The Giants Really Didn’t Need a Madison Bumgarner Injury
A quick glance at the contract situation for the best players on the San Francisco Giants might make it appear as though the club is set up for the long haul. Of the Giants’ eight best players by projection this season, seven are locked up through at least 2020, with the eighth signed for two more seasons. Every single player expected to make a significant contribution is signed or under team control for at least two seasons, with Andrew McCutchen representing the only notable exception.
What that quick glance at the Giants’ contract situations might miss, however, is the ages of all of those contributors. With a veteran core, the Giants are very much in win-now mode and losing Madison Bumgarner — who likely won’t return until June after breaking his pinky finger — deals the team a big blow in what might be the team’s last best chance at another playoff run.
Below, you will find the Giants’ best players’ current projections as well as their age this season.
| Name | Projected WAR | AGE |
|---|---|---|
| Buster Posey | 4.6 | 31 |
| Brandon Belt | 3.2 | 30 |
| Brandon Crawford | 3.1 | 31 |
| Jeff Samardzija | 3.0 | 33 |
| Evan Longoria | 2.8 | 32 |
| Joe Panik | 2.6 | 27 |
| Johnny Cueto | 2.6 | 32 |
| Madison Bumgarner | 2.3 | 28 |
| Andrew McCutchen | 2.2 | 31 |
| Mark Melancon | 1.5 | 33 |
| Chris Stratton | 1.2 | 27 |
| Ty Blach | 1.0 | 27 |
All that red in the age column is not good when it comes to projecting past the 2018 season. Even if we ignore pitching for a moment, Buster Posey, Brandon Belt, Brandon Crawford, and Evan Longoria all project as starters for the 2019 season. Based on what we know about aging generally, we can expect them all to come in to the 2019 season with roughly half-win declines from previous seasons. With those declines plus the loss of Andrew McCutchen, that’s four wins the Giants will be looking to replace on roughly an 82-win team on paper. Factoring in options and arbitration raises, the Giants’ payroll for 2019 is already around $160 million. To bring back a team in 2019 as good as the one they have now, the Giants are going to have to push payroll close to — or perhaps well past — $200 million. The team’s best prospect is an 18-year-old currently outside of the Top-100 prospects in baseball. The Giants’ greatest opportunity to win in perhaps the next half-decade exists this year.
With the Dodgers considered the favorites to win the National League West, the team’s best chance at the playoffs comes in the form of the Wild Card. In what should be a tight race, the loss of the Giants’ ace for any amount of time was going to hurt. The current prognosis for Bumgarner doesn’t look good. After fracturing his hand, Bumgarner underwent surgery, a procedure that included the insertion of pins into his hand. Those pins won’t come out for four to six weeks, at which point he’ll have to (a) strengthen his throwing his hand, then (b) start throwing, and (c) appear in minor-league games before he can return to the majors. Missing one-third of the season seems a reasonable guess.
Losing one player for a couple months generally isn’t a death knell for any team — and that’s true for the Giants and Bumgarner, too — but for those of you interested in panicking, this is what Dan Szymborski had to say.
Normally, I would counsel people about panicking after a two month pitcher injury, but running the latest ZiPS updated standings (putting together prop bets), each Giants win hit is massive to their playoff hopes. So it's cool to run into the street flipping over cars.
— Dan Szymborski (@DSzymborski) March 25, 2018
With Bumgarner healthy, the team is projected for 82 wins, an 8% chance of taking the division, and a 24% chance of capturing a Wild Card spot. Those odds aren’t great, but they also represent the third-highest odds after the division favorites in a league where two teams make the Wild Card. If a few players have better-than-expected seasons or one of the favorites falls back a little, the Giants are right there.
With Bumgarner out for a bit — following the news that Jeff Samardzija will also miss about a month — the Giants’ win total drops down to 81, their division odds move to 6%, and their Wild Card odds decline to 20%. What was once a one-in-three chance at the playoffs is now one-in-four. This is what the playoff picture in the National League looks like in terms of projected win totals and odds for the division and Wild Card.
| Team | EXPW | DIV | WC | POFF | DOFF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cubs | 95.7 | 78.7 % | 17.0 % | 95.7 % | 88.5 % |
| Dodgers | 94.4 | 84.0 % | 9.6 % | 93.6 % | 89.3 % |
| Nationals | 92.0 | 78.6 % | 10.6 % | 89.1 % | 84.4 % |
| Cardinals | 87.6 | 17.9 % | 48.8 % | 66.7 % | 43.6 % |
| Mets | 83.9 | 18.0 % | 26.3 % | 44.3 % | 30.9 % |
| Giants | 80.8 | 5.9 % | 19.8 % | 25.7 % | 15.8 % |
| D-backs | 80.7 | 5.9 % | 19.1 % | 25.0 % | 14.8 % |
| Rockies | 79.2 | 3.9 % | 14.4 % | 18.3 % | 10.6 % |
| Brewers | 79.0 | 2.3 % | 14.7 % | 17.0 % | 8.5 % |
| Phillies | 76.0 | 2.2 % | 5.8 % | 8.0 % | 4.7 % |
| Pirates | 76.2 | 0.8 % | 7.4 % | 8.3 % | 4.5 % |
| Braves | 73.3 | 1.2 % | 2.6 % | 3.8 % | 2.4 % |
| Reds | 71.6 | 0.1 % | 2.1 % | 2.2 % | 0.9 % |
| Padres | 72.1 | 0.3 % | 1.9 % | 2.2 % | 1.1 % |
| Marlins | 64.3 | 0.0 % | 0.1 % | 0.1 % | 0.0 % |
As Dan says, commence panicking. The Giants still have a good team, but there are a lot more scenarios in which they don’t make the playoffs than ones in which they do. The more mediocre innings pitched by Derek Holland and Tyler Beede at the expense of Madison Bumgarner, the tighter the race for the playoffs becomes. Derek Holland is coming off a season during which he walked 12% of batters and struck out just 17% for the Chicago White Sox. He hasn’t been good since 2013, and his fastball averaged 95 mph then compared to 92 mph last season. Tyler Beede had a good 2016 season in Double-A, but a 5.02 FIP in Triple-A last year represented a step back. He had a rough go of it in his first promotion to Double-A before performing well there his second time through, but that really only provides some encouragement for Triple-A this season. His track record suggests he’s not ready yet.
San Francisco is in a tough spot. There are no more reliable free-agent pitchers available. The team could try to explore a trade, but it isn’t clear who might be available right now who would also make sense for the club. They don’t have the prospects to pull off a monster deal, and they’ve been reluctant all offseason to take on payroll that would push them past the competitive-balance tax. The season isn’t over — indeed, my calendar says it hasn’t even started. That said, the Giants made moves this offseason to add Evan Longoria and Andrew McCutchen after Giancarlo Stanton exercised his no-trade clause. McCutchen and Longoria are moves made for a team expecting to win now, and the rest of the roster looks a lot like those two acquisitions: quality players, but on the wrong side of 30 and likely to decline as time passes. The trades were a positive for the Giants in the attempt to win this season, but the odds of winning just got a bit longer.
Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards.
Both the losses were huge for the Giants. That being said, those losses may not be as damaging as they appear.
1) the Giants are able to use a four-man rotation for parts of April, eliminating the fifth starter (aka the worst replacement starter).
2) there is extreme difficulty in projecting prospects. One rumor suggests Tyler Beede will finally get his major league debut. As a first-round draft pick a few years ago, he should have decent upside. ZIPS and Steamer are great projection systems and are down on him, but if it was easy to project prospects… they’d be private and in a front office.
My attempt to provide hope in the face of a dire situation.
You are right about the 5th starter thing, but it means they are eliminating Derek Holland when they could have eliminated instead both Holland AND Blach (or whoever is now 4th).
Actually they’re not eliminating Holland. The rotation is Blach/Cueto/Holland/Stratton until they need a 5th starter. They’re skipping someone like Tyler Beede or Andrew Suarez.
Woof!
The Giants FO are secret geniuses. They are stockpiling high draft picks all while fooling their fans and media that they are trying to compete.
JOHN LACKEY TO THE RESCUE!!
Surely there’s a Weaver or two available. Or you know, they Giants would be the perfect team to bring back Jamie Moyer — the only team where he won’t really raise the average age all that much.
Dan Straily seems logical
I like this idea, but unless he’s been secretly keeping in shape, throwing bullpen sessions and sending out completely under-the-radar feelers to teams, Lackey may not be ready until May if he was signed today. There’s been utterly no news on this guy this offseason, so one wonders if he’s already on a beach somewhere and forgot to tell anyone.
I could see this going the way of the Diamondbacks’ 2016 season where the wind was let of their sails right before the season began. They were right on the sweet spot win curve and now they know they have to fight with one hand tied behind their backs…
BUT IT’S AN EVEN YEAR
So you’re saying the Cubs win the series again, since they obviously traded the Billygoat Curse to SF for Even Year BullShit.
it’s probably not helping either that they play the dodgers 10 times in April
the Giants top prospect is an 18 yr old with an incredible ceilnig, who is definitely in the top 100 prospects, according to the reliable sources like BB America and John Sickels
OK, so maybe the Giants have one top-100 prospect (on the back end of the list). By my math, that is still 2.33 fewer than average. I think the larger point still stands.
The other point was that he is 18 years old, which is an objective fact, that means he is very unlikely to contribute in the MLB this season.
He also just struck out 48 times in 138 at bats in Rookie Ball. That’s not the end of the world for an 18-year-old in a very small sample, but it also shows he is nowhere near ready.
While other teams have depth and contingency plans in case of inevitable injuries …the Giants have the worst pitcher in baseball last season and Gorkys Hernandez if something goes wrong.
Meanwhile the never-tanked Dodgers probably have ~15 starters in their organization who are better than Ty Blach right now (who Giants consider to be their #2). This isn’t rocket science.
Theres not really a reason you can pinpoint as to why thats the case. Dodgers are just a better ran organization since they brought in Friedman
Under Sabean/Evans, one of the hallmarks of the Giants is complacency with certain veterans they already have and “trust”, whether its Barry Zito, Matt Cain or Joaquin Arias. There is never any impetus to improve the margins of the 25 or 40-man roster. They decided in October 2017 that Gorkys and Sandoval were going to be on the opening day roster, not even considering that there might be better options available.
Loyalty definitely seems to be a theme. Giants love their own guys. Friedman walked in and made a statement trading Kemp and Dee. Also traded team favorites like Uribe and Aj Ellis. Dodgers dont have attachments to their guys based off anything other than stats. With the exception of Chase Utley who doesn’t cost anything and still provides depth at the organizations weakest position
Where’s Timmy ?
It’s also true dodger fans aren’t actual fans. Arriving late, leaving early, only cheering when they do well.
Edif: speaking from experience – went to school in LA and went to dozens of games.
Too bad the fans arriving late has nothing to do with their front office that is up to date with how to construct a winning franchise.
Those aren’t good examples. Zito and Cain were on long-term contracts and it wouldn’t have made sense to dump them with years left, when there was still a chance they could provide value (and Zito did provide value, helping them win the 2012 WS). Arias was a utility infielder who provided some value, until he didn’t, and then he was released.
The Giants have been good at finding minor league free agents and upgrading the “margins” of the roster. Andres Torres, Ryan Vogelsong, Gregor Blanco, Santiago Casilla. All were originally signed as minor league free agents and provided significant value. Obviously they’re trying to improve the margins of the roster, and some years it works, some years it doesn’t (see: 2017).
Finally, Gorkys likely won’t be on the opening day roster and Sandoval costs the minimum. It’s the front office’s job to consider better options, and it’s naive to think that they didn’t (i.e. spring training invites like Rutledge, d’Arnaud, Blanco, etc.), but who do you think is a better backup 3B/1B who costs the minimum?
Jae-Gyun Hwang. FYI, Gorkys made the roster.
The Giants are the team in your fantasy league who never make any moves and then complain about their bad injury luck when they lose.
This. It’s actually too bad they are in the same division, because the Giants could really use someone like Wilmer Font or Brock Stewart. But I’m sure the Giants wouldn’t trade in the division with them.
Maybe this article should have been called “War is BS”, because I don’t see how losing a third to a half of a season of a guy with a projected WAR of 2.3 makes that much of a difference.
The injury is already factored into the projection, as is last year’s injury. People that expected a lot from the Giants were looking at a ~5 WAR season from Bumgarner. This cuts something like 2 wins from that, which is a lot in a wild card race.
A 54% reduction in WAR due to this injury seems high. What’s it based on ?
2 from 5 is 40%. “Out until June” is about a third of the season. More if he doesn’t come back June 1st. That gets to 40% of his potential value pretty fast just based on missed starts, even assuming he’s at full strength, completely stretched out, and pitching like the good version of himself as soon as he returns.
Thanks for your treatise on how to turn “33% is not 54% but I’m going to pretend it is and here’s how” into a paragraph.
piddy,
the article says 1 game, where did you come up with 2 games ?
More to the point. From the article.
“With Bumgarner healthy, the team is projected for 82 wins … With Bumgarner out for a bit … the Giants’ win total drops down to 81”
First of all, that’s one game, not 2 or 3, as others have suggested. But put that aside for a minute and instead take the marquis name out of the headline and just report the raw data:
“The Giants Really Didn’t Need a One Game Hit in Their Expected Win Total”
Now that sounds ridiculous.
One game ? Yeah OK, nobody wants to lose a game, but to make it sound like their season is off the rails is a bit much.
So either the headline is unnecessarily alarmist or WAR is misleading.
You pick.
The Dbacks seem like they are clearly a more talented team than the Giants right now. How are all of their projections so similar if Arizona was a 93-win team last year (97 Pythagorean wins and 96 BaseRuns wins) and their only real subtraction is two months of JD Martinez (which they partially made up for by sending Tomas to the minors and signing Dyson), while the Giants were a 64-win team last year (67 Pythagorean wins and 66 BaseRuns wins) that will get roughly the same amount of innings from Bumgarner and had no meaningful additions to an aging pitching staff?
Projecting a 17-win improvement by replacing Nuñez/Arroyo/Sandoval with Longoria, replacing Span with McCutchen, and getting rebound seasons from a bunch of players in their 30s seems incredibly optimistic, while projecting a 12-win decrease for a younger team that really only lost a couple months of Martinez seems quite pessimistic.
I actually think this is worse than it looks because I think the projections are too high on the Giants. I see a slightly under .500 team even if healthy. Now it would take a miracle for this to be a playoff team in my eyes.
What about Ubaldo Jimenez? I know, he’s not great. But he’s estimated for a 1.5 WAR season here on FG, and maybe pitching in the NL West he might be decent. He’d come cheap, and he might be able to provide a bit more value than the Giants other back-end starters.
I like this thinking here.
Of guys who might be available on other teams, here are some semi-decent options who wouldn’t cost a ton:
Brandon McCarthy (probably would only have to take on his salary)
Mike Minor/Doug Fister (?)
Ian Kennedy
Jason Hammel
Mike Fiers/Francisco Liriano (?)
Matt Andriese
I’m not positive all these teams would be sellers, and some of these guys would be more expensive than others. They wouldn’t all be better than Stratton/Blach/etc., but some of them would for sure.
If I’m Sabean, I’m burning up the phone lines trying to get one of these guys cheap.
Most of these guys could really benefit from a trip back to the NL, or at least a pitcher’s park. The players should be calling the Giants!
Players signed this offseason cannot be traded at this time without their permission. And they are unlikely to give that permission if it seems likely that they would be out of a rotation spot once Baumgarner returns.
Plus, the Giants are not likely to take on any multi-million contracts.
Admittedly, I am not a Giants fan, but it really does confound me how there is so much optimism for a team that that I believe has the worst record in baseball over the last ~230 games. I’m not talking about the general public or Giants fans. We are all optimistic about our teams and there are still core guys that won titles several years ago. I’m talking about the projections.
I’m still fairly new to understanding the projections, but it feels that past performance is a little too heavily weighted for players that are aging. Could this have anything to do with players slipping faster today than they did in the steroid days? Half of the guys on their roster just look old and a shell of their former selves. It’s really hard for me to imagine them winning more than 72 games given the Bumgarner injury.
In full disclosure, I won money on betting the under last year, which also felt like a slam dunk (and was) and I’m doing the same this year. Easy money???
Your point about aging curves being adjusted for projection tools is a good one. I’m sure they are updated but the post steroid data set isn’t complete. In reality the fact that the data are backward looking are an inherent error in projections. Good question for Dan.