There’s been a lot talk about Lincecum’s velocity this year and I think it’s gotten to a point where it’s jumped the shark. By most accounts, he’s down by about 1 mile per hour from his 2009 season. Should we freak out? If we assume that he’s healthy, I don’t think it’s as big of a deal as the media has made it out to be. It’s not unusual for a pitcher to lose velocity as he ages. The numbers indicate that Lincecum still has strikeout stuff even if he’s throwing 91 instead of 94. Big radar gun readings are sexy and most fans love to see hitters being blown away with mid-90′s gas, but should we care how hard a pitcher is throwing as long as he’s effective? Lincecum might be more of a 5-6 win pitcher these days than the 7-8 win player he was in his CYA years. If that’s true, the Giants still have a top 15 pitcher in baseball.

I pulled the PFX numbers for 2010 Lincecum starts at home — to remove any stadium bias from the road games — and here’s what we get.

The average fastball for Linecum this year is 90.8 mph. He’s still able to reach back and touch 92-93 when he needs it. I’ll be interested to see how he responds to the conditioning claims next year. The point is: 91-mph-Lincecum is still quite good and a major boon to the Giants’ rotation.

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I like Darren Ford — bad decisions aside — and it was cool to see him score the winning run last night. If you haven’t seen it, check out this video. Ford had a excellent year in 2009 in San Jose hitting .300/.386/.463. He struggled some this year in AA (.251 /.315/.365) but the Eastern League is a notoriously difficult place to hit. Ford probably won’t hit enough to start in the majors, but his defense in CF — mostly described as plus-plus — and his speed/baserunning — also described as plus-plus — should keep him employed as a 4th OF on any major league roster. It’s worth noting that much like 2009, he struggled a bunch in the first half this year. Post All-Star Break he was hitting .302/.367/.437 for the Squirrels in 126 at-bats.

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Rounding out today’s post, a graph of the National League Extra-base hits leaders.

Yeah, Andres Torres is having a pretty excellent year. Fun fact: In 2001 Barry Bonds had 107 XBHs — 73 of which were home runs.

What I’ve done for today’s ‘Wednesday Graph’ is to take 10 statistics — wOBA, K%, BB/K, AVG, OBP, ISO, Speed Score, BABIP, BB%, and FIP — and create Chernoff faces for every major league team. I’ll also note here, to avoid any confusion, that the BB% and K% statistics are based on offense and not pitching.

I would also like to send a huge thank you out to Flowing Data for putting up a tutorial on my request. FD has some of the best tutorials on the web for learning and using R and it’s a daily staple for graph junkies like myself. R is still very new to me and this post wouldn’t be possible without FD.

(Click to enlarge)

Be sure to consult the key above for what features are being displayed by which statistic. For example, the Diamondbacks’ hair is almost horn-like, representing their league worst FIP (4.82). Compared to the league’s best pitching (Padres, Braves) the D-Backs hair looks pretty goofy. We’ve mapped isolated-power (ISO) to the smiling trait. The more the face is smiling, the more power that team has hit for. The Mariners, Astros, and Royals have been a few of the most punch-less teams in baseball this year. Their individual ISOs of .106, .113, and .119 are extremely poor and they look almost depressed. On the other side of things, the Blue Jays (.203!), Red Sox (.185), and the Yankees (.174) boast some of the best power in baseball with their huge grins.

I’ll leave you to read over the graph some more, but if anyone has any questions, or suggestions, please post them in the comments section.

Continuing with the heatmap theme, here is a graph using the same concept but with the more advanced statistics. All numbers are pulled from Fangraphs as of 8/28/10. I cheated and used Excel for this particular graph.

Aubrey Huff: Still pretty darned good.

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Because the numbers are based on raw totals, some players’ offensive value might be misrepresented . Notice Buster Posey. He is solidly orange across the board. That’s not bad at all, but if he had started the year in the majors — and assuming he would have been this good for the entire year — he would be much closer to Aubry Huff in raw counting totals. Posey hasn’t had the same number of chances (G, PA, AB) to hit those doubles, triples, and homers when compared to some of the other players.

Other things I enjoyed

• Torres’ white-hot SB square. The Giants don’t run a lot and Torres has 23 SB all by himself. The next runner up is Aarond Rowand (5 SB) followed by Nate Schierholtz (4).
• Batting average isn’t a very important statistic, but I included it in this ‘basic’ heatmap. Rowand’s BA (.239) looks extremely poor. Maybe adding a BABIP column in a more ‘advanced’ heatmap would be helpful. Posey (.332) is leading the Giants in BA.
• Molina gets hurt by not being on the team longer — and thus not having the chances to add to his totals — but his string of red squares indicate that he never really hit for the Giants.

I’ll be posting more R experiments as I learn more. Stay tuned.

The bad news: Each day the Giants struggle to play solid baseball, the NL West looks less and less winnable. The Giants currently sit 6 games out of 1st place in the West. And while the team has struggled to win recent games, the Padres have not, going 13-7 in August. Tim Lincecum is still searching for his mojo. His BABIP is nearly 30 points above his career average and it’s possible that he’s getting dunked and dinked more than usual, but the Giants need their ace to pitch a couple of solid games in order to get some sort of balance back. Jose Guillen looks absolutely statue-esque in the outfield and I really, really dislike the outfield defense when Rowand is in CF and Burrell and Guillen are in the corners.

The good news: The wild card. Holy god, the wild card. I will cling onto the wild card until reality forces me to loosen my grip. Did you know the Giants are only 2 games out of the wild card? Ignore the fact that they’ll have to leap over the 2 teams they just played so miserably against — St. Louis and Philadelphia — to win the blasted thing. Yes, the wild card is good. It is great. Where the heck where you in 1993?

The Giants head home to play a 3 game series against the NL Central leading Cincinnati Reds. A tough assignment for any team. The Reds can hit (2nd in the NL in team wOBA, .337) and they’ve been on a roll so far in August (13 wins, 5 losses). I would try and make a bold prediction that the Giants need to sweep this series, but really, the Giants just need to start winning games. Please win, Giants.

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In an effort to field a team composed solely of outfielders, the Giants have been awarded OF Cody Ross from the Florida Marlins in a waiver claim. A corresponding roster move will need to be made.

The Giants will wait until Monday to announce a corresponding roster move to clear room for Ross, 29, whom they claimed last Friday. San Francisco will be responsible for approximately $1.1 million of Ross’ remaining 2010 salary of $4.45 million.

The 29-year-old Ross is a career .340 wOBA batter and he’s been an average defender in CF over his career. That makes him an above average defender in the corners. I like the pick-up but it’s unlikely the Giants will start him in RF over Guillen. Ross is both a better baserunner and defender when compared to Guillen. He’s also been a much better hitter over the past 2 years than Guillen. Ross will present an interesting question to the Giants. The team is surely better with Ross manning RF, but will the Giants play him as a starter? I wouldn’t hold your breath, but if the Giants are serious about the playoffs, playing Ross over Guillen is the right thing to do. The Marlins get to shed some salary and make room for uber-prospect, Cameron Maybin. The Giants will retain control of Ross for the 2011 season if they wish to do so. Ross will be arbitration eligible again next year. He’s earning $4.45M this year after winning his arbitration hearing with Florida. His current salary will make him an expensive bench player, but he’s decent insurance in a corner OF spot and if Rowand truly sees a reduction in his role as a player going forward, he could get a crack at starting.

I’m ready for this.

Make it so, Sabes.

Update: Baggs tweets that the Giants have DFA’d 2B Matt Downs in order to make room on the 40-man for Ross.

The Giants agreed to sign first-round pick Gary Brown for about $1.3MM, according to Yahoo’s Kendall Rogers (on Twitter).

I didn’t say much about the Brown draft pick when it went down, but I’m not a huge fan of Brown’s hitting approach. In his last year at Cal State Fullerton Brown hit .438/.468/.695. Yes, notice that batting average, it’s nuts. While that batting average is quite nice, he’s not going to hit .400 in pro-ball. Brown was notorious for just-not-walking — in 210 at-bats he drew only 9 walks. That kind of plate approach will raise a few eyebrows even with the anti-walks brigade. The other quirk with Brown on offense is his batting stance. He quite literally dances about and moves his feet while in the box as evident by his draft day video. Brown’s best tool his is speed and overall athleticism. Reports are slightly mixed on his defense in CF, but most believe that he’ll be a plus-defender there once he gets settled.

The Giants will have to reel in Brown’s approach at the dish if he wants to succeed as a prospect. His bat-on-ball skills seem outstanding, but you can’t survive in pro-ball while walking 4% of the time. The good news is that if Brown’s baserunning and defensive abilities play true to his talents, he’s not going to have to overly excel on offense to be good. He just can’t be a black hole of stink. Then again, expecting the Giants to transform a free-swinger into a more disciplined hitter seems like a lofty proposition.

Recommended Reading on Brown

‘How Few Walks is Too Few?‘ - College Splits
‘An Alternative Look At The Giants’ First-Round Pick‘ - Triples Alley

Ken Rosethal tweets:

Rival executive says Guillen to #SFGiants is “done,” confirming ESPNDeportes report. #Royals #MLB

You can scroll down for my take on Guillen or read it right here. It hasn’t changed.

* Jose Guillen, OF – I love the idea of picking up an outfielder and moving Huff back to 1B. It improves the overall defense and it should keep Huff fresh. However, Jose Guillen is not the outfielder you are looking for. Guillen has had a resurgent year at the plate (.347 wOBA) after posting a .304 wOBA in an injury plagued 2009 campaign. Despite advanced medical skills, Guillen isn’t a good bet to actually help the Giants. Never a strong fielder, Guillen is more of a DH these days. He’s unlikely to be an upgrade over Burrell and he’ll cost prospects in a trade. Mega-pass on Guillen.

So, yeah. The Giants just traded for Jose Guillen. You’ll also be happy to know that since I posted that quote, Guillen’s wOBA has dropped to .325 — so most of the luster is gone. Unless you’re into dingers and RBIs, then if so, great move! Also, I know that our outfield has rated quite well this year, but remove Andres Torres from the mix and we’ve got Pat Burrell, Aaron Rowand, Jose Guillen, and Aubrey Huff as the primary “defenders” in the outfield. That’s just a tad bit scary.

If Guillen takes on any role that’s larger than pinch-hitting, this becomes terrible news. No word on who the Giants are sending to the Royals.

Update:

Sounds like the player will be a PTBNL. The bigger news is this…

Bruce Bochy confirms Guillen will be the everyday RF and Aubrey Huff will play 1b. #sfgiants

That’s from Jeff Fletcher’s twitter feed. To put it bluntly, the Giants made themselves worse today. Andres Torres is an amazing CF, but playing him between Burrell and Jose Guillen is almost criminal. There’s nothing about this move that makes a lick of sense. Consider this for a second: Torres’ hamstrings kept him out of the lineup yesterday, if he misses time, the Giants OF defense becomes Burrell – Rowand – Guillen. That’s … um … very bad.

That sound you just heard is the pitching staff’s ERA rising.

I’ll note here that I didn’t include Tim’s slider into this discussion. It’s definitely the 4th pitch in his arsenal and something that he’s only throwing 5-6% right now. For the sake of simplicity, I wanted to focus on his three main pitches: the fastball, curveball, and changeup. All pitch-type ID’s are using the MLAB algorithm (meaning I did not classify them myself) and sometimes, as history has shown, they can be a little wonky. Also, I’ve lumped all of his fastballs into one generic category. Tim throws both a 2-seam and 4-seam fastball.

The top graph represents the usage by pitch-type for Lincecum this season. Like most pitchers, Tim works heavily off the fastball — he’s throwing it 57.3% of the time. As you can see, the graph shows a slight uptick in fastball usage as the season has gone on. On 6/16/10 his yearly FB% sat at 51.7%. Over his next 10 starts, Lincecum threw his fastball more and boosted the yearly percentage to the 57.3%. That’s a increase of almost 6%. It appears that Lincecum is making an effort to throw his fastball more. Why? That’s an excellent question. One has to wonder if it’s related to his mechanics.

Our other points of interest are the changeup and curveball. The changeup has become Tim’s #2 pitch and it’s current usage sits at 21.8%.  He’s backed off of it’s usage slightly — at 5/31 the yearly percentage sat at 23.5% — but it’s still something he’s going to throw 20%, or slightly more, of the time. It’s for good reason, too. His changeup has become one of the better pitches in baseball. The curveball is interesting. Before I ran the numbers, I expected it’s usage to have a slight uptick as the season has progressed. I seem to recall seeing more curves from Lincecum while watching games on TV, but the usage line for the hook looks pretty steady — ranging from 15-17% for most of the year. Tim’s curveball usage currently sits at 16.6%.

I really like how the Whiff% graph turned out. Whiffs are defined as anytime a batter swings at a pitch and misses (foul tips are included). If you’re interested in what a league average whiff-rate is for certain pitch-types, check out Harry Pavlidis’ extremely useful ‘Benchmarks for pitch types‘ post on The Hardball Times. I will be referencing it a couple of times in this post. Lincecum’s changeup is a monster. It’s yearly whiff-rate currently sits at 42.8%. According to Harry’s benchmarks, the league average CH has a whiff-rate of 30.7%. Lincecum’s changeup is getting whiffs at nearly +12% over the league average changeup. I wondered how the changeup would look with some of Tim’s recent struggles, but the pitch still appears to be an above-average pitch. That should comfort us some since Lincecum’s changeup has grown to be an important part of his success as a pitcher. Just don’t call it a trick pitch and we’ll be fine.

Fastballs rarely get whiffs and, in fact, Tim’s whiff-rate on his fastball of 17.1% is slightly better than the league average 15% for 2-seam/4-seam fastballs. His curveball whiff-rate (20.9%) is below the league average whiff-rate (26.1%) for the pitch.

Looking Forward

It’s still way too easy to freak out over Lincecum’s recent struggles. The good news it that his changeup still looks like a very, very good pitch. It’s one that batters will swing at, and miss, nearly 40% of the time. That’s incredible. Right now, in season, he’s throwing his fastball more and it’s anyone’s guess as to why. It’s easy to panic when Lincecum get’s hit hard by a struggling Cubs team. I think it’s human nature to assume the worst sometimes. But Lincecum is still on pace to break 5 wins this season — in terms of WAR — and maybe even 6. That’s a top pitcher and while it’s not in the 7-8 win range he posted in both CYA years, it’s a huge asset to the team. Let’s just leave it at that for now. He’s a huge asset to this team regardless of velocity or wins or any of the other sports talk radio fodder.

Fontenot describes the weirdness of changing sidelines and changing teams before a game.

“It’s been a strange day so far, just coming to the field, getting the work in and everything and coming up from the stairs after hitting, and they brought me in the office after hitting to let me know,” Fontenot said. “I’m excited for the opportunity to play here. I’ve been keeping up with baseball as much as anybody else does and knowing that the Giants are in the thick of it really gets you pumped up.”

As the post title states above, the main reason for acquiring Fontenot was Renteria’s return to the DL. As of today, the Giants have placed Renteria on the 15-day DL with a strained left biceps. This marks Renteria’s third trip to the DL this season — he went through groin and hamstring problems earlier this year in May. Picking up Fontenot should mean that the Giants will go with a combo of Juan Uribe and Emmanuel Burriss at shortstop. This presents a couple of problems. (1) Uribe has been an acceptable fill-in this season at short but he’s battled injuries and hamstring issues as well. It’s uncertain if he’ll be able to play a position like SS full-time. (2) Emmannuel Burriss isn’t very good and not someone a contending team should ever play regularly. If Juan Uribe goes down, or can’t play SS, the Giants are in hot water.

What did the Giants get in Fontenot? The 30-year-old 2B has played in the majors on a part time basis since 2007. He’s a career .330 wOBA batter with a league average walk rate (8.9%). He’s show league average power (.149 ISO) over his career as well. Some of his batting numbers are a little skewed by his 2008 in which he hit .305/.395/.514 (.395 wOBA) in 284 at-bats. In non-’08 years, he’s been much closer to a .320-ish wOBA hitter, making him below average on offense. As a lefty batter, Fontent has hit RHP better than LHP over his career — wOBA’s of .337 vs. 277. The ZiPS rest-of-season projections have Fontenot as a .331 wOBA batter for the rest of the year. His defense has rated well by some of the advanced metrics. He’s logged 1,747 career innings on defense at 2B. UZR has him at +8.5 runs per 150 defensive games, +/- has him at +7 runs.

He’s not a bad bench option to have against RHP but his downside is that, while he does appear to play 2B well, it’s really the only position he can play with any skill. He might get the occasional start to rest Freddy Sanchez, but the Giants should keep him limited to games against RHPs.

What the Giants gave up to get Fontenot seems appropriate. Crawford is a 21-year-old putting up a slash-line of .255/.319 /.366 in his first year of A-ball.

Bottom Line: The Giants deepen their bench a little with this move and if Fontenot has to play the field, he’s not going to hurt you on defense. I’d much rather have Fontenot taking hacks as a PH than Burriss or Whiteside.

1. The offense, while chocked full of league averageness, is still going to be an issue most days. I know that’s going to come as a shock to you, but the offense is going to fluctuate between just enough to get the job done and terrible. Which one will show up today’s game? It’ magic inside! I tend to think that because the Giants’ offense is primarily powered by Huff and Torress — two players having great success at odd times in their respective careers — the foundation is a little shakier than most.

2. Speaking of offense, Pat Burrell has really been a godsend. After struggling in the American League, Burrell has been hitting in the National League. He was one of the few hitters in the Braves series that actually did anything. He went 4-13 with a pair of doubles and couple of walks. Burrell is sporting a wOBA in the .370 range since he joined the Giants. You can deal with his outfield shenanigans as long as he’s hitting. Depending on how he finishes out the year, I wouldn’t mind seeing the Giants offering him a deal in the range of 1-year with an option. Though, with a player of Burrell’s skill-set, you wouldn’t want to go too far down the road in years.

3. Releasing Denny Bautista was a move that needed to be made. Replacing him with Todd Wellemeyer wasn’t. Appearing in his first game since being recalled, Wellemeyer gave up 4 hits and an earned run without retiring a single batter. Wellemeyer is Denny Bautista but without the strikeouts. The Giants bullpen ranks 3rd worst in baseball in walks issued per 9 innings (4.6) and adding Wellemeyer to the mix isn’t going to help matters. He’ll get dubbed the ‘long man’ but the Giants need quality relievers more than they need a pitcher that can throw 2-3 innings in a game. And do you really need a designated long man when you’re carrying 13 pitchers?

4. Anecdotal evidence but Pablo Sandoval looks sluggish at third base. He missed more than one ‘get-able’ play against the Braves. However, the advanced fielding metrics say he’s right around average — slightly up from last season.

5. Torres had a fine series going 6-17 with 2 doubles and 2 stolen bases. Torres has been my favorite Giant this season on offense and defense. He takes amazing routes to the ball, utilizes his speed perfectly, and for a little guy has some solid power. If not for Huff, Torres would have been the biggest surprise on the team this year.

The Giants are heading home to play 4 games against an under-performing Cubs team (47-64 on the year, 8-13 since the All-Star break).  The G’s currently sit 1.5 games back of the Padres. A sweep of the Cubs would put the Giants in a great position to pass the Padres when they come into town on Friday for a 3 game series. At worst, the Giants need to split against the Cubs.