During his tenure with the Minnesota Twins, Nick Punto has often been the object of scorn around the internet, generally being lumped in with players like Willie Bloomquist as another “speedy” white dude whose alleged “scrappiness” overshadows overall lousiness on the baseball field. The Twins recently decided that they weren’t enamored enough with Punto to pick up his five million dollar option for 2011. With Orlando Hudson looking for bigger deal in 2011 and thus unlikely to return, Minnesota seems to be looking to Alexi Casilla as their 2011 second baseman at the moment. I don’t think Casilla is as good as Punto — whatever small advantage he has with the bat is taken away by a terrible glove — but if the Twins need to trim payroll, not picking up Punto’s option makes sense (although picking up Jason Kubel’s option is an odd choice…). That’s a lot of money for a part-timer.

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With the year-end awards right around the corner, fans are going to be celebrating and debating the most valuable players in baseball. The WAR framework is helpful for that sort of thing, as well as something just as fun: debating which players were the least valuable. But you know who gets left out? The guys in the middle: the most average players in baseball.

It is easy enough to determine (for position players) from the WAR components. As I did last season, by subtracting the “replacement” component from a player’s WAR (in this case, RAR) line, you get his combined batting, fielding (the WAR leaderboards use UZR, but one could do with with other metrics), and positional contribution above or below average. If you take the absolute value of that number, you get his distance from average.

Keeping the “toy stat” nature of this exercise in mind, here are the five “average-est” position players of 2010!

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It’s that time of year again, the time when teams and players start positioning themselves to get the best deals for themselves on the free agent market. A good deal of this is posturing, naturally, but it is often difficult to separate mere negotiating ploys from the honest truth. That said, taking some initial reports of what certain players (assuming their agents accurately speak for them) want, I wonder who the most deluded person of the 2010 offseason is so far: Bruce Chen, Jeff Francoeur, or Derek Jeter.

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Yesterday, the Los Angeles Dodgers reportedly excercised their half of a mutual option with left fielder Scott Podsednik. Podsednik came over in a trade from the Kansas City Royals, who signed him last winter to a contract that included a two million dollar club option for 2011 that became effectively mutual when Podsenik reached his 525 plate appearance in 2010.

After three miserable seasons from 2006 to 2008, Podsednik seemed like he was ready to be out of baseball, but a 1.8 WAR revival in Chicago in 2009 put him back on the map. Although he he wasn’t able to repeat his .338 2009 wOBA performance, his .323 wOBA for the 2009 season was about league average in a deflated run environment. CHONE’s last update saw Posednik as a 5 runs below average per 150 games true-talent hitter. His ability in the field is more difficult to pin down. Both versions of TotalZone are fairly friendly to Podsednik’s skills in left field, and CHONE projects him at +6 there. However, both UZR and DRS have seen Podsednik less positively, especially in 2010, when he was more than 10 runs below average. The Fans Scouting Report for 2010 splits the difference, seeing him as an average fielder in left.

The positional adjustment is -7.5 for being a left fielder. Let’s call his offense -3, plus average defense. Overall we’d say he’s around a 1 WAR player. There’s some attrition for age (and he did have a foot injury at the end of the season), but given the uncertainty about his fielding ability, I think 0.5 to 1.5 WAR is a fair range, so 1 WAR over a full season seems about right. The price of a marginal win for 2011 will probably be at least four million dollars, and probably more, so this seems like a good decision on the Dodgers’ part.

A one-win player is generally a bench or platoon player, or a stopgap at best. Despite the Dodgers’ disappointing performance in 2010, they should be in the mix in the National League West again in 2010. Given the money they put out for Ted Lilly despite a muddled ownership situation, that seems to be be the plan. So this isn’t like a rebuilding team blowing money on a veteran.

There are some other issues to consider. For this to really be a “good” deal for LA, Podsednik needs to play pretty much the whole season. He hasn’t played 150 games since 2004. That issue aside, it’s one thing to have a 1 WAR player as a bench/platoon guy, and other to have him as an everyday player when trying to win a division title. Even as a part-timer, Podsednik’s utility is limited — he doesn’t have the arm to play right field, and while he is fast, his poor routes limit his effective range in the outfield, so he’s really a left-field-only player outside of emergencies. Given Matt Kemp’s own issues in center field, Podsednik isn’t an ideal fourth outfielder for them, given the current roster. Podsednik is not really good enough to start, but also doesn’t truly fit LA’s bench needs. The Dodgers need to keep their eyes open for better options.

That said, the free-agent market for outfielders is pretty thin, and it is unlikely that the Dodgers have the money to be in on players like Jayson Werth and Carl Crawford. Given the Dodgers’ current hole in left field and their potential to contend, picking up Podsednik’s option as a safety net isn’t a terrible idea as long as he isn’t Plan A. As for Podsednik, while he has proved he can still be a bit useful in the right situation, he shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

This is the follow-up to (and conclusion of) yesterday’s post using the World Series teams to make a point about the “sufficiency” of the draft. But first things first: congratulations to the San Francisco Giants. I’ll freely admit that at the beginning of the season I didn’t see them as a playoff contender, but they made it in and won the whole thing with a mixture of young players they developed and some veteran castoffs that played better for them than most of us would have imagined. That brings me back to the theme of this two-part discussion: the Giants illustrate that while good drafting is essential for most teams to compete, it is hard to come up with examples of teams that managed to do so solely with players they originally acquired. (I used these two teams as examples because they were in the World Series — the 2010 Rockies would have been perhaps a more interesting case; they have a high proportion of drafted players, but imagine them without Carlos Gonzalez, Jason Hammel, Jorge da la Rosa, and Huston Street.) Having covered the Giants yesterday, I’ll briefly discuss the Rangers before offering some concluding thoughts. The World Series is over, but the point of these posts isn’t about the World Series, but rather using two teams (whose 2010 fate every other team envies) to illustrate a point about team building.

The Rangers are a very young team, so initially, one might think they might make a better argument for the relative sufficiency of the draft. However, this is far from being the case. Indeed, out of all the position players that started for the Rangers in the World Series, only Ian Kinsler and Mitch Moreland were originally drafted and signed by the Rangers. Even seeming Ranger-for-life Michael Young came over in a trade long ago from the Blue Jays.

The improvement of the Rangers’ pitching has been rightly oft-noted, but the final 2010 rotation relied heavily on “outside help.” Cliff Lee came over because the team was willing to trade top first base prospect Justin Smoak (and others) to the Mariners for him. Colby Lewis was actually originally drafted in the first round by the Rangers back in 1999, but as is well-known by now, bounced around both the majors a bit and Japan before the Rangers picked him back up. That’s a display of good scouting of an older player in a different league rather than good drafting. Neftali Feliz is a good young closer (who might still be able to start, according to some), but like shortstop Elvis Andrus, he came to the Rangers in the massive 2007 trade that sent Mark Teixeira to Atlanta.

I realize these two posts have been a bit disjointed, so I’ll summarize in conclusion. This was not primarily about comparing Brian Sabean and Jon Daniels with Dayton Moore or any other general manager or front office, although my introductory remarks from yesterday might have made it seem that way. I used Moore as a starting point because (a) despite all my criticism for his moves on a major league level, I wanted to acknowledge that he’s done a great job of building Kansas City’s farm system into the best in baseball, and I wanted to do so before he starts signing free agents and my goodwill (likely) gets buried; and (b) because the Royals’ front office is an example of a grop who seems to get amateur scouting, but generally struggles (to put it mildly) with making smart major league trades and signings. We all agree that drafting and developing talent is essential for any team (even the Yankees’ two most valuable position players in 2010 — Robinson Cano and Brett Gardner — are from their farm system). Some have pointed to the Rangers as a “homegrown” team, and to the Giants as a team whose drafts have overcome questionable signings. There is some truth to that, but as I hope I’ve pointed out, this isn’t really the case. Both teams had essential contributions from players (who were more than just role and bench players) acquired through free agency or trades without whom they probably wouldn’t even have made the playoffs. This isn’t intended to be a comprehensive study, but rather a reminder that while good drafting is certainly necessary for almost every franchise to compete, it isn’t sufficient to build a contender on its own.

However and whenever it ends, one thing that the 2010 World Series has demonstrated is that even teams without significant contributions from high-priced free agents have a shot at a championship. (Yes, the Giants still have a lot of money bound up in Aaron Rowand and Barry Zito, but the former has been consigned to the bench and the latter didn’t even make the playoff roster.)

The successes of the Texas Rangers and the San Francisco Giants this season would have been impossible without good drafting and development. This has given hope to fans of other franchises such as the Kansas City Royals. While Dayton Moore has made many terrible trades and free agent signings in the past, it can’t be denied that he has done a splendid job of rebuilding the Royals’ minor league system. Featuring draftees such as Mike Moustakas, Eric Hosmer, Wil Myers, Mike Montgomery, John Lamb, and Danny Duffy, among others, the Royals’ farm system is almost universally considered to be the best in baseball at the moment. While Moore’s record in trades and free agent signings has been pretty horrible taken as a whole, the same can be said of Giants GM Brian Sabean, leading Rany Jazayerli, Dean of Royals bloggers, to tweet (following a related blog post)

If Brian Sabean gets a ring, there’s no way on God’s Green Earth you can convince me that Dayton Moore can’t do the same thing.

It is an interesting thought, and one that isn’t unique to Jazayerli. Others have seen in the Giants and/or Rangers a draft-based “plan” that other less-affluent (i.e., not the Yankees or Red Sox) franchises can embrace. No one denies, of course, that it is necessary for almost every team to draft and develop well. The question is how far doing so is sufficient for a team to compete. It would be silly to argue that a team can compete solely with players they originally drafted or signed — neither Jazayerli nor anyone else is making that claim. But just how much did the World Series teams need to “supplement” their excellent drafts by way of free agency and trades? Rather than focusing on the Royals’ situation, Rany’s discussions, specifically (see also the recent excellent posts at Royals Review), or whether the current World Series teams got “lucky” in their acquisitions or not, in lieu of a detailed study I want to take a cursory look at the provenance of some of the more significant contributors to the 2010 success of the Giants and Rangers. Today’s post will focus on the Giants; the follow-up will deal with the Rangers.

The Giants’ recent drafting prowess is obvious from a look at their World Series starting rotation. Staff ace Tim Lincecum put up 5.1 WAR in a “down” year for him; Matt Cain, 4.0; Jonathan Sanchez, 2.6; and Madison Bumgarner, 2.0 (in only 111 innings). Closer Brian Wilson is also a Giants draftee, and had 2.7 WAR this season. That’s more than 16 wins from pitchers the Giants drafted and who are all still under club control. Among the position players, catcher Buster Posey stands out as another budding superstar, accumulating 3.9 WAR in less than 500 plate appearances this season.

However, it is clear that the Giants, who just barely made the playoffs, couldn’t have done so without some surprising performances from other kinds of acquisitions. As good as Posey was in a partial season (for reasons totally not related to service time), the 2010 Giants’ two most valuable players according to FanGraphs WAR were 2009 scrap-heap signing Andres Torres (6.0 WAR) and first baseman and second-choice first-baseman Aubrey Huff (5.7 WAR, imagine if first-choice Adam LaRoche had accepted the Giants’s offer). Juan Uribe, brought back as a bench player, was worth about three wins, as was Freddy Sanchez, and Pat Burrell was as valuable as Sanchez in just over half a season in San Francisco after being fished out of Tampa Bay’s dumpster. That’s about 20 wins from veterans signed for far below what they were worth. Indeed, even if, for example, Huff had been “only” a 3 WAR player this season, that would have been a great deal for the Giants, but they wouldn’t have made the playoffs.

The point isn’t whether or not the Giants “knew” these players could do this or that they got “lucky,” but that, even with their excellent recent drafting, they required significant contributions from other players to make it into the playoffs. The next post will take a look at the Rangers and make some concluding reflections.

It is difficult criticize a manager’s decisions when his team wins 9-0. This is particularly true when his counterpart puts on a managing performance so memorably horrible. Yes, I bravely hold the position that Bruce Bochy is out-managing Ron Washington this series. Indeed, Washington’s decisions (or lack thereof? It’s really hard to tell) from Vladimir Guerrero in Game One to the eternal eighth inning of Game Two have been so bad that my response has gone from baffled to amused to sad to thinking they are so obviously bad they aren’t worth arguing about. So I won’t dwell on Washington’s various mistakes, but on what some think is one of Bochy’s: not pulling Cain for a pinch hitter with two outs in the bottom of the seventh inning with a runner on second and the Giants only leading by 2-0.

Given the Giants’ seven runs in the bottom of the eighth inning, it turned out that it wouldn’t have mattered either way, but obviously Bochy couldn’t have known that would happen. That is why there is some traction to the notion that Bochy should have hit for Cain. Like most pitchers, Cain is a terrible hitter, so much so that we don’t need to worry about the pinch-hitting penalty from whomever would have come in. With two outs, a bunt wouldn’t have done any good, so Cain had to swing away. A two-run lead isn’t impregnable, even with Cain pitching well. With no game on Friday night, the bullpen was available, why not use them for the last two innings? These reasons for pulling Cain after a job well done make sense, and seemed pretty persuasive when, with a runner on, Josh Hamilton came up to the plate in position to tie the game with one swing. Bochy ended up going to the bullpen and bringing in Javier Lopez to face him.

On the other side of the argument, just as it’s unfair to consider that the Giants ended up blowing out the Rangers in the bottom of the eighth in evaluating Bochy’s decision, it’s also a not the right move to judge it from the standpoint of Hamilton coming to the plate with a chance to tie the game. We have to go from the information Bochy had available to him at the time. While a two run lead is far from insurmountable, Cain had indeed been pitching well. Perhaps he hadn’t been as dominating in the sixth and seventh innings as he had been earlier, but despite the overall lack of strikeouts, he appeared to be handling the Rangers hitters well for the most part. Whatever stock one puts into pitch counts, Cain wasn’t over 100 at the time he came up to bat. Moreover, the beginning of the eighth didn’t look to be that challenging — Bochy knew Cain would be facing a pinch-hitter (who turned out to be the noodle-batted Julio Borbon; but even Vladimir Guerrero still would have faced both the platoon disadvantage and the difficulty of hitting off of the bench), then Elvis Andrus (who has been hot in the playoffs, but still isn’t much of a hitter), and then Michael Young. Hamilton would only come up if at least one runner got on, which is what happened. However, Bochy still had the option to use Lopez versus Hamilton, which he did. Bochy may not have wanted to bring in closer Brian Wilson because, other than the two innings issue, he still wanted to be able to bring in Wilson later if necessary. One could make an argument for say, Sergio Romo at the beginning of the eighth, but even that’s a judgment call based on how Bochy and his coaches felt Cain was pitching.

I can see the arguments for both sides, and things did get tense once Andrus got on base. But one more bit of data: the leverage index for Cain’s plate appearance was on 0.55. In terms of the Giants chances of winning at that point, the situation wasn’t all that crucial. I can see the arguments for pinch-hitting for Cain and using Romo to start the the eighth inning, but given the low leverage of Cain’s plate appearance, his chances against the likely Rangers hitters, and the availability of Lopez to face Hamilton if he were to come up, if I can’t heartily endorse Bochy’s decision, I have a hard time criticizing it. Given how the game turned out, I realize my position doesn’t take much courage, but hey, I’d say the same thing if Hamilton had homered, right? Uh, right.

Josh Hamilton had an awesome 2010 at the plate, hitting .359/.411/.633 for a .447 wOBA, and he put on quite a show in the ALCS, too. This has prompted the suggestion that the Giants should give Hamilton the ‘Barry Bonds Treatment’ in the World Series, simply walking Hamilton every time he’s up. Anyone who has watched Hamilton hammer the ball can relate to this sentiment, at least on a visceral level. The Yankees certainly came close to giving Hamilton the Bonds Treatment in the ALCS, and that obviously didn’t work out too well for them. At the risking of beating another sabermetric shibboleth into the ground, let’s take a look at the numbers.

The place to start is to figure out how good Hamilton probably is. He had a .447 wOBA this season, but that isn’t the whole story. CHONE’s August 23 update estimates Hamilton’s true hitting talent in context at .386 wOBA (my conversion from the projected line). When we’re looking at intentional walks, we need to compare that to the hitters who typically hit after him: Vladimir Guerrero is at .364, Nelson Cruz is at .376, and Ian Kinsler is at .357. No surprise here: Hamilton is clearly the best hitter of the group.

Just because he’s the best hitter that doesn’t necessarily mean he should be walked in every situation. For a good summary of reasons why, read MGL’s discussion here. His basic advice:

My recommendation to any manager would simply be to never worry about walking anyone intentionally, at least in the early and middle innings. Pitch to everyone. One, except perhaps in rare, ideal situations, you are probably reducing your team’s chances of winning. Two, it is not worth the time and effort, and perhaps a little stomach acid and a few extra gray hairs worrying about it.

That’s probably the best rule to go by, and definitely better than much of the decision-making we’ve seen. But let’s get into a bit more detail for Hamilton’s case. The Book goes into great detail regarding the iBB; the idea is that given a particular game/out/base stat, the hitter at the plate’s expected wOBA versus the pitcher needs to be a certain higher proportion than the following hitter(s) in order for an intentional walk to be the right move. For the sake of space, for the most part I won’t do detailed analyses of individual Giants pitcher splits or other Rangers hitters other than Guerrero (whose projected numbers are the most relevant, and aren’t all that much better or worse than Cruz’s or Kinsler’s).

While Hamilton has hit everyone well this year, like many good hitters, he has a pretty big platoon split. Given his projected wOBA of .386, I estimate his platoon skill as .400 wOBA versus RHP and .355 vs. LHP. That’s decent vs. LHP, but hardly intentional walk territory, especially given that Guerrero’s estimated wOBA skill vs. LHP is .382! So neither Jonathan Sanchez nor Madison Bumgarner, both southpaws, should ever walk Hamilton to get to Vlad. When the later innings come around and the starters are out of the game, the Giants should bring in Javier Lopez to face Hamilton in crucial situations.

That takes care of many situations, but what about against right-handed starters Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain? Neither has a terribly big split, but we’d expect them to have less success against lefty hitters than against righties. Here we need to look at the ratio: Hamilton’s expected .400 wOBA is about 1.12 times Vlad’s expected .358 vs. RHP. When does the big chart in the Book say that calls for a walk? In the bottom of the seventh, runners on second and third, one out, and the pitching team down by five; in the top of he eighth runners on second and third, out, and the pitching team down by five; in the bottom of the eighth, runners on second and third, one out, and the game tied or the pitching team is behind; and the top of the ninth, runners on second and third, one out, and the game is tied or the pitching team is behind. That’s it, and since those are all relatively late game situations, the Giants will often be able to bring in a left-handed reliever to face him.

Of course, if you think Hamilton is better than a .400 wOBA hitter versus righties, it changes things. If Hamilton is a .430 wOBA true talent hitter versus RHP, the ratio of that to Vlad’s .358 is about 1.20. But even though the situations where an intentional walk is called for increases, most of them are still in the latter innings with the pitching team behind, one out, and runners on second and third. Again, in many of those situations the Giants probably should be able to bring in Javier Lopez to pitch to Hamilton.

Josh Hamilton is clearly the Rangers’ biggest threat at the plate, and there are some situations when an intentional walk would be the right move. But for most game states, or with a lefty on the mound or available to come in, the Giants shouldn’t give him the Barry Bonds Treatment.

Congratulations on the Texas Rangers and San Francisco Giants on their upcoming World Series matchup. While part of me regrets the lost opportunity for obnoxious snark during a Bruce Bochy/Joe Girardi intentional walk-fest (preferably set to “Dueling Banjos”), I’m sure that Bochy will find Ron Washington a worthy foe. However, while I had originally thought I would “go off” a bit on the topic of the Rangers’ lead-off spot, the more I thought about it the less vehement I felt.

I agree that Elvis Andrus is a talented young player who is at worst a good defensive shortstop, and given his age (Andrus just turned 22 in August) he can be expected to get better with the bat. However, while Andrus’s defensive abilities make him a good player overall, he’s not a good hitter a the moment. Yes, his .342 on-base percentage during the past regular season is above-average, but with wOBA now easily available we don’t have to go through any sort of gymnastics in terms of weighing OBP and SLG. Andrus’s wOBA this season was .298 (81 wRC+). To put that into perspective, Yuniesky Betancourt’s 2010 wOBA was .300 (84 wRC+). ‘Nuff said? Yes, Andrus has a .357 wOBA in 57 plate appearances this post-season, but I assume that FanGraphs readers don’t need to be lectured about the “usefulness” of a 57 PA sample or about the predictive “power” of hot streaks.

Of course, 2010 is not all there is to Andrus. He was better in 2009 with a .322 wOBA, and given his age, his minor league performances, and the other factors that go into making an estimate of his current true talent (a ‘projection’), CHONE’s August update sees him as a .321 wOBA (my rough wOBA calculation based on CHONE’s projected stat line) hitter in his run environment — just below average before adjusting for the hitter-friendly park. That’s a good number for a defensively-skilled shortstop, and promising given his age.

However, when setting a batting order, a player’s defensive skill-set is irrelevant. The issue isn’t whether Andrus should start, but whether he should be hitting first. Despite talk of “true lead-off hitters” and “ideal number 3 hitters” and so on, the implicit lesson of The Book’s chapter on lineup optimization (summarized here) is that where a player should hit in the batting order is relative to the other players on the team. The best hitters on the team should get the most PA, and thus should hit in the top half of the order. Ideally, the best three hitters should hit in the first, second, and fourth spots (sometimes adjustments need to be made for platoon issues, e.g., trying to avoid two lefties in a row), the next best two should hit third and fifth, and from the sixth spot on down simply go in order of projected ability.

Is Andrus one of Texas’ five best hitters? According to CHONE’s update, not only Josh Hamilton, Nelson Cruz, Vladimir Guerrero, Michael Young, Ian Kinsler, but also Mitch Moreland, Jorge Cantu and David Murphy are all better hitters than Andrus. Without revising the entire lineup, the simplest move would be to put Ian Kinsler into the first spot and put Andrus further down in the order. Kinsler not only has a better on-base percentage, but also more extra-base power. He probably doesn’t have as much speed as Andrus at this point, but speed at the top of the order is overrated when hitting in front of Michael Young (still a good hitter) and especially Josh Hamilton. Those guys don’t need much help from runner who can steal second for them. Andrus’s ability to steal (although it’s worth noting that he wasn’t as successful in 2010 as 2009) would be better leveraged in front of bad hitters more likely to need help from a guy who can move himself over. All those particular issues aside, the Rangers would simply be better off giving more chances at the plate to a hitter with a projected wOBA of .357 (Kinsler) than one projected at .321 (Andrus).

It’s worth remembering that over a full season, the difference between a typical lineup and an optimized lineup is probably only between 5 and 15 runs. Even the worst single move imaginable, like hitting the pitcher cleanup the whole season, only costs about 15 runs worse. That’s why I can’t get too worked about the issue. However, a team needs to get every edge it can, even in a short series of games, especially this Series.

Game Five obviously did not go the way the Giants wanted, as the 4-2 loss cut their series lead to 3-2. There are small signs that the Phillies’ hitters are coming around, and the pitching matchups aren’t going to get any more favorable for San Francisco. I won’t review every key play of Game Five, but rather a few bad and good points that the Giants can take away from it.

Errors in last night’s game highlighted problems some see with the Giants infield defense. Aubrey Huff‘s error in the third inning was the biggest WPA shift in the game (.155), scoring two runs to put the Phillies up for good. Pablo Sandoval’s error in the ninth didn’t cost the Giants any runs, but did serve as a reminder that he has been benched for reasons other than his bad season at the plate. Despite Huff’s good UZR and DRS scores this season, for his career he’s still a negative defender at both at first, and was slightly below average in 2010’s Fans Scouting Report. The metrics don’t see Sandoval as horrible at third base, but the Giants are clearly concerned about his abilities there.

The middle of the Giants’ batting order got shut down. There’s no shame in getting reigned in by Roy Halladay, even when he’s working with a pulled groin, but the Giants needed more from their 3-4-5 hitters Aubrey Huff, Buster Posey, and Pat Burrell, who were held to a double (by Burrell) and a walk (by Posey) in twelve plate appearances. It was obvious before the series started that runs would be hard to come by for both teams, especially the Giants, but the team can’t count on Cody Ross to keep bailing them out (insert baserunning joke here).

There were some hopeful signs for the Giants, however. They still aren’t being dominated by the Phillies’ offense. Tim Lincecum gave up three runs (not horrible in itself over seven innings), but two of those scored on Huff’s error. The Phillies did look better at the plate in this game (at least to me), but they are still struggling to score runs. Lincecum won’t be starting the other games of the series, but Jonathan Sanchez and Matt Cain have more than held their own so far against the Phillies. One long home run by Jayson Werth doesn’t change that.

Despite the last night’s defensive foibles, Giants fans should be happy that Pablo Sandoval started last night and got a hit. He grounds into an incredible number of double plays, and 1-4 with no walks isn’t great, but he’s still a better bet than running either Mike Fontenot or Edgar Renteria out there. Bruce Bochy resisted the temptation to leave Andres Torres on the bench, and he responded by going 2-3 with a walk. Another poor plate performance shouldn’t change our evaluation of his true talent, but it might have put pressure on Bochy to sit him for the remainder of the series, and he’s clearly better both offensively and defensively than Aaron Rowand. It is amazing how much I’ve read about Torres’ “returning to reality” during his playoff struggles from people who should know better. He’s probably not as good offensively as his 2009 and 2010 regular season performances, but as I’ve discussed before, this hasn’t been a 300 PA, BABIP-fueled hot streak, either. For more than 700 PA in 2009 and 2010 Torres has had an above-average walk rate and good power. He needs to be starting every game for the Giants.

Some will want to talk about the Phillies “seizing the momentum” as the series shifts back the Philadelphia. The Phillies still have the more talented group of players, but they certainly haven’t outplayed the Giants so far in this series. Even in last night’s loss, the Giants showed that if they do win the series it won’t be a miraculous feat.