I'm not sure if this story is true or apocryphal. The story goes that once upon a time, Jamie Farr, the actor from the TV show MASH, was trying to explain to his family why he liked an American game called baseball so much. He thought that if he took them to a game to see for themselves, they would fall in love with the game the way he did. One day, he packed them all up and took them to Dodger Stadium to see Sandy Koufax pitch. Koufax pitched a perfect game that day while the opposing pitcher for the Chicago Cubs pitched a 1-hitter and the Dodgers won the game 1-0. Farr knew he had witnessed something special. His family hated it!
I thought about that story yesterday as I watched 4 teams in the LCS series' score a total of 2 runs including one team that did not get a hit until there was 1 out in the 9'th inning. Just a guess, but I'm thinking Jamie Farr's family would not have enjoyed yesterday's games, and quite possibly a lot of other people watching on TV did not either. The people who run Major League Baseball have long known that low scoring games do not attract fans. That is why in the mid-60's, they lowered the mounds and made other rule changes when MLB pitchers achieved unprecedented dominance. It is also why they looked the other way on the PED issue when HR records were being broken with regularity in the late 1990's and early 2000's.
Those 1-0 games yesterday were not flukes. Yes, there were games where a lot of runs were scored in the Wild Card and LDS games, and there will probably be a high-scoring game or two in the remainder of this post-season. After all, Pablo Sandoval did hit 3 HR's off Justin Verlander in last year's World Series. Things like that happen. On the other hand, Giants fans should know better than anyone, pitching wins championships! Pitching! Pitching! Pitching! It should come as no surprise that the 4 teams left in postseason competition all have very good pitchers and lots of them!
What is indisputable, is that MLB is still very much in a downward trend in run production going all the way back to the year 2000 when teams averaged a peak of 5.14 runs per game. The trend has been steadily down ever since and appears to be accelerating. It has dropped every season since 2006 when it was at 4.86 down to 4.17 in 2013. That is the lowest number of RPG since 1992. Only 4 seasons have been lower since 1978! In case you are wondering, there have been just 11 seasons with less than 4 RPG since 1920 which takes us all the way back to the deadball era. Most of those sub-4 seasons came in the 1960s' and early 70's.
In the next installment we will look take a look at reasons for the downward trend in run scoring in Major League Baseball.
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Anybody still think we need a power hitter in LF over a #3 starter? More Abreu at 1B or more solid starters? The Ginats ability to develop pitching over the next three years will determine their success over the next six.
ReplyDeleteThat's why I think David Price needs to be gotten. He would give us for the next 2 years the top 3 pitchers at the top of a rotation in the game with him, Madbum and Cain.
DeleteHe might. Or he might lapse into being a 2012 Lincecum. Or he might need Tommy John. I say this only in relation to the corollary question: at what cost to the Giants, in terms of players rather than money, does "David Price need to be gotten"? How much do you want to gamble on the fragility of a single star?
DeleteI'm not at all sure the Giants have enough of what TB would want for David Price. I would think the starting point for discussions would be Brandon Belt, Heath Hembree and Kyle Crick.
DeleteI will say I think the Giants should at least consider a trade like that if they can afford Price's salary pricetag. He is a seriously good pitcher.
DeleteWe are, of course, talking about only two years of Price, since he will be a FA after 2015.
DeleteI would presume that if the Giants traded for him, they would not re-sign Timmy and would use the Timmy money to make serious run at a longterm deal with Price. Even if the failed in that, 2 years in the current baseball climate is a lifetime.
DeleteWouldn't mind Price at all. But we should also look at where St. Louis success is coming from - home grown guys from all over the draft cycle. I think the Giants can match that. Have to trust the draft and development to a certain extent.
DeleteTotally agree that pitching rules when it counts.
As I watched St. Louis bring in reliever after reliever throwing 96 MPH cheese on the first pitch, I couldn't help but think of all those hard throwing reliever types Sabes has been drafting and hoping that at least a few of them pan out.
DeletePrice might bring a forever flying flag in 2014, but the other side of the coin is patience with home grown guys from the draft cycle, letting the developments unfold certain extent.
ReplyDeleteFor me, it's better to keep our home grown guys, especially possible frontline starters, as tempting as 3 months of Beltran or even longer 2 years of Price seem.
We have home grown pitchers on the staff right now. Price would round it out with three real good pitchers who are still young and under contract for two more years at least. This is a window that Sabean was talking about. We have depth in the minors to trade some prospects and still be able to produce an impact starter in the near future.
ReplyDeleteThat is certainly a legitimate take. If the Rays do put Price on the trading block, there will be no lack of interest. I'm just not sure that the Giants have what it would take, even if they did have interest.
DeleteGoing over different scenarios.
DeleteIf it 'only' takes Hembree, Belt and Crick (let us use that as an example; one can use other examples), it's possible that we pay
Hembree a couple million for output worthy, say, $8 million
Belt 2 or 3 million for output worth, say, 10 million
Crick 1 or 2 million for output worth, say, $9 million.
That's $5 to $7 million for a combined output of $27 million. You say $20 million.
The question, then, is what can you get $20 million a ear on the open market?
Maybe a 80% David Price?
In that case we have Hembree, Belt, Crick and a 80% Price for the same, er, price, in, say, well, let's be conservative and say August 2014 or July 2015..
*Numbers will be different from the example used here. People are free to run the analysis using their own numbers.
Rumors are the Dodgers may go after Price too. That happens we are going to have to find 2 or 3 Crick's ourselves. To me this is a no brainer
ReplyDeleteI don't see that the Dodgers have what it would take to land Price.
Delete