Q: When was the last time the San Francisco Giants finished above the NL league average in runs per game?

A: 2004, when they finished second.

Of course, when you have one player who gets on base 60 percent of the time you can expect to have a high-powered offense. In 2005, though, the Giants fell off a cliff, finishing second to last in runs per game. Since then they’ve sported among the worst offenses in baseball. In 2009 they scored just 4.06 runs per game, more than a third of a run below league average. Yet, once again, during the off-season they made few moves to upgrade that substandard unit.

After the 2009 season the Giants featured solid regulars at only two positions, Pablo Sandoval at third base and Aaron Rowand in center field. Every other position was either vacant or could have used an upgrade, though Freddy Sanchez was pretty much a given at second. Helping with flexibility, Sandoval could have made a move across the diamond in case a deal for a viable third baseman presented itself. It did not. A few opportunities did at first base, though.

The Giants could have tendered Ryan Garko a contract, but instead decided to let him go rather than pay him his first-year arbitration salary. They made a run at Adam LaRoche, but ended up signing Aubrey Huff. The step up from Garko to LaRoche might have made sense, but Huff, a 33-year-old coming off a poor, to be kind, 2009 season, doesn’t represent much of an upgrade. So it goes for the Giants. Huff likely won’t hit as poorly as he did for the Orioles and Tigers last year, but chances are he also won’t come close to his 2008 numbers.

Otherwise, the only addition the Giants made this off-season is Mark DeRosa, fresh off surgery to repair a torn tendon sheath in his left wrist. The injury seemingly affected his numbers last season, as he posted a five-year low in wOBA and a four-year low in WAR. Those numbers could recover this year, and chances are DeRosa can still outhit the Giants’ 2009 left field tandem. He could always move to third base, with Sandoval taking over at first, if Huff disappoints, but that just creates another hole in the outfield. They’re already taking a chance by starting Nate Schierholtz in right.

Rounding out the offense are Edgar Renteria at short and Bengie Molina behind the plate. The past two years haven’t been kind to Renteria. He has posted negative wRAA figures and has produced just 1.7 WAR, including a minuscule 0.3 WAR last season. His defense, once an asset, now figures somewhere around league average. Molina posted an OBP under .300 in 2009, the second time he’s done so as a Giant. Yet they signed him again for 2010, leaving Buster Posey in the future talent portion of these organizational rankings. Molina’s saving grace last year was his power, a three-year high for him. If he doesn’t produce like that again he might find himself riding the bench in favor of Posey by mid-season. That might be best for the organization anyway.

Pitching, on the other hand, represents a strong point for San Francisco. Two-time reigning Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum heads the rotation, and he doesn’t figure to slow down anytime soon. Even as he lost fastball velocity last season he compensated by throwing it less frequently. He worked in his curveball and changeup more often, and even started using his slider.
Matt Cain follows him in the rotation, creating one of the best 1-2 punches in the league. His high strand rate might come back down to earth in 2010, but even so he has posted a FIP under 4 every full season of his career.

The Giants had to be happy with Barry Zito’s performance last year after two disappointing years to lead off his seven-year, $126 million contract. Like Lincecum he relied less on his fastball in 2009, concentrating more on his curveball. He also worked in a slider more than ever before in his career. Perhaps the two secondary pitches will help him remain a solid No. 3 starter.Jonathan Sanchez, often the subject of trade rumors, has found himself a spot in the Giants rotation. He could stand to walk fewer batters, but his high strikeout rate will buy him some time to do so.

In the bullpen the Giants still figure to have a quality crew, even with the departure of
Bob Howry. Brian Wilson stepped up in the closer’s role last year, and Jeremy Affeldt proved to be more than just a LOOGY. Otherwise the Giants have a number of young arms they can continue plugging into the pen until they find something that works. That seems to be the best strategy, as relievers represent the most volatile players on a baseball roster.

Can the Giants prevent enough runs to make up for their weak offense? It would be tough for the starters to match the 3.58 ERA and 3.88 FIP from last season. That puts more pressure on the offense to produce more than the 657 runs it did in 2009. Without any major off-season upgrades, though, the Giants just have to hope. That’s not a good situation for any team to be in.

And now, we come to the fundamental problem with lists. Because of the linear growth from #30 to #1, the White Sox are going to appear right next to the Pirates in this rankings series, but there’s actually a pretty massive gap between the #25 and #24 teams on this list. The first six teams we covered all have some pretty serious problems and are unlikely to win now or in the future. Starting now, however, we enter the big blob of teams that make up the middle ground – organizations that could win if things break right, but have enough question marks that they need some luck to have success.

The White Sox are a perfect example of this kind of team (of which there are quite a few). Their pitching staff is very good, led by a rotation that is among the best in baseball. If all of their starters stay healthy, and Jake Peavy can figure out how to keep the ball in the yard in that ballpark, they can make a run at the AL Central title. But while this is not a bad team, neither is it a good team, and the future doesn’t look especially bright.

Their position players leave quite a bit to be desired. Gordon Beckham is a good young player, Carlos Quentin can hit when he’s healthy, Alexei Ramirez is decent, and I still have a little hope for Alex Rios, but there’s not much after those four. And that’s not really a championship core capable of carrying mediocre teammates for long stretches of time. The pale hose are counting on too many mediocrities, guys like Juan Pierre and Mark Teahen who are solid reserves but simply shouldn’t be starting on a team that wants to win.

Unfortunately, their acquisitions were deemed necessary because the farm system just isn’t up to par. As Bryan noted, a string of bad drafts led to shallow minor league teams, and so when the White Sox need a role player, they end up paying market value to bring them in from the outside. In fact, there aren’t too many bargains on the roster, as most of the talent is now making something approximating their overall value. The White Sox have a solid payroll, but not enough to build a winner by paying market rates for everyone, and that’s why they have spent nearly $100 million on a team that is projected to be around .500.

Kenny Williams took some risks in picking up the tab for the remaining contracts for Peavy and Rios, but then saw the market to continue to contract and he had to watch as players who could have helped his team signed elsewhere for peanuts. They already have $66 million in commitments for 2011, and that’s before giving raises to Quentin and John Danks, who are going to be eligible for arbitration. There isn’t a lot of payroll flexibility going forward, and there are still quite a few spots that need upgrading.

Williams is going to have to swing a few quality trades, where he gets more than he gives up. He’s certainly not shy about making deals, so maybe he’ll do it, but it’s not a great position to be in. With the Twins moving into a new park that should increase their revenues, the division will only get more challenging, and the White Sox are in danger of getting left behind. 2010 is going to be a critical year this team. With some breaks, they could challenge for a playoff spot, but they also need to continue to add young talent to the organization. Trying to do both at the same time is not easy.

Kenny Williams is a direct reflection of his team – enigmatic. He’s made some brilliant moves and he’s made some…less than brilliant moves. But he’s always making moves, he rarely stands pat. Well, unless it’s this winter regarding his DH situation, but that is a horse that has already been whipped by our own Matt Klaasen. Right now we’re looking at the present talent Williams has assembled.

The White Sox are a mixed bag of aging veterans and up-and-coming youngsters, sprinkled in with a couple of players with (what have been deemed) toxic contracts that Williams took on. I’ll start with the starting rotation, which has a player with a less than flexible contract in Jake Peavy. Peavy is making the switch from one extremely friendly ballpark to the less than friendly confines of “The Cell”. He has a bit of an injury history (202 total days on the DL), but the Pale Hose have been one of the best clubs at treating and preventing injuries. They’re paying him like an ace for the next three, possibly four years, but I wouldn’t bank on him being one. Peavy leads the charge of what is a very strong pitching rotation, behind him is the dependable Mark Buehrle, who is under contract for this season and the next. Following those two are two very good, cost-effective starters in John Danks and Gavin Floyd. Lastly, we have Freddy Garcia keeping Daniel Hudson’s seat warm. Few teams boast of such a rotation. This is a fantastic rotation that will need to hold together, because the offense could be pretty wretched.

Backing up that rotation is a strong, yet expensive bullpen. Matt Thornton has been worth on average 1.6 WAR per season since coming for to the Sox. Those are elite totals for a set-up man, and because of his presence I’m surprised the White Sox have not been more aggressive about trading Bobby Jenks, who they just paid $7 million in his second season of arbitration eligibility. This is also the team that is paying Scott Linebrink $11 million more over the next two seasons. The team also is gambling $3 million on J.J. Putz. They also have the hard-throwing Tony Pena, who they traded Brandon Allen go the Diamondbacks to get. Allen was supposed to be the future for the Sox at first base.

The lineup is headlined by Gordon Beckham, who played extremely well in his rookie debut and should provide the team all-star caliber contributions for years to come. His double-play partner Alexei Ramirez should also be in a White Sox uniform for years to come, but he’s proving to be a tough nut to crack. His offense slipped last year, but his defense at shortstop improved. The season before his defense was terrible but he hit well. The Sox would like to get him firing on all cylinders. Carlos Quentin has two more seasons of arbitration eligibility left, and if he can hit like he did in 2008, the White Sox may think about extending him. But his defense has been abysmal in the outfield and he’s had trouble staying on the field, dealing with foot and wrist injuries.

From there, Williams has an odd collection players who used to be great earlier in this millennium that he’s brought in in recent times – Alex Rios, Juan Pierre, Mark Kotsay, Andruw Jones, Omar Vizquel and I suppose even Mark Teahen fits that bill. (Remember that 2006!) There are also longtime Sox Paul Konerko and A.J. Pierzynski, who are in their last season of their contract and have seen better days. Rios has over $61 million remaining on his contract that will take him into 2014. He was a 5 WAR player in 2007 and 2008, but was replacement level last season, and the move to the Windy City didn’t help as many expected.

For the present, this looks very much like a .500 team. Williams hamstrung himself by taking on the Peavy and Rios contracts, and will have to rely on his prospects to carry the White Sox forward.

Kyle McCulloch was the last straw for Kenny Williams, and deservedly so. The White Sox were making practice of botching first-round picks with low-ceiling players that, if their skills even progressed enough to reach the Major Leagues, weren’t likely to be significant contributors (Royce Ring, Lance Broadway, etc). So, in 2007, Williams issued an edict to begin drafting players’ ceilings, and suddenly, a nice middle ground was struck: the White Sox have made habit of drafting college players with prep-like potential.

It began with Aaron Poreda, who hadn’t pitched extraordinarily well at the University of San Francisco, but his size and velocity from the left size promised greater things. They did, as Poreda became part of the package that acquired Jake Peavy from the Padres last season. Next in line was Gordon Beckham, who had developing power and the defensive skillset to succeed in the middle infield. And then last year, the White Sox took the approach to new levels with Jared Mitchell, who like many high school first-round picks, covers a lot of ground in the outfield, hits a fastball a long way, but swings and misses far too often against curveballs. I expect Mitchell to be the next success story, but obviously his timetable was pushed back a year this spring with an ankle injury.

Ultimately, the Sox need to connect on these first-round picks, because it’s not happening with their international scouting department. What should be an easy pipeline thanks to Ozzie Guillen’s far-reaching popularity is not, as it has instead become a hot-bed of controversy. The White Sox are still recovering after bonus-skimming allegations led to Dave Wilder’s dismissal from the team. Yes, the team is still one of the prime locations to Cuban defectors — leading to Dayan Viciedo, Alexei Ramirez, etc. — but just have not recruited enough impact talents from Venezuela and surrounding countries.

So with Mitchell out, and a dearth of international talent, the White Sox prospect list is topped with almost-ready prospects that each have a ding against them. Jordan Danks had a breakout season last year, and has very nice OBP and defensive skills, but his power development simply isn’t happening. Tyler Flowers can hit, but it looks more and more like a move to 1B/DH will happen, decreasing his value as a prospect. I really like Daniel Hudson, but his peak is a third starter or so, unless Don Cooper can do more change-up magic with him. The next tier is filled with guys like Brent Morel who just doesn’t profile all that well.

Part of the reason for the shallow farm system is Kenny Williams, who does a nice job of using the farm system to get good talent. We mentioned Peavy, but both Carlos Quentin and John Danks were acquired using other young players, and the Sox look to have received the better end of both deals. But, you still sometimes get head-scratchers like trading Brandon Allen for Tony Pena, which creates the worry that Williams might be too haphazard trading prospects. Williams wheeling and dealing makes it impossible to accurately predict the future of the White Sox after guys like A.J. Pierzynski and Paul Konerko have moved on. But given the current talent level, it’s difficult to predict much success with the pool of players behind Gordon Beckham and John Danks looking so shallow.

Right now, it seems like Juan Pierre, Carlos Quentin, and Alex Rios are locks for the White Sox starting outfield, and then Andruw Jones has a good chance of being the 4th outfielder. That leaves Alejandro De Aza, Jordan Danks, Josh Kroeger, and Mark Kotsay as the four candidates for the 5th outfield spot. So far, the 25-year-old De Aza is making a strong case in spring training, with a 13/33 line (.394 avg), 4 XBH, and 3 BB.

With Jones currently set to receive the majority of PAs at DH, that leaves quite a few PAs open for another outfielder after the three starters. That means that this decision will be important for the White Sox, as this final outfielder could be an injury away from a starting role and could potentially be the first player off the bench.

De Aza certainly isn’t as good as his spring line so far, but he’s a very interesting player. He didn’t play at all in 2008, but he had a decent season in Double-A as a 22-year-old in 2006 and then had an excellent season in Triple-A upon his return in 2009, putting up a 130 wRC+ in 300 PAs. Thanks to this minor league performance, De Aza is projected to be a near average hitter this season. He has a good defensive reputation and is extremely fast. As such, De Aza is probably a +5 or better defender in the corners and near average as a CF, and that’s a conservative estimate.

With that offensive and defensive profile, De Aza projects as a roughly average player for next year. This kind of player certainly doesn’t grow on trees, and the fact that they were able to steal him for the Florida Marlins is surprising. CHONE projects De Aza for 1.2 wins in only 325 PAs, or 2.2 wins in a full season of work.

Mark Kotsay is old and bad, Jordan Danks likely isn’t ready for the show after a 95 wRC+ in Double-A, and Kroeger is a Triple-A lifer. De Aza is young and has solid tools, and could step in and be productive if any of the starting three go down. Watch for De Aza this summer, as he could have a big impact at the major league level.

Major League Baseball has been preoccupied with cleaning up the game, instituting harsh penalties for fighting, intentional beaning, and even attempted beaning. The tough disciplinary regime has been set in place over the past decade by Frank Robinson, who served as MLB’s Director of Discipline before returning to the manager’s chair in 2002, and Bob Watson, who replaced Robinson and has been the rules guru ever since. They were both all-star hitters during their playing careers, and don’t seem to mind too much that their actions have served to narrow the inside corner — a fact that has been brought up endlessly as the penalties have gotten ever more severe for pitchers with the temerity to plunk, to graze, even to brush back.

Now Cliff Lee has been suspended for five regular-season games for throwing two pitches at Brandon Chris Snyder in a spring training game on Monday, without hitting him. (First Lee threw near him, and then he threw behind him.) Lee was steamed because Snyder had knocked him over in a play at the plate two innings earlier. Lee felt that the punishment was lopsided and overly harsh, particularly because after the second pitch, Snyder started walking out towards the mound. As Lee described it: “I was trying to go inside, a couple got away from me, and the guy hitting got mad and came towards the mound and I got thrown out of the game in the process. That’s it in a nutshell.”

Lee was being disingenuous: he was clearly going after Snyder. MLB.com analyst Harold Reynolds argues, “The suspension comes because of what Cliff said afterwards.” Still, a five-game suspension for not hitting a guy in a game that doesn’t count is absurd. What does this punishment serve? Is it meant to deter spring training beanings? Meant to punish Lee for lying about his intent with the pitches? Or is it meant to send a message that a pitcher may not ever brush a hitter back? Snyder nonetheless took steps toward the pitcher, so if baseball truly wants to prevent fighting, they should at least have fined him. If anything, Lee restrained himself: he certainly could have hit Snyder if he wanted to. How many regular-season games would Lee have been suspended if he did so? Seven? Ten? And what purpose would that have served?

Whatever the intent, Major League Baseball went too far with the punishment. Cliff is a headstrong guy, and if he’s pissed, it’s hard to imagine that he’ll refrain from giving a guy a close shave, so I can’t imagine that this will serve as an effective deterrent to his future behavior. Moreover, if the punishment for throwing behind a guy is as harsh as that for plunking him, there’s no real reason for a pissed-off hurler to refrain from beaning a guy, further decreasing the deterrent. At the same time, punishing a man for comments made in a postgame press conference seems anathema, especially when the game is an exhibition. For some reason, MLB felt that this punishment was warranted. I thoroughly disagree.

(Note: in an earlier version of this blog post, I stupidly wrote “Brandon Snyder” instead of “Chris Snyder.” Thanks to reader CSJ for pointing it out.)

The 2010 ZiPS projections courtesy of Dan Szymborski of Baseball Think Factory are now available in the player pages and sortable formats.

This wraps up the projections we’ll be carrying on FanGraphs this year and ZiPS, just like last year, will be updated daily all season long.

I have finally joined the 2008 and got on Twitter. I cannot promise anything great from my feed, but I like how easy it is to follow baseball news and read other analysts’ passing thoughts. It has already paid off in the form of the idea for this post. This morning Sky Kalkman tweeted:

Andy Sonnanstine: trade bait, rotation candidate, bullpen filler, or AAA veteran?

I had sort of forgotten about Andy Sonnanstine, but the tweet reminded me what an interesting pitcher he is. Sonnanstine was worth over 3.5 wins for the Rays in 2008, but then things fell apart in 2009. Part of that was bad luck on his BABIP and HR/FB, but part of it was also based on his performance. Sonnanstine doesn’t strike out many batters or get that many ground balls, so he needs to have a great walk rate to succeed. That is what he did in 2008 — walking just 1.7 — but in 2009 it increased to 3.0, erasing much of his value.

The increase of walks was not from missing the strike zone — his pitches were in the zone just as much — but, rather, from batters swinging less often at his out-of-zone pitches. Here are those numbers by pitch type:

             O-swing        O-contact
           2008   2009     2008   2009
Fastball   0.23   0.23     0.83   0.80
Cutter     0.22   0.19     0.73   0.72
Slider     0.40   0.35     0.55   0.69
Curve      0.29   0.26     0.57   0.86

The rates on his fastball were essentially the same, but for his cutter, slider and curve the O-Swing rates were way down. This turned many more plate appearances into walks. Another big problem was that the O-Contact rate on his slider and curve were way up, although this was not responsible for the increase in walks it does show these pitches were easier to hit.

Interestingly Sonnanstine also threw his cutter much more often in 2009. According to my pitch classifications, it went from 28% of the time in 2008 to 44% in 2009. Mostly this change came at the expense of his fastball which went from 35% to 24%. It could be that hitters do better on the cutter after seeing it more often or because they are expecting it. But I do not see evidence for this on an at-bat level. That is there was no trend for batters to do any better on the second or third cutter they see in an at-bat than the first cutter they see in at-bats against Sonnanstine.

Getting back to Sky’s question, I think I would take a little from column a, a little from column b and a little from column c. That is start him off in the pen as a long reliever — since the Rays have five better starting options — but with the eye to trading him if anything of value comes along or moving him to the rotation if needed. He has a relatively small platoon split, doing fairly well against LHBs, so deploying him as a long reliever would be a nice way to leverage that talent. Also his very deep repertoire of pitches plays well as a long reliever where he might have to face batters multiple times. These skills also mean he might be better suited as a starter if he can get things back together, which might mean throwing his fastball a little more often.

Late to the party as usual, for the past few weeks I’ve become more and more interested in pitch-type linear weights for hitters.* In particular, I was curious as to what they might reveal about which hitters are particularly good at hitting particular kinds of pitches. For example, we sometimes call certain hitters “fastball hitters.” I’ve heard one of particular minor leaguer who shall remain nameless who hasn’t been called up because he allegedly has a “slider-speed bat” (given the dearth of other players in that particular organization that can hit the slider, you’d think that would be seen as a good thing…). And so on.

I thought that it would be interesting to look at differentials in linear weight values between pitches for different hitters. I found some interesting stuff, but I want to avoid the illusion than pretend that I’ve “discovered” anything at this point, so I’ll begin with a post (or two) about an individual . In the spirit of Dave C.’s earlier “questions” posts, this is the beginning of a conversation (and I hope to get more in-depth later) rather than the conclusion of a study. For today, I want to talk about Jimmy Rollins‘ recent problems against the fastball against the backdrop of his continued success against changeups.

* If you haven’t already read Dave Allen’s clear and excellent explanation of how pitch type linear weights work, I strongly recommend that you do so.

While Rollins is still a good player overall, there’s not denying that 2009 was a down year offensively, as he put up a mere .316 wOBA after a very good .357 in 2008 and an excellent .378 in his 2007 MVP campaign. This is well known. There could be different reasons for it (which may all have roots in age-based decline), for example, bad luck on balls in play. But what also stands out are his pitch-type linear weight values against fastballs and changeups.*

* Those of you who dutifully read Dave’s article already know that the linear weights are by count, there is the chance, of course, that recently Rollins is only falling behind on fastballs then crushing them later, but that seems pretty unlikely, and for simplicity we’ll be ignoring that possibility for now.

Over the last three seasons (2007-2009), Rollins has been +6.3 against fastballs, and +22.8 against changeups during the same period. As one might expect, during that time his best season against fastballs was 2007, when he was +10.7. He was even better in 2006, at +20.4. However, he’s been in (apparent) decline against fastballs since 2006 and 2007, sporting a -1.8 in 2008 and a -2.7 in 2009. His rates per 100 fastballs bear out the decline as well: from 0.58 in 2007 to -0.12 to -0.17.

In contrast, Rollins continues to be consistently good against change-ups. While prior to 2007, his numbers against changeups where generally unimpressive, in 2007 he smashed them for +13.3, and while he hasn’t been as good (against much of anything) since then, while he numbers against fastballs dropped off, in 2008 he was still +4.5 (+1.29/100) against changeups, and in 2009 +5.0 (+1.36/100). More interestingly, of the good hitters I looked at (bad hitters are terrible against most everything), Rollins had one of the biggest “gaps” in his numbers between fastballs and changeups. I’m curious as to what this means.

Obviously, players typically lose ability as they age, but I’m curious if the linear weights tell us something specific about how that works for hitters. I apologize for ending with questions, but that’s better than presumptuous answers. I want to know if readers a) have any insight (even educated guesses) into what’s going on with Rollins in particular and/or b) want to see more stuff on this. Is Rollins “sitting changeup” more often as he gets older? Maybe, I don’t know for sure from the data I have. It would be easy to say he’s doing this because he’s aware that he’s “lost bat speed,” but to me, that is also a leap — “bat speed” is a useful scouting term, but it is too quick to infer anything about that that from the data I’m looking at. Perhaps an aging study can be done down the road using this or other data. I don’t know what this means right now, but I’m interested to see if we can find out.

We’ll start with the good news – I think Andrew McCutchen is one of the best young players in the game, and a legitimate starting spot to build an organization around. He’s Carl Crawford 2.0, a fantastic five tool player who can do everything well. The Pirates have a budding superstar in center field, and they own his rights through 2015. Just having a guy like this in the organization is enough to give you some optimism.

Unfortunately, it goes south pretty quickly after that. The second most talented guy in the organization is probably Pedro Alvarez, and while I think he’s going to hit, there are enough questions about his defense, his conditioning, and his contact rates to have concerns. And, really, it’s hardly ever a good thing when your second franchise building block is ticketed for the minors. But that’s the state of the Pirates roster; it’s McCutchen and a bunch of role players.

There just aren’t that many good everyday players on this team. Maybe Jeff Clement figures out how to play first base and hits well enough to be a platoon first baseman, but he doesn’t have much star potential there. Maybe Andy LaRoche adds a bit more power and becomes more than just a solid third baseman, but he’s 26 and is running out of time for growth. Maybe Lastings Milledge or Jose Tabata translate their tools into production, but I wouldn’t count on it.

The Pirates decision to go for quantity over quality in most of their trades has left them with a lot of options, but few clear good ones. They’re going to need several of these guys to develop beyond expectations, or they’re going to have to keep making moves and hope to hit a home run on a couple of them. McCutchen and friends aren’t going to win in 2010, and unfortunately, there’s not enough quality around him to expect them to become contenders in the near future either.

That said, the Pirates are doing some things well. Neal Huntington is pushing the organization forward into thinking about things in new ways, they’re honest about their chances, and they aren’t wasting cash on superfluous veterans anymore. They’ve acquired enough useful pieces to avoid being terrible, and they’ve got some young talent in the farm system.

But, the common theme here at the bottom of this list is a small payroll team, a lack of a championship core, and not young talent to expect development into contenders in the next few years. McCutchen is great, but he’s not enough – Pittsburgh needs a few more guys like him before they can be taken too seriously.