Thanks for the response.

* I think Nate could handle LF well enough. I like the idea of having a strong throwing arm in left and he’s got OF experience, he would just have to work at the position during spring training. He probably wouldn’t be any worse than Bonds, who was just a little under replacement level defensively last year.

* I’ll disagree with you here. I think Davis is very similar to Roberts and I have no doubt that he could match Roberts career of (.268/.342/.370). Furthermore, I think between Davis and Roberts, Roberts has more value because hes a veteran. Losing him would hurt a little, because I’m not sure who’d hit leadoff for us right away (Frandsen? I have no idea, I’d have to try and construct a lineup or something) but I was really hoping Nate would get 400 AB’s this coming year.

* Winn has more value than Roberts, you’re right, but I don’t think the Giants will deal him because he’s one of our better hitters, he plays RF really well, and he still can block some trades with this partial no-trade. Unless Winn is ready to jump ship, I think he’s less moveable than Roberts because he provides more value than Roberts to the Giants.

* Rowand can hit sometimes but he’s been closer to a league average hitter his entire career than his 2004 and 2007 years. If you look at his stats by EqA (which normalizes park factors, league, and pitching difficulty) his numbers aren’t too impressive. A league average EqA is .260 and for his career Rowand is a .269 hitter. Going as low as .235 in 2002 and as high as .294 in 2007. I think a 850-ish OPS is going to be really hard for Rowand to get to because of the spacious parks in the NL West (AT&T, Petco, Chavez Ravine). If he could hover around a .800 OPS I would be thrilled.

* I’ll disagree with you again. I’d rather take a short term 2 year risk for Jones (who for his entire career has been a much better player than Rowand, both defensively and offensively. He’s a borderline HoF if he turn it around and be productive for a few more years.) than a 5 year deal for Rowand who has bounced around a little bit between seasons. Worst case is that Jones doesn’t bounce back but still plays amazing defense for the Dodgers and they can rid themselves of his salary after 2009. If Rowand falters, the Giants have to hold him for a much longer time.

* He might be our best hitter, you’re right, but thats more a testament to the lineup than it is Rowand. On a good team he’s a very nice complimentary peice, on the Giants, he’ll have to be one of the main pieces. He was healthy in 2005 and was below league average (OPS+ of 93). I can give him a pass for 2006 because of his collision with the outfield wall. Like I said, Winn has played a good portion of his career in pitcher friendly parks while Rowand has played in hitter friendly parks, I think if Winn had played the same amount of time in Chicago and Philly, his numbers would be closer, if not better than Rowand’s numbers.

* I can definitely agree on this. Thank goodness that we still have Lincecum and Cain. Lincecum is one of my main reasons to watch the 2008 season.

* Interesting idea with the hit charts, but I think its a rough example. You also have to take into issues like elevation, wind patterns, and temperature when dealing with how a stadium plays. Look at Colorado, it’s a gigantic stadium, dimensions-wise, but traditionally it’s been a hitters park because of the elevation. When Philly heats up in the summer, the ball just seems to fly out of the park. I have no idea what the wind plays like for either San Francisco or Philly, but I’d assume that SF has more of a wind effect than Philly, but you never know.

It is indeed a good thing that Rowand is a RHH but it will probably still be tough for him to hit for power like he did in ’07. Philly was the #1 park to hit HR’s in the National League last year from either side of the plate. Overall, it was (+0.017) for HR’s and San Fran was (-0.008) for HR’s. SF played hard for both LHH’s and RHH’s last year when it came to HR’s.

Also, BBTF posted some ZiP’s projections for Rowand after the Giants signing.

You can find them here – http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/oracle/discussion/giants_signed_rowand/

The mean projection doesn’t have Rowand breaking 100 OPS+ over his 5-year deal.

Here are my comments:

* First, Schierholtz has learned to be a RF, and he was not naturally an OF, and it was a steep learning curve for him there from what I heard. Moving him to LF would mean a learning curve for him again.

* Rajai Davis is not Roberts equal and probably never will be. Roberts is a legit major league hitter – versus RHP. Davis had a nice month with us but then totally disappeared in September, which aligns with his career up to this point. People need to stop looking at Roberts 2007 stats and look instead at his stats AFTER he had his elbow problems fixed and he got back into the swing of things. If you look at his second half stats, it is very much in line with his career numbers and he is an excellent leadoff hitter, gets on base better than average plus can steal a lot of bases with a high success rate.

* Winn is the OF who should be traded. His trade value is now back to normal after his 2007 recovery, he has a ready replacement right now in Schierholtz, and his contract is more reasonable than Roberts ($8.5M vs. $6.5M for a platoon player). Davis, though, is the perfect platoon buddy for Roberts and together would probably match Winn’s production for $1.5M less. Davis hit .299/.384/.402/.786 against LHP (his overall numbers are skewed horribly by half his AB’s being against LHP when a regular will see maybe a third of his AB’s), while Roberts hit .285/.356/.408/.763 vs. RHP in 2007 (and hit .291/.362/.388/.751 in the second half of 2007, which is in line with his stats for the Padres in 2005-2006, and their homepark is even worse than ours on hitters, particularly lefties). And Roberts/Davis makes a good platoon for leadoff, whereas Winn doesn’t really have a good spot to put him in the lineup.

* He can hit. As I detailed on my blog, his bad years are explainable, whereas when he’s healthy and playing, he can rake. Home parks help a bit, but he’s been a good hitter based on his peripherals all four seasons he’s been a regular, so he should be able to hit for .800+, maybe mid-800 OPS for us, particularly on the road.

* 2 years of Andruw Jones scares me, 5 years of Rowand don’t. If Jones hits like he did in 2007 for the two years, you are screwed for those two years. And you’d be paying him $6M more per year than Rowand. JOnes’ decline actually started in 2005, his BABIP for much of his career, especially during the good years, were around .300, but starting in 2005, he dipped to .240, .264, .242 (from baseball-reference.com); the decline was masked by him suddenly launching homers at an even greater HR/FB rate than before, from the 20% range to 25% in 2005, 22% in 2006, before collapsing in 2007, dropping to 13%. And the league average for that is 10%, so he’s still above average, just not as much as before. He also benefited from swinging for the fences more as well, as he lofted more flyballs than before starting in 2005. However, his BB/K ratio is still about the same as it always been, though his K-rate is rising, but it has gone up and down all through his career. So he looks like he might have a rebound in 2008 in regards to homers, but his hitting skill appears to have disappeared in 2005, as his BABIP is down greatly, suggesting that this is not an aberration but permanent downturn.

* About Winn and Rowands, Winn is steady OPS producer so his career average is his expected production. Rowands, as I explained, have explainable reasons why he didn’t hit that well in 2005 and 2006, but when healthy and playing in 2004 and 2007, his OPS was around .900. Part of that was park, but if you look only at his road numbers for those two years, his OPS was still in the high .800′s. Winn just had that one fluke 2 months with us, other than that, he is steady eddie, neither very good nor bad, a complementary player for any team. Rowands has the potential to be our best hitter and a plus one at that, all for $12M per year, basically delivering what Carlos Lee gives the Astros (talk about inflated OPS) offensively and making up the difference with defense, but Lee gets $4.7M more per year.

* Yes, we got our Christmas present early this year, we are keeping Lincecum on our team!