Return of The Machine: Giants Re-Sign Burrell
Understandably left for dead by the Tampa Bay Rays in May, Pat Burrell latched on with San Francisco and hit .266/.364/.509 (.371 wOBA) in 341 plate appearances as part of the Giants’ World Championship run. Despite his struggles in the postseason, without Burrell’s unexpected regular season contributions it is hard to imagine the Giants getting to the playoffs. He has reportedly re-signed with San Francisco for the 2011 season for a very affordable one million dollars guaranteed (plus incentives) over one season. There are questions, however, about how Burrell fits into the Giants 2011 plans.
The Giants plan to contend, of course, coming off of their championship. All but the most vociferous Giants fan would probably admit that whichever team is the current favorite for the 2011 NL West, that team is not leaps and bound ahead of the others. The Giants just barely got into the playoffs in 2010, and even if one thinks the Padres were a fluke, the Rockies reamin talented and young, and the Dodgers are reloading. The Giants can’t rest on their laurels, despite their tremendous rotation and one of the best young catchers in the game. They need to get better where they can.
How does Burrell fit into such a plan? While Burrell did hit well for the Giants last season, given his dreaful performances for the Rays in 2010 and 2011, expecting him to repeat just because of his proximity to the Pacific and Aubrey Huff would be a bit… silly, given that he’s obviously in his decline phase. His .346 wOBA over the last three seasons isn’t horrible, but it is greatly influenced by his .374 wOBA over 645 PA for Philadelphia in 2008. Given his age and recent performance, something between Bill James Projections’ optimistic .351 wOBA and a still-above-average .330 seems reasonable. A .340 wOBA would be about 10 runs above average over a full season. Defensively, Burrell is probably pretty bad despite nice 2010 UZR and DRS numbers over a small sample. 5 runs below average in left field is probably generous given his age and how eager Bruce Bochy was to pull him for a defensive replacement in late innings. Calling it something like 10 runs below average and factoring in positional adjustment, we’d estimate Burrel to overall be somewhere bewteen one and 1.5 WAR over a full season. He’s still a bargain given the price, but not really what you want from a starter in a contending season.
As noted above, the Giants probably need to be improving their talent level, rather than just maintaining it. Rob Neyer made a similar comment in his note on the Burrell signing. The Giants have much going for them, but they also probably can’t count on players like Huff and Andres Torres to repeat anything like their 2010 performances. While they didn’t go crazy in signing Miguel Tejada, it doesn’t really improve their team. Moreover, with Burrell in left field and Huff at first, where does super-prospect first baseman Brandon Belt go?
These are valid concerns, but Burrell’s contract doesn’t really clog things up. Starting with the Belt situation: while Belt is quite promising, the Giants probably want to leave him in the minors for the at least the first months of 2011 in order to game his service time to get him more seasoning at AAA, where he only had 61 PA in 2010. When Belt does come up, the Giants can always move Huff to the outfield again (not that he’s great out there), and some have suggested that Belt himself might be able to hack left field — I’ll leave that to prospect mavens to judge. That would push Burrell to the bench, and that leads to the second point: the Giants need someone on the bench. One million dollars isn’t terrible even for a bench player, and Burrell wouldn’t start the season there. Contenders shouldn’t put themselves in a situation where they have play replacement level scrubs when someone goes down.
The money (or lack thereof) is the biggest issue here. A Burrell, Torres, and Cody Ross/Aaron Rowand outfield is hardly an inspiring group to start the season. But Burrell’s contract (unlike, say, Barry Zito’s) doesn’t impede the Giants’s ability to sign another outfielder if they can. If they can’t, at least they aren’t marching someone like Jose Guillen out there. Whether by way of Belt, Huff, or another signing they need to bench or even cut Burrell, they wouldn’t be taking a bath. At the very worst, Burrell’s contract is superfluous for the Giants. More likely, it is somewhere between good insurance and a nice fallback.
Matt Klaassen reads and writes obituaries in the Greater Toronto Area. If you can't get enough of him, follow him on Twitter.
Burrell reportedly has no incentives in his deal.
http://twitter.com/#!/hankschulman/status/10509649874780161
Which in my opinion would make it a quite good deal, even if he was used mainly as a pinch hitter. Also, I can’t believe Burrell is already 34. I remember when he was but a young pup on the Phillies. Time flies.
Heh. I can remember when he was tearing it up for the Hurricanes in the CWS.
Does this look like the best team they can put on the field?
1B: Belt
2B: Sanchez
SS: Tejada
3B: Huff
C: Posey
LF: Burrell
CF: Torres
RF: Ross
Bench: Sandoval, Rowand, DeRosa, Backup C?
yeah, that sounds about right. I think Belt will start the season in the minors if only to delay his ML service time, so Huff would be at first and Sandoval (or DeRosa) would be the opening day 3B.
I think this deal is unambiguously a good one. there are a lot of teams out there paying long relievers and pinch hitters more than Burrell, coming off a 3 WAR partial season and projected to be an everyday player, will make in this deal.
Maybe if you are content exposing Huff to sharp grounders: http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=12883737
Now imagine this on a daily basis, and it gives you a reason not to put Huff at third. We already have enough Zombie fielders without returning Huff to his original position.
I’m not ready to give up on Panda as a starter at 3b.
Many players have had a sophomore slump.
His bat was too good the prior year.
But I too would like to see belt hit full time.
I could see handing Huff LF, platooning ross and burrell
Who is a reasonably priced LF option who is projected to fair better?
Regression:
Huff, Torres, and Burrell. Count in perhaps Uribe to Tejada downgrade. Maybe Jonathan Sanchez and the bullpen?
Improvement:
Sandoval. Full years of Posey and Bumgarner. Belt in May. Ross and Burrell taking most of the OF AB’s that early in the year were abysmally wasted on Rowand, Schierholtz, Bowker and DeRosa. The bench will be deeper and more flexible.
The Giants aren’t upgrading from the year-end world series team, because they made gradual but massive upgrades in-season last year from the Opening Day team. So the team that starts Opening Day 2011, may not project as well as the team that just rough-housed the Rangers and Phillies, but it projects much better than the overall regular season 2010 team.
I’m pretty sure the plan is for Huff to take over LF when Belt is “ready” and for Burrell to take over Ishikawa’s job as the top PH. I think if they were anticipating any more of a role for Burrell than that he wouldn’t have signed for only $1 mil.
Exactly.
According to a piece on the Giants website Burrell negotiated the deal himself.
The Giants, even with the World Series win, are in budget hell because so much of their money is precommitted to their 5th starter and their 4th outfielder. They have to fill holes with crummy players because they have no real cash to spend (certainly not after the Huff deal) and the farm system is just about the worst in baseball.
Given the circumstances in which they’re operating, getting Burrell at just $1M is something close to a minor miracle.
It’s hard to call the Giants’ farm system the worst in baseball. They just graduated their top two prospects, so it seems thin on a superficial level, but factor in a consistently successful scouting and drafting department and you can expect the system to rebuild over the next few years.
They have two prospects projected to make an impact on the major league level (Wheeler and Belt) and two prospects on the borderline (Neal/Crawford). It’s not the best, but far from the worst.
agree w/ paul, it’s a very thin system. A few guys are interesting, but w/ prospects you need quantity. crawford/neal and others in the higher levels did not impress in 2010.
@Brendan:
They played in AA Richmond, which is a horrible place to hit, and Neal still had a pretty good year. Move those guys to the PCL, and everyone will be incredulous; how did they get so great all of a sudden?
The upper levels are fairly barren, yeah, but all the talent graduated in the last couple years. Matt Cain is the longest-tenured member of the team, and he came up in 2005. There are some good prospects in the low minors; of course, the uncertainty there means they can’t really be counted upon, but the Giants don’t have a bad system.
Ummm, Aaron Rowand isn’t the Giants 4th OF, he’s their 5th (6th if you count Huff as an OF). Also, their minor league system is bottom heavy, but any system that contains Brandon Belt cannot be the worst in baseball based on that fact alone.
as a note, burrell hit .266/.364/.509 over his 341 PA with the giants. .252/.348/.469 is his season line.
oops… read the wrong line
The latent tenor of doubt that has ruled Giants analysis ever and anon is very palpable in this article. I’m a pretty strict G’s fan, so I’ve always welcomed it, even if it does seem a little thicker lain than what Jack Z, Daniels, Reagins, etc. front offices get.
Cheeseplease got it right in showing that the roster is setting up an incredibly improved baseline. One that may feature above-average production out of players 1-25, with many filling multiple roles. Depending on how things develop through May, the G’s have the talent to not only lead the NL West but one of the best rosters as far as marginal ability to improve going forward through the season.
Bottom line; Hinske got 1.3, I believe. Adjust analysis accordingly.
I don’t know that the Giants “need” to make improvements. On the one hand, yes, I would expect some regression for Huff, Burrell, and Torres, not to mention the Giants’ rather fortunate lack of injuries, specifically to the starting rotation. On the other hand, they will get full seasons from Burrell, Torres, Posey, Ross, and Bumgarner, which could easily equalize (or outweight) any expected regression.
Bottom line, this team is not an 80 win team, and it’s not a 100 win team. I would expect them to be right around where they were last year–88 to 94 wins, which should put them right in the thick of things.
IAWT
Having all those players for a full season will help a lot to keep the Giants in contention next year. People forget how much Aaron Rowand, Euginio Velez, and Todd Wellemeyer played in the beginning of last year. I think Burrell and Tejada will be comfortable in the NL West. If they get any major injuries though, they could be in trouble.
Rowand, Guillen, DeRosa, Bowker and Velez combined for 756 plate appearancs in the OF and were -25.9 in Batting value. Schierholtz also had 252 PA with -6.8. He’s not likely to get that many this year.
So that’s over 1000 really crappy PA’s by outfielders that are going to be primarily taken by Cody Ross, with another chunk divvied up between Burrell and potentially Belt.
I hope shierholtz figures it out at the plate. ATT is a tough right field, and he is one of the best there is.
I think it would be great if they made some substantial improvements to the lineup.
Short of signing Crawford or Werth, or trading actual pitching that they actually need, or moving one of their few prospects, I simply don’t see how it can be done.
Exactly. So far this has been a simple, sound, offseason where short and long term interests were looked after.
Here’s what is not mentioned with respect to the Burrell signing:
He is a legitimate power threat behind Posey and will anchor the lineup. More pitches for Posey to hit and a middle of the order that will facilitate runs.
Last year, every realistic Giants’ fan was concerned about total absence of team speed. This year, speed will be shrugged off in favor of ‘professional’ AB’s and well time long balls and XBH’s.
Like 2010, whatever holes the 2011 Giants have in the lineup come mid-summer, Sabean should have the prospects available for trade to help fill them.
Surprised no one mentioned this actual statistic considering all the mentions of getting full years out of all our 2nd half guys vs. our 1st half guys, and the fact that Huff actually fell off a bit in the 2nd half, but after June 30th last year, with most of the new guys playing and the Rowands not, the team went 52-34, a better than .600 clip, which includes the stellar rotation’s not so stellar August. They will NOT win 98 games, but resting on one’s laurels so-to-speak could be a lot worse.
Even that doesn’t include going 11-4 in the playoffs against the best teams in baseball. So about a .623 clip over 100ish games with the most of the same guys coming back.
Best fangraphs headline ever.
Re: the comment about the Giants gaming Belt’s service time
I’m digressing a bit, but I don’t know why FG writers in particular look down on teams gaming service time. Isn’t this just another way for teams to exploit a market inefficiency? If you could get 6 years of value at a comparable cost to 5 years of value, who would turn that down?
I take it more as a criticism of the system, which enables teams to do this but requires in turn for general managers to basically lie about their intentions.
This is the same lame analysis/excuses that I’ve seen the contingent of still active Sabean Naysayers espouse on: “but the Giants barely squeaked in.”
After the Giants switched to Buster Posey as starter, the Giants won at a very high winning percentage for the rest of the season, around a 105-110 win season. With basically the same team they have right now.
Now they were hot initially, but using only second half stats, they were on a 98 win pace with Uribe the only missing player who played significant innings in the second half, and he only hit .244/.297/.441/.738, a hardly irreplaceable contribution, that is basically what Tejada hit for SD in second half. If you throw in Renteria and Guillen, that’s .240/.305/.396/.701 and .266/.317/.375/.692, respectively.
And nobody hit out of their mind (http://www.baseball-reference.com/play-index/split_stats_team.cgi?full=1¶ms=half%7C2nd%20Half%7CSFG%7C2010%7Cbat%7CAB%7C), with Burrell .258/.363/.520/.883, Huff .284/.385/.462/.847, Posey .283/.340/.472/.812 leading the way among those with significant ABs in the second half.
And there are positives for improvement in the offense. First Sandoval is losing weight (15 pounds so far) working with a fitness firm that has worked with A-Rod and Barry Bonds and if you analyze his ups and downs in 2010, his downs were marked by his divorce/child custody battle and his nearly losing his mother to a massive gas explosion. He hit over 1000 OPS in April and ended the season’s last two weeks with high 800 OPS. Second, Ross should be an improvement over Guillen/Rowand/Schierholtz in RF in second half, even with his down year overall, that trio was in the high 600 OPS. Third, Belt looks ready to reach majors by mid-season and provide a good lefty bat, both OBP and SLG, and plus defense at 1B.
Meanwhile, the starting pitching, while one outlier in Sanchez (2.61 ERA), that is balanced by another outlier in Lincecum (3.76 ERA; horrible August, new slider in Sept took care of that). Bumgarner (3.14 ERA) and Zito (4.70 ERA) both look to regress to each other (Zito has 4.09 ERA over 2009 and 2010, not worth his salary but that is still pretty good). And Cain (2.91 ERA) looks repeatable.
Overall, the pitching staff will be missing Moto and Ray, the two pitchers with the worse ERA in the second half (6.20 and 5.19 ERA, respectively). That should help balance regression on the part of Ramirez and Lopez. That leaves possible regression by Wilson, Romo, and Casilla.
Possible positives here too. First, Bumgarner was flashing mid-90 heat in the playoffs, so who is to say that one of the top pitching prospects of 2010 isn’t that good. Second, Sanchez could have reached a new level of performance during the regular season that he could repeat in 2011 (3.47 ERA in first half still pretty good). Third, part of the reason Lincecum was hittable in August was because of poor conditioning in the off-season and in-season. Lesson learned, he probably won’t do that again. Meanwhile, he picked up a new slider that enabled the weakened Lincecum to be a batting practice pitcher in August to become an outstanding Lincecum in Sept/Oct/Nov.
So lets recap. Team that won roughly at a 100 win rate after the ASG retains all key contributors and dropped 5 who did not contribute that much, replacing with players who look to be better or same. And that is with players contributing as a group basically what they should be contributing, nobody really out there with a plus performance without a counter-balancing player who could regress back up. In addition, there are possibilities for improvement for the season.
Meanwhile, LA basically has the same offense, with Uribe being their major add (but not one that look to push up production), but pending what they do at C (but Victor Martinez is already gone), has basically the same pitching, with Garland as the upgrade, and that same team was significantly under .500 in the second half (31-43) after losing Manny, and Uribe and Garland are their major upgrades? Really, they are going to get 11-12 games better with those additions? And they have no top prospects ready to reload, not on level of Brandon Belt at least.
Padres, once they are forced to trade A-Gon, they will be A-Gone from the top of the division. And if you look at the Giants record, if it wasn’t for their lousy record against the Padres, they would have won going away. If they would have simply played .500 with SD, they would have had 95 wins and SD 87 wins.
Rockies I can see as the major competitor for the division title. But they were 34-40 in the second half with the team they had. They had a mind-blowing great first half from Ubaldo to get where they got, and they were still 9 games behind the Giants at the end. They get some wins for more games played by Tulo, but are they really going to make up the 9? And if the Giants are the new improved second half Giants, they would need to make up 15+ games. And they just traded away Olivo, one of their better hitters; are they ready to go all in with Ianetta now? Jose Lopez, though, could be a good boost, but again, we are talking 9-15 games to make up, he’s not that good.
I won’t declare the Giants prohibitive favorites, because you never know how injuries and poor performance crop up, but right now, I don’t see how the other teams have made up the difference between them and the Giants at the end of the season. You have to like the Giants chances to win the NL West Division.
This is all stuff die-hard Giants fans know, but most other people don’t seem to talk about. Excellent post, just spot-on.
The Giants that won the World Series are better than their 92-win record, because a much weaker team took the field for half the season.
I’m expecting a big season from Lincecum in particular. A full season of that slider, plus his self-proclaimed renewed commitment to conditioning after his rough August, and it’s gonna be good.
And he’s got that slider now. Because when Timmy feels like he’s losing it a little bit, he just shows up with a ridiculously awesome pitch. In a couple years he’ll be throwing knuckleballs.
The reason why only Giants fans know this stuff is that it’s flavored like Aid.
Newsflash: EVERY team replaces sucky backup players and failed prospects with other guys as the year goes on. As for the cherrypicked second-half stats, well– guess what, that stuff is just flat out meaningless.
This is fangraphs. People here really do not care about what a guy did in the last two weeks of the season.
Analyzing based on assuming the prior year’s results and then adding and subtracting is a terrible way to analyze. Much more accurate is to project the roster as is from scratch.
Paul, you totally missed the point, which was that the Giants won at a 100-win rate despite players regressing in the second half. Reread and try again.
Wow… I’m almost starting to believe after that post, obsessive!
Unfortunately for the Giants Pablo’s problems have almost nothing to do with his weight. Whether he weighs 150 or 350 he isnt going to hit consistently at the ML level with that approach. Also concerning was his new found tendency to air mail throws all over the diamond. I hope camp panda can fix those things…but I’m not optimistic.
I could have posted as long a post regarding Pablo. The thing is, he had a very hard year dealing with personal issues.
You say he won’t hit consistently at that level in baseball but he basically did hit that well, even on a month by month basis, from the time he made the majors in August 2008 to April 2010, basically 1.5 seasons worth of games.
Then he goes – roughly – from 1000 OPS in April to 300 OPS for two weeks in May to mid-800 for a month then down again to ASB hits 800-range OPS for a couple of weeks, flies down to Venezuela to sign his divorce papers, is down again, starts hitting again and then his mom almost dies in a gas pipeline explosion so he is hitting poorly again until hitting well again at the end of the season. The ups and downs early in the season probably correlates to first the divorce papers hitting him, then the custody battle over his daughter.
Maybe you are superhuman and stuff like that don’t bother you, but he clearly was dealing with issues that most people would have a problem dealing with, without it affecting them in other parts of their life.
Many people can go to work to avoid dealing with those personal issues, but for Pablo, it was his work that caused both to happen: MLB has a lot of temptations and he partook and apparently was caught and if he weren’t a baseball player, his mom would have been home in Venezuela, thousands of miles away from that explosion that nearly took her life.
So maybe the league figured him out, finally, after 1.5 years of being unable to get him out (but it’s been obvious what SHOULD be getting him out), and then not only did one pitcher/team figure it out, but it quickly passed to all the teams after that, for a couple of weeks, then he starts hitting well again, then poorly, then well, then poorly, then well.
I don’t believe such adjustments happen like that and for short periods of time. I’ve certainly never seen that with other players. Once his problem is discovered, he usually don’t get better again for a long while, and certainly not after two weeks or so.
In addition, there are clear markers for key events: his flight to Venezuela, taking him away from the team for a few days, when the pipeline explosion nearly took his mother away. Doing well, then suddenly not doing well before recovering.
So call me a homer if you must, but I don’t believe that his bad 2010 was due to the league figuring him out. They had 2008 and 2009 to figure him out when everyone knew that pitching outside the zone was the way to go, and yet he would still hit them hard for line drives for hits and homers. Suddenly they figure him out like that?
It would only make sense if he started getting himself out by changing himself in some way. And if he got himself out, then why did it take 1.5 seasons to happen? We all see what his problem is, and yet he kept on hitting and very well. At age 22. It makes more sense that he was troubled by something and wasn’t himself when hitting, or fielding for that matter. If you aren’t concentrating on the field, you will certainly air mail throws.
While I understand that Huff will most likely regress to some extent, why does everyone assume that Torres will? Last year was his first full season in the Big Leagues and he had a pretty rough second half that was marked by a couple nagging injuries and an appendectomy. At the end of the day though, there’s really not enough data on Torres after his swing overhaul to make any kind of assertion based on his numbers as to how his season will play out next year. Also, I’m yet to hear or read anyone point to anything about his game from a scouting perspective that would suggest a regression.
He looked rough in September, but then in the World Series he turned it on. He is one of my favorite players on the Giants now, and I can’t wait to see him next year.
“He looked rough in September”
He also struck out a lot in the second half. But then again, his appendix was about to kill him. The guy got chopped up and then was back to form about a month later; it happened to be in the WS.
I watched almost every inning of Giants ball after the Molina trade, and it was perceptible that sometimes when AT came to plate, it looked like his ADHD was flaring up: the guy would twitch and flail apparently on the verge of uncontrollably; other times, it was apparent that he was calm and locked in.
The guy is exciting to watch, and I don’t see evidence to suggest his performance will deteriorate.
He’s 33 next season, and players regress to the mean, because that’s how regression to the mean works.
That’s not enough for you?
Hard and fast rules for onset of regression have you ?
He’s 33 in excellent condition will relatively low MLB mileage considering his previous existence as a AAA journeyman.
My concern would be his hamstrings which he had some problems with in 2009. Not a problem in 2010, perhaps his conditioning program has mitigated chance of recurrence.
Torres is an MVP candidate on the Giants; and as their sparkplug, only speed threat and as a gold-glove caliber defender they need him on the field producing similar WAR values from 2010.
The question though is what is Torres’ mean? You seem to be assuming its regressing to be a AAAA player. People who are watching him play everyday for the last 2 years are seeing a sustained high level of performance. Maybe somebody will discover a hole in his swing next year (he did seem particularly vulnerable to high fastballs from the left side in the 2nd half) and exploit it, but otherwise their is no reason to expect a significant drop off.
Good comment.
Problem is most people are not aware of either his swing overhaul or his ADHD or his appendectomy. They see a journeyman who could never hit suddenly hitting (and I was one) but he’s now 33 YO, when players start to wear down and decline.
And who knows, maybe they are right about that. I’ve seen many point out his hammy problems, and after Durham, I’m still leery whenever I hear someone has that problem, particularly a ballplayer whose value is built on speed (I’m less worried because he was a track guy, they should know how to take care of that because their legs are so important). Still, the main problem is that the naysayers are not aware of all the other factors and just write him off when they don’t know the full picture.
It’s a shame that there’s somewhat of a conventional wisdom that the Giants were a weak champion. In fact they had the WAR of something like a 94 win team (3rd in MLB, from this site’s numbers), and if you take their second half lineup and project it out to a full season it’s something like a 100 win team.
I guess people think great rotation, great closer, weak lineup, meh. But the truth if you look at the WAR is great rotation, very good bullpen, average hitting, and great fielding (they get no credit for this).
I’m sure they project for some regression… more so than the projected benefit of having Posey, MadBum, and NotRowand for a full season. But I bet when all the projections are done they come in as a 91-95 win team. A solid contender.
As for the Burrell move, it’s obviously great for the Giants. And I don’t see why he has to be just a bench player. The system of giving Burrell 3 PAs and then pulling him for Schierholtz every game worked great last season and I say keep doing it until Burrell shows real drop-off.
Giants were one of the best defensive teams in baseball last year, which everyone seems to ignore. Andres Torres is an incredible CF, Ross is a good RF, Sanchez is a great 2B, Posey’s a better C than everyone thought, and even Huff isn’t DH-worthy and Pablo’s range is lacking but he’s still got an arm. Only Burrell and Tejada will be significant defensive liabilities, and we’ve got the strength at other positions to make up for that.
Oh, and 1-8, the Giants had one of the most balanced lineups in baseball. Not many guys are thinking of putting a Pablo Sandoval-type talent at their eighth hitter.
any other 25 HR OFs available for $1MM?
“While Burrell did hit well for the Giants last season, given his dreaful performances for the Rays in 2010 and 2011” Besides the typo (dreadful*)…isn’t this supposed to be 2009 and 2010? Or am I missing something….
The Giants didn’t improve on the roster that dominated in the playoffs, but full seasons of Torres, Posey, Bumgarner, Burrell, Ross, and Freddy Sanchez should improve this team substantially throughout the season.
The pen will be good again. Even if Wilson and Casilla regress a bit, Affedlt should bounce back and they’ll get a full season of Javier Lopez.
There’s depth everywhere but at C and SS. I’d really like an upgrade at backup C, but I don’t know who that would be. An injury to Posey would be devastating – but not many teams can shrug off an injury to their star player, I guess.
My other fear is for the health of the pitching staff. They’ve been lucky to avoid the DL the last few years – is that luck going to run out? Sanchez’s ERA was lucky and he’ll regress, and the four young starters all pitched heavy loads and in the postseason for the first time. Hopefully Timmy’s conditioning really was what cost him to lose velocity for the second year in a row, but another dip in velocity and increased work load are significant risk factors for 2011. I guess we’ll see.
Sanchez’s ERA was not lucky.
He has been building up to it in each prior season. He was this good early in 2008 but then was not used to pitching so many innings so he tailed off. He started 2009 out of sorts because he copied his hero’s pitching mechanics (Johan Santana, while in WBC), not realizing that what works for a shorter player like Johan don’t work so well for Sanchez, who is a bit taller. Once he stopped using that, he had his no-hitter and even if you drop that game and look at the rest of his 2009, he pitched as well as he did in 2010.
So 2010 just puts together in one season the talent he showed in early 2008 with the stamina he showed in late 2009. When a pitcher can strike out so many hitters, he has a real gift and he finally put it all together in one season in 2010. Should just be the start of many.
There’s a lot of Giants diehards drinking the Kool-Aid here, and a lot of pretty poorly thought out rebuttals. I’d like to see some people come in and give a balanced point of view on this..
I think your seeing a lot of Giants fans wondering in what universe is signing a player with Burrell’s level of productivity this past year to $1M for 1 year a bad thing…yet the tenor of the article suggests it is.
That said, I do agree that if your not improving your team your losing ground to your rivals.
I think as fans we get caught up in the hot stove and think that the offseason is the only time to significantly improve a ball club. I suspect that the lesson the Giants learned from the past offseason, and are attempting to replicate, is that if you can build your ballclub with significant positional flexibility, not only do you pick up wins by not having significant drop off in replacement players, but you give yourself more opportunities to improve your team throughout the season, becuase your roster is less static. In that way, you can wait to see how the season unfolds and then invest in wins through trade that will be more efficiently effective in increasing your playoff odds.
“There’s a lot of Giants diehards drinking the Kool-Aid here”
You can do that when you’re World Champions.
The Kool-Aid is in the rationale that Tejada can come anywhere near replacing Uribe’s performance. Major downgrade there (and for double the money).
Resigning Burrell was a good idea, and doing for it for nearly nothing–since Burrell selflessly didn’t care about the money–is a major stroke of good fortune for the team.
Burrell-Torres-Ross (and with Schierholtz as a late-inning defensive replacement) is a good OF.
With Barry & A-Rod’s former trainers at work on Panda, he might come to ST stacked with fatless muscle, but would he pass the pee test? His real issue is that he believes, on some level of consciousness or unconsciousness, that he can hit any pitched ball. Rebuild his plate discipline, and he’ll regain the form that got him on to the team.
Can Z please pitch in the #5 spot where his abilities might earn him a winning record?
The reason Pablo believes it is because he can. He’ll be back in 2011 and he’ll be his hack-tastic self again, slinging outside pitches to the outfield for hits and homers, now that his personal problems are over and hopefully his body will be in better shape as well.
The problem is actually with the people who believe that Uribe can replace his 2010 performance. They are not aware of how badly he hit in the second half of the season. Tejada might not replace him but he wasn’t that bad last season either, and certainly better than any other options out on the market, particularly the trade market, which would cost us prospects. At minimum, Tejada hit just as well as Uribe did in the second half and with the current team, that team was winning at a 95-100 win pace for that half year. Good enough performance for me.
Good for him… he and Brian Wilson can remain neighbors.