Eric's Giants Blog

Of Curses, the New School and a bit of Giants baseball

Yes, it's been a very long time since I've been inspired to put up anything in this space, but frankly I was totally uninspired by the nominal subject of this blog, and even now am not going to spend much time writing about my beloved Giants, as they are not worthy of too many words right now.

However after seeing such a series of historical baseball events these last two weeks, I feel compelled to put down a few thoughts, not so much of the Curt Schilling / Bunch of Idiots mythos that fills the mainstream press, but rather a few observations that, by virtue of being less romantic and quite a bit more ornery than what I read elsewhere, probably won't get mentioned.

First off, let it be known that I was rooting for the Red Sox. Rooting pretty hard, truth be told. This isn't because I'm a Red Sox fan - in fact, I was rather seriously anti-Sox up until a couple of years ago. My position on the Red Sox then was similar to my position on the Cubs now - that they were a big-payroll team that tried to recharacterize incompetence as loveability. I had no patience for a team that spent $100M+ on payroll and then complained about being underdogs all the time. Yes, their fans had suffered through many heartbreaking losses, and care about their team in a way that I found appealing, but as is probably quite foreseeable to anyone that knows me, my opinion on any non-Giants team is usually an opinion of the front office or of an individual player or two. In the Red Sox' case, their ownership and front office were pathetic bumblers who spent like crazy and still couldn't get anything done. Their players seemed to fade at crucial moments and I had no use for them.

All that changed when they decided to hire a guy my age to run the team. The day I read up on Theo Epstein was the day I decided to adopt the Red Sox as my unofficial AL team. Those who got my baseball rant emails from those days might remember that for weeks I would speculate as to what I thought Theo might do, only to find out a few days later that he'd been working on such a deal already. Sign a defensively-superior contact-hitting third baseman with a great eye who will come cheap because of his two years of knee injuries? Done. Claim a productive outfielder / first baseman who'd done nothing but hit well above league average and was on his way to Japan? Done. Claim a power-hitting Mo Vaughn-clone who was disfavored by his AL Central team because he doesn't fit their slap-hitting athletic mold? Done. Move after move I watched Theo Epstein make and just kept nodding my head. People complained that he was doing his job as if he was building a fantasy baseball team. He picked up guys who were cheap and who could hit. He picked up relievers who struck guys out and didn't walk too many. What others saw as building a fantasy team (I'm still not sure what that meant, btw), I saw as a guy simply using the large resources provided him to build a great 25-man roster (as opposed to a great starting lineup and a cruddy group of reserves as Brian Cashman did with the Yankees). I was superbly impressed.

I bet on the Red Sox last year. I thought they had a great team. And as Red Sox teams have done so many times, they lost to the Yankees in the post-season. I thought the Sox had a better team last year. If not for Grady Little, the 2003 Red Sox would have done at least part of what the 2004 Red Sox accomplished. Old-school baseball idiots wrote in defense of Grady Little, saying that he was smart and wise to stick with Pedro through 137 pitches. I'm not going to bother rehashing that, but needless to say I strongly believe that a combination of Mike Timlin and Alan Embree could have closed out Game 7 last year.

Regardless, after that loss Theo went back to work, and because the Red Sox are financially unlimited for all intents and purposes, he went out and signed two of the five best pitchers in the American league. He traded for Curt Schilling (as a side note, giving up on Casey Fossum at just the right time, after refusing to trade him to acquire Javier Vazquez the previous year), probably the second-best pitcher in the AL this year (after the deity that is Johan Santana) and signed Keith Foulke, recently of the also-Sabremetric Athletics, who has been really just amazing for 6 years and strangely no one seems to realize just how good. This is how good [warning: stats tangent coming]:

Over the 6-year period between 1999-2004 (all of which he spent as a reliever) Foulke averaged 87 innings per year. Just for reference, Mariano Rivera, widely and correctly recognized as the best closer in baseball over that span, averaged 70 innings per year. Foulke posted the following numbers over that six-year period:

512.2 IP
2.23 ERA
380 hits allowed
113 walks allowed
0.96 baserunners per inning
514 strikeouts

I bring this all up not because it's all that relevant, but because Foulke is currently the best player in the major leagues who was drafted by the San Francisco Giants, so I just wanted to point out that this guy is an absolutely top-notch, dominant closer, and should be part of the discussion every time the top closers are discussed. And because he gave the Red Sox something else they didn't have in 2003 - a shutdown closer. So the 2004 edition went into spring training with (at the time, arguably) the two best pitchers in the American League and a newly-added top-flight closer to what was already a dominant bullpen.

The point of all this being two things - first off, I root for pretty much any team that has a GM who does things that I think make sense, and secondly, I thought the Red Sox had the best team in the AL. And so I'm happy that they won the World Series. Just not for the same reasons as a lot of other people.

Reason #1 - this is a huge victory for "new-school" baseball analysis. One of the things that allowed the Joe Morgans and Tim McCarvers of the world to continue to stay things like "yeah, all that Moneyball stuff works great in the regular season, but what really matters in the postseason is making sure you bunt a lot and steal a lot of bases" was that none of the new-school GMs (Beane, Epstein, Riccardi, DePodesta) had ever won a World Series. Never mind that Beane runs one of the cheapest teams in baseball and Epstein, Riccardi and DePodesta are all new on the job - none of them had won anything. The A's especially provided fodder for this with their running streak of first-round exits from the postseason.

That's all changed now. The Red Sox played arguably the ultimate Moneyball postseason. With the exception of Dave Roberts' crucial steal against Mariano Rivera in game 4 of the ALCS, the Sox played the most prototypical "big ball" I've ever watched. They won with dominant starting pitching, walks and home runs. It was beautiful. When the leadoff man got on board, they didn't bunt. When Trot Nixon was up 3-0 with the bases loaded Francona gave him the sign to swing away. This was the anti-Angels of 2002 (well, even the Angels of 2002 weren't really what they were portrayed to be, but that's another topic). The Red Sox made lots of errors in the field, stole (to my recollection) zero bases in the world series and swept the thing. McCarver spent the entire series hoping for more bunts, but the only one he got was from Tony LaRussa, bizaarely bunting with Larry Walker with no outs (he later claimed LARRY WALKER was trying to bunt for a hit). It felt, to me as a very biased observer, like watching a generation of outdated baseball thinking pathetically trying to reassert itself against the newer, more effective generation.

Reason #2 - Red Sox fans don't get to whine anymore. This is something I alluded to above. This is a big-money team (#2 overall in payroll after the Yankees) that has largely been the victim of its own incompetence these past decades. As a fan of a genuinely mid-market team (or at least, mid-payroll... grr....), I got tired of hearing Red Sox fans bitch about the teams they were running out, teams that every year picked up new, expensive free agents while I watched my Giants pick up Neifi Perez or Doug Henry. After 2004, the Red Sox are just like the Dodgers - if they suck, it's because they suck, not because they're cursed, and Red Sox fans will just have to deal with it.

Reason #3 - Now people will focus more on the futility of the Cubs who, partially because they have Dusty Baker as their manager, are likely to remain futile.

And that's probably enough for anyone that bothered to read this, but I have to vent a tiny bit about the Giants.

Clearly I was mistaken, at least quantitatively, about the 2004 Giants. Anyone who read my blog could see that I figured them to finish near the bottom of the NL West and have a horrible season, and that didn't happen. They missed the wild card in the NL by a game and played yet another season of competitive baseball.

And this is almost worse than if they had just been awful and had rebuilt. Because it forces me to look at just how easy it would have been to win the NL West. So let's look at a couple of things. First off, how did the Giants outperform my projections by such a vast margin?

1. Barry Bonds had, at age 40, his best season as a pro. Bonds put up an OPS of 1.421, the highest in major-league history. He won another batting title (.362). He set the all-time major-league records for OBP (.609), walks (232) and intentional walks (120 - get your mind wrapped around THAT!). With a player like the 2004 Bonds in the lineup, it's damn difficult not to score runs, and the Giants did score them in bunches. In fact, the Giants had the best offense in the national league, scoring just 5 fewer runs in a far tougher park than St. Louis.

2. JT Snow came back from the dead. After six seasons of failing to top an OPS of .850, JT turned in his best season at the plate at age 36. His .429 / .529 season was arguably more impressive than David Ortiz' .380 / .609 season if you factor in the relative importance of getting on base versus hitting for power and just how difficult it is to hit for power as a lefty playing half one's games at SBC Park. And Ortiz is legitimately considered an MVP candidate.

3. Deivi Cruz. DEIVI CRUZ. When I saw that the Giants had signed him to a minor-league contract, I almost retched. And yet he wound up becoming a productive member of the Giants offense this year. While I wouldn't oversell a .297 / .322 / .431 season, the contrast between this above-average (especially considering ballpark effects) hitting performance and what he replaced (Neifi Perez), Sabean clearly hit a home run by picking up Cruz and then cutting Perez. As I mentioned many times in this space, replacing Perez with even a league-average player is like adding a middle-of-the-lineup hitter to a team. And Cruz was above average.

4. The emergence of Noah Lowry. When you have the top offense in the league, all you need from your pitchers is solidity. And Lowry was quite solid for the Giants this year. In 14 starts, he averaged about 6 innings per start and had an ERA under 4.00 - something the Giants desperately needed, and didn't get from other starters besides Jason Schmidt. When the rotation all but fell apart midseason, Lowry was an enormously important band-aid.

Mostly, they just scored a lot of runs. Mostly, that was because of Barry. If they'd just built a league-average team around him, they'd have won 95 games easily and taken the NL West without breaking a sweat. There are a couple of obvious things they could have done that would have been worth at least the one more win they needed to force a one-game playoff with Houston:

1. Don't trade for AJ Pierzynski. This was something that the "Lunatic Fringe" said all along - Catcher wasn't one of the Giants' glaring weaknesses. Pierzynski was considered a strong player - 27 years old, hit .300, blah blah blah. What I saw was a defensively mediocre catcher who hit a relatively empty .300, was switching leagues, and was facing a huge increase in ballpark difficulty. And sure enough, he went from .360 / .464 his last (career?) season in Minnesota to .319 / .410 with the Giants. Almost all of that decrease was the result of a batting average that went from .312 to .279. Part of that is switching leagues, part is ballpark, part is probably a fluky good 2003. But what killed the Giants were the players they gave away. Joe Nathan, who presumably would have either started the season closing for the Giants or who would have assumed that job when Herges proved (again) that he can't close effectively, was unbelievable this year. Foulke-esque, you might say. It hurts me to look at these numbers, but Nathan blew 3 of 47 save chances this year, had an ERA of 1.62 and struck out 89 batters in 72 innings. Putting him atop the Giants bullpen depth chart and pushing everyone down a rung would have been far, far more than sufficient to give the Giants a playoff spot this year. The Giants would have been forced to see if Yorvit Torrealba could be a full-time starter. I'll be honest - I'm not a huge Yorvit fan. He doesn't hit much (.302 / .407 this year, .322 / .402 for his career). But the difference between full-time Yorvit and AJ is worth at WORST 1-2 wins on the season, and I actually think Yorvit's demonstrably superior defense probably makes the effect neutral or even a win in Yorvit's favor. Just to pour lemon juice in the wound, the Giants traded away two minor-league pitchers along with Nathan - Boof Bonser and Francisco Liriano. Bonser is a bust, a typical Sabean pitching prospect. Liriano had been considered untouchable in 2003 (as Nathan had in 2001) because his upside was so high. He's a lefty who throws 97 mph, but had missed almost the entire 2003 season due to elbow problems. Well, he got right in 2004. Liriano pitched
117 innings (21 starts) for Single-A Fort Myers before being promoted to AA New Britain for 40 innings (7 starts). He actually performed better at AA than he had at A ball. Over the course of 156.2 innings in 2004, Liriano sported an ERA of 3.79 and struck out 174 hitters to 60 walks. Liriano turned 21 two days ago. If he stays healthy, he probably makes the majors in 2006. His upside is, theoretically, Johan Santana.

2. Don't trade for Ricky Ledee. No one has explained this to me yet. Felix Rodriguez is no longer what he was a few years ago, but he was the best reliever in a very bad bullpen and Sabean traded him away for yet another 4th outfielder (we didn't already have enough of those?). For a team that was scoring runs and blowing a lot of saves, this move was totally inexplicable. Felix was only decent this year (3.27 / 1.37 / 59 K's in 65.2 IP) but decent would have been a hell of an improvement over Matt Herges and Dustin Hermanson. Continuing to hold Felix is probably worth the one win needed for a tie, and likely the two needed for an outright win of the wild card / tie with the Dodgers.

3. Re-sign Tim Worrell. I'm sorry, but the cheapskate shit is really getting old. Worrell wasn't expensive and signed with the Phillies to be a setup man for setup man money. Worrell made $2.75M for Philly this year, and put up a workmanlike 3.68 / 1.23 season for them, with 64 Ks in 78 innings. Adjust for ballpark and defense and you're probably looking at something similar to what he got for the Giants in 2003. He'd have been perfectly adequate closing for the Giants in 2004 just like he'd been in 2003. Nothing special, but adequate. He converted 38 of 45 save chances in 2003. Herges, by contrast, converted 23 of 31 before being removed.

There are plenty of others (sign Vlad, trade for Carlos Beltran, etc...) but these three were easy and required almost nothing. And any one of them would have been sufficient to put the Giants in the playoffs. Do I think they'd have done much? Who knows. The playoffs are pretty random. Anyone can get hot at any time. The way Tomko was pitching I actually liked the Giants' 3-man rotation if they'd gone with one with Schmidt, Tomko and Jerome Williams, which allows Lowry to become an effective lefty and long reliever out of the bullpen and pushes Christianson off the roster. But that's all water under the bridge now. We'll never know how Barry might have done against Schilling and Pedro in the Series.

The 2005 Giants look to be more of the same. Sabean has already started the "we came close so why make major changes?" talk, and is probably already steaming at the lunatic fringe's requests that we not allow Bonds to get 200 intentional walks next year. He says that Goliath couldn't protect Bonds. That's fine - then let's sign a Goliath and watch him drive in 200 runs. It's not a matter of just getting Barry pitches to hit. It's a matter of scoring him if they're going to walk him. The Giants did a halfway decent job of this in 2004. He scored 129 runs this year, tied for the most of his career. Of course, he got on base 375 times. You wonder just how many times even a Paul Konerko or Carlos Lee could drive him in, to say nothing of a Beltran or Vlad.

But that's all talk for the upcoming offseason. For now, congratulations to the 2004 Red Sox, a great team put together by a great GM with great resources who performed at a high level and dispelled the notion of curses for, hopefully, another 86 years.

posted by Eric @ 8:44 AM