Give 'em Some Stankeye!

As I try to overcome the post-celebratory hangover following the departure of Pedro Feliz to the Phillies, I guess I should pause and acknowledge that Philadelphia is probably the most ideal fit for our old friend Happy Pete. The Phillies had a gaping hole at third base, and they have a lineup good enough to hide Feliz's many weaknesses with the bat. As amazing as it seems, Phillies third basemen last year were collectively worse than Pedro. Much worse. As bad as Feliz was, at least the Giants weren't giving 287 plate appearances to Abraham Nunez.

Now that Feliz is hitting at the bottom of a great lineup and is now moving into a very homer-friendly ballpark, I'd be willing to bet that he smacks 30 homers and knocks in 110 runs. This wouldn't mean he would be any better, obviously, as his OBP would still surely suck. However, I'd bet that if Feliz does bust out those artificially good counting stats, myriad sportswriters who don't understand Park Factors and lineup context will ream the Giants for letting Feliz go. Meanwhile, us Giants fans who know better will just lean back and chuckle softly to ourselves.

So it seems that this deal works out for all involved. Feliz gets to go to greener pastures playing for a contending team, and the Giants get to be rid of Pedro Feliz. All is well. Meanwhile, the Phils get the best fielding third baseman in the majors, and his horrid plate discipline will be sort of hidden by all the runs being produced by guys like Chase Utley and Ryan Howard. I'm not sure why they felt they had to tack on a second year for the honor, though.

So with Feliz gone, the Giants would seem to have a hole at third base. Or do they? The in-house option is Kevin Frandsen, who used to be regarded as the heir apparent to Ray Durham at second base, but who is now stuck between a rock and a hard place after the Giants re-upped Durham after the 2006 season. I used to be a big disbeliever in Frandsen's usefulness at third, but now that I think about it...why not?

Frandsen's defense isn't going to match Pedro's, but his ability to get on base is almost certain to be light years better. Frandsen is also criticized for being a slap hitter without much power, but, as I've mentioned on this blog before, his career slugging percentage in the minors is .458. That might not translate to a .450 slugging rate in the majors, but for the sake of comparison, Feliz hasn't topped .430 since 2004, and he'll be 33. Frandsen will be 26 and has room for improvement. Frandsen also turned it on in a big way at the end of last year, posting a .906 OPS in September in 73 at-bats.

So, really, it's worth the Giants' time to see what Frandsen can do, especially since 2008 should be regarded as a learning year, of sorts. I think a reasonable expectation would be for Frandsen to turn into Bill Mueller, and we all loved Mueller for a very long time. I'd much rather give Frandsen 300 at-bats, find out he can't play, and then move on to something else rather than go out and pick up some crappy veteran who we know can't play, and then watch Brian Sabean bitch some more when the guy sucks and the fans get testy.

Speaking of crappy veterans, here are some other third base options, in order of the level of rumor buzz surrounding them and the Giants:

Joe Crede: Word was abuzz this morning that the Giants had a deal in place for Crede, the White Sox third baseman, to be made when Crede proves he's healthy in the spring. If the Giants give up anything valuable (like, say, Jonathan Sanchez) for Crede they should be ashamed of themselves. Crede is a terrific fielder, but he's also a terrible hitter who has had one good full season (2006) in his entire career, and even then he put up a poor .323 OBP.

So the equation becomes good glove + bad bat= Feliz part deux? Kind of, but what's scarier is that from 2003-2005 Crede was putting up sub-Felizian numbers while playing in a hitter's park. At least Feliz had the excuse that Mays Field squashes home run numbers. Add in the fact that Crede missed almost all of last year with a back injury, and back injuries for players turning 30 tend to not really go away, and this just seems like the worst possible solution. Why let the cure for third base be worse than the disease?

OT Stupid Side Note: Did you realize that Crede won the Silver Slugger Award in 2006...ahead of ARod? Yeah, that's right. I mean, Crede had a pretty good year, hitting .283/.323/.506 with 30 home runs. ARod hit .290/.392/.523, though, with 35 homers. Yes, that's a bad year by ARod standards, but that still beats Crede's production, especially in OBP. I doubt anybody pays attention to Silver Sluggers anyway, and nor should they, so I guess I shouldn't get too worked up, but sheesh.

Also, did you know that Crede has a cousin who closed for a short period of time in the late-60's? Add that to your collection of useless info to bore people at parties with.

Morgan Ensberg: I love the huge 2005 and I love the 101 walks in 2006, but at this point he's pretty much a train wreck. He'll still draw a walk, but his power seems to be completely gone and a lot of that may have been aided by Houston's short left field porch. As a cheap one-year flyer, he's a better option than Crede, but that's not saying much.

Dallas McPherson: He's completely dropped off of the face of the rumor planet, which is interesting because he'd seem to garner a lot of interest from young, rebuilding teams. Or teams that should be rebuilding, like, say, the Giants. McPherson put up monster numbers in the minor leagues, but his performance in the majors has left a lot to be desired, and now he's an injury-riddled former phenom trying to find his way again. As a spring training invitee battling for a job, he'd be a wonderful guy to give a shot to, because the power potential that made the Angels go gaga once upon a time is likely still there.

Sadly, his agent is Scott Boras, which probably means he's looking for a major league deal, perhaps even for more than one year. Guaranteed money for a guy who is coming off back surgery and who couldn't break a .300 OBP in three major league tryouts? No thanks.

Justin Leone: I've been curious to see what this guy could do if given a real chance in the majors, but it looks like he's destined to go the way of Roberto Petagine. He hit .269/.383/.498 at AAA Fresno last year and the Giants threw him a spring training invite for 2008. He'll be 30 and his ZiPS projections (.233/.319/.375) are totally uninspiring, but he's never been given a good chance and he'd cost virtually nothing to take up a roster spot. His career batting line in the minors is .260/.363/.480, so it seems like he's got something to offer. If the Giants aren't going to give Frandsen a shot, then Leone is my guy.

--It's probably a sad attempt at patting myself on the back, but at least give me some credit for correctly predicting where Feliz would go, sort of.

--One more thing. Bold prediction for 2008: Feliz leads the majors in GIDPs. It would seem to make sense with Pedro's lack of patience and all of the runners he'll have on base for him. You heard it here first.

Labels: happy pete, joe crede, kevin frandsen, positional battles

All right, take a good look at this pic...













Now look and see how it relates to this link right here...

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3219098

We're free!!!!!!!

Labels: bad movie analogies, happy pete

The sensation I feel right about now after Pedro Feliz's decision to decline the Giants' arbitration offer is somewhat akin to what Chief Bromden must have felt at the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, either the book or the film, take your pick. I feel like I've been stuck in a nuthouse for years, with all sorts of loonies surrounding me and one hell of a bitch nurse who won't let me go out on a freaking boat trip. Only instead of the likes of George Sorenson obsessively washing his hands, there's Brian Sabean, poking me with a small plastic baseball bat and jabbering on and on nonsensically about the Giants' need to fill the team with proven vets to surround Barry Bonds. Like it was for poor Chief Broom, it's been a long series of hallucinations of stupid personnel decisions that only a madman could think would improve a baseball team.

Now, with this one move, my eyes have been awakened. I don't feel small anymore. I can grab Pedro Feliz, throw him through the window, and run and run all the way into a new Giants era. "I been away a long time", indeed. I've been away too long from horrible first pitch hacks at sliders two feet off the plate, from weakly hit grounders to the shortstop in crucial late-game situations, from OBP numbers that would make Johnny LeMaster hold his nose.

This, fellow Giants fans, is known as progress. If the Giants really want to move on and get younger and better, jettisoning one of the worst hitters in baseball is a great way to start. Now the Giants can sit back and pray that some dumb team (the Twins perhaps, as they seem to have the same disregard for on-base percentage that the Giants do) will sign Feliz and they can get a draft pick out of the whole debacle. Getting a draft pick for Feliz after his years of suckitude is a little like being given a napkin after having a bag of manure dumped on you, but it'll have to do.

The most talked-about in-house option to replace Feliz is Kevin Frandsen. A lot of Giants fans (including me, at least until recently) are worried that Frandsen won't be a feasible option at third base because his power is lacking for the position. Here's the thing: so is Feliz's. Over the past three years, despite the double digit home runs, Feliz hasn't broken a .430 slugging percentage one time. That's not good. Meanwhile, Frandsen's career slugging in the minor leagues is .458. Meanwhile, it goes without saying that his ability to get to first base is also clearly better.

Bottom line: Frandsen may not be the answer in the long run, but it's worth a shot to find out if he can at least be Bill Mueller. If nothing else, the chances of him being a better player than Feliz, even without the defense, are so high I'd throw all my roulette chips on it. Even last season, Frandsen's .331 OBP dwarfed Feliz's hideous .290 mark, and Frandsen also out-VORPed him 2.9 to -2.7, despite having nearly 250 less at-bats (!).

--Before I get too excited, it must be pointed out that there is still a chance that Feliz could come back to the Giants. In the olden days, if a player refused, or was refused, arbitration with his former team, he could not renegotiate with that team until May 1 of the next year. Under the new CBA, though, starting this offseason, a team can now negotiate with a player any time it wants after the arbitration deadline.

The only difference would be that, if Feliz does come crawling back, it'd be on the Giants' terms. Like, the team could say "here's $2 million to be a part-time player and defensive specialist, take it or leave it." Which is the way it should have been since forever.

Labels: happy pete, ken kesey is rolling in his grave, kevin frandsen

I'm going to do it again. I'm going to defend Pedro Feliz. Lock up your children, chain down your pets, 'cause this is going to get ugly. I know, I know, I should be ashamed of myself, but I believe in justice, even if it means I have to go to the mat for one of the most abominable players in all of baseball.

Yesterday the Gold Gloves winners were announced in each league, with the usual spate of horrid picks mixed in with some deserving winners. Rob Neyer breaks it down succinctly here. Truthfully, I stopped giving a crap about this award several years ago. Nobody knows who to vote for, and if the voters on these things don't care enough to do even a cursory bit of research (at least enough to realize that Derek Jeter isn't anywhere near the top fielding shortstop), then why should we care who wins?

Generally, the coaches and managers just give the awards to star players or players who have won several times before. No-hit/all glove types on bad teams rarely get any love, even though they're often the most deserving. The past few years, Houston's Adam Everett has been the best fielding shortstop in the majors, and it hasn't even been close, and yet he hasn't even gotten a sniff from the voters, who decided that since Omar Vizquel had won it a bunch of times he must still be the best (sorry, Omar). Kansas City's Tony Pena could make a great case for the best fielding AL shortstop this year, but nobody's ever heard of him and he can't hit, so TS, Tony.

That brings us to Feliz, a horrible hitter on a bad Giants team, but yet who in 2007 was a fantastic fielder. As I noted here a few months ago, Feliz ranks as the very best third baseman by any metric. Usually all of the fielding numbers, both old school and newfangled, tend to disagree, but when they all point conclusively to one outcome, that Feliz is the man, chances are the stats aren't playing tricks with you. Sadly, he lost out to David Wright, who I'm sure can pick it, but the numbers say it all. Hell, even my eyes could see it. Feliz looked stellar this year.

So a big giant whiff for the Gold Glove voters, but it's nothing new. Again, I stopped caring about this a while ago, but it really would be nice to see a guy who is so clearly head and shoulders above everybody else at least get some recognition from the people who are supposedly watching him day in, day out..

Feliz takes a lot of shit on this blog, and deservedly so, but I also believe in a sense of fairness, and this is just not right. Some people still do take the Gold Gloves seriously, so let history show that poor Pedro got snubbed.

--I should point out that, no, Mr. Sabean, I am not campaigning for Feliz to be brought back, and this talk I hear of a 2 year/$8 million deal gives me the urge to run and bow before the porcelain god. I appreciate Feliz's glove, really I do, but it's not enough to make up for his hideous bat. Nothing is.

See, I ended this post on a Feliz-bashing note. I'm not getting soft after all.

Labels: happy pete, stupid award voting

It's not every day that you wake up and find yourself allied with your worst enemy. I was perusing Google the other day when I came across Mahalo.com, which is a neat little search engine. Now, if you do a search for "Pedro Feliz" (don't ask), you come to this page. Now scroll down to the part headlined "Pedro Feliz Fansites". I think you can probably guess where this is going.

That's right, there I am, in all my glory, classified as a Pedro Feliz fansite. This is just a dark, dark day. For three years, Feliz has been the scourge of my existence as a Giants fan. For three years, I've called him all manner of bad names and ranted about his bad hitting and his poor OBP, and yet somehow I now run a Pedro Feliz fansite!!!! It's like all my efforts to demean the man have all been for naught. I might as well just wear a badge that says "Paul Rice: Pedro Feliz Fan" on my chest, like my own personal scarlet letter.

Now well-meaning yet unenlightened Giants fans will stumble onto Stankeye expecting a Feliz lovefest. I guess they'll be in for a surprise when they discover that the most commonly referred-to nickname for Feliz here is "fuckass". Thanks a lot, Mahalo.com.

Apparently to twist the knife even more, Feliz wants to come back to the Giants on a multi-year deal. So can we look forward to several more years of Feliz rah-rah-ing from this loyal "fansite"? If so, just kill me now, in slow mo, a la "Stranglehold" (kickass game by the way).

I'd say that the Giants aren't stupid enough to actually give Feliz said multi-year contract, but the team has made so many dumb decisions in the last few years, I'd be willing to bet that it does happen. It's like the end of The Terminator, as thunder crackles in the distance and the dark clouds start to roll in, and some random gas station attendant puts down the SF Chronicle sports section and says ominously, "There's a storm coming." And I sit there in my jeep with my Feliz-sniffing dog and say, "Yeah, I know."

Labels: happy pete, stankeye misinterpreted agendas

Yeah, you read that right. On his blog The Soul of Baseball, Joe Posnanski has been doing a series on the best fielders at every position, based on the cumulative results of a number of defensive metrics, both old school and newfangled, and also just based on his two good eyes. His verdict on who the best fielding third baseman in the majors is? That's right, it's our old flailing friend Happy Pete. Here's a snippet of what Posnanski has to say:

>"Statistically there is absolutely and positively no doubt that Feliz is the best defensive third baseman in baseball. None. For you traditionalists, he has the best fielding percentage. For the Bill James lover in all of us, he has the highest fielding range. For those looking for a little bit of a statistical edge, he has the best zone rating. And for those, like me, who love John Dewan’s plus/minus system, Feliz is FAR AND AWAY the best in baseball."<

Holy crap. I was pretty sure that Feliz was near the top of the list, but the best? Posnanski brings up the statistical portion because, in his view, Feliz has ugly mechanics and sure as hell doesn't look like he's a Gold Glover. However, I think most Giants fans agree with me that from watching him day in, day out, it's been pretty clear for a long time that he's an exceptional fielder, and you don't need any crazily-acronymed stats to see it.

Fielding stats are notoriously hard to decipher, because, for one thing, it's difficult to distinguish how much a player's fielding ability is being impacted by his environment (think Fenway Park's Green Monster or Mays Field's massive right-center field), his pitchers, or even his teammates (like Derek Jeter's mysterious improvement when ARod partnered with him in 2004). Fielding percentage is perhaps the worst way to evaluate fielding, while range factor is better but still pretty bad (it's useless in evaluating first basemen). Other, more advanced statistics like Ultimate Zone Rating, Fielding Runs Above Average (a BP stat), John Dewan's plus/minus, and David Pinto's Probablistic Model of Range, are some of the best in terms of cutting through the smoke, but even they have their holes.

The thing is, usually all of these statistics disagree. One model will find a player to be the best at his position, while another will find that same player to be one of the worst. In this case, though, they're all spitting out the same result, and that means that something else is going on. If all of these normally combative elements suddenly join hands and verify what our eyes have been telling us, then it stands to reason that, yes, Feliz is the best fielding third baseman in the majors. Congrats, Pedro. This is the first time in the history of this blog that I've said something complimentary about you. Mark this day.

The question now is whether or not Pedro's sparkling defense is worth his hideous bat. A .294 OBP is pretty tough to take no matter how much of a genius you are with the glove. Its not like Feliz is Ozzie Smith here. It's the same old debate we had about Mike Matheny. Awful hitter, but great defensive player. We could gauge how much Matheny's bat was killing the lineup (as it turned out, he was decent in '05, his only full season with the Giants), but not how much his defense was helping. With Feliz, he's one of the worst hitters in the league, except that he's playing a position that isn't as difficult as Matheny's.

Basically this just confirms what I've been saying about Feliz all along. His super defense and his ability to smack one out of the yard should make him a pretty good spare part. Use him as a late-inning defensive replacement or as a once-in-a-while starter and you've got a useful ballplayer, like he was in 2003. As an everyday player, though, even with the D, Feliz is a miserable option. Baseball Prospectus has Feliz at a VORP of 0.0. That means he's the very definition of a guy who should be replaced.

Hopefully Brian Sabean doesn't read Joe Posnanski, because come free agent time that little snippet may be enough to make our fearless GM wet his pants and award Feliz with a multi-year deal.

-Brief Plug: I meant to plug this earlier, but it slipped my mind. Matt Johanson, co-author of the book Giants: Where Have You Gone?, has a new book coming out titled Game Of My Life, a collection of stories involving some of the most beloved past Giants players. My favorite part, though, is the chapter on Brian Dallimore, the obscure journeyman who had one shining moment in the bigs when he hit a grand slam off of Dontrelle Willis in 2004.

All information regarding the book and how to order it can be found here.

Labels: defense, happy pete