San Francisco Giants

Ken Adams/Don Malcolm

KA: You know, Don, a couple of flaming leftists like us should really be covering the A’s. Small market, with a mom-and-pop feel—

DM: —And with four lefties in the starting rotation.

KA: True, but I don’t think they’re going to break the record for the team with the most games started by left-handers—

DM: —Which is 127, set by the 1983 New York Yankees.

KA: Darn! That’s just what I was going to say!!

DM: You type up the notes next time, and you can say whatever you want...

KA: Of course, we’re not here to talk about the A’s, but their cross-Bay rivals.

DM: The team that quick-hooked Russ Ortiz out of the World Series and right out of town.

KA: Ladies and gents, Peter McGowan’s San Francisco Giants.

DM: What are your thoughts about the post-Dusty era?

KA: My first thought, if you can call it that, is that Brian Sabean he’s the GM, folks—has spent a good amount of time trying to restructure the team around the preferences of their new manager (Felipe Alou). When you look at the changes in the starting lineup, it’s pretty clear that the team is moving away from the "stand-and-crank" approach into something that has greater dimension to it.

DM: "Stand-and-crank" is baseball’s version of the "left coast offense", right, where you just go for the downs all the time and ignore all other alleged subtleties?

KA: Yeah, that’s right. That’s pretty much been the Giants’ approach for the last fifty years, except maybe for a few years in the mid-to-late 70s when they were about as down-in-the-mouth as you can get.

DM: You liking how your "turns of phrase" are turning out now?

KA: Oh yeah. But seriously, folks, the Giants did a nice job of reconfiguring their lineup, Here’s what they had last year, and here’s what we expect will be the batting order in 2003:

BOP  2002        2003       
1    Lofton cf   Durham 2b  
2    Aurilia ss  Cruz rf    
3    Kent 2b     Aurilia ss 
4    Bonds lf    Bonds lf   
5    Sanders rf  Alfonzo 3b 
6    Bell 3b     Snow 1b    
7    Snow 1b     Grissom cf 
8    Santiago c  Santiago c 

DM: Ray Durham, Jose Cruz, Jr., and Edgardo Alfonzo add a lot more "dimension" to the lineup, even given the reduction in power due to the loss of Jeff Kent.

KA: Now let’s look at it position-by-position:

Pos  2002      2003     
C    Santiago  Santiago 
1B   Snow      Snow     
2B   Kent      Durham   
SS   Aurilia   Aurilia  
3B   Bell      Alfonzo  
LF   Bonds     Bonds    
CF   Lofton    Grissom  
RF   Sanders   Cruz     

DM: Solid gains at two positions—third and right—and an interesting sidestep at second. They lose some ground in center field, but overall this is a solid reconfiguration.

KA: To re-use my big word—or was that more "editing"?? The Giants are going to need to get a better center fielder somehow in the near future, but they can probably make do at first base as early as mid-2003 with a platoon of Tony Torcato (who’ll probably open at AAA in order to get playing time at first) and Pedro Feliz.

DM: Lord have mercy, could this be the end of J.T. Snow? Who will statheads have to revile on the Giants without him??

KA: Don’t worry about that. Snow’s contract is up, and with Dusty gone, he’s about to hit the trail. They at least have some viable in-house solutions there that won’t break their (self-imposed) budget constraints.

Besides, there’s always Neifi Perez, or Marquis Grissom, for those guys to use as fodder for toasting marshmallows.

DM: Or Marvin Benard, another Dusty favorite who’s going to get paid a lot to pinch-hit.

KA: Unless Grissom really does live down to his stathead press notices. And don’t forget the "mercurial" Ruben Rivera, who is now the Giants’ fifth wheel—er, fifth outfielder.

DM: Ah, yes—lock up everything that’s shiny...

Seriously, though, people don’t seem to be aware that the Giants’ offense was pretty darned good last year. The characteristics of Pac Bell Park (or whatever they’re calling it now...) tend to mask that. If we look at road scoring in the NL for last season, we find the Giants comfortably at the top of the list:

Team    RS
SF     427
LA     399
STL    397
PHI    393
NYM    369
CHC    367
ARZ    365
ATL    346
HOU    344
MON    341
FLA    330
SD     328
CIN    327
MIL    327
PIT    311
COL    280

KA: Having Bonds around clearly can compensate for a lot of mediocrity elsewhere in your lineup, but how long can he keep performing at this level? If he becomes just a "regular" superstar—say 12 runs created per game instead of twenty, what happens to the Giants’ offense?

DM: That’s the $20 million question, and the answer is that the offense gets pretty stinky in a hurry.

Which leads us to the pitching staff, doesn’t it? How many of the Giants’ pitchers are products of a ballpark illusion?

KA: Probably not as many as most people believe. Since you looked at run scoring on the road, let’s look at team ERA on the road in 2002 to see where the Giants rank:

Team    ERA
ATL    3.16
CIN    3.98
ARZ    3.99
PIT    4.01
SF     4.09
LA     4.11
HOU    4.17
NYM    4.20
STL    4.31
MON    4.38
CHC    4.46
PHI    4.62
COL    4.92
FLA    4.96
MIL    5.05
SD     5.65

Giants’ pitchers posted a 3.03 ERA in Pac Bell, and while there’s a good bit of falloff in performance on the road, they still ranked fifth in the league in road ERA.

DM: This year’s rotation is at least dipping its big toe into the Giants’ truckload of young pitching phenoms now that Livan Hernandez has been sent to the Expos.

KA: First up is Kurt Ainsworth, who’ll take Livan’s slot, and it appears that Jesse Foppert will get the next call, with Jerome Williams and Boof Bonser looming on the horizon.

DM: We talked about Livan being a creature of Pac Bell Park, but the three-year home/road ERA stats show that actually pitched worst there of the five guys in the 2002 Giants’ rotation:

Pitcher     Home ERA  Road ERA
Schmidt         2.37      5.02
Ortiz           3.32      4.48
Rueter          3.45      4.29
Jensen          3.87      5.02
Hernandez       4.03      4.95

Schmidt’s numbers are for 2002 only, so we shouldn’t read too much into them. What do you make of that Ortiz trade, by the way?

KA: Money, mostly, plus the fact that all of the Giants’ up-and-comers are all righties and they’re more likely to trade Kirk Rueter if Damian Moss defies the doomsaying of the DIPS police.

DM: Originally you were going to say "dire doomsaying of the DIPS police," but I know you’re not really a big fan of alliteration.

KA: You’re too kind. Actually, I was sorry to see Russ go, as he’s far more of sure thing than Moss, who’s been having a rough spring.

DM: Maybe more important to their prospects in 2003, however, is the health of Robb Nen, who sets the pace for a bullpen that was quietly the second-best in the NL last season.

Team    ERA
ATL    2.60
SF     2.89
STL    3.11
NYM    3.20
LA     3.59
CIN    3.64
PIT    3.78
HOU    3.81
MON    3.83
MIL    3.88
PHI    3.96
FLA    4.14
SD     4.24
ARZ    4.58
CHC    4.86
COL    5.14

KA: There was a lot of discussion about the Braves’ "fluky" bullpen performance in 2002, but the Giants certainly made out well with a collection of castoffs behind Nen and Felix Rodriguez. Can they do that again?

DM: Not if Nen isn’t 100%, they can’t. A more general note needs to be made, however, about how the team has been able to tailor itself to playing extremely well at home ever since they moved out of the Stick.

KA: OK, let’s hear the note, general.

DM: Incoming from Tommy "Ballpark" Franks: the Giants are almost as ruthless on their home turf as a certain Middle East adversary. Since moving to Pac Bell Park, the Giants have had a record of 154-89 (.633)—exactly the same record that their cross-town rivals, the A’s, have put up at home over the past three years. On the road, however, the Giants were only 127-115 (.522), which gives them the biggest home-field advantage in recent history.

Hard to say if that is the kind of advantage that any team can count on maintaining over a long period of time, but it’s clear that for the Giants to keep at or near the top, they’ll have to stay within reasonable striking distance of their home-field performance over the past three years. What’s difficult to gauge is whether the changes they’ve made will help or hurt them in that. Any thoughts?

KA: Of course. As you might expect, it all comes back to Bonds.

   G   AB    R    H   D  T  HR  RBI   BB   SO  SB  CS    BA   OBP   SLG
 217  655  179  219  52  6  81  173  223  101  16   4  .334  .508  .803

The above numbers are what Bonds has hit in Pac Bell Park from 2000-02. Keep in mind that we’re talking about a pitcher’s park—that means that the Giants have had the most powerful extra home field advantage ever working for them during this time. Bonds remains the key to everything for the Giants, and if he slugs "only" .600 at home, it might be more significant than anything the GM or anyone else does. Four or five games at home over and above the "natural" home field advantage has become part of the Giants’ strategic assumptions, and those assumptions are fueled by Bonds putting up historic production levels.

DM: How can a team prepare itself for life after Bonds?

KA: Well, you’ll have to develop a real pitching staff, which is something that seems to be in the works. And you’ll have to create more consistency across the batting order, which is something that they’ve tried to accomplish over the winter.

DM: There’s also the injury scenario, where Bonds doesn’t decline much from his recent peak, but simply misses a third or more of the season.

KA: Yeah, that’s a possibility. If Bonds really is using steroids, you’d kinda expect that would happen at some point, because most people who’ve used them have had injury problems. Bonds’ durability in the past two seasons, however, really point toward the idea that he’s telling the truth when he denies using them.

DM: I tend to agree with you. Let’s say, though, that he does get hurt—after all, he’s turning 39 in July. If he misses a significant amount of time, what happens to the team? Can they stay in the race without him for 50 games?

KA: No, not unless the pitchers are a whole lot better than even the most optimistic fan hopes they’ll be. In order for that to happen, Ainsworth would have to be a star, and Foppert would need to come up in mid-season and be just as good. That’s possible, but not likely.

DM: So what’s the bottom line? If Bonds is healthy, the Giants have a fighting chance even if he declines a bit. If he falls off to mere superstar level, they’ll need better pitching that what looks likely. If he gets hurt, they’ll need a pitching performance that rivals what the Braves have been doing for the past ten years. That sound about right?

KA: Uh huh, but I think they’ll need to upgrade their rotation during the season in order to make a run at it, even with Bonds healthy and within reasonable distance of his 2001-02 performance level. Got any snappy patter to wrap up with—maybe a war reference to make all of our "fans" froth at the mouth?

DM: No, there’s no way the Teamsters could fit us into that trunk with Michael Moore. I can’t remember who said it, but the gist of it was that "America the country" is more important than "America the nation," and I like to think that baseball is more about the country than it is about the nation.

KA: I think you should keep thinking that way. And let’s play ball.

DM: That’s something that everyone here can agree with. As I wrap this up, the first game of the year is underway, Texas at Anaheim—Alex Rodriguez has hit into the year’s first double play, Juan Gonzalez has driven in the first run, and Mike Young has hit the first homer, off Giant Killer John Lackey.

KA: How sweet it is...

2003 ZiPS Projections - Click for info

PO Player       G  AB   R   H 2B 3B HR RBI  BB  SO SB CS   BA  OBP  SLG
C  Santiago   120 432  40 109 26  3  9  52  22  72  3  4 .252 .291 .389
1B Snow       136 416  49 102 32  1  8  53  58  99  0  1 .245 .348 .385
2B Durham     152 600  95 160 39  6 13  59  73 101 21 13 .267 .352 .417
3B Alfonzo    137 501  77 149 30  0 17  60  69  60  5  1 .297 .389 .459
SS Aurilia    144 577  85 163 35  2 23  74  45  88  1  3 .282 .336 .470
LF Bonds      142 420 102 131 37  2 42  97 156  69  8  4 .312 .504 .710
CF Cruz Jr.   141 544  67 136 30  4 23  65  56 120 15  4 .250 .321 .447
RF Grissom    127 438  51 102 25  2 12  52  23  91  7  8 .233 .273 .381
c  Torrealba   99 336  41  91 15  1  4  25  22  51  1  1 .271 .322 .357
1b Galarraga  115 352  32  81 22  0 10  45  28 104  1  5 .230 .307 .378
1b Minor      111 352  49  91 17  1 15  47  42  75  0  0 .259 .344 .440
if Perez      148 594  57 137 25  6  4  38  25  60  6 10 .231 .262 .313
ss Ransom     136 456  50  88 18  3 10  40  37 151  7  3 .193 .260 .311
3b Feliz      101 316  39  84 17  1 12  40  15  62  1  1 .266 .305 .440
of Benard     123 400  65 102 23  2 10  38  37  70  9  9 .255 .324 .398
of Rivera     146 414  55  98 19  4 14  54  43 106  7  5 .237 .314 .403

PO Player         W  L  ERA  G GS  IP   H  ER HR BB  SO
SP Schmidt       11  8 3.65 26 26 158 131  64 12 64 164
SP Rueter        10 13 4.71 33 33 191 215 100 20 53  86
SP Moss           7  8 5.12 29 26 146 142  83 16 82 117
SP Ainsworth      9  9 3.97 27 25 143 130  63 13 54 132
SP Jensen         8 10 4.62 30 27 154 156  79 17 58 111
SP Williams       8  9 4.50 26 26 142 147  71 17 45  98
SP Urban          6  9 4.46 31 21 127 133  63 16 35  85
SP Powell         8 10 4.62 29 26 148 156  76 17 49  94
RP Nathan         4 11 6.13 29 21 119 130  81 20 70  79
RP Zerbe          2  3 4.27 47  0  59  62  28  4 20  31
RP Eyre           4  5 4.12 71  2  83  73  38  6 40  77
RP Christiansen   3  4 4.15 56  0  39  32  18  3 20  40
RP Worrell        4  5 4.12 72  0  72  67  33  5 31  58
RP Rodriguez      6  5 3.48 75  0  75  60  29  5 31  80
CL Nen            6  2 2.47 72  0  73  53  20  3 20  87
ZiPS is not a playing time predictor and should not be added for team totals.