Sabean has to occassionally make a few moves that are good just on accident.

This team is still pretty darn bad and when Lincecum's arm blows out because of all the abuse they put on it for no good reason it will only get worse. There are only a few franchises that are in worse shape than the Giants and I don't think any with their level of payroll are in that bad of shape.

Wow at Alderson's projection, only 20 years old and already above average ERA.

Hennessey is an Oriole of Baltimore now.

Josh Phelps gives the Giants an option of .273/.339/.457 (OPS+ 106) at first, too.

There are only a few franchises that are in worse shape than the Giants and I don't think any with their level of payroll are in that bad of shape.


Seattle! The Giants have some hope. Good arms, a rapidly improving farm system and an ownership that, for better or worse, is not afraid to spend money. I think they compete by 2010 and could be a surprise in 2009.

I'm surprised at the projection for Zito.

There are only a few franchises that are in worse shape than the Giants and I don't think any with their level of payroll are in that bad of shape.

Houston's a better team but with a much, much worse farm system.

Theres an Alderson projection, but no Bumgarner?

Theres an Alderson projection, but no Bumgarner?

I'm more confident of a projection based off of one California League season than one Sally League season. Alderson was really close to the line. Villalona was Sally too, of course, but I'd rather project a low-level hitter than a pitcher of the same level. If Bumgarner repeats his season, he's going to have an awesome projection.

Thanks have to go to Lincecum for coming through - I was a little worried about projecting a 24-year-old, no matter how awesome, to go 10-5, 3.28 in his second season.

Hennessey is an Oriole of Baltimore now.

Yes & some of these guys are FAs

Anyways some nice projections of the young guys (Alderson/Sandoval) surprised no projection though of Kevin CORREIA/Tyler WALKER nor FA pick up Justin MILLER...actually with these numbers if they do pick up FURCAL & CC they would certainly be back in the division race & still developing some useful pieces too

FAs go to the previous team. I had missed the Hennessey signing in the last few days.

Projected Walker/Correia but I didn't add them to the roster (I use DMB for the ease of getting preformatted text reports).

Sorry, a little more error-prone than usual.

Sorry, a little more error-prone than usual.

Well, we demand a lot out of our free services.

I really had no idea that Rich Aurilia still exists. It's reassuring, in its vague way.

Travis Denker's a Padre now, Giants cut him which was the last "WTF Sabean" decision. Not that he was going to save the franchise, but why keep Velez over him?

The Ortmier cloud? Really?

Why drop a pseudoludlum like "The Shierholtz Conundrum"

The Ortmier cloud? Really?

Why drop a pseudoludlum like "The Shierholtz Conundrum"

What, you don't like comets?

I don't pay much attention to the Giants (imagine that!), but the one thing that strikes me about this projection is that this isn't a good fielding team. Playing in a park that keeps the ball in play (and with a poor hitting team), it would seem defense would be at even more of a premium. Or maybe that's just my traumatized perception after a year of watching the '08 Mariners.

No Barry projections?

I realize with a computer projection it is hard to forecast a one-year pitcher will go even as low as 3.28 after a 4.00 season, but personally I expected a breakout season from Tim Lincecum, somewhere in the 2.75-3.00 area. If one looks at his hits ratio in 2007, it was really good. Good home run rate and excellent strikeout rate.

Only his walks were high -- and even there,they were well down from his high walk rate in his freshman and sophomore years of college. Tim said it all came together in the Cape Cod League in the summer of 2005, and indeed his control has been improving ever since.

If he continues to improve his control, particularly on his first pitches, he can continue to improve from here.

I expected Tim to come in around 3.25 in his rookie year. Had his catchers had better knowledge of his stuff and had he had more pitching luck, he might have come pretty darn close.

An example of Tim's not being handled optimally as a rookie came in his very first major league venture into the ninth inning, which came on August 21, 2007. For the first seven innings, Tim's control of his fastball was as good as I have ever seen it. By putting the heater right where he wanted much of the time, he was getting lots of easy ground balls.

In the eighth, he began to get his fastball up, walking his first batter of the night, getting into a bit of trouble and experiencing his first inning with much pitch count. With a couple of men on and Daryle Ward pinch hitting, Bengie Molina finally called back-to-back change ups, which resulted in strikes two and three, getting Tim out of the inning.

Still, it was obvious Tim wasn't the same pitcher in the eighth, that he was starting to get his fastball up.

So what did Bengie call for in the ninth? Five straight fastballs, four of them up, three of them becoming hits to increase the Cubs' total to five on the night. Tim was out of the game, and the Giants wound up yielding five runs in the inning -- and losing what had through eight innings been their best-pitched game of the season.

Molina did a better job of calling pitches for Lincecum in 2008, contributing to his success rather than hindering it. As good as Tim was in 2008, with continued improvement in his control, he can still improve. He can strike a batter out with any of four pitches. All he has to do is get those pitches close to where he wants them.

Correia and Walker are there in all their mediocriglory.

I did project Bonds and considered putting him in here (251/444/492). But to be honest, the Giants don't have any really good hitters (for 2009 at least, I expect some of those guys to change that next decade!) and Bonds there would stick out like a sore thumb, even after a year off. Hell, a 65-year-old Bonds would probably be one of the best offensive players on the team.

However the Bonds Era in San Francisco ended, it has ended and Bonds isn't coming back to San Francisco, so I wanted to be more forward-looking with a projection.

I think Sanchez betters that ERA next season.

I don't pay much attention to the Giants (imagine that!), but the one thing that strikes me about this projection is that this isn't a good fielding team.

The OF defense is decent, although Rowand was bad last year. The IF defense, other than 1B (since they have a variety of athletic "position players" who can't hit play there) and Vizquel was generally awful. But they made up for it with... oh, - well even Durham's gone now.

I think Sanchez betters that ERA next season.

Not if the defense doesn't get better.

-- MWE

19: An example of Tim's not being handled optimally as a rookie came in his very first major league venture into the ninth inning, which came on August 21, 2007. For the first seven innings, Tim's control of his fastball was as good as I have ever seen it. By putting the heater right where he wanted much of the time, he was getting lots of easy ground balls.

Hey Rog, I was at that game too, the only time I have seen Lincecum pitch live. I was traveling on business and had bought the ticket online the week before calculating who would pitch. Then the week before there was a makeup game and I thought "oh, s***, now I'll have paid to watch a Zito game (but to be honest Zito did well the next day)".

I do remember as well that the stadium gun had him constantly at 96 all game, but there was that uncertainty after 8 innings at 1-0 whether they would go to the pen, and that there was a big cheer when he came out of the dugout in the top of the 9th. It might have been as much his excitement as loss of command that he was throwing high in the top of the 9th and didn't get anyone out.

The side story of that game was that Jason Marquis had given up a manufactured run in the 1st and shut the Giants down, eventually with some bullpen help, and had Lincecum gotten the shutout I probably would have still had a wish that I could have seen the Cubs throw a no-hitter and lost, or that the two Cub hits through 8 had not happened and gotten to see the 2nd double-no-hitter in MLB history.

Giant hits that day: Winn 2-out infield single (3rd inning), Pedro Feliz 2-out double (4th), Vizquel 1-out groundball triple down the RF line. Don't remember the Cubs making any great plays, so there was maybe 1-5% chance that if that game happened again in another DMB dimension that Marquis & Co get the no-no.

Cub hits thru 8: De Rosa 2-out infield single (2nd); Jason Kendall no-out single (6th). Thanks, Retrosheet.

Again, maybe .01% in the twilight zone that Lincecum starts the top of the 9th of a game with no hits at all. Probably walks the first 2 batters on 99 mph high heaters.

Is Noah Lowry expected to pitch in 2008? If so, the Giants have a pretty solid rotation, assuming any kind of bounceback from Zito.

The problem with computer generated projections - and I love them - is that they don't always take things into context.

For example, Lincecum had some growing pains at the start of his career that he had to get out of his way. After that he compiled over 15 starts a 2.96 ERA in 94.1 IP with 96 K's, 1.24 WHIP. That's not far from the 2.62 ERA he ended up with, and was far closer than any prediction I saw for him for 2008. And even then, you could see his performance lag at the end too, probably due to tiredness. Taking out those games would yield a 2.64 ERA.

Lowry is not being counted on to pitch in 2008. The Giants are reportedly checking with some starting pitchers, like Randy Johnson and Brad Penny, and Sabean publicly said that the Giants view getting anything from Lowry as extra. Not sure what the team would do if Lowry happens to be ready to pitch come starting day, I suppose they would put him in long relief and maybe send down Yabu, who is their usual guy doing that.

Dan, I'm curious, do you do any post-season mortem to check your prediction system's accuracy? In the past, I've found your system's predictions to be - and this has been my initial impression upon first seeing them - too pessimistic relative to my thoughts on the Giants future performance, though I've never gone back and see whether your system was right or me. However, you must be close though, somebody ran DMB on your 2008 data and the Giants had 75 wins in that, the difference of which could be accounted for by the Giants trading away Durham mid-season and using lesser replacements. It is certainly closer to what really happened than what most Giants fans were predicting for the Giants in 2008 (my prediction was barely right, that they would be closer to .500 than they would to losing 100 games, which most fans feared). Is there a good thread somewhere, or FAQ, where I can read up on your system and how it works? Thanks.

Question on Sanchez: why is he rated so low on IP? Or rather, why is he predicted to relieve a lot of games. The Giants clearly will not be swinging him back and forth in that regard, he's a starter now. Any way to jimmy your system to force such expected usage? In that same vein, Lincecum has already been announced as the opening day starter and he won't be doing a funky "relief" start in 2009, so he's probably starting 33-34 games then, like Cain.

Challenge: Resisting the temptation to short-circuit rebuilding. The rotation looks solid, even if ZiPS yearly too-optimistic look at Barry Zito fails to pan out, and a few lucky seasons from the offense and the Giants are competing in a very bad division. Getting, say, Brian Roberts for Sandoval/Tanner/Romo is a bad idea if it's just to charge for 83 wins and get into the playoffs.

It is a challenge that Sabean has basically met for the past few years. He has not traded away anyone who could be a key player for the Giants and the free agents he has gotten has not entirely blocked any of our prospects, who until Sandoval, did not really deliver the type of knock-out great minor league performance that says you should give him a chance now. His most important prospects have been kept and they are now on the major league roster, and more to come in the low minors.

Dan, I'm curious, do you do any post-season mortem to check your prediction system's accuracy? In the past, I've found your system's predictions to be - and this has been my initial impression upon first seeing them - too pessimistic relative to my thoughts on the Giants future performance, though I've never gone back and see whether your system was right or me.

Well, several people usually check the numbers every year (while I do it internally, I'm uncomfortable crunching the results publicly due to an obvious conflict of interest).

There's no indication that I'm too negative as a rule - if you look at the full-timers and see where the center is, I have no tendency to hit low. Last year, for instance, if you look at the players that got 250 PA, I projected the group to have an OPS of .783 compared to .777 actual. For pitchers with 50 IP, I projected the group to have an ERA of 4.33 compared to actual of 4.27. Whatever the faults of ZiPS, I'm very happy with where the "center of gravity" is every year, so-to-speak.

Running DMB seasons on data is, of course, fraught with problems because rosters are constantly changing. As such, I don't consider ZiPS to have any "view" on the team-level for a season.

ZiPS only predicts future playing time to the extent that the past is a good predictor of playing time. I don't butt in and change a player's role unless there's some drastic change that I believe will stick, like Brandon Morrow going from 100% relief to 100% starting, as expected. Sanchez didn't pitch well enough that I want to hang my hat on him still being in the rotation full-time when April rolls around, after a winter of unknown moves, which the Giants should be relatively involved in.

Thanks for the explanation. Taking a closer look, I see what you are saying, some are worse than I thought, but there are some better too, and those balance out, as you note, in a center of gravity.

FYI, the Giants have been saying all winter that Sanchez was the fifth starter with Lowry competing for his spot, and is clearly the incumbent now, Sabean said that just the other day and, frankly, I don't see how Lowry can beat out Sanchez, he hasn't pitched in over a year now, and hasn't been that great when he was pitching before.

The reason Sanchez didn't pitch well enough was because he hit the wall mid-season, his pre-ASG ERA was under 4.00, after ASG was way above, as he didn't condition himself well enough to last a whole season. When he was going good, he was very dominating in his starts, it wasn't just inconsistency from start to start, there was a clear demarcation. He reportedly is much stronger now and been working all off-season to condition to pitch more innings, which he got out of because he was relieving the previous two seasons. Barring any collapse or injury on his part, Sanchez should be the 5th starter. So should I just adjust his stats to the number of innings I think he will put in?