Le roi est mort, vive le roi!

The San Francisco Giants bring back both Bruce Bochy and Hunter Pence to the fold. It's a familiar pattern for management--Felipe Alou was retained after his replacement and Dusty Baker returned after his falling out. The front office is littered with former coaches and players. That's a good thing. I like organizations that conserve resources. People are the resource. If you put that much faith in someone, even if you part ways or change the relationship, they still have "the stuff" that made you believe in them in the first place! I'm glad Boch isn't going to another organization. He has a lot of baseball wisdom. Some of these so-called old school guys are human calculators. Boch knew all the odds. The saber-istas use a run expectancy matrix and linear weights and whatnot but ol' Bruce had all that in his gigantic head already. He'd been collecting the data and analyzing it for years. I'll bet he asks the best questions in the meetings with the analytics gang. Plus, he's known for his character and personality, and you can never have too much of that.

Hunter Pence figured out how to have a second act in baseball. That is no mean feat. I hope he can keep it rolling. In a part-time role, especially against lefties, there's a good chance he will. Expect a lot of platooning and creative lineups this season.

I said in the comments that I think FNG Gabe Kapler sees a kindred spirit in Pence. Kapler lacks Pence's charm but he has the same relentlessly positive outlook. The new skipper's intensity will be a good thing for the many young players in camp, and Pence will embody the ethos enthusiastically. I think it's a good mix.

--M.C.


p.s. I neglected to mention that Boch is returning as a "special adviser" which is the best job title ever.

Dates

February 11: pitchers and catchers report (Tue)
February 12: first workout (Wed)
February 16: position players report (Sun)
February 17: first full-squad workout (Mon)
February 22: first spring game (Sat)
March 21: last spring game (Sat)
March 22: at River Cats (Sun)
March 23-24: Bay Bridge Series (Mon-Tue)
March 26: Opening Day in LA (Thu)
April 3: Home Opener vs. Dodgers (Fri)

These are from Maria Guardado's article on the website.

Here's the link to the printable regular-season schedules.

--M.C.


update: Giants sign IF Wilmer Flores

Giants pitcher WAR

From 2007 to 2012 Matt Cain racked up 26 bWAR, or about 4.3 bWAR per season. FanGraphs rates the same period 23 WAR, or 3.8 fWAR per season. I think we can safely say Matt Cain embodied the 4-WAR pitcher during that span. Roughly, a 5-WAR pitcher is an All-Star. Matty's 6.1 in 2009 was his bWAR peak, his 4.6 in 2011 was his fWAR peak.

Madison Bumgarner, from 2013 to 2017, was worth 16-18 WAR or about 4.0-4.5 per season.

Tim Lincecum's two Cy Young seasons, 2008 and 2009, are rated 7.8 and 7.4 bWAR and 7.1 and 7.6 fWAR. When you get to 6+ WAR you are among the league elites.

Another fine season? Johnny Cueto's 2016 rated 5.5 bWAR and 4.9 fWAR.

A major-league starter, a regular rotation member, is a 2+ WAR player. A quality reliever can contribute about 1.0 WAR and sometimes more.

Last year FanGraphs said Bum was our best guy (3.2 WAR) and Smardj our second-best (1.5 WAR), Baseball-Reference reversed them, with Smardj at 2.9 WAR and Bum at 2.8 WAR.

FanGraphs version (fWAR) is based on a pitching metric called FIP or Fielding Independent Pitching. FIP grew out of some research by a fella with the spectacular moniker of Voros McCracken. We'll talk about FIP later, it is a very useful way to look at pitching.

--M.C.

Giants position player WAR

The best part about WAR and the new saber-stats is that the math geeks have done all the heavy lifting. We get to use the fruits of their labors. WAR is an abstraction about baseball. It's not perfect and should not be relied on as the only measure of a player's value. More than anything it is a way to cluster similar players. Here's the graphic I posted yesterday:

In recent Giants history, the best season by WAR was Buster's MVP campaign in 2012. FanGraphs gives him 10.1 WAR while Baseball-Reference calculates 7.6 WAR. In the case of FanGraphs, only Mike Trout matched Posey that year. B-R rated Mike Trout (10.5), Robinson Cano (8.4), and Justin Verlander (8.0) above Posey that year but Buster was #1 in the NL. FG gives a lot of weight to the catching position and puts a high value on pitch-framing. The positional adjustment for catcher is not as great in the B-R version of WAR. Two models, two different outcomes, but both in agreement about the very best players.

Last season Cody Bellinger was rated the best among position players by B-R (9.0), but FG put him third (7.8), tied with Christian Yelich (7.8), but behind Mike Trout (8.6), Alex Bregman (8.5).

The Giants position player leaders were Mike Yastrzemski (2.2 fWAR, 2.8 bWAR) and Evan Longoria (2.0 fWAR, 2.4 bWAR). Buster rated (FG/B-R) 1.8/0.9, Pillar rated 1.8/1.4, and Donovan Solano 1.3/1.6. Not a pretty picture!

We'll look at pitchers later.

--M.C.

p.s. here's the technical stuff on how to compute fWAR (FanGraphs) and bWAR (Baseball-Reference)