San Francisco Giants – Red Seam Dreams

MadBum a Snake? What Is The World Coming To?

It’s hard not to feel bad for Giants fans after losing the one player fans most associate with post-season success – Madison Bumgarner. To make matters worse, Bumgarner signed with divisional rivals, the Arizona Diamondbacks, so the fans get to see him in a not-Giants uniform trying to make the Giants lose, and all San Francisco got for him was a draft pick. That has to sting. I know for Giants fans it will be hard to look at their roster for a few weeks, but eventually they will be ready to face reality and when they have grieved, this article will be sitting there like a hug from your best friend after a bad breakup. Who in the name of God will start games for the Giants in 2020, you ask? I’m here for you, man.

There are reasons to despair if you are a Giant’s fan, but there are reasons to hope as well and things are legitimately not as dark as they seem when it comes to the starting rotation. Try to keep in mind that the Giants are in the middle of a “soft rebuild”. They are trying to build a team that will stay out of the cellar and be worth watching, that is building for the long run without tearing it down to the studs. That means looking for bargains and taking short term risks on guys for reasonable costs who could completely flame out, but since they are on short deals, they don’t burden the team moving forward – enter Kevin Gausman. The former “Ace in Waiting” of the Orioles was available in part because of his 5.72 ERA in 2019. There are a couple of things that indicate that this might be a smart signing for the Giants. First of all, even though Gausman has been around a while he will only turn 29 in January. His fastball still sits around 94 and his control is good as indicated by his career walk rate of 2.72 per nine. Two more indicators of a possible brighter future for Gausman is the disparity between his ERA and his FIP – 5.72 versus 3.98 – portending a return to a reasonable ERA. Also, his BABIP was .344 which was 30 points above his career average – another indicator of possible bad luck contributing to his craptastic 2019. Where Gausman gets in trouble – and it has always been this way – is the long ball. His career rate of 1.26 homers per nine is up there, but he is leaving a hitters park in Atlanta and moving to an extreme pitcher’s park where the park and the weather both help to suppress offense. Even if he doesn’t pitch significantly better (which he probably will), his numbers should improve quite a bit. He is not an ace, but as the A’s have shown over the last couple of seasons you can get by without an ace if you can get average pitching and lots of depth. Gausman is a good signing on a one year deal – $9 million, and if he likes pitching in SF he might be a good candidate for an extension at mid-season.

That Johnny Cueto pitched at all last season after missing most of 2018 with a blown out elbow, which finally required Tommy John surgery, was a positive for the Giants. Cueto could not hit water from a boat with his pitches in his short stint at the end of 2019, but with a normal off-season and spring training he should be fine in 2020 – fine for an old guy. He will be 34 in 2020 so Giants’ fans shouldn’t expect prime Cueto, but he has always used deception and variation in his delivery to keep hitters perpetually annoyed, and that skill ages well. I also would not anticipate Cueto to break 200 innings like he did every season from 2012 through 2016. Still, it would be reasonable to expect Cueto to get 30 or so starts and be league average or maybe better because of his sneaky goodness – a mid-rotation starter. Welcome back, Johnny Cueto!

Tyler Beede finally made it up to the bigs and stuck in the rotation in 2019 making 22 starts and striking out 8.69 per nine. But to be more than an innings eater, Beede needs to find the strike zone more often (3.54 walks per 9 in 2019) and keep the ball in the yard as his 1.69 home run per nine rate is untenable. Beede’s ERA and FIP were so close – 5.08/5.03 – and his BABIP was .312 indicating that he got what he deserved. It wasn’t pretty, but even small improvement and continued health would make him valuable as a guy who can get them 30 starts with an ERA under 5.00. Projections see his home run rate stabilizing, but his walk rate being pretty poor and still managing a FIP in the mid-fours. The Giants would gladly take that. Beede works with a four pitch mix including a fastball that averages around 94 MPH. Maybe some work with his pitching coaches will help him maximize his stuff through changing his pitch mix or sequencing. Whatever happens, the Giants need Beede to turn into something useful, and he is already close.

After Tommy John surgery and a suspension for PEDs, Logan Webb is one the Giants couldn’t have been clear on, and to be fair, they probably are still a bit unsure after watching only eight starts in the majors. But Webb’s peripherals show promise that in spite of the 5.22 ERA there might be something of value there. Webb struck out just over eight batters per nine and walked just over three showing fringy control and good strikeout ability. His ground ball rate wasn’t quite as high (48.8%) as what the Giants might have expected from his time in the minors. He had multiple stops with ground ball rates of better than 60%. Webb allowed a few too many homers – 1.13 per nine – but it wasn’t as bad as some of his rotation mates. If he could induce a few more grounders like he did in double-A and triple-A, then the homer rate should come down. If he can manage that while keeping his other rates about the same as last season, then his ERA might even beat his 2019 FIP of 4.12. With a fastball that averages around 93 (even higher from the pen) and a four pitch mix, Webb, who is only 23, could turn into a solid 4 or maybe even a 3 with some growth. There could still be some growing pains, but the Giants have something to build upon with Webb.

It is difficult to be too optimistic about what the Giants have in Jeff Samardzija. He is 34 so any talk of potential is silly at this point. He is not an ace or even a number 2. His ERA last season was 3.52 but his FIP was 4.59. He is no longer a strikeout pitcher (6.95 per nine last season) with a fastball that averages a tick under 92 MPH, but he has good control (2.43 walks over nine) so there’s that. If he induced a lot of ground balls then that might be a sustainable approach, but at just over 36% in 2019 in the launch angle era, that seems like a tough profile to predict anything but decline and volatility. He gave up 1.39 home runs per nine last season which seems appropriate since he gives up so many fly balls. He gave the Giants 181.33 innings last season and that has value, but he is more a back of the rotation guy now who will cost the Giants just north of $18 million. Oh Shark – what could have been!

If any of those five starters falter, there are other guys – pitchers with some serious question marks and a bit of potential to provide value – waiting for a chance. Conner Menez is 24 and gets batters to strike out quite a bit – over 10 batters per nine at each of three stops last season including San Francisco. What Menez also did last year as he climbed through the system was walk more batters as he moved to a higher level starting with 3.02 per nine at double-A, then 4.40 at triple-A, and finally 6.35 in 17 innings in the majors. That dog don’t hunt. The fastball isn’t particularly hard, but the lanky lefty generates well above average spin with it. Unless Menez can get his walk rate down to the mid to low threes, he will probably be a quad-A pitcher or move to the pen. Guys with high spin rates get lots of looks in this age of data so look for him to get a few shots as openings appear.

Dereck Rodriguez had a rough first half and a rougher second half, but at 27 and with two good seasons in a row under his belt before 2019, he should be an early option if the Giants need a starter. His home run rate exploded last year to 1.91 per nine and moving to the bullpen didn’t fix him or even turn him into something useful. His walk rate didn’t increase as much as his homer rate, but he doesn’t dominate, so another half a walk per nine might be enough to turn him from effective back of the rotation option to a quad-A, break glass only in case of emergency kind of guy.

Andrew Suarez, like Dereck Rodriguez, took a big step in the wrong direction in 2019 after showing promise in 2018. He also saw his home run rate explode (1.93) and his walk rate jump (by more than a walk per nine). Suarez is also 27 and doesn’t have a pitch that really separates him from the pack. What he did have before last season was good to excellent control. The Giants didn’t give him much of a chance after he started the season on the IL – he only started two games with the big club – and he wasn’t particularly effective at triple-A in 2019 (probably why they didn’t hand him a rotation spot). Still, a lefty who can throw strikes should get some chances, so watch for reports of health and effectiveness in Spring Training because Suarez could sneak back into the rotation if he reverts to his form from 2018.

It would be worth watching Tyler Anderson’s progress in Spring Training too. The former rotation survivor for the Rockies made five starts in 2019 and was shut down for the rest of the season with something called chondral defect which is short for “his knee was screwed up”. It includes cartilage and possibly bone damage of the knee, which as you can imagine makes it hard to pitch. Anyone who can fashion an ERA in the mid fours over 32 starts in Coors Field (which he did in 2018) deserves lots of chances to see if he can get healthy and recapture that. Mr. Anderson is a tall lefty with excellent control – a career strikeout to walk ratio of 8.32 to 2.81 per nine. There’s a lot to like about this signing assuming he can get past his knee injury, which sounds like a pretty big if for a starting pitcher. This is a very low risk and potentially very high reward move for the Giants since they signed him for $1.78 million on a one year deal. Anderson still has a minor league option left, so if he needs more time to make adjustments once he is healthy, the Giants can give him some time in the minors. Here’s hoping health to Tyler Anderson and a return to form which could turn his signing into an enormous coup for the Giants rotation, where he could slot in as a two or three.

The 2020 Giants seem to be following a similar path to the 2018/2019 A’s in their rotation construction – get a bunch of arms, chuck them at the nearest wall, and see what sticks. In spite of their brief run last season, the Giants aren’t ready to compete, so this strategy makes a lot of sense. I would expect them to do something on the free agent market that will excite Giants fans in 2021 once the Shark’s contract and Johnny Cueto’s even bigger contract is off the books. They are improving their minor league system, and with some luck their ship will begin to turn around in a couple of years. They don’t have an ace anymore now that Madison Bumgarner is gone – he hasn’t really pitched like an ace since 2016 anyway. Their rotation looks to be a collection of threes, fours, fives, and some sixes (which really isn’t a thing). With some luck one or two of the young arms will turn into something more than a rotation filler as they build to their next competitive window. They might also hit on a reclamation project like Tyler Anderson. It is hard to say goodbye to links to your glory days like Mad Bum, but it is the right thing to do when it is obvious that you don’t have enough to chase down the Dodgers and Diamondbacks or even the Padres in 2020. They will find another window to compete with their combination of money and the draw of their beautiful stadium. Don’t despair Giants fans; your day will come!

Dark Times By The Bay

In baseball, when a team wins the World Series many sins can be forgiven. When a team wins the World Series three times in the span of five seasons then it would seem all sins should be forgiven for a decade at the very least. How many teams have even done that in the history of the Major Leagues? The Yankees (duh – multiple times), the Dodgers, the New York Giants, the Tigers, and the A’s have pulled off three wins in five seasons. It happens more often than one would think mainly because of the Yankees, but it is rare enough that only five franchises have ever managed the feat. So you would think that the San Francisco Giants fans would be content with whatever the team can manage these days since they were the last club to pull it off with their third win coming in 2014. In baseball years that’s pretty much a week ago, so why does there seem to be so much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth from the orange and black loyalists? It is easy to understand why Giants’ fans might have become spoiled and also why they find it hard to give up on their hopes of another title considering their payroll – just over $221 million to start the 2018 season – good for first in the bigs. But all the money in the world (in the days of salary caps) can’t guarantee a deep postseason run. This is especially true when one of the reasons your payroll is so high is that your team is old. The Giants as I mentioned, as well as the Nationals, Mets, Angels, Mariners, and Blue Jays all missed the playoffs entirely and had team salaries in the top 9. But age isn’t the only reason the Giants missed the postseason and are likely to miss it for a while.

Ok, so age is part of the Giants’ problem. They had the third oldest roster (29.6 years according to Statista) in the majors in 2018. It makes sense when you think of the message they were sending to the league, which was, “We’re going for it again”. Instead of shipping off veterans to rebuild their minor league system, the Giants went out and signed veterans to shore up their lineup – 33 year old third baseman, Evan Longoria, and 32 year old outfielder Andrew McCutchen were the two biggest acquisitions. To make those signings anything other than basic wish-casting, the Giants had to feel confident that their starting rotation would be healthy and effective again – especially their big three, Madison Bumgarner (29), Johnny Cueto (32), and Jeff Samardzija (33). Well that certainly didn’t go how they’d expected it to go. Bumgarner is the only one of the big three who pitched 100 innings (129.67). Cueto made 9 starts (53 innings) and went down for the season and possibly some or all of 2019 after his second trip to the DL. The Shark didn’t look much like a predator after losing 2 MPH off his fastball and also going down for the season with a shoulder injury (and a grotesque ERA of 6.25 after 10 starts and 44.67 innings). If not for the development of Dereck Rodriguez and Andrew Suarez, and the resurgence of Derek Holland, the Giants would certainly have lost 100 games. How embarrassing would that be to have the highest payroll in all of baseball and still go out and lose 100 games?

One of the brightest lights of the 2018 season was the re-emergence of closer Will Smith who missed all of 2017 due to injury. Smith fanned 71 batters in 53 innings, kept his WHIP to .981 and sported an ERA of 2.55. With Smith in the closer spot, Tony Watson in the setup role, and Sam Dyson contributing 70 quality innings, the pen should be a relative strength as it was in 2017. Hunter Strickland was a hot mess last year with self-inflicted DL stints and issues with wildness. The former closer has seen his strikeouts to walk ratio go down each of his four full season with the Giants, from 5.00 in 2015 to where it was in 2017 – 1.76. If he can get right and quit punching immovable objects, the Giants pen would have a deep core to build from.

With a solid pen and at least three starting pitchers who were decent, you would think the Giants would win more than 73 games, but in baseball run prevention is not enough to succeed. The Giants had the most anemic offense in all of baseball in 2018 based on wRC+. They created fewer runs after adjusting for park and league than even the Marlins, Orioles, Tigers and Padres, and this after signing Longoria and Cutch. While Longoria had a subpar season generating 0.4 WAR (Fangraphs version) with a wRC+ of 85 (15% below league average), McCutcheon actually had a good season before he was traded to the Yankees – wRC+ of 115 during his time in SF to lead the team. Brandon Belt and Buster Posey were the other two Giants who posted wRC+ scores above league average (100) at 107 and 106 respectively, but both players finished the season on the DL. That may sound like bad luck, but with Belt at least, injuries are part of his profile. Only once since 2013 has the man with the name made for a power hitter played in at least 150 games. Belt appeared in only 112 games last year and 104 in 2017 so counting on much more is unwise even though he is only 30. Buster Posey, who moms everywhere want for their son-in-law, has been quite durable, especially for a catcher, but he had off-season hip surgery, and at 31 it is possible that a decline phase might be starting for him. In fact maybe it already has begun as Posey hasn’t posted a 5 WAR season since 2015. Joe Panik, a relative baby in the lineup at 28, was besieged by injuries last season from a torn ligament in his thumb to a strained groin, and he posted his worst season since becoming the starter at second base. Panik, with a 75 wRC+ picked up most of his value with the glove as his bat sure wasn’t getting it done. The Giants should get a better version of Joe Panik in 2019, but Joe isn’t enough to carry an offense. At his best, Panik is around league average – nothing wrong with that. Brandon Crawford will turn 32 during the off-season and has posted two sub 100 wRC+ season in a row (85 & 93 respectively). This is likely the new normal since most of Crawford’s value comes from his excellent glove work and even at his peak he was only a bit above league average with the stick. This isn’t meant to denigrate B-Craw’s value – three Gold Gloves at short and two All Star Game appearances (including last season) would make any team happy, but we are talking about the Giants’ offense, and while Crawford contributes plenty for his position, it isn’t like he is Manny Machado. For some perspective the Giants had Crawford batting 8th to start the season, moved him around between the 6, 7, and 8 holes for most of the first half, and then once injury and ineffectiveness turned them almost completely punchless, they moved him around in the middle of the batting order.

So what’s left to look at if we want to see where the Giants can produce some runs? The outfield, often a source of offense for most teams, struggled to get it done. Gorkys Hernandez played in 142 games with a wRC+ of 83, up from 76 in 2017. Hernandez is 31 so he is mostly a known quantity, and if he is starting most of your games in center or left then you are in serious trouble. He is a capable defender but eats outs like Pacman eats dots. Steven Duggar took his job and pushed Gorkys to left. Hernandez is a 4th outfielder at best. He can punch the occasional homer, play all three outfield spots, and pinch run. He should not under any circumstances get 500 plate appearances if your goal is to win, unless he is surrounded by a tremendous offense, which was not the case in San Francisco. There’s Duggar who in his rookie season showed promise with his speed and glove. He wasn’t much of an upgrade over Hernandez, but if he can repeat his walk rate from the minors – around 12% instead of the 6.6% he showed in limited time in the bigs, then he will be an upgrade and an adequate starting center fielder. Shoulder surgery ended his season, but he should have enough time to recover so that he can start on opening day.

Hunter Pence lost the starting job and will play the 2019 season as a 36 year old. He is a free agent and he is still a lot of fun to watch with his twitchy, funky way of doing everything, even as he declines. His power and ability to get on base haven’t been on display since 2016 so if he still wants to play he will likely need to sign a minor league contract. With 248 plate appearances last season, he hurt the team’s offense more than most with his wRC+ of 62. Chris Shaw was another rookie who tried to take an outfield spot. The rookie has good power, but no other established offensive skills. He has shown the ability to take a walk and to hit for average at times, but he has done neither consistently and his swing and miss rate is untenable. When you strike out 34% of the time at triple-A, really the only way for you to get a chance to play in the majors is if the big club has no offense to speak of. Austin Slater also received a decent amount of playing time because of the Giants offensivocalypse. He is a left fielder/first baseman but is really a bench bat, not a starter as he is neither fast enough nor powerful enough to generate enough runs to get a lot of starts. He lives and dies by his batting average and doesn’t walk enough to be a leadoff hitter so again – bench bat.

An outfielder who can easily hit 20 home runs should be a shoe-in to start in San Francisco, but Mac Williamson’s profile comes with a low batting average and low on-base percentage. In 339 plate appearances in the majors over four seasons, the 6’4 power hitter has a slash line of .222/.295/.386 with 13 home runs and 84 wRC+. He has never hit above .269 in triple-A and has a decent amount of swing and miss in his game – a career 28% strikeout rate. That said, this is the kind of hitter who needs a chance to start everyday to see if he can be a regular left-fielder or just an emergency guy who gets stashed in the minors. He would need to hit above .240 to succeed in the majors as something like a 7-hole hitter. At 28 it’s too late to call Williamson a prospect, but he might be a useful part, and the Giants shouldn’t bury him in the minors like they did after in 2018 – he battled some injuries including a concussion and spent the rest of the season after June 22nd as a Rivercat amassing 13 home runs in 182 at bats. One other number in his favor is that in limited playing time, Williamson has put up 5 defensive runs saved playing mostly left field. Giving him at least a half season as the starter would make a lot of sense if the Giants choose not to empty their pockets for free agents.

So the picture at the major league level should be clear by now. There just isn’t much offense there and what is there is carried by stars in their decline phase. The starting pitching, which should be a strength, is thin if the veterans can’t contribute. The pen is a relative strength. When a team is getting older, like the Giants, they generally reach a point where they have to decide to make a last run or start a painful rebuild, or if the organization has been smart about maintaining their farm system, something in between. Look at what the Yankees are doing right now retooling with Gleyber Torres, and Miguel Andujar, in addition to Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez. Of course, not everyone is in the same position as the seemingly infinitely resourced Yankees, but other teams have put themselves in similar spots – the Astros and the Dodgers for example.

What influences teams to choose one path over another? If an organization doesn’t have money then the choice is forced upon them. If they can’t win now, then they have to start to retool/rebuild in the hopes that everything will align properly this time. But if your club has money, like the Giants, then you have to look at your minor league system. Do you have the parts to trade for that last piece or two that you need? Do you have a top prospect or two who you can just promote to fill a hole? And then there is one other consideration. Is your minor league system even good enough that trading away the pieces of value from your major league roster will put you in a position to make a run soon? If the answer to that last question is no, then does it even make sense to start a rebuild without the even more painful step of tearing it down to the studs and tanking for a few years to get a handful of very high draft picks? That’s a lot of questions, but that’s because teams like the Giants are in a very difficult position with an aging team and a very weak farm system. How weak is it? Depending on the source you pick, the Giants have between 0 and 2 top 100 prospects – Heliot Ramos shows up around 100 on some lists and not at all on others while Joey Bart, who was just drafted appears on some mid-season updates based mostly on his promise. The consensus is that the Giants have one of the five worst farm systems in baseball. The Giants just hired a new President of Baseball Operations – Farhad Zaidi, from the Dodgers – who is tasked with rebuilding the franchise while still keeping butts in their beautiful stadium’s seats. The question he faces is “to tear down or not to tear down?”.

The Cubs and Astros proved that the fans will come back after a teardown if you can provide them with a winning team. But boy are those three to five years painful! Here is the dichotomous off-season situation for Giants fans right now. The two biggest rumors in baseball involve the Giants either going hard to sign top free agent Bryce Harper or trading away their most valuable if not their best player, Madison Bumgarner which one would assume would trigger a fire sale and the beginning of a massive rebuilding effort. Either route is precarious. Signing Harper and calling it a day will not add enough offense although it will put butts in the seats by giving the Giants the star power they need to draw fans. Trading away MadBum would cost them fans for sure and once he is moved, presumably for prospects, then aside from Buster Posey, there would be nobody on the roster that the fans would come to watch while the Giants lose. In fact, if you trade Bumgarner would it even make sense to keep Posey once he proves that his hip is sound? The same question would apply to Brandon Belt and Brandon Crawford. The team would need to try to trade them for prospects with the understanding that these veterans won’t be around when the Giants are ready to win again. The Giants would be rebuilding their system in the hopes that the one or two players near the top 100 pan out, and that at least a couple of the players they get back from trades eventually make it as regulars in San Francisco. They would also have to count on drafting well with their higher picks once they have scrubbed their team of championship quality players and they would need to develop a star or, if they are lucky, more than one star. And then at some point it would make sense for the Giants to start spending money on proven talent again.

Or, the Giants could try to spend their way through the hard times without the tear down and hope they draft well and get very lucky with their picks, but other teams in the NL West are already better positioned to succeed in the next 3 years. In that atmosphere they would have to be supremely lucky to win anything and would have to succumb to the rebuild at some point anyway. The Padres have a superior farm system with both depth and star quality. The Dodgers have depth at the top levels, plenty of talent to win now, and deep pockets. The Rockies also have a superior major league club, including young quality starting pitching under team control – a rare commodity – plus some talent ready to emerge from the minors, and more depth in their system than the Giants.

Faced with no clear path to victory now or in the future, it is indeed a hard time to be a Giants’ fan. The Giants shouldn’t choose the path to take, instead they should let the path choose them. They should put out feelers for trade partners willing to overpay with prospects for everything on their roster including their mascot Lou Seal, while at the same time going hard after Bryce Harper and either another bat or a starting pitcher. Whichever path works out is the path the Giants should commit to with everything they’ve got. No time to be indecisive which sounds ironic after that last sentence, but in baseball, like in life, forcing it isn’t usually the best strategy. The Giants aren’t obviously in a position to either rebuild or compete, but circumstance might dictate the wisest path and that’s what Farhan Zaidi’s real job is. Find the best path for his well heeled but flawed club in their time of trouble.