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The big story today in Giants Land is that Lincecum looked human last night, receiving his 2nd loss on the year. He’s now 10-2, or, a crap load better than Barry Zito. Lincecum struggled to get through 6 innings, giving up 4 runs and in the process he gave up two HR’s — a 3-run HR to Beltran and a solo HR to Delgado. His HR/FB% is still really low at 6.8% but he was due to give up a HR or two and that’s what happened last night.
The most concerning thing about Lincecum was that his velocity was lower than usual. BIS, courtesy of Fan Graphs, has Lincecum’s average fastball velocity at 94.2mph this year, but in last nights game, he threw a few fastballs between 91-92mph. The lowest velocity on a fastball of the night was a 90mph fastball that he threw in the bottom of the 5th inning to Mike Pelfrey.
Henry Schulman touched on the speed dip in the Chronicle wrap-up:
His velocity was down, too, from his normal 95 mph to 92. That matched the Mets’ Mike Pelfrey, who stifled the Giants on three singles through seven innings.
All of which raises the question of whether the accumulation of innings (1212/3) in Lincecum’s first full major-league season is having an effect. The Giants do not think so. They shuffled the rotation to get him two starts this week instead of one.
I’m not overly concerned with the velocity during last nights game. He was still touching 94-95 and did so more than once, but he was definitely up in the zone to start the game. Still, the influx of innings that Lincecum will be throwing this year will be something to keep an eye on. He’s on the cusp of the injury nexus for young pitchers and the Giants need him to get through this season healthy. Without a healthy Tim in the rotation, things start to look real ugly real fast.
The offense of course was putrid. The Giants were in their patented HACK MODE™ and helped a pitcher in Mike Pelfrey, who’s a decent starter but has struggled in his brief career, look like Tom Seaver. No dig against Pelfrey who’s been pitching decently of late, but the Giants looked exactly like the 14th team in the NL in runs scored.
Speaking of the offense, Bengie Molina has looked incredibly bad over the last month. His blazing May was the byproduct of a .360 BABIP that was nearly 80 points over his career BABIP numbers. In June Molina hit (.275/.287/.297) which is bad for a 7th placed hitter, downright terrible for a cleanup hitter. And in 24 brief AB’s this month, he’s had two knocks. Yet Bochy seems intent to keep Molina in the cleanup spot no matter how much he struggles. The alternatives for him are weak, but Rowand should be hitting higher than 5th.
I don’t even want to talk about Omar Vizquel and his 10 OPS+. His glacial bat-speed is so GAMER.
The real test of my will was having to listen to Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez. I know that baseball announcers are a touchy subject with some. I’ve had people tell me how much they hate the greats of Vin Scully or Harry Kalas and then spin around and tell me that they actually enjoy Joe Morgan or Tim McCarver. I get it, announcer preference is one of the personal things that you might not be able to convey to others. But Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez are terrible. Not since the early days of TBS Braves’ announcers had my mind been so thoroughly scrambled by dumb statements.
Statements such as:
~ Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez delving into everyone’s favorite topic, Barry Bonds! Darling droned on for a few minutes about how nobody would want Barry Bonds — and his stupid enormous OPS — because he’s immobile in the field! Barry is no longer a good fielder, but he’s played around replacement level over the last couple of years. It’s not pretty, but when you hit the way he does, it’s not going to kill you. This is coming a guy that’s had to watch Moises Alou patrol LF — when he not injured — for the last 1.5 years. Why need Barry when you have the mighty Endy Chavez?
~ Ron Darling telling me how awesome Mike Pelfrey was now that he’s (paraphrasing here) “Started relaxing, not over analyzing everything, and just pitching!” When announcers talk about stuff like this, it drives me up a wall. You know why? Because they-don’t-know. Maybe Pelfrey was pitching good because the Giants suck at hitting? Or maybe he was wearing a golden thong. Or started growing a mustache. Or ate a giant sandwich before the game. It’s pseudo-analytical babble that announcers like to spew out because it makes them sound like they know something. Bottom line, no matter how many times Keith Hernandez gushes over the new “Calm Pelfrey” it’s unquantifiable, undetectable, and unintelligible. File this under “Team Chemistry Matters!” for things you should ignore from announcers.
~ When the umps blew a call in the first inning — Fred Lewis ran out of the baseline to avoid a tag…wasn’t called out — I thought Hernandez might have a heart attack. “That’s EGREGIOUS!” he said. It was almost like hearing Ron Santo — who’s sorta lovable in a crazy Grandpa-type of way — but without any of the charm. Yes, the call sucked but it happens in baseball.
~ Yes, Mets announcers, Bengie Molina is our 4-hitter. And, yes, we suck at hitting. You could have gotten that out of the way in the first inning, but it was brought up like 18 different times in the game.
I used to catch Darling do Nats games on MASN when he worked with them but I don’t remember him being this annoying before. Keith Hernandez also isn’t a very good announcer, watching him try to explain the biomechanics of Lincecum from the SI article was terrible. Did you know he strides over 120%? Settle down, Keith. Also, his views on women are fascinating.
Comment Starter: Which announcers make you want to plug your ears? And if a Mets fan stumbles across this post, do you actually like Darling and Hernandez?
I’ll kick this one off.
Hate List
- Mark Grace and Darron Sutton (Grace is mind crushingly dumb and Sutton thinks that the louder you are, the better announcer you become.)
- Thom Brennamen (sp?)
- HAWK and DJ (STRETCH!)
- Joe Buck and Tim McCarver
- The Rockies Announcers (not sure why, they always seem smarmy?)
- Jeff Brantley (This guy isn’t CLUTCH! *BAM*)
- Rick Sutcliffe (More tired players stories)
- Suzyn Waldman (OF ALL THE THINGS!) and John Sterling (Bad nicknames + DAAAAH YANKEEEES WIN = FAIL)
I might have a problem.
Having the best announcing team in the game has spoiled me. Basically I can’t stand most broadcast teams. The White Sox guys are painful, as are the Braves father and son team. Absolutely awful. I don’t have Gameday or Gamechannel or Gamecast or whatever, so I don’t have a lot of opportunity to listen to non-Giants announcers, thank God.
Also, fire Joe Morgan and shut up, Tim McCarver. Those guys are the absolute worst in the game.
As for the Enchanter, I’m officially worried, and this post didn’t help any! Cusp of the injury nexus?? Oh noez! But seriously, that spooks me. Tim is the one and only bright spot of this team, and if he goes down, this team will go from borderline unwatchable to absolutely unwatchable.
As far as Dreamhost, I’ve heard generally good things about ‘em, but sometimes the site is *really* slow to load. That is all.
I’m backing up Delorean on this one.
1. Hawk Harrelson
2. Tim McCarver
No one else really comes close. The A’s announcers are just boring. I actually like Joe Morgan, despite his reactionary attitudes.
@Delorean
I like our announcers, too. Maybe that’s the way all fans feel about their home announcers? Krukow can grate on me at times because he can be your stereotypical ex-player in the booth, but more times than not he’s very listenable. Kuiper is great, in my opinion. I love John Miller on the radio, not-so-much on ESPN. JT Snow is a zombie on air, not very good, but then again he’s really new to this. FP sucks.
Cusp might be a little off in my wording, but pitchers under the age of 24 experience the highest attrition rate. Lincecum squeaking past that point in this, his age 24 season. So, he’s definitely “safer” (as much as a pitcher can be) than your average sub-24-year-old pitcher, for now.
A classic BP article from Carroll on the study he did on the “Injury Nexus” for pitchers.
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=1658
Let’s check his next start and see what happens. If I have time, I might try to do some PFX stuff with it.
Oh, and is the site been slow for you lately? I enabled a plugin maybe a month or so ago that’s seemed to speed things up.
@OldJacket
Hawk is one of those guys that’s an unabashed homer and his act grows old, real fast. McCarver is just senile and old. Did you know he used to do Giants games in ’02? I can’t ever remember hearing him, I might have erased that memory from my mind.
Re. our guys:
JT has no business broadcasting anything. He’s dismal.
I love Krukow unconditionally. He can do the Eliminate Me thing, but he can also break down a hitter’s swing and talk astutely about pitching mechanics. Of course he occasionally lapses into Reactionary Baseball Silliness, but the good FAR outweighs the bad (to me). We could do way, WAY worse w/r/t former-player color guys. WAY worse (Ron Santo).
Also, FP sucks.
On JT,
I love his patented dead air pauses!
“Well, …. Kuip … you can see that Molina …… really stayed in on that inside ….. pitch …. that’s some good …….. hitting”
I feel bad for the guy, he was a pretty decent Giant but jeez, not everyone can be an announcer.
I think every sentence ever should end with “Also, FP sucks”
Let’s try it out…
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Also, FP sucks.”
and then post the FP/Byrnesie pic. Consider it done.
IMO
Worst 5
McCarver
Suttcliffe
George Frazier
Ryan Lefebvre
Grace
Top 5
Scully (hands down best guy in the biz)
Kruk & Kuip
Steve Stone
Jerry Remy
Joe Buck
——
And you seriously don’t believe team chemistry matters? At all? I’m shocked.
Likewise, you think it’s just “psycho-analytical babble” that it’s possible a pitcher can be significantly – and visibly – more successful by, for lack of a better word, just relaxing on the mound? Are you saying that psychology has no role in player performance? Tell that to Rich Hill. Or Barry Zito, for that matter.
I understand the sabermetrician’s point of view that because these kinds of things are immeasurable we need to be careful about how and when to use them, but I vehemently disagree with the notion that because these kinds of things are immeasurable they simply don’t exist.
Mr. Lomez,
Love your list. Who does Lefebvre do games for? Not sure if I’ve heard him. I’m also a BIG Steve Stone fan, really good (and intelligent) commentary. Interesting that you like Joe Buck, you might be one of the few. Remy is pretty funny and I’ve enjoyed him on occasion when I catch a Sox game.
I don’t believe in team chemistry. At least not in the way most announcers might. I’ll take talent over good buddies every time. Not that it proves anything, but the Seattle Mariners were supposed to be stuffed full of team chemistry this year and it turns out, they suck. Not because they aren’t getting along, but because they can’t hit. Teams win that hate each other and teams win that love each other, I think the key is that all these teams had good talent. You won’t ever see the 2008 Giants win a World Series no matter how many pitchers wear high socks, or how many guys go bowling together, or how many players were eyeblack.
Without big bad Barry Bonds, isn’t this the best team chemistry we’ve ever had in the recent years? Shouldn’t our record be better if team chemistry truly exists?
On the psycho-babble, I have more faith (and reason) to believe that Pelfrey did well not because he had “Calm Eyes” but because the Giants aren’t very good at hitting a baseball.
Likewise, I think Zito’s problem has less to do with how he’s feeling and more to do with loss of velocity, command, and pitch quality.
I’m not arguing that these things (feelings, chemistry, getting along, etc.) don’t exist, but if they do, they matter very little in the big picture. And they’re certainly trumped by talent and ability.
“Chemistry is a class you take.”
Jim Leyland.
Most of time OK, occassional blips, could have been from my end, my system’s been flakey recently since I added Skype.
Molina’s numbers were bad for any position except for pitchers. But as much as I think it would be better to bat Rowand or even Winn in that spot, keeping in mind that this is a rebuilding year, really, neither Rowand or Winn are clean-up hitters either, and that job fell to Molina because the other hitters are where they probably should be.
If I were manager, I would view clean-up much like the closer position, when a player is in that position, he might go outside what he normally does in order to “be” a “clean-up” hitter. Why mess up other hitters minds, particularly young ones like Bowker who probably deserves to hit a little higher up the lineup, or even Lewis, who has thrived leading off but might change if he were batted in a key RBI position.
Plus, it’s a lose-win situation: if we lose because of this, we win in a better draft pick next season.
FWIW, announcers can and do interact with the players on a regular basis – Kruk mentions his interactions often in his morning show on KNBR – so if they noticed that he’s now more relaxed, I would be inclined to believe that he knows that Pelfrey has relaxed.
But per your point, it is psycho-babble, who knows why exactly a pitcher suddenly figure things out and does great over an extended 8 game stretch (much like how Lincecum was terrrible for a while, then figured out how to relax, according to reports last season) where he has pitched 51.2 IP, 48 hits, 19 walks, 36 strikeouts, 2.61 ERA, .250/.322/.313/.635, so it is not just the Giants doing poorly against him, St. Louis and the rest of the NL West have also done poorly against him, and he also shut out Colorado in Colorado.
About Lincecum, chill. It’s one start. It is NY and they probably flew in yesterday, arriving later in the day. So you got your jet lag and adjusting to sleeping in a different bed, so maybe he didn’t get the bestest of sleep. And all pitchers go through a dead period during the season. And sometimes the hitters just have your number that day. Plus as Chris noted, he was due to give up some homers. If we are still having this conversation a month from now, then I’ll start worrying.
Zito has had his abilities, but through whatever tweaks he did, his velocity is up, as well as his command and control over his pitches have improved as well, over his last three games. It is not a definitive change but it certainly is a change and a performance he has not delivered for four years now. Hopefully he can continue the improvement.
First, the list.
Lefebvre is the Royals play by play man. Typical Lefebvre scenario from last week: his color guy mentioned something about Greinke having a bunch of Quality Starts (like, QS as a stat) but not having much to show for it in the W column. Lefebvre goes ape, doing the whole “that’s just a bunch of geeks in a basement” routine, then continues on with the “the point is to win, so obviously wins and losses are the best way to measure a pitcher” routine. The whole time the color-guy is trying to talk him down from a ledge. He’s like Joe Morgan, but angry. It’s absolutely mind-numbing stuff. (He was also the central figure in the Milton Bradley fiasco a few weeks back.)
And wow, Joe Buck definitely belonged on the WORST list. Major gaffe on my part. I dislike him almost as much as McCarver.
You know who is fantastic, is Jim Palmer who does about half the Orioles home games. Delightfully insightful. I’d put him on the Top 5 in lieu of Fuck-o Buck-o.
—
Team chemistry (this is a radically attenuated argument since we could go on all day about this – and get nowhere): Let’s clarify what it is first. I think the misconception is that chemistry is just a matter of guys getting along, being pals, that if you set enough amiable dudes to the same task they’ll be able to nice-guy their way to the finish line. This is not what I, and I think most, mean by team chemistry. As I perceive it, chemistry is more a combination of personalities (good and bad and other) and playing styles that taken as a whole elevates the intensity, the urgency, of a team (or doesn’t). It’s largely, if not wholly, ineffable, and it may just be irreducibly complex. That is, it cannot be broken down into component parts.
Again, I realize this is all pretty nebulous and probably unconvincing, but I can tell you from my personal experience playing sports at a high level, there is a certain “clubhouse energy” that exists for all teams. That energy can have positive effects, it can have negative effects, and it can be as stale as month old bread. Bad chemistry can be overcome by lots of talent and good chemistry can be cut down at the knees by a roster full of scrubs. I can’t explain in this space beyond that, and certainly have little understanding of its nature, but I am convinced that team chemistry is a real thing.
As far as relaxing on the mound, I have to side with Darling. These guys aren’t playing in some physical vacuum. They’re affected by the media, and by crowds, and by the expectancies of big salaries. Whether or not Pelfrey specifically last night was “relaxing on the mound” or whatever, I can’t say (whether or not Darling has better info, is also up for grabs), but to dismiss the psychological aspect of sports in general – that relaxing, not overthinking, getting back to basics, trusting your stuff, or whatever cliche is thrown out there, is more or less just babble – seems myopic to me.
Thanks for the link to the Injury Nexus by BP. I’ve always wanted to read it.
I have to say that they really need to update it and make one of their lackey interns research which players were injuried and which where not, or just redo the study using what we know today about FIP and ERA. I feel that there is a huge flaw in the study. It assumes that a pitcher who is capable enough to throw 150 IP with a park-adjusted ERA no worse than 10 percent worse than the league average, but then doesn’t the next year, suffered a catastrophic injury.
As you know from your posts on ERA and FIP, there are wild swings for ERA, particularly for young pitchers who are unproven, but their FIP is suppose to be closer to their true talent level. It seems clear to me that there is probably a significant number of pitchers in their 20′s who had a nice first season but, due to the BABIP luck, HR/FB luck, or any other luck, did well that first season, but then when luck was no longer on their side, they get sent down “to figure things out.”
Even if that was only 10% of the population (and I would guess more than that else there would be no need to use FIP), that would reduce the attrition rate for 22 year olds to about that of mid-30′s, 20% would push it to the late 20′s, 30% to the mid-20′s. For FIP to be more effective than ERA, I would guess that the problem of false positives have to be at least 20-30% (being conservative, I would think 50%), which would account for most of the difference in attrition between the 21-22 year olds and the 23-25 year olds.
In addition, they didn’t explain their studies’ methodology very well or in good detail. From what I gather from their methodology section for this, if a pitcher, say, threw 150 IP when he was 21 and did well, but didn’t throw 150 IP when he was 22, he was counted among the attrition. However, there could be a variety of reasons for that.
One is for a large portion of their study, from 1946 to 1972 or so, it was common for the military to draft someone. Thus if Willie Mays were a pitcher, he would have been counted among the attrition because he did well when young, then didn’t play (due to induction into military) but then returned to have a long career.
Another, and this is not noted clearly in the methodology, is that all a pitcher had to do to be included was 150 IP then less than IP the next year. So if a pitcher should have a bad but not serious injury, he could pitch well, then pitch less than 50%, counting as one attrition for that age, then return to normal and pitch another 10 years (say he broke his leg or finger), then had another good 150 IP year followed by less than half, and counted for attrition for that season as well. At least, that is what I see from their methodology.
For example, Roy Halladay, in 2003 at age 26, pitched 266 innings, in 2004, at age 27, 133 innings, thus he would count as an attrition at age 27, even though he has continued to still pitch well. Nowhere in the methodology does it say that if he returned to normal IP the next season, that attrition would not count.
Another could be from FIP. He’s a true talent but young and learning, so he has his great first season, but luck turned badly on him his second year and he gets sent down, where he “proves” himself again, and go on to throw another 10 seasons before age gets to him. He would count twice in the attrition counts, one young, one old.
Double counting from all these sources will inflate the attrition rates for the younger ages, which I’m basing on their stated methodology. At minimum, I would exclude from the attrition counting anyone who again pitches over 150 IP after doing that 150+ IP then less than 50% filter.
In addition, and again, they don’t mention in their methodology, but how many pitchers even pitch in the majors when they are 21 or 22? I would think significantly less than that at 25, even more so when they are 27-28. Thus the population of that could be very small.
That age range also brings in selection error there. Maybe a rebuidling team brings up a pitcher too soon as a trial but he does well, but as his FIP showed, he was just lucky, and gets sent down the next season when his true talent shows and never makes it back to the majors again. He would count as an attrition even though he should never been up in the majors in the first place, but just got lucky. Or as above, he just wasn’t ready, so he goes down, finally learns to pitch, and comes back up and have a nice career.
Until they either fix these flaws in their study or clarify their methodology that they used, I would not point to this study and say categorically that young pitchers suffer from high attrition rates. Even if they fixed the study, and it showed the same results, they admit in the methodology that this was just a proxy for injuries, meaning that there is noise in the data where the pitcher is not injured but is still counted.
They need better data to back up their assertions, and maybe they have in the years since that study, but I don’t subscribe.
@Mr. Lomez
Wow, Lefebrve sounds truly terrible. I did watch the Giants series against the Royals so now that I think about it, I must have heard him. Maybe I tuned him out.
I’ve never heard Palmer do games but I’ll have to check him out now when I see an O’s game on cable.
I think you made some good arguments in your post but this had me interested
“Bad chemistry can be overcome by lots of talent and good chemistry can be cut down at the knees by a roster full of scrubs.”
Isn’t that essentially what I was saying? That talent will trump chemistry? The big question with chemistry is, if it does have an affect, how much does it affect players? Can we measure it? I still lean that if it’s nearly undetectable it matters very little.
I think you’re right on the money with this “(whether or not Darling has better info, is also up for grabs” because Darling isn’t inside Pelfrey’s head and I doubt Pelfrey tells him everything.
“Gee, Ron, I’m really relaxed tonight!”
He might be closer to Pelfrey than you or I, but that doesn’t mean he’s any better at evaluating him than you or I.
—
@OGC
You’re questioning a lot of the methodology which you yourself aren’t sure how is put together. I think we all agree that ERA is a bad measure for pitchers. But they had to set a baseline somewhere for their study, and they chose 150 innings with certain ERA restrictions as an indicator of having a successful season. FIP would most likely be a better indicator.
You’ve made some interesting assumptions but they could very well be account for in BP’s methodology. It’s a lot of “What if” questions.
The article stats that “However, by placing a few restrictions on our dataset, we can serve to limit these cases, and use attrition rate as a reasonable proxy for catastrophic injury. ”
So, I’m assuming that they could have corrected for war time service and maybe some of your other issues.
I think it’s a valid study, if not maybe dated some. Even if you might have troubles with the supposed methodology of the study, it raises good questions for future studies.
So many bad announcers, so little time. Let’s take two.
Giants fans may still hate him, but Orel Hersheiser is terrific – One of the few announcers I don’t FF my Tivo past while watching (and not having to listen) to a game.
Joe Morgan is that extraordinary special kind of W stupid. I’m amazed he doesn’t have a high post in the Administration.
EL,
Hersh isn’t bad, I’ve found him to be a little vanilla-ish when I’ve heard him but for mainstream TV dudes, you could do far worse.
The comments on Darling and Hernandez are pretty clueless.
First of all, you complain about their comments on Bonds and how they dont want him with the mets because he is a statue in the field because the Mets have had Alou for the past 2 years. Newsflash – announcers do not make personnel decisions – its not like they signed him. I have heard them comment negatively on alou’s mobility as well.
Your complaint that they talk about Pelfrey pitching better beause he is relaxed. Well Darling was a very good Major League pitcher for 15 years – he probably has a better understanding of the psychology of baseball players than you or I. He also watches the mets and pelfrey almost everyday, so he probably has a better sense of the player’s moods. The whole reason you have former players is announce is because THEY KNOW THINGS WE DON’T.
3rd, you are annoyed that Hernandez complained about the call – he is passionate about baseball, do you prefer the Braves style that drones on in monotone voices and put you to sleep? And they were right it was a terrible call. And Hernandez gets upset when calls are blown either way.
Last, you are annoyed they talk about Molina being the crappy 4th hitter – should they pretend like its not the case? Like it does not affect the strategy of the game? Especially when you compare the current Giants to who they have had in the recent past – their offense being so much worse is a relevant story.
In addition to all of that, they are by far the funniest announcers that I have ever heard in Baseball. Unlike McCarver who THOUGHT he was so witty and funny, Hernandez actually is, in part because he is a little bit crazy and will talk about all kinds of topics.
Finally, they were both great players, who have good baseball minds and are fair – they are not major homers like many other pathetic announcers (i am thinking in particular of sterling from the yanks and harrleson from the whitesox (definately the worst i have ever heard – i am waiting for him to start referring to the opposing team as Al Qaeda)