Giants Making Giant (Lineup) Gaffes?
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.
Perhaps the choice was about strikeouts. The Baby Giraffe has struck out in 27.5% of his at-bats this year, which seems a little high. His 9.7% swinging strike rate fits right between Jason Bay (21.7 K%) and Miguel Montero (17.3 K%) on the leaderboard. His minor league high in a full season was 22.2%, too. On the other hand, Pill has never struck out in more than 16.7% of his at-bats and was in the midst of a 9.4% rate in Triple-A this year. So he won’t strike out as much as Belt.
But he won’t walk as much either. Or show as much power. Pill’s best power year in the minor leagues (.218 ISO this year) exactly equals Belt’s worst (.218 in Triple-A this year), and given their ages (27 and 23 respectively) and career minor league power rates (.166 and .253 respectively), it’s fairly obvious that Belt has more uspide. So call that strike two for the Giants’ lineup card.
At least Aubrey Huff wasn’t out in left field. But in center field, there’s another new face. Justin Christian made his National League debut at the tender age of 31. Could lightning strike twice in the bay? Could the Giants find a second late-blooming center fielder to replace their last version?
In a word, maybe. The knock on Christian used to be that he was a speed-only player with no power or patience. Then, in 2010, something clicked. He’s walked in over 10% of his plate appearances since while keeping his strikeout rate under 12% as he usually does. Power is still a question mark. Yes, he had a .235 ISO in Triple-A, but it was in the Pacific Coast League, where the average ISO was .166. He might have had some help there, and he’s never had an ISO above .175 otherwise.
Again, it might be about strikeout rate, since Andres Torres is striking out a little too often (24.4%). And yet again, it might be ignoring the fact that Torres has a longer track record of patience and power along with his strikeouts. And yet again, Torres is a switch-hitter with virtually identical lines against lefties and righties, and Christian is a righty going up against a righty. Strike three?
If the Giants are striking out on their lineup decisions in order to avoid the strikeout, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. The team has the sixth-best strikeout rate in the National League… and the fourth-worst ISO and third-worst walk rate. Especially against a right-handed pitcher, the team should be running our their most patient and powerful players.
Then again, those two old rookies are in the middle of their best years… and went a combined two for six with a walk and a home run in the game last night. Baseball!
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
Thank you. This deserves attention and Bochy needs to be slapped. You should also mention the obsession with Orlando Cabrera. No matter how much he sucks, he’s still out there every day, not hitting and making errors.
Whilst having Brandon Crawford on the bench collecting dust preparing for AFL.
They still have Mike Fontenot too.
Neither Cabrera or Crawford should be gracing a major league baseball field, a distinction without a difference. One is over the hill and the other can’t hit his weight. They do have something in common though, they have very similar fielding stats.
If you think their defense is in anyway similar you have not watched them play. Cabrera is a statue at this point. That tie breaking single last night should not have gotten through the infield.
“They do have something in common though, they have very similar fielding stats.”
Similar looking, but Orlando Cabrera’s has a negative sign in front of it.
watching o-cab play is like watching your grandma’s cat get raped by a buffalo: hilarious and disgusting. not that that’s ever happened.
The Giants front office is just trying to make a mockery of itself. Even their September call ups are wily (minor league) veterans.
Watching the Franchise is hilarious.
[Cut to small room with Giant Brass looking stoic and thoughtful]
Sabean: “Well, we are doing everything a ballclub needs to be doing. We are grinding out wins on the road, blahalbhalbalaalhbal lots of other stuff that means nothing.”
This was looking so promising at first. And then the 2nd half of the Sabean quote happened and sucked the whole thing back down to zero funniness.
Giants are done, it hardly matters at this point.
yeah could be true… but even then, probably makes sense to go with Belt over Pill most days.
Particularly from a developmental standpoint. Who is more likely to be a contributor on future Giant teams?
You really believe Bochy doesn’t understand that Belt is the long-term future when compared to someone like Pill? Seriously? The one guy who probably more than anyone else in the org had Belt begin the season in the majors in the first place?
Sample size is a beautiful thing…
no reason not to be playing Belt right now. Even if it’s over, he’s the future, much more so than some of those other guys Bochy’s running out there right now.
I think they’re just trying to give some of these guys some playing time while the rosters are expanded and they’re out of the race. If they were 5 games back, Belt would be in the lineup. A better title for this article would be: “Giants giving up race, giving career minor leaguers some playing time.”
If you were actually watching the games, I don’t see how you could criticize this. Pil got a home run on his first at bat, which clearly just about made his lifetime. That’s a feel good story, it makes people happy. Is Pil going to hit like that for the rest of his career? Well, he just might- given that as a 27 year old rookie with limited pop, he could get cut next year and never see the majors again. But he got to have his night.
From the perspective of the organization, these moves make a ton of sense- you are building goodwill with your minor league guys and showing that your organization cares about giving people a shot. If they lose one more game this year, who cares? Their odds of making the playoffs are less than 1% already.
Huh? I watch the Giants only less than I watch the Mets, probably at least four or five innings a day. You look at Bochy and see a guy that’s managing like they are out of it and looking to next year? I don’t see that. Bochy almost ate his hat last night.
He thinks Pill gives him the best shot now. If he was managing for next year, he should play Belt anyway. Is he managing to give career minor leaguers a good feeling about themselves?
Fair enough. I’ll have to chalk it up to bad process, good results then. Because in my opinion he was doing what he should have be doing, though he might have been doing it for entirely the wrong reasons.
With that said, I never said that Bochy was playing Pil to make Pil happy- I was saying that as a fan it made me happy watching it. And I entirely disagree that if he was playing for next year that Belt should have been playing. When you’re out of the race is a good time to see how minor leaguers handle big league competition, in my opinion. You’re losing games that don’t matter. Everybody knows Belt will be playing next year, there will be plenty of sample size for him.
Does lineup gaffes
rhyme with baby giraffes ?
on the field: Orlando Cabrera
ready to make another error.
now THIS is good. well played.
I disagree with the count.
Playing Pill over Belt may be equivalent to swinging at a ball that bounces in front of home plate, but regardless of how many reasons there are for that decision being wrong, it should only count as one strike.
Hah! Good point! I didn’t write it, so I don’t get credit, but perhaps the shenanigans at shortstop can be strike three?
“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.”
Just a bit of trivia here, but Pill scored/drove in their only run and had two of the team’s seven hits. Might have been a puzzling move on paper, but why single it out when it worked, whatever the reason? Also, small sample size, but Belt has been much better against lefties than righties this year.
Because the process is more important than the results. Good process most often leads to good results… bad process can sometimes lead to good results but that doesn’t mean it was a good idea.
was the 2010 WS the result of bad process? and 2011 a more predicable outcome ?
and strike three on Sabean/Bochy, but the the ball went to the back stop and they safely reached first.
The 2010 Giants were a much healthier and much much better hitting team than these 2011 Giants.
Really though, they have had a ridiculous amount of injuries this season. All of the below players have been on the DL.
Buster Posey (60)
Eli Whiteside
Brandon Belt
Freddy Sanchez (60)
Mike Fontenot
Miguel Tejada
Pablo Sandoval
Andres Torres
Cody Ross
Nate Schierholtz
Carlos Beltran
Mark DeRosa
Manny Burriss
Darren Ford
Bill Hall
Pat Burrell
Barry Zito
Jonathan Sanchez
Brian Wilson
Sergio Romo
Santiago Casilla
They are offensively challenged to say the least. Here is a tidbit from one reporter:
–The Giants have scored an MLB-low 454 runs. Yes, fewer than Seattle and 52 runs fewer than the Padres.
At this pace, the Giants will score 549 runs this season.
That’s 170 fewer runs than the Yankees and 45 fewer than the D-Backs have scored RIGHT AT THIS MOMENT, with more than a month of games to play.
Last year the Giants scored 697. Last year at this same point in the schedule (134 games), the Giants had scored 593 runs.
Hubris often leads to bad outcomes too. Belt’s been scuffling lately, and Bochy has given him some time to clear his head. He’s managing people, not stats.
Apologize if guilty of hubris, but cannot know what I don’t know.
I do know that I don’t believe that the team has given Brandon Belt a fair shot and that they’ve tried many other less attractive alternatives instead. Those things are fairly factual vs opinion-based, too. I’d be more likely to believe that it’s just about ‘getting his head right’ or ‘clearing Belt’s mind’ if they’d given him a month and then decided to give him a day off to rest.
I don’t believe that’s what’s going on here.
Eno, All you should say is the stats indicate that in the average situation Belt should get the start over Pill, which I think everyone would agree is correct – surely the Giants do as they released Pill last year and promoted Belt rapidly through the org. When you say “it’s a process” then you’ve widened the analysis space to include non-stat elements, and surely, in that space, Bochy is in a better informational position than you.
I get that your thesis here is that Bochy is an idiot who must not understand lefty-righty match-ups nor elementary sabermetrics. Or did you not intend to present a straw-man argument with this as the thesis?
My thesis is not that they are idiots. They obviously know more than I do about what Belt ate today, or how someone’s hammy feels, as much as I abhor appeals to authority. But I read nothing about those kinds of things in the pre- or post-game information. If it’s numbers, we have very similar if not the same numbers, so I feel like I can question them on that level.
My thesis is that they have the wrong goals. If their goal is to avoid strikeouts, which it seems to be in these two cases, then they are misguided, because the team is not having a strikeout problem, it’s having a patience and power problem. I also find the entire management team to be slightly myopic in a strange way: Whoever’s been better recently, and/or is older, seems to get more shrift. That’s a a feeling behind my words that’s separate, though, and it comes from watching the games.
In short, I’m just trying to figure out what they are thinking. The strike one/two/three thing is a writing trope meant to make the piece flow. Just a dash of snark, and maybe that’s where the Bochy is an idiot idea came from.
As for straw men, I don’t see any here. This is a straight-forward questioning of the reasoning and motives of two very real men, Sabean and Bochy. IF my language wasn’t clearer about who is responsible for what, that’s because that’s a real limit of my knowledge.
And that, according to most of the ocmments, is the rub: Does Sabean think the team is out of it, so he called up these two guys to see if they can help? Does Bochy think they are in it, so he’s playing them to ride the hot hand? Does Bochy agree with Sabean and also wants to see what they have? If so, why would they play Pill and not Belt?
I think there’s a disconnect somewhere in terms of the goals of the organization.
Eno, you’re guessing at what their goals are and then presenting arguments as to why those goals are wrong – that is a definitive strawman argument. There’s a bit of petitio principii in there too.
If you’re just trying to deduce what their goals are then fine, but you can’t then turn around and say those goals are wrong – not given the level of precision in deduction you’ve presented here.
Perhaps rather than worrying about the flow of your writing, you should concentrate on the technical elements of presenting a logical argument. Surely, this should be minimum standard for any sabermatrician to meet.
Anyway, got to run, the final word is yours.
Agree with Peter. “Hubris” definitely applies here. Based on his writing, Eno Sarris is kind of full of himself and has been for a while.
@tynandaly —
is that the list of Giants who’ve been on the DL this year or the AARP’s membership list?
At this point, I think the Giants’ playoff chances are gone, so I’m fine with playing some minor leaguers to see what value they may have for next year given the Giants’ very tight budget. Still, Belt should be playing everyday. If it’s in left with Pill at first sometimes, fine, but Belt should start every game for the rest of the season.
They realize the season is done and they just want to get a better look at how some players handle major-league pitching. They’ve already seen a decent amount of Belt and know he’ll be in the mix next year. The only head-scratcher for me is why Crawford didn’t start instead of Cabrera…
I have to say, this analysis is just plain back-asswards. No offense. All these moves show is that the Giants are out of the playoffs. This is garbage time with expanded rosters. Any good team worth its spit in this position SHOULD be playing its young guys.
Firstly, it makes them happy and it makes the fans happy. Imagine yourself as a career minor league player at 31. Are you HONESTLY going to say that SF shouldn’t have played this guy? Do you have no heart? You’re talking about a grown man who has waited his whole life to play a game in the MLB. But you’re right, definitely an extra 2% chance at winning the game by playing Andres Torres is a much better move. Because that is going to mean so much when they’re already 7 games out with around 14 to play (e.g. soon to be mathematically eliminated).
Secondly, this is a good time to figure out if someone might have the skills to be an MLB player or will forever be a AAA guy. This is really the only chance to put them against major league competition without hurting your playoff chances, if you’re a competitive team. Sure, finding a regular this way has about the same odds as scratch tickets- but you’d still be a fool to have half a dozen scratch tickets and not check if any of them are winners. At some point, due to injuries or whatever- some of these guys may be called up next year. If you can figure out some of their limitations in the majors, you do it.
Needless to say, if you can’t see these things- you could be a very good analyst, but never a very good manager or GM. Baseball is a repeated game. If you don’t treat it as such, you’ve already lost.
I still don’t see this team acting like they are out of it. Who’s playing shortstop? Why not see if the ‘true’ young guys… like Brandon Belt… could make it?
I don’t mind the Christian over Torres thing so much. If they are truly out of it, then they should play Pill in left field, sure. or Belt there, and Pill at first, okay.
But they’re still giving Burrell and Cabrera and Huff at-bats. If they’re in it for this year, they should play their best chances. If they’re in it for next year, they should play their youngest best players.
In both cases, Belt should play. In one case, sure Christian is fine. But the track record of 30-year-old debuts is not good.
I’m pretty sure Brandon Belt wouldn’t make it at shortstop.
This is a thoughtless comment.
No need to attack the writer of the article.
“Any good team worth its spit”: what the hell does that mean?
I hate it when people say something offensive and then say, “no offense”. Unless you meant, “The Giants have no offense”, then that would have made sense.
If your second theory is correct, then only small sample sizes will determine if a player can ‘hack it’ at the major league level. I doubt you’re gonna learn much from the 50 pa’s that Brett Pill gets in the next month. Forget scouting, minor league stats, projections, and focus on these arbitrary 50 at-bats at the end of the season against other teams’ jv squads. Yah, that’s the way to evaluate talent and scratch off those lotto tickets.
If your second theory is correct, that the Giants should be figuring out how these young players do against major league pitching, where is Belt? Crawford? Why is Cabrera even on the roster? Why doesn’t Bochy play Pill, Christian, Belt, Crawford and Hector Sanchez every day?
I do agree, however, that the common sportswriter does in fact lack a heart. Sportswriters definitely shy away from the feel-good stories in sports.
The thing is, they can have the feel good Pill story while still playing Belt. They can also have another feel good story by never showing us Orlando Cabrera again.
As the article states, some of these guys who are playing aren’t “young.” (although, compared to all the octogenarians on the Giants roster, maybe a 31 year old is “young”.)
The point is, if the Giants are going to play the “young” guys, one of those young guys should be Brandon Belt.
managerial mistakes are clearly the result of east coast bias.
Nothing is worse to me than batting Delmon Young 3rd. I find it hilarious how his last game with the Twins he’s batting 8th, and since the trade he’s been hitting 3rd. these old managers are a piece of work, man
Really, batting Orlando Cabrera lead off because he asked to isn’t as bad as batting Delmon Young 3rd, a lineup position that isn’t as important as 2nd or 4th.
There are all sorts of examples as bad as this or worse. The Cards’ Skip Schumaker has batted leadoff 13 times this year and 71 times last year.
A couple weeks ago Belt failed to advance a runner over from 2nd with less than 2 outs…Bochy was pissed. Haven’t seen much of Belt since.
Which is an example of a supreme double standard from Bochy. The “gritty gamer” veterans on the Giants do this all the time.
Small sample size is almost a synonym for Sabean-Bochy thinking.
At least part of the reason that they waited longer than they should have to bring Posey up last year was that he didn’t do well in a few plate appearances at then end of the previous season in the majors and the AFL.
This year, Belt was given a start the next day after hitting 2 HR’s in a game. When he didn’t produce for a day or two, he was benched again.
Pill hit a HR in his 1st game, so he got another start the next day.
I could go on and on, but you get the idea.
best closing sentence ever?
I’m late with this but I wrote it up right after this came out, just didn’t have time to post it…
This is logical and makes sense but it suffers from the problem many of these team specific analysis fail from: lack of team specialization by the author. He may follow the Giants second to the Mets but its still not enough.
First Pill vs. Belt. Playing Pill is mostly about 2012 but also partly reward for homering. The author goes totally overboard with the analysis going too deep when the answer is simple: the Giants want to learn more about Pill. They won’t learn that by playing Belt against all RHP.
Also, here is where lack of intimate team knowledge hurts this otherwise good analysis: Belt can’t hit off-speed pitches very well. This was just acknowledged in the local papers just before this article, when the Giants announced that Belt agreed to go to play in the Dominican Winter League because there are a lot of off-speed pitchers there that he can get practice against. In the interview, he acknowledged that he needs to go because of this pre-ponderance of pitchers who throw them.
A lot of Giants articles leans towards Giants bashing, specially Sabean bashing. Here, it is subtle, with the author condescendingly noting, “it’s fairly obvious that Belt has more upside.” Well, it is obvious to the Giants too. That is why they promoted him aggressively in 2010 when he was not even highly rated in the pre-season as a prospect. That is why he made the opening day roster while Pill was dropped off the 40 man roster last off-season. That is why the Giants kept Pill in the minors all year while bringing Belt up repeatedly.
So, while Belt clearly has more potential, one start here to reward Pill for homering will not hurt Belt’s development. And people complaining about the yo-yoing but the fact remains that if the talent and will is there, he will make it. Giants fans seem to rememver mmore Todd Linden and john Bowker but forget that Matt Williams was also yo-yoed but somehow he survived that fine. If Belt is so mentally weak that going up and down causes him to fail, who is to say that any other obstacle won’t stop him either? Baseball is full of obstacles, whether yo-yoing, temptations, or what have you.
And, frankly, I find that scenario improbable because – again, knowledge a fulll-time fan would know – his football coach father should have taught him to be more mentally tough than that.
Thus, the Giants are: 1) rewarding Pill for homering (one game); 2) rewarding him for doing well in AAA this year and boosting his prospect status; 3) deciding whether they want to keep him for 2012 or not. The author is not aware that Pill can leave the Giants as a free agent, while they have control over Belt for a long time. They need to decide whether he is worth giving a 40-man spot for next season. They are not going to find that out sitting him out against all RHP in the majors. If he is worth keeping, the Giants need to see how he does against MLB RHP.
I don’t think I’ve read anything about the Giants in over a year that wasn’t met by tons of comments about how anti-Giants that article was. A 92-win team is not above criticism. This year’s team is not above criticism. And the criticism offered in this article is spot on.
If Belt can’t hit breaking stuff…why wait till the offseason to address it by facing sub-Major League pitchers?
As your Sabean defense…well those anti-Sabean writers relate to your last spat of questions. A good GM would base his evaluation of Pill on lots of things. A good GM wouldn’t need an irrelevantly small sample size of 50ish MLB plate appearances to make up his mind.
I don’t mind anti-Giants. I mind articles that claim the Giants are doing something wrong, when there is public knowledge, which a regular hardcore fan would know, but general baseball writers won’t dig deep enough to find out. Criticism is one thing, complaining about things when you don’t know the full picture is another.
The criticism is not spot on. I explained what the author missed, and the information that counters what he wrote. Counter my criticism, if you actually believe he was spot on and I was wrong, hand waving “spot on” does not prove what he said to be true. As I myself noted, what he says makes sense, only he didn’t know all the information that an informed fan would know.
Baloney. A good GM would not know how a long-time minor league player who did not show much offense in the minors until this season would do in the majors unless said minor leaguer gets some time up in the majors going against major league pitchers. That is true with any minor leaguer, unless you still think Andy Marte is the next big hitter or that Matt Weiters is going to be the next Mauer or that Sean Burroughs was never given a good chance. There is a huge leap in talent between AAA to the majors, and actual experience up here will give invaluable information towards evaluating that.
Yes, 50 ABs would not be enough for stat-minded fans like those here to evaluate. That is why you have scouts and other talent evaluators observe the hitter as he battles up here against the best pitchers anywhere. It won’t make up his mind, but it should be part of the answer set. There is a lot of data not captured in the box score. Line drives, hitting the ball squarely, even if they are caught, can be observed, whereas getting lucky with hits can also be discounted.
Great reply.
Do Sabermetrician’s believe players exist in a vacuum?
The traits we express are determined by the interaction of our genetic makeup and our environment…unless you’re a baseball player that is.
Suffice to say, Bochy, Belt, Crawford, and the Giants got the last laugh.
Kiss the rings.
Pill rewarded with free vacation to Korea.