RSS Feed
Filed under: Uncategorized
One of the concepts that I’ve been thinking about more recently is defense.
The ugly stepchild of sabermetrics family tree, defense has never liked to do out on the family outings with pitching and hitting or take part in board game night. We’ve never really been able to relate.
But with the stats available, so far the Giants are not faring well.
The team is currently 17 plays below average in the Hardball Times plus/minus ratings, good for second-worst in the National league (good lord, the Pirates are bad, at -30). That’s 17 extra outs for Giants’ pitchers.
Part of the problem is that the Giants infield has only made 61 out of zone plays, compared with a league average of 75. I still have a lot to learn about defensive metrics (one of the reasons I’m writing this) but that seems to suggest that the Giants are missing some infield range as players aren’t able to go much further than the area designated to them.
Indeed, Giants infielders rank very low in RZR, the percentage of balls in their zone turned into outs. Ray Durham and Eugenio Velez each have the lowest ratings for their inning levels (186 and 287 respectively), Jose Castillo is 12th among qualified players at third, and if Rich Aurilia qualified at first he’d be just ahead of Prince Fielder, fourth-worst in the league
The Giants shortstops have fielded better, as was to be expected for a trio of no-hit, all field players in Emanuel Burriss, Brian Bocock and Omar Vizquel. Combined they have basically been Kahil Greene, playing 530 innings with 19 OOZ plays.
In a season heralded as “Pitching and Defense to the Rescue!” the defense part has not been up to par. While the team FIP is only .03 lower than actual ERA (4.31 to 4.34) this team doesn’t have the offense to support “average” in the field. The solace of course is that a majority of the offenders may be gone next year, but this will be something to keep an eye on as Sabean rebuilds this team over the next few years.
The Giants really tried to squeeze an entire season into the last week.
There was a historical milestone in Omar Vizquel breaking Luis Apparicio’s mark for most games played at shortstop, a sweep of NL West leaders Arizona (including victories over Randy Johnson and Dan Haren), a triple play, a 13-inning game and the Annexation of Puerto Rico.
But in the end it seems unfulfilling. The team sandwiched that sweep – one of the best moments of the young season – between a pair of losses to the Marlins and the Padres. They were unable to win the day Omar broke Aparicio’s record or the day they honored it.
One of the things I love about baseball can be the most maddening. With 162 games there are just as many opportunities for spectacular moments, tiny glimpses that can make almost any team seem just a step away from taking over the league. As great as the Diamondbacks sweep was one game, albeit a 13-inning killer, can make it all seem like it happened months ago.
Bad teams are most often inconsistent, and we’ve seen that with the Giants. As great as some times have been, stretches where it seems like 2009 could be better than we think it will, there are games where the only team with a worse record in the NL West can take it all away.
May’s now over, ending a month where the Giants bats seemed to wake up to some extent. Their .269/.333/.422 slash over the month was good for a 105 OPS+, meaning this team was actually above-average the whole month. That’s with this past week, which saw the team post a .245/.317/.381.
That jump has come fortunately from veterans such as Ray Durham (127 OPS+ in May), Aaron Rowand and Benjie Molina, I say fortuntely becuase as the months now start with ‘J’ it’s time to start thinking about getting anything we can to build forward.
With that in mind maybe this week wasn’t so bad. If there’s anytime to try to live a lifetime in a week it’s just before the trade deadline, when every little thing gets so blown out of proportion players such as Durham and Molina can seem valuable to a contender. So yeah, Giants, keep on living like there is no tomorrow. Becuase hopefully for a few, there isn’t. At least not in San Francisco.
