40 Percent Mark Check Up

The 2010 season is 40% done if this were a baseball game we would be in the top of the 4th with one out. There is certainly a lot of baseball left to play but at this point we have learned quite a bit about this team.

Rk	Tm	W	L	W-L%	GB	R	RA	Rdiff	pythWL	vEast	vCent	vWest	Inter	Home	Road	ExInn	1Run	≥.500	<.500
1	SDP	38	28	.576	---	4.1	3.3	0.8	39-27	10-9	9-4	14-11	5-4	21-15	17-13	6-4	13-9	21-20	17-8
2	LAD	38	28	.576	---	4.7	4.5	0.2	34-32	4-9	14-10	18-5	2-4	23-13	15-15	5-2	15-7	20-16	18-12
3	SFG	37	28	.569	0.5	4.3	3.5	0.8	39-26	10-5	14-5	8-14	5-4	24-12	13-16	5-4	11-12	14-19	23-9
4	COL	34	32	.515	4.0	4.5	3.9	0.7	37-29	11-8	3-8	14-13	6-3	19-12	15-20	4-4	9-13	17-15	17-17
5	ARI	26	41	.388	12.5	4.7	5.8	-1.1	27-40	6-6	9-11	9-20	2-4	17-16	9-25	2-4	6-10	19-32	7-9

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Generated 6/18/2010.

At the moment before the days games begin the Giants are 37-28, in third place and 0.5 games out of first place. They are under performing their expected win/loss pathagorean record by two games while tying the Padres for the best run differential in the division.

The big thing that jumps at you from the standings is the Giants record agains teams that are better than .500, this season they have .719 winning percentage against the best teams in the league while manageing a winning percentage of only .424 against the bottom teams. I am not sure what to make of this perhaps they are playing at the level of the competitioin, but they have the best mark in the league against winning teams. That would be good news for the playoffs if this isn't just some anomoly of luck that will even out over the course of the season.

If they maintain the same pace they will be a 92 win team which would hopefully be good enough to get into the playoffs. It would also be the best record that the team has posted since the 100 win team of 2003.

The season has had quite a few ups and downs this season. As you can see from one of my favorite charts the Giants over their last 20 games have played very well adding 8 games between them and a .500 record, but if the past has any perdictive value there will be some more rough patches to make it through up a head.

I have created a companion for this graph as well that tracks all the teams in the division relative to first place.

Any thing above 0 means that the team is in 1st place every thing below is how many games back from 1st they are. There isn't a whole lot of analysis that can come out of this but it is a nice visual representation of the division race.

This years team has had trouble scoring runs so I created some graphs to have a look at how things have played out this season.

The first graph is the runs per scored for each game this season.

The black line is a 5 game moving average and the dotted red line is the season average of 4.3 runs per game.

This is an interesting graph but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot to glean from it. The rise and falls match up pretty close to the peaks and valley's that you can see in the games above .500 graph, but that is to be expected as runs and wins are highly correlated.

The next graph shows the run distribution of runs scored and runs allowed.

This graph is pretty interesting. When you look at the league as a whole the graph will be much more normally distributed with the peak around 5.5 runs but for the Giants this season the magic number has been 6 runs which they have scored 15 times. The next closest is 5 runs with 8 occurances and then 1 and 2 runs each with frequencies of 7. After 6 runs there is a large drop off with only a hand full of really high scoring games. This is a fairly odd distribution as the peak is realitivly far from the average of 4.3 runs.

For the runs allowed the peak is at 2 runs per game and is follows a much more typical distribution. From this you can definitly see how good the Giants pitching has been this season for the most part scoring a lot of runs on this team has not been easy and is a rare occurance.

Checking up on the players:

Pitchers:
The piching has been great this season. The staff lead by Lincecum and Cain had dominate stretches. Barry Zito got off to a great start and has pitched very well this season and is having his best season with the Giants. Jonathan Sanchez has to be the best number 4 starter in the league who has really excelled this season and deserves much better than his 5 and 5 record. The one sore spot has been Todd Wellemeyer who is not a very good pitcher away from AT&T park, hopefully his days in the rotation are numbered and the spot will be Madison Bumgarner's for the stretch run.

Rk		Age	W	L	W-L%	ERA	GS	IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	ERA+	WHIP	H/9	BB/9	SO/9	SO/BB
1	Tim Lincecum	26	7	2	.778	3.11	14	92.2	76	33	32	37	106	139	1.219	7.4	3.6	10.3	2.86
2	Matt Cain	25	6	4	.600	2.05	13	92.1	66	23	21	28	65	210	1.018	6.4	2.7	6.3	2.32
3	Barry Zito	32	7	2	.778	3.10	13	87.0	73	31	30	34	58	139	1.230	7.6	3.5	6.0	1.71
4	Jonathan Sanchez	27	5	5	.500	2.78	13	81.0	59	29	25	34	77	155	1.148	6.6	3.8	8.6	2.26
5	Todd Wellemeyer	31	3	5	.375	5.52	11	58.2	53	36	36	35	41	78	1.500	8.1	5.4	6.3	1.17

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 6/18/2010.

The Giants bullpen has caused a few heart palpatations this season but it is an excellent collection of power arms. Jeremy Affeldt has been a bit of a disapointment this year but his numbers from last year were definitly inflated and were not going to be sustainable. Sergio Romo has had a few pitches that were mistakes that really cost him but other thatn that has been one of the best guys on the staff with his nasty frisbe slider. New comer Santiago Casilla is a flame throwing monster and I am not sure why the A's let him go for nothing. Lastly Brian Wilson has been pure awesome and while he has walked the high wire a few times in his saves he has had a special season.

Pos		Age	W	L	W-L%	ERA	G	SV	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	SO	ERA+	WHIP	BB/9	SO/9	SO/BB
CL	Brian Wilson	28	2	0	1.000	2.15	27	18	29.1	26	7	7	1	10	41	202	1.227	3.1	12.6	4.10
RP	Santiago Casilla	30	1	1	.500	0.87	13	2	10.1	6	1	1	0	6	18	510	1.161	5.2	15.7	3.00
RP	Sergio Romo	27	2	3	.400	2.77	27	0	26.0	18	9	8	4	5	24	157	0.885	1.7	8.3	4.80
RP	Dan Runzler	25	2	0	1.000	3.80	27	0	23.2	20	11	10	1	17	21	115	1.563	6.5	8.0	1.24
RP	Guillermo Mota	36	0	2	.000	3.09	27	1	23.1	22	8	8	1	5	12	141	1.157	1.9	4.6	2.40
RP	Jeremy Affeldt	31	2	3	.400	4.57	23	2	21.2	23	12	11	2	16	18	95	1.800	6.6	7.5	1.13

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 6/18/2010.

Hitters:

There are a few really bright spots in the lineup at this point in the season and a few spots that I want to take a steel scrub brush to so that I never have to see Aaron Rowand swing at a slider that is 4 feet outside again.

The bright spots this season have to be Aubrey Huff who is destroying the ball while playing defense that is much better than adervtised, Juan Uribe who is putting together the best season by a NL short stop, Andres Torres who has figured out how to be awesome and is among the best leadoff hitters in the game right now, Freddy Sanchez who I wasn't sold on but it is easy to see how he won a batting title and he seems to have more paitence this season then he did in the past and finaly Buster Posey who exploded on to the scene in his first few games in the majors.

The not so bright spots this season have been really bad. Aaron Rownad is in a 6 week long slump, Bengie Molina has lost all of hits power and hasn't made up for it with increased ability to get on base and for some reason Mark DeRosa hasn't had surgery on his injured wrist and is clogging up a roster spot. These are not pretty but Bruce Bochy is finally taking these guys out of the lineup on a regular basis.

Rk	Pos		Age	G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	SB	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	OPS+
1	C	Bengie Molina	35	53	178	16	46	6	0	3	17	0	12	17	.258	.313	.343	.656	73
2	1B	Aubrey Huff	33	63	220	37	67	15	2	11	36	3	33	26	.305	.396	.541	.937	144
3	2B	Freddy Sanchez	32	26	99	14	34	7	0	0	14	0	12	16	.343	.404	.414	.818	116
4	SS	Juan Uribe	30	63	218	33	63	11	1	11	42	1	23	37	.289	.355	.500	.855	122
5	3B	Pablo Sandoval	23	64	255	36	72	17	2	6	27	2	24	34	.282	.343	.435	.778	103
6	LF	Mark DeRosa	35	26	93	9	18	3	0	1	10	0	9	16	.194	.279	.258	.537	43
7	CF	Aaron Rowand	32	46	183	20	41	8	2	6	23	1	7	39	.224	.267	.388	.655	70
8	RF	Nate Schierholtz	26	57	125	20	33	8	1	1	9	4	13	17	.264	.345	.368	.713	88
9	OF	Andres Torres	32	57	188	30	55	20	3	3	19	11	31	39	.293	.395	.479	.874	129
10	SS	Edgar Renteria	33	23	86	9	28	3	0	1	11	3	7	14	.326	.372	.395	.768	103
13	C	Eli Whiteside	30	30	68	12	19	5	0	4	9	1	5	15	.279	.338	.529	.867	124
14	1B	Buster Posey	23	17	64	8	22	4	1	1	7	0	3	5	.344	.382	.484	.867	127
16	LF	Pat Burrell	33	11	31	5	11	3	0	2	5	0	3	6	.355	.400	.645	1.045	170
17	1B	Travis Ishikawa*	26	40	29	6	8	4	0	1	4	0	4	8	.276	.364	.517	.881	129

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 6/18/2010.

This ladies and gentlemen this is your 2010 Giants, they have had sucess following their winning formula great pitching followed up with timely hitting. They are in the thick of things and the lineup and offense is starting to come together.

There is still a ways to go but I think that the team has done well over this first stretch of the season and looks to be getting stronger and understanding what the strengths of the team are.