Hot off the BaggsPress: Kevin Frandsen was called into Bruce Bochy’s office this morning and left in street clothes. The Giants just gave the official word: he has been optioned and will begin the season at Triple-A Fresno. All signs pointed to this yesterday. Jesus Guzman confirmed he has been reassigned to minor league camp. He’ll go to Fresno but… Read more →
Positionally, when you think about the Giants, most everything is in it’s right place. First base had been claimed by Travis Ishikawa. The outfield — headed by Fred Lewis, Aaron Rowand, and Randy Winn — is set. Bengie Molina will return as the starting catcher. Edgar Renteria will start his Giants career at shortstop and the Pablo Sandoval third base… Read more →
The Giants have sent LHP Jack Taschner to the Phillies for C Ronny Paulino. Meet your new backup catcher. From SFGiants.com: Paulino, 27, could replace Steve Holm as the Giants’ backup catcher. Paulino hit .278 in 304 games with Pittsburgh from 2005-08 before Philadelphia obtained him in an offseason trade. Paulino played in only 40 games for the Pirates last… Read more →
A simple question today, should the Giants sign Will Ohman to a 1-year $2M-ish deal to replace the struggling Jack Taschner? After avoiding arbitration with Taschner — he was signed to a 1-year 830K deal — the Giants can’t be pleased with how the Special Agent has performed thus far in Spring Traninig. Taschner’s 12 free passes in 8.2 innings… Read more →
*I hope I’m not scaring away potential readers. Because OGC asked nicely in the comments section of the Zito FX post, here’s two velocity plots for Zito’s 2008 season with the Giants. The first is his overall average fastball velocity — as identified by PFX — month-by-month. The second plot is his velocity by home start. The 2nd plot should… Read more →
All PFX data is from 2008. Unlike in the Randy Johnson FX post, I cleaned up some of the pitch-types for Zito this time around. The first plot is the familiar movement plot that you’ll often see with PFX data. The second plot is movement based on velocity. It’s very crude — I broke everything into 5mph chunks — but… Read more →
A very quick graph today for something I’ve been meaning to do since the offseason when RJ signed. Here’s a PFX movement plot of Randy Johnson’s 2008 season. A few quick words on the graph: The pitch-types included are all from the MLBAM algorithms and their accuracy has been disputed somewhat. Consider this plot a rough version of what Johnson… Read more →
I’m still tied up in a couple of different projects right now, so I fear it’s going to be another link post today on BCB. But, fear not, I’ve got a couple of cool things lined up for the future and there’s a few interesting things happening right now in Giantsland. Let’s check them out. ~ The Big Unit is… Read more →
Good morning on a Monday. I hope everyone had a nice weekend and is strapping in for another work week. Something I had forgotten about Spring Training — it’s really long. The games have been going on for a couple of weeks now and yet, we’re still about 20+ days away from Opening Day. Trust me, I’m happy that baseball… Read more →
For the last 6 months or so, FanGraphs has really be on a roll by providing new features on it’s site. Today, David Appleman, announced that FanGraphs has updated it’s leaderboards section of the site. You can now search the leaderboards by career instead of just yearly chunks. This new career leaderboard function applies to things like batted ball data,… Read more →