| Daniel Leroux. 21st May, 2010 - 10:18 pm
 Of the Giants 18 losses this season, 11 of them have come in games where the team scored two runs or less.
It is not surprising that teams rarely win when they score an extremely small amount of runs. As such, the fact that the Giants have a .153 winning percentage this season in games where they score two or less runs makes sense (the two wins: Barry Zito?s shutout of the Cardinals and a 2-1 win by Tim Lincecum over the Astros on Saturday). After all, scoring two runs or less necessitates allowing less than that, with the only possible victory margins being 1-0, 2-0, and 2-1. Even with a Giants? pitching staff whose A-game is higher than most other teams with a staff that has allowed the third-least runs in the league thus far, it just cuts the margins too thin to yield much success.
The problem here lies in the fact that the Giants have scored two or less runs in exactly one-third of their games thus far. The team is eighth from the bottom in total runs scored, yet this figure is inflated by a few big games with four games of nine + runs and two with eight. What this boom/bust pattern of run scoring does is negate much of the power of the starting rotation since it pushes so many games into the range where even a very good pitching performance is not enough. San Francisco is an excellent 20-6 in games where they score three or more runs (partially aided by the 5-1 record in games with eight or more runs scored).
While identifying the problem is somewhat easy, the more challenging proposition is ascertaining the root causes and more importantly figuring out how to correct them in both the short-term and the long-term.
The primary root issue with the Giants offense is readily apparently to nearly every hardcore fan: plate discipline. One of my personal favorite stats is O-Swing%. What it measures is what percentage of pitches out of the strike zone a player or team swings at. While some guys like Pablo Sandoval and Vladimir Guerrero are good bad ball hitters, it provides a very good gauge of a team?s patience. As of this writing, the Giants stand second to last in all of baseball in the category. This measure highly correlates to the Giants? other catastrophic figure in this area: Walk Rate. While miles ahead of the horrific Astros in the stat, San Francisco is sixth from the bottom in walk rate and a clear cut last in the division as every other NL West squad is in the top half of baseball. Though the team?s strikeout rate is not bad (7th in MLB), a team that swings at pitches out of the strike zone and does not walk makes life much, much easier for opposing pitchers.
The poor plate discipline is compounded by the Giants being a team that has a hard time moving runners around the diamond. They are in the bottom ten in speed rating and only have 15 stolen bases on the year. Eighteen different major leagues have nine or more (SF?s leader has five) and both Brett Gardner and Juan Pierre have more individually than the Giants as a team. Some of this is based on personnel as players like Bengie Molina, Pablo Sandoval, and the pitchers? spot are clearly not fleet of foot on the basepaths, yet it is also philosophical. Talking with the press after last Friday?s win against the Astros, Nate Schierholtz was asked about the aggressiveness that he and Andres Torres had shown on the basepaths that night. In the game, Nate stole a base and Torres? pushed the issue on the basepaths to help break open the game with help from two wild pitches from Felipe Paulino in the 5th inning.
When asked if the effort from these two players that helped win the game directed by Bruce Bochy or the coaching staff, Nate said ?No. Not necessarily,? which shows the attitude of the coaching staff. Even the two team leaders in steals who are the only two guys with more than two on the season and combine for more than half of the team?s total do not have the green light or specific attention on the point.
The confluence of these two factors explains much of the Giants? problems with consistency in run production this year, especially when combined with the third factor: complete lack of power. San Francisco is eighth from the bottom in home runs and in the bottom half for slugging percentage despite being #11 in batting average. These three factors combine to make a team that has trouble getting on base, advancing runners, and cannot generate baserunner-independent offense via home runs. When they can string hits together they can have big games like they did in the sweeps against Houston, yet they need to do that in order to be productive at all.
The disconcerting problem in the short term is that there is not much that can change from a personnel perspective. While the ballpark obviously hurts the team?s power numbers, the team also does not have anyone that can bring that pop who is not around already. Buster Posey should be a very good offensive player down the line, but power is not his forte. The singles machine Freddy Sanchez is an even more extreme example of this. Fortunately, both of those players can move better on the basepaths than the players they will replace, so if Bochy can get more aggressive in terms of steals those numbers could improve when combined with more exposure for Nate and Andres.
That said, there are a few encouraging signs for the long term. The Giants? two best hitters in terms of O-Swing% are Andres Torres and Matt Downs, with John Bowker and Nate staying in the top half of the team as well. Excluding the pitchers, the biggest offenders on the team thus far have been Aaron Rowand, Sandoval, Molina, and the putrid Eugenio Velez. Only one of those four should be on the team once their current contract runs out.
Since Brian Sabean has been a complete disaster in terms of drafting position players, whoever is in charge of personnel should put a focus on getting guys who have shown patience while also bringing in a coaching staff that can nurture and value it from the minors all the way up. Combining an improvement in this area with one or two guys with the power to move runners around the bases faster than station to station and ideally a leadoff hitter would make it so Timmy, Matt Cain, and the rest of the staff don?t need to worry about losing games 2-1.
After the game a week ago Friday, Todd Wellenmeyer said he ?could just feel? that the team was going to score runs for him the day after they got one-hit by the Padres. While that feeling did end up being correct, it?s time the starters had a reasonable expectation of a workable run margin instead of a hope. |
