Back in 2009, Pablo Sandoval wasn’t just a portion of the Giants’ lineup, he was the Giants’ lineup. Their second-best hitter was Fred Lewis, who was pretty much placed on the DL with a phantom injury the following spring before getting shipped to Toronto for a scuffed bottle cap. Pablo finished second in batting behind a superb season from Hanley… 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 →
Question: Are the Giants the only team in baseball that can lose a game in which their starter goes 7 innings, strikes out 10 batters, and only allows 1 hit — a non-HR hit, too. I guess it’s supposed to be a rhetorical question. One I would rather not spend any more time thinking about. The Giants dropped to 8-6… Read more →
As fans of baseball, we sometimes like to place a huge (or at least disproportionate) amount of importance on the outcomes of April baseball. If a player is hitting the ball around the field with ease — he’s going to have a great year or he’s completely healed from an injury. If a player is struggling — he’s probably not… Read more →
Henry Schulman has tweeted that Juan Uribe’s 1-year deal does not include an option. I’m a little surprised that Uribe couldn’t do better than a 1-year deal without an option. Also, I’m a little surprised that he chose to come back to the Giants with Mark DeRosa on the roster. Dollars still have not been announced, but Uribe has passed… Read more →
In baseball statistics, you’ll often hear the phrase: “small sample size” thrown around early in the season. Most teams in baseball have played about 15 games so far — give or take a game. 15 played games results in 9.2% of your total baseball season. At this point, if you’re a full-time position player you’ve probably accrued about 50-ish PA’s… Read more →
Good morning on a Monday. I hope everyone had a nice weekend and is strapping in for another work week. Something I had forgotten about Spring Training — it’s really long. The games have been going on for a couple of weeks now and yet, we’re still about 20+ days away from Opening Day. Trust me, I’m happy that baseball… Read more →
Yesterday we talked a little bit about Edger Renteria. Mostly in the context of some batted ball data over the last three years. But, today, we’ll be using one of my player value graphs to examine Renteria from 2002-08. The following graph examines both offense and defense to determine the overall value of a player. A few quick bits of… Read more →
In 2008, despite Omar Vizquel’s fantastic defensive play at shortstop, the position was a major challenge for the Giants. Vizquel started the year late because of a knee surgery and the Giants rotated in several infielders to play the position. Brian Bocock, Ivan Ochoa, and Emmanuel Burriss all spent time at short but none of them — outside of Burriss… Read more →
I’ve been playing around with EditGrid this morning and I made a few graphs relating to the 2009 Giants WAR projections. There really isn’t any new information presented in these graphs, but they might help some to see just where the wins are actually coming from. I like this pie chart because it shows — in my opinion — how… Read more →