I throw out the question because, with respect to the 2018 Giants, I honestly don't know. Here is a list of the Giants' position players who have spent time on the disabled list this season:
Buster Posey
Brandon Belt
Evan Longoria
Joe Panik
Hunter Pence
Alen Hanson
Steve Duggar
Mac Williamson
Pablo Sandoval
That's our entire infield including a couple of the back-ups. It's easier to make a list of players that weren't on the DL: Kelby Tomlinson, Brandon Crawford, Gregor Blanco, Gorkys Hernandez, Nick Hundley (thank god for that), Austin Slater and the FNG's called up in September. I see 2 guys there who are legit full time major leaguers (maybe 3 if Slater develops further). And Andrew McCutcheon, who gave us 5/6 of a season before he was traded. Of course, that doesn't include the pitchers: Madison Bumgarner, Johnny Cueto, Jeff Samardzija, Mark Melancon, Will Smith, Hunter Strickland. The Giants fortunately got exceptional performances out of their young pitchers, otherwise, it would have been a long view up at San Diego.
But just what toll did the injuries take? There have been some statements to this already. Ron said, "Every team has plenty of injuries every season." Nomisnala said, "Injuries hurt this team severely." I read a quote from the Giants trainer that said he had never even heard of a team with this many injuries. Of course, that is a bit of a self-serving line for the Giants to put out. But I wonder, just how much better would the Giants have been had they gotten decent seasons out of most of their players? Clearly injuries played some part, and clearly every team has them throughout the year. Also, the injuries have an effect that is longer than the length of the DL stay - a player has to rehab, and then get back to major league play. It doesn't seem like that happens easily. Madison said his mechanics were at their best right before he got hurt - not late in the season after he had rehabbed in the major leagues for 4 months.
So what do you think? 10 games? That would make a big difference. 1 game? It's clear that the Giants need to make some moves to muscle up the team, yet it is also clear that the Giants are still going to be built around pitching (finishing, after that historically horrendous September with a 5th-best team ERA). I've said that I thought the Giants improvement (which was ultimately only 9 wins) was the result of pitching. But how better could they have been without the injuries?
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One way might be to do something like total DL-days. Once you sort for teams, assuming there are differences amongst them, with the most DL-days, then you could sort for "projected WAR" or somesuch with individual players. If a team like the Giants, for example, has 10% more DL-days than the average team or the league-leading teams, or whatnot, then you could get into the numbers. You could look at the projected production of the missing players and make a rating system. Team A lost 10 projected WAR in 200 DL-days, Team B lost 5 WAR in 180 DL-days, etc.
Ultimately that is futile, though. Players get injured. You have to prepare for that with backup players or make moves to shore up the roster. Whether the Giants "would have" won 10 more games with fewer injuries is irrelevant. Guys got injured. In the end, the injuries forced the Giants to promote youngsters like D-Rod and Suarez and rely on backups like Holland. Those were positive developments ultimately as the Giants may have found an important rotation piece or two for next year.
There is also a lot of variation in outcomes anyway. LA is a good example. They won 104 games last season and 92 this season, and there's no way this team is "12 games worse" than last season's. Could be they have 4-5 lucky wins last year and 4-5 unlucky losses this year. They are probably a "98-win" team in terms of talent and production in both seasons. In other words I look at team win totals as having an uncertainty of +/- half a dozen wins or so due almost entirely to random variation. So whatever you come up with for the impact of injuries would have to take into account the normal variance that already exists, or I should say the inherent uncertainty. So again I think it is futile. The team may have a scheme for determining the "cost" of injuries (both in terms of team production as well as the bottom line), and that would be useful to them perhaps, in terms of planning and budgeting and etc.
I think it is safe to say injuries hurt the team and they were unprepared for them. I remember all our pre-season expectations were based on guys being healthy and giving us full (or close to full) seasons. That of course did not happen. What would be most interesting to me is whether or not older rosters have demonstrably more DL-days and "lost WAR" than younger rosters. After all our youngsters spent, it seems, almost as much time on the DL as the oldsters!
Posey dropped 2.2 WAR from 2017 to 2018. Brandon Belt dropped 0.5 WAR (in nearly the same number of plate appearances), Longoria dropped 1.7 WAR and Panik dropped 1.2 WAR. That's 5.6 for those guys. How much of that is due to injury is impossible to tell, though. Crawford increased 0.4 WAR, however. So I think you're right, it's futile to try to quantify.
How many WAR did we lose from Cueto's injury, especially the way he started the season. How many war did we lose from Bumgarner's injury. How many war did we lose from Williamson's injury, and from Duggars injury, and from Smith's injury, and how many war did we get back from their replacements. And how did the injuries effect their production when they came back? It seems to me intuitive, that if the giants had been considerably more healthy this year they would have been in the race right up to the end. The last month's record, shows how losses can mount rapidly when you cannot put out a lineup that can score runs. I have no doubt that Evan's put out a very competitive team, but the injuries were just too great to overcome.
Cueto's loss was probably the biggest. He looked really good early on. I was hoping for 200 innings!
And Belt was having a career year until his appendectomy and he never recovered, in fact he added a knee injury and his season utterly tanked. I think those two blows were the biggest. The offense had no one else, especially with Posey hurt and Longoria not producing before he got hurt. The pitching stabilized; first the bullpen took over, and then D-Rod and Holland held it together until Bum came back.
I don't think we answered our question, which was "were the Giants more hurt by injuries than other teams?" I think that answer has to be "yes" because (1) the Giants have a lot of older players who I have to assume get hurt more frequently and (2) they didn't have the talent depth to recover. Note that the Dodgers lost Corey Seager and coped with that and then added Machado. Giants had no replacements, except starters, for any of the position players that went down (well, Pablo did his best at both 3B and 1B).
The dodgers despite their excellent runs scored vs. runs against, only played about 560 ball, and were extremely reliant on the homerun. When they were not hitting them, they looked quite ordinary, but when they were, they looked good, to my chagrin. A few more injuries to the bums, perhaps to Bellinger and their catcher, and perhaps one of their better back up players, would probably knocked them right down also. If they lost on of their major pitchers for almost the entire year, and their next best pitcher for half the year, they would also not be in the playoffs. Same is true for the Rockies. Being I live on the east coast, I find the SF press very unrealistic and overly critical of this team. The answer is clear: injuries hurt the giants more than most teams were hurt by injuries, and the team amassed at the beginning of the season was a competitive team.
Homers are good. Giants could use a few. Dodgers have a deep roster and they can fill in the gaps. Giants were thin after the front line. But I expected better of this team, for sure, I did not envision another injury parade. The weird thing is all the young guys getting hurt.
This is a quote from Zach Britton, explaining how things changed re analytics when he went from the Orioles to the Yankees:
Zach Britton experienced a sea change of data usage when he changed teams in July. As the Yankees reliever put it when I talked to him prior to last night’s ALDS Game Two, “There’s a gigantic difference in how we use analytics here compared to Baltimore.”
As you might guess, that difference is to the lefty’s liking.
“I’d never been exposed to that amount of information,” said Britton, who was drafted by the Orioles in 2006. “And it’s not just ‘Here’s a stack of stuff to look over.’ It’s (targeted) to each individual player. I don’t want to get into specifics, but some of it is how my ball moves, both my sinker and my slider, compared to different hitters’ swings. It kind of opens your eyes to things you maybe didn’t think of when you didn’t have that information.”
Astutely, the southpaw recognizes that the Yankees aren’t alone in October.
“If you look at the teams in the postseason, most are well-known for their analytics departments,” observed Britton, who proceeded to name-check the notables — one of which merited a modifier: “Especially the Astros.”
I wonder where the Giants are on the information/analytics spectrum.
source article: https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/sunday-notes-the-voice-of-the-indians-flirted-with-a-pigskin-tiger/
I was going to write up a post about this (and might still, but work!), but here's what I saw about the Giants:
* they lost significant time from their top 3 starting pitchers (and basically two were out for a most of the season, so essentially we lost an ace and a #3 for the entire season),
* their closer by contract missed time again, and was limited in usage because of his physical problems,
* their starting catcher who is an above average hitter, missed the last month or so, and lost his power all season,
* their starting 1B, who was headed to his best season ever, also above average hitter (just not 1B level average), had appendectomy and then knee injury hurt his swing,
* their starting 3B, who was doing okay in AT&T, missed two months due to pinky injury, and lost how to hit in AT&T for the rest of the season until the last homestand (his road OPS, however, we all love; since it is road, it suggests that's his skill level still),
* their main 1B/3B bench player, Sandoval, missing a huge chunk of the season, he's still killer vs. RHP,
* their starting SS didn't go on DL, but really should have, as evidenced by how well he hit at the end of the season when they finally rested him, but half a season of poor hitting to help kill the offense,
* our starting LF, Pence, injured again right at the start of the season, he hit .800 OPS roughly last two months of 2017, and was hitting again once given regular starts at the end of the 2018 season,
* our starting CF prospect, Duggar, who was starting to figure out the majors, missed the last month too
* our starting corner OF prospect, Williamson, who was hitting the same, whether he was in spring, in AAA, or in the majors, out after a few games, cussed out of a full MLB season, he could have been our power, paired up with Belt
* of course, there's Strikland's stupid DL for breaking his hand, as well.
Did I miss anything?
How does any team have a backup plan for the top of their rotation plus 4 out of the top 5 hitters in their lineup (plus Panik failed, again) plus their closer and backup closer? Baloney I say!
I see others say that the Dodgers and A's had injuries too, and that's what I was going to see, did essentially their entire lineup and top 3 starting pitchers, and closers (contract and real) suffer from injury or physical ailments? I doubt it, but I wasn't close enough to know, either, though I'm pretty sure that their closers were okay for most of the season (I think Dodger's had a heart thing briefly). I know Kershaw, at minimum, pitched more than Bumgarner did.
Oh, and also, that's pretty much every 30+ YO player on the roster (other than McCutchen, and relievers) who saw significant playing time, ending up on the DL,.
Sure 30 YO players are more likely to be injured, but if their point is that all 30 YO players are injured, which seems to be their point, as they want to jettison every 30+ YO player and avoid signing anyone over 30 YO, then they'll never win a championship again with that strategy because every team needs 30+ YO players to fill in the gaps and/or be a leader, there isn't any team that wins it all without 30+ YO players playing significant roles for them, nobody. I've challenged people to find me a team that won without older veterans and nobody has given me a team yet.
There aren't enough 20's YO players around to fill out a team organically, the fail rate for prospects is very high, so most teams followed the formula that the Giatns used: draft and develop one or two HOF caliber players (Posey, Bumgarner; or signed IFA), add to them to a bunch of young good veteran-ish players (Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez, Sandoval, Belt, Crawford) and a bunch of vets (Renteria, Huff, Burrell, Pagan, Pence, Zito, Hudson, Peavy).
We all need to stop feeling sorry for ourselves (e.g. whining about injuries) & come to grips w/ the fact that the Giants' model is broken.
Expecting big things in everyday roles out of multiple position players over 30 years old & clearly in their declining years is a messed up model. All that you have to do is look at the numbers for Posey, Pence, McCutchen, Longoria, A. Jackson, & Belt - none were on the upswing, &, typically, players in that age category are typically in decline. Again, I am really sorry to point this out, but Brandon Belt is not a difference-maker. Now, he is an older, injury-prone non-difference-maker.
Expecting big things out of a crop of Pitchers who have been shaky and/or recently injured is also a messed up model. As far as the rotation is concerned, Samardzija has never been good. Melancon, Cueto, (& Bumgarner) were recovering from injuries (& got hurt again). Strickland? Clearly, a ticking time bomb from the word go.
The model is broken & obsolete. Winning Teams these days have multiple young, lower salaried players & a few carefully-used veterans (like McCann on last year's Astros). They don't have 6 or 7 half broken down formerly great guys. Winning Teams these days have wave after wave of talented Players coming up from the Minors, or coming in from overseas.
The Giants blew their chance to build things up from the winning base that they established in the early part of the decade. Now, they just look like rudderless, overly sentimental perpetual losers. Unfortunately, I don't see a quick fix.
Here are some numbers:
Evan Longoria, career .268 BA, 2018 .244 BA
Andrew McCutcheron career .287 BA, 2018 .255 BA
I looked at batting average rather than OPS or something that is more power dependent due to ATT. A drop off in both cases.
Meanwhile, some other guy's batting averages:
Brandon Crawford: .338 on Jun 10, .292 at the ASB, .254 at season's end.
Gorkys Hernandez, such a feel good story for awhile: .300 on Jun 3, .234 by season's end.
Alen Hanson had a similar drop off, although he was on the DL for awhile: .301 on Jun 22, .252 at the end of the season (which was the best in his career). I think in Hernandez' and Hanson's cases, these guys never had the potential to be full time major leaguers, they were put in that role and, for a while, bloomed. I don't know what happened with Brandon Crawford, other than what OGC suggested.
It is certainly a fact that the Giants lost a large part of their projected lineup and rotation due to injury. What kind of difference that made in the outcome I can't say for sure. But it is part of what went wrong. And when things go wrong we do a post-mortem to try and make sense of it. That's not whining, it's analysis.
You know who has an old roster? The Cleveland Indians. Of course the Giants could use a Cody Bellinger or two, but every team out there can use a Cody Bellinger or two. They are hard to find.
What I want to know is can the Giants find those guys? If not, why not? If they need a "shake-up" in the scouting department then by all means let's get a shake up. What I also want to know is do the Giants employ analytics to help their players improve? (See the Zach Britton thing above.) If not, why not? If we need a whole new crew of nerds and nerd-savvy coaches then by all means let's get some.
I feel for Belt. He's a very accomplished player but has had an unusual run of injury bad luck. The fan base is very polarized about Belt and that's too bad as it obscures the fact that he's a good ballplayer (and lest we forget a goddamn 2x champion). I know everyone wants him to be Joey Votto, but it doesn't work like that. Only Joey Votto can be Joey Votto.
I think one thing we will see next season is a willingness to exceed the salary cap. This year they wanted to get under to "reset" the clock on that penalty so I expect they'll spend money where they'll need to. That is, the fact that they have a lot of sunk costs already won't necessarily be as big of a handicap.
And the fact that they let Evans go and seem to be booting Sabes further upstairs (and that Boch's contract will be up after 2019) means they know they have to make some changes. The organization is a big black box. Stuff goes in and stuff comes out. We can only guess at the process. (And bitch about the results, of course!) My point is we all think we know what the franchise OUGHT to do, but we are stuck with what they WILL do. I'm antsy because I know the process will be slow and I'm eager to see what's ahead.
Here's a little comic that sums up blogging about baseball!
Batting Average for McCutchen. He apparently hit the ball as hard has he has in any season as far as velocity of the ball off his bat. But he and several players were not that good at adjusting to the shifts. If you can hit 40 homers, as a pull hitter, maybe most of the time you do not have to adjust to the shift, but if you max out at around 15 homers a year, you probably need to learn to adjust to the shift, at least until they stop using the shift against you.
I think the shifts in baseball are very interesting and I'm curious about what's next. Will more batters learn to spray the ball, hit the other way, bunt, etc? Certainly some guys will try to hit more fly balls. Right now it is a TTO kind of game, lots of Three True Outcomes (HR, BB, K). Fewer balls in play. Of all the things happening in baseball, I think that's the most dramatic. The trend is definitely for more uppercut swings and hence more long balls. But things come and go, what's hip today is dead tomorrow. Maybe we'll see a new wave of hitters that avoid whiffs and keep fielders busy. Maybe the high-velocity four-seamer wave will abate a little and the low pitch count, pitch-to-contact guys will make a comeback.
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