We knew the Giants were going to miss Zack Wheeler when they pulled the trigger on the deal to acquire Carlos Beltran. Brian Sabean was sacrificing a piece at the future for the sake of the present. Many of us thought the pain would at least be dulled by a postseason appearance and a shot at defending their 2010 championship. It’s OK, though. We all make mistakes. Myself included:

The Giants’ addition of Beltran should put the NL West title squarely in the bank for San Francisco, as they already hold a three-game lead over a flawed Arizona team. Beltran will replace Nate Schierholtz in right field. The 27-year-old right fielder has been serviceable so far, posting a 109 wRC+, but Beltran has been worth nearly three more wins this season and could be an upgrade of as much as two wins over the next 50 games and change remaining.

Whoops.

Fast forward to September. The Giants have dropped 11.5 games in the standings and, depending on your source, have between a 0.2% and 0.3% chance of winning the National League West. Beltran’s play hasn’t quite been what the Giants were hoping for — the 34-year-old has a .296/.333/.463, good, but not superstar-level — and he’s spent much of his time in San Francisco injured and on the pine, missing 14 games and only playing in 28.

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It’s clear the Giants are in desperation mode. Now seven games out with 19 to go, they’ve jettisoned their disappointing veterans and have called on hands onto the deck. Wednesday night, facing righty Aaron Harang in San Diego, two of those callups were in the game. Did their inclusion on the lineup card actually constitute a mistake on the part of the Giants? Has their search for lightning in a bottle set them astray?

First, the more obvious head-scratcher. Perhaps on the basis of his Tuesday night home run, 27-year-old rookie Brett Pill was inserted into the sixth spot. Pill is a righty. Brandon Belt is a lefty. Harang is a righty. So that’s strike one for the managerial team in San Francisco.

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Going into this season, ZiPS projected Madison Bumgarner to have a 3.93 ERA and a 1.32 WHIP built on the back of a 5.84 K/9 and a 2.78 BB/9. It’s safe to say that he outdid those conservative numbers this year. Was this more about improvement or consolidation of talent? In other words, did Bumgarner say the same in the face of regression, or did he take fundamental steps forward this season?

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They say desperate times call for desperate measures. In San Francisco, desperate times apparently call for sane, resonable, and rational measures. Today, the Giants have designated Aaron Rowand and Miguel Tejada for assignment.

The Tejada decision was an easy one: he was on a one-year deal and simply never showed MLB ability this season, posting a .239/.270/.326 line. The Rowand decision, on the other hand required more than simply dumping an aging veteran who would be gone at the end of the season anyway. Designating Rowand for assignment at this juncture is that decision we so often see general managers (or ownership) shy away from at the most important times: cutting bait on a big, long-term contract.

Rowand is currently in the fourth year of a five-year, $60 million dollar contract. He is still owed roughly $2 million for the rest of 2011 and $12 million for the 2012 season. But with Rowand contributing only 0.7 WAR in 2011 and 4.8 WAR from 2008-2011, it was increasingly difficult for Brian Sabean and the Giants to justify his spot on the roster. Hindsight, of course, is simple, and Aaron Rowand was once a very good baseball player. Did Sabean whiff on the decision to pay Rowand, or was the ill-fated deal more about the player failing to live up to his value?
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Heath Bell and Carlos Pena were each claimed on waivers earlier this week, though it appears that neither player will be moving.

The Giants claimed Bell, most likely to bolster their bullpen given the injuries to Brian Wilson and Sergio Romo. The waiver claim could have also been submitted to block the Diamondbacks from acquiring Bell. The Yankees claimed Pena, even though Mark Teixeira plays virtually every inning at first base and Jorge Posada has performed well against righties this season with a .359 wOBA.

But given the Yankees place in the standings and the lack of need for the Red Sox, the claim on Pena probably wasn’t used as a blocking mechanism.

Both players should have been dealt back at the trade deadline, when teams could unilaterally work with one another. Both Bell and Pena might not represent massive improvements to anyone with only a month remaining in the season, but they could have impacted the playoff picture if traded in mid-July, when more teams were seemingly in the race. Let’s take a look at both situations.

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We often roll our eyes when announcers cite a player’s stats over the past 15 days. We’ll groan when they tout how many home runs he’s hit since the All-Star break. We’ll throw the remote when a pitcher’s last five starts are mentioned. And yet, when we attempt to analyze a player here, there’s nary a blink if ‘last season’ is mentioned.

Well, guess what. Seasons are also arbitrary endpoints. Yes, they are arbitrary endpoints that allow for easy analysis, and ones that we have all agreed to use. And, if we didn’t use them, statistical analysis would be rendered fantastically difficult. Our record books would look very strange. We’d have to phrase things very carefully.

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Aubrey Huff will continue to bat in the middle of the batting order, says his manager. It’s no surprise, either, given the organization’s predilection for veterans. Even though it’s clear that this will be one of Huff’s off years, he’s been better recently. Has it been the colloquial ‘dead cat bounce,’ though?

First, a definition! Our own Joe Pawlikowski seemed to nudge towards a definition of the ‘dead cat bounce’ term in his writeup of Jorge Posada. Mr. Pawlikowski hinted that an unsustainable blip on the way down might be a fully BABIP-driven occurence. If a player has the same flaws in the good months and the bad months, and a large BABIP fuels the difference, it makes sense that once the BABIP subsides, the player will return to his free fall. The dead cat returns to being dead.

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When you think of the San Francisco Giants bullpen, you think of Brian Wilson. Since assuming the closer’s role four years ago, Wilson has been the face – and the beard – of relief pitching in the Bay Area. That recognition comes with merit since the right-hander has been one of the better relief pitchers in baseball and his save totals (160 since 2008) shows he is well-equipped with the closer’s mentality. While he has done a great job closing the door, the pitchers bridging the gap from starting pitcher to Wilson has been as good, if not better.

As a unit, Bruce Bochy’s bunch has been a top-3 bullpen this season. More specifically, he has deployed a lefty/righty combination of high-leverage relievers to lock down the innings prior to his closer. From the left side, Javier Lopez has been quite the pickup for the Giants since joining the club in late 2010. As an alumni of the FanGraphs’ school of higher leverage, Lopez has settled in as one of the more dependable lefties in relief.

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Ron Fairly was a better player than you probably realize. In 21 major-league seasons he hit .266/.360/.408, with 215 home runs, while spending the prime of his career in an extreme pitcher’s park, in an extreme pitcher’s era. Overshadowed by big-name teammates, he quietly helped the Dodgers to World Series titles in 1959, 1963 and 1965.

Fairly is also a good storyteller  — especially when the stories pertain to the Dodger-Giants rivalry. When Juan Marichal attacked John Roseboro with a bat, Fairly was there. Ditto when Sandy Koufax was dominating hitters, and Don Drysdale was knocking them down. What did it feel like to get drilled in the back by Bob Gibson? What hitting advice did he get from Ted Williams? What did Duke Snider say about Roy Campanella? Well, now you’ll know.

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David Laurila: You had a productive a career that looks even better after accounting for era and park factors. Were you underrated?

Ron Fairly: “I think everybody feels that maybe they weren’t appreciated as much as they should have been for the contributions they made to ball clubs. I think it goes without saying. A lot of players feel that way.

“I think my numbers would certainly be better today. I played in an era — the 1960s — that might have been the most difficult in which to make your living, as a hitter, of any in the history of the game of baseball. I played in Dodger Stadium, which was a big ballpark where the ball didn’t carry very well. It doesn’t take many [lost] hits during the course of a season for your average to drop a little bit, and you weren’t going to have as many home runs or RBIs there.”

Laurila: Sandy Koufax put up his numbers in that same environment. While he was obviously a great pitcher, was he maybe a little overrated? Read the rest of this entry »

With the non-waiver trade deadline past us, we can take a step back and see how each contender upgraded its roster. Because the season is two-thirds over, these players might not have an enormous impact. But for a contender sitting on the fringe, or a leader wanting to solidify its position, these acquisitions could make enough of a difference now, and then a bigger one come playoff time, when everyone starts from scratch.

To project the positional upgrade the team will receive, we’ll look at the wRAA the team has received so far from the position, the projected wRAA for the incumbent, and the projected wRAA for the replacement, based on ZiPS rest of season. We’ll assume 230 PA, which is based on a prorated 700 PA season. I’m leaving out defense, because I’m not comfortable projecting 1/3 of a season. I’m also leaving out guys such as Jerry Hairston, who are injury fill-ins rather than upgrades.

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