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 the 4th round of the 1998 First Year Player Draft, Torres had logged over 469 games in the minors since 2004. He caught the Giants’ eye after his 2008 season with the Cubs — being Torres, this was the Iowa version of the Cubbies — in which he hit: .306/.391/.501

Before the season started, the Giants ended up signing Torres to a minor league deal with an invite to Spring Training. Putting myself in Torres speedy shoes, I imagine he was prepared to start his year in Fresno. However, things turned out differently. Torres impressed the Giants while in camp and opened the season with the team in San Francisco. It was the first time since 2005 that Torres had been on a major league roster. I was slightly pessimistic about Torres’ odds, but across the board he had a fine season, which when tabulated by WAR, added up to +2 wins.

The biggest surprise with Torres was his hitting. Torres was never a masher in the minor leagues, but he showed up to the Giants and made hard contact all year long. In 170 PA’s, Torres hit 6 home runs, 8 triples, and 6 doubles. That’s an ISO of .262. But it wasn’t just his hitting that made Torres stand out, his fielding was exceptional. By UZR, in an admittedly too-tiny-sample to take seriously, he was +7.8 runs above the average CF in just 351 innings fielded. Pro-rated to 150 games in CF, that’s a +30 run season. That’s probably not going to happen, but with Torres’ footspeed, he should be able to play CF around +5 runs over a full season, making him a very good defender.

This Spring Training, Torres must feel like he’s repeating history. He’s back in camp and again fighting for a job. The Giants have 2 open OF positions to split among Fred Lewis, John Bowker, Eugenio Velez and Andres Torres. Because of Torres’ ability to handle CF adeptly, he should have somewhat of an inside track to make the team. Out of the Lewis, Velez, and Bowker group, none of them can really play CF — even though the Giants have stuck Velez there from time-to-time. I don’t think anyone should expect Torres to repeat his .379 wOBA from last year. His BABIP (.347) and success on flyballs should make us skeptical of his chances in 2010. The BABIP of .347 is high, but it’s not totally outrageous, the one thing that Torres shouldn’t be able to repeat was his success when hitting the ball in the air. When talking about batted balls, flyballs are turned into outs more often than groundballs, but they do more damage when they land for hits (or go over the fence). It’s hard to hit a groundball out of the park. Thanks to the handy Baseball-Reference, we can see just how fortunate Torres was in ‘09 when he hit the baseball in the air. The average NL batter hit .224/.218/.595 on flyballs. Torres hit .378/.378/1.111 on flyballs. Or, by using sOPS+ — the split based version of OPS+, compares the current batter by split to the league average by split — of  259. That means that Torres hit 159% better than your league average hitter when it came to flyballs.

That’s unreal.

And, very likely unsustainable. Looking ahead, It’s hard to try and project Torres. His footspeed and range make me think his defense is for real, but trying to get a handle on his hitting is tough. His development as a player is all over the place. After struggling in the minors he put together a few nice seasons later in his career — namely his 2007 split between AA/AAA with the Tigers and his 2008 with the Iowa Cubs. Of course, age-to-level caveats apply, but it’s not impossible that Torres learned something in the minors that helped him on offense. CHONE has Torres projected as a .319 wOBA hitter for 2010 which is quite the drop off. You might think that if Torres is a .319 wOBA batter, then he’s not very valuable. Not true. Torres would be a below average hitter, but his defense is a plus in CF and his baserunning should chip in a few runs as well.

Unless Rowand is hurt by slamming into a wall, the Giants won’t need Torres to be a starter. His defense and baserunning make him a nice candidate as a 4th OF. And he’s the only player on the roster that can honestly handle CF in an above average fashion. Those reasons should make him the go-to guy to start the season with the team in the majors. Torres has taken a long path to the majors, but if he can stay healthy and defend in CF, he should be able to find some work at the major league level as long as his legs are healthy.

I’ve probably uttered the following phrase on this site a million times, but Pablo Sandoval really did have a terrific year at the plate last season. He started the season off a little rough, neither hitting for power or getting on base, but he corrected himself pretty quickly. Around game #20 his BA, OBP, and SLG all improved and he never really let up, kicking it up another notch around game #60 — especially in the power department — as he coasted to the end of the year as one of the best hitters in the National League. One of my biggest concerns with Pablo last year was his power, but he sustained a > .500 SLG for most of the season. And he’ll only be 23-years-old next season.

Rowand wasn’t as fortunate as Pablo in ‘09. He started off hot, cooled down a little, and was moved to the leadoff around game #37 to somewhere around game #87. Rowand’s success as a hitter while batting leadoff shouldn’t be considered a cure for his hitting problems — more than likely it was a happy coincidence. But, Rowand will be heading into 2010 as the most likely candidate to hit leadoff for the G’s. He’s been a streaky hitter in his career and you can expect more of the same in the upcoming campaign. After watching Rowand limp to the finish line (hello, sliders!) it’s hard to imagine that around midway through the season he was hitting .295/.355/.478.

I’ll be editing the spreadsheets as changes occur. Each player is also color-coded based on their Opening Day status. Red means unavailable for Opening Day, yellow is questionable, and green is ready-to-go. You can also filter each column by your desired criteria.

Editgrid Link: http://www.editgrid.com/explore/user/xanthan/InjurySheet

“Velez attacks flaws in hopes of sticking”

Eugenio is like the bad habit the Giants just can’t quit. Giving Eugenio playing time should be lumped in between picking your nose and forgetting to turn off your cell ringer during movies. Yet, he runs fast and the Giants like guys that run fast because speed doesn’t slump, unless you’re Eugenio Velez and you can’t get on base. Then speed kinda slumps. But he’s still fast! And he’s kinda funny looking which is nice because every baseball team needs a guy that’s funny looking.

Worst article quote:

Third-base coach Tim Flannery, the Giants’ bunting guru, estimated that the fleet Velez could boost his batting average by 15 to 20 points if he became proficient at tapping the ball up the third- or first-base line or dragging it by the pitcher.

Hmm, the arbitrariness is delicious. The only skill between Eugenio Velez and competency on offense is bunting. Yup.

I don’t have to tell you that Eugenio Velez isn’t a very good player of baseball. Of the 5 tools that scouts like to use to asses players, Velez has 1 tool, he’s very fast. And unless you count hilariously crazy defensive clanks as a tool, it’s the only that he has to work with. He’s played almost every defensive position on the diamond. In the minors, he played 116 career games at SS (which is still a funny image to me) 201 games at 2B, 74 games in CF, and 52 games in LF. This gives Eugenio the illusion of being a versatile utility man when he should probably only being playing LF in the majors.

What I think shocks me — and maybe you — the most about Velez is that he’s not young, either. Despite his scrawny, gangly and youthful appearance, he’ll be 28-years-old next season. His minor league numbers should give us the slightest hope, but each day they seem more and more unlikely. Velez might be out of baseball in 2 years or he might still be playing, who knows. But even though I don’t think he should be playing too much on this year’s team, I’ll always appreciate him for this:

Yeah. That was pretty cool.

If a player is not traded, and clears waivers, he may be released from the team. The player is then a free agent and may sign with any team, including the team that just released him. The team that releases him is responsible for the salary the player is owed, less what he is paid by the team that signs him. In practice, that amount is usually a pro-rated portion of the Major League minimum salary.

A quick word on Ramirez and why he might interest the Giants. Ramirez is a 6′3″ right-handed reliever out of the Yankees organization that has also spent time in his earlier years with the Angels. He works off of a 88-89 mph fastball that he’s thrown 53% of the time in the majors and a plus-changeup (that’s sometimes been called a “Bugs Bunny Change”) that he’s thrown a hair under 38% of the time. He has a slider but it’s usage has been minimal. By FanGraphs pitch-type linear weights, his changeup has been an above average pitch for him in his 98.1 career innings in the majors — over that time-frame his changeup has been worth a total of +7.6 runs above average. He sells the change really well and it’s his best pitch. He’s not a hard-thrower, but his fastball and changeup combo has devastated minor league hitters.

Ramirez’s career minor league numbers:

Note: some of his years cover different levels and leagues. To get a more specific breakdown of Ramirez’s number in the minors, check out his BB-Ref page.

Yup, those numbers should be enough to interest any team. Ramirez hasn’t had the same level of success in the majors as the minors. He’s still had the ability to K hitters with a career K/9 in the majors of 10.62, but his BB/9 at 5.13 is well above his minor league control numbers. CHONE is projecting him as a 4.37 FIP reliever for the 2010 season — making him more of a back-end bullpen guy than a late inning reliever. But Ramirez does offer plenty of upside, especially in the NL. His minor league numbers are fantastic and a smart team needing to round out their bullpen should check in on Edwar. If the Giants picked him up, I’d rank rank him above Brandon Medders, and maybe even Waldis Joaquin or Dan Runzler.

Other links on Ramirez: Neyer | THT | River Ave. Blues

My feelings about relievers stem from the the following:

~ Generally speaking, anyone can relieve. The list of starters-turned-to-relievers is long. You rarely see anyone go in the other direction from reliever to starter. Therefore, the potential population to draw relievers from is enormous.

~ They just don’t pitch that much. Having a relief ace is great, but he’s only going to pitch in 60-some innings for your team. There just isn’t a lot of available PT for a reliever to influence a game. I think you could make the case for shifting back to multiple inning usage, a’la Goose Gossage, but with specialization in the ‘pen, I’m not sure that’s going to happen anytime soon.

Because of these two reasons, I have a hard time justifying paying the going rate for relievers, which admittedly has taken a hit lately. You can still find good buys (Jeremy Affeldt being one of them) but in general, paying for relief help through the FA market seems risky. Tom Tango in his seminal post on calculating WAR ran the numbers behind roster construction and found that by WAR, you should only use around 10% of your entire payroll on relievers. That’s by far the smallest percentage of any portion of your roster. It’s even lower if you consider pitcher risk.

Switching gears a little, after trying to think about how to sum up my feelings re: relievers, I then started to think about how teams manage their bullpens. We’ll often hear the phrase in the press or on the TV that a certain manger “really manages his bullpen well.” Managing a bullpen can be a catch-all term but to me it normally means when in-game a manager calls on his relievers. You want to use your best reliever in the best possible spots based on leverage — or the state of the game. We give relievers credit for working in tight late game situations. Example: Brian Wilson comes in a 1 run game in the 8th innings, 2 outs, and the bases are loaded. That’s a much higher leveraged situation than Brandon Medders working mop-up in the 4th inning of a blowout. Wilson will get credit for his hard work and Medders will not. Seems fair, right? In theory, managers will use their best relievers in the toughest leveraged situations. It makes no sense to bring in Wilson during the 5th inning when the Giants are up by 6 runs.

Therefore, I wanted to look at every qualified reliever (by FanGraphs) by 2009 and examine their FIP vs the average leverage index they pitched in. The theory remains that the higher the leverage, the better the reliever should be. Nobody wants the worst member of the bullpen pitching the 9th inning in a close game.

There seems to be on obvious relationship between pitcher quality and use. Managers aren’t going to throw a 5.00 FIP pitcher into the 9th inning and expect him to wiggle out of tight jams. You can see a few relievers that posted very high FIP scores but still worked very high 2+ leverage situations*. The players who posted poor FIP’s but were still give high leveraged situations are the Established Closer ™ types. Brad Lidge had a down year posting a 5.45 FIP but he still pitched in tough situations. Brian Fuentes was very similar. The graph also shows how good Brian Wilson was last year. He pitched in extremely high leveraged situations while posting a FIP of 2.50. His success by FIP combined with his usage adds up to a 2.4 win season. For a reliever, that’s an incredible sum. Brian Wilson’s work out of the bullpen was one of the highlights of the Giants’ 2009 season. But, as his price rises through arbitration, the Giants might want to start combing their system for their next great relief arm.

*A quick word about leverage, 1.0 indicates a neutral situation. Closers tend to work around 1.8 and guys who are mopping up will be below 1.0. Read more about leverage at FanGraphs.

Phil Hughes’ success as a reliever has been well documented but despite his sub-2.00 FIP score, he was leveraged pretty low. You can chalk that up to team composition. When you’ve got Mariano Rivera in front of you, you’re probably not going to get the high leveraged situations. Also of note is Luis Perdomo, former Rule 5 pick by the Giants. Perdomo is notable not because he performed well for the Padres, but because his average leverage index of 0.28 was by far the lowest of all our relievers. In order to keep a Rule 5 pick, he must remain on your active roster for the entire season and it’s pretty obvious that the Padres hid Perdomo in their bullpen, only letting him out when the situation allowed.

Managers seem to have an idea of who their best reliever is and how they should use him. Which makes me think that the idea of managing a bullpen is overrated to an extent. Should we give credit for a manager realizing who his relief ace is and when to use him? Even if managers are judging relievers by things like ERA or scouting reports, it seems that by and large, they make the right call. Which makes me think, is it all that hard to do?

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!)

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 should start trickling in (this article notes that 24 of the 40 players on the 40-man are already in camp) with March 2nd being the mandatory reporting date for anyone not in camp yet.

Some news from the early stages of ST:

~ Aaron Rowand reported to camp about 10lbs lighter according to Andrew Baggarly. Rowand reports his weight loss due to some cycling he did over the offseason and he expects to be quicker and stronger for the 2010 season. Offensively, Rowand has been pretty much the same player in his first 2 years with the Giants, posting wRC+’s of 97 and 96 in each season. Spring Training is the time for optimism, but don’t buy too much into these stories. Everyone is in the best shape of their life, better, stronger, faster, learned a new pitch, fixed a mechanical batting flaw, etc. But players usually play like they always have.

~ Unlike Rowand, Jonathan Sanchez has packed on about 12lbs in an effort to throw harder. Hmm, I’m not sure more weight = more velocity, but if Sanchez can build off of his 2009 season, the Giants would be very pleased.

~ Freddy Sanchez states that he’s ahead of his rehab schedule but still isn’t sure when he’ll have his full range of motion back. He should be able to resume baseball activities within the next couple of weeks. For now, Juan Uribe should be in the lead for the 2B job, but the Giants could always shift DeRosa over to 2B and then move someone like John Bowker into LF. In other injury news, Travis Ishikawa is hurting from 2 torn ligaments in his left foot. He’s wearing a boot right now. Surgery is a possibility if the ligaments don’t heal. If Ishikawa goes under the knife, he could be out for up to 3 months.

~ Todd Wellemeyer is in competition with Madison Bumgarner for the 5th starter’s spot. This contradicts what the team initially said about Wellemeyer when he was signed, calling him a long reliever, but I think most expected Wellemeyer would get his chance in ST. We talked about Wellemeyer, here. He’s not very good, but he should give Bumgarner a chance to work on his secondary pitchers and/or stamina in AAA before the Giants call him up. The other benefit of Wellemeyer is that he’ll keep Bumgarner’s service time in check. Hopefully the Giants will also look at Joe Martinez or Kevin Pucetas as other possible options — both could pitch better than Wellemeyer in the full season and it’s well known that I’m somewhat of a Martinez fan.

And a quick word on Spring Training statistics: don’t worry about them. Dave Cameron of FanGraphs has a nice article on the topic of ST stats. They just aren’t predictive of anything. Things get muddy when you consider parks, sample size, level of competition, and yes, even effort.

For fun, here’s the top Giants hitters last spring by OPS sorted by 50 at-bats.

Name	        OPS
J. Guzman	1.366
P. Sandoval	1.168
A. Torres	1.077
F. Lewis	1.028
R. Aurilia	0.989
T. Ishikawa	0.929
E. Burriss	0.855
E. Velez	0.852
J. Uribe	0.734
K. Frandsen	0.717
B. Molina	0.693
J. Bowker	0.669
R. Winn	        0.628
E. Renteria	0.609
A. Rowand	0.595

We all know that Rich Aurilia went on to great success during the 2009 season!

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, $23M deal with the Giants. It’s not a bad deal for either side. Lincecum get’s a little security in his 2nd year of the deal (if he blows out his arm, he’ll still get $14M next year) and he’ll get another chance to go back to arbitration and receive a raise if he’s still pitching at an elite level. I would expect that if Lincecum holds up over the next 2 years, the Giants will try to ink him to a longer term deal before they head back into arbitration. The Giants get Lincecum for 2-years and won’t have to worry about going back to arbitration with him for the 2011 season.

With his $9M salary for 2009 (I’m including his $1M per year bonus), Lincecum becomes the 4th highest paid Giant behind Barry Zito (18.5), Aaron Rowand (13.6), and Edgar Renteria (10). That’s a lot of dead weight at the top of the salary scale. It’s easy to remember how bad Zito’s deal looks and how uninspiring Rowand’s deal is — but seeing the number “$10M” beside Edgar Renteria just kills me. Rent’s signing wasn’t a terrible one at the time and if you searched this site you would see I wasn’t opposed to it. But, man, he’s taken a turn for the wrong direction.

5 days until pitchers and catchers report!

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 season.

The two horizontal gray lines indicate the standard strike zone by height. Matt Cain, being a flyball pitcher that goes for strikeouts, is more likely to pitch batters up in the zone with his fastball. Cain has a FB% (flyball percentage) of 45% over his career — indicating that he’s more likely to give up flyballs than any other batted ball. His career K/9 of 7.5 is above average for a starting pitcher in the National League. In 2009, the average SP in the NL struck out 6.8 batters per 9. Cain is almost a full strike out better than league average. This fastball location profile seems to mesh with what we would expect for Cain’s pitcher-type. Cain works up in the strike zone with his heat.

Affeldt had an interesting season in ‘09. He owns a career GB% of 48.8% which indicates that he’s got some groundball tendencies. But, last year Affeldt’s ground ball percentage shot all the way up to 65%. As a result, Affeldt induced 18 double plays — leading all relievers in baseball. As you can see from his frequency graph, he kept his fastball down in the zone (much lower than Cain) where batters are more likely to hit it on the ground. I don’t think Affeldt is a true talent 60%+ groundball pitcher, but his game plan should remain the same: keep the ball down. Over his career since he switched to relief full-time, he’s been successful by following that approach.

It all adds up to another reason why I like baseball so much. You’ve got two pitchers with two great fastballs, but they use them in two opposite ways to achieve success.