Watching Tim Lincecum struggle against the Washington Nationals should remind us all that he’s human. And, at the same time, the tremendous strides he’s made since he debuted in 2007 at the age of 23-years-old. I’ve written about it before, but two things essentially have turned Lincecum from a promising college arm to one of the best pitchers in baseball… Read more →
Below you’ll see this week’s Wednesday Graph — a new feature I’m going to be doing here on BCB. Every Wednesday I’ll be posting a Giants-related graph. Please, hold back your excitement. This week’s graph focuses on Aaron Rowand has his BB% and K% rates. (Last data pulled from 5/23/10. BB% = BB/PA, K% = SO/AB) Career K% – 20.4… Read more →
The Giants drafted Brandon Crawford out of the 2008 First Year Player Draft from UCLA. The talented college shortstop was projected as a first round talent but he fell to the 4th round when he struggled in his final college year. The book on Crawford was as follows: terrific defender at SS but he swings-and-misses a lot — he struck… Read more →
It’s hard to say that Baseball-Reference could get any more useful. But, Baseball-Reference just got even more useful. Sabermetricians have always been on the search for the best way to measure wins contributed by players. Baseball Prospectus has WARP, Bill James has win shares and now we are presenting Sean Smith’s Wins Above Replacement or WAR data on the site…. Read more →
Here’s a graph for the bases-loaded 9th inning showdown between Brian Wilson and Kaz Matsui. The graph represents each pitch in the at-bat and the result: foul, strike, ball, and in-play. It took Wilson 15 pitches to eventually put Matsui away on a flyball to LF Andres Torres. From the graph, you can that from about pitch #5 to #14… Read more →
I know it’s tacky to quote yourself, but I never claimed to be non-tacky. I got the opportunity to write a guest post for Rob Neyer’s SweetSpot blog this week and I took the chance to talk a little about the Giants situation with Mark DeRosa. It seems that the Giants are hoping that some rest will cure DeRosa’s wrist… Read more →
For a moment there, the offense looked like it was going to be OK. A couple of Aubrey Huff double plays later and I’m jaded again. At the moment, the Giants are 18-14 based on their hot start in April when the team went 13-9. During that April, the Giants scored roughly 4.5 runs per game. In May, the scoring… Read more →
First, Happy Mother’s Day! Second, I’ve been traveling the last couple of days — going home for mother’s day, of course — and I’ve only caught bits-and-pieces of the current Mets-Giants series. After reading yesterday’s boxscore, this might have been a good thing. Some brief thoughts * If you wanted to create a basic statement about the Giants’ offense in… Read more →
In honor of Tim’s 13 strikeout game against the Marlins on Tuesday, here’s a graph depicting every start in Lincecum’s career and how many strikeouts he had in that particular start. For now, Lincecum’s career high for K’s in a game came against the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2009. In that game, Lincecum pitched 9 innings while striking out 15, walking… Read more →
Outside of on-field performance, there’s a few things that will always endear me to a pitcher. Stirrups, check. Weird facial hair, check. Funky pitching motions, double-check. As a fan of the Giants and their farm system, sometime around 2007 Sergio Romo caught my eye when he completely devastated the California League. If you ever read any scouting report on Romo,… Read more →