Giants continue yo-yo / catch as catch can strategy with hitting prospects

I agree 100% with this synopsis of the Giants recent roster moves from When the Giants come to Town.... Let's see, what's new today, Jarrett Parker (??) and Matt Duffy up, and I Don't Know (THIRD BASE?!?) who heading back down.

The young hitters especially have to feel like they are on a yo-yo.

Whether it's Duvall, Panik, Susac or others over the years, the Giants are either not patient enough with the young hitters they develop or worse they know their organizational weakness and just hope to catch lightning in a bottle here and there. That kind of  'catch as catch can' strategy is ridiculous.

When the Giants Come to Town...:

I do have a couple of concerns with the way Sabes has handled this deadline: 

 1.  I disagree with the way he has publicly tied his aggressiveness, or lack of same, in the TRADE MARKET with the recent performance of the team.  If he thinks trading away prospects for a veteran or two is throwing good money after bad, he should keep it to himself.  To tie it to the recent performance of the team, then to do nothing is sending a message to the players that he does not believe in them and has the potential to further demoralize them at at time when they need a boost of confidence.  Even today, he was musing to the media about not liking the feel of the recent homestand.  I don't think anybody liked the feel of it, but I would have preferred that Sabes simply say, "you know, there was nothing on the market that I believe was enough of an upgrade on the guys we have to justify the cost.  We're still in this race despite the recent losing and I believe we can get it done without a trade.  Instead, it looked like the old thin-skinned Sabes getting defensive about his non-activity and throwing his own players under the bus in defending it. 

 2.  The shuffling of prospects in and out has become almost comical.  It seems directionless and based on yesterday's minor league boxscores rather than any development plan for the prospects.  It's trying to catch lightning in a bottle and trying with a different bottle every day!  I mean, the Uggla promotion was ridiculous.  I would have preferred that Abreu get the PT, but Abreu was up for just a few days and got a total of 4 PA's.  Now it's Matt Duffy and Jarrett Parker, both guys who I like, but you have to wonder what the plan is for either of them.  Does this mean Panik gets less PT or is Crawford going to lose PT at SS?  I guess Matt Duffy will be the back up at both SS and 2B and Parker could conceivably  be the regular CF.  We'll see how much PT either of them get.  At this point, I just want them to make a commitment to somebody, for better or worse, and stick with it.

'via Blog this'

Sorry to get all geeky on y'all but I agree with this analysis that pegs the point at which you "know" what you have in a hitter at 650 PA's - -and I think the scouting community goes along with this type of statistical guidelines well.

It seems as if the Giants are smarter than everyone else with regards to hitters and can make a valid determination after 65 PA's. Time to add back the zero guys.

When Samples Become Reliable | FanGraphs Baseball

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Cutter basically searched for the point at which split-half reliability tests produced a 0.70 correlation or higher. A split-half reliability test involves finding the correlations between partitions of one dataset. For instance, taking all of Burrell’s evenly numbered plate appearances and separating them from the odd ones, and then running correlations on both. When both are very similar, the data becomes more reliable. Though a 1.0 correlation indicated a perfect relationship, 0.70 is usually the ultimate benchmark in statistical studies, especially relative to baseball, when DIPS theory was derived from correlations of lesser strength. Without further delay, here are the results of his article as far as when certain statistics stabilize for individual hitters:

50 PA: Swing %
100 PA: Contact Rate
150 PA: Strikeout Rate, Line Drive Rate, Pitches/PA
200 PA: Walk Rate, Groundball Rate, GB/FB
250 PA: Flyball Rate
300 PA: Home Run Rate, HR/FB
500 PA: OBP, SLG, OPS, 1B Rate, Popup Rate
550 PA: ISO

Cutter went to 650 PA as his max, meaning that the exclusion of statistics like BA, BABIP, WPA, and context-neutral WPA indicates that they did not stabilize. So, here you go, I hope this assuages certain small sample misconceptions and provides some insight into when we can discuss a certain metric from a skills standpoint. There are certain red flags with an analysis like this, primarily that playing time is not assigned randomly and by using 650 PA, a chance exists that a selection bias may shine through in that the players given this many plate appearances are the more consistent players. Cutter avoids the brunt of this by comparing players to themselves. Even so, these benchmarks are tremendous estimates at the very least.

In conclusion, to reiterate what was mentioned in When the Giants come to Town....'s blog:

At this point, I just want them to make a commitment to somebody, for better or worse, and stick with it.