Tuesday, January 16, 2018
Thoughts on Bobby's Big Gamble
As I was digesting the trade for Andrew McCutchen, the thought occurred to me: There is one guy who Bobby Evans and the Giants are making a huge gamble on, Chris Stratton. When Evans traded Matt Moore and his $9 M salary to get the financial room for this trade, he suddenly put Stratton in the #4 SP hole with a safety net consisting of Ty Blach, Tyler Beede, Andrew Suarez and Joan Gregorio. Not only that, but the #5 SP spot would need to be filled out of the latter 4 pitchers. Now, with just $4.5 M of CBT cap space to operate with and marginal SP's commanding $8-10 M/yr, that roster spot is not going to be filled by an obvious upgrade. Yes, the Giants will probably bring in at least one SP on a minor league deal. The word I've read is they are talking to RHP Scott Feldman, but even at that, Stratton is the guy they appear to be counting on to run with the #4 SP slot. So congratulations, Chris Stratton! The 2018 season rests on your right arm. No pressure on you or anything!
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Yes, 4 & 5 are ugly but, really, not as ugly as last year, but they need to be more than ugly, they need to at least be not bad!
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine Pirate fans being even mildly excited, they were much underwhelmed with the Cole trade which kinda helped the Giants -- they weren't going to get a piece key for the Giants!
Only Yelich fits for any key guys but, as you said, the Giants no matter what don't have enough to pull that off. I think TradeRumors doesn't think that anyone does!
I think there are a lot of gambles:
ReplyDelete1. Stratton, as you suggest. I think this is a nice development, given the way he seemed to flounder. But he has earned the shot.
2. Slater and Mac. Not so much for this year but for next year. If we have Cutch and Pence on one year deals, even if we put Duggar in CF, we have no depth behind them. Helios is several years away, as is Fabian and pretty much every other candidate for OF. So it means we will need to rely on the guys we got.
3. Fernandez--the Rule 5 kid? We have decent depth in the pen without Crick (frankly, he may not have made the squad as compared to Law, if both were to have a good spring). Yet somehow we did something we typically don't do, which is pick a Rule 5 guy who I don't think has pitched above Class A. Now, I know the Giants could always work a trade to keep him, but it makes you wonder.
Ultimately, I think the trade was ok and I liked it better than Longoria (both because of who we gave up and how long we're saddled with the contract). Of course we gave up less because of the short term rental. I am a tad worried about OF depth, especially if Pence does another disappearing act this year. I would prefer to go with Duggar in CF, and keep Mac/Parker as platoon guys, so it will be interesting to see what happens.
Pence did not disappear, he was injured. His second half (July-Sept) wasn't that bad, that would work in our new lineup.
DeleteI would note that Stratton's flounder was probably related to the concussion he suffered when he was hit in the head by a batted ball weeks after he was drafted. We don't know what the effects are or were, but he's finally the guy we were expecting when he was drafted.
Crick had two wipe-out pitches with ABs against below .160 (curveball (.110) and slider (.158)) and a heavy, hard-to-barrel fastball with a solid 14.2% swing-and-miss and yielded (with the fastball) just 2 XBHs in 41 batters because of the heavy sink that makes it so hard to barrell even if you make contact. Derek Law, even at his best, wasn't close to that, never mind what happened last year.
DeleteAnd, frankly, he had the best three-pitch mix of any reliever last year. Though I will note that Gearrin's slider was probably the single best pitch of any Giants' pitcher last year and is a ROMO-QUALITY SLIDER with a 21% wiff rate that makes it a ++ pitch. But Crick had a better mix and finally harnessed it.
And for him, and our #4 prospect, we got another one-year rental on a yet another falling apart CFer who, over the tailing off of his career ahs, once again, been one of the worst starting defensive CFers in virtually every metric. And isn't so much of an offensive up grade he's going to carry the load like Stanton or true difference might make.
Or possibly even make up for his defensive ineptitude.
In short, what I see is that we traded up-and-coming players for moving onto pipe-dreams and chronic-mediocrity while hampering our future efforts. My opinion on the trade is whoop-de-****ing-do. So we finish 75-87 and pretty much out-of-it by the trading deadline where we can sell more of the roster when we finally see we're nowhere near competing with the Dodgers, Yankees, Astros and Cubs.
In the end, this strongly reminds me of the same kind of BS that kept the 49ers, Giants and Warriors mired in chronic mediocrity, for decades at times, over my 50-years of fandom for those three teams.
Don't current projections have the Giants wining 85 games?
DeleteYeah, 85 was what I saw after the trade, but it seems to change every day, I think it's down to 83 now, not sure why it is moving so much up and down. Either way, not projected to finish at 75 wins, but roughly in range of the second wild card.
DeleteAnd that is with low projections for Bumgarner, Cueto, Melancon, and Smith, which if they bounce back to prior goodness, would add 2-5 WAR to whichever total WAR you want to use. For example, prior two seasons, Bum averaged 5.0 WAR but Steamer has him at 3.4 WAR; Cueto averaged 4.7 WAR, project at 2.5; Melancon 2.0 vs. 1.1.
That was the projection right after the trade, 85 games, but then it started going down for some reason (apparently the projections for players changed in the days afterward; ZiPS came out around the same time, perhaps they switched from Steamer to ZiPS or blended the two, but not sure at all what they do). It was down to 83.4 Wins when I last checked.
DeleteBarring significant injuries (which seem to strike the Giants in odd years), the Giants are better than mediocre, competitive for the last WC spot. If Bumgarner, Cueto, Melancon, and Smith can return to pre-injury production, that should get the Giants into competitive for the first WC spot with the Cards. I'm also expecting a bump up from Strickland, for some reason he is projected at 0.3 fWAR but has produced 0.8 for the past three seasons. I feel that these are likely.
While I saw MosesZD disdain for the mediocre brand of baseball exemplified in my youth from 1973 to 1986, and will always be on the lookout for any return to that, I don't think the Giants are at that stage at this moment. And if they can strike with their #2 pick in this year's draft, coupled with Heliot fulfilling the potential seen for him, I think the Giants can transition nicely to the 2020's and stay competitive, with Bumgarner as the transitional leader, backed by the vet Posey, and supported by the (current) NextGen Giants of Stratton, Duggar, Shaw, Beede, Suarez, Slater, Garcia, Garrett Williams, Gonzalez.
This was a horrible team last year. Moore, Cain, and Span were a big part of the problem and they are all gone. Third base and OF were huge gaping holes and we now have 2 good players who could easily be great again. The rotation is better than most even with Stratton and Blach (both pitched well at times last year with no offense and poor OF defense behind them).
ReplyDeleteWhat did Bobby really give up to inject some life into the worst team in the National League last year? One year of McCutchen in possibly his most motivated season ever for a low level CF prospect and found money in Crick. Longoria and stability at 3B for the next 4 years for Arroyo who was a nice story but had a low ceiling. A chance for Beede, Suarez, Stanton, and Blach to fight for rotation spots that have been taken by guys like Cain and Moore... I'm scratching my head here trying to find ANYTHING to make me feel negative about these moves and I can't.
I want to make one more point very clear. Andrew McCutchen and Evan Longoria are two of my absolute favorite players over the last 10 years. They have been all-stars and played at MVP levels at points in their careers and have been the faces of their franchises and ambassadors for the game of baseball. These are incredibly high quality individuals and players who you can now be proud to call San Francisco Giants! You won't find 2 classier ballplayers in all the major leagues and they literally cost us nothing to acquire other than Bobby Evans working his ass off. If these moves don't excite you then nothing will.
I like the trades, especially if Cutch sticks in a corner. I'd love for us to add a speedy CF, even to platoon with Gorkys now that we have some legitimate bats in the lineup. Something nobody is talking about is the tendency for good players on poor teams to not be "protected" in their lineups with real pop batting behind them... Longoria, Posey, and McCutchen have all faced this reality at some point in the past few seasons. I wouldn't be surprised for an uptick in OPS from all 3 just simply because they're not on the same team.
ReplyDeleteLast thing I was thinking about: we tend to think of our pitching as weak and in need of an upgrade, but I'd be the first to admit that bigger names often hide poor stats. What I mean is that Matt Moore was a "splash" pickup and a bigger name, so to most fans, replacing him with Stratton seems like a huge mistake. In reality, Matt Moore was terrible and even an average Chris Stratton would be an upgrade over Moore's 2017 season.
We will need some luck with health, but we have some flexibility with going Right/Left through the lineup. Probably need to win some ugly 7-8 run games to makeup for an average rotation and pen, but at least this team looks on paper like they could actually do that...
Andy in OC
I agree that they are taking a big risk with Stratton, but as I covered in a recent blog post, he has superior spin rates, and some of his pitches are elite in keeping the damage down. I'm confident that he can at least be Zito-ish in the rotation, which is all we need from him right now, and likely better.
ReplyDeleteI would say that Samardzija is the guy on the hot seat with Moore gone. We need three good pitchers in the rotation, and Moore was expected to be that third when we traded for him. Both of them have pitched like that on and off, but now it is up to Samardzija to assemble everything he has learned in the past two seasons and deliver a great season, like his 2014 (if I remember that breakout season right). With Bumgarner, Cueto, and Samardzija pitching well, Stratton only needs to deliver average-ish, like Zito, for the rotation to hum.
#5 starters tend to be bad to worse, and the Giants survived that situation OK from 2009 to 2012, in the rotation. Ideally, we have a nice pitcher there, and maybe we can pick up a retread who can deliver something in 2018, but I would be OK with Blach, Beede, Suarez, etc. battling for the last spot. And I would not bet against Suarez winning the #5 starter's spot.
I would argue that our rotation is no worse than 7-8 overall in the National League as it is now. Only the Dodgers, Nationals, and maybe Mets when healthy are clearly better. Cubs, D-Backs, maybe the Rockies and possibly St. Louis are there with the Giants or slightly better but the rest of the league is clearly worse. No Cain or Moore is addition by subtraction.
ReplyDeleteThe bullpen should be better with a healthy Melancon and Smith. Dyson could be an 8th inning guy with Strick, Gearin, and Law as earlier options. Even Beede could break in as a bullpen option to fill Crick's shoes. Work out the other lefty between internal options for now.
Let's assume Cutch isn't playing CF and whoever they get is defensive minded and we will have a better defense than last year by far. The offense is clearly an improvement and I have no doubt leadoff will work itself out. This team is built to win in 2018 and if for some reason it doesn't work out, they can have a fire sale before the trade deadline! I prefer to have something to cheer for this year and can't wait to see Longo and Cutch in Black and Orange.
I note that McC has now been told by Evans that he will be playing RF, and Pence LF, so that all the complaints that we won’t improve in CF over Span are at very best premature, as are the invocations of McC’s defensive stats from the past, for a position that we now learn he will not be playing for the Giants.
DeleteIs it laughable to anyone else that the criticism is about what kind of year these new guys will have when it really doesn't matter unless Belt, Crawford, Pence, and, to some extent, Panik have? (This assumes Posey will be the same as always -- maybe better if he doesn't have to carry the team!)
ReplyDeleteLongoria and McCutchen merely duplicating 2017 isn't going to help unless the guys who barely showed up last year get back to normal or better!Simply put, the Giants are better in 2018 than 2017 with Pence in LF, McCutchen in RF, and Longoria at 3B. What will the stalwarts do?
If the 7 guys not playing CF play like how they're paid, 2018 will be a good year as long as CF can play positive defense.
SP-wise, if 4 & 5 can break even (with improved offense and defense), Bumgarner, Cueto, and Samardzija just need to be themselves (and healthy) to be 88-74 and eke into the playoffs.
Now, just get a plus fielder for center, Bobby.
I'm stoked, let's go Giants!
Juan Lagares is #5 in the Mets OF when Conforto is back. He'd be a strong defensive upgrade in center. Can't be expected to hit better than .250, but someone has to bat 8th.
ReplyDeleteWhat does a 5th OFer cost? A couple promising prospects below the top 10 or so?
This one costs about $6M a year in salary, so unless the Mets paid the Giants something to take him, he’d bust the budget. Those prospects would have to be extra-promising.
DeleteThey would have to shed Dyson -- part of trade?
Deleteif the giants get another CF then either Mac or Parker will have to be on the waiver unless one of them starts the season the DL...hope the giants try to Mac. Don't want to see another Adam Duvall situation....
ReplyDeleteParker hits left and has demonstrated a cannon for an arm. I think it is time to pass on Mac.
DeleteRichard in Winnipeg
According to a report I saw somewhere, while Parker is out of options, Mac still has one more option.
Delete