? He was a top Giants prospect a few years ago, a right-hander who threw gas and projected as a #2 starter. He was not the Giants top prospect, but he often got mentioned in the list of the bounty of arms in the Giants' system. Diaz was traded in 2002 as part of the deal for Kenny Lofton, who played a few months with the Giants, helped the Giants get to the World Series, and then insisted on playing the field despite having a hernia that limited him defensively, sending the all-glove, no-bat Tsyoshi Shinjo into the DH spot for the games in Anaheim. As I recall, the Giants had a real "players' manager" back then, who wasn't about to tell the veteran Lofton that his claim that he could only hit when he played the field and couldn't concentrate when he was DHing were completely ridiculous, and that he was hurting the team by being a prima donna about playing the field when he was hurting, and when Shinjo was better anyway. As a sidelight, if the Giants had even one decent hitter on the bench that year who could reasonably DH, the contours of this dynamic would have been very different - as it was, we were getting Lofton and Shinjo, it was just a matter of who played the field and who DH'ed.

Diaz was playing for AA Shreveport when he was dealt in the Lofton trade. He was 21 years old, young for the level, and was 3-5 with a 2.70 ERA and 48 Ks in 60 innings (that must have been a very bad team) at the time of the trade. He finished the season with the Birmingam Barons and was successful there as well (4-0 with a 3.48 ERA and 30 Ks in 31 innings). Overall, 2002 had to look like a serious breakout season for Diaz, posting an overall line of:

7-5; 18 GS; 91.0 IP; 2.97 ERA, 1.21 WHIP, 78 Ks to 31 BBs

For a 21-year-old in AA that's very nice performance. He followed it up with a solid, if unspectacular season in AAA last year (3.97 ERA, 83/33 K/BB ratio in 115.2 innings). It was the type of year for a 22-year-old pitcher that will look like a different thing based on what happens to him. If he becomes a major-league pitcher and has some success, it will be looked at as a consolidation year. If he doesn't, it will be looked at as an example of him getting exposed at higher levels.

That being said, he's absolutely on fire this year:

5-0; 6 GS; 39.1 IP; 1.83 ERA; 32 K to 5 BB

As the note I read above said, if someone on the White Sox gets hurt or isn't performing well enough, it's likely Diaz that gets the nod and will be a starting pitcher in the major leagues. Renting Lofton helped the Giants that year, and even if Diaz turns into Javier Vazquez, he was a AA pitcher at the time. Still, the point is that the Giants haven't had to feel the pain associated with this strategy because, in hindsight, they've been dealing away non-prospects for these veterans rather than actual prospects. If and when some of these guys (Foulke, Diaz, Liriano, etc...) start turning into good major league players, the price of doing business this way becomes a lot clearer.

posted by Eric @ 7:06 AM