Replacing Santiago Casilla

Today the Giants lost a game to the A’s, however Sandy Rosario did not give up any runs so if you’re a fan of little victories today you’re a winner. Sandy Rosario is no longer with the team, but his spirit is still here. By spirit I mean the fact that Sandy Rosario had to be called up and put on this major league roster is still very indicative of the shape of the roster.

The point here is that you should go ahead and try to name your most trusted right handed reliever on the Giants roster besides Sergio Romo. Here’s a list to help:

The Tim Lincecum Conundrum

The Giants starters ERA has now climbed to 4.87. Brett Tomko’s career ERA was 4.61. And if we go to our ole pal ERA+, which is ERA adjusted for ballpark, the Giants as a team rank worst in the National League in ERA+ at 81. Sidney Ponson’s career ERA+ was 89 and the higher that number goes the better. So in essence, the 2013 Giants are pitching like a bunch of Brett Tomkos and Sidney Ponsons, only a little worse. I am going to escape this paragraph now.

Madison Bumgarner has been excellent for the most part, Matt Cain we expect to get better, Zito is going to have mixed results and Vogelsongs spot will likely be replacement level for a while. But the one person who’s been kind of stuck in between Madison Bumgarner (great!) and Ryan Vogelsong (sicada ugly) has been Tim Lincecum. If you were to put him somewhere on that spectrum this season in would probably be closer to pre-injury Vogelsong than Bumgarner. Still, he hasn’t been a complete dumpster fire like last season at this time. Lincecum has had a few quality starts and a few starts where he’s done things like walk Josh Beckett and Juan Uribe in the same game. He's still a relatively unknown for 2013.

If the Giants are to get where they want to be, the postseason and beyond, there going to need Lincecum to be a reliable starter. As well all knew last year, if he wasn’t good last season, there was no way they would win the World Series. Yep. No way.

But it’s going to be hard to do that again. The early returns this year for Lincecum are in a word, mixed. He’s posting his highest strike out rate since 2010 and his xFIP, what is ERA should be, is 3.34 which is the lowest it’s been since 2010. By that measure, Lincecum is back! But of course, we know that’s not true. His home run per fly ball ratio is the highest in his career (16.2%), he’s walking 4.19 batters per nine innings, the second highest rate of his career, and he also has one “slip off the mound and fall on butt”* this season, the highest mark of his career. Here is his line drive percentage from year to year:

Matt Cain Wins Game Against Rockies

Here are some quick notes from the Giants 8-6 win against the Rockies, who came in ready to battle!

This is Matt Cain's season in a nutshell. Here he is facing Josh Rutledge in the second innning. Grant Brisbee did a similar exercise to this at baseball nation in evaluating Matt Cain. Watch where the Posey wants it and where the pitch ends up. After the first pitch runs down and away, here is where Posey wants the 1-0 pitch.

The New Barry Zito

Barry Zito redefined himself as something of a cult hero during the 2012 postseason. Game 5 in St. Louis was one of the most important starts in Giants history and that’s no exaggeration. He’s never going to be worth 126 million dollars but after 2012, Giants fans became a lot more tolerant of it now than say, this start.

However, the general thought here entering the 2013 season was that Barry Zito was still Barry Zito. That is, he is an almost terrible pitcher that is okay as a fifth starter. To illustrate this easily, let’s compare his 2010 to his 2012.

2010: 4.15 ERA, 4.25 FIP, 1.79 K/BB, 7,5 HR/FB

2012: 4.15 ERA, 4.49 FIP, 1.63 K/BB, 8.7 HR/FB

Almost identical lines. If anything, he had a better 2010 than 2012. Yet in 2010 he hit arguably the low point of his Giants career, which is saying something, while on the other hand 2012 was so transcendant it prompted a GQ photo-shoot where he is pretending to bowl for some reason.

What's Wrong With Matt Cain?

Hello. Welcome to China Basin Baseball, a Giants blog where there is a post sometimes every 3 months! Probably not a good strategy to generate traffic. But I haven’t been writing for the past few months for a variety of reasons. I like to think the main one is to accumulate as many creepy automated blog comments as possible. I have some deleting to do. But the truth is college requires you to put in a lot of work, and quite frankly I lost a little motivation along the way. I'm back though and hopefully for good, and will try to get at least 3 or 4 post up per week. That's something that I will regret writing soon.

Anyways you’re probably here for the baseball, because this is a baseball blog! To baseball! There are already many storylines in the first month of the season for Giants baseball, but this one tops the list for me (via gidget)

Justin Upton Trade Reaction

This is a picture involving Dan Runzler

In 2008, when Justin Upton was 20, he hit a 458 ft. home run, the 2^nd longest home run in Chase Field History.

The longest home run in Chase Field history was hit by Richie Sexson (503ft.). This has no relevance to the article, I just wanted to note something about Richie Sexson.

In 2009, when Justin Upton was 21, he had a .385 wOBA and was nearly worth 5 Wins Above Replacement.

In 2011, when Justin Upton was 24, he finished 4^th in the MVP voting.

Today, the Diamondbacks traded Justin Upton for 1 year of Martin Prado, a projected 5^th starter, 2 B- prospects and one C+prospect. That’s not the official press release, but that is essentially what just happened.

There are a couple ways to look at this as a Giants fan. One is that the the Diamondbacks traded Justin Upton for 1 year of Martin Prado, a projected 5^th starter, 2 B- prospects and one C+ prospect. Which after a quick google image search, leaves me wondering which person in this picture is D’backs GM Kevin Towers: