Since September 1st, they have allowed 2.31 runs per nine innings – truly one of the great stretches of team pitching in baseball history. They earned the championship, and their place in history. Enjoy it, Giants fans.
In September, Andres Torres hit .164/.188/.328 in 69 plate appearances, finishing with his worst month of the season. In the NLDS, Torres hit .125/.176/.125, striking out six times in 18 trips to the plate. After going 1 for 9 with five strikeouts in the first two games of the NLCS (four of those coming in a brutal Game 2), he took a seat on the bench. He looked awful at the plate, and everyone began to talk about how he had finally been exposed.
His line since then? .414/.469/.655 in 32 trips to the plate. He’s struck out just six times, and he leads the Giants in extra base hits during the World Series. His production is one of the main reasons they’re a game away from being World Champions. Two weeks ago, Torres was being written off as a guy who couldn’t hack it. Today, he’s in the running for World Series MVP.
His postseason is a classic case study in confirmation bias. Torres’ odd development path, where he went from being a scrub to a quality player at age 31, bred skepticism over his performance. When he slugged .533 last year, well, it was just 170 plate appearances. When he kept hitting this year, there were no easy explanations, but there was still an expectation that it wouldn’t last forever. He had been a Triple-A outfielder for nearly a decade, and that made it hard to accept that he may have actually become a good hitter late in his career.
So, when Torres struggled in September, then again in the first round of the playoffs, and finally capped it off by looking hopeless against Roy Halladay and Roy Oswalt to start the NLCS, we had six weeks of recent performance where the results matched our preconceived notions – Andres Torres had reverted back into being Andres Torres. We didn’t know how to explain what he had done in the couple of years prior, but the last six weeks, well, that was the real Torres, the one we had been expecting all along. The one who couldn’t hit.
The only problem is that as soon as he was written off, he caught fire. Torres began to disprove the narrative as quickly as it gained momentum. Had the Giants bought into recent performance and kept Torres on the bench, they wouldn’t have champagne on ice tonight, just in case they have some celebrating to do. They had to ignore the bias that comes at us all when something we expect actually happens and realize that a larger view of the situation needs to be taken.
Overcoming confirmation bias is a critical part of good decision making. Fulfilled expectations are often the worst thing that can happen to someone’s analytical process, as we get an overinflated sense of the value of what we believe is going to happen. Torres wasn’t exposed as a guy who couldn’t hit in the playoffs – he was simply in a slump.
If Pat Burrell launches a couple of home runs tonight, don’t be shocked. If the Rangers win three games in a row and steal this series back from the Giants, it won’t be the biggest surprise in sports. In reality, the narratives that have been shaped by recent postseason performances – Burrell can’t hit, the Rangers can’t win in San Francisco, the Phillies are unbeatable, etc… – are often just not a reflection of reality, but instead just a big collection of confirmation biases.
Well, you guys certainly don’t see much of a difference between the second tier free agent first baseman. The results of our afternoon crowdsourcing:
Average length:
Paul Konerko: 2.43 years
Carlos Pena: 2.25 years
Aubrey Huff: 2.20 years
Lance Berkman: 1.68 years
Lyle Overbay: 1.44 years
Average salary:
Konerko: $10.96 million
Pena: $8.94 million
Huff: $8.80 million
Berkman: $7.70 million
Overbay: $4.80 million
Median contract:
Konerko: 2 years, $20 million
Pena: 2 years, $16 million
Huff: 2 years, $16 million
Berkman: 2 years, $16 million
Overbay: 1 year, $5 million
Standard deviations:
Konerko: 0.90 years, $3.73 million
Pena: 1.00 years, $3.44 million
Huff: 0.76 years, $2.88 million
Berkman: 0.69 years, $2.85 million
Overbay: 0.70 years, $2.24 million
The Berkman result is, to me, the most surprising one yet. I’ll take the under by a good margin on his deal, as I think he ends up settling for something like 1 year, $5 million. I’ll take the under on Huff as well, though I could see the Giants rewarding him for a good 2010 season after getting the World Series. If they let him test his market value as a free agent, though, I don’t think he’ll get 2/16, given his history of inconsistency. I’ll take the over on Konerko’s average salary, though I agree that two years is probably all he’ll get. Pena and Overbay sound about right.
Add in the availability of Adam Dunn, along with guys we didn’t project like Derrek Lee, Adam LaRoche, Nick Johnson, and Russell Branyan, and the market for first baseman is going to be very crowded this winter. I don’t think anyone’s going to land a big deal as teams will have too many other options to get tied into overpaying any one player.
Since Major League Baseball made the step of beginning free agency just five days after the World Series ends – a terrific move to get the off-season going earlier, by the way – and the Giants are threatening to end the postseason sooner than later, I figure that we have some catching up to do on contract crowdsourcing. So, instead of doing them one by one, we’re going to start categorizing them by position, save for a few of the more interesting players we haven’t covered yet – Cliff Lee will get his own post, for instance.
Today, first baseman. We’ve already covered Adam Dunn (who was projected for 3/36), but there are quite a few alternatives for teams who want to go another direction. The forms are after the jump, and we’ll cover the results later today.
In the seventh inning, Bruce Bochy put Nate Schierholtz in the game for defensive purposes in order to give his team the best possible chance to win. Two batters later, Schierholtz rewarded him with a great running catch in the gap to save an extra base hit in a one run game.
Ron Washington used four relievers in the eighth inning, none of whom were Neftali Feliz or Alexi Ogando, probably his two best bullpen options. He couldn’t use Ogando after having him pitch two innings in a blowout yesterday, and he didn’t use Feliz because he was saving him for a situation that would never exist. The Giants put up seven runs and the game turned into a blowout.
Life doesn’t always reward people fairly for their decisions. Tonight, it did. Bochy put his best players on the field, Washington did not. The Giants deserved to win that game more than Texas did. The result matched the process.
In some ways, C.J. Wilson and Matt Cain are polar opposites. Wilson’s a lefty, while Cain throws with his right hand. Cain throws a ton of fastballs, while Wilson has basically abandoned his this year. Wilson is a guy who gets a lot of grounders, while Cain is one of the most prolific flyball pitchers in the game.
In how they achieved success this year, however, they are quite similar. Cain had the fifth-lowest BABIP (.260) of any starter in the National League. Wilson’s .271 BABIP was fifth lowest in the American League. His 5.3% HR/FB rate was lower than any other qualified AL starter, and while Cain’s 7.4% rate was only the 12th lowest in the NL, he’s posted well below-average rates in every single year of his career.
Both of these guys kept runs off the board by getting people to hit the ball at their defenders and by keeping their fly balls in the yard. As any regular FanGraphs reader can tell you, these are not things that are usually considered repeatable skills, as history has shown that most pitchers simply can’t sustain the kinds of performances that these guys put up this year.
In fact, when skeptics of xFIP want to point out why they don’t like the metric, Cain is invariably the first guy they point to. His career 3.45 ERA is nearly a full run lower than his 4.43 xFIP, and at 1,100 innings pitched, the sample size is getting fairly large. For various reasons, some of which we understand (park effects, batted-ball profile) and some of which we don’t, Cain’s continually outperformed his peripherals. Wilson was also able to pull that off this year, though he clearly doesn’t have Cain’s track record at succeeding this way.
The differences will be obvious. The similarities will be a bit more subtle. But, in the end, it should be a good match-up and a fun game to watch.
In the grand scheme of things, Vladimir Guerrero didn’t matter last night. The Giants would have won that game no matter who was playing right field. But after watching Guerrero stumble around, Washington cannot put him back in the field this series. Right? Maybe not.
“No, I don’t,” Washington said when asked if he’ll have to reconsider the idea of using Guerrero in the field with the designated hitter not in effect. “A couple balls got by him.”
That is one way to describe what happened when the ball was hit his way. I think most people would go with something a bit more accurate, like “That was the worst outfield defense anyone has ever played.” This wasn’t just a ball dropping in that we think Murphy could have gotten to – last night was simply confirmation that Vladimir Guerrero should never wear a glove again.
The first inning pop-up that Kinsler caught and turned into a double play was a routine fly ball – Guerrero wasn’t anywhere close to it. If the Rangers’ second baseman doesn’t make a tremendous play, the Giants would have been on the scoreboard in the first inning. Then there were the obvious miscues – the inability to cut off a ball down the line; the horrifying misplay of Renteria’s base hit that gave him two extra bases; and then kicking around the ball in the corner. It was painful to watch. And, if Ron Washington is trying to win this series, we can’t see it again.
Joe has already laid out the case for why David Murphy is a better player against right-handers than Guerrero, and that should be fairly obvious to everyone at this point – he hit better against RHP this year, and the defensive gap is enormous. Guerrero’s problems are probably big enough that it would be smarter to start Jeff Francoeur or Julio Borbon over Guerrero if they were the only option.
Last night, Guerrero playing the field didn’t change the outcome. Tonight, or in Game 6 and 7, it could. The Rangers do not have the luxury of hoping that Guerrero’s inability to field the position doesn’t end up costing them games. It’s the World Series – put your best team on the field and give yourself the best chance to win.
The Rangers best team does not include Vladimir Guerrero wearing a glove.
