Giants as the anti-A's

Hey thanks there, Einstein. I'm glad that the Giants are considere the anti-A's in more ways than one. I'm also glad when any one of the pro-scout, anti-Moneyball teams like the Giants, the Cardinals, the Braves and even the Royals win. These teams still retain a lot of the charm of old-school scouting and player development with a smattering of statistical analysis.

I read somewhere that the amount of statistical analysis in baseball has gone up exponentially by some insane amount or another. I guarantee most of these teams are just gathering data as a CYA exercise and have no idea what they are looking at or what to do with most of it.

from sfgiants.com
Giants' latest title offers questions, answers | sfgiants.com:

Maybe the wrong Bay Area baseball franchise was celebrated in a best-selling book and a feature film that grossed more than $100 million worldwide. Certainly the Oakland A's and general manager Billy Beane offered a compelling story for the world to absorb with "Moneyball."

The Giants are perceived as the anti-A's, and yet San Francisco's the team that keeps ordering championship flags and rings.

As the Giants' GM, Sabean has created a culture in which many baseball-operations employees don't want to leave the organization. He asks for unswerving loyalty, but he also reciprocates it. The resulting "collective collaboration," as Sabean called it, helps the Giants act in concert when reaching a baseball-related decision.

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This article from Tracy Ringolsby tends to support my point. The top NL franchises of the last 19 years ( the length of Brian Sabean's tenure ) have been none other than the Giants, the Cardinals and the Braves. All of these franchises lean more towards scouting and player development than statistical analysis.

from Tracy Ringolsby:
Sabean Doesn’t Want Attention, Just Wins « Write 'em Cowboy:

And under his guidance the Giants, in the last 19 years have:

–Third best winning percentage in the NL (1,556-1,358, .534) behind the Braves (1,651-1,263, .567) and Cardinals (1,545-1,319, .547).

–Played more post-season games (76) than any NL team other than the Cardinals (121) and have a better post-season winning percentage (.605) than any team that has played at least 34 post-season games.

–Have made four World Series appearances, the only NL team other than the Cardinals, who also have made four, to have been in the World Series more than twice, and have won an NL-best three World Series in the last 18 years.

And don’t forget he took advantage of the San Diego Padres decision to fire manager Bruce Bochy by quickly signing Bochy to oversee things at AT&T Park.

Not bad for a franchise being run by an “idiot.’’

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Pitch Counts according to Bumgarner

Madison Bumgarner has a 0.29 career ERA in the World Series. (USA Today)

He will be a hero to the old-school pitching coaches who do not buy into the pitch count revolution and believe that it, and not the lowering of the mound, has led to the disappearance of the dominant starting pitcher from the World Series scene. If they need him, he throws. He will have a lot of rest before his next pitch thrown in anger after tonight, so he gives them what he's got when he's asked.

from Yahoo Sports:
Giants' Game 7 hopes rest with Tim Hudson, and if not him, then Madison Bumgarner - Yahoo Sports:

Four outs from Peavy and 20 from the bullpen Tuesday night netted the Giants a 10-0 shellacking and an invitation to Game 7. Bumgarner threw 117 pitches just Sunday night, and he'd have two – really, by game time, nearly all of three – days off. Asked how many pitches he believed he could throw if called upon, Bumgarner half-smiled and said, "Maybe 200, I don't know. As long as you're getting outs. Pitch counts are overrated." Especially, presumably, on Oct. 29. "I think it's overrated all the time," he said.

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Regardless of what happens tonight, Bumgarner has posted a stat line for the ages in this World Series and will leave Giants fans wishing that Bochy had been able to line him up for Games 1, 4 and 7 right from the get-go. Which is how it SHOULD have been done. This type of adjustment on the fly is awkward and clunky and has the whiff of a desperation move. ADVANTAGE ROYALS.  that we're even talking in terms of how quickly we can throw Hudson from the train and climb aboard the Bummer Express.

If the Royals see Bumgarner get the call from the bullpen, they get the chance to at best dirty up the pretty little stat line and at worst virtually erase it from the narrative of history. All it takes is a well-placed, well-timed bloop or a bomb. It would be hard to envision a scenario where Bummer gets the call without the Giants being behind in the score. At that point, the onus would be on Bumgarner to hold the Royals in place while the Giants bi-polar offense gets to work. Less a savior or a Superman coming out of a phone booth ( speaking of which, where's Posey been? ) and more of a place-holder.

This game will be very quickly move from "momentum is your next days' starting pitcher, more "2 out RBI's get you to heaven". It will be what heroes and goats are made of in the post-mortem.

Game 7 of the World Series: It doesn't get any better than that

Because all the pre-game speculation, all the "Royals will win because home teams have won XX% of Game 7's" or the "Giants can bring back Madison Bumgarner and he's invincible" melts away into history and then is argued about for eternity based on your perspective.

I read this clip about the 1985 World Series from Wikipedia about Bill James perspective as a Royals fan on the 1985 World Series -- a touchy subject for Cardinals fans -- and it dawned on me that while KC can take the Jamesian perspective that the Denkinger bad call had no material effect on the outcome of that Series, "the Cardinals just needed to get the next out" or "just keep your poise, don't meltdown, win the next day", etc. All valid points, there is another perspective. You could just as easily take the St. Louis cardinals fans perspective that perhaps the Kansas City Royals are Instant Replay away from being the baseball version of the Buffalo Bills with the cardinals having another World Series title on their resume.

Kansas City Royals - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

The baseball statistical analyst Bill James wrote a chapter in the 1986 edition of his Baseball Abstract titled "A History of being a Kansas City Royals Baseball Fan." In the style of an opinion piece as a longtime Royals fan, rather than in his usual analytical tone, James commented that "The truth is, the Royals kicked the holy crap out of the Cardinals" in the 1985 Series. The chapter asserts that it was the Cardinals' overconfidence and the Royals' ability to engage the Cardinals in "a conservative game of baseball chess," not simply Denkinger's controversial call, that led to the Cardinals' collapse, "leaving any other arguments...cutting little or no ice."

Following James's comments in the book, the Royals failed to make a single post-season appearance until earning a spot in the 2014 American League Wild Card Game. Many reasons besides one fan's hubris and a Cubs-style billy-goat curse exist for the Royals' 29-year long playoff drought, including their status as a "small-market team" without the budget or broadcast revenue to attract and keep playing talent. The timing of James's comments in the 1986 Abstract, juxtaposed with the beginning of the Royals' postseason drought, however, remains clear.

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Anyway, the 2014 season ends tonight one way or the other and the results will be the retained for posterity.

But that's where the real fun of baseball actually begins: the post results debate over what should have happened, what could have happened versus what actually happened. And that, my friends will always clouded by your individual perspective. And that is what makes history and debates. The Game will be over soon enough, the rest of the stuff is virtually endless.

Game 7 of the World Series - Bring it On!!!!

Bochy likely one win away from a ticket to Cooperstown | New York Post

Giants manager Bruce Bochy has had a lot to smile about.

Photo: Getty Images
.....and Giants fans will have an awful lot to smile about as well if he is able to seal the deal. Two shots and veterans like Peavy and Hudson taking them with Bumgarner in emergency reserve. I will say this, if Peavy can't win in his second shot against Ventura......I don't know what to say except maybe he's not destined to get a ring. Hudson could follow up the next night and save his butt, but I wouldn't want to cede momentum back to the Royals at home forcing a Game 7. It is really a must-win for both clubs, which could make for another nail-biter. With the Giants, they all seem to be nail-biters. 

from the New York Post:
Bochy likely one win away from a ticket to Cooperstown | New York Post:

Bochy led the Giants to World Series titles in 2010 and 2012. Now the Giants are nine innings shy of a third title that would make him a lock for the Hall of Fame.
Of the four managers — Sparky Anderson, Miller Huggins, John McGraw and Tony La Russa — with exactly three World Series victories, all are in the Hall of Fame. A victory in Game 6 or 7 would reserve a spot in Cooperstown for the former catcher who played nine years in the big leagues and is a lot better manager than he was a player.

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The Hollywood story-book ending would be for Peavy and Bochy, who go way back with the Padres to complete each other's careers and ride off into the sunset as the dramatic background music plays. 

The Royals are making weird "still just happy to be here" type comments, even Yost, which would be a bit disturbing to me as a fan, so maybe they come back to earth after bludgeoning led by Bumgarner. My feeling is when the other team scores 15 consecutive runs on you, some sort of response is in order and we'll see if an aging Peavy can deliver the knockout blow, even though it appears as if he has lost the knockout punch of his youth. 

Royals put the crown on a little early, pay the price

(USA Today)

http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/63106348/v36860095

Vargas thinks he took ball four

 10/25/14 | 00:36

10/25/14: Pitcher Jason Vargas thinks he took ball four and makes his way toward first base as his teammates share a laugh

To me, this was the turning point of the game. They Royals start clowning, vision of sugar plums dancing in their heads. The sugar plum being a 3-1 World Series lead, which means we're playing with house money against Bumgarner and go back home no worse than up 3-2 with two games at home to close it out. The Giants are imploding, Vogelsong knocked out, Machi looking knocked up. Why not? 

Only problem is, it's only the third inning and your playing against a former champ. Vargas goes out to the mound all loosey-gooey'd up and begins puking it up, slowly but surely. When you're in a tug of war against an equal opponent and you let up on the pull for even an instant, you can get pulled over the line yourself. IMO, that's what happened to the Royals. They lost the focus that got them in front and it cost them, big time. You can't start your touchdown dance on the 5-yard line and that's what they did. 

Leon Lett Super Bowl XXVII

Of course, Dallas still went on to win 52-17, but Leon Lett still looked like a horse's ass. Speaking of which, it reminded me of another similar moment, that being one Dusty Baker handing the World Series trophy ball to Russ Ortiz, right before the Angels rallied right to the 2002 World Series championship, blowing the doors off the Giants. 

This game was a microcosm of the Giants roller coaster season, within a two or three inning span. They started out looking like a 100-win team, they were on that pace, then the injuries and they begin looking like a 100-loss team and they played at that pace and worse. Within this game, the Giants started out looking like a playoff team, by the fourth inning they had morphed into a 100-loss plus team on the verge of imploding, and then right before our eyes went back to looking like world-beaters. 

I can't recall seeing anything quite like it. The closest parallels I could come with was ironically, the Cardinals sudden implosion against the Royals in their last World Series trip in 1985 and perhaps the 1969 Amazing Mets, in that people perceived them to still be a 100-loss team while they had morphed into a no nonsense 100-win team that just crushed their so-called "better" competitors throughout the playoffs. 

I have to admit, I was having 1985 Cardinals flash-back memories the way the Giants looked in the third inning. Fortunate they turned things around, and hopefully the hitting not only continues, but adds a heaping helping of Buster Posey. I'm sorry, his bat replaces Hunter Pence's on the milk carton. He is not hitting where he is is to turn in productive OUTS!! He is there to provide productive, RBI-filled AB's. Period!! Time to step up. 

It was good to see Hunter Strickland get back on the horse and show not just a 95+ MPH fastball, but the slider, a splitter and a change-up. Where have those pitches been hiding?

And where would this team be without Yusmeiro Petit? Sitting home watching, probably. 

The speed at which Vogelsong lost command and control of the game worries me and he was perhaps pitching for his life in SF which is too bad. I worry the same, unfortunately about Jake Peavy and to a lesser extent Tim Hudson. Adrenaline only takes you so far, usually an inning or two, than ability takes over. That leaves 3-4 inning of trouble to get to our own, over-shadowed shut down bullpen. Could see more of Petit and perhaps Timmy Lincecum. 

It's where we like the ball to be, Madison Bumgarner's hands. I don't want to under estimate the odds of Big Game James Shields pitching two sub-par games in a row, so this could be a battle of the bullpens again, perhaps going into extra frames. As is often the case in World Series games, a player you least expect to have an impact has to step forward. Where have you gone Al Weis? Or Denny Doyle. 

No, Ned Yost didn’t “out-manage” Bruce Bochy. His players played better | HardballTalk

So now we're grading these guys game to game. Maybe I should be the first to toss my "Ned Yost Hall of Fame Manager" nomination into the ring. Good Grief, this is what happens with the 24/7, all news, all the time media circus that rules these events.

Lets' employ the KISS principle and Keep It Simple Stupid, OK? One game is the ultimate small sample size from which you cannot draw any real meaningful conclusions. And yet that's what we do. We've been around the block a couple of times with this in regards to Bochy out-managing (??) Mike Matheny and Matt Williams. I guess it can't just come down to the fact that his guys just made plays and the other team's manager's guys didn't make plays. Even though Matt Holliday broke down the Cards - Giants series in just this manner on the Doug Gottlieb Show.

from Hardball Talk:
No, Ned Yost didn’t “out-manage” Bruce Bochy. His players played better | HardballTalk:

It seems to me that, rather than focus on the managers like everyone seems so intent on doing, maybe we can just say that the Giants’ pitchers didn’t make good pitches when they needed to and the Royals handled everything that came their way in that sixth inning. I suppose it’s harder to get 800-1,000 words out of “the Royals hit the ball well and the Giants didn’t pitch too good” than it is to go on about managerial genius or the lack thereof, but the fact is that most games are decided by the players playing, not the chess moves the managers make. Last night was one of those games.

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This gets you to the Hall of Fame as a manager. Make a 26 game difference over the course of about 20 years. That is an almost imperceptible difference over a LONG period of time. But that doesn't fit well into the current news cycle nor the average baseball fans attention span. But that's baseball.


from Grantland.com
Is Bruce Bochy One of the Best Managers in Baseball History? (Yes. Here’s Why.) «:

Beating the Odds

Another way to measure a manager’s effectiveness is to compare his team’s win-loss record with its expected win-loss record. In Bochy’s case, we can see a clear pattern of his teams outperforming what you’d expect based on those run totals.

Bochy with the Padres

Year	Win-Loss	Expected Win-Loss	Difference
1995	70-74	72-72	-2
1996	91-71	90-72	+1
1997	76-86	73-89	+3
1998	98-64	93-69	+5
1999	74-88	74-88	0
2000	76-86	75-87	+1
2001	79-83	79-83	0
2002	66-96	66-96	0
2003	64-98	66-96	-2
2004	87-75	87-75	0
2005	82-80	77-85	+5
2006	88-74	86-76	+2

Bochy With the Giants

Year	Win-Loss	Expected Win-Loss	Difference
2007	71-91	77-85	-6
2008	72-90	68-94	+4
2009	88-74	86-76	+2
2010	92-70	94-68	-2
2011	86-76	80-82	+6
2012	94-68	88-74	+6
2013	76-86	74-88	+2
2014	88-74	87-75	+1

That’s a total of 26 extra wins over the course of his career.

Of course, one of the surest ways to outperform your expected record is to have a stacked bullpen. The closer for Bochy’s entire stay in San Diego was Trevor Hoffman, one of the best ever, so that certainly helped. In his eight years with the Giants, though, Bochy has cycled through multiple closers and many bullpen configurations, handing ninth-inning duties to everyone from Casilla and Sergio Romo to Wilson, and the immortal one-two punch of Old Armando Benitez and someone named Brad Hennessey. At a certain point, after 20 years of managing, with two teams and all kinds of rosters, you have to acknowledge the common denominator.

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This is why I cannot get on the "trash Mike Matheny" bandwagon. He went with the formula that got his team to the post-season, which BTW was further down the road than most of the so-called experts and prognosticators saw his team advancing to. So he should at least get some credit after the fact for getting there.



Mike Matheny: One-plan man - Viva El Birdos:

In Will Leitch's column over at Sports on Earth yesterday, he dissected Matheny's postseason managing prowess ad nauseum but this chunk really hit home:

Matheny formulated a plan --Gonzales throws two innings -- and maneuvered everything to rigidly follow that plan. When the plan fell into trouble, he had no backup plan, and he was doomed. The regular season requires only one plan; the postseason requires many. Matheny is a one-plan man.

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The fact that in putting all his decisions under the microscope after the fact may demonstrate some that were questionable is, as always just plain silly. I'm sure Mike Matheny and Matt Williams are smart enough to make intelligent decision with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. They don't have that luxury however. That's why they get the big bucks.

These same guys who criticize Matheny for being a one-plan man likely also had an article written for the "Matheny screwed up by panicking and deviating from the formula that got his team to the dance" if that scenario had played out.

It's brings to mind the classic Teddy Roosevelt quote about the critic:

http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/trsorbonnespeech.html

THE MAN IN THE ARENA                                          Excerpt from the speech "Citizenship In A Republic"                                          delivered at the Sorbonne, in Paris, France on 23 April, 1910 

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.