Bay City Ball

I’m drinking a jug of coffee and trying to turn on my brain. So, please, forgive me if my writing is a jumbled. I’m getting married in October and every weekend until the Big Day™ is filled with places to go, things to do, and people to see.

But, despite my zombie-like state, a lot of interesting Giants happenings this weekend. Let’s check some of them out:

1. You can come out of your panic room, Buster Posey has indeed signed a contract to play baseball for the San Francisco Giants. Early rumors had Posey inking a major league deal for $7.5M clams, but as it turns out, Posey didn’t actually sign till the end of the deadline. The down-to-the-wire nature of contract negotiations surely had many Giants fans in full panic mode. As it happens, Posey didn’t get a MLB deal but he did get a $6.2M straight signing bonus, the largest in baseball history for a bonus. Welcome to the fold, Buster. If you’ve seen my previous posts on the Giants Top-10 Prospects, I have Posey ranked as the #2 talent in the G’s farm system.

2. After watching Brad Ausmus — The Evil One — slam a line drive off of Tim Lincecum’s leg in his last start, I was waiting and watching with bated breath for his next start against Atlanta. Would he be OK? Would the knee hold up? I’ll let his pitching line do the talking:

7.2 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 4 BB, 10 SO

I’m not thrilled that he ended up throwing 119 pitches in the start. For PAP believers, Tim ranks #5 and Matt Cain ranks #8 for starting pitchers in the majors. The Giants seem semi-cognizant of the idea of pitch counts, but I’m not sure how cognizant they are.

The hilarity evaporated when Escobar walked and Jones singled with two outs in the eighth, ending Lincecum’s afternoon. He had thrown 119 pitches, which was enough for Bochy. Although Lincecum leads the staff by averaging more than 106 pitches per outing, the Giants remain wary of taxing his arm. Had he elected to leave in Lincecum for the ninth inning, Bochy said, “you’re looking at 135, 140 pitches. We still don’t think that’s worth it.

I know because of Lincecum’s style of pitching — lots of strikeouts with some walks mixed in — that his PC will get pumped up sometimes before the 6th or 7th inning, but my god man, I’ll say it until I’m blue in the face: Please, protect the young arms. Please. As I demonstrated in my post on Wins Above Replacement, Lincecum is by far the best player on the Giants, and the amount of value he provides for what he’s being paid is astronomical. To ensure that he can continue to pitch well isn’t only good baseball sense, it’s good economic sense.

Blogmates RMC drop some Lince-knowledge on us after his 13th win on Sunday against Atlanta:

1. 13-3 is the second best start in SF history (5 occurrences). Only a couple hacks named Perry and Marichal were better at 14-2. I venture to guess they had better teams playing behind them, ya think?
2. With his sixth double digit strikeout game this year (8 in his career), he ties Marichal (1966) for number 4 on this all time list. Only Schmidt (9 in 2004), Sadecki (8 in 1968), and Montefusco (7 in 1975) are above him. With at least five or so starts left, Tim has a good shot at taking over the lead of that list.
3. The Enchanter has limited opponents to 3 or fewer runs in 40 of his 49 career starts, including 21 of 25 this year. The Giants are 26-14 in those forty games. Tim is 17-0 (29 starts) when the Giants score at least three runs for him.

Yeah, he’s OK.

3. Speaking of protecting our young guys, Sanchez is on the 15-day DL with a strained throwing shoulder. Sanchez has blown past any previous innings total in any season for his career and his 2nd half has been bumpy. A result of his workload? Maybe. If the Giants are smart, they’ll shut down Sanchez for the rest of the year. There isn’t much he can gain by trying to continue to start. If the Giants shut him down now, he would miss about 7 starts, which in the big picture, seems pretty insignificant. The Giants have called up Sergio Romo and Matt Palmer will probably take Sanchez’s rotation spot for the near future. Palmer struggled in his first start, but the Giants should give him a few more chances. He has no upside, but if he could just eat some innings from the back of the rotation, the Giants would be happy.

4. Travis Ishikawa hit his first major league HR on Sunday. Since his promotion, he’s 5-13 with 2 2B’s and a HR. Ishikawa should start against all RHP in the majors and the Giants can push Sandoval over to 1B when a lefty is on the mound. Sandoval’s versatility is nice because he can get time in at catcher when Molina needs a break and the occasional start at first when a southpaw takes the hill.

Not a bad weekend.

First, big news buzzing in Giants Land this morning. The Giants have made a flurry of draft pick signings. The biggest news is that, according to Andrew Baggarly — whom I feel that I’ve been linking to almost everyday for the past week, keep  up the great work Andrew — is that #5 overall pick Buster Posey is on the verge of signing a $7.5M major league deal. With the deadline to sign your draftees on Friday, August 15th, the Giants have been standing on the precipice to get a deal done.

In addition to Buster, the Giants have inked third-rounder OF Roger Kieschnick for $525,000 and fourth-rounder, UCLA SS Brandon Crawford for $375,000. The Crawford signing is good news because before his college season began, many thought he would play himself into the first round, instead, he struggled this year and played himself out of the first round. Rumors were that he was considering going back to school to try and improve his stock. Kieschnick was rated as the best talent coming out of Texas this year by Baseball America. The Giants also signed intriguing 13th-rounder Juan Carlos Perez who set a Division II Junior College record for home runs in a season with 37. He’s had some visa issues and he signed a ‘09 contract to give him time to sort them out.

These signings really cap a nice draft by the Giants this year. I like what the Giants did in the draft, taking a guy they really liked in Posey — who could have been a #1 pick overall — and going with some higher ceiling guys in Kieschnick and Crawford and getting a really polished hitter in Conor Gillaspie — who’s already signed and is playing for the AZL Giants. The Giants loaded up on hitting on the first day, taking 4 hitters with their first 4 picks and jumped into the pitchers on the 2nd day, finding some nice talent in the later rounds.

With these signings, here’s how I would sketch out the Top 10 Giants Prospects:

1. LHP Madison Bumgarner - Has dominated A-ball in Augusta. Plus velocity from the left-side, pinpoint control, and a developing slurvy breaking pitch. One of the best pitching prospects in baseball.

2. C Buster Posey - Everyone knows what he did in his junior year at Florida State; he hit: (.463/.566/.879) with 26 HR’s. A Golden Spikes winner, Posey is very athletic and entered college as a shortstop. Some question how well his power will translate — most see him as more of a 10-15 HR guy than 20+ HR guy — to the majors, but he’s one of the “safest” picks in the ‘08 draft in terms of reaching a sustainable ceiling.

3. RHP Tim Alderson - Tim 2.0 has responded extremely well to the challenge the Giants set forth to him; skipping a high school draftee straight to the California League is something you don’t often see. Watching him survive a hitters league and flourish is also out of the ordinary. But, the Giants were very impressed with the polish that Alderson had coming out of high school. He leads the Cal League in FIP at the age of 19 and is third in K%.

4. 1B Angel Villalona - Lots of power and still very, very young. He just turned 18 and has been competing for most of the year as a 17-year-old in the South Atlantic League where the average age of the competition is 21-years-old. He’s striking out a good bit, K% of 24.8, but scouts still love where he’s at in his development. Leads the Greenjackets in HR’s.

5. 1B/C Pablo Sandoval - Out of any Giants prospect, Pablo may have taken the biggest step forward this year. He carried his power surge from San Jose in ‘07 over into this year, posting ISOP’s of .200 or greater across two levels of A and AA baseball. He’s a switch-hitter and can handle both 1B and catching duties. For a system that’s lacked hitters near the upper-levels, Pablo has been a diamond in the rough. He should make his debut tonight against the Astros.

6. 3B Conor Gillaspie - Currently in the AZL, Gillaspie profiles as a solid contact hitting 3B. He probably won’t develop much power but he should hit and hit a lot of doubles. The Giants have had talks about moving him to 2B, but the system is thinner at 3B, so he’ll probably get every chance to play himself out of that position.

7. 2B Nick Noonan - I’m not thrilled with Noonan’s microscopic walk rate, his BB% is currently at 3.7%, but it’s his first full-season of pro-ball outside of high school, so he gets a little slack. He would benefit from cutting his K’s down, his K% is currently at 18.4%, but he still profiles as a 2B that can hit a little and run a little. There are a couple of things I don’t like about Noonan, but I can chalk it up to “he’s still young” for now.

8. RHP Henry Sosa - Sosa has battled some injury problems this year, his season was delayed from knee surgery but when he’s right the tall lanky pitcher works in the mid-90’s and has a plus curveball. His K% is strong at 24% and I still love his arm. I think he’s a prospect that you can’t really judge by his performance this year but by the overall package.

9. OF Wendell Fairley - Fairley might have the highest ceiling of any Giants prospect currently in the farm system. His start was delayed this year because of some health issues but he’s finally getting regular playing time in the AZL. His batting line of: ( .241/.371/.324) isn’t dominating, but he’s getting playing time to develop and that’s the most important thing.

10. OF Rafael Rodriguez - An international signing from this year, Rodriguez became the highest paid international talent that the Giants have ever signed. The 16-year-old inked a deal for $2.55M, surpassing the $2.1M that Villalona got in ‘06. The reports on him are vague, he’s got great raw power, but his hitting mechanics need work. He should be a strong fielder in a corner OF spot, sporting a strong throwing arm and good speed to cover ground. He’s had comparisons to Dave Winfield and Vlad, which both should be taken with grains ‘o salt. The Giants hope that Rodriguez can see a little time in the AZL this year and he’ll start ‘09 as his first full pro-season.

Just missed: Nate Schierholtz, Roger Kieschnick, Brandon Crawford, Jesse English, Travis Ishikawa, Kevin Pucetas, Ben Snyder, Clayton Tanner, and Joe Martinez.

I think it’s interesting to note that in my Top-10, the Giants have 7 hitters and 3 pitchers. For a pitching heavy team, the hitting is a welcome change.

—

I did get around to watching the Giants play the Astros last night, mostly because I wanted to see Rholinger play, but what an ugly game it turned out to be. The Giants ended up falling completely apart in the 6th inning. Zito was cruising along until the aforementioned inning of doom. It looked like this:

/cue Benny Hill Music

It was maybe one of the sloppiest, ugliest innings of baseball that I’ve seen in awhile. A combination of bad luck — Wiggington was called safe when he was actually out by a half-step on a nice play by Omar — and poor execution — walks, HBP’s, and poor throwing decisions — sunk the Giants. Maybe the most criminal was when Zito walked the opposing pitcher, Randy Wolf, with the bases loaded to force in a run. If you’ve read any Zito quotes in the papers this year, can you guess what he said about that at-bat? I’ll give you a good 5 minutes to think of all the possible responses that Zito might have used. OK, have you got them? Let’s see what he actually said:

Zito had little to say about his final self-destructive act, which was walking Wolf.

“I just lost my aggressiveness,” he said. Against a pitcher batting .140? “I don’t know. I just did,” he said.

The ‘ole not-being-aggressive-enough-excuse, huh? Who else saw that coming? Surely not me. Sadler then came in for Zito and proceeded to throw gas on the fire when he hit two batters with the bases loaded to force in another two runs.

Zito’s final line of the night was:

5.2 IP, 4 H, 6 R, 6 ER, 5 BB, 6 SO

Once again, walks killed Zito. With the loss, Zito drops to 6-15 and is only 3 losses away from challenging the modern record for most losses by a Giants pitcher in a season, currently held by Ray Sadecki for his 1968 season in which he went 12-18. Sadecki’s ERA+ for that season was 103, indicating that he wasn’t actually all that bad. Another reason why W/L records aren’t a good way to judge pitchers. But, Zito’s ERA+ this year is 75, indicating that he probably deserves his poor record.

Rohlinger looked decent, he airmailed his very first throw to 1st base on the night and made another fielding error in the bottom of the 7th. Maybe nerves? He did make some decent contact a couple of times, hitting an RBI double down the RF line in the 7th inning. I’ll be watching to see how Rohlinger does for the rest of the year along with Ishikawa and Pablo.

Comment Starter: What’s your Top-10 look like?

Action returns to major league baseball today but the Giants are still off until Friday when the G’s take on the Brewers. The opening game of the series should be a good one, Matt Cain meet CC — no longer C.C. — Sabathia. The second half of the season will also reveal the Giants new revamped rotation, which looks like this: Cain, Sanchez, Lincecum, Zito, and Correia. That’s some hot RLRLR action for you. Pushing Zito back as far as you can makes sense because you really don’t want Zito matching up with the CC Sabathia’s of the world.

And because I haven’t written much of anything today, I’m going to go the cheap route and just link to some stuff.

~ El Lefty Malo has a nice post on the state of the Giants outfield.

The outfield has preformed admirably for the Giants but I’m still itchy to move Randy Winn in any trade if I can. Lewis has been a favorite of mine but he’s really striking out a lot right now. As of today, Lewis has a K% of 27.8% which sandwiches him between Matt Kemp (30.8%) and Evan Longoria (26.8%) for 6th in the majors among hitters with 350 PA’s. Freddie-Loo has helped offset his swing-and-a-miss approach with a good dose of walks. He’s walking at 10.5%, which is acceptable.

Lewis has been the Giants most patient hitter in the first half. His average pitches per plate appearance is 4.26 and the only other Giant to see more than 4 pitches per PA, is Ray Durham at 4.13.

Check out the following plots for Pit/PA and Contact Percentage.

Name	 Pit/PA
Lewis	 4.26
Durham	 4.13
Winn	 3.87
Vizquel	 3.75
Castillo 3.64
Bowker	 3.58
Aurilia	 3.53
Rowand 	 3.5
Burriss	 3.47
Molina 	 3.3

Name	 Contact
Vizquel	 91
Burriss	 88
Molina 	 86
Winn	 82
Aurilia	 82
Durham	 81
Lewis	 79
Bowker	 78
Castillo 77
Rowand 	 73

What can these plots tell us?

First, that Fred Lewis sees the most pitches per plate appearance among Giants hitters but his contact percentage is closer to the bottom for these hitters. Seeing more pitches is a good because it tells us that the hitter has some idea of how to control the zone. It’s no coincidence that our top three hitters by Pit/PA — Lewis, Durham, and Winn — lead the Giants in BB% with scores of 10.5%, 12.6%, and 10.6% respectively. The key is when to swing and it’s something that the Giants would like Lewis to do more of. He ranks 3rd in the majors for watching a called strike three. Lewis has said that he’s still learning the zones of the different umpires and hopefully that has some truth to it. I do not think the Giants should try and make Lewis more aggressive. Part of his value is that he’s so patient and that’s going to result in a called strike three now and then.

Secondly, the Pit/PA and Contact plots confirm some of the things we see with our eyes. Namely that Molina likes to swing at everything. His 3.3 pitches per plate appearance tell us that he doesn’t wait around to swing the bat. On the flip side, Molina covers the plate well, his contact percentage of 86 was third on the team. We’ve seen Molina hit balls this year that no one should swing at let alone be able to hit in play. You’ve also got a pair of Hacky McSlaps in Omar and Manny. Omar has a awesome contact percentage but he’s hitting less line drives than ever before and he’s hitting the majority of his balls in play on the ground. Groundballs are more likely to be turned into outs and with Omar losing some mobility because of his knee, it’s not a good mix. Burriss should look to slap the ball on the ground and just run — his infield hit percentage is at a sparkling 13.8%. He might be the fastest player on the Giants and his lack of power means that any ball hit in the air is most likely going for an out.

~ Giants draft pick — still yet to be signed — Buster Posey was named the winner of the 2008 Golden Spikes Award. The GSA goes to the best amateur baseball player and if Posey signs with the Giants, he’ll join Will Clark and Tim Lincecum as former winners of GSA to wear the orange and black.

~ Speaking of Lincecum, he’s feeling better after missing the All-Star Game with a flu-like bug. He should be on schedule for his start against the Brewers on Sunday.

~ Henry Schulman has a midseason report on the Giants. Among several discouraging things he lists a couple of encouranging developments for the ‘08 Giants. In short: Lincecum great, Lewis and Bowker good, and Barry Zito terrible.

That was the first thought that ran through my head as Bud Selig read aloud the Giants 5th overall pick in this years draft.

“With the 5th pick in the First-Years Player Draft of 2008, the San Francisco Giants select Gerald Posey, catcher, from Florida State University”

Second thought, I guess the Giants aren’t scared off by his rumored $12M pre-draft demands. Posey and the Giants both know that he won’t sniff 12 large ones, but it was enough to drop Gerald, err Buster, a few slots down to the Giants at the #5 pick. I expect he’ll sign because Posey has no incentive to head back to college over a few million dollars. If he heads back to college and gets injured or declines or has a bad year, his payday will be gone. In the 2007 draft Matt Weiters, another catcher, was drafted 5th overall and signed for $6M. Posey might get anywhere between $6-9M but I’ll be really surprised if he hits double-digits.

The Giants will have until August 15th to get a deal done with Posey or they’ll retain the same pick for next years draft. If Posey signs quickly, he’ll probably report to short-season Salem-Keizer.

Third thought, I really like what the Giants did in this draft.

John Shea from the Chronicle runs down some points on Posey:

Posey, whose college team (Florida State) would earn a berth to the College World Series by beating Wichita State in a best-of-three series this weekend, leads Division I hitters in batting average (.468), RBIs (86), slugging percentage (.897) and on-base percentage (.572).

Right now, Posey projects as an above average catch both offensively and defensively. He doesn’t have the same power projection that the big slugging first basemen had in this draft — Smoask, Hosmer, Alonso — but he should hit .280 or better, draw walks, and pop 15-20 HR’s a year. For a catcher, that’s an All-Star. He’s super athletic — you’ve heard of the game where he played all 9 positions — and even though he’s fairly new to the catcher position — he came to college as a short stop — he’s taken well to the switch. Posey has a plus-arm behind the plate. He has hit 94mph on the mound and also has good accuracy behind the dish. Because Posey is already very polished and super athletic, he’s got a chance to move fast and be in a Giants uniform by 2010.

Brian Sabean hinted that with Molina’s contract running out after next year, Posey could be on the “fast track”:

“(Posey) is on the fast track and Bengie’s clock is winding down,” Sabean said. “It’s really up to him how soon he wants to get going and how soon he can get here.”

Thanks for the effort, Bengie, now see ya later! With Sandoval having a breakout year and Posey — hopefully — now entering the system, the Giants could have two potential solid catchers in the wings. With Sabean’s comments about Molina “winding down” I wonder if they might entertain a trade offer or two for him at the trading deadline this year or over the offseason? Sandoval will most likely end up this year in AAA and might even see sometime with the big club this September. And if Sandoval isn’t ready by next year, the Giants could bring in a 1-year stopgap if they decide to move Molina.

After Posey, the Giants drafted the following players.

Name                Pick#   Position     College/HS     BA-Rank
Conor Gillapsie       37       3B        Wichita St       23
Roger Kieschnick      82       OF        Texas Tech       44
Brandon Crawford     117       SS           UCLA          134
Edwin Quirarte       147       RHP      Cal St. North.    NA
Eric Surkamp         177       LHP      N.Carolina St.    NA

I said earlier that I liked what the Giants did in this draft and the picks of Gillaspie, Roger K., and Brandon Crawford are a big reason why. The Giants got some really nice value late with these picks.

Gillapsie might not have the prototypical power for third base, but he can hit. He’s a pure hitter that makes solid contact and controls the strike zone. You’ll hear him compared to Bill Mueller a lot because he should hit for average and get on base. He might not hit a lot of home runs, but he should hit a ton of doubles and get his fair share of triples. He’s projected to stick at third base defensively, with soft hands and a good throwing arm. Gillapsie is very polished as a college hitter and could move fast. Great pick by the Giants.

Roger Kieschnick is another pick that I like. He’s got above-average power to all fields and could profile as a 5-tool player. His arm should be strong enough to keep him in RF and despite some concerns about his hitting mechanics and aggressiveness, he’s improved every year in college as a player.

From RedRaiders.com:

If Kieschnick signs, he will leave behind a great legacy at Tech as one of its most prolific hitters. He currently ranks in the top five in school history in at bats (689), hits (222), doubles (54), home runs (39) and RBIs (156), and the 168 games played ranks sixth all time.

He finished his junior year by improving in every major statistical category from his sophomore year. The 2006 Big 12 Conference Freshman of the Year who hit a grand slam in his first career game and the 2008 season finale May 16 against Baylor, Kieschnick in 2008 hit .305 with 17 home runs and 65 RBIs. The home run and RBI totals led the Big 12 during the regular season.

Kieschnick was considered to be the top position player coming out of Texas this year.

Crawford is a guy that could prove to be a nice pickup late in the draft. From the MLB.com draft report.

After his first two seasons at UCLA, Crawford seemed poised to be one of the top collegiate middle infielders in the class. But a rough Cape season appears to have carried over and he’s lost some confidence in his game, both at the plate and in the field. Some added thickness to his lower half has taken away a little of his quickness, though he’s still a solid shortstop. If he can right himself, he’s the kind of player who usually sees himself go off the board within the first couple of rounds.

A nice pick to see if Crawford can regain some of the promise that he showed in his first two seasons at UCLA. Bryan Smith from the BP Roundtable has a great take on the Crawford pick.

Bryan Smith (4:39:42 PM PT): The Giants pop Brandon Crawford here in the fourth, and I think it’s a fabulous selection. Crawford is incredibly raw for someone his age, but he has some really nice tools. After going for sure bets in Buster Posey and Conor Gillaspie, Crawford is the perfect type of complement. Throw in Roger Kieschnick, who was once considered a first round right fielder, and it’s possible — not likely, but possible — the Giants just filled half their future.

Smith is right on the money, it’s a great complement pick to the more polished guys.

I don’t know much and can’t find much on the two pitchers that the Giants took. You can watch a video of Edwin Quirarte on the MLB.com draft page for the Giants. And you can find his 06-07 stats on the Baseball Cube. His stats from these years don’t look like anything special, ERA’s of 4.50 and 6.57, but in his video he touches 91mph a few times and looks to be throwing a slider in low-80’s. He’ll probably work best as a reliever. Surkamp’s stats look a little better but I have no idea what he throws.

From Scout.com on Surkamp:

Surkamp, a junior from Cincinnati, Ohio, went 5-2 with a 4.28 ERA. Surkamp went through an up-and-down 2008 season, but is finishing on an up note, posting a 1-0 record with a 2.91 ERA in his last four starts. A second-team All-ACC pick as a sophomore in 2007, Surkamp has worked 73 2/3 innings in 15 starts, allowing 74 hits, walking 38 an d striking out 86.

Overall, I really like what the Giants did in this draft, selecting 4 college position players with their first four picks. Posey and Gillapsie could both move fast and Kieschnick and Crawford might move a little slower, but both offer some nice upside. Some fans might be upset that the Giants picked Posey over someone like Justin Smoak but the Giants took the best position player available. Only Pedro Alvarez was ranked higher on the Giants list of draft candidates. But don’t get me wrong, I would have loved the power potential of Justin Smoak but Posey is a fine pick at #5. I do think Smoak was an absolute steal at #11 for the Rangers, he’s going to hit a ton of home runs for the Rangers.

Let’s get these guys signed. Day Two of the draft finishes up today, you can follow the results on MLB.com.

Comment Starter: Happy with the draft? Or irked by passing up a power bat?