Rangers
White Sox
But you knew that. He’s also a hero, because he’s dunking on David Kaplan in a second language, when Kap can’t even manage his first.
Darvish’s entire Cub career has been hard to get your arms around. His first was ruined by an injury that at first even his own team wasn’t sure was actually there, until he proved it. Remember the whole Alex Rodriguez play-acting journalist thing? The eight starts he did manage weren’t all that impressive. Then this year started, and there were flashes of everything, from brilliant to helpless to utterly confusing. It was an amazing Javy Vasquez cosplay. It was infuriating, as Darvish couldn’t seem to harness any of his pitches, nor decide which ones to throw when.
And then there’s this recent strange of what should be insane dominance. And yet it’s not, because the thread through all of this season at least has been giving up home runs. And to most people, that means there must be a problem. We’re looking for something that isn’t there, or it’s just right there in front of us and we can’t see it. I don’t know, and neither do you. But considering everything else, there can’t be a problem. There doesn’t have to be a reason in baseball. Things can just happen to happen. It’s what makes it so fascinating and frustrating, and leads to all those metaphors for life that probably drive you nuts as well.
So let’s get into it. So here’s the big number. Since July 1st, Yu Darvish has a 35.5-to-1 K/BB ratio. That’s 35.5. He’s struck out 71 hitters. He’s walked two. In August, he’s struck out 35 hitters and walked none. So in August, he has an infinity K/BB ratio, because he might not walk anyone ever again. For reference sake, since July 1, the second-best K/BB rate is Justin Verlander’s at 11.5. And 11.5 is amazingly good! Darvish is over three times that!
So when you’re striking out that many hitters, and walking literally no one, it’s really hard to argue you’re doing anything wrong. And yet there are the homers, and homers come off mistakes, so something must be wrong. But if you look at the whole picture, the homers have to be an anomaly. A ghost in the machine. Just some sort of spasm of weirdness. The ultimate punishment for being mere millimeters off where a pitch should be. It’s disproportionally punitive.
In this stretch, hitters are batting .211 against Darvish. That’s incredibly good. He’s not getting hit at all, except for last night where he was clearly off. In August, it’s .222, still really good. And yet they’re slugging .544, which isn’t. Which means every single hit he’s giving up, or close to it, is getting hit hard. So I guess you could argue his mistakes are bigger than others, because they’re just sitting there to get whacked. But if you’re striking out 35 hitters for every one you walk, you really can’t be making that many mistakes. You’re probably making barely any at all.
The number on the other side is a 24.6% HR/FB rate for the season, which is almost twice Yu’s career-average. In four August starts, it’s 44%. There’s no “method” to that, it’s just extremely bad luck. Yu would have needed simply four guys to foul a mistake straight back, a matter of an inch or two to cut that in half, and 22% would still be abnormally high for him.
So is something going on with fly balls? I mean, sort of? Yu is giving up 40% hard-contact on the fly-balls he gives up, which his high, but it’s hardly amongst the leaders. Just so you know, when giving up fly balls, Tyler Beede’s 56.2% hard-contact leads, and Yu ranks 52nd. And it’s less than two percent of an increase on his 2017 season, y’know the one that netted him this big contract. It’s not out of line from anything he’s done before, it’s just that everything keeps floating out of the park.
I suppose an argument you can make is that when you’re walking no one, hitters know you’re around the plate all the time so they’re a little more tuned in? Or maybe all of Yu’s mistakes are in the zone instead of outside? Doesn’t seem to bother Kershaw much, but Yu isn’t Kershaw. But are we really going to advocate Yu start walking more guys? How would that really help?
Maybe it’s a certain pitch or two that’s the problem. Except it isn’t. Every pitch is going for a higher slugging this season, due to that inflated HR/FB rate. But the thing is, a majority of his pitches are giving up less fly balls than his career norms–slider, curve, and cutter. The fastball and sinker are getting lifted in the air more often, but not exceedingly so. And only his cutter is getting hit for more line-drives by a significant margin. Yet they’re all going out of the park at a higher rate. The big one is that his splitter has a huge jump in home run/put-in-play rate, which I guess you could point to as the pitch he’s making more mistakes with than others. But it also has a 40% whiff rate, so would you really ask him to drop it?
Essentially, what I’m saying is that it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Yu give up two homers the rest of the season without changing a thing simply because BASEBALL. You really can’t stress enough that when you’re striking out 35 hitters for every one you walk, there’s nothing to change, no matter what Kap’s galaxy dome has to say.
And then there was one.
Eddy Piñeiro is the lone kicker remaining from the Bears extensive offseason search to replace ol’ double-doink, Cody Parkey. Steady Eddy won the right to kick sans competition about as much as the recently cut Elliot “J” Fry lost the job, so sure. Congrats.
But the recent damning article by SI’s Kalyn Kahler about the brief history of this unending quest tells us Eddy shouldn’t get too comfortable. When you have NFL folks quoted as saying that Cody Parkey is easily better than anyone they’ve brought in, Piñeiro included, you best watch your back. You can read the article for the rest of the behind the scenes of what any sane person knew was a batshit circus of a competition; it’s worth your time. You’ll also learn that most of this shit show is probably for nothing, since kicking is based solely on in game results, which no one can tell until September 5th.
But I’m not here to rehash the last few months and, assuming this is not at all over, I want to take a look at the new crop of kickers our pal Eddy is now up against: THE LEAGUE.
The Field – Joey Slye: Best of the rest, but at what cost?
True, the Bears already spent some draft capital on the kicker currently on the team, but he hasn’t made one longer than 47 in a fake games and Slye Stallone here has banged in two from 54+, one of which fans at Soldier got to see in person. He’s a perfect 5-5 on FG attempts and 2/2 on XP. Ryan Pace failed to trade for Kaare Vedvik last week, losing to the rival Vikings because they stumped up to an unconditional 5th rounder. Pace might have to go back to the draft well for Slye instead, as there at plenty others, like the Jets and Cowboys, that have far from certainty at the position.
Slye hasn’t exactly shown a proven record outside of this preseason: Slye was undrafted in 2018, then bounced around from the Bucs to the Browns to out of football to the Giants to summer vacation to the Giants again and eventually landing in Carolina, where he was signed to keep a spot warm until Graham Gano was healthy enough to reclaim his job. Slye has a pretty great backstory of battling adversity and working to achieve his NFL goals in the name of his late brother. He’d hardly be difficult to root for, lack of results be damned. And with a nickname like “Swole”, he’s already earned the hearts of meatball fans without pulling on the GHS armband.
Slye can boast that he’s Virginia Tech’s all-time leading scorer, though. And there are those long makes and impressive ability to simply make the kicks in games. You have to wonder how this guy wasn’t one of the billion legs brought in for a look already, but here we are. It might take a late conditional pick, but Slye passes the eye test which is about all that matters in kicking. The Bears can ill afford to wait it out and hope they can sign him at final cuts, but I also think if they were interested Pace has shown he’ll spend to go get his guy.
A few other notables to watch the next two weeks….
- Matthew Wright is unlikely to boot incumbent Chris Boswell from his job in Pittsburgh, but the 2019 UDFA is 2/2 from over 40 with a pair of XP as well. Plus, kicking in Heinz is as a good a comparable as any outdoor stadium in the league.
- Tristan Vizcaino is 2/3 on FGA through two games, going 1/2 from 40+ and nailing a 51 yarder. He probably won’t win the job over Randy Bullock in Cincinnati. If Piñeiro fails to impress further he might get a call from Pace around Labor Day.
- Veterans Matt Bryant, Mike Nugent and Kai Forbath all remain unsigned as we approach kickoff in week 1. Bryant may well be done at 41 and isn’t likely to push off retirement to kick in Chicago in December. Nugent and Forbath are probably better than the circus from mini camp, but it’d be unlikely the Bears dial any of them up over anyone already kicking the last month-plus.
NFC North Kicker Thunderdome….
- Sam Ficken and Mason Crosby are having their own battle up in Green Bay, who were also reportedly in on Vedvik. Ficken and Crosby are both 1/1 on FGA (41/43, respectively), so not much to show yet. Both are perfect on XP as well, so the loser here might not have to wait long for new work if it’s more a coin flip situation than one kicks his was out of town.
- Minnesota made their intentions clear when they sent a 5th round pick to Baltimore for Kaare Vedvik – he’s pretty much assured to be the guy. That leaves veteran Dan Bailey in limbo, a spot he’s familiar with after a surprise cut from his long time job in Dallas ahead of the 2018 campaign. Bailey is also struggling mightily this preseason, a year after going only 21-28 in FGA for the Vikings. Hard pass if I’m Ryan Pace, but who knows with the way this thing has gone so far.
BOX SCORES
There are few things as frustrating as the White Sox getting their shit kicked in by the Minnesota Twins, but also few things more incredible than the White Sox kicking the Twins’ shit in. This week we got to witness both of these things happen, and it was a little strange but given that Lucas Gi0lito shoved in Wednesday’s game for the dominant win, it felt far more satisfying. Any time we can beat the shit out of those lousy idiots up north is a good time. Let’s do this:
– Ivan Nova has slowly grown on me this year, but I feel like it’s more like a disgusting zit and less like a nice beard. Not to say that Nova hasn’t been good, because he has been nothing short of solid in most of his starts for a while now (did I hedge this sentence enough?). In reality, though, he was just so bad early in the season that he is now pitching less bad and this really is what the Sox were expecting and hoping for when they traded for him to be their innings eater rather than adding someone who could, you know, actually be a difference making starter.
– Fresh among a week in which Rick Renteria adopted the company line and told any fans who might criticize his lineup construction and in game decisions to kiss his ass, he made yet another extremely questionable and crticizable (?) decision by putting on a suicide squeeze with a two run lead and an 0-2 count in the seventh inning. Now to be fair, I also would probably rather not watch Yolmer Sanchez swing a bat in an important situation, and it’s not like Ricky has a lot of options at his disposal (which I think was at the heart of his comments about critics), but I am just hoping that all of the bunting will go away next year when there is hopefully some real talent here.
– I do not want to talk much about Game 2, because it was very very bad. But Nelson Cruz is still fucking awesome and I am not looking forward to the Sox having to face him next year as well.
– Last comment about Game 2, but it’s tough to see Reynaldo Lopez get shelled after he had been having a strong second half of the season. Hopefully it was just one bad start and we move on.
– I am not sure what more I can say about Lucas Giolito at this point. The man is simply incredible, and it’s pretty cool to think that a huge part of his early struggles were mostly mental. It definitely seemed that way last year, and hearing about all of his neural pathway training (that inspired this recap title, thank you) was pretty fascinating. It was the kinda thing that makes you want to do the weird computer thing and figure out your own brain. But if you put me at full brain power I’d obviousbly be unstobbale and the whole world would be fucked.
– We should get Yoan Moncada back for this next series against the Rangers. So this team will become slightly more likeable and watchable. Thank you God.
As you can tell with the swing of our content over the past couple weeks, it’s hockey dead season. Training camps are still weeks away, even the prospects tournaments aren’t all that close, and everything off the ice has come to a standstill (except for Bill Guerin’s face slowly melting off his skull, apparently).
Still, there’s some intrigue, and even for Hawks fans. Except that nothing will move before camp starts likely, and maybe right on the eve of the season. And that’s in Winnipeg, and to a lesser extent Denver.
The Jets currently have Kyle Connor and Patrik Laine unsigned as restricted free agents. And though both would seem to be as important to the Jets, the atmosphere around those negotiations (if they’re even taking place) are very differently. Connor seems to want to be locked down for a good long time at a high salary, whereas the Jets and Laine seem to view things differently. Laine is coming off what was a disappointing seasons, though his disappointing season would look great to about 75% of the players in the league.
The funny thing is that even with Laine’s apparent downturn and Connor establishing himself as a top line player (at least for the Jets), their numbers the last two seasons are remarkably similar. Connor has gone 65G-58A-123P the past two seasons, and Laine is at 74G-46A-120P. And Laine has another 36-goal campaign in front of that. It’s funny how differently their contract talks are viewed by both player and team and media, when overall they’ve been the same player. It’s humorous that Connor could end up with $8M or more, while the Jets would love to lock in Laine at $6M or thereabouts and only for a couple years if possible.
Now, if the Jets are looking at such things, and I would heavily doubt they are but if it saves them money I won’t rule it out, Laine’s metrics are much worse than Connor’s last year. Whatever role that plays in talks, I leave to you.
It’s pertinent to the Hawks because Alex DeBrincat is going to find himself in this position a year from now. Top Cat’s numbers are 69G-59A-128P, which looks an awful lot like Connor’s and Laine’s, don’t they? Unless he has an injury or completely falls in the tank or some other indignity befalls him (Weather Girl-itis, let’s call it), it’s pretty easy to picture DeBrincat meeting or exceeding Laine’s three-year total. Which, because it won’t come after a disappointing and somewhat mysterious season, probably nets him more money than Laine is going to get from the Jets.
Mikko Rantanen‘s stalled talks in Denver add to this as well, though he’s got better numbers than Top Cat is probably going to be able to reach. Basically it feels like Rantanen’s number and Laine’s number will give the Hawks and DeBrincat a good bracket to find an answer within. If DeBrincat were to manage an 80-point season he’ll get up around where Rantanen is now points-wise, and should easily pass his 80 goals in three seasons (Top Cat has 69 and fuck you). So a Rantanen number might be closer to what the Hawks have to shell out than a Laine one.
As of now, the Hawks will have $20-$22 million to play with, and we know that they almost never shortchange one of their guys. Other than like Marcus Kruger, who was happy to be that for them. So it would seem $9M or so for DeBrincat is on the way, though maybe they can get him in at around $8. Still, the Hawks will have to sign at least one goalie, and hopefully Dylan Strome proves worth an investment, and that’s basically all the space the Hawks will have.
Basically, Kirby Dach is going to have to be good and in a hurry, because the Hawks are going to have to compete while he’s still cheap if at all possible.
Ok, sorry about that.
It’s been a cantankerous few days on the Southside. I suppose this is where a joke about it always being cantankerous around 35th and Shields would go, and that’s just the Sox Experience, but I’m trying to turn a new leaf here. So we’ll just leave it. A couple days ago you had Rick Hahn making the mistake of thinking Twitter represents all Sox fans and lashing out. And today in the Athletic, Rick Renteria has just about had it with people criticizing his lineup construction.
It’s not hard to see where Renteria’s anger, or insecurity, or frustration boils from. This is his second managerial job, and the first one lasted only one season before he was replaced by Joe Maddon and the Cubs went on to this era. His one season on the Northside was seen merely as a caretaker, someone to smile at Anthony Rizzo and Starlin Castro to aid their development after having their souls broken by Dale Sveum. And it was generally understood that Renteria would be moved along when things mattered again, which happened much faster than anyone anticipated. It felt like Renteria was never judged on what he could do as a manager, and though his one season didn’t mean much, we never got much of an answer.
The thing is though, both Rizzo and Castro had their best seasons in the majors in 2014, Rizzo’s by far. Now maybe you can chalk that up to just natural maturation and growth, but it would be a stretch to say Renteria didn’t have anything to do with it all. Moreover, Jake Arrieta became a star that campaign, Kyle Hendricks, Jorge Soler, and Javy Baez came up late in that season (though the latter certainly had some issues with the whole whiffing-at-the-world thing), and at least some seeds were planted. We can even throw in Hector Rondon having a great season as a Rule-5 pick, and he would be a valuable piece going forward. It feels like all of this couldn’t have happened in spite of or around the manager, smiling politely the whole way.
So to the Sox, and once again Renteria is being viewed as merely a placeholder or glorified mascot, even in his third year of managing. And for the most part, at least to start, he wasn’t given really anything to work with. You don’t want to look at that 2017 team if you’ve eaten in the last hour or are planning to in the next. Basically, it had one pitcher who was then flipped across town halfway through and not much else.
Still, this season, Yoan Moncada, Tim Anderson, and Lucas Giolito have all taken major steps forward–along with at least half of a breakout campaign from James McCann–and it’s easy to pass that off as them just being naturally talented and gaining experience. But this seems to keep happening with Renteria around, so either he’s one of the luckiest guys in the world when it comes to young talent or he at least can provide an environment for it to progress and even flourish. There are more than a few managers who couldn’t even figure that one out.
As the article is based around. Renteria gets a lot of shit for his lineup choices, and as it also points out he’s behind a handful of eight-balls when it comes to it. Earlier in the year it was Anderson batting seventh, though now he’s batted second even more. Some would have liked to have seen Eloy moved up, but he hasn’t really done anything yet to merit that. Overall, I’m of the opinion batting order is a touch overblown, but it’s easy to see where hitting third or fourth would add extra pressure to a rookie still trying to navigate the heavy waters of The Show.
Renteria doesn’t have an OBP-heavy leadoff hitter anywhere, which isn’t his fault. It also would seem that Jose Abreu is entrenched in the third spot as organizational policy, so someone has to go cleanup which we’ve come to find out isn’t really where you want your best hitters. In an ideal world where everyone was healthy and producing, your top three would be some combo of Moncada, Jimenez, and Anderson, but it just hasn’t worked out like that for various reasons. Renteria has black holes essentially in center, right, DH, and second base. That’s a lot to navigate around.
Of course, he can’t escape the criticisms of his in-game managing, and there’s way too much bunting and playing for one-run. And while James Fegan here leans to the “having no choice with the talent on hand” button, which is defensible, to me if the season isn’t really about wins and losses (and it isn’t) then you have to establish what you’re going to do going forward. How you’re going to play. Show the kids who will be here that no, we don’t bunt here or we don’t go for moving the runner over, just bash the shit out of the ball and let’s get two or three at once. But at the same time, does it really matter what he decides to do with Yolmer or Cordell at the plate? How much of a tone does that set going forward for Moncada or Jimenez? I’m guessing not much of one.
As for bullpen management, we know Renteria likes to go hard at times, and get the matchups he wants. There is something to be said of showing everyone that you want to get wins, that their hard work should be rewarded at times with the manager doing just as much to get those rewards. Though beyond Aaron Bummer and Jace Fry (maybe Jimmy Cordero), it’s hard to see out of the pen who is going to matter long term. But getting them in as many big spots as you can isn’t the worst idea in the world.
None of this means I or anyone else would expect Renteria to be around when the Sox are contending again, be that next year or probably more likely 2021. Which might be harsh on Rick for a second time, but that’s reality. But it would seem the main crux of his job–moving the players forward who are going to be the driving force for that contending team–he’s done. And he’s done it for a second time.
Regardless of how great the 2019 Bears defense is supposed to be, the success of the team will ultimately rely on the play of third-year quarterback Mitch Trubisky. This could be a problem if Trubisky’s advanced metrics from the 2018 season are any indication of future performance. To be clear, I am convinced #10 for the Bears will be markedly better this season, however, an advanced look into his stats for the 2018 season do not paint the prettiest picture for an organization that has never truly had an elite passer under center.
So, before you make your Super Bowl reservations, I took a deep dive inside some numbers from last season that go way beyond your layman QB stats:
Deep Ball Accuracy
- Despite ranking #8 in all of the NFL in Deep Ball Attempts, Trubisky ranked #29 in Deep Ball Completion rate at 29.6%. This number shows Matt Nagy’s confidence in his QB and his own system, the problem is that the coaches’ confidence is not being rewarded by the signal caller. Deep balls are most often first read throws, which further makes this statistic problematic. I don’t anticipate the number on attempts changing much this season, so the accuracy on these throws must be better if the Bears are to return to the playoffs and make a deep run.
True Passer Rating
- This rating is essentially a QBR without unpressured throwaways and dropped passes. Trubisky ranked #26 last season in True Passer Rating – ouch. The vast difference in Trubisky’s QBR (72.8) vs. True Passer Rating (84.3) is mostly related to the amount of passes dropped by his receivers, a number in which the Bear pass catching corps was the 5th best in the league. For years, people would blame Jay Cutler’s lack of success on his lack of talented pass catchers – which was a fair point – the same cannot be said for Mitch.
True Completion Percentage
- The Bears QB was ranked 25th league-wide with a True Completion Percentage of 68.5%. Much like the True Passer Rating above, this advanced stat shows you just how good the Bears receivers were last year and just where Trubisky really ranked amongst the entire league.
Accuracy Rating
- This stat grades a QB’s accuracy for each throw on a scale of 1-4. Mitch Trubisky ranked #17 overall in this category with a rating of 2.9. As a reference, a rating above 3.0 is considered highly accurate. As such, this is a very promising number; and one that I think will increase this year based not only on Mitch’s continued improvement, but also the health and improvement of the receiving unit and finally, the addition by subtraction of Jordan Howard.
Using the above mentioned advanced stats, as well as many, many more, two intriguing conclusions have been made:
- Mitch Trubisky’s career currently compares most favorably to…wait for it…Touchdown Teddy Bridgewater.
- Trubisky’s overall production, based on advanced metrics, places him as the equivalent of a late 4th round draft pick.
In sports, you are who your stats say you are, but I cannot believe there is any way I would want Bridgewater as the quarterback of this team instead of Trubisky. In fact, I wouldn’t even want a healthy 2015 version of Bridgewater over the Bears #10 right now.
Moreover, drafting Trubisky in the late 4th round would be the steal of the 2017 draft and probably most other drafts. Keep in mind that this projection is based only on the previous years’ stats and do not provide a career projection.
After digesting numerous advanced metrics and trying to make sense of it all, I am at the same place I was before I started, I’m just more certain now – Mitch Trubisky’s accuracy will be the key to a successful 2019 season for the Chicago Bears.
vs. 
RECORDS: Giants 63-62 Cubs 66-58
GAMETIMES: Tuesday/Wednesday 7:05, Thursday 1:20
TV: NBCSN Tuesday/Wednesday, WGN Thursday
MISSION REFUGEES: McCovey Chronicles
SERIES PREVIEW POSTS
Depth Charts & Pitching Staffs
Now that yet another nightmare road trip is over, the Cubs return to The Confines, where they’ll probably tease us by looking like an actual team worth giving a shit about fo six games. They’ll kick it off with three games against the walking anomaly that is the San Francisco Giants.
The Giants have convinced themselves, or maybe they have to convince themselves because there’s nothing else, that they’re still in this wildcard race. And technically they are, thanks to the grade-school basketball nature of the National League. They sit 3.5 games out of the second spot (the right to get domed by Strasburg or Scherzer on an October night), but have the Brewers, Mets, and Phillies to leap to get there.
And they’re there even though this team doesn’t do anything particularly well. The offense is second-worst in the NL, the rotation has to cling by its nails to maintain a middling status, and the bullpen has to save everything (which it can’t do as well at the moment after shedding some pieces at the deadline). They got here thanks to a ridiculous month of July where just about everything went right that could, except for that part where it carried delusion with it and may have stunted the whole thing for the next couple seasons.
The Giants are 8-9 in August, which is what they are. This is still the same team that stood 22-34 on June 1st, which is probably closer to the truth of what they are than a 19-6 July. It got a few spasms of usefulness out of some true nobodies like Yaz’s descendant, or Stephen Vogt, or now Alex Dickerson, Donovan Solano, or Austin Slater. None of these guys or the regulars are under 26 and none suggest this is something they can carry out for longer than a sneeze on the great timeline. But it was enough for Fairhad Zaidi to pass on the deadline for the most part, or fall asleep during it, or something.
Perhaps it being Bruce Bochy‘s last season Jewish mother-guilted Zaidi into at least making a half-ass attempt to get to a playoff spot, instead of Bochy having to serve out his last two months in the dugout watching an old, stripped, directionless club have its organs harvested. Or maybe that in combination with the weekend-detention nature of the National League led the Giants to believe something truly strange could really happen.
Either way, for this weekend, this is a lineup the Cubs staff should really buzz through, especially at home. There’s literally no pop here, as no one on the Giants have over 20 homers in a year where your neighbor who never wears sleeves and is always testing his boat engine has 25. And the Cubs will catch a break in that Madison Bumgarner will not pitch in the series, so the Cubs get looks at Tyler Beede and Dereck Rodriguez and his misspelled first name. Of course, they didn’t really do much with Beede back in San Francisco last month, though that was when the Giants swallowed a box of horseshoes and were still passing them. Shark will clean this up on Thursday afternoon, and generally the Cubs have had their way with him since he skipped town.
For the Cubs, it’s been something of a roster-palooza. The cadre of returning relievers from the IL has seen now both Albert Almora Jr. and David Bote punted back to Iowa to search for hard contact. It probably means more Tony Kemp than anyone should ever be comfortable with. Also Addison Russell to make everyone uneasy, but at least he can catch the ball on occasion. Cole Hamels will attempt to find the mechanics he left on the IL with his oblique, and there really aren’t too many lineups you’d choose over this Giants one to try and figure shit out against. Darvish and Hendricks just need to keep their recent form rolling.
Again, with the Cardinals and Brewers playing each other, the Cubs can make up ground on someone by treating this Giants team like the floating garbage ship that it really is. They’ll also, at least looking like, dodge Scherzer and Corbin on the weekend, so let’s do some things here.
The Giants held all the keys, or marbles, or cards, whatever game we were playing, at the trade deadline. They had the most sought-after reliever in Will Smith. They had perhaps the most coveted starter in Madison Bumgarner. The Giants could have started planning for a future they’ve put off for years now, as the glow from #EvenYear has finally faded.
And they chose to do nothing.
Oh sure, there was some tinkering. Out went Sam Dyson and Mark Melancon, the latter another panic signing in an attempt to plug holes on the good ship Giant a couple years ago. In came Scooter Gennett to try and fill what had become a black hole at second base, though he seems to have been swallowed up by it as well. Still, no major shift. No groundbreaking on a new era for the orange and black. No shift whatsoever.
Which makes one wonder what the plan here is for GM Farhan Zaidi. These current Giants clearly have an end date, and that’s after the 2021 season. Both Brandon Crawford‘s and Brandon Belt‘s contracts are up then, and Buster Posey will only have one more year that can be bought out for just $3M. Right now the three combined for some $55 million on the payroll, which has been something of an obstacle as together they’ve been worth exactly replacement level this season. They’re not going to be linchpins of this team in their mid-30s in two seasons, that much is clear.
And perhaps the Giants didn’t feel they were going to get those pieces in return for Smith or Bumgarner. Smith is a free agent after the year, and as good as he’s been, two months of a closer plus whatever playoff games you only might get him into just isn’t worth all that much. Bumgarner is having a bounce-back season as he’s hardly walking anyone, but he’s a free agent-to-be with a ton of miles. And only a couple of contenders would have felt they needed another starter. The Phillies? The Braves definitely could but believe in their young rotation as well as being overly miserly, and made their move with Dallas Keuchel. Where the Brewers or Yankees were on this is anyone’s guess, but the Yankees probably figure they’ll be throwing their bullpen for five or six innings in every playoff game anyway. Houston opted for Zack Greinke, objectively the better pitcher.
Still, what are the next two years, then? The Giants prospect pool is filled with kids who are at least two or three seasons away from being anything on The Cove. Perhaps Bumgarner or Smith don’t get you the players to come up and fill in that gap, but they might get you closer. Or maybe the offers were just that bad and Zaidi figured it was better to try and miracle half of a playoff spot (the Giants are only 3.5 games out of the second spot but have three teams to leap).
The Giants aren’t totally out over their skis financially for next year. Yes, the core of those three parades are taking down the aforementioned $55 million or so, and throw Johnny Cueto‘s and Evan Longoria‘s paper on top of that and that’s $91 million for four players who are on the back nine of their careers and one pitcher coming off Tommy John. Not ideal.
Still, the Giants aren’t paying anyone else after that, aside from Jeff Samardzija. And they might be able to move him along, as he’ll only have 2020 left on his deal. None of their arbitration players are due for huge raises. And the Giants weren’t afraid to at least look like they wanted to throw money around last winter, making some kind of attempt at Bryce Harper to finally give them ANYTHING in the outfield, which they haven’t had since Hunter Pence died.
That didn’t work, and this free agent class isn’t worth putting too many eggs in. Gerrit Cole would help things, whether in combination with a returning Bumgarner or as a replacement. But there isn’t much to help the lineup. Anthony Rendon can’t be crowbarred in with Longoria at third, unless they move the latter to left field? And Longoria is still good with the glove. J.D. Martinez can’t play in the NL without being a danger to himself and society as a whole, though you’d be tempted to see if everyone can survive with him in left. Nick Castellanos isn’t a team-turner.
And should the Giants just lose Smith and Bumgarner in free agency, they aren’t going to have anything to peddle next year to try and fill the gap in their old era and new. Samardzija isn’t landing you much other than space on the payroll. Maybe if Cueto proves to be healthy, as he’ll have another year and an option year left on his contract. Perhaps that’s what the Giants are banking on.
But without a splurge, or something really creative, this team is kind of just floating there for the next two, three, or four seasons. Good thing the ballpark is nice.
