The World Series

The Houston Astros come in as favorites against the Atlanta Braves. I've seen a variety of numbers for the money line so I'm going to pick one (from The Athletic) and talk about that. The Astros are listed at -145 for the Series and the Braves are listed at +120.

-145 means bet $145 to win $100 and is equivalent to 20:29 in fractional odds (100/145). That's an implied win probability of about 59% (145/245).

+120 means bet $100 to win $120 and is equivalent to 6:5 in fractional odds (120/100). That's an implied win probability of about 45% (100/220).

I have a hard time believing that ANY team in the post-season has a nearly 60% chance to win! That's too high for my taste. I think Houston should be favored but not by that much. The Astros have too much hitting and their pitching is pretty even with Atlanta's. If you add in home field advantage I think that's enough to tip the Series. But the Braves have a bit of magic going on right now and sometimes that's all it takes for an upset. I don't have a dog in the fight. If one team has "SF Giants" on their jerseys then I'll give a shit, otherwise it's just a bunch of guys running around in different colors.

Note that the win probabilities add up to over 100% (59+45=104). That extra 4% accounts for the vigorish (the "vig" or house cut). Those guys make money either way--god bless American capitalism! (Anyone who bets on sporting contests is a fool.) I do believe that this unholy alliance between MLB and sports books is ultimately a bad thing. I say enjoy the baseball before Las Vegas corporate quants wind up running the whole show.

--M.C.

 

p.s. 538 says it's a 50-50 tossup

The 2021 Giants, part 4

Take a look at the chart below (click on it to get a larger image). You can see the names on the left and what I want you to look at is the number on the far right. It is OPS+ and it measures OPS against a league-average hitter. A hitter rated 100 OPS+ is at league-average level, and a hitter rated 120 OPS+ is 20% better than a league-average hitter. All these hitters had at least 200 plate appearances (from Baseball-Reference).

 

Almost everyone on the list was over 100. That's like Lake Wobegon where everyone is above average! Seriously, the Giants were able to run out a lot of good players every day who could hit the damn baseball especially when given favorable match-ups. Even the guys who under-performed (La Stella and Dickerson) were expected to do better, and those expectations were reasonable given past performance. Casali was the backup catcher and thus subject to a different standard, and I think 42-13 in his starts works as a standard.

The rest of the list (under 200 PA) is Mauricio Dubon, Mike Tauchman, Thairo Estrada, Jason Vosler, Chadwick Tromp, Jaylin Davis, Joey Bart, and Skye Bolt. Only Estrada (52 G, 132 PA) delivered the goods (.273/.333/.479) with an OPS+ rating of 118. I hope he's a big part of next season. Even though the other names are underwhelming, remember of course that Tauchman made the play of the season in LA, which goes to show how many heroes it takes to win 109 games.

Take a look at the same page for the 2014 Giants. That team had a lot of good hitters up and down the lineup.

It seems like a no-brainer that the team will pick up Posey's option. They could offer Belt a QO, much like they did with Gausman. Bryant will be one of the more desirable free agents, and he does fit the Giants nicely, but that's too big of a picture to speculate about. Too many moving parts! Mostly I expect FZ & Co. will continue to acquire talent and keep the level of competition for roster spots at a high level. The 2021 Giants enjoyed some fine work by young pitchers that were promoted from within, maybe there will be some hitters in the system that will make highlights in 2022.

--M.C.

The 2021 Giants, part 3

The biggest surprise of the season was the pitching staff. From the get-go they were among the best in the league at suppressing runs, specifically limiting walks and homers, and continued to pitch well until the final game. They allowed 18 runs in the five-game LDS and threw two shutouts against a Dodgers team that led the NL in offense (and were fourth in runs scored behind three AL teams, the Astros, Rays, and Jays).

How did that happen? Let's start with the bullpen. Here are the top six relievers by IP this season with their ERAs: Tyler Rogers (81, 2.22), Jarlin Garcia (68-2/3, 2.62), Jose Alvarez (64-2/3, 2.37), Zack Littel (61-2/3, 2.92), Jake McGee (59-2/3, 2.72), and Dominic Leone (53-2/3, 1.51). All of those ERAs rate 150 ERA+ and higher meaning they are 50% better than league average. All the FIPs are correspondingly good (3.28, 3.77, 3.15, 3.87, 3.35, and 3.08) so you know that the numbers aren't too fluky. They threw strikes and mostly kept the ball in the yard. I have to add wunderkind Camilo Doval's 27 IP, 3.00 ERA, and 3.47 FIP. When everyone else was faltering he went un-scored upon in September and literally saved the season. Although other relievers logged more innings (Tony Watson, Caleb Baragar, Jay Jackson, Matt Wisler, John Brebbia, Conner Menez), the 13-1/3 delivered by young Kervin Castro (one unearned run, 2.12 FIP) got him a spot on the post-season roster and he saw action in two games.

The construction and emergence of the bullpen was a vindication of the infamous "churn" so beloved by our owlish and genial PoBO Farhan Zaidi. He and and his loyal lieutenant Scott Harris and their staff made sure there was a continuous stockpile of major league-ready ballplayers to be called upon. And called upon they were!

The starters obviously shone this season as well. The Giants almost pulled off a five-man rotation at one point, looking very old-school, but fatigue and injuries took their toll. It's amazing the club went 21-6 in September! The front five accounted for 137 starts. Aaron Sanchez, Sammy Long, and Scott Kazmir added 16 more and the rest were bullpen/opener games.

Giving Kevin Gausman a QO at the end of last season paid off handsomely. He was a top-tier pitcher this season and stayed healthy enough for 192 IP (6th-best in MLB). I expect they will offer him a deal this winter. Another free agent that really delivered, especially in the first half, was Anthony DeSclafani. Unfortunately his troubles against LA and in the LDS really hurt his stock. I could see them re-signing him but they won't have the same enthusiasm they did earlier. Alex Wood however made a case to stick around, mostly because he's a lefty and could perhaps relieve as well as start, sort of like Julio Urias. Johnny Cueto had a brief resurgence and started 21 games but couldn't stay healthy and did not make the post-season cut. I assume they'll buy him out. Alas, that's the last we'll see of that wonderfully entertaining performer.

Logan Webb was the story of the year, of course. The 24-year old put himself on the national radar with two brilliant efforts against the Dodgers in the playoffs. That only confirmed what Giants fans had just discovered--that he was an ace. You have to be excited about seeing him pitch next season. It's also another reason to re-sign Gausman as having that co-ace tandem at the top of the rotation is tough on other teams!

FanGraphs rated the San Francisco staff 5th in WAR (21.9) behind the White Sox, Dodgers, Brewers, and Yankees. They rated second in FIP (3.55) to LA (3.54). B-R gave them a 127 ERA+, again second only to LA's 136. For more conventional statistics they had the second-lowest WHIP (1.148, LA led MLB with 1.097). The Giants allowed the fewest homers (151) and the fewest walks (146). They had 18 shutouts, second to Atlanta and Milwaukee with 19. They had, like the Dodgers, a league-leading 56 saves.

--M.C.

The 2021 Giants, part 2

I've said it before and I repeated it in my last post: this is the most interesting Giants team in my tenure as a fan. What's so interesting? Let's start with the manager, Gabe Kapler. This is a man who leaves nothing to chance. Every action has a purpose. Even warm-up tosses are conscious, deliberate acts with clear outcomes. This approach, at first blush, seems too hands-on for pro athletes and more suited to working with elementary school kids. But Kapler believes that every athlete (every person, in fact) can learn, adapt, and grow. Practice isn't just drills. It's a personal improvement plan. Kap's forte is player development, and he believes that this process happens continuously and throughout all the things that happen in the season from Spring Training to the playoffs to the layoffs.

Kapler is also match-up obsessed. He believes that every encounter can be maximized and that even the tiniest increment in your favor is worth pursuing. It drove the old-school purists in Philadelphia crazy, and to Kap's credit he adjusted his schemes when he came to San Francisco. Mostly, he asked the veteran players for buy-in beforehand and they were professional enough (and hungry enough for increasingly elusive success) to meet him halfway. The result? Career resurgences for BCraw, Belt, Buster, and Longo, and a rejuvenated nucleus of veteran leaders to build a team around.

Ron put it crudely in the comments: "making Lemonade out of Lemons." I have to counter that notion just a bit: there are no "lemons" in a Gabe Kapler organization! The baseball world may look at the Giants lineup of no-names and think the team was scraped together by dumpster-diving and somehow these marginal players were transformed by SF secret sauce into winners. It's a nice narrative, but it's bullshit. Kap respects professional baseball players. He knows they are talented and ambitious. He sees what they CAN do and not what they CAN'T do. Very few players reach the heights of someone like Mookie Betts or Max Scherzer. The vast majority of players will never be superstars. MOST ballplayers are more like Darin Ruf and Jose Alvarez! What the Giants do is recognize what contributions their players CAN make and so they maximize their chances to make those contributions. Moreover, they provide the coaching and instructional support to help players work on the things they need to work on.

Giants players noted all season long Kap's willingness to listen. Kap, in turn, noted again and again how unselfish the players were in accepting whatever role the team needed from them. I think the skipper gets a lot of credit for creating that culture. One thing that stood out for me: if a reliever blew up in a crucial spot in a game Kap would put him back out there in a key spot in the next game. It was a message that said "we trust you and we have your back." It seems like really simple schoolyard stuff but it makes a huge deal in a teaching environment. The clubhouse was as much a classroom as the playing field.

Have you ever seen a manager pinch-hit for a guy that was 2-for-2 with a homer? Or sit a guy with the game-winning homer the previous night? It happened all season long! And the hitters never bitched or whined. They knew the system was working for them individually and for the team as a whole. The 2021 Giants had few regulars. They platooned like they invented platooning. They looked like a hockey team some nights the way they ran through the line changes. That's not supposed to work. You're supposed to plug in your All-Stars every day in the same spots on the field and in the lineup and go with that all season long. This Giants team didn't do that. They used all forty men on their 40-man roster. It was a team in the true sense of the word.

I find all this modern stuff really interesting. I've really enjoyed the emergence of analytics, for example. I feel like all that stuff just enriches and enlarges my appreciation of the game. And now Kapler comes along and says things like "trust the process." Imagine a manager saying that back in the day. They would have thought he was a fruit loop who belonged at Esalen instead of MLB! Kap comes up with stuff that sounds like it emerged from a Bayesian workflow seminar instead of a coaches meeting.

In the end, the Giants won 109 games.

--M.C.