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| It's funny because he's sticking his butt out at the Umpire! |
It’s been two weeks since I last wrote a post, and the
majority of that time was used thinking and completing this post.* Yep, I can
guarantee this is going to be the most clever, and interesting piece of writing
you will ever lay your eyes on.** These last two weeks also allowed more time
for the 2012 Giants to develop as we now have 1 month of data compiled on the
team. 30 games is still a microscopic sample size, and who knows how much of
this month we’re going to remember in October, when Sergio Romo’s beard is home
to live reptiles. Still, it was a month where baseball was played, and that’s
always worth reviewing. Here’s how the Giants season has gone so far:
* not really
** Oops, that sentence was
meant for my Great Gatsby book report, not this post. Lol silly me!
Pitching (Starting
Rotation): Tim Lincecum ends the month with a 5.74 ERA. By comparison Jerome
Williams has a 5.51 ERA. Still love his pooka shells. Linecum’s fastball was
averaging 89.8 mph, the lowest speed of his career by about 2 or 3 mph which is
significant for a player just reaching his prime. He’s had terrible command at
times, and has for the most part looked nothing like the pitcher that won back
to back Cy Youngs. But we’ve seen stretches like this from Lincecum where he
loses his release point for a month before, most notably August of 2010 where
he finished with an 7.82 ERA. Fun fact: The San Francisco Giants won the World
Series that year. Wow that was fun. And factual! What also would be fun is a
drinking game for every time Mike Krukow says ‘release point’ during a Lincecum
outing. I digress.
I’m a
little worried these problems keep recurring, but his xFIP (expected fielding
independent pitching) is the best on the Giants staff, which is the nerd way of
saying he got really unlucky and pitched much better than his stats indicate.
So I’m not worried about Lincecum, and in his last start against the Padres he
gave up just 1 ER in 8 in, despite not having good stuff. He’ll be fine.
Matt Cain
and Madison Bumgarner are money in the bank when it comes to reliable top tier
starting pitching in baseball. Cain at one point scattered 3 hits across 18
innings, during which he toyed with a perfect game. Bumgarner has a 2.35 ERA
and by the way he’s only 22. Also he’s not 23 yet. In addition, he only has
lived 21 years and then one more.
Of course,
none of the aforementioned starters have the best ERA for Giants starters. That
title belongs to Barry Zito. While Lincecum has gotten lucky, Zito has the
highest xFIP on the team, and has gotten extremely lucky. Expect Zito regress
tremendously, as he’s had good pitching stretches like this before for the
Giants and subsequently struggled. Still, he’s the 5th starter.
Nobody is asking him to be Greg Maddux. While I expect him to regress, his
command has been excellent so far, and as long as he doesn’t self destruct from
his current pitching performance, I’m perfectly fine with Barry Zito. Yep, that
statements going to come back to haunt me. Also let’s take a break and look at
this:
Handsome fella, he really is.
Pitching (Bullpen): Brian
Wilson’s season ending elbow injury hurt in terms of depth, but Santiago
Casilla has been just as dominant in Wilson’s place. Casilla has been perfect
in save chances, with a 1.04 ERA and has a line drive rate of just 8%, albeit
an extremely small sample size of 8 innings. He also has the best picture on
the team:
Overall, the bullpen has been good
not great, posting a 3.64 ERA, as opposed to the 3.04 ERA in 2011 which was 2nd
best in the NL. It’s hard to find much to complain about in the bullpen. Romo
and Lopez look poised to remain elite relievers and Clay Hensley has been a
brilliant surprise.
Also Jeremy Affeldt was placed on
the DL after picking up his son. Last season he was placed on the DL after
slicing frozen hamburger patties….Oh. We move on.
Batting: Let’s
start with the good. The Giants have scored the 6th highest runs in
the NL. They have the 3rd
best OPS+ (OPS adjusted for ballpark). Buster Posey looks like he went to Naboo
and got one of them robot legs and has now returned with galactic powers. Yep,
still wondering why I have troubles with girls. Pablo Sandoval is attacking
baseball like they took his funky monkey chocolate chip ice cream sundae. Melky
Cabrera has an OBP of .355, and has looked like the 2011 Melky that posted a 4.2
WAR. After a rough start, Angel Pagan has banged out 4 homers and has gotten
very comfortable at the plate. Overall, the offense has been a pleasant
surprise. And yet…
The Brandon
Belt saga has continued, as he’s now stuck in a platoon with Brett Pill,
despite posting a .360 OBP. I could write 80000 words on Brandon Belt, but I’d
rather spend that time thinking of ‘Belt’ puns. Nate Schierholtz, after a hot
start, is now swinging at anything thrown in his general direction. He even
swung at a carbon dioxide molecule the other day. Odd. For some reason Bruce
Bochy and Brian Sabean have a full on man crush on Hector Sanchez, and his .256
OBP. Emmanuel Burris, Ryan Theriot, Joaquin Arias and Brandon Crawford are
fighting for two positions on the infield. Now seems like a good time to remind
you I’m not writing about the Fresno Grizzlies. Those are not good players. The
Giants also have a .178 avg with runners in scoring position, and are hacking
at 33.5% of pitches out of the strike zone, 2nd highest in MLB.
The offense
has been average, but Buster Posey, and Pablo Sandoval are still the only
hitters you can really trust to produce. Everybody else has question marks and 3
or 4 of the hitters you know are going to stink like a smoothie blended with
coyote feces and 1000 year old milk. However, the offense should be better than
last year and some combination of Pagan, Posey, Sandoval, Cabrera and Belt
should be good enough to scrap 3 or 4 runs a game.
Fearless Prediction for May: Tim
Lincecum will be much better. Brandon Belt will have the magic stick, and not
the one Lil Kim was talking about. Jeremy Affeldt will injure himself brushing
his mustache.
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