Bay City Ball

The Giants will be kicking off their series against the dreaded blue ones tonight at Mays Field in a 3-game series. The pitching match-ups for the games are as follows:

• Friday August 8th - RHP Brad Penny (5-9, 5.88 ERA, 4.66 FIP) vs. LHP Barry Zito (6-13, 5.40 ERA, 4.89 FIP)
• Saturday August 9th - RHP Hiroki Kuroda (6-8, 4.21 ERA, 3.83 FIP) vs. RHP Kevin Correia (2-6, 5.53 ERA, 4.75 FIP)
• Sunday August 10th - RHP Chad Billingsley (11-9, 3.01 ERA, 3.07 FIP) vs. RHP Matt Cain (7-9, 3.60 ERA, 3.51 FIP)

Zito, coming off his best start of the year, will hope to continue whittling his ERA down to under 5. Zito’s second best performance this year was the 10K effort against the Dodgers on July 5th, hopefully Zito can repeat some of that magic and beat the Dodgers again.

Correia pitched decently last time out against the Padres, making it only the third time this year he’s pitched 6+ innings in a game. Is the oblique healthy? A good start would help to halt those fears.

And in the Sunday game, the best match-up of the series, is a Billingsley v. Cain battle. Cain has been phenomenal in the second half and Billingsley — a guy that’s often been compared to Matt Cain — is having the best season of his young career. Their pitching styles are similar, this should be a really fun game to watch if you’re into watching pitching match-ups (and watching Matt Cain lose 1-0).

Other News and Links

~ Chris Dial of BBTF has posted his National League defensive numbers. Some notable numbers: John Bowker has struggled lately on defense and his overall defensive numbers have him as a (-2.3) defender. That’s somewhere between Wes Helms (-2.7) and Dmitri Young (-2.3). Surprisingly, Aurilia is not that far behind Bowker at (-2.1) indicating that he might not be much of an upgrade as a late inning defensive replacement. Omar Vizquel is rated as a (+7.7) SS putting him as the best defensive SS in the NL, albeit in a smaller inning sample than runner up Jimmy Rollins (+5.6). Aaron Rowand is slightly above average in this system (+1.3) meaning that his reputation as a glovemaster might be overblown.

~ Fred Lewis shares his story of a painful automobile accident on ESPN’s Outside the Lines.

~ Eric Seidman — who just recently published a book, check it out if you haven’t! — has an article on the age old question of: “Do closers perform worse in non-save situations?“. The findings might surprise you. Hat tip to Delorean Ian! for the link.

~ Nate Silver of BP has an interesting article on “Bonds Bingo” of just where, if anywhere, could Bonds fit. Nate details 5 teams that could use the slugger’s services. I doubt we’ll see Bonds play this year, but an injury or two could change the opinion of a couple of teams and you never know what might happen. I think the bigger, and more realistic question, is will Bonds appear this weekend in San Francisco for a pre-game celebration?

Question: Barry Zito has just thrown another poor start and he’s talking to the press. Which quote will he give?

A. My arm feels like a bag of sand and I can’t hit 84 miles-per-hour anymore.

B. I’m rich, bitch.

C. I’m not being aggressive enough. I’ve got to start being more aggressive.

—

You know the answer by now if you’ve read any Zito article after a bad start. I’ve bolded the good parts. From the Chron:

“I was just nit-picking out there instead of being aggressive,” said Zito, whose three fourth-inning walks (not counting the intentional walk he issued) included one to Chris Snyder with the bases loaded. “There’s no excuse for it. Instead of going with the approach that worked for me the past few games, just pitching free and easy, I went back to grinding.

/looks up the word ‘Aggressive’

Maybe Barry is on to something.

I’d love to pose a question to Zito on the topic of being aggressive. When you pitch well, you were aggressive. When you don’t pitch well, you are not aggressive enough. The question is: How can you forget what works for you just 5 days previous? If it’s just as easy as being aggressive, why aren’t you aggressive all the time? The worsening of control can be seen as an indicator of arm injury and the further Zito goes down this path, the more I wonder how healthy his arm is.

Zito’s pitch quality and control has evaporated. In yesterday’s loss, Zito’s 13th on the season, Zito walked 5 batters. Including a bases loaded walk to Snyder to force in a run. Zito has started 21 games this year and he’s walked 4 or more 10 times. That’s almost half of his games. He’s walked 6 twice, 5 four times, and 4 four times. He only has one game on the season where he did not walk anyone.

Zito’s BB% is now at a grossly large 13.3%, the highest ever for Barry Zito. His K% is at 13.8%, he’s barely striking out more hitters than he’s walking. That’s a tightrope that Zito is walking and one that he’s falling off of more often than not. In ‘07 the league average BB% was 8.5% in the National League. It tends to be slightly higher in the American League because of the DH, but you want to see your pitchers around 8% on average. Going beyond that, especially when you’re into the low-teens like Zito, is a trend for trouble.

Watching Zito throw is excruciating. He constantly floats pitches up and away. You cannot pitch up in the zone when you have no control and you’re topping out in the mid-80’s. Sunday’s game against the D-Backs was the typical Zito showing. No control, everything up in the zone, and a bloated pitch count by the 5th. When can I get off this ride?

Moving Zito to the side, this was the most painful event of the weekend. Lincecum matches Brandon Webb step for step while punching out 13 hitters. Tyler Walker is summoned for the 8th inning and promptly gives up a leadoff double to Augie Ojeda. Augie. Ojeda. Ojeda is a minor league journeyman that’s latched on with the D-Backs for the last couple of years but you cannot, you cannot, give up a leadoff double to Augie Freakin’ Ojeda. He’s 33-years-old and the owner of a career batting line of (.238/.319/.319). You just can’t do that. Ever. Walker wasn’t helped by an error by John Bowker — his defense has really been rough lately — but it seems that Walker has this knack of melting down at the worst possible times.

Last I checked, Walker was the 2nd highest leveraged reliever on the Giants because Bochy has time and time again put him in high leveraged (read: tough, game changing) situations. Bochy loves to give his bullpen defined roles and let them stick with it, for better or worse. Stop putting Tyler Walker in these situations and see if anyone else in the bullpen can handle them. Hinshaw, Romo, or anyone. At least if and when they blow the lead, I can accept it as a learning experience. Walker has no future, no upside, and nothing left to learn. Evaluate our youth so that we can apply it to the future. I think Bochy has to, and already is, considering this.

Rough weekend for G’s fans.

Switching back to Sundays game for second, Fred Lewis became the first ever left-handed hitter to get 4 hits in a game off of Randy Johnson. How cool is that? Lewis went 4-5 and hit two doubles off of RJ. The bunion is still an issue for Lewis but hopefully he can play through it because he’s taken a huge step forward as a player this year and it would be supremely unfortunate to lose him for the rest of the season to injury. The look on Fred’s face after Johnson tossed him an eephus pitch in the first inning was the highlight of my weekend.

Comment Starter: Crappiest weekend ever for Giants baseball?

—

Link Swap

~ Very nice article on the Hardball Times on the ‘08 Draft which includes an evaliation of Giants draftpick — yet to be signed — Conor Gillaspie.

~ Various trade rumors: The Tigers could be watching Taschner. The Marlins might be interested in Bengie Molina. Randy Winn could be a 2nd tier OF that the Mets might be intersted in with Nady off the market.

~ For the PITCH/FX inclined, a very cool interview with Josh Kalk, owner of the Web PFX Tool.

You know what I’m talkin’ about.

(10 points to whomever gets the movie reference)

After writing a little yesterday on Fred Lewis and his patient approach at the dish, BCB commenter Delorean reminded me of the great plate discipline data you can pull from FanGraphs. I’ve briefly touched on these stats here at BCB but nothing serious. Today, we’ll examine them in a little more detail. Plate discipline stats are fascinating because you can see when hitters are swinging outside of the strike zone and when they are swinging in the zone, and when they are making contact — both in and out of the strike zone.

We learned yesterday that Fred Lewis sees a lot of pitches when he takes an AB. Just seeing a lot of pitches is only a scratch on the surface, it’s also important to know when he swings and how often he’s making contact from within and outside the strike zone.

I did a few plots for the plate discipline data. Let’s look at the O-Swing and O-Contact numbers first.

O-Swing% is how often a hitter takes a swing outside of the strike zone and O-Contact% is how often a hitter makes contact outside of the strike zone.* Remember, swinging outside of the zone isn’t always a bad thing if you can consistently make contact. Hitters like Vlad Guerrero have made a good living by having awesome plate coverage. My cutoff for these plots are hitters on the Giants that have had at least 150 PA’s. For this plot I’ve sorted our data by O-Swing%, or the most likely to swing at pitches outside of the strike zone.

Season O-Swing Z-Swing  Swing  O-Contact Z-Contact Contact   Zone
2005     20.3%   68.0%  46.0%      51.8%     88.3%   80.8%  53.8%
2006     23.5%   66.6%  46.1%      57.4%     88.5%   81.0%  52.6%
2007     25.0%   66.6%  45.9%      60.8%     88.2%   80.8%  50.3%

Like we noticed yesterday, Molina loves to swing the bat. He’s the Giants hitter that’s most likely to go outside of the strike zone when hitting. We can see from our league average numbers above that from ‘05-’07 your league average hitter went outside of the zone 20-25% of the time. If we use that as a baseline for our hitters, we can see that Molina (36.67%), Bowker (33.04%), Castillo (31.05%), Rowand (30.35%), and Rich Aurilia (27.01%) will all swing outside of the zone more times than your league average hitter. Molina, Bowker, Castillo, and Rowand are especially likely to go outside of the strike zone, they all have O-Swing percentages of 30% or greater. Vizquel (21.35%), Winn (20.73%), Durham (20.16%), and Lewis (18.27%) are less likely than your league average hitter to go outside of the strike zone.

Swinging outside of the zone is one thing, but how often do these hitters make contact when they venture outside of the strike zone? Even though Molina was the most likely Giant to go outside of the zone, he was also the most likely to make contact outside of the strike zone. The league average contact percentage outside of the zone from ‘05-’07 was 51.8-60.8%, that’s almost a 10% spread over three years but if you look at the last two years, hitters have been making more contact outside between 57-60%. Molina (78.79%) and Vizquel (75%) are both excellent at making contact outside of the strike zone. Durham (70.54%), Aurilia (69.42%), Winn (66.9%), Castillo (62.11%), and Lewis (60.9%) all posted above league average percentages — if you use the ‘07 league average of 60.8% as your cutoff — for contact outside of the zone.

What about our new center fielder? Aaron Rowand is a free-swinger — 4th likely on the team to swing outside of the zone — but his contact percentage outside of the strike zone is 48.70%. That’s the worst O-Contact on the team and almost 10-20% below league average. Rowand swings like a power-hitter, but he might do well to refine his approach some and lay off of pitches outside of the zone because he’s had trouble making contact with them. Rowand has always been below average on his contact outside of the zone. His 0-Contact for the last three years stands at 48.19%, 54.04%, and 53.52%

Because I was interested in Lewis yesterday, let’s review his numbers quickly. He’s less likely than your league average hitter when it comes to swinging outside of the zone. His O-Swing this year sits at 18.27% and that’s below the 20.3-25% league average from ‘05-’07. He’s right at league average for contact outside of the zone when he decides to swing the bat. Lewis appears to be very patient and he’s not struggling like Rowand is to make contact outside of the zone when he chooses to swing.

Let’s check out the plot for Z-Swings and Z-Contact, or the percentage of swings a batter takes inside of the zone and the percentage of contact he makes in the zone.

Like I’ve done with the 0-Plot above, I’ve ordered the hitters by Z-Swing%, or by who was most likely to take a swing at pitches in the zone.

The league average hitter swings at pitches inside of the zone anywhere from 66-68% over the last 3 years. Molina (74.05%), Castillo (73.43%), Rowand (72.45%), and Winn (69.24%) are more likely than your league average hitter when it comes to swinging in the zone at pitches. Aurilia (65.34%), Bowker (64.43%), Lewis (62.86%), Vizquel (62.43%), and Durham (62.29%) are less likely to swing at pitches in the strike zone as opposed to your league average hitter. This is where the Giants would like Lewis to swing a little more, when the pitch is in the strike zone. Only Durham and Vizquel took more pitches in the strike zone than Fred Lewis.

From ‘05-’07 the percentage of contact that’s made when a hitter swings inside of the zone has held steady at 88%. Vizquel (96.68%), Bowker (90.97%), and Molina (90.44%) all made contact at 90% or greater when they swung inside of the zone. I wasn’t surprised to see Molina and Vizquel in this group because they seem to be able to get their bats on anything. I was however, surprised to see Bowker in this grouping. Bowker ranked second on the Giants when it came to swinging outside of the strike zone and only Aaron Rowand was worse at making contact outside of the zone. This is where I think Bowker’s next step to becoming a better player — if he takes this step — will occur. If Bowker can swing less outside of the zone and keep himself in the strike zone more, he’ll really benefit as a player. When he swings in the zone he’s making great contact. His tendency to go outside of the zone and miss is what’s hurting him. We all love his swing and the quickness of his bat seems to play well in the zone, the key for him will to be more selective and try not to chase pitches outside of the strike zone.

After Molina, Vizquel, and Bowker, Rich Aurilia was the only other Giants hitter to make contact in the zone at a league average or better percentage. Aurilia made contact within the zone at 89.46%. Winn (86.82%), Durham (86.40%), Rowand (85.68%), Lewis (85.03%), and Castillo (83.55%), all made slightly less contact within the zone than your league average hitter. If Lewis wants to continue to cut his K’s like the Giants wish, it should start with him making more contact within the strike zone. Another reason to not like Castillo is that he doesn’t make good contact inside of the strike zone.

Finally, let’s check out the Zone% for our hitters, or the percentage of strikes they see in the strike zone.

Name	        Zone%
Omar Vizquel	54.60%
Fred Lewis	52.26%
Randy Winn	52.10%
Rich Aurilia	51.67%
Bengie Molina	50.50%
Jose Castillo	50.36%
John Bowker	49.78%
Aaron Rowand	49.24%
Ray Durham	48.47%

From ‘05-’07 the league average Zone% looks as follows: 53.8%, 52.6%, 50.3%.

It’s clear that major league pitchers are challenging Omar Vizquel. He’s seeing the most strikes on the Giants. Pitchers obviously aren’t respecting his (.159/.228/.179) line. It also makes sense that with Lewis’ K problems — 90 punch outs at the half — that he’s seeing the 2nd largest amount of strikes on the Giants. You have to get strikes to strike out and with Lewis being as patient as he is, he’s watching some of those strikes go by. Bowker and Rowand are receiving less strikes than our top hitters because of their tendancy to go outside of the zone and miss. Why throw in the zone — where the league average contact percentage is higher — when you can go outside of the zone and make a batter — in most cases — reduce his chance of contact by nearly 20%?

Wrap up

It’s interesting that the Giants have two young hitters who are basically opposites of each other. John Bowker could use a little more discipline because when he goes out of the zone, he’s probably going to miss. Meanwhile, Fred Lewis isn’t making great contact inside of the zone and he’s not swinging in the zone as much as you would like to see. Because each player in his first full season at the MLB level, we can hope that through coaching, god given abilities, and maybe some luck, they’ll make the needed adjustments.

If you really want to blow your mind, check out Barry Bonds’ plate discipline statistics for the last few years. Just amazing numbers, from ‘06-’07 he only swung at pitches outside of the strike zone 13% of the time. He also made contact within the zone 90%+ of the time. I’d LOVE to see the plate disicipline stats from his peak years of ‘00-’04.

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.

Ouch, bad day yesterday to be involved in running a major league team.

Seattle Mariners GM, Bill Bavasi, was “relieved of duties” and shown the door. I’ve always enjoyed the Mariners on a basic level. I think everyone grew up a fan of Ken Griffey Jr. but the Mariners also had players like Edgar Martinez and Jay Buhner that I liked to watch play in the mid-to-late 90’s. I was never really a fan of the team but I liked the players they had and would look for their names in box scores when I got the chance. I saw Ichiro play live for the first time last year at the All-Star game and watched him hit the first ever inside-the-park home run in an All-Star game. Ichiro is great.

Being a Giants fan, I can sympathize with Mariners fans who didn’t like the direction their team was heading. I think as Giants fans we are uniquely qualified to understand this type of pain. Bavasi made some strange moves and while he probably was a great guy, maybe he just wasn’t cut out to be a general manager. Playing Jose Vidro at DH was extremely weird and head-scratching. They took Vidro, who at this point in his career had become a slow-footed singles hitter, and placed him in the one position that you need offense from the most. It’s like that Sesame Street game, ‘Which One Doesn’t Belong?’, David Ortiz, Frank Thomas, Jime Thome, Jose Vidro?? Then, in an attempt to correct the error of Vidro at DH, they called up their best hitting prospect in Jeff Clement and let him get all of 40-something AB’s before deciding that he wasn’t ready and shipped him back to the minors. They just called him back up today.

That’s just a brief viewing of some of the weirdness going on in Seattle. Follow the ’strange moves’ link above to read about some of the other stuff. The less we talk about the Bedard trade, the better.

Fun Fact: Bavasi was rumored to have offered Zito 7/99 before the Giants came in and totally bonered things up. Bill Bavasi almost saved us from the horror that is BZ, and for that, I’ll always appreciate you just a little bit Mr. Bavasi. It’s unfortunate that Barry Zito didn’t like mocha frappachinos more. And yes, the phrase ‘totally bonered’ is a real term, look it up.

After Bavasi was cut loose, the Mets then proceeded to fire head coach Willie Randolph, pitching coach Rick “I can fix Victor Zambrano in 10 minutes” Peterson, and first base coach Tom Nieto. Peterson was known for working as the pitching coach with the A’s from 98-2003, the years of the “Big Three”. Zito and Peterson are close and it’s got many wondering, should the Giants bring in Rick Peterson to try and fix their $126M problem? Call me skeptical, but this isn’t the same Zito that Peterson knew during his time with the A’s and unless Peterson can magically make Zito start throwing 89mph again, I’m not sure he can really help him.

—

After getting swept by the A’s, the Giants played the red hot Detroit Tigers last night and won! The game had it all, Lincecum vs. Verlander, a Freddy Loo homer, a Bowker 3-run shot to put the G’s up, and Bochy even got tossed when the umpires blew a call in the 7th.

Marcus Thames continues to play out of his gourd. He hit 2 HR’s off of Lincecum, both on offspeed stuff that was up, taking his consecutive HR streak on hits to 7. I’ve never seen a hitter on such a roll. Lincecum didn’t have his usual dominate start but he held a surging Tigers team to 4 runs — would have been 3 without the blown call at home in the 7th — over 7 innings. Even when Lincecum isn’t firing on all cylinders, he’s still pretty good. The education of Tim continues.

Fred Lewis went 2-5 that included a double and a HR off of Verlander to tie the game in the 5th. He had 3 RBI’s on the night. His line for the year is at: (.284/.362/.475) 119 OPS+. The man of the evening was John Bowker. Bowker went 3-4 with a 3-run HR to take the lead in the 8th inning when he whacked a Ferando Rodeny hanging changeup into the RF seats.

A little over a weak ago I wrote a post trying to answer the question of, has John Bowker been unlucky so far this year? The basis of my argument was that he’s hitting a ton of line drives and his BABIP was very low for someone that’s hitting line drives almost a quarter of the time. When I made the post, Bowker was hitting (.248/.299/.411) with a BABIP of .280. A week later, his line has improved to (.273/.320/.460) with a BABIP of .314.

What’s the difference between this week and last? Nothing. Bowker is still hitting line drives at a great rate but the difference is that they are going for hits. Line drives fall for hits 75% of the time and Bowker was running into a little bit of bad luck previously. I love this quote from him in the recap from SFGiants.com on his approach.

“It’s a big park, but you can’t let it mess with you,” Bowker said. “You have to hit line drives. Line drives are still hits.”

The Giants need to keep playing Bowker at first base against righties. I even wouldn’t mind seeing the Giants give Bowker some AB’s against left handed pitching, either. Great game from Bowker and it was good to see him have some good luck. His first two hits on the night were line drives that he stung.

Watching games like last night remind me that I’m always going to be a fan of baseball, even if our team isn’t the best. We might be low on talent but there’s more than one silver lining with this years team if you look hard enough, squint if you have to. Watching players like Tim Lincecum, Fred Lewis, and John Bowker have some success at this level has been very rewarding.

The Giants never develop any young hitters. That’s a constant criticism of the Giants and one that’s not entirely unfounded. The Giants haven’t developed hitters — good hitters — at the same rate that they’ve developed good pitchers. Part of this could be that the Giants have always focused on drafting pitching and then attempting — I say attempting — to trade them for valuable hitters. Whether or not this strategy has worked out really isn’t important for this post but the Giants have had trouble acquiring or developing young above average hitters.

We all know the old familiar names of Todd Linden, Lance Niekro, Damon Minor, Calvin Murray, Dante Powell, Jacob Cruz, Tony Torcato, and so on and so forth. But something very strange has been happening this year in foggy city of San Francisco — The Giants have a hitter, farm developed, who’s actually, wait for it … hitting!

Enter, Fred Lewis.

Many Giants fans have always had a soft spot for Fred Lewis. He was always a patient hitter in a system that seemed to be full of hackers — career minor league OBP of .377. He hit for a little pop and was speedy, despite never swiping bags at a great rate in the minors. Fred was your typical ‘toolsy’ prospect. Lots of developing tools but not always the results that you would want from those tools. He was a multi-sport athlete growing up and because he never focused on baseball completely until he went to college, he was always considered to be a little raw.

The Giants drafted Lewis in the 2nd round of the 2002 draft, 66th overall, and began his minor league career playing for the short-season Salem-Keizer Volcanoes. From 2002 and onward Lewis gradually climbed his way through the minor leagues. He got a cup of coffee with the Giants in ‘06 and in ‘07 he netted 157 successful AB’s in which he hit (.287/.374/.408) with a memorable game or two mixed in. Lewis was heading into the ‘08 season as a 4th OF that could play all three positions and give players like Roberts or Winn a breather now and then. Instead, Lewis was moved to a starting role after Dave Roberts went down very early in the season with a knee injury that he’s still rehabilitating. Setting aside the unfortunate injury, this couldn’t have helped Fred Lewis any more. Roberts is 36 this season and if he was healthy, the Giants would have played him regularly much like they’ve done Durham and Aurilia. After all, Roberts is earning $6.5M this year and the team would surely want to play him to keep his trade value up. The idea fits with the past behaviors of the Giants as a franchise.

The Giants moved Lewis into the leadoff spot and he’s adapted very well to the role. In nearly one-half of a full season Lewis has hit (.276/.356/.458). That’s pretty close to what Lewis has done in the minor leagues (.282/.377/.420). His OBP has dropped a little but he’s hitting for more power. Now, you might be saying to yourself, “Having a slightly above 800 OPS left fielder isn’t anything special.” but consider the context of the Giants, a team that’s had problems developing hitting talent, and Lewis looks a little better. But, Lewis also stacks up well against other left fielders in the National League.

Lewis is an above average LF right now and that’s something to be proud of. Let’s look at some numbers.

Here are the top left fielders in the National League by OPS+ (Minimum of 200 PA’s)

  Cnt Player            **OPS+**  PA Year Age
+----+-----------------+--------+---+----+---+
    1 Pat Burrell          156   272 2008  31
    2 Jason Bay            142   287 2008  29
    3 Matt Holliday        135   227 2008  28
    4 Adam Dunn            132   262 2008  28
    5 Ryan Braun           129   284 2008  24
    6 Alfonso Soriano      123   232 2008  32
    7 Fred Lewis           112   253 2008  27
    8 Carlos Lee           111   272 2008  32
    9 Luis Gonzalez        108   206 2008  40
   10 Skip Schumaker       106   244 2008  28
   11 Scott Hairston        95   212 2008  28
   12 Juan Pierre           74   232 2008  30
   13 Eric Byrnes           71   200 2008  32

Currently Lewis ranks 7th, ahead of Carlos Lee who’s making $12M this year and $18.5M next year. Lee plays terrible defense and could eventually have to leave the OF due to his body size. Remember that OPS+ only judges if a hitter is better than league average or not. It doesn’t take into account position that the player plays, defense, or baserunning. Purely on the basis of hitting, at this point in the season, Lewis is hitting as well as Carlos Lee.

Judging Lewis only on his hitting ability is a little unfair because he’s swiped 12 bags out of 14 attempts this year. You’ll notice that many of the hitters on our ERA+ list are plodding slugger types. Guys who mash the ball but don’t run much. Hitters like — Pat Burrell, Adam Dunn, and Carlos Lee — all fit that mold. Like he was in the minors, Lewis is more of a guy with a little power, good OBP, and with some speed — though his minor league SB-rate was never very good, this year he’s running well.

We can use a handy Baseball Prospectus metric called EqA to help us sort out our left fielders even more. EqA is desirable because it includes a baserunning component into it’s score, which should help Lewis’ value because he is adding value with his stolen bases. EqA works like a batting average, .260 is league average. So, a score of .300 indicates a better than league average player. It should also be said that EqA has no defensive component, so the defense of a player neither hurts or helps his score because it’s not included. The average EqA for a LF in major league baseball is .270, an above average hitter, which means that your team is probably hurting itself when they play a Juan Pierre-type player.

Here’s our 13 left fielders again, but sorted by EqA (Minimum of 200 PA’s)

#	YEAR	NAME	        POS	PA	EqA
1.	2008	Pat Burrell	lf	272	.332
2.	2008	Jason Bay	lf	287	.324
3.	2008	Adam Dunn	lf	262	.311
4.	2008	Matt Holliday	lf	227	.310
5.	2008	Ryan Braun	lf	284	.293
6.	2008	Alfonso Soriano	lf	232	.286
7.	2008	Skip Schumaker	lf	244	.286
8.	2008	Fred Lewis	lf	253	.282
9.	2008	Luis Gonzalez	lf	206	.276
10.	2008	Carlos Lee	lf	272	.274
11.	2008	Scott Hairston	lf	212	.255
12.	2008	Juan Pierre	lf	232	.253
13.	2008	Eric Byrnes	lf	200	.225

Lewis is still in the middle of the pack for left fielders in the National League but check out his EqA score. It’s about 12 points above average for a left fielder. Surprisingly, Skip Schumaker got a nice boost on our EqA list, moving slightly ahead of Fred Lewis. The expensive Carlos Lee isn’t much better than your league average left fielder in baseball. Even with stolen bases added into a players value, Juan Pierre still isn’t any good. I’ll thank Ned in L.A. for trumping Sabes’ offer for Pierre.

We haven’t touched on defense yet but we can use Revised Zone Rating to rank our left fielders in an attempt to try and get a even better overall picture of how much they are helping or hurting their teams.

Year  	Last  	 First    BIZ  	Plays  	RZR   	OOZ
2008 	Byrnes 	 Eric 	  62 	59 	.952 	11
2008 	Holliday Matt T   74 	70 	.946 	13
2008 	Lewis 	Fred D 	  76 	71 	.934 	19
2008 	Pierre 	Juan      75 	69 	.920 	24
2008 	Bay 	Jason 	  98 	87 	.888 	23
2008 	Dunn 	Adam 	  105 	93 	.886 	17
2008 	Soriano Alfonso   79	69 	.873 	18
2008 	Braun 	Ryan J    104 	89 	.856 	24
2008 	Burrell	Pat       81 	68 	.840 	26
2008 	Lee 	Carlos    87 	72 	.828 	28

Lewis got a nice bump by RZR. By Revised Zone Rating, he ranks as the 3rd best defensive LF in the National League. 76 balls were hit into Lewis’ “zone” and he turned 71 of them into outs.

A zone is defined as:

The areas on a ballfield in which at least 50% of batted balls are handled for outs. Zones are standardized and defined separately for each position.

Our defensive rankings confirm some of the popular notions of some of these players. Carlos Lee — is the move to 1B going to happen soon for Carlos? — and Pat Burrell are both at the bottom of the list. Ryan Bruan is most likely still learning his new OF position after being moved off of third base because of poor defense. The defensively challenged Dunn has been respectable. Juan Pierre got a big bump in his overall terms of value, but it’s probably not enough to offset his incredibly weak bat. It’s also amazing that Eric Brynes is the top defender in left field because before going on the DL, he had been playing with leg problems all year. He was a top LF defender last year.

When you combine all of Lewis’ abilities, he forms into a nice player. His bat is competent enough right now to play in left and he’s also adding some positive value with his speed. Defensively, for a guy with a mixed reputation in the OF, he’s doing very well. The knock on Lewis is that he’ll take weird routes sometimes and he has, but his foot speed is usually good enough for him to make adjustments on the fly. His arm profiles better for LF, too. It would be stretched in RF and might be passable in CF — although the Giants might not care too much since we had Dave Roberts and his noodle arm play most of CF last year.

Not a bad package for a team that’s struggled to produce above average hitters.

Is he likely to have continued success?

Lewis has been a great surprise this season but he has a few underlying signs that are just a little worrying. His batting line on the year has been aided by a higher than expected BABIP. His BABIP is currently at .356 which is really high for a guy that’s not knocking a ton of line drives. Lewis’ LD% is at 16.6% right now and if you crudely calculated his xBABIP (expected BABIP) it should be closer to .286 than the .356 it currently is. So, we could see Lewis take a slight dive at some point in the season but his above average defense will help him stay in the lineup. If Lewis could hover around league average production while in LF, the Giants will be getting great value.

Lewis’ higher than expected BABIP isn’t entirely flukey. It’s helped by his good foot speed and it’s one reason why it might not regress as harshly as someone with similar hitting stats but with lesser speed. Lewis is getting his fair share of infield hits this season, with an IFH% of 8%. Because of his foot speed, Lewis has beat out 7 infield hits this year. Speedsters like Ichiro routinely hit double digits on IFH% and Lewis, while not Ichiro fast, is taking advantage of his speed.

My only other concern with Lewis would be his K%. In the minors he was routinely right around 20% but this year he’s up to 26.7%. One reason could be that he’s hitting for more power and is changing his approach slightly, but he’s still a very patient hitter. Swinging less than your average hitter and swinging outside of the zone less than your average hitter. The good news is that his BB% is still pretty good and around the same levels that he established in the minor leagues.

—

Whew, that felt good.

As a Giants fan you rarely get the chance to write positively about a hitting prospect at the major league level but Fred Lewis is having a nice season to this point and has been a pleasant surprise. He’s always been high on tools and this year he’s making good on some of those tools. Lewis already 27 and he should be at peak physical condition, hopefully he can keep this level of production up for the next couple of years and continue to be of great value to the Giants. The season is still young and Lewis has a long way to go before he can successfully call this season a good year, but he’s made a great start.

Comment Starter: Did you expect Lewis to play this well, so far?

Ladies and gentleman, John Bowker.

It’s tough to overshadow a dominant Tim Lincecum start — 11 punch outs over 6, we’ll go into more detail later — but John Bowker has made quite a name for himself in just two games. The Chronicle noted this morning that Bowker has done something that Giants’ legends — Bobby Bonds, McCovey, Cepeda, Clark, and Williams — had never done before; hit home runs in their first two games at the major league level. Bowker did just that when he blasted the first pitch he saw from Joel Pineiro into the arcade during the 4th, his 2nd longball in just two days.

While this season will mostly be dark, dreary, and depressing at times, it should also give us glimpses of hope. Tiny slivers of hope poking through the dark clouds of a franchise on tough times. John Bowker is one of those tiny slivers of light. He’s not going to turn into Mickey Mantle, but he could be an-honest-to-goodness decent homegrown player produced by the Giants minor league system. In years past, Brian Sabean would have traded off Bowker for a middle reliever sometime over the summer months and that would be the last we would ever see of him. But not this season, this season the Giants have the luxury — or curse, however you want to look at it — of losing. And that luxury gives them the bittersweet chance to play younger players like a John Bowker.

Bowker’s surprising first two games isn’t totally surprising. Last year he had a nice season in AA and during the dog days of July, I wrote a brief post on some minor league players that were giving me hope for the future. Bowker made the list.

6. OF John Bowker - A 3rd round pick in 2004 Bowker has blossomed as a hitter in a harsh environment not conducive to hitting, the Eastern League and more specifically Dodd Stadium. A quick glance at Bowkers splits show a tale of just how hard it can be to hit in Dodd. Bowker’s home stats (.263/.321/.421) which is good for a OPS of (.742) Meanwhile, Bowker’s road stats are (.319/.370/.582) which is good for a OPS of (.952) Bowker is only 24 and can give Giants fans hope for a potential homegrown bat from the minors.

Since his promotion to the bigs, Bowker has knocked in 7 runs over just two games. It’s been great to see a semi-interesting Giants prospect on television. Bowker’s swing is nice and compact, short and quick without a trace of slowness or unneeded bat wrap. You can see why this guy might be able to pop out a few HR’s now and then at the yard. Tonight, the Giants take on the Arizona D-Backs and Randy Johnson. It’s going to be Johnson’s first start of the year and there’s a good chance that Bowker could take a seat tonight. Rowand is reportedly feeling better and should be in the starting lineup and with Bowker being a lefty, Bochy might be tempted to start Ort or Davis over him. However it shakes out tonight, I hope to see Bowker get an AB or two, because right now, he’s one of the most exciting things about this team.

Don’t Forget Tim

Tim Lincecum, who shall never be forgotten, also had himself a great game against the Cardinals. Striking out 11 over 6 innings — the highest K total for a Giants starter yet this season, beating Sanchez’s 10 against the Pads.

In the previous PITCHf/x article on Lincecum I noted that he’s been developing a slider for the 2008 season and that I would try to keep an eye on it’s development. So far, it looks like the slider has been very kind to Tim. I recorded each of Tim’s strikeouts by hitter, inning, pitch type, velocity, and result.

Let’s check out the results.

K#     Batter     Inning     Pitch     Velocity     Result
1      Ludwick     1st       Slider      84mph    Swinging Strike
2      Duncan      2nd       Change      84mph    Swinging Strike
3      Pineiro     2nd       Fastball    94mph    Swinging Strike
4      Kennedy     3rd       Slider      86mph    Swinging Strike
5      Miles       3rd       Slider      85mph    Swinging Strike
6      Washington  3rd       Slider      80mph    Swinging Strike
7      Pineiro     4th       Fastball    95mph    Called Strike
8      Kennedy     4th       Change      82mph    Swinging Strike
9      Schumaker   5th       Slider      86mph    Swinging Strike
10     Ankiel      5th       Fastball    95mph    Swinging Strike
11     Ludwick     5th       Slider      83mph    Called Strike

These numbers were all generated from PITCHf/x. A cool feature of this year’s PITCHf/x incarnation is that the system now classifies pitch types from the get-go. For the first time, the system has the ability to differentiate pitch types by using algorithms developed by Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM). Dan Fox of BP had a brief update about PITCHf/x on BP Unfiltered that proved to be a quick and interesting read. The system is making awesome strides in accuracy and reliability, great stuff.

Of the 11 strikeouts, 6 of them came on sliders. 5 of the 6 sliders were swung at and missed, while one was a called strike. It’s very encouraging to see Lincecum have a good game with his “new toy”. The early progress that he’s shown with his slider speaks to the skill level he has. Last year he turned an average changeup into an awesome weapon in his repertoire. He quickly developed that pitch and made it an asset. The early results for the slider suggest the same. He’ll probably have hiccups with it now and then — new pitches can be tough to get a feel for — but the early results are very, very encouraging.

Besides the slider, Lincecum got 3 strikeouts on the fastball and 2 strikeouts on his changeup. 9 of the 11 strikeouts he recorded were by swinging. Like we learned in the Lincecum FX article, he’s hard to make contact against. I’m planning on comparing Lincecum’s strikes swinging % from ‘07 against some of the top tiered pitchers in baseball, I’ll be sure to post my results when I get them.

Oppo Fred

Another nice surprise this year has been Freddie Loo’s play since he moved into the lead-off spot. In the Cardinals series he went 9-17 with 6 doubles, 1 triple, 2 walks, and 1 RBI. That’s good for a line of: (.529/.579/1.579).

Something that I’ve noticed while watching Lewis hit, is that he really loves to hit the ball the opposite way into left field. Let’s take a look at his hit chart, courtesy of MLB.com’s player page on Lewis.

Listed on this hit chart are: triples (t), doubles (d), and singles (s).

Lewis appears to be extremely comfortable with letting the ball get deep in the zone and then shooting to to LF. He’s smacked 3 doubles right down the line and single in the same area. He hit 2 more doubles and 2 singles to left-center. He pulled a triple deep off the wall in right-center and pulled a double down the RF line.

Of the 10 hits depicted, 8 of them were hit left off center. It’s possible that teams will start to pitch Lewis inside more because if they keep pitching him middle away, he’s just going to serve it to LF most of the time. It’s possible that if teams start to come in on his hands more, he’ll have to try to pull the ball down the RF line or lay off the pitch. Just something to think about. But it’s great to see someone like Lewis who isn’t afraid to go the other way, if only Pedro Feliz could have done this.