*It’s not surprising, that from 1980 to the present, Randy Johnson sits at #1 and #2 on the Top-10 list for most walks issued by a pitcher in a season for his 1991-92 seasons. Guess who rounds out the top-10 at #10? Russ Ortiz for his 1999 season and the 125 free passes that came along with it.

Starting in 1993, something happened with RJ and his control. It drastically improved.

This graph is really simple — but I really like it because it sums up what became a Hall of Fame career for Randy Johnson. His control plummeted from 6+ walks per every 9 innings in 1991-1992, to below 4 walks per every 9 innings for 17 straight seasons. Meanwhile, he never lost his ability to strike out hitters. It actually got better if you can believe it. Check out the 1995-2001 stretch on this graph. Johnson was striking out 12+ batters per 9 innings for 7 straight years culminating with a K/9 of 13.4 in ’01. That’s a truly dominant stretch of baseball and it’s during this 7 year period that Johnson won 4 of his 5 Cy Young Awards. During the back end of his career, Johnson has still retained the ability to post above-average strikeout rates. If you’re still striking out 8.5-ish hitters per game at 45-years-old you’re a freak of nature.

Here’s the last graph. It’s Randy Johnson’s ERA+ by his age with a rolling average (every 2 seasons) included.

Pure dominance from 30-years-old to about 40-years-old. Johnson was hurt in his age 39 season and only threw 114 innings but returned the following year at age 40 and tossed 245.2 innings with a 177 ERA+. How’s that for an old guy? In fact, it’s the most dominant pitching performance in a single season by a 40-year-old starting pitcher, ever. It bests seasons by Dennis Martinez, Nolan Ryan, John Smoltz, Tom Seaver, Warren Spahn, Phil Neikro, Gaylord Perry and even Cy Young.

—

When the history books close on Randy Johnson his Giants career will most likely be a happy footnote. A place where he collected his 300th win on the way to the Hall of Fame. Although the RJ we’re seeing today is quite different from the flame-thrower that relentlessly dominated hitters in the 90′s and early 2000′s, it’s been a pleasure to watch Johnson take the mound and do his thing. Even at 45-years-old.

Johnson’s final line of the night was: 6 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 2 SO

The damp weather in DC was conducive to ground ball outs. Johnson posted 12 outs on the ground to just 4 in the air. It seemed that over and over the Nats were pounding the ball into the ground. Emmanuel Burriss made a highlight grab that most likely saved the game and preserved RJ’s chances for the win. Not bad for the DC local. At times this year Burriss’ defense has looked a little iffy, but he was solid in both games of the double header.

Maybe the most contested call of the night was Adam Dunn’s called third strike against Brian Wilson in a full-count with the bases-loaded. I watched the game on MASN because of blackout restrictions and the MASN announcers were disgusted with the knee high fastball that was called for strike three against Dunn. Everything from “You can’t fight City Hall” to “Tim Timmons (the umpire) will get the save for this one.” came out of Bob Carpenter and Rob Dibble. It was pathetic. I know that announcers are allowed to occasionally root for their teams, but after hearing Dibble chant “Drop it! Drop it!” on air after the Nationals hit a couple pop fly’s in the infield, I knew I was in broadcasting hell.

By the way, the pitch looked pretty solid on PFX.

Eat it, Dibble.

—

UPDATE: A very nice press conference with RJ can be found, here.

In today’s post, I wanted to look at Giants pitching in terms of those who are underperforming vs. those who are overperforming. I did a similar post back in December that will utilize the same graph-types for today’s post. The basic premise is that I’m comparing a defense neutral runs allowed stat (tRA) vs. how many runs a pitcher has allowed in total (RA/9) with a league average adjustment between the two. We”ll sort the pitchers into two groups. Underperformers = those with tRA’s lower than their RA/9′s. And overpeformers = those with tRA’s higher than their RA/9′s.

The Starters

Thoughts:

• Despite some velocity concerns, Tim Lincecum is still having a truly dominant season. He’s posted the largest differential between his RA/9 and tRA (0.90 runs). He’s raised his K% this season — 30.66% this year to 28.71% last year — and he’s also cut down his BB% — 6.93% this season to 8.80% last season. Just amazing stuff. Tim Lincecum is, and continues to be, the engine that drives the Giants.
• Randy Johnson is technically an underpeformer — his tRA says he should be closer to a 5.05 run pitcher — but he’s still struggled at times this year. It’s no secret that RJ has been up-and-down in his performances but he’s still got some very positive underlying numbers. He can still punch out batters with the best of them (24 K%) but his control has been problematic at times this year (8.44 BB%). Once Johnson’s HR/FB% settles down — it’s still a very high 20% — and his control shapes up, you should see his overall numbers improve.
• tRA doesn’t buy the Barry Zito comeback story. Zito is firmly placed in the overperforming category. In fact, his differential of -2.12 runs edges out Matt Cain as the biggest overpeformer on the starting staff. Of course, most defense neutral pitching statistics, historically, haven’t liked Zito. The key for Zito has been his control. It’s gone from horrible (12.47 BB% in 2008) to just slightly worse than average (9.92 BB% in 2009). The Giants should just leave him in the 5th rotation spot for the rest of his contract and be done with it.
• Matt Cain has been brilliant this season but tRA thinks his underlying peripherals aren’t indicative of a pitcher with a 2.40 ERA. Cain, behind Barry Zito, has the 2nd largest differential between his RA/9 and tRA. What does this mean for Cain? He’s been slightly lucky in some regards (BABIP, a lower K rate this season) but if Cain can continue to keep the ball in the yard at his previous career levels, he should beat that tRA a little.
• Jonathan Sanchez, by tRA, is pitching almost exactly as well as his RA/9 indicates. Which is to say, not that great. Sanchez has been a little like Randy Johnson this year — inconsistent. He’s still posting a strong K% (21.99) but his control has been terrible. In 43 IP he’s walked 31 hittters. His BB% (16.32) is nearly 6 points higher than his 2008 BB%. A Sanchez improvement starts with a reduction in walks.

The Relievers

Thoughts:

• Brian Wilson has had some tough outings this year, but tRA still thinks he can be an above-average reliever. He’s got the biggest differential between RA/9 and tRA of our reliever group. Wilson has been hurt by a low LOB% of 63.8. That’s the 7th lowest LOB% for relievers that have thrown at least 20 IP in all of baseball. If Wilson starts to strand a few more runners, his RA/9 numbers will look better.
• Bob Howry also has a pretty large differential between his RA/9 and tRA. Howry has been shaky at times but he should probably be given a few more chances to work things out.
• The rest of the bullpen comes down on the overperformers side. Brandon Medders is the biggest overperformer in the bullpen. His RA/9 of 3.15  is 2.31 runs under his tRA of 5.46. Ideally when Romo is activated Medders would get bumped out of the bullpen but I can’t see the Giants dropping a guy with a 3.05 ERA no matter how poor his underlying numbers are. Justin Miller, Merkin Valdez, and Jeremy Affeldt will all probably see some correction in their RA/9′s.

When you look at these graphs remember that for some of the relievers we are dealing with some pretty small sample sizes. Same thing for the starters. The highest IP by a Giants’ starter is Lincecum’s 65.1 innings pitched. We’ll revist these graphs in a couple of months to see how things have changed.

If you’re worried about Randy Johnson’s performance so far this year (his FIP of 5.92 is 2+ runs over his FIP from 2008) you should console yourself with this fact: He’s still striking out hitters. His K/9 of 9.57 is 2nd on the staff only to Tim Lincecum’s K/9 of 11.77. RJ’s mechanics have been a little out of whack this year, resulting in a BB/9 of 3.93. That’s his highest BB/9 since 1992 when he was walking 6.16 batters per 9 innings. In addition, Johnson has been a little unlucky with the longball. His HR/FB% of 27 percent is the worst among all MLB starters with at least 20 IP. AT&T has played as a neutral park for runs scored over the last few years — and it’s been one of the harder parks to HR in — and eventually RJ’s HR/FB% should regress by a good 10-12% and his numbers should improve some.

Next, Johnson will get the Mets as he tries for career win #299. The Mets team wOBA currently sits at .351. That places them as the 3rd best hitting team in the National League.

—

Madison Bumgarner made his AA debut last night for the Connecticut Defenders and pitched 6 innings of 1 run baseball. He struck out 2 hitters, gave up 7 hits, and didn’t walk a batter. Bumgarner will turn 20-years-old this August and it’s possible that if he excels in AA and does a brief stint in AAA, that he could make the Giants near the end of the season as a September call-up. It all depends on how the Giants evaluate him during the rest of this year.

There’s no need to rush his development but Bumgarner continues to be the Giants most interesting prospect.

—

Heading back to last night’s game for a second, it was good to see the Giants drop 11 runs on the Nationals but before you go off singing the praises of the Giants offense remember that the Nationals have horrible, horrible pitching. Their team FIP of 5.11 is among the bottom 5 for all of baseball and their 4.56 walks per 9 innings is the worst in baseball.

A few Giants hitters seem to be warming up — Winn most noted — but when your offensive outburst is the result of the opposing team walking in three straight runs with the bases loaded, you might want to consider the strength of the opponent that you’re playing. If you would have told me that at some point during this season that Pablo Sandoval would draw a bases-loaded walk, I probably wouldn’t have believed you.

Some PITCHf/x graphs from his start last night:

Johnson’s location looked pretty good. He was around or in the zone with all of his pitches. You can see that his slider location was particularly good. Working the lower half of the zone with the pitch. I’ll note here that PFX tabbed Johnson as throwing several changeups last night, but to my knowledge, Johnson doesn’t actually throw a changeup. It was either a 2-seam fastball or a split-fingered fastball. For simplicity’s sake, I’m calling them split-fingered fastballs for now. There’s been some debate as to if it’s a 2-seam or a split-finger, but they both act in the same fashion for Johnson — as more of a changeup than anything else.

Spin direction — or the direction in which the pitcher spins the ball when he releases a pitch — is a good way to also classify pitches. You can mostly see the groupings of fastball, slider, and what I’m calling his split-finger in this plot. In terms of spin direction, all of his pitches have a similar action on them. There’s a few blips on the plot.

Here’s the classic PFX movement plot. Both axises are in inches. The fastball and split will work itself away from right-handed batters. The slider has more horizontal break — into RHB’s, away from LHB’s — than it does vertical break.

And finally, here’s the velocity averages on RJ’s pitch-types. On the night, his average fastball was clocked at just a hair under 90 mph. His slowest fastball was around 83-84 mph and his fastest fastball was 93 mph. That top fastball velocity indicates that Johnson still has some “reach back” velocity to put on his fastball when he needs it. The slider on average was thrown at 84 mph with a low of 80 mph and a high of 87 mph. The split-finger fastball was thrown at an average of 85mph — about 4 mph slower than his 4-seam fastball.

—

All in all, a promising start for the Big Unit. There’s a lot to like about how he pitched his first game with the Giants.

A few quick words on the graph:

• The pitch-types included are all from the MLBAM algorithms and their accuracy has been disputed somewhat. Consider this plot a rough version of what Johnson throws until I get some things ironed out.
• The pitch-types are: FA (fastball), CH (changeup), FS (split-finger fastball), CU (curveball), SL (slider).
• To my knowledge, RJ doesn’t throw a curveball . The curveballs that PFX tracked could very well be sliders. Whether or not he throws a split-fingered fastball is up for debate as well. I’ve read in some places that he does and in other places that he doesn’t. You’ll notice that there’s a large section of fastballs in the middle of the graph that looked misplaced from the other large amount of fastballs, these are probably 2-seam fastballs.
• Positive break on the x-axis is movement away from a right-handed batter. Negative break on the x-axis is movement towards a right-handed batter (or away from a LHB).

Johnson is primarily a fastball (2-seam, 4-seam, split-finger) and slider pitcher. Here’s what his total pitches thrown by pitch-type looks like:

And, again, with the algorithm I’m using, I wouldn’t be surprised to see these percentages shift around a little after I’ve improved some things. But, as a rough-sketch, they should be decent. As I improve my database, I’ll have more (hopefully accurate) information to post.

~ The Big Unit is going to miss his next scheduled start because of “bicep soreness”. The Giants need to get as much out of RJ this season as they can. He’s projected to be the #2 starter and a major asset to the rotation. Hopefully he’ll be fine by Opening Day.

~ Andrew Baggarly has a new article on Jesus Guzman in today’s Mercury News. Guzman has been one of the better hitters in camp, but his defensive problems are still very real.

Guzman concedes his defensive profile is not the prettiest picture. He has been inconsistent at third base and is not a factor in the competition at second. So he added another glove to his duffel bag. Early Monday, he, Alguacil and special assistant J.T. Snow walked to a back field and tackled footwork fundamentals at first base. It’s probably a long-term project, but if Guzman picks up the position quickly, there’s an outside chance he could make the opening-day roster.

He should start the year in AAA where he can play every day and work on his defense.

~ Henry Schulman notes that Sergio Romo’s chances of making the Opening Day roster are looking slimmer and slimmer:

He had hoped to start playing catch by the end of last week, but he still has not grabbed a ball and will not do so at least until he sees the doctor for a follow-up appointment this weekend.

Romo was projected to be a vital part of the Giants new bullpen. Leading candidates for his replacement should be players like: Brandon Medders, Justin Miller (my favorite), and maybe even Luis Perdomo. I’ve got a feeling that Medders might be the guy.

~ Speaking of the bullpen makeup, ELM has some thoughts on how the bullpen might round out.

~ FanGraphs’ Dave Cameron has ranked the Giants at #19 in his Organizationl Rankings. The rankings range from worst (30th) to best (1st) in terms of a team’s ability to: “contend for a World Series title in the future.” RMC has some reactions to the #19 ranking.

I like this pie chart because it shows — in my opinion — how much I think teams, fans, sportswriters, etc. can overrate the impact of a bullpen. I really like our improved bullpen, but in the big scheme of things, bullpens don’t add a lot of wins to a team. You tend to get the meat-and-potatoes from your position players — in part because they both create and prevent runs — and your starting pitching — because they throw more innings than your bullpen. If you want to spend on making your team better, you would get the most bang for your buck by improving your starting lineup and rotation. Of course, that assumes that you’ll be spending wisely. The Giants might have had the right idea with Barry Zito, but they missed the mark by miles.

Briefly looking at the wins added by the hitters/position players — this includes defense — we can see that Aaron Rowand is projected to add the most wins above replacement out of our group. For all those that groaned about the signing of Edgar Renteria, they could be groaning just to groan, he’ll add the 2nd most wins to the team among this group. In fact, only Renteria and Rowand are breaking the +2 wins threshold. Randy Winn almost breaks +2 wins with his projection. If I was a betting man, I would put down a bet on him to do so. Also, remember this is based on playing time — you can’t rack up WAR’s if you aren’t playing — so while Nate Schierholtz isn’t adding much to the overall team, it’s mostly because of playing time. Because of this, don’t get confused and believe that Dave Roberts is a better player, he’s just projected to get more playing time.

On to the starters group. Lincecum and Cain are really good. Johnson and Sanchez constitute a nice 1-2 punch, they both are projected to add +2 wins a piece to the team. Zito clocks in as our worst full-time starter and Noah Lowry is projected to chip in a quarter fraction of a win. If the Giants do decide to trade Sanchez, they would lose 2 wins off their team total. That assumes that they would replace him with exactly a replacement level starter — a starter with an ERA of 5.50.

Brian Wilson and Jeremy Affeldt should be the go-to relievers for the team in 2009. Also, remember that the reliever WAR projections include a leverage index which will help boost the wins of certain relievers used in high leverage situations. Wilson and Affeldt are getting a partial boost to their WAR’s because of this. Sergio Romo should be a solid member of the bullpen in ’09 and Bob Howry offers some upside if he can bounceback after a poor 2008 season. Hinshaw, Yabu, and Taschner are the bottom tier of the bullpen and should be used accordingly. The ‘Other RP’ group is responsible for 80 innings of exactly replacement level relief, that’s why they have a score of zero.

Some assumptions before we get started:

~ I’m using the Dodger Sims method for calculating WAR for our pitchers. You can read about how to calculate it for yourself, here.

~ I’ve set replacement level for starters at 5.50 and relievers at 4.50

~ I’ve also included a leverage index for the relievers and starters. This doesn’t really affect the starters, but pitchers that work in late game higher leveraged situations — closers and setup men — will get a boost to their WAR numbers.

~ For pitcher projections I’ve used a combination of Marcels, CHONE, and ZiPS. I tried to use CHONE more for players without major league data.

Let’s examine the spreadsheet:

• In the post yesterday, we talked about the 20 win gap that the Giants would have to make up with their pitching in order to be competitive in the NL West. Fortunately for the Giants, their pitching, once again, will be their biggest strength. As of now, I’ve got the Giants pitching — starters and bullpen — projected to be worth around +17 wins above replacement. It’s not the +20 wins that we were aiming for, but it’s pretty close. Those extra 17 wins added by their pitching moves the Giants to an 82-83 win club. We’ll talk more about this later, but for now let’s examine the pitching more in depth.
• Our starters, by WAR, shake out as follows: Tim Lincecum (+4.95) Matt Cain (+3.42), Jonathan Sanchez (+2.07), Randy Johnson (+2.06), Barry Zito (+1.62), and Noah Lowry (+0.32). Tim Lincecum is really, really, really good and much of the rotation’s success will be tied to his ability to stay healthy and pitch at a dominant level. Matt Cain often get’s overlooked, but he’s adding almost +3.5 wins which is very good, it makes him more valuable than Randy Johnson and Sanchez who both are chipping in for around +2 wins a piece. Zito is adding about +1.6 wins and I’ve got Noah Lowry throwing 50 innings of slightly above replacement level ball.
• I’ve got new guy, Randy Johnson, projected to throw around 150 innings in 2009. I don’t think we can expect much more from the 45-year-old even though he threw 180+ innings in 2008. Much like the defensive numbers, I try to stay conservative for innings pitched projections. You’ll notice that none of our starters broke the 200 IP mark, despite having two pitchers — Lincecum and Cain — who surpassed that mark last season. Back to RJ, even though he’s projected to ‘only’ throw 150 innings, his 4.20 FIP is still quite good making him a valuable addition to the starting rotation.
• Marcel, ZiPS, and CHONE all remain semi-optimistic on Barry Zito. I would love to see him post a FIP of 4.65 but I won’t be holding my breath.
• You can see why many still remain high on Jonathan Sanchez. He’s projected to contribute as much as Randy Johnson in 2009. Despite his high ERA in 2008, he displayed some very nice underlying peripherals — mainly his ability to miss bats — last season. If Sanchez has a ‘breakout’ season, the rotation could pick up 0.5-1 wins.
• I frankly have no idea of what to expect for Noah Lowry next year, so I tentatively penciled him in for 50 innings pitched. If you really disagree with that assessment, you can replace him with 50 innings of a generic replacement level pitcher. It will slightly knock down the win total for the rotation, but nothing drastic. The Giants aren’t depending on Lowry next season and we shouldn’t really expect much from him.
• Talking money with the starters, Lincecum is still an amazing value — the best in baseball? He’s projected to put up just under +5 wins as a starter making him worth something like $24M for such a performance. The Giants are paying him beans, for now, and he’s rewarding them very nicely. Matt Cain is also a very good value. He’s pitching more like a $16M pitcher than the $2.65M he’s getting paid. Randy Johnson is valued between $9-10M and he’s making a base salary of $8M, making him a fair market buy for the Giants. Sanchez is getting paid the league minimum and is projected to pitch more like a $10M pitcher. The Giants have several very cost-effective pitchers in the rotation, the one pitcher who isn’t, is Barry Zito. Zito will earn $18.5M next season and is projected to pitch closer to a $7-8M pitcher. The Giants are nearly paying Zito twice for what he should be earning. That’s not good.
• In total, the rotation is adding +14 wins above replacement to the team. Tim Lincecum is responsible for nearly 35% of the wins provided by the rotation. If you ever needed a reason why the Giants should not grind his arm into dust and keep him healthy, there you go.
• Now, to the bullpen. The revamped ‘pen is headed by Brian Wilson (+0.86), Jeremy Affeldt (+0.87), Sergio Romo (+0.51), and Bob Howry (+0.30).
• The bullpen is adding about +2.75 wins to the overall team and it could bump up a little if Wilson can out pitch his projection. Though, I think a 3.75 FIP for him is pretty spot on. The bullpen might change a little between now and the start of the season — Hinshaw could get bumped, as well as Taschner — but these shouldn’t impact the total WAR for the ‘pen by that much. I think we might see a pitcher like recent Rule 5 selection Luis Perdomo get a chance to pitch in the bullpen. Yabu isn’t guaranteed of a spot this year and Justin Miller might be a darkhorse candidate to win a spot.
• Overall, the bullpen looks much improved. The Giants essentially replaced Tyler Walker and Vinnie Chulk with Affeldt and Howry.
• You’ll notice that I added in 80 innings for ‘Other Relief Pitchers’ in the bullpen. This should take care of guys getting the call to fill in spots in the bullpen. We’ll assume that they’ll be league average relievers — an ERA of 4.50 — and no better or worse. Think of these ‘Other RP’s’ as guys like Geno Espinelli, Osiris Matos, Erick Threets, etc.

When you combine position players and pitchers, I’ve got the Giants projected to be an 82-83 win team next year. That should put them pretty close to contending in the National League West. There was some good debate in the comments section from yesterday’s post on just how many wins it should take to win the NL West. Some thought my assessment of 86-88 wins was a tad high. I think around 85 wins could bring the division home. I don’t necessarily think it’s likely but, the Giants are a better team heading into 2009 than most people realize. I think the big ‘if’s will be as follows: if Sandoval can defend adequately at third, if Tim Lincecum will continue to be a +4-5 win pitcher, if Randy Johnson can throw 150 innings, if Aaron Rowand can rebound defensively, and if the new bullpen additions pitch as well as they are projected to. Mix in a few breakouts or repeat performances — Fred Lewis shows that his 2008 was for real — and the Giants could be in the mix.

This team won’t score a lot of runs, but the pitching should allow the Giants to be better than they look by just their batting lineup. The rest of the NL West is either in transition, looking for parts, or in flames. Meanwhile, the Giants have a semi-competitive team that didn’t mortgage the future for the Adam Dunns of the world. They haven’t traded Sanchez for Jorge Cantu — yet! — and are in a position to surprise a few people if things break their way. Best of all, even if things go wrong, players regress, and the team doesn’t win 80+ games in 2009, they’ll be in a better position for the 2010 season and beyond.

Comment Starter: Can the G’s contend?

Just this morning I’ve been listening to a little sports radio and some commentators have touched on the Johnson deal. Most of them seem to be amazed that the Giants would acquire such a pitcher. After all, Johnson will be 45-years-old next season and the Giants goal of the last 1.5 seasons has been to “get younger”. It’s true that Johnson won’t help lower the overall team age but the bottom line is that he can still pitch. Even at 45-years-old he can still pitch. Marcel has him projected to throw around 160 innings with a 4.12 FIP. CHONE is a little more pessimistic and has Johnson around a 4.65 FIP. ZiPS has him around a 4.02 FIP. Moving out of Arizona should help Johnson’s numbers some. So, we’ve got about three projection systems that have Johnson as a 4.02-4.65 FIP pitcher.

If we go conservatively and project Johnson as a 4.30 FIP pitcher that can throw 160 innings for the Giants next season, he’ll be worth a little more than +2 wins above replacement. With the going rate for free agents at about $5M per win, he should be worth around $10M in a one year deal. The Giants paid $8M for Johnson with some additional incentives which I don’t think have been released yet. All-in-all, a solid deal for the Giants. Going back to the likely sports media back-talk, the Giants made a prudent move with Johnson. He’s shown that he’ll most likely be an above-average pitcher in 2009 and the deal is good in both years and money. It’s impossible to get burned on a one year deal and in the process, the Giants upgraded their rotation for fair market value with a short-term commitment. What’s not to like?

Hopefully when I get my PFX database sorted out I’ll be able to do a profile of Johnson’s ’08 season. The database is taking longer than I expected to get together and I was away from my computer for most of last week with the holiday vacation. I’m thinking in another week or two I should have something close to a functional database. Anyways, I’ve got a brief couple of velocity plots to share on RJ.

According to BIS data, Johnson’s average fastball velocity last season was 90.8mph which was down from the average of 92mph from 2005-2007. Still, with the decrease in velocity Johnson was tough to make contact against. His K% of 22.44 was 15th among all starters in baseball. Johnson also throws strikes. His BB% of 5.66 is above average for a starter. So, despite some lost oomph on his heater, Johnson still pitched quite well. According to BIS, he was mainly a two-pitch pitcher. He threw his fastball predominately — 51.4% of all his pitches were fastballs — with his slider — 35.2% of pitches — being his #2 pitch. BIS has him throwing the split-fingered fastball but I’ve read some disagreement that he no longer throws the pitch. It could be something like a 2-seamer, I haven’t seen the data yet so I’m taking a guess.

Let’s take a look at RJ’s velo over the course of the season. The first plot is all of his 30 starts plotted by velocity. The second plot is just his starts in Arizona. Hopefully by sticking with one park we can remove any of the noise/variance from his road starts.

Overall, the velocity plot looks pretty close to the BIS data. The majority of Johnson’s fastballs were in the lower 90′s. PFX has him touching 95+ a few times in the season which is pretty cool for a 44-year-old pitcher. It looks like he had a slight dip in velocity to close out the year but he was pretty consistent. It would probably be in the best interests of the Giants if they didn’t over use Johnson during the season. The Diamonbacks tended to keep Johnson around a 90-100 pitch limit in his starts. The most pitches he threw in any start last season was 111 pitches. Hopefully Bruce Bochy won’t give him the Matt Cain / Tim Lincecum treatment and turn his arm to dust. The Giants have made some curios pitching management decisions over the last couple of seasons but I don’t anticipate they’ll misuse Johnson.

If you examine the home games only velo-plot, things even out a little more. In terms of miles-per-hour Johnson works in a 10mph window. His fastball clocks around 90mph and the slider will fall in the low-to-mid 80′s range. I expect Johnson’s wipeout slider is still a very good pitch for him and when I get my data together, it’ll be the first thing I’ll be looking at. Stay tuned for that.

Final Thoughts

Writing about the Giants moves this offseason has me sounding like a broken record. The Johnson deal is no different from the Affeldt-Howry-Rentria deals. It’s a short-term commitment at a very reasonable price. Bringing in Johnson will help round out the rotation and will nix any reason to rely on Noah Lowry making significant contributions to the staff. If time catches up to Johnson, the Giants will probably watch him limp across the finish line to 300 wins — and make some nice ticket sales at the same time — and be done with him after 2009. If he remains an above average pitcher, he’ll help boost sales — memorabilia, tickets, etc. — and give the team a better chance to win.

I also don’t think this means that the Giants will automatically trade Sanchez, but they might be a tad more receptive to offers for him. I remain a huge fan of Sanchez and I hope they give him another season in the rotation to try and put it together. His underlying numbers from last season are pretty damned good.

On paper, the rotation should look something like:

1. Tim Lincecum
2. Randy Johnson
3. Matt Cain
4. Jonathan Sanchez
5. Barry Zito

Hello, $18.5M 5th starter.

Comment Starter: There isn’t much to dislike about this deal so I’ll ask something different. Where does Zito go in the rotation now? Surely he hasn’t given the Giants many reasons to start him in front of Lincecum-Cain-Johnson-Sanchez. Where do you stick him?