The 25th Man

Bruce Bochy and Brian Sabean have both strongly hinted that the Giants will break camp with only 11 pitchers. This would create room for one more position player. I'm going to assume a bench of Steve Holm, Rich Aurillia, Juan Uribe, Eugenio Velez, and Nate Schierholtz is fairly set. If Kevin Frandsen wins the second base job, Emmanuel Burriss will likely start the year in Fresno to get regular playing time. If Burriss is the starter on Opening Day, my guess is Frandsen gets the last roster spot. Here are some other candidates.

John Bowker: Bowker showed a great deal of promise during the first two months of 2008, but the league eventually caught up to him and he was sent back to Triple-A. He possesses a skill the Giants desperately need: power. But it's hard to find a place for him on this team. He's below Travis Ishikawa on the depth chart at first base because of defensive ability, and Nate Schierholtz fills the need for a left-handed hitting outfielder off the bench. Bowker will probably make the team of Schierholtz continues to be bothered by injuries, but that's probably his best chance.

Jesus Guzman: Signed as a minor league free agent out of the A's organization, the corner infielder, who dominated the Venezuelan Winter League, has continued to hit this Spring. Of his nine hits, eight have gone for extra bases (five doubles, one triple, two home runs). Defense is a big concern, and the Giants would likely prefer that he get some work in at Triple-A, where he could also get regular at-bats. But he can certainly hit, and I wouldn't be surprised if he ended up in a platoon at first base at some point this season.

Brian Bocock: If Emmanuel Burriss starts the year in Fresno, the Giants may want a better backup option at shortstop. Right now, that role would probably be filled by Juan Uribe. Bocock's glove is major-league ready. His bat is definitely not, but if his ceiling is no better than a backup infielder, the team may not care whether or not he plays every day.

Andres Torres: This is the guy who I think has the best chance of making the team. The 31-year old journeyman outfielder, who hasn't played in the majors since 2005, could occasionally spell Aaron Rowand in center field, and be a late-inning pinch runner. He doesn't need regular at-bats because of his age and non-prospect status, which may make him the best fit on the Opening Day roster.

Loving The WBC

I watched a decent amount of the World Baseball Classic over the weekend, and I gotta say I'm into it. Last night, I was keeping an eye on the Dominican Republic-Netherlands game, figuring, like most, that the DR would bounce back from its defeat a couple days earlier. When I noticed the game was scoreless in extra innings, I thought "I should probably start watching this." I wasn't disappointed. The DR scored a run in the top of the eleventh, and with the nasty Carlos Marmol coming in to close, I thought it was over. But remarkably, the Dutch rallied for two runs, helped by a couple of errors. Some have described the WBC as having a "playoff atmosphere." I would argue that it's more like March Madness, with the potential for crazy upsets and unsung heroes, and the enthusiasm shown by the various nations' fans.

If there's one problem I still have with the WBC, it's the distance that pitchers are allowed to go. Most starters don't make it through the fourth inning, and the game is determined by a revolving door of relievers. This is often by necessity, as many pitchers have seemed to tire out and become ineffective by the third or fourth. Joe Sheehan has a good idea over at Baseball Prospectus for fixing this, or at least making it less of a problem. He recommends cutting the field to 12 teams, and pushing the tournament back to the end of March, just before the beginning of the regular season. This way starters will have built up a little more stamina over the course of Spring Training. The more closely the WBC resembles actual baseball, the more popular I believe it will be.

What?

This is a Giants blog first and foremost, but occasionally I like to get my rant on about something in the wider baseball world. Today the focus is the San Francisco Chronicle's Bruce Jenkins, who wrote a column describing how Billy Beane has forsaken "Moneyball" and how this has put the A's into contention once again.

As for the A's, it's nice to see one of the most tiresome catch-terms in sports, "Moneyball," get tossed onto the shelf - forever, if we're lucky.

I'm no fan of the A's, but I will defend Billy Beane and his approach until I no longer have to. So I don't have a whole of patience for baseless attacks on sabermetrics, which are common among newspaper columnists, as well as commentators on ESPN and the new MLB Network. Jenkins criticizes how, after the A's success earlier this decade, "people have spent the ensuing years trying to package Beane's strategy in a nice little box - and they've been hopelessly wrong." He then proceeds to...package Beane's strategy in a nice little box. And he's hopelessly wrong.

Jenkins cites the trade for Matt Holliday and the free agent signings of Orlando Cabrera and Nomar Garciaparra as evidence for the change in Oakland. What he doesn't realize is that these moves fit perfectly with Beane's strategy the past several years. Holliday is a rent-a-player. He will either be turned into several prospects at the deadline or a couple of draft picks in the offseason. He will make $9.5 million next year, about a third of what he's actually been worth the past two seasons, according to FanGraphs. Look at the players traded for Holliday. Carlos Gonzalez is a prospect with all the "tools" that scouts look for, but who has never had the numbers to back up that promise (.340 career minor league OBP). Huston Street is an overvalued reliever, who will be replaced by the much cheaper Joey Devine and Russ Springer. Greg Smith was moved to make room for younger and better pitchers like Brett Anderson and Trevor Cahill. Holliday is just the latest in a pattern that includes Johnny Damon, Jermaine Dye, and Ray Durham. If Beane were to sign him to a five-year contract, then we could start talking about a change in strategy.

The signings of Cabrera, Garciaparra, and Springer shouldn't come as any surprise either. Beane has a long history of finding undervalued players, like Scott Hatteberg, Jack Cust, and Frank Thomas. In the current market, every player is undervalued, and it's no shock that an astute GM like Beane would take advantage of this. Beane didn't sign these players because they are "quality veterans with a mural of postseason history," whatever that means. Or if he did, I've got a center fielder in San Francisco I'd like to sell him.

Here's another excerpt:

Beane was frankly disgusted as he watched his lineup perform last year, and who wasn't? Around the infield horn, each man had the lowest batting average at his position. Daric Barton, heralded as the essence of Beane's preoccupation with on-base percentage, consistently produced the most tedious at-bats in either league.

This is the one of the things that entertains me the most about critics of sabermetrics. They criticize the use of stats, but then use them if they back up their own assumptions. Jenkins cites the team's low batting average to make a (valid) point about the team's offense last year, but then mocks Beane for his "preoccupation with on-base percentage."

Did Bruce Jenkins even read Moneyball? Or do any research for this article?

Matt Holliday and Jason Giambi are two guys who go up there hacking, not looking to run a 3-1 count.

Jason Giambi: .408 career OBP, 4.30 pitches/plate appearance in 2008 (4th in MLB)
Matt Holliday: .386 career OBP, 3.88 P/PA in 2008

What many in the media don't understand is that "Moneyball" isn't the exception anymore. Every team has a department of statistical research. The Boston Red Sox were one of the first teams to catch on. They've been the most successful team of the decade.

MLB 2K9 Commericial

I haven't picked up MLB 2K9 yet, but here's a pretty funny commercial featuring cover boy Tim Lincecum, with a cameo by Randy Johnson.

Starters in Midseason Form

Randy Johnson showed no butterflies facing his former team, the Arizona Diamondbacks, for the first time in today's exhibition game. Then again, Johnson doesn't seem to be the butterflies type. Against a lineup featuring most of Arizona's regulars, the Big Unit struck out seven of the twelve hitters he faced in three innings. 29 of his 42 pitches were strikes.

Johnson's performance was the latest in what has been a mostly positive spring so far for Giants' starters. The five pitchers expected to make up the team's opening day rotation have allowed just six runs in 17.1 innings, striking out 21 while allowing just four walks and one home run. Only Matt Cain (4 ER in 3.2 IP) has struggled, and he has been hurt by poor defense behind him. Tim Lincecum has retired 12 of the 13 hitters he has faced. Jonathan Sanchez struck out four in three innings in his only appearance before leaving to join Puerto Rico for the World Baseball Classic. Barry Zito struck out two and did not allow a hit over two innings in his first outing.

Yes, Spring Training numbers don't mean anything, and pitchers are usually ahead of the hitters this time of year. But at the very least, it's reassuring that we haven't seen any early meltdowns, such as we saw last year with Zito and Noah Lowry.

Notes
- The Giants beat the Diamondbacks 7-6. The offense rallied from a 5-0 deficit behind home runs from Eugenio Velez and Pablo Sandoval. After Johnson departed, almost all of the damage was done against non-roster invitee Ramon Ortiz, who had his second ugly outing, allowing five runs on seven hits in two innings. Justin Miller, Brandon Medders, and Osiris Matos each threw a scoreless inning before Luis Perdomo allowed a run in the ninth.
- Reliever Sergio Romo, who was roughed up in his only appearance this spring, was shut down for a week to 10 days with a sprained right elbow.