Bay City Ball

I’m drinking a jug of coffee and trying to turn on my brain. So, please, forgive me if my writing is a jumbled. I’m getting married in October and every weekend until the Big Day™ is filled with places to go, things to do, and people to see.

But, despite my zombie-like state, a lot of interesting Giants happenings this weekend. Let’s check some of them out:

1. You can come out of your panic room, Buster Posey has indeed signed a contract to play baseball for the San Francisco Giants. Early rumors had Posey inking a major league deal for $7.5M clams, but as it turns out, Posey didn’t actually sign till the end of the deadline. The down-to-the-wire nature of contract negotiations surely had many Giants fans in full panic mode. As it happens, Posey didn’t get a MLB deal but he did get a $6.2M straight signing bonus, the largest in baseball history for a bonus. Welcome to the fold, Buster. If you’ve seen my previous posts on the Giants Top-10 Prospects, I have Posey ranked as the #2 talent in the G’s farm system.

2. After watching Brad Ausmus — The Evil One — slam a line drive off of Tim Lincecum’s leg in his last start, I was waiting and watching with bated breath for his next start against Atlanta. Would he be OK? Would the knee hold up? I’ll let his pitching line do the talking:

7.2 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 4 BB, 10 SO

I’m not thrilled that he ended up throwing 119 pitches in the start. For PAP believers, Tim ranks #5 and Matt Cain ranks #8 for starting pitchers in the majors. The Giants seem semi-cognizant of the idea of pitch counts, but I’m not sure how cognizant they are.

The hilarity evaporated when Escobar walked and Jones singled with two outs in the eighth, ending Lincecum’s afternoon. He had thrown 119 pitches, which was enough for Bochy. Although Lincecum leads the staff by averaging more than 106 pitches per outing, the Giants remain wary of taxing his arm. Had he elected to leave in Lincecum for the ninth inning, Bochy said, “you’re looking at 135, 140 pitches. We still don’t think that’s worth it.

I know because of Lincecum’s style of pitching — lots of strikeouts with some walks mixed in — that his PC will get pumped up sometimes before the 6th or 7th inning, but my god man, I’ll say it until I’m blue in the face: Please, protect the young arms. Please. As I demonstrated in my post on Wins Above Replacement, Lincecum is by far the best player on the Giants, and the amount of value he provides for what he’s being paid is astronomical. To ensure that he can continue to pitch well isn’t only good baseball sense, it’s good economic sense.

Blogmates RMC drop some Lince-knowledge on us after his 13th win on Sunday against Atlanta:

1. 13-3 is the second best start in SF history (5 occurrences). Only a couple hacks named Perry and Marichal were better at 14-2. I venture to guess they had better teams playing behind them, ya think?
2. With his sixth double digit strikeout game this year (8 in his career), he ties Marichal (1966) for number 4 on this all time list. Only Schmidt (9 in 2004), Sadecki (8 in 1968), and Montefusco (7 in 1975) are above him. With at least five or so starts left, Tim has a good shot at taking over the lead of that list.
3. The Enchanter has limited opponents to 3 or fewer runs in 40 of his 49 career starts, including 21 of 25 this year. The Giants are 26-14 in those forty games. Tim is 17-0 (29 starts) when the Giants score at least three runs for him.

Yeah, he’s OK.

3. Speaking of protecting our young guys, Sanchez is on the 15-day DL with a strained throwing shoulder. Sanchez has blown past any previous innings total in any season for his career and his 2nd half has been bumpy. A result of his workload? Maybe. If the Giants are smart, they’ll shut down Sanchez for the rest of the year. There isn’t much he can gain by trying to continue to start. If the Giants shut him down now, he would miss about 7 starts, which in the big picture, seems pretty insignificant. The Giants have called up Sergio Romo and Matt Palmer will probably take Sanchez’s rotation spot for the near future. Palmer struggled in his first start, but the Giants should give him a few more chances. He has no upside, but if he could just eat some innings from the back of the rotation, the Giants would be happy.

4. Travis Ishikawa hit his first major league HR on Sunday. Since his promotion, he’s 5-13 with 2 2B’s and a HR. Ishikawa should start against all RHP in the majors and the Giants can push Sandoval over to 1B when a lefty is on the mound. Sandoval’s versatility is nice because he can get time in at catcher when Molina needs a break and the occasional start at first when a southpaw takes the hill.

Not a bad weekend.

It’s a post on everyone’s favorite topic: The Bullpen!

I’ve ranked our relievers by pLI — a player’s average leverage index for all game events — and I’ve included FIP as well. FIP stands for ‘Fielding Independent Pitching’ and it’s a measure that removes fielding — hence the Fielding Independent part of FIP — and only measures what the pitcher is responsible for. It’s useful in seeing how well a pitcher is pitching, regardless of what kind of defense is playing behind him. Just think of FIP as an ERA, because it’s scaled in the same way that ERA is.

If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of leverage, just think about it as what kind of game situation a reliever appears in. The tougher the situation — more men on base — the higher the leverage. BP has a nice definition of leverage which I’ll quote:

Leverage measures how important the situations a reliever has been used in are. A leverage of 1.00 is the same importance as the start of a game. Leverage values below one represent situations that are less important than the start of a game (such as mopup innings in a blowout). Leverage values above one represent situations with more importance (such as a closer protecting a one-run lead with bases loaded in the 9th inning).

So, coming into the bottom of the 9th with the bases loaded and no outs is a high leveraged situation. The idea seems simple: Use your best relievers in the highest leveraged situations and use your lesser relievers in lower leveraged and mop-up situations.

Let’s check out our numbers and see how the bullpen is getting used.

Note: Ignore the Lincecum numbers, they are from the appearance he made out of the bullpen earlier in the year in L.A.

Some thoughts on the numbers:

~ Brian Wilson has really worked in some hairy situations this year. He’s the Giants highest leveraged reliever by far, he’s the only reliever with a leverage index of 2.0 or greater. He also has the best FIP out of our bullpen members at 3.42. That’s good usage. I still wish Bochy would think “outside of the skull” sometimes and use Wilson in non-save situations when it’s called for, instead of just waiting around for the save. He’s our best reliever, use him accordingly.

~ Tyler Walker, who’s morphed into a human gas can lately, is our 2nd highest leveraged reliever at 1.74. The bulk of that leverage score he’s accumulated by working the 8th inning this year. Recently, he’s been working outside of the 8th inning but he’s still struggled. His FIP of 4.71 just isn’t very good and it’s definitely not the kind of guy you want in high leveraged situations. Walker’s FIP ranks 11th out or pitchers listed, but because we have Lincecum on the list and a couple of guys who’ve just thrown an inning or two out of relief this year — Correia, Misch, Threets, Chulk, and Hennessey — you could bump him up a few positions. Still, it’s been a hard year for Walker and he definitely should not be pitching in high leveraged situations.

~ Despite his control issues this year, Hinshaw ranks 2nd in FIP right behind Wilson. Yet, his leverage score of 0.71 indicates that Bochy has used him more in blow out or low leveraged situations. Maybe it’s time to move him up the bullpen ladder so to speak? His walks are a problem — BB% of 15.7% — but he’s neutralizing them to an extent with his high K% of 30%. I would be in favor of working him up the ladder gradually to see how he does. The control still needs work, but I love his arm.

~ Yabu might be our 3rd best reliever right now. His FIP of 4.11 ranks him behind Wilson and Hinshaw at number three. I’m fine with Yabu’s leverage score of 0.84. He’s been mostly used in long relief or mop-up situations.

~ Whether or not it’s part of Bochy’s bullpen philosophy or not, he’s really working in the young guys slowly. Hinshaw, Salder, Matos, and Espinelli are all working in very low leveraged situations. Hinshaw tops the list at 0.72 and most of the young relievers are are in the 60’s or lower. Espinelli — who’s struggled in a brief 11.2 innings — has a leverage score of 0.19.

~ The bullpen has largely struggled this year. Wilson has emerged as the top arm but with the disintegration of Tyler Walker, Brad Hennessey, Vinnie Chulk and the majority of the younger arms having their expected ups-and-downs, it hasn’t been a pretty sight. FIP isn’t thrilled with Taschner but he’s having a decent year, he might be pitching over his head right now to some extent. The Giants are last in the National League for bullpen ERA at 4.44.

Just some thoughts on the bullpen, but I wonder how Sabean will try to fix things. I’m a little afraid of what Dr. Sabes might try to do, I rarely like the idea of paying the FA market for relievers because they tend to be overpriced and I’m not convinced the value is there. F-Rod will be entering the market this offseason and could land the highest paid contract for a reliever ever. Our bullpen is in tatters. Hugely priced pitcher enters the FA market. Brian Sabean is drooling. Anyone else a little worried?

Comment Starter: Outside of Brain Wilson, who on the Giants do you like to be a successful contributing member to the ‘09 bullpen? Should the Giants stand pat, or dip into the free agent pool for bullpen help?

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PANIC UPDATE: Sound the alarms, call the police, is the Posey deal still gelling? Henry Schulman thinks so. On his blog, he posted an update that Posey isn’t a sure thing, yet.

Evans told me negotiations were “ongoing.” I pressed him and another source on whether this was all semantics. In other words, are the Giants using the fact that a potential contract is not signed to say a deal is “not done” even if the two sides have a verbal agreement? No, I was told. Very simply, as of 9:30 this evening, there is no deal. Doesn’t mean there won’t be.

C’mon, Buster, take the money! I’ve cursed us all by already ranking him in the Giants farm system.

First, big news buzzing in Giants Land this morning. The Giants have made a flurry of draft pick signings. The biggest news is that, according to Andrew Baggarly — whom I feel that I’ve been linking to almost everyday for the past week, keep  up the great work Andrew — is that #5 overall pick Buster Posey is on the verge of signing a $7.5M major league deal. With the deadline to sign your draftees on Friday, August 15th, the Giants have been standing on the precipice to get a deal done.

In addition to Buster, the Giants have inked third-rounder OF Roger Kieschnick for $525,000 and fourth-rounder, UCLA SS Brandon Crawford for $375,000. The Crawford signing is good news because before his college season began, many thought he would play himself into the first round, instead, he struggled this year and played himself out of the first round. Rumors were that he was considering going back to school to try and improve his stock. Kieschnick was rated as the best talent coming out of Texas this year by Baseball America. The Giants also signed intriguing 13th-rounder Juan Carlos Perez who set a Division II Junior College record for home runs in a season with 37. He’s had some visa issues and he signed a ‘09 contract to give him time to sort them out.

These signings really cap a nice draft by the Giants this year. I like what the Giants did in the draft, taking a guy they really liked in Posey — who could have been a #1 pick overall — and going with some higher ceiling guys in Kieschnick and Crawford and getting a really polished hitter in Conor Gillaspie — who’s already signed and is playing for the AZL Giants. The Giants loaded up on hitting on the first day, taking 4 hitters with their first 4 picks and jumped into the pitchers on the 2nd day, finding some nice talent in the later rounds.

With these signings, here’s how I would sketch out the Top 10 Giants Prospects:

1. LHP Madison Bumgarner - Has dominated A-ball in Augusta. Plus velocity from the left-side, pinpoint control, and a developing slurvy breaking pitch. One of the best pitching prospects in baseball.

2. C Buster Posey - Everyone knows what he did in his junior year at Florida State; he hit: (.463/.566/.879) with 26 HR’s. A Golden Spikes winner, Posey is very athletic and entered college as a shortstop. Some question how well his power will translate — most see him as more of a 10-15 HR guy than 20+ HR guy — to the majors, but he’s one of the “safest” picks in the ‘08 draft in terms of reaching a sustainable ceiling.

3. RHP Tim Alderson - Tim 2.0 has responded extremely well to the challenge the Giants set forth to him; skipping a high school draftee straight to the California League is something you don’t often see. Watching him survive a hitters league and flourish is also out of the ordinary. But, the Giants were very impressed with the polish that Alderson had coming out of high school. He leads the Cal League in FIP at the age of 19 and is third in K%.

4. 1B Angel Villalona - Lots of power and still very, very young. He just turned 18 and has been competing for most of the year as a 17-year-old in the South Atlantic League where the average age of the competition is 21-years-old. He’s striking out a good bit, K% of 24.8, but scouts still love where he’s at in his development. Leads the Greenjackets in HR’s.

5. 1B/C Pablo Sandoval - Out of any Giants prospect, Pablo may have taken the biggest step forward this year. He carried his power surge from San Jose in ‘07 over into this year, posting ISOP’s of .200 or greater across two levels of A and AA baseball. He’s a switch-hitter and can handle both 1B and catching duties. For a system that’s lacked hitters near the upper-levels, Pablo has been a diamond in the rough. He should make his debut tonight against the Astros.

6. 3B Conor Gillaspie - Currently in the AZL, Gillaspie profiles as a solid contact hitting 3B. He probably won’t develop much power but he should hit and hit a lot of doubles. The Giants have had talks about moving him to 2B, but the system is thinner at 3B, so he’ll probably get every chance to play himself out of that position.

7. 2B Nick Noonan - I’m not thrilled with Noonan’s microscopic walk rate, his BB% is currently at 3.7%, but it’s his first full-season of pro-ball outside of high school, so he gets a little slack. He would benefit from cutting his K’s down, his K% is currently at 18.4%, but he still profiles as a 2B that can hit a little and run a little. There are a couple of things I don’t like about Noonan, but I can chalk it up to “he’s still young” for now.

8. RHP Henry Sosa - Sosa has battled some injury problems this year, his season was delayed from knee surgery but when he’s right the tall lanky pitcher works in the mid-90’s and has a plus curveball. His K% is strong at 24% and I still love his arm. I think he’s a prospect that you can’t really judge by his performance this year but by the overall package.

9. OF Wendell Fairley - Fairley might have the highest ceiling of any Giants prospect currently in the farm system. His start was delayed this year because of some health issues but he’s finally getting regular playing time in the AZL. His batting line of: ( .241/.371/.324) isn’t dominating, but he’s getting playing time to develop and that’s the most important thing.

10. OF Rafael Rodriguez - An international signing from this year, Rodriguez became the highest paid international talent that the Giants have ever signed. The 16-year-old inked a deal for $2.55M, surpassing the $2.1M that Villalona got in ‘06. The reports on him are vague, he’s got great raw power, but his hitting mechanics need work. He should be a strong fielder in a corner OF spot, sporting a strong throwing arm and good speed to cover ground. He’s had comparisons to Dave Winfield and Vlad, which both should be taken with grains ‘o salt. The Giants hope that Rodriguez can see a little time in the AZL this year and he’ll start ‘09 as his first full pro-season.

Just missed: Nate Schierholtz, Roger Kieschnick, Brandon Crawford, Jesse English, Travis Ishikawa, Kevin Pucetas, Ben Snyder, Clayton Tanner, and Joe Martinez.

I think it’s interesting to note that in my Top-10, the Giants have 7 hitters and 3 pitchers. For a pitching heavy team, the hitting is a welcome change.

—

I did get around to watching the Giants play the Astros last night, mostly because I wanted to see Rholinger play, but what an ugly game it turned out to be. The Giants ended up falling completely apart in the 6th inning. Zito was cruising along until the aforementioned inning of doom. It looked like this:

/cue Benny Hill Music

It was maybe one of the sloppiest, ugliest innings of baseball that I’ve seen in awhile. A combination of bad luck — Wiggington was called safe when he was actually out by a half-step on a nice play by Omar — and poor execution — walks, HBP’s, and poor throwing decisions — sunk the Giants. Maybe the most criminal was when Zito walked the opposing pitcher, Randy Wolf, with the bases loaded to force in a run. If you’ve read any Zito quotes in the papers this year, can you guess what he said about that at-bat? I’ll give you a good 5 minutes to think of all the possible responses that Zito might have used. OK, have you got them? Let’s see what he actually said:

Zito had little to say about his final self-destructive act, which was walking Wolf.

“I just lost my aggressiveness,” he said. Against a pitcher batting .140? “I don’t know. I just did,” he said.

The ‘ole not-being-aggressive-enough-excuse, huh? Who else saw that coming? Surely not me. Sadler then came in for Zito and proceeded to throw gas on the fire when he hit two batters with the bases loaded to force in another two runs.

Zito’s final line of the night was:

5.2 IP, 4 H, 6 R, 6 ER, 5 BB, 6 SO

Once again, walks killed Zito. With the loss, Zito drops to 6-15 and is only 3 losses away from challenging the modern record for most losses by a Giants pitcher in a season, currently held by Ray Sadecki for his 1968 season in which he went 12-18. Sadecki’s ERA+ for that season was 103, indicating that he wasn’t actually all that bad. Another reason why W/L records aren’t a good way to judge pitchers. But, Zito’s ERA+ this year is 75, indicating that he probably deserves his poor record.

Rohlinger looked decent, he airmailed his very first throw to 1st base on the night and made another fielding error in the bottom of the 7th. Maybe nerves? He did make some decent contact a couple of times, hitting an RBI double down the RF line in the 7th inning. I’ll be watching to see how Rohlinger does for the rest of the year along with Ishikawa and Pablo.

Comment Starter: What’s your Top-10 look like?

Oh-my-freaking-god.

SO HAPPY.

To clear room for the additions, first baseman-outfielder John Bowker and catcher Steve Holm were optioned to Triple-A Fresno. Infielder Jose Castillo, San Francisco’s primary third baseman for most of the season, was designated for assignment.

All three players promoted had been thriving offensively, fostering the Giants’ hopes that they could bolster their limp hitting overall. Ishikawa was batting .312, Sandoval owned a .339 average and Rohlinger was at .296. Meanwhile, Bowker was hitting .115 (9-for-78) in his previous 24 games and had slumped to .247 overall. He had gone 96 at-bats without a home run. Castillo was batting .105 (4-for-38) over his last 10 games.

Can’t feel hands. Must be a dream. Where am I? Will type more later once I regain feeling in my hands.

No more Castillo, it’s not a dream. No more Castillo. Don’t wake me up. Did I mention no more Jose?

Comment Stater: Open celebration thread.

Good lord, what a terrible game last night. In the 0.5 seconds it took for Brad Ausmus’ — hereby referred to as the evil one — line drive to reach Lincecum’s knee, every tragic career ending scenario flashed through my head. Watching Lincecum limp badly off the field as he leaned against our head trainer, so to keep his balance, was the worst thing I’ve seen all year in a Giants game.

And that’s saying something, I’ve seen a lot of Jose Castillo.

Getting Lincecum and the other young pitchers through this season healthy and ready for ‘09 is the prime objective. It’s extremely important to the Giants future. That’s it. That’s all there is to it. Without the young pitching — especially Lincecum, who might be one of the best pitchers in the game right-this-very-moment — the Giants have little to work with. The pitching is the beginning foundation of a nice house. Without them, the Giants have a few bits-and-pieces of construction materials, but nothing substantial.

That’s why in those 0.5 seconds of pure horror, everything put into that burgeoning house came tumbling down. Reports last night are that the x-rays are negative and that Lincecum was walking around the clubhouse afterwards on his own power. Both are good signs.

Now, what the Giants shouldn’t do — this seems painfully obvious — is to not try and push Lincecum into his next start. They surely know how valuable he is and as Andrew Baggarly notes, if he did miss a start it might not be the worst thing in the world for him, he’s thrown a bunch of pitches this year and a breather could do his arm good. I worry that the liner hit Lincecum’s right knee, which is his plant-and-push leg. Lincecum has a great stride, almost springing off the mound, and that leg is what holds up the entire process. The Giants might be short on pitching because they don’t get a day off until August 28th. Lincecum’s next start is on Sunday, August 17th. Make a bullpen game out of it if you have to, maybe let Yabu throw 4-5 innings and then go from there.

Following the same Baggs link from above, we’ve got some rumors that 1B Travis Ishikawa could be on his way up to the majors and John Bowker could be on his way down. Bowkermania was a brief and wonderful time, but his plate discipline has been poor this year and he’s had a really hard time in July and August. I don’t mind Bowker going to Fresno to get constant work in a lower pressured environment but I hope we seen him again in the big leagues. He might not be a starter, but he could be a fine 1B or 4th OF on this team. I still like his upside a good bit.

As for Ishikawa, I wrote about him last when he was in AA Connecticut:

The Giants sent Ishikawa back to AA this year and he’s made some noticeable changes. Firstly, he cut his K% down to 16.1%, signaling to me that he’s potentially changed his swing in order to make more contact. Ishikawa’s swing has always considered to be a little long. He also raised his BB% to an excellent 13.6%. He does have noticeable splits but it’s encouraging that he’s hitting even just slightly at Dodd Stadium. Overall his line currently sits at (.291/.380/.467). Because of his struggles against LHP he will most likely max out as a platoon partner at 1B. But, after where he was heading a couple of years ago, he’s made some nice adjustments to his game. Let’s hope that they carry throughout this season and that the Giants move him to AAA before the year is done.

After writing about Ishikawa in June, he was promoted just a couple of days later to AAA Fresno. How has he done in Fresno? He’s been on a tear. In 171 AB’s he’s hit (.310/.370/.737) with 16 HR’s. His BB% has dropped some — from 13.6% in AA to 7.3% in AAA — but he’s killing the ball when he makes contact with an ISOP of .427, some question how his power will translate to the majors but he’s turned himself around this year. Just how far he’s turned himself around and how far he’ll go is still for debate.

His combined MLE’s from both levels are (.257/.335/.468) which seem to be about what I’d expect Ishikawa’s upside to be in the majors. He has some platoon issues — OPS’ing .642 against LHP this year — but with Bowker struggling, he’s earned the chance. He’s supposed to be a strong defender at 1B and should be a better defender than Bowker right now.

Gah.

Will update as soon as tears dry.

—

Update: Baggs, who’s on top of things as usual, is saying that the x-rays on Lincecum’s knee are negative. From his blog:

He’s OK, according to his agent, and expects to make his next start. The liner hit him on the tibia just below the knee. Bad bruise. You may breathe normally now.

The Giants would be smart to give Lincecum his next start off. Start Yabu out of the bullpen if you have to, I would think with the way Lincecum uses his legs, a significant bruise is nothing to play around with.

A quick post today on Wins Above Replacement and our starting rotation. Tango has a nice post on how to calculate it and some other concepts associated with WAR.

WAR is wins above replacement.  Replacement is defined very specifically for my purposes: it’s the talent level for which you would pay the minimum salary on the open market, or for which you can obtain at minimal cost in a trade.

A replacement level player is freely available talent. The kind of player you can either pull up from your AAA roster, find on waivers, or easily trade for. Since we are talking about pitching, consider guys like Pat Misch, Steve Hammond, Matt Palmer, or any of the bulk of starters in AA Fresno right now. These guys are replacement level pitchers.

At it’s core, WAR allows us to evaluate players in a quantifiable way and see what “value” they bring to the table. I’ve ran the numbers for our starting pitchers but a quick preface on the following chart and some of the numbers.

~ WAR is wins over replacement, that is, how many wins a player has credited or debited over what a replacement level player would have done.

~ $WAR is how much that player is valued. Salary for replacement level talent is set to $0.4M, or league minimum. In the free agent market, major league teams pay about $4.4M per win above replacement level. This works out to (WAR*4.4) + .4 = $WAR. This lets us see how much a player’s wins are worth, and in turn, how much that player is worth.

~ Actual is how much money the player is actually making this year. As with $WAR and the value column, numbers are in millions. For example, Lincecum is making league minimum this year, or $0.4M. All salary numbers were pulled from Cots Contracts.

~ Value is $WAR (our estimate of how much a player is worth) subtracted from Actual (how much the player is actually getting paid). This will give us an idea of which player are bargains and which players are not.

~ The numbers used for the pitchers in this chart are current as of August 12th, 2008. A caveat with this is that with 45 games remaining in the season, these numbers will surely change. This post is a valuation of what these pitchers have been worth at present time. Zito could improve, or he could get worse. Same with Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez, or Correia, they will all look different at the end of the season than they do right now.

~ Touching on that last point, I’ve rounded the innings pitched total for each pitcher either up or down. For example: Zito has thrown 121.2 innings this year, which I’ve rounded up to 123 just to make calculations easier.

Now, let’s check out our numbers.

Lincecum leads the staff with 5.55 wins above replacement. Matt Cain has also pitched well this year, ranking second to Lincecum with 3.47 wins above replacement. Sanchez has added 1.83 wins above replacement and Correia has added 0.25 wins above replacement — remember that Correia has thrown less than 100 innings this year so his numbers should be judged with a skewed eye. Zito has pitched just under replacement level this year with his contributions totaling -0.02 wins under replacement level. Whether or not Zito can rebound is a discussion that’s been covered thoroughly on this site, but the Giants can’t be happy with his perfomance this year. Zito is performing on par with what you would expect Pat Misch, Brad Hennessey, Steve Hammond, or Matt Palmer to do in the same inning sample.

If Lincecum’s WAR holds steady in the 5-win range for the rest of the season, he would be valued at around $24.84M on the free agent market. That’s an incredible value that the Giants are getting from Lincecum right now. I haven’t seen other numbers but I’m guessing that’s the best in baseball if not in the top three. His combination of low salary — he’s making league minimum — and high wins added make him a super value. If Cain hit the free agent market and stayed in a 3+ win range, he’d be valued around $15.65M. The Giants are paying him $0.8M this year. Even with his salary kicking up to $2.65M next year, Cain should still be a great value if he can retain this level of production. Sanchez is valued at $8.44M making him attractive, in that he’s only earning league minimum as well. The Giants have a solid, cheap, and most importantly, good trio of young pitching to work from.

While the trio of Lincecum, Cain, and Sanchez would make the most conservative of penny pinchers happy, the Zito contract looks incredibly bad in the same light. The Giants are paying $14.5M this year for a replacement level performance from Zito. Zito’s free agent market value doesn’t even surpass $1M a year, he’s actually worth less than league minimum.

Moving on to the ‘Value’ column, like we stated above, the Giants are doing great with Lincecum, Cain, and Sanchez. Lincecum’s value is insanely high at $24.44M. Cain’s $14.95M and Sanchez’s $8.05M also prove to be good buys for the Giants. Correia is decent and he’s making about what he should. Lincecum, Cain, and Sanchez are all underpaid. Try and not to spend too much time gazing into the Zito value colum because you might go blind. It’s very possible that the Giants have the best buy in baseball (Lincecum) and also the worst buy in baseball (Zito) on the same roster and in the same rotation. Also, keep in mind that this table is using Zito’s ‘08 salary of $14.5M, next year it kicks up to $18.5M for the next three years, making it even more difficult for Zito to contribute positively to the Giants roster. In 2012 Zito will earn $19M and in 2013 he’ll earn $20M. Ouch.

So, to wrap things up, the Giants are getting phenomenal value from Lincecum and Cain. Pretty good value from Sanchez and Correia’s value is still up in the air. Zito, however, is an anchor that will pull the Giants under. If not now, then soon, especially when the Giants are paying him $18.5M a year to hopefully pitch at or around replacement level.

Zito bad. But, I’m not telling you anything you didn’t already know.

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?

If you’ve seen one game this year of Giants baseball you know that this team doesn’t hit for power. Not hitting for power means not hitting for home runs. El Lefty Malo recently touched on this conundrum. The Giants, as a team, aren’t projected to eclipse the century mark for home runs this year. They would be the first team since the 1993 Marlins to not hit at least 100 home runs in a full season of baseball.

In yesterday’s post, we learned that the Giants steak of 12 consecutive games without a HR was the largest streak for any team in the major leagues this year. When your team is composed of hitters such as: Omar Vizquel, Randy Winn, Jose Castillo, and Dave Roberts, who all get significant playing time, you don’t figure to hit a lot of home runs.

Entering yesterdays game, the Giants did not have a singe player to have double digit home runs. Enter Braves pitcher Chuck James:

Click to enlarge

That’s a HR/9 graph from Chuck James’ FanGraphs page. In 29.2 innings pitched this year, James has given up 10 home runs. He’s given up at least one home run in all of his seven starts this year. Is HR/FB is 20%, meaning that 20 percent of his batted flyballs are leaving the park. That’s an incredible statistic when you consider that the league average HR/FB is between 10-12%.

In the bottom of the 1st Aaron Rowand steps to the plate with a runner on and this happens. Rowand hits a deep flyball to LF to become the first Giant to hit double digits for home runs. 118 hitters in the majors have hit more home runs than our top home run hitter. Currently the Giants have 63 home runs as a team.

Tim Lincecum had another very, very solid performance. Lincecum’s final line was:

8 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 4 BB, 8 SO

Tim lowered his ERA to 2.68 and raised his ERA+ to 160. Among all major league pitchers with at least 140 innings pitched and ranked by ERA+, Tim is currently 4th. Only Cliff Lee, Danny Haren, and Carlos Zambrano have had better years. If the season ended right now, Linecum’s ERA+ would be good enough to place him 5th all-time since 1956 for Giants starters. Think about how amazing that is. Those four guys in front of him?

Cnt    Player    **ERA+**   IP  Year Age
+----+-----------+------+-----+----+---+
1 Jason Schmidt    179   207.2 2003  30
2 Juan Marichal    169   295.1 1965  27
3 Juan Marichal    168   299.2 1969  31
4 Juan Marichal    167   307.1 1966  28

If you ranked Giants pitchers since 1956 by ERA+ who were 24-years-old or younger and who threw at least 140 innings.

Cnt    Player      **ERA+** IP   Year Age
+----+------------+------+-----+----+---+
1 Tim Lincecum       160   157.2 2008  24
2 Bob Knepper        131   260   1978  24
3 Shawn Estes        130   201   1997  24
4 Mike McCormick     129   253   1960  21
5 Jim Barr           123   179   1972  24

Since 1956, Tim Lincecum is having the best season of any young Giants pitcher, ever. Bob Knepper went 17-11 in 1978. We’ve got a Shawn Estes sighting for his 1997 All-Star season. Mike McCormick and Jim Barr are also well known Giants pitchers. Let’s increase our range and go from 1876-2008 and look at the Giants franchise. Same parameters of innings pitched, age, and ranked by ERA+

Cnt    Player      **ERA+** IP   Year Age
+----+------------+------+-----+----+---+
1 Christy Mathewson  230   338.2 1905  24
2 Amos Rusie         189   444   1894  23
3 Johnny Antonelli   177   258.2 1954  24
4 Jeff Tesreau       173   243   1912  24
5 Tim Lincecum       160   157.2 2008  24
6 Hal Schumacher     148   258.2 1933  22
7 Christy Mathewson  147   366.1 1903  22
8 Amos Rusie         144   482   1893  22
9 Christy Mathewson  138   336   1901  20
10 Rube Marquard     134   277.2 1911  24

Christy Mathewson, greatest young Giants pitcher, ever? Lincecum’s having a good year, but I don’t think he’s going to catch Mathewson’s 230 ERA+ 1905 season. In fact, Mathewson makes this list 3 times. He’s also the youngest player in our top-10 of young greats. At the tender age of 20 Mathewson went 20-17 with a 2.41 ERA. Johnny Antonelli is an interesting player. He debuted in 1948 as an 18-year-old with the Boston Braves. In 1954, he was traded from the Milwaukee Braves along with Billy Klaus, Don Liddle, Ebba St. Claire — great baseball name — and cash to the New York Giants for Bobby Thompson and Sam Calderone. In that ‘54 season Antonelli went 21-7 with a 2.30 ERA. For those looking for Matt Cain, his 2007 season at age 22 places him 26th on this list.

Our list is rounded out with Amos Rusie, Jeff Tesreau, Hal Schumacher, and Rube Marquard (another great baseball name). Regardless of where Lincecum ends up in Giants history, it’s amazing how well he’s done in such a short time. I wonder how many teams are kicking themselves for not drafting Lincecum?

—

Edit: I forgot to include this the first time around, but it’s official, the Giants have come to terms with supplemental draft pick 3B Conor Gillapsie. There had been some rumors percolating over the past couple of days that the deal was done, but nothing definite until now.

From SFGiants.com:

San Francisco now has signed 14 of its first 19 selections, though Gillaspie is the only signee among the club’s top four picks. Director of player personnel Bobby Evans wouldn’t disclose the terms of the deal, per team policy, but he said the signing process was “typical” and had been “ongoing since the day we chose him.”

On Monday, a Wichita, Kan.-based NBC news affiliate reported Gillaspie had agreed to a pro contract with the Giants that included a $975,000 signing bonus and other incentives.

Buster Posey, Roger Kieschnick, and Brandon Crawford are still unsigned. Posey should go down to the wire, as might Crawford, but I think Kieschnick might be the next to ink a deal. Let’s hope the Giants can get all three of these players signed.

..ly stupid.

Did Sergio Romo just get DFA’d by accident?

From Andrew Baggarly’s blog:

I’m told that Romo was still on revocable trade waivers when the Giants optioned him, which is not allowed. Therefore, he was designated for assignment. I’m told that trade waivers supercede in this case…so it’s a bit tangled. Will the Giants lose Romo, an arm they value, for nothing? I’ll find out.

To potentially lose a valuable bullpen arm because you don’t understand how the waiver-wire system works, is just amazing. How long have you been a GM?

If Romo is lost to the waivers, this will be truly amazing. I will be angry. Updates to follow.

Update

Crisis averted.

A little explanation on Romo: The Giants probably put him on revocable waivers because a potential trade partner was interested in him. Or they wanted t ogauge the general the level of interest. No matter the reason, you cannot option someone when they are on revocable waivers. (I’m up on most roster rules, but that’s a new one for me.)

Anyway, and this is the important part, the Giants insist the oversight will not result in losing Romo to another club. When you designate a player, you take them off your 40-man roster and have 10 days to waive, release or outright him. Before those 10 days are up, the Giants will revoke Romo off waivers be able to option him at that point. He’ll remain on the 40-man roster. Romo said he expects to join Fresno in Salt Lake on Friday.

Next: The Giants accidentally sell Tim Lincecum’s rights to Japan!