Q: Who was the 3rd most valuable position player on the Giants last season by wins above replacement?
A: Andres Torres
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Torres was a weird bird for the 2009 Giants. He was a 31-year-old minor league journeyman with a scant 285 career plate appearances in the majors before the season started. Originally drafted by the Tigers in [...]
Posts under ‘Giants’
Andres Torres And Flyballs
Labwork: Tale of Two Seasons
A quick graph post tonight before I turn in. I’m trying to come up with a graph that shows the ups and downs of a player’s progress over the course of a season. I know that the praiseworthy FanGraphs has been doing similar graphs for awhile, but I wanted to try my hand at my [...]
Injury Status Spreadsheet
A quick update: I was going to attach this to my previous post but forgot to. I’ll be keeping track of Giants’ players various aches and pains as they advance through ST. You can either bookmark this page for updates, or I’ll be re-posting it as big news develops. The spreadsheet is very basic, it [...]
I Can’t Believe I’m Writing About Eugenio Velez
Heaven help me. I can’t believe I’m writing about Eugenio Velez. There’s nothing better (or worse) than STFP (Spring Training Fluff Pieces). Now that baseball is back in action, sportswriters tend to go a little overboard with their spring time pieces. The phenomenon is well known. The latest offense in STFPs? Eugenio Velez.
“Velez attacks flaws [...]
Cheap Relief Arm: Edwar Ramirez
Ah, nothing like cruising around for cheap relief arms with upside. In order to create room for the newly signed Chan Ho Park, the Yankees have DFA’d 29-year-old reliever Edwar Ramirez. You can read the Wikepedia article on the process of DFA, but the meat-and-potatoes lies here:
If a player is not traded, and clears waivers, [...]
Bullpen Management, Do We Give Too Much Credit?
When it comes to evaluating prospects or looking at roster make-up, I’ve always been a little biased against relievers. It’s not that I think all relievers are replaceable, but in the short-term of baseball history, what teams have paid for and what they’ve gotten has been grossly out of proportion when it comes to relief [...]
My Goodness.
I’m between a few things but this has to be watched. Jim Bowden interviewing Dayton Moore about advanced stats? Pure gold.
(H/T to Marcello!)
I’m In The Best Shape of My Life!
Hooray, baseball is back. Well, sorta back. Here’s my annual don’t-worry-too-much-about-Spring-Training post.
Yesterday Giants pitchers and catchers (and a few position players, too) found their way down to Arizona for the start of Spring Training. Today is first the official day when pitchers and catchers start working out. On February 23rd the rest of the roster [...]
Giants Reach Deal With Lincecum
Our long national nightmare is over. Hot off the presses:
The contract is reported to be for two years and $23 million. SI.com reported that Lincecum will receive $8 million in 2010, $13 million in 2011 and a $2 million signing bonus to be split between the two years.
Narrowly missing arbitration, Lincecum agrees to a 2-year, [...]
High Heat vs. Low Heat
Playing around with some PFX tonight. I wanted to plot a graph of fastball height location vs. frequency thrown. I selected Matt Cain and Jeremey Affeldt as comparisons.
Big thanks to Joe Lefkowitz’s Pitch F/X Tool for providing the data. My deskstop is still packaged away, and with it my database. All numbers from the 2009 [...]