Charlotte Giveth and We Getteth

Charlotte was the location for our nation's first gold rush, way back in 1802. It's also the birthplace of Southern Presbyterianism, a holy thing for a great number of people. However, Charlotte is most famous for producing a 33 year old pitcher that seemingly found his lightning bolt embossed sleeves nestled away in the cozy crevices of his closet this off-season.

With his super shirt donned (this is the best explanation I can come up with) Ryan Vogelsong has been the most consistent pitcher on the formidable Giants staff in 2011. I don't think any fan has gotten to a point yet where they expect him to close down whichever team he's facing, but he's getting close.

In 15 games started this year, he's given up more than three runs, exactly one time. It was his second start, way back on May 3rd, and he must have had terrible butterflies in the Big Apple, because he was lit up for five runs in four innings by the Mets. Perhaps that loss was the catalyst needed for him to pitch lights out ever since. The six starts after that day in New York were 0 or 1 ER outings. In fact, not until June 28th did he give up even 3 earned runs in a start.

I think the Giants knew exactly what they were doing when they drafted him back before Y2K was threatening to end our way of life.

Sure they did.

It's been 13 season, but now he's starting to look not just legitimate  but amazing. Sure, he pounced on a Dodger team with a front office that has more drama than a weekend-long Melrose Place marathon, but the Dodgers love to beat up the Giants at China Basin. For the past four seasons it has been nearly automatic for the men in blue, but tonight Vogelsong made sure that didn't happen.

So instead of skipping rocks across Sugar Creek in Charlotte this evening, Ryan Vogelsong electrified 42,000 rabid fans on the shores of McCovey Cove in San Francisco. This has been a special All Star year for him and one of the greatest comeback stories that even Disney couldn't top.

With each consecutive start, he's getting closer to being the first Giants starter to finish a season with an ERA under 2.00 since Bobby Bolin posted a 1.99 ERA with 19 starts in 1968 and the first Giant to lead the league in ERA since Jason Schmidt in 2003.

This is a good story that I'm looking forward to continuing again in five or six days. Do you think Vogelsong will get better as the year progresses? Did he find the fountain of youth in Japan and bring it back stateside?

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Giants Pitching Staff April Pure Quality Starts

This is cross posted from Obsessive Giants Compulsive who will be tracking these stats all season long.


This post has the Giants Pure Quality Start scores for the month of April 2011 (plus a game from March), PQS as defined in Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster annual book and they published the details here. I wrote on this first in 2006 and have compiled their stats on a regular basis, so I'm continuing it this season for continuity and historical comparison (there is the "PQS" label that you can click to see the old posts on this). Regular readers can skip to the next section.

This is the Quality Start with a sabermetric DIPS twist, and it gets really easy to calculate once you get used to it. I don't think it's the end all or be all, but then nothing really is that. It is, as I like to say, another piece of the puzzle. A dominating start is scored a 4 or 5 and a disaster start is scored a 0 or 1. DOM% is the percentage of starts that are dominating, DIS% is the percentage of starts that are disasters (any start under 5.0 IP is automatically a 0, or disaster).

What's Good and What's Not

From my observations, a DOM at or above the 40% mark is indicative of good pitching; above 50% is great; above 70% is elite. A low DIS is also indicative of good pitching, just look at the table in the link above showing DOM% and DIS% on the axes.

Basically, you want to see a pitcher's DOM% to be over 40% and ideally over 50%, and you want their DIS to be under 20% and ideally under 10%. For example, Johan Santana has a 76% DOM and 3% DIS in 2006 (2.77 ERA), whereas Orlando Hernandez had a 52% DOM and 28% DIS (4.66 ERA), and Adam Eaton had a 31% DOM and 31% DIS (5.12 ERA). Read the link, as I noted, there's a nice chart there showing the combination of high DOM% and low DIS%, and there you can see particularly how s low DIS% is so important to a low ERA.

If you had to chose a high DOM% or a low DIS%, pitchers tend to have a lower ERA when you have a low DIS% vs. a high DOM% (obviously if you combine both, you have a much better chance of having an elite pitcher). But I think when the DOM% is high enough, you win more by choosing a high DOM% over a low DIS%, as there are more high quality games pitched overall.

I wholeheartedly recommend buying Baseball Forecaster and learning more about their methods of analyzing baseball. It has been greatly illuminating for me, and if you want to get a taste for it without paying full price, they used to sell their old editions of their annuals on their website for half price or less (plus shipping); but that was before he sold the company off, and I haven't checked recently.

Giants Starters' PQS for 2011 Season

Madison Bumgarner- (20% DOM, 40% DIS; 1:2/5): 0, 2, 3, 0, 5

Matt Cain- (60% DOM, 20% DIS; 3:1/5): 4, 4, 3, 0, 5

Tim "The Kid" Lincecum - (83% DOM, 0% DIS; 5:0/6): 4, 5, 3, 5, 4, 5

Jonathan Sanchez - (50% DOM, 0% DIS; 3:0/6): 3, 4, 4, 3, 3, 4

Ryan Vogelsong - (100% DOM, 0% DIS; 1:0/1): 4

Barry Zito - (50% DOM, 50% DIS; 1:1/2): 5, 1, X

X = start Zito was injured in and had to leave the game. I don't include these in my analysis.

Giants season overall - 56% DOM, 20% DIS out of 25 games counted (14:5/25)
Giants Month of March/April - 56% DOM, 20% DIS out of 25 games counted (14:5/25)

The Giants pitchers continued to do well, carrying over their collective goodness from last season. Led by Tim Lincecum's 5 DOM starts, their 56% DOM as a group is excellent - remember, great pitchers have DOM of 50% or better and they are doing it as a group. Their 20% is good as well.

And they may even get better. Bumgarner was lost for much of April. After 4 starts, he had 2 DIS starts and 0 DOM starts. Now he has had two consecutive 5 PQS DOM starts. After walking a lot of people and more importantly, not striking out that many either at the same time, he shut things down and in those two DOM starts he had 2 walks and 14 strikeouts.

Plus Vogelsong had a nice first start, though very poor second start now. If he can keep up the good pitching he did in the minors, which he did in his first start, he should be able to at least duplicate what Zito delivered last season. But he had a really bad second start, so it is not clear what we got with him yet, lightening in the bottle or the career MLB journeyman pitcher.

Those could push the staff up above 60% DOM and below 20% DIS. Lincecum has returned to his Cy Young level of DOM and DIS: above 80% DOM and below 10% DIS. Cain has been his usual good self, with the occasional hiccup. Given his playoff run, I can see Cain making another leap in DOM/DIS this season, perhaps join Lincecum in a Cy Young caliber season.

Also importantly, Sanchez despite not having great control plus battling a flu in a recent start or two, has ZERO disaster starts, plus 50% DOM. He could be another key change in the rotation relative to last season, he still hasn't put together two great halves of a season, he has been great one half, and lost in the other half, for the past three seasons. While his old wild self so far this season, he has been unlike his usual self by limiting the scoring that could happen, and shutting down the other team despite the walks. Of course, part of that is his still high rate of strikeouts.

Read th rest for some more great analysis.

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Walks are Killing the Giants

It seems like every time a Giants pitcher issues a walk, it comes back to hurt them. The walks always come in the worst moments and compound the issues.

I took the time to painstakingly look through the play-by-play files to determine how many of those walks came into score and my tally was 27. [Side note: if someone knows a place that keeps track of this so I don't have to do it manually, leave me a comment.]

Breaking this down a little further, of the 76 walks, five were intentional, so we have 26 runs scored on 71 regular walks and one run scored on five intentional walks.

For the regular walks, the Giants pitchers have managed a strand rate of just 63.4%, which is far below the overall average this season of 69% and league average, which tends to be about 72%. This suggests that things will get better as the season goes on, but man, the early picture is not a pretty one.

This actually ties in with the picture painted by the overall team stats that I went over in the post about the Giants not having a claim to the best pitching staff in baseball. They rate well in two thirds of the stats that pitchers have the most control over, with the second best home run rate per nine and the third best strikeout rate per nine, but only the 19th best walk rate per nine.

When you add that to the fact that they haven't done well in keeping these base runners from scoring, it makes sense that the team is in the middle of the pack in ERA. If the Giants can do better in limiting the walks (I am not holding my breath, not with Jonathan Sanchez and Barry Zito in the rotation) or do a better job of stranding the runners they give a free pass to, things will get much better.

Until then, the walks will keep killing the Giants.

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Do Giants Have Claim to Top Pitching Staff?

Giants fans were outraged when everyone and their Mother forgot about the 2010 playoffs and jumped on the Phillies bandwagon as the best in baseball. Many were incensed by the team that just beat each of these pitchers so casually being cast aside.

So far this season, the Giants have not done much to try regain the claim as the top pitching staff after their slow start.

By just about every traditional measure, the Giants are just not among the best in baseball. Here are the MLB rankings:

ERA - 3.92 (14th)
WHIP - 1.245 (12th)
ERA+ - 104 (13th)

However, if you take the time to dig a little bit deeper, you can see things are not as bad as the traditional stats would lead you to believe:

K/9 - 8.18 (3rd)
K/BB - 2.37 (6th)
FIP - 3.28 (3rd)
xFIP - 3.53 (4th)

All of these save for K/9 (which was 8.20 last year) are better than that historically great staff. This year's team is giving up more runs, but the biggest departure this year is they just haven't stranded as many base runners as normal.

April has been a tough month for the Giants, so I expect that the rankings will improve as the season progresses, but I think maybe that some of that over confidence in having the best pitching in baseball might have been too much. This is still a very good pitching team, but I'm not as sure that they still have a claim as the best.

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Re-Imagining the Sports Illustrated Baseball Preview

Jason Wong of The City Graphics has redone the Sports Illustrated Baseball Preview Edition cover replacing the Phillies with the defending Champion Giants.

That looks much better to me. Be sure to check out the rest of his work.

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Giants Link Round-Up

All of the Giants links fit to print.

PaapFly: "Jeff Suppan is no Joe Posnanski" I wonder how he feels about this pickup. Actually I don't because this line sums things up nicely.

Imagine for a second you were collecting baseball writers. You already have Joe Posnanski, Bill James, Rob Neyer, Joe Sheehan and Jayson Stark. But you want a little just-in-case insurance, you know, just in case. Maybe, along the way, one of them gets writers block, or maybe one breaks both hands and can’t type. You already have Murray Chass lined up in the stable, and a couple others like him. Then, in an effort to beef up your complete and utter lack of depth, you hire on the Bleacher Report. This is essentially what the Giants have done.

Sully Baseball: A great video giving MLB some tips on how to appeal to a younger generation. What makes it better is he says that we need more Giants.

Baseball Monk: The monks talk about how loaded the National League is in pitching right now. I couldn't agree more, after years of offense the pendulum has swung towards pitching and it special with the number of great arms out there.

Splashing Pumpkins: A quantitative look at Giants skipper Bruce Bochy. He did everything right in the playoffs it seemed but I agree with the conclusion here that his overall effect on the team was probably a wash with great decisions cancelled out by the boneheaded ones.

22Gigantes: If you need more reasons to hate the Dodgers here is another one: Tommy Lasorda disses the Giants.

When the Giants Come to Town: The top 50 prospects (plus a bunch of Honorable mentions). First few detailed scouting reports are out too: #1 Brandon Belt, #2 Zach Wheeler, #3 Thomas Neal and #4 Gary Brown.

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Madison Bumgarner at Risk for Verducci Effect

Tom Verducci has his annual list of young pitchers who experienced a big jump in innings who he flags for injury or regression and this year Giants pitcher Madison Bumgarner is on the list.

This could be big news if Bumgarner does suffer from the "Verducci Effect" as he is a big part of the Giants elite pitching staff.

For those not familar with the "Verducci Effect" here is a quick run down:

Drawing on the advice of pitching coach Rick Peterson, I developed a rule of thumb that pitchers 25 and younger should not increase their workload by more than 30 innings. It's the same theory as training for a marathon: you risk injury by jumping from a 10K to the marathon instead of incremental increases. I called it the Year After Effect because the wear and tear often was followed by regression or injury the next year.

Bumgarner had an increase of 73 innings (the innings include everything throughout the year, fall league, minors, majors, postseason, etc). Bumgarner threw 82.2 innings in the minors, 111.0 in the majors and 20.2 in the postseason for a grand total of 214.1 innings.

Bumgarner has the prototypical pitching frame; a large frame with good mechanics. The Giants seem to do pretty well in bringing along their young pitchers without too many arm injuries so I am hopeful that Bumgarner should still do very well next season.

This isn't a scientific study but just something that Verducci does to get an idea for potential overwork of young pitchers. For example the Padres' Mat Latos, the Mariners' Felix Hernandez, who won the AL Cy Young award, the Marlins' Josh Johnson and the Tigers' Max Scherzer were all on the list last year and had very good seasons.

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Numbers for the Giants Numbered Starters

Fangraphs Brayn Smith wrote an article attempting to quantify certain levels in pitching statistics that correspond with the traditional pitching slots of the #1 pitcher through the #5 spot in the rotation.

He proposes that in evaluating pitchers you should use the things that pitchers have the most control over; namely the strike out rate, walk rate, ground ball rate and home run rate. To do this he has created cut off points in 4 different categories to rank pitchers.

Control (BB/9)

#1 Starter: 0.76 – 2.41 BB/9.

#2 Starter: 2.44 – 2.92 BB/9.

#3 Starter: 2.95 – 3.41 BB/9.

#4 Starter: 3.47 – 4.74 BB/9.

How the Giants Measure Up:

Tim Lincecum: 3.22 BB/9, Rank #3 Starter

Matt Cain: 2.46 BB/9, Rank #2 Starter

Jonathan Sanchez: 4.47 BB/9, Rank #4 Starter

Madison Bumgarner: 2.11 BB/9, Rank #1 Starter

Barry Zito: 3.79 BB/9, Rank #4 Starter

I think that these results are pretty much exactly what you would expect, Tim Lincecum has always been a little wild with a career walk rate of 3.25 and it is well known that Jonathan Sanchez has trouble finding the strikezone. Matt Cain who has drastically improved his walk rate since coming up from the minors is on the borderline between #1 and #2.

Swing-and-Miss Stuff (K/9)

#1 Starter: 10.95 – 7.86 K/9.

#2 Starter: 7.84 – 6.87 K/9.

#3 Starter: 6.86 – 5.44 K/9.

#4 Starter: 5.43 – 3.80 K/9.

How the Giants Measure Up:

Tim Lincecum: 9.79 K/9, Rank #1 Starter

Matt Cain: 7.13 K/9, Rank #2 Starter

Jonathan Sanchez: 9.54 K/9, Rank #1 Starter

Madison Bumgarner: 6.97 K/9, Rank #2 Starter

Barry Zito: 6.77 K/9, Rank #3 Starter

The Giants have quite the collection of strikeout arms. Barry Zito is the laggard of the group and he still is close to being in the #2 starter group. The ability to pitch to the strikeout is definitely one of the strengths of this Giants team.

Movement (GB%)

#1 Starter: 64.1 – 49.6 GB%.

#2 Starter: 49.4 – 44.9 GB%.

#3 Starter: 44.7 – 39.8 GB%.

#4 Starter: 39.5 – 28.3 GB%.

How the Giants Measure Up:

Tim Lincecum: 48.9%, Rank #2 Starter

Matt Cain: 36.2%, Rank #4 Starter

Jonathan Sanchez: 41.5%, Rank #3 Starter

Madison Bumgarner: 45.1%, Rank #2 Starter

Barry Zito: 37.8%, Rank #4 Starter

The Giants may have a collection of power arms but to go along with that they also have pitchers that tend to be more of fly ball pitchers. That may not be as big of a problem as it can be for some teams as AT&T park is pretty spacious and as long as the guys can keep the ball in the park they tend to do pretty well.

Overall Rate Value (xFIP)

#1 Starter: 2.92 – 3.80 xFIP.

#2 Starter: 3.81 – 4.18 xFIP.

#3 Starter: 4.19 – 4.51 xFIP.

#4 Starter: 4.56 – 5.62 xFIP.

How the Giants Measure Up:

Tim Lincecum: 3.21, Rank #1 Starter

Matt Cain: 4.19, Rank #3 Starter

Jonathan Sanchez: 4.11, Rank #2 Starter

Madison Bumgarner: 4.03, Rank #2 Starter

Barry Zito: 4.77, Rank #4 Starter

Lincecum is the class of the staff with the best FIP but Cain, Sanchez and Bumgarner are not far behind him. This is another category where Cain is right on the cusp of moving up a ranking. When you look at these numbers it is easy to see why the Giants have one of the best pitching staffs 1-5 in all of baseball.

Here is the all of the rankings put together:

	BB/9	K/9	GB%	xFIP	Average
Tim Lincecum	3	1	2	1	1.75
Matt Cain	2	2	4	3	2.75
Jonathan Sanchez	4	1	3	2	2.5
Madison Bumgarner	1	2	2	2	1.75
Barry Zito	4	3	4	4	3.75

Lincecum and Bumgarner rank as the best pitcher according to these measures followed by Sanchez and Cain. Zito brings up the rear but for the worst pitcher on the staff he still ranks higher then many #3 or #4 starters on many teams.

I was surprised by Cain's low ranking as this season he has been one the better pitchers on the team. He is hurt by being right on the edge between tiers in two categories and if he switched to the lower category his average would improve to a 2.25 average which is more of what you would expect.

The other surprise using this measure is how good Madison Bumgarner is he truly looks like he could be a future "ace" with his excellent walk rate, solid strikeout rate (that has improved as the season went on), solid ground ball numbers and very good xFIP. I am excited to watch him grow as a pitcher.

Giants Historic Pitching Streak

Every one loves a good streak story and I think that it is needed especially on a day after where the Giants were able to generate no offense.

Well this story comes via Baseball Reference and it shows the pure and utter dominance of the Giants pitching staff. The Giants have gone 21 games where they have given up 4 runs or less good for tied for 5^th on the all time list.

The single season record was set by the 1972 Cubs at 23 games so the Giants are gunning for them.

It doesn't make you feel any better about the loss last night but at least it is something positive.

Rk		Strk Start	End	Games	W	L	SHO	SV	IP	ERA	Opp
1	STL*	1942-09-07	1943-04-29	25	20	5	5	3	232.2	1.39	PIT,NYG,BRO,PHI,BSN,CHC,CIN
2	CHC	1972-04-29	1972-05-27	23	16	7	2	6	208.2	2.03	CIN,ATL,HOU,PHI,STL,NYM,MON
3	CIN*	1943-09-23	1944-04-28	22	18	4	7	1	204.0	1.32	NYG,BSN,PHI,BRO,CHC,PIT,STL
4	WSH	1924-06-18	1924-07-05	22	17	5	4	4	202.0	1.78	CHW,PHA,NYY,BOS
5	SFG	2010-08-30	2010-09-21	21	13	7	4	9	179.0	1.61	COL,LAD,ARI,SDP,MIL,CHC
6	OAK	1981-04-09	1981-04-29	21	18	3	4	1	190.0	1.89	MIN,CAL,SEA
7	BAL	1965-05-31	1965-06-24	21	15	6	2	6	195.0	1.66	MIN,KCA,CAL,WSA,BOS,NYY
8	ARI	2002-08-05	2002-08-26	20	16	4	2	6	186.0	2.03	NYM,ATL,FLA,CIN,CHC,LAD
9	BAL	1979-08-26	1979-09-14	20	14	6	2	5	182.0	2.18	CHW,MIN,TOR,BOS
10	CAL*	1970-09-26	1971-04-21	20	13	7	0	8	189.0	2.43	OAK,CHW,KCR,MIL,MIN
*Games with asterisk are streaks that span more than one season.

Random Observations during the streak:

During the streak the team has gone 13-8 which is pretty depressing seeing the pitching performance they have received.

The team has averaged only 3.05 runs per game while allowing a miniscule 1.76 runs per game. If only the team had an offense.

The team has shut out their opponent 4 times and been shut out themselves 4 times.

The team has allowed 4 runs twice, 3 runs four times, 2 runs six times, and 1 run five times. That is some good pitching.

5 Reasons the Giants Will Make the Playoffs

The Giants are in the hunt to play October baseball. They have a chance to make the playoffs for the first time since 2003 when they went wire to wire. I give you 5 reasons to be optimistic about their chances.

1) The Pitching

It is well known that the 2010 Giants are a team built around pitching. This is the bread and butter for powering this team. So far the pitching has been good but really not as good as it could be and even with that being said it still ranks as one of the strongest groups of pitchers in the league. They have a starting rotation that most teams would envy that has talent all the way through the fifth starter, they have a bullpen that is stockpiled with power arms that can strike people out in bunches, all very good things to have.

They are 3^rd in ERA, 6^th in FIP (fielding independent pitching), 1^st in K/9, 2^nd in HR/9, and 2^nd in batting average against.

The thing that seems to be holding the pitching staff back has been the walk. They are currently last in the NL in BB/9, if they are able to cut down on the free passes even if just a little bit this pitching staff could become truly dominate and carry the team.

The Giants Four Horsemen

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has watched the Giants this season but the Giants have four really good starting pitchers (and one that will cost you 50 bucks at the bar to forget).

Tim Lincecum has been dominate again. Barry Zito has continued his resurgence that he showed in the second half of last season. Matt Cain hasn’t been as sharp as last season but has still been an above average pitcher who has been well Cained (Cained: a term named after Giants’ pitcher Matt Cain who often pitched beautifully but is stuck with a loss or no decision after a lack of run support) this season. Lastly Jonathan Sanchez who goes tonight has also been Cained this season (see one hitter and a loss) but has thrown two of the best games of the season for the Giants and deserves a whole lot better.