Monday, May 05, 2008
P.U.-genio
Once, way back in the early-1980's, when Dave Kingman was playing first base (and badly at that) for the Mets, he tore his mitt in the middle of one game and had to have it repaired mid-inning. Upon watching one of the Mets equipment guys come out to re-stitch his glove, Mets play-by-play announcer Richie Ashburn quipped that the team should have called a welder.
I thought of this classic quote immediately after I watched poor Eugenio Velez fumble the game away for the Giants yesterday afternoon, as the team's defense as a whole looked as though it did indeed need to be rescued by a blowtorch and a KUKA. Due to a number of defensive lapses and Brian Wilson's first Benitez experience, the team dropped two of three to the Phillies in a series that they easily could have swept.
The chief culprit among the defensive rogue's gallery was Velez, who enabled the winning run to score yesterday when he missed a ground ball, and who also should have been credited with another error in a pivotal Phillies rally in the fifth inning. Velez is a guy who I've been trumpeting to play every day, but now I'm ready to do a 180 on that. Velez's miserable game Sunday brought his line to .232/.264/.354, which coupled with his erratic defense may have Giants fans welcoming Ray Durham back from the doghouse with open arms.
While it'd be fun to see how many triples Velez could rack up with his speed over a full season, I think it's best for all concerned if he were sent to AAA to be the starting second baseman. It's clear that Velez is overmatched by major league pitching, and the worries about his defensive performance that popped up in Spring Training are proving to be legit. As much as we all want to see the Giants play young guys, in this case it's probably only going to stunt Eugenio's development to keep trotting him out there.
Velez's most valuable asset is his speed, but without some ability to take pitches he's just going to turn into Gary Pettis without the defensive rep, and it's hard to get much more useless than that. I'd love to see him get regular playing time from here on out at Fresno and then see if he can't learn to hit there. Remember, his awesome season in 2006 came as a 24-year-old in A-ball, so maybe what we see is what we get. Still, there's really nothing to gain from letting him stink it up in the majors for a whole year, unless derailing his confidence is the stated goal. I'd gladly sit through another couple of months of Ray Durham if it means Velez turns into a useful ballplayer.
--Currently leading the NL in saves...Brian Wilson, with 10! That's right, I surmised in an earlier post that Wilson could theoretically save 30 games this season because every game the Giants win will likely be low-scoring, and thus Wilson should get a lot of opportunities. As if to prove me a baseball genius (rim shot), Wilson is well on his way.
I've always maintained that saves are a stupid junk stat, but if Wilson does rack up a bunch of them then it will help the Giants a lot in the future. For instance, if Wilson puts together a bunch of 30-save seasons in a row, and earns that beloved "proven closer" tag that gets bestowed upon the likes of Rocky Biddle and Derrick Turnbow, then he might have a lot of trade value as his arbitration years start to tick down. I can imagine a desperate fringe contender throwing a prospect or two at the Giants for the chance to get a gritty ninth inning man to solidify their bullpen and look mean. If the Giants could convince Wilson to wear coke-bottle glasses and grow wild facial hair, they'd only be helping their cause.
--I'm not sure what to make of the site called Steve Finley Was Here, since it takes the namesake of one of the most hated players in Giants history. It contains a link to my page, though, so I guess that means I should I plug it, right? Except...2004. Wayne Franklin. I'm so confused. I guess I'll call a truce and grudgingly link to it.
For real, though, check it out. It's all about West Coast baseball, it's good stuff, and if you ever wanted to know what Barry Zito has on his iPod, you're in luck (he apparently doesn't have Tu Quieres Volver...I guess I'm the only young adult in the world who would admit to putting that on a playlist).
I thought of this classic quote immediately after I watched poor Eugenio Velez fumble the game away for the Giants yesterday afternoon, as the team's defense as a whole looked as though it did indeed need to be rescued by a blowtorch and a KUKA. Due to a number of defensive lapses and Brian Wilson's first Benitez experience, the team dropped two of three to the Phillies in a series that they easily could have swept.
The chief culprit among the defensive rogue's gallery was Velez, who enabled the winning run to score yesterday when he missed a ground ball, and who also should have been credited with another error in a pivotal Phillies rally in the fifth inning. Velez is a guy who I've been trumpeting to play every day, but now I'm ready to do a 180 on that. Velez's miserable game Sunday brought his line to .232/.264/.354, which coupled with his erratic defense may have Giants fans welcoming Ray Durham back from the doghouse with open arms.
While it'd be fun to see how many triples Velez could rack up with his speed over a full season, I think it's best for all concerned if he were sent to AAA to be the starting second baseman. It's clear that Velez is overmatched by major league pitching, and the worries about his defensive performance that popped up in Spring Training are proving to be legit. As much as we all want to see the Giants play young guys, in this case it's probably only going to stunt Eugenio's development to keep trotting him out there.
Velez's most valuable asset is his speed, but without some ability to take pitches he's just going to turn into Gary Pettis without the defensive rep, and it's hard to get much more useless than that. I'd love to see him get regular playing time from here on out at Fresno and then see if he can't learn to hit there. Remember, his awesome season in 2006 came as a 24-year-old in A-ball, so maybe what we see is what we get. Still, there's really nothing to gain from letting him stink it up in the majors for a whole year, unless derailing his confidence is the stated goal. I'd gladly sit through another couple of months of Ray Durham if it means Velez turns into a useful ballplayer.
--Currently leading the NL in saves...Brian Wilson, with 10! That's right, I surmised in an earlier post that Wilson could theoretically save 30 games this season because every game the Giants win will likely be low-scoring, and thus Wilson should get a lot of opportunities. As if to prove me a baseball genius (rim shot), Wilson is well on his way.
I've always maintained that saves are a stupid junk stat, but if Wilson does rack up a bunch of them then it will help the Giants a lot in the future. For instance, if Wilson puts together a bunch of 30-save seasons in a row, and earns that beloved "proven closer" tag that gets bestowed upon the likes of Rocky Biddle and Derrick Turnbow, then he might have a lot of trade value as his arbitration years start to tick down. I can imagine a desperate fringe contender throwing a prospect or two at the Giants for the chance to get a gritty ninth inning man to solidify their bullpen and look mean. If the Giants could convince Wilson to wear coke-bottle glasses and grow wild facial hair, they'd only be helping their cause.
--I'm not sure what to make of the site called Steve Finley Was Here, since it takes the namesake of one of the most hated players in Giants history. It contains a link to my page, though, so I guess that means I should I plug it, right? Except...2004. Wayne Franklin. I'm so confused. I guess I'll call a truce and grudgingly link to it.
For real, though, check it out. It's all about West Coast baseball, it's good stuff, and if you ever wanted to know what Barry Zito has on his iPod, you're in luck (he apparently doesn't have Tu Quieres Volver...I guess I'm the only young adult in the world who would admit to putting that on a playlist).
Labels: anti-saves rant, brian wilson, eugenio velez, giant-killers
Friday, September 14, 2007
TGIF Links
It's Friday, and I'm heading up to the A's game tonight. I'd take pictures and post them here, but who really wants to see pics of the Oakland Coliseum and its pee-soaked corridors? And this is a Giants site after all. In fact, I'll probably be rooting for the Rangers tonight, since they have Kason Gabbard going, and he's on my fantasy squad (it's a really deep league...don't ask).
Well, here are some random links I thought you readers would find fun and interesting. Enjoy!
---Last week, ESPN's Jayson Stark wrote a wonderful article detailing why the save is probably the most ridiculous statistic in baseball. The insane overvaluing of saves is something I've ranted about repeatedly over the years, but this is the first time, I think, that I've ever seen a columnist from the mainstream sports media talk about it. I haven't gone on an anti-saves tirade in a while, but Stark opened the door, so I be a rantin'.
There are so many things wrong with saves, I don't even know where to begin. Let's start with a somewhat extreme example. Let's say a reliever, we'll call him Paulie Rice, comes into a game with a 5-2 lead. Now, I know there's probably more pressure in the ninth inning, but protecting a three-run lead by getting three outs seems like something most guys can do, right?
So Paulie comes in, walks the bases loaded, gives up a two-run single, but gets out of the jam and the team wins 5-4. Paulie gets credit for the save, even though he pitched atrociously. That save is somehow supposed to reflect upon some quality inherent in Paulie's ability, even though he pitched like crap. True, there are a lot of one-run saves, where the room for error is smaller, but coming in with no one on base to get three outs doesn't seem too taxing for a big league pitcher, no matter what the score is.
The problem is, closers are often paid vast amounts of money based on their save totals. This is just silly. You know who leads the AL in saves this year? Joe Borowski, with an ERA of 5.40. Yet you can bet that Borowski is going to get the "proven closer" label and stick around in the majors for a while, probably stinking up the joint. It's crazy. You can find pretty much any decent pitcher off the scrap heap and plug him in as a closer and he'll rack up saves. Remember Tyler Walker and his 23 saves in 2005? Okay pitcher, resilient fellow, but "proven closer" my arse. Matt Herges also saved 23 games in '04, and he stunk. The list goes on. If a guy consistently blows saves and can't get it done in the ninth, it usually just means he's a bad pitcher. Do I need to bring up Armando Benitez here?
If you look at BP's Wins Expected Above Replacement Level (WXRL, yeah it's a mouthful), which gauges reliever performance based on stranding inherited runners and difficulty of situation, among other things, a lot of the guys at the top aren't even closers. It's because the most critical situations in a baseball game usually don't come in the ninth inning. Yes, there are good pitchers who don't have what it takes to close, for whatever reason (LaTroy Hawkins is one). However, there are also a lot of guys who couldn't consistently come in with the bases loaded and one out in the seventh inning and strand every duck on the pond, and I guaran-damn-tee you Joe Borowski is one of them.
And I won't even go into the ridiculous three-inning rule that allowed Wes Littleton to get the save in the notorious 30-3 game this year. So please, everybody, stop overvaluing saves. It's a bad statistic and just because a guy racks up 35 in a season and has a pair of goofy glasses or a scary mustache, it doesn't mean he has some sort of grit or intestinal fortitude that other pitchers don't. Ok, I got that out of my system. End rant.
--Also last week, BP founder Gary Huckaby caused a furor amongst the stathead community by announcing, in pseudo-Nietzschian fashion, that "baseball analysis is dead". This, of course, sent all of us nerds into a panic. Here we had the founder of the most prestigious and influential stathead website in the world just coming out and saying that everything we believe in is all for naught and we should just stop trying. What's going on here? Is OBP suddenly not life? Have our efforts to dissect VORP been rendered moot? Has Joe Morgan won?
Well, no. Actually, it really isn't that apocalyptic. Huckaby's point is a little muddy (even he admits that in a subsequent chat), but I think he's basically saying analysis is dead in the context of front offices actually utilizing such information. His argument is that all the obvious stuff (like OBP is good, don't shag young pitchers' arms) is pretty much accepted by major league teams now, so there are only so many things a stathead can give you if you're a GM and you hire him on to your staff. The thing is, most of the real in-depth number-crunching is being done independently all over the Internet; it's out there so anybody can grab it, unlike traditional scouting measures. So in that sense, why hire a bunch of stat guys to give you data that you can just get for free by having some intern spend five minutes on The Hardball Times?
I think Huckaby has clearly got a point here, but I also think he's being a merciless drama queen. Does he really have to announce that "baseball analysis is dead"? It just seems like a ploy to get people yelling. Why can't he just say something like, "We've reached a point where quantitative analysis has essentially reached its limits in being an asset to major league front offices. Good job, people. You nerds, don't stop doing what you're doing, though." As for the argument that every front office has accepted the common sense arguments of the saber-types...ladies and gentlemen, I direct you to the Juan Pierre signing.
Huckaby has always been sort of a pompous writer, and he's definitely not my favorite of the BP squad. Dave Studeman and Nate Silver have appropriate rebuttals to the "baseball is dead" article. It's a fun little controversy to wrap your brain around.
--The Giants are apparently looking to bring back Omar Vizquel on a one-year deal for 2008. If it's just one year, then this is a perfectly acceptable move. Vizquel still plays Gold Glove defense, and that's a tremendous thing to have with young pitchers who could get rattled by a bunch of errors behind them. With no immediate alternatives (I do not want Kevin Frandsen as the everyday shortstop, and who does?), bringing back Vizquel would make perfect sense.
One thing though: I really didn't realize until now just how bad Vizquel has been with the stick. He's hitting .243/.303/.300 on the year. That's mother-bleeping atrocious. This is seriously his worst season offensively, and he had some pretty crappy seasons early in his career with Seattle. I'd say there's no way he can get worse, but he's 40 and seems to be done. Like I said, I'd still advocate bringing him back for a year based on his defense alone, but man, his bat has been friggin' awful this season.
--There's really no point to this, but I'm a big Dave Matthews fan, so this is a little something I found on YouTube for all you DMB lovers. It's a live performance of one of his more, er, cult-ier (is that a word? Ah, screw it) songs, Halloween. It's neat because the song rocks and the band almost never plays it live. I think they've only played it in concert like seven times in the past ten years or so. The best part is at the end when Dave just starts talking gibberish into the microphone, like he's having some kind of epileptic fit. Enjoy, and have a good weekend!
Well, here are some random links I thought you readers would find fun and interesting. Enjoy!
---Last week, ESPN's Jayson Stark wrote a wonderful article detailing why the save is probably the most ridiculous statistic in baseball. The insane overvaluing of saves is something I've ranted about repeatedly over the years, but this is the first time, I think, that I've ever seen a columnist from the mainstream sports media talk about it. I haven't gone on an anti-saves tirade in a while, but Stark opened the door, so I be a rantin'.
There are so many things wrong with saves, I don't even know where to begin. Let's start with a somewhat extreme example. Let's say a reliever, we'll call him Paulie Rice, comes into a game with a 5-2 lead. Now, I know there's probably more pressure in the ninth inning, but protecting a three-run lead by getting three outs seems like something most guys can do, right?
So Paulie comes in, walks the bases loaded, gives up a two-run single, but gets out of the jam and the team wins 5-4. Paulie gets credit for the save, even though he pitched atrociously. That save is somehow supposed to reflect upon some quality inherent in Paulie's ability, even though he pitched like crap. True, there are a lot of one-run saves, where the room for error is smaller, but coming in with no one on base to get three outs doesn't seem too taxing for a big league pitcher, no matter what the score is.
The problem is, closers are often paid vast amounts of money based on their save totals. This is just silly. You know who leads the AL in saves this year? Joe Borowski, with an ERA of 5.40. Yet you can bet that Borowski is going to get the "proven closer" label and stick around in the majors for a while, probably stinking up the joint. It's crazy. You can find pretty much any decent pitcher off the scrap heap and plug him in as a closer and he'll rack up saves. Remember Tyler Walker and his 23 saves in 2005? Okay pitcher, resilient fellow, but "proven closer" my arse. Matt Herges also saved 23 games in '04, and he stunk. The list goes on. If a guy consistently blows saves and can't get it done in the ninth, it usually just means he's a bad pitcher. Do I need to bring up Armando Benitez here?
If you look at BP's Wins Expected Above Replacement Level (WXRL, yeah it's a mouthful), which gauges reliever performance based on stranding inherited runners and difficulty of situation, among other things, a lot of the guys at the top aren't even closers. It's because the most critical situations in a baseball game usually don't come in the ninth inning. Yes, there are good pitchers who don't have what it takes to close, for whatever reason (LaTroy Hawkins is one). However, there are also a lot of guys who couldn't consistently come in with the bases loaded and one out in the seventh inning and strand every duck on the pond, and I guaran-damn-tee you Joe Borowski is one of them.
And I won't even go into the ridiculous three-inning rule that allowed Wes Littleton to get the save in the notorious 30-3 game this year. So please, everybody, stop overvaluing saves. It's a bad statistic and just because a guy racks up 35 in a season and has a pair of goofy glasses or a scary mustache, it doesn't mean he has some sort of grit or intestinal fortitude that other pitchers don't. Ok, I got that out of my system. End rant.
--Also last week, BP founder Gary Huckaby caused a furor amongst the stathead community by announcing, in pseudo-Nietzschian fashion, that "baseball analysis is dead". This, of course, sent all of us nerds into a panic. Here we had the founder of the most prestigious and influential stathead website in the world just coming out and saying that everything we believe in is all for naught and we should just stop trying. What's going on here? Is OBP suddenly not life? Have our efforts to dissect VORP been rendered moot? Has Joe Morgan won?
Well, no. Actually, it really isn't that apocalyptic. Huckaby's point is a little muddy (even he admits that in a subsequent chat), but I think he's basically saying analysis is dead in the context of front offices actually utilizing such information. His argument is that all the obvious stuff (like OBP is good, don't shag young pitchers' arms) is pretty much accepted by major league teams now, so there are only so many things a stathead can give you if you're a GM and you hire him on to your staff. The thing is, most of the real in-depth number-crunching is being done independently all over the Internet; it's out there so anybody can grab it, unlike traditional scouting measures. So in that sense, why hire a bunch of stat guys to give you data that you can just get for free by having some intern spend five minutes on The Hardball Times?
I think Huckaby has clearly got a point here, but I also think he's being a merciless drama queen. Does he really have to announce that "baseball analysis is dead"? It just seems like a ploy to get people yelling. Why can't he just say something like, "We've reached a point where quantitative analysis has essentially reached its limits in being an asset to major league front offices. Good job, people. You nerds, don't stop doing what you're doing, though." As for the argument that every front office has accepted the common sense arguments of the saber-types...ladies and gentlemen, I direct you to the Juan Pierre signing.
Huckaby has always been sort of a pompous writer, and he's definitely not my favorite of the BP squad. Dave Studeman and Nate Silver have appropriate rebuttals to the "baseball is dead" article. It's a fun little controversy to wrap your brain around.
--The Giants are apparently looking to bring back Omar Vizquel on a one-year deal for 2008. If it's just one year, then this is a perfectly acceptable move. Vizquel still plays Gold Glove defense, and that's a tremendous thing to have with young pitchers who could get rattled by a bunch of errors behind them. With no immediate alternatives (I do not want Kevin Frandsen as the everyday shortstop, and who does?), bringing back Vizquel would make perfect sense.
One thing though: I really didn't realize until now just how bad Vizquel has been with the stick. He's hitting .243/.303/.300 on the year. That's mother-bleeping atrocious. This is seriously his worst season offensively, and he had some pretty crappy seasons early in his career with Seattle. I'd say there's no way he can get worse, but he's 40 and seems to be done. Like I said, I'd still advocate bringing him back for a year based on his defense alone, but man, his bat has been friggin' awful this season.
--There's really no point to this, but I'm a big Dave Matthews fan, so this is a little something I found on YouTube for all you DMB lovers. It's a live performance of one of his more, er, cult-ier (is that a word? Ah, screw it) songs, Halloween. It's neat because the song rocks and the band almost never plays it live. I think they've only played it in concert like seven times in the past ten years or so. The best part is at the end when Dave just starts talking gibberish into the microphone, like he's having some kind of epileptic fit. Enjoy, and have a good weekend!
Labels: anti-saves rant, arbitrary youtube links, link drop, omar vizquel, stat nerd stuff
