The All-Star break affords the opportunity to look back at the first half to see what went right and wrong for the thirty MLB teams. The San Francisco Giants are up next, and here is the pre-season post on the NL West.
| Statistic | San Francisco | NL Rank |
|---|---|---|
| Runs per Game | 4.18 | 13th |
| Batting Averge | .262 | 5th |
| On-Base Average | .312 | 15th |
| Slugging Percentage | .393 | 13th |
| ERA | 3.51 | 1st |
| Strikeouts per 9 IP | 8.0 | 1st |
| Walks per 9 ip | 3.61 | 7th |
| HR per 200 IP | 18.4 | 3rd |
The Giants provide another good example of why batting average is a poor way to judge offenses.
What Went Right
Tim Lincecum’s arm didn’t fall off. He was a prime candidate for the Verducci Effect. If he makes it through this season unscathed, every pitcher should be taught to throw like that.
It’s not really clear what Matt Cain is doing differently from the rest of his career, but his ERA is over a run lower than his career average. It looks like the defense is better behind him, and FanGraphs ranks the Giants as the second best defensive team in the league.
Offensively, Pablo Sandoval turned out to be the real deal. He hits for average, gets on base and hits for power. He also has the strangest baseball body since Kirby Puckett.
What Went Wrong
The Giants failed to develop or acquire a power hitter to back up Sandoval. Travis Ishikawa hits like a good second baseman, but that’s not what you want at first base. If the Giants could increase their run scoring by .25 runs per game, they would move from a predicted .563 winning percentage to a .592, a difference of five wins over the course of a full season. Ninety one wins might get them into the playoffs, but 96 wins almost certainly does.
Other teams in this series:
- Oakland Athletics
- Seattle Mariners
- Texas Rangers
- Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
- Pittsburgh Pirates
- Cincinnati Reds
- Houston Astros
- Chicago Cubs
- Milwaukee Brewers
- St. Louis Cardinals
- Baltimore Orioles
- Toronto Blue Jays
- Tampa Bay Rays
- New York Yankees
- Boston Red Sox
- San Diego Padres
- Arizona Diamondbacks
- Colorado Rockies
Did you ever notice how many great baseball players have what could be loosely described as a Hack Wilson type body? Kirby Puckett once said that his fantasy was to have a body like Glenn Braggs’. Kirby was a short, squat man who didn’t look like a baseball player; Braggs was about 6-3, slender, fast, very graceful — and of course, not one-tenth the player that Kirby Puckett was.
When you look around, there are a lot of good baseball players who have that Kirby Puckett body. Maybe I didn’t phrase that right: there aren’t very many ballplayers built like Kirby Puckett. But given that premise, they seem to be disproportionately successful — perhaps because scouts don’t like them and don’t want to sign them unless they’re really good.
But perhaps, just perhaps, the short, powerful body is actually the best body for a baseball player. Long arms really do not help you when you’re hitting; short arms work better. Compressed power is more effective than diffuse power. Yogi Berra had that kind of a body — a short, powerful, funny-looking kind of guy. He wouldn’t sign with the Cardinals, his home-town team, because the Cardinals wouldn’t give him the same bonus they had given his buddy, Joe Garagiola. He’d been playing ball against Garagiola all his life; he knew that he was a better athlete than Joe was. Joe knew it, too. The Cardinals couldn’t see it, because Yogi was even shorter and squatter than Joe.
… Lousy players outnumber great players a hundred to one — but can you name a dozen guys who had bodies like that and were lousy players?
— Bill James in his Historical Baseball Abstract, on Yogi Berra — and by extension, Pablo Sandoval.
One big thing about the Giants that strikes me is the huge improvement in their bullpen. Last year, the bullpen was ranked 24th. This year, it’s #1 in the league. Jeremy Affeldt and Justin Miller are both in their first year with the Giants and having unexpectedly great seasons, with ERAs of 1.32 and 1.98. These were brilliant signings, now they just need some more offense.