Enter last night’s game.

Roy Halladay’s career doesn’t need much explaining. He’s been a terrific pitcher in the AL for years and he’s off to a white-hot start in the NL. His WAR totals since 2006 –  5.7, 5.6, 7.4, 7.3 — go to show what a dominating pitcher he’s been, and continues to be. And then you have back-up catcher, Eli Whiteside. To put it bluntly, Whiteside isn’t a good hitter. He’s never been good and he’ll probably never be good. So, what does Whiteside go against Halladay? He hits an RBI double in the 2nd inning and a solo HR in the 7th. If you like WPA, Whiteside was the 2nd most valuable Giants hitter last night. Go figure?

On the pitching side of things, Sanchez wasn’t sharp but he was good enough to last 5 innings and get the win. Sanchez ended up striking out 6 batters but he also walked 5. Control will most likely still be a problem for Sanchez. His arm slot can give him trouble at times and he’s currently at 4.81 walks per 9 innings. Last year, Sanchez finished with a 4.85 BB/9. He’s still quite the talent, and the odd chance that he can take a step forward with his control without sacrificing his K-rate he could be very, very good. Right now, he’s just very good, which might sound like damning with faint praise but it’s not. He should continue to be a solid option for the Giants. He’ll have his ups-and-downs, but the talent is undeniable.

The Giants will kick off the second game of the series in about an hour. Taking the hill for the G’s is Todd Wellemeyer. For a pitcher that’s struggled for most of the season, his assignment in the Phillies isn’t a recipe for breaking out of a slump. The Phillies are a patient team — BB% of 1o.4, 8th in the MLB — and they’ve hit RHP well this year with a slash-line of: .277/.346/.454. Both things could give Wellemeyer problems if he can’t throw strikes and avoid the big inning. Let’s hope he can keep the Phillies in the yard.

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 on the young season last night after losing 1-0 to the San Diego Padres. Jonathan Sanchez pitched brilliantly but made a fatal mistake when he allowed a single to Chase Headley, who eventually came around to score on a stolen base, a pop-out that moved him to third, and then a sacrifice fly off the bat of evildoer Scott Hairston. It’s obvious to me that Sanchez has yet to learn how to win a major league game. A grittier, guttier pitcher would have never allowed such a sequence of events to take place.

On the topic of Sanchez, he’s pretty flipping good. In 19.1 innings pitched this year he’s already struck out 27 batters. That’s an eye-popping K/9 of 12.57. Sanchez was sharp for most of the night outside of the 2nd inning. Sanchez’s 2nd inning is classic Sanchez. If you could distill him into one single inning to represent him as a player, it would have been that 2nd inning. He threw 27 pitches, walked 3, and struck out 3 — leaving the bases loaded on a Matt Latos K to end the frame. Sanchez’s ability to miss bats is quite rate.  How rare you ask?

From 2008-2010, starters ranked by K/9 with a minimum of 300 IP over that span.

Rich Harden, Tim Lincecum, and Jonathan Sanchez are your top-3 pitchers that have been the hardest to hit since 2008. That’s a danged good list to be a part of. It’s amusing to see Jorge de la Rosa right behind Sanchez. He’s a hard-throwing lefty with control problems much like Sanchez and I think they are almost mirror images of each other as players. I think this list might surprise the average fan. And it goes to show what a talent the Giants have in Sanchez. Whether or not he ever “puts it together” and reduces his BB/9 is anyone’s guess, but on the level of raw talent, he’s up there with some of the top pitchers in baseball.

Unfortunately for Sanchez and the Giants, the game boiled down to the 8th inning.

Facing reliever Mike Adams, Nate Schierholtz tripled to christen the eighth before Whiteside grounded out, pinch-hitter Bengie Molina popped up and Velez took a called third strike.

In my opinion, this is a pretty poor job of managing by Bochy and it might be the 2nd time within the last week that he’s cost the Giants a game. With a runner on third base and zero outs, why let Eli Whiteside hit? Whiteside may possess supernatural magical game-calling abilities, but if it’s one thing we can be certain about Whiteside, it’s that he’s a poor hitter. How do we know this? Over thousands of minor league at-bats he owns a career slash of .244/.288/.393. As a 28-year-old in AAA, he was posting an OPS of .600. He’s just not good. And to let him hit, and then let Molina pinch-hit in the next at-bat is confusing to say the least. Why not let Molina hit for Whiteside? You end up not giving an at-bat to the poorest hitter on your team.

It seems clear that the Giants are still going to struggle to score runs. Renteria hit into two double plays in the game which helped him rack up a WPA of -.257. Since his HR off of Billy Wagner, Renteria has gone 5-38, .132/.171/.158. With Rowand and DeRosa banged up, the Giants have to hope they can tread water for a little bit until they get them back in the lineup. I’m still a little worried about DeRosa’s health. He hasn’t, to my knowledge, had hamstring problems before, but he seems to be hitting everything to RF softly.

The Giants will wrap up against the Padres tonight when Todd Wellemeyer (6.97 K/9, 6.10 BB/9, 8.82 FIP) takes the mound.

Using PitchF/X, we can try and get an idea of what Sanchez was throwing in his 11 strikeout game.

/dusts off Excel 2003

What you’re seeing above is an attempt to classify pitches by speed and spin direction — or at what direction the pitcher spun the ball after releasing the pitch. Sanchez’s main 2 pitches are his fastball and a slurvy breaking pitch. His fastball topped out at 92.3 mph but he worked mostly in the 89-90 mph range. I call his breaking pitch a ‘slurve’ because it almost breaks like a tight curveball instead of your traditional slider that moves more horizontally that vertically. But, the spin direction on the pitch makes it look like a slider to me. Interesting stuff, and if anyone reading this can correct me on that pitch, and my attempt to classify it, I’d love to hear anything. Also of note is the changeup and fastball. They both are very similar in spin direction, but quite different in velocity. One of the reasons why a good changeup can be devastating to hitters.

It’s a great game from Sanchez, but like most early season performances, we should take a wait-and-see approach.

A few assumptions before we begin:

~ I’m still using the same method for pitcher WAR as I used in last year’s post. Check the link if you want any more information on it.

~ Replacement level for starters has been set to 5.50. For relievers it’s set to 4.50 runs.

~ I used the CHONE projections for 95% of this post with a few tweaks here and there. CHONE is an awesome projection system and the ZiPS database hasn’t been fully released just yet.

~ For the defensive projections I’m working off of Jeff Zimmerman’s 2010 UZR Projections. He’s projected every defensive player for 2010 with an age adjustment. Good stuff.

Now, let’s check our numbers out.

• Right off the bat I’ve got the Giants projected as an 83-84 win baseball team for 2010. If you’ve read the Giants 2009 projection post, they were projected as an 82-83 win baseball team. I’ve said more than once that I’m not sure the Giants have actually improved themselves heading into 2010, as this initial projection seems to validate that idea some. DeRosa in LF isn’t an improvement over Fred Lewis (and maybe even John Bowker — but DeRosa does have some value from his versatility), even with a dead cat bounce Huff isn’t projected to be any better than say Ishikawa, and Freddy Sanchez will improve the 2B group — but his health concerns shouldn’t be taken lightly.
• The Giants did win 88 games last season after we projected them to win 82-83 wins. That’s over our numbers by 5 wins or so. A couple of things helped the Giants play over their heads last season: they fielded an exceptional defensive team, their pitching was incredible (clearly the best Giants pitching team in almost 50 years), and they were a “clutch” team (by FanGraphs, the Giants were the 6th best team in baseball for clutch performance). Being clutch isn’t something that you can’t rely on from year-to-year and the Giants accumulated nearly +3 wins because of it. Realize that it’s just as likely for the Giants’ luck to swing the other way, and instead of 88 wins, you end up with 78 wins. It’s a good reason why to not treat baseball performances as static and say: “OK, we won 88 wins this year, add a player here, a player there, and 90 wins!”
• Some numbers. The top 5 Giants players by projected WAR: Lincecum (6.1), Pablo Sandoval (4.1), Matt Cain (3.6), Jonathan Sanchez (2.5), and Nate Schierholtz (2). Not surprising that 3 of the 5 are pitchers. The Giants pitching is by far their best team strength. Projection systems always love Nate (calling him a slightly better than league average hitter with +6 defense in RF). I would love to see Nate live up to that projection this year but I’m skeptical on him. He looks great on D in RF, but his hitting approach leaves something to be desired. If he’s a league average hitter with +6 defense, he’s a starter on this team and quite valuable.
• More pitching thoughts: Zito turns in a slightly below average performance (1.7)  in 190 projected innings pitched. He’s earning $18.5M these days and continues to be a vast overpay. But most Giants fans (me included) would be happy if he can hang around 2 wins for awhile. Brian Wilson’s projection (1.6) is very solid for a reliever. The elite guys in the bullpen tend to pitch around 2 wins per year. Wilson took some great steps forward last year with his components and if he can hold them steady, he should be in for another good year.
• The bullpen also projects some solid performances from Affeldt and Romo but outside of the top three pitchers in the ‘pen, things drop off. Medders is a replacement level reliever that out-pitched his peripherals last year. Runzler and Joaquin have some promise, but control issues in their past make them a little risky to project as sub-4.00 FIP relievers.
• I’m calling Bumgarner (0.7) the 5th starter for now even though I would prefer that he start the year in AAA. Look for the Giants to bring in someone like Todd Wellemeyer to fight for the 5th spot. Bumgarner does offer some upside vs. his projection. He could be a spot on the Giants were they could add an extra win.
• On the hitting side of things the Giants could improve themselves in a few places: (1) As soon as possible use Posey behind the plate. He’s set to almost outproduce Bengie Molina in just 25% PT as compared to Bengie’s projected PT of 60%. Catcher is one of the few areas on the Giants where a clear and reasonable upgrade is available. (2) Play John Bowker. Bowker gets the 2nd best projection for hitting on the team behind Pablo. Bowker probably won’t be in the open RF competition in ST, making his avenue to the team narrow. But a poor hitting team like the Giants just can’t ignore the possibility of a .350 wOBA hitter on their roster. I’ve got Bowker backing up in RF and LF, but you can probably cut that back at the moment — taking down the total team WAR a few runs. (3) If Huff looks done, don’t be afraid to play Ishikawa at first base, he still profiles as the better player. (4) This also applies to Renteria vs. Uribe.
• Uribe comes back to earth in 2010 but his defense is still good enough in the infield that he should be the preferred sub at 2B/3B.
• Aaron Rowand gets a below average projection (1.6) in 80% PT. I find Rowand to be a pretty volatile player. He’s going to be an average hitter in most seasons, but his defense, which has also been average, could go quick. He’s projected as an average defender in CF for next year but if he posts, say, a -5 run season in CF, he’s going to be lucky to break 1 win. The Giants tried to rest Rowand more last year to help his bat and he was basically the same hitter. His defense did bounce-back, though. Only three more years left.

Feel free to click around the spreadsheet above and check out the numbers. The 2010 Giants team looks pretty similar to the 2009 team. The Giants are going to have to hope that last year was for real and that they’ve actually improved themselves over this offseason. I’m not seeing in right now in February. The team is still weak on offense and there’s reason to think the defense (losing Winn, reduced PT to Ishikawa, Renteria, Rowand) might take a step back. The pitching should be very good again but any missed time to either Lincecum or Cain (or even Pablo, or if he regresses) and you can kiss the season goodbye. The Giants don’t have the depth on offense/defense to make up for any missed time in the rotation. Once again, the rotation will carry the team with a below average offense.

Before you jump into the comments section, check this post from Dave Cameron on what projections are. Because these projections can sometimes bring out the worst in people, please keep your comments respectful in the comments section or I will edit them with pictures of sheep.

Comment Starter: How many wins do you think the Giants will net in ’10? Is it enough to win the NL West?

*It was just the 18th time this year that the Giants hit 2 or more HR’s in the same game. In fact, in 112 games played this year, the Giants have had 59 games in which they didn’t homer at all. 53% of the time on the season the Giants have failed to hit the little white ball over the wall.

On the pitching side of things, Sanchez’s control was his downfall in the 4th inning. He started the inning by getting Andre Ethier to ground out but then a Manny Ramirez single and back-to-back walks loaded the bases for Matt Kemp, who promptly hit a bases-clearing double. Sanchez ended up throwing 5 innings with 3 walks, 6 strikeouts, and 4 earned runs. Sanchez will probably get some flak for his game, but I can’t hate on him too much. The Giants need Sanchez too much at the moment and his stuff is still as good as ever. He’s punching out 9.48 hitters per 9 innings and his walks have started to move closer to his career averages. Check out his BB/9 FanGraph’s chart and you can see that he’s been better lately. Ultimately, he’s frustrating to watch at times but he’s posting a very good 4.12 FIP after a hellish start to his season.

Quick Blurbs

This isn’t the first basemen you were looking for. Ryan Garko has not started his Giants career with a bang. The big lug is hitting: .222/.349/.278 over his first 43 PA’s with the team. Decent OBP, but the power hasn’t materialized. He’s been an HBP magnet, getting hit 3 times already. The best thing for the Giants would be to start Ishikawa against all RHP and start Garko against all LHP. I wasn’t a fan of trading for Garko then, and I’m still not loving the deal. On the bright side at least the Giants haven’t been delusional enough to try him in the OF.

Buster Posey has now played 23 games in AAA Fresno. His steady trek  through the minor leagues hasn’t slowed down his bat. He’s hitting: .289/.375/.542 over 96 PA’s. The most delicious stat of them all? He’s posting a 12.6 BB% in Fresno. A hitter than knows how to take a walk? I like the idea.

Has Rich Aurilia played his last game in a Giants uni? Henry Schulman thinks it’s a possibility:

Here is an educated guess: The Giants need to clear a roster spot for Nate Schierholtz, who is due to come off the disabled list tonight. Aurilia is the logical candidate to go and has been given some sort of indication of that. But the team is still not sure whether Juan Uribe who is battling a leg injury, is ready to play and are waiting to see how he feels tomorrow or the next day before the Giants make a move.

With the new additions of Sanchez and Garko, Aurilia doesn’t have a place on the team anymore. If Uribe is healthy he really, really, doesn’t have a place on the team anymore. If this is it for the goatee’d one, then he’ll end his Giants career with a batting line of: .276/.327/.432 with 143 HR’s and an OPS+ of 99.

After being demoted the bullpen, it was a game that Sanchez wasn’t even scheduled to pitch in. But a Randy Johnson injury gave Sanchez the opportunity to crack the starting rotation once more and it’s an opportunity that he took full advantage of. That’s one of the reasons baseball is so enjoyable for me — one minute you’re the goat, an under-performing left-hander with good stuff and the next minute you’re the hero. Sanchez hurled 9 innings of no-hit baseball that was punctuated by a career high 11 strikeouts.

Let’s dive into a few PFX numbers.

Note: The following pitch-types are pulled directly from MLBAM’s pitch classifications which aren’t always right. They largely look OK for this start. Sanchez doesn’t throw a 2-seamer to my knowledge and a few of the curveballs could have been sliders but, overall, it’s a decent bit of information.

From the velocity plot and the data table you can get a feel of what Sanchez was throwing in the game. To get an idea of just how good Sanchez’s fastball can be, look at the velocity plot. Until his 40th pitch on the night (or around the 4th inning) it’s all he threw. Just think about that for a second. Sanchez’s fastball is so good that he can cruise through the batting order once or twice before needing to mix in other pitches. By the 40th pitch on the night Sanchez started to mix in his slider which proved to be his best pitch on the night. Sanchez also threw a few curveballs and changeups, but for the most part he was a two-pitch pitcher with the fastball and slider. Another note about the fastball is that out-of-the-gate, he was touching 95 mph. Lefties that can throw with that type of velocity don’t grow on trees. By around the 40th pitch of the game his fastball settled into the 90-92 mph range.

For a pitcher with control problems (his BB/9 is still over 5 for this year) what’s one of the reasons that Sanchez had so much success?

Answer: He pounded the strike zone all night long.

This is a plot of all the pitches that Sanchez threw during the game. His arm-slot will still give him problems sometimes — causing him to miss up in the zone — but he was in the zone all night. Sometimes his arm-slot would give him a little trouble and he’d miss up, but by the next pitch he’d correct himself and get back into the strike zone. It’s a pretty remarkable graph for Sanchez. With his swing-and-miss stuff, if he can stay in the strike zone more he could be a very good pitcher. But, of course, you could say that about every pitcher with good stuff and control problems.

Let’s check out Sanchez’s movement by speed during the no-no.

This plot is sort of a combination of the data table and velocity graph. The red dashed circle indicates Sanchez’s fastballs, which because of his left-handedness, will move away from right-handed batters. Most of his fastballs were between 90-95 mph with a few reaching 95+ mph. Below that is the orange dashed circle which indicates the few changeups that Sanchez threw. And in the bottom left-hand section of the graph is the blue dashed circle or the sliders and curves that Sanchez threw. Again, because of his handedness these pitches will break away from left-handed batters and in on right-handers. The majority of Sanchez’s breaking stuff ranged between 80-85 mph with a few that dipped under 80 mph.

The slider was quite good for Sanchez. Actually, better than quite good — it was devastating. More often than not he kept the pitch down in the zone and the Padres just couldn’t hit it. 10 out of the 11 strikeouts that Sanchez collected were via the slider. Watching Sanchez, I can’t remember a time before when he slider was so “on”.

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Wrapping up, it’s not too hard to see why Sanchez had such a great night. His fastball is good enough that he can get through a lineup a couple of times on nothing but the heater. But, if he’s controlling the slider like he was there’s not much else he needs to succeed as a starting pitcher in the majors. His changeup has always been scouted as a plus-pitch and if he can still work towards making that pitch a weapon for him, he’s going to be good. Of course, his control is always going to drive you mad some nights but no other pitcher in the Giants system near the major league level has the level of “stuff” that Sanchez has.

Hopefully the no-hitter is a big step in the right direction for Sanchez, but even it wasn’t, it was a hell of a game to pitch and one we’ll all be remembering for some time to come. I think the kid earned himself a few more starts.

The Stuff

Sadowski appears to work mainly off of three pitches. A fastball with some tailing action, a slider, and a curveball. PitchFX believes that he may have mixed in a couple of changeups, but after looking at the pitches, I’m not sure they weren’t fastballs. So, I eye-balled things and just called them fastballs. It’s not overly important because it seems that any changeup that Sadowski might be throwing is a 4th best pitch — ie: not something he’s going to throw 99% of the time.

Here’s the horizontal vs. vertical break for Sadowski’s pitches in graph form.

As you can see from the data table above, Sadowski’s curveball doesn’t have huge break. It’s more of your tight breaking curve. Depending on how he’s griping the fastball, it’s going to cut in on right-handed batters and the slider is something else for righties to think about. Looks like a pretty generic arsenal to me. Let’s check out Sadowski’s velo throughout the game.

Sadowski mainly worked in the upper-80′s with his fastball. He touched 92.5 mph once with the pitch but generally settled in around 89 mph. The fastball and slider are both around the mid-80′s and the curveball is only pitch that’s dropping below 80 mph.

Here’s how Sadowski pitched RHB’s

Right-handed batters got the fastball in and the slider away with a few curveballs down and out of the zone. From this graph, you can see that Sadowski did a nice job spotting his slider to right-handers. It looks like he put quite a few fastballs down the middle of the plate. But, that’s where he got most of groundballs.

And how he pitched LHB’s

Left-handed batters were pitched away from by Sadowski more than righties. There’s still some pitches in the middle of zone, but you can see that Sadowski make a conscious effort to stay away from lefties. Maybe not such a bad idea since lefties were hitting him the hardest in AAA.

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It’s possible that Sadowski will be sent down soon to make room for an infielder like Kevin Frandsen. And if so, it’s not really a bad move to make. Sadowski’s stuff is borderline for a MLB starter. I think we can all agree that he pitched his heart out in his first major league career start. Still, the fact that he only struck out two hitters and walked three is pretty much what you should expect in the future. He did get quite a few groundballs, but getting groundballs is something he’s only been marginally good at in the minors. I’d love for Sadowski to stick around and go on an Aaron Small-type run for the Giants, but more often than not, the league catches up quickly to this type of pitcher.

What fans shouldn’t do is make more out of Sadowski’s start than needs to be. He came up, collected his first big league win, got a hit, and that should be enough for us. Congrats on your first major league win, Ryan.

UPDATE: Looks like for the time being, Sadowski is in the rotation. From Baggs:

As if Ryan Sadowski’s presence in a Giants uniform today wasn’t a big enough clue, Manager Bruce Bochy told us the right-hander will start Friday when the Giants begin a homestand against the Houston Astros.

Interesting.

The move cements Jonathan Sanchez’s demotion to the bullpen. Sanchez, 2-8 with a 5.54 ERA, has lost four consecutive games and, in the minds of Giants officials, simply wasn’t demonstrating much improvement.

I would be surprised if Sadowski makes more than 1-2 starts with the Giants. The 26-year-old right-hander has had a pretty marginal minor league career. Drafted out of Florida in 12th round of the ’03 Draft, Sadowski has slowly worked his way up the minor league ladder one season at a time. He missed 2006 with what I’m assuming was an injury. Since then, he’s mostly been a reliever. He went back to starting with Fresno this season.

In 13 starts in AAA his numbers shape up as the following: 70.2 IP, 62 H, 30 BB’s , 55 K’s, and 4.85 FIP. He’s posted a GB% of 47.6, a K/9 of 7.0, and a BB/9 of 3.82. He looks like your typical AAA starter with marginal stuff. His MLE puts his FIP around 5.57 runs at the MLB level.

Sadowski is getting the call because Kevin Pucetas pitched a couple of days ago and the Giants didn’t want to pitch him on such short rest. It’s clear that unless the Giants are willing to dip into the well that is Madison Bumgarner or Tim Alderson, any minor league replacement for Sanchez will most likely be a lateral move with a good chance for worse performance. Sanchez has struggled this season, but Sadowski (especially) or Pucetas aren’t much of an upgrade.

Hopefully, the bullpen assignment is a quick one and Sanchez can get back into the rotation and on track.

Sanchez’s Location (balls vs. strikes) courtesy of Brooks Baseball.

Click to enlarge

You can see from the location plot that Sanchez missed up in the zone a good bit. He’s still striking hitters out — he recorded 5 strikeouts in this particular game — but he still needs to get a grip on his control. With his BB/9 currently at 6.71, he’s like the anti-Roy Halladay. His 4.63 FIP is respectable but the control desperately needs to improve.

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The First Year Player Draft has been completed. Let’s check out a few guys that the Giants drafted but we haven’t talked about yet.

• RHP Jason Stoffel, Arizona – The Giants picked Stoffel in the 4th round with the 117th overall pick. In BA’s pre-draft rankings, they had Stoffel ranked as the 62nd best talent entering the draft. Before the college baseball season started, Stoffel was tabbed to be a 1st round pick but an inconsistent season cost him draft position. In previous seasons Stoffel was throwing in the mid-90′s but his fastball lost some velocity in ’09 and he was as low as 90-91mph at times. His slider also lost some bite in ’09 as well. I’m not a fan of drafting relievers, but if Stoffel can regain some pitch quality (velocity on the heater, break on the slider) he might move fast through the minor leagues. In ’08 at Arizona he struck out 79 batters in 48 innings — a K/9 of 14.8. That’s the kind of arm the Giants would like to get. In ’09 he struck out 55 hitters in 54 innings, a sharp drop in his K/9. With Stoffel the Giants have a bit of a project. If they can iron out his kinks, he could find himself in the back-end of the big league bullpen.
• 1B Brandon Belt, Texas – MLB.com has him listed as an OF, but Belt has played first base for Texas. If you watch the video linked above, you can see that his swing mechanics aren’t conducive to hitting for power. He drops his hands and swings out of a semi-crouch. He’s made good contact while in college. He hit .340 this past season with 16 2B’s and 8 HR’s. BA notes that his hitting approach is based on going the opposite way. He was drafted as a pitcher in ’06 but the Giants announced him as a 1B. You can add him to the pile of 1B’s drafted by the Giants this year.
• RHP Jeremy Toole, Brigham Young – Picked up in the 10th round, Toole throws hard — touching mid-90′s — but his control is problematic, walking 53 hitters in 83 innings this year. His delivery has been described as violent which might be leading to some of his control problems. He’s also missed some time in college with arm soreness. He’s your usual ‘live arm’ but he might be able to make it in a starting role because he also throws a slider and a changeup. Good 10th round gamble.

Sanchez Going Forward

After his 2008, Jonathan Sanchez had a lot of people excited for the possibilities of 2009. In his first full season as a starter, the left-hander showed promise with occasional dominance. Overall, Sanchez posted a 3.85 FIP in ’08 with some strong K-rates (8.94 K/9). His underlying performance suggested a pitcher with hard-to-hit stuff, but also with some control problems.

This season Sanchez has retained his ability to strike hitters out, posting an almost identical K/9 rate of 8.56 punch-outs per 9 innings. But, his control which was below-average in ’08 has worsened. Calling Sanchez’s control merely bad this season is an understatement. Of all starting pitchers in the MLB that have thrown at least 40 innings, Sanchez has the highest BB/9 of any other starter. His BB/9 of 6.60 clearly demonstrates that he’s had a hard time finding the zone consistently.

The question remains: What should the Giants do?

I’ll offer a simple response of “nothing”. Sanchez has been the kind of starter that will drive fans crazy, but pulling the plug on his career as a SP because of 47.1 clunky innings would be criminally short-sighted. Sanchez might never be able to hack it in a starter’s role, but you’ve got to give him every opportunity to pitch himself out of that role. As I noted above, the stuff is still there, the control hasn’t been. Sanchez won’t be able to survive by walking 6+ hitters every 9 innings, but he’s never been a control-oriented pitcher and his walk rates have never been this bad. Barring an injury, his true talent level for walks probably lies between 4-5 per 9 innings.

In the modern era, starting pitcher’s who have walked 4.5+ hitters per 9 innings while striking out 8+ per 9 innings have had some success. As a pitcher-type, it’s not out of the ordinary. Pitchers like: Mark Langston, Randy Johnson, Al Leiter, Nolan Ryan, Bartolo Colon, and Tom Gordon have all had seasons that fit this criteria. Some of these pitchers eventually took a step forward with their control — some didn’t — but if you’ve got above-average stuff, chances are you’ll be given the chance to stick around. Pulling the plug after 47.1 innings of inconsistency would be foolish. This brings me to my next point and our second question.

Valuing Sanchez

It’s easier to find a +2 win starter than it is to find a +2 win reliever. For example, in 2008 62 starting pitchers added +2 wins or more to their respective teams vs. just 10 relievers that added +2 wins or better. In order for a relief pitcher to produce as much as a starting pitcher a couple of things are going to have to happen. The relief pitcher is going to have to pitch in really high leverage situations and they are going to have to be lights out. A +2 win starter is Randy Wolf, Brett Myers, or Greg Maddux. A +2 win reliever is Joe Nathan, Kerry Wood, or Jonathan Broxton.

If the Giants pull Sanchez out of the rotation and move him into a non-closer’s relief role, they are punting 1-2 wins. Even in a somewhat poor start to the season, Sanchez has already added +0.5 wins. Brian Wilson has been worth +0.4 wins. Furthermore, the Giants lack the depth to pull Sanchez out of the rotation at the moment. Madison Bumgarner and Tim Alderson are moving through the minors quickly, but they are still a bit away from a full-time starting role. At AAA, Kevin Pucetas is quasi-interesting, but he doesn’t have the upside that Sanchez has and it’s doubtful that he would be an improvement.

When you consider Sanchez from a wins added perspective and a trade value perspective, leaving him in the rotation benefits the Giants on both ends. In order for Sanchez to be a viable trade chip, he’s going to have to make it as a starter or his value is diminished. If the Giants exhaust all efforts to let Sanchez prove himself in a SP capacity and he flunks, then by all means move him into a bullpen role or trade him, but until that’s happened, just let him pitch.

Give Sanchez another 100 innings, evaluate him again, and then go forward. At this point it’s way too early to pull him.

Comment Starter: What would you do with Sanchez?