Tuesday, July 13, 2004

What about Randy Johnson?

Remember the "White Flag Trade"? The "Matt Williams Trade"? The "Jason Schmidt for Armando Rios trade"??? (that one was my favorite)

Even though in some years his moves have been decidedly underwhelming (in 2000 the Giants' big midseason acquisition was Doug Henry), Brian Sabean has developed a deserved reputation for willingness to make midseason moves to fill what he perceives to be holes in the team and to bolster what are usually contention teams' playoff chances and strength.

So let's look at the current situation in the NL West:

LA 48-38 0
SF 49-40 .5
SD 47-41 2
COL 36-51 12.5
AZ 31-58 18.5

Clearly we're looking at a tightly-contested 3-team race. This wasn't so tough to predict, although I admit LA is better than I thought they would be (mostly because Adrian Beltre got back on the track he was supposed to be on and Paul DePodesta picked up Milton Bradley. Career seasons from normally non-hitting players like Alex Cora and Cesar Izturis have also contributed and of course they still have a dominating bullpen), but these three teams are all fairly closely matched. San Diego is still the most talented in my opinion, and I think the Giants will need to add some pieces if they want to compete through the long stretches of July and August, especially since I still believe that even though the Giants would be the NL wild card if the season ended today, ultimately the wild card will come from the NL Central.

Looking at this another way:

LA 382-352 (+30)
SF 454-437 (+17)
SD 377-360 (+17)

Keeping in mind that the Giants play in an extreme pitchers' ballpark, their pythagorean numbers are really quite astonishing. The Giants are an offensive juggernaut this year, although you'd never know it by looking at the lineup card. In fact, the Giants have scored more runs this season than all but two teams this year. On of those teams is St. Louis, who have scored exactly one more run than the Giants and the other is Colorado with 465, and they doesn't count for obvious reasons.

If you adjust for ballpark effects, the Giants had the best offense in the NL during the first half. And I think that bears repeating.

The Giants had the best offense in the NL during the first half.

So even though the instinct of most Giants fans is almost assuredly that the team needs more offense, if the first half is at all indicative of the true state of the team (and half a season usually has at least some predictive value unless there are obvious reasons why it should be discounted), it's the pitching that needs help. Big help.

The Giants' 437 runs allowed is worse than all but three other NL teams. One of those is pythagorean overperformer Cincinnati, who is 47-41 despite a run differential of -31 (411/452). Of course, that's not surprising - other than Danny Graves, how many Reds pitchers can you name? Expect to see the Reds play substantially below .500 in the second half. The other two teams are Arizona (499) and of course Colorado (525). Arizona's woes are testament to why you need five starting pitchers and not two and Colorado, as I said before, doesn't count.

So to go with the Giants league-leading offense, they've had among the worst pitching staffs in the league. If you adjust for ballpark you might argue that it's the worst in the NL, but I probably wouldn't. Either way, you're looking at a team that has been clubbing its way into contention, and that informs what ought to be done going forward.

To get it out of the way - damn right they need a closer. Anyone who is familiar with my ranting knows I'm not a fan of paying a good reliever a lot of extra money so he can collect saves. That has NEVER meant that having a bad reliever close is a good idea. Matt Herges is god-awful. Just horrid. He's 22 for 28 in save chances. That's 78%. That's just bad. A league-average reliever should close out around 82% of opportunities. He has a 1.61 WHIP. I don't know why Herges can't close, but it looks like he's in the same category as Arthur Rhodes - good pitchers who just can't close for whatever reason. Call it mental block, call it lack of clutchness, call it whatever you want, just don't call for Herges when you have a one-run lead. Get someone in there who can handle it and put Herges back into the setup role where he's been successful.

The Giants do need to add someone good or at least decent. There are plenty of guys out there who can do it and plenty of teams who would be happy to have a contract gone. Call Seattle and ask about Eddie Guardado. Call the Mets if and when they decide they aren't going to make it this year and talk about Braden Looper. Hell, I'd rather take a chance on a guy like David Riske of Cleveland or Tampa Bay's Lance Carter - these are guys with a little closing experience who can pitch. It would be hard for most major-league relievers to be as bad as Herges has been.

But even though I agree that a closer is needed, let's talk about something a little more exciting today. First let's look at the Giants pitching rotation, which based on their overall runs numbers need serious help:

Jason Schmidt: 122 IP / 2.51 ERA / 0.96 WHIP / 11-2 / 134 Ks Grade: A+
Jerome Williams: 102 IP / 4.66 ERA / 1.28 WHIP / 8-6 / 70 Ks Grade: B
Kirk Rueter: 104 IP / 4.85 ERA / 1.58 WHIP / 5-6 / 33 Ks Grade: D+
Dustin Hermanson 87 IP / 4.34 ERA / 1.38 WHIP / 3-3 / 63 Ks Grade: C-
Brett Tomko: 94 IP / 4.98 ERA / 1.54 WHIP / 4-5 / 45 Ks Grade: D

Keeping in mind what SBC park typically does to a pitchers' numbers, you can see that the Giants have three really bad starting pitchers in there. I love Kirk Rueter, but he has really stunk up the joint this year, and Hermanson and Tomko are little more than bodies to throw inning, although Hermanson has given the Giants the kind of innings a team can live with while Tomko has not.

There are no internal answers coming unless Jesse Foppert makes the most amazing recovery from Tommy John surgery in the history of the procedure (I'm rooting for him), so Sabean will probably have to go outside the organization.

Which leads me to my title - what about Randy Johnson?

What about Randy Johnson?

He has recently made some noise about being willing to accept a trade to a team that has "a real chance to win the world series". Everyone thinks that means the Yankees, where he'd slot in nicely in front of Mussina and Vazquez, or Boston where he'd create a trio of himself, his old friend Curt Schilling and Pedro Martinez.

But what about the Giants? What about the team with the best player of the modern era, the #1 offense in the NL, the best starter in the NL and a desperate need for another quality starter? Johnson would actually be the #2 starter on the Giants behind Jason Schmidt, and would give San Francisco the kind of 1-2 punch that Arizona had the year they won the series. Johnson-Schilling was all that team had going for it and they went all the way. They had an offense with one outstanding player (Luis Gonzalez) and a bunch of stalwarts. They even had bullpen problems.

With Randy Johnson the Giants would probably become co-favorites to win the NL along with Chicago. A three-man rotation of Schmidt, Johnson and Jerome Williams would compare favorably to those thrown up by any other team, with Chicago's Prior / Wood / Zambrano axis being the most competitive.

Now generally teams don't make trades within their division. But why, really? During the offseason, when teams are trying to compete, it makes perfect sense, but now? Arizona knows they aren't going anywhere in 2004 and Randy Johnson is in his 40s. Hell, if anything it makes sense to trade for young players from a divisional rival, because as you set yourself up to rebuild for the future you're taking pieces away from a team that will be a direct competitor in that future-state where you envision yourself contending.

Of course, I have no idea what Arizona is asking for, and I have bemoaned the woeful state of the Giants' farm system plenty of times in this space. But if the other contenders for Randy Johnson are Boston and New York, neither of them have much to offer either. So let's see Johnson stay in the NL, stay on the West coast, and play for the good guys for a while.

(and after all this, he'll go to the Braves)

posted by Eric @ 7:45 AM 1 comments

Monday, July 12, 2004

Poor Rich Aurilia

While the Giants are enjoying a breakout season from the most unlikely source (who really thought the Giants would get above replacement-level performance from Deivi Cruz, and that he'd actually be drawing a few walks? You can be sure this overly critical fan missed that one), a former Giant has fallen on some hard times.

Over this past weekend, the Seattle Mariners cut former Giants shortstop Rich Aurilia.

When I was first getting serious about baseball (which I freely admit was far later than it ought to have been) during the short dry spell between the 1993 non-playoff juggernaut team and the recent six-year run of Sabean miracle teams, two guys came up from the relatively barren Giants minor league system and quickly became my favorite two players.

Of the two, my favorite was the slick-fielding, average-hitting patient and inccorectly-pronounced Bill Mueller. I always felt like Mueller was just a massively underrated player, a guy whose defense was gold-glove worthy but who didn't get enough attention because his bat didn't make him stand out, even though he brought very real skills to the plate. When he was traded for Tim Worrell after his off-season in 2000, I was very upset (even though Worrell turned out to be a great acquisition). When he was brought back after his short, injury-filled tenure with the Cubs, I was thrilled, and thought the Giants were going to make him a cheap and home-grown solution to the void filled by David Bell's depature for Philly. Instead, they signed Edgardo Alfonzo to a four-year contract and let Mueller head to Boston, where he won the batting title I'd been waiting for.

My other favorite Giant was the hard-hitting, Brooklyn-born, hard-working shortstop my brothers and I referred to as "future hall-of-famer Rich Aurilia". We just loved that guy. Totally out of step with my current approach to player valuation, but Aurilia when he came up first in 1995 and then played part-time behind Ray Sanchez before finally getting a starting job in 1998 - the guy just seemed like a ballplayer to me. Looking back, he wasn't actually that good. Those first few stub seasons predicted relatively well what he'd become - a guy who could hit for an acceptable average and had nice power for a middle infielder, who couldn't control the strike zone and who played decent (if not pretty) defense. In short, s solid, stand-up player.

Aurilia really only had a three-year shelf life. He took over the starting job in 1998, but didn't do a whole lot with it (.726 OPS) but had two solid seasons in 1999 and 2000 (.780 and .783 respectively) before having a career season in 2001 (a season in which he perpetuated the myth of The Bonds Effect, as he hit ahead of Bonds that year). After 2001 he had some injury problems and never again reached his 1999-2000 level of production, to say nothing of his 2001 numbers.

Since 2001 Aurilia has put up season OPS of .718, .735 and was looking at .641 when he was cut by Seattle. What seems unfair about this is that, at age 32, this isn't all that surprising a development. Looking at his career since he became a starter:

1998: .726
1999: .780
2000: .783
2001: .941
2002: .718
2003: .735
2004: .641

Two of these years look like aberrations, don't they? 2001 was obviously a career year and a fluke. This isn't a player who could be relied on to hit .320 or hit 37 home runs again. But expectations were set by that year, and he's never been able to live up to them since. If Aurilia had put up .718 and .735 in years following .783 instead of .941, would people have been so disappointed in him? Unlikely. And .641 is really bad, but he's adjusting to AL pitching in a tough pitchers' park over fewer than 300 ABs.

There isn't really a message here. I like Aurilia, but what he's doing now doesn't entitle him to much. He was never great defensively, but as he gets into his mid 30's, playing shortstop regularly is going to be a stretch unless he starts hitting again, at least as well as during his two consolidation years. Is that likely to happen? I think in a part-time role, yeah - it really might. Put him in a position to succeed, playing some shorstop and some third-base in the NL and preferably in a ballpark where some of his moderate power can translate into more home runs and fewer flyball outs (Aurilia is an extreme fly-ball hitter, one of the reasons I always wanted him hitting BEHIND Bonds and not in front of him) and he might continue to be a good major-league player through his mid 30's. He could be an older Shea Hillenbrand who can also fill it at the middle-infield positions, picking up 300-400 ABs for a good team, and there are worse things to be than that.

And because he's still one of my favorite players and one of my favorite guys in the game, I'm hoping he finds that right situation.

posted by Eric @ 7:26 AM 0 comments