Cubs 12, Giants 1: Matt Cain: five walks in four innings. Three relievers: five walks in four innings. Jack Taschner has now given up at least a run in four of his last six outings, and at least one hit in eight of his last nine. He is getting absolutely abused by left-handed hitters in one of the strangest splits you’ll ever see for a relief pitcher. I wonder when we’ll start to see opposing managers send lefties up to pinch-hit against him. Whatever the case, The Special Agent needs to go back to Fresno for debriefing and re-education as soon as Jonathan Sanchez is ready for duty.
Back to Cain: the wildness is frustrating, but we have to remind ourselves he’s only 22. Kudos to Bochy for taking him out two batters into the fifth with 92 pitches (!) already spent. For the rest of the year, there’s no reason to put extra strain on the arms of Cain and Lincecum.
A quick question: I’m looking at the details of Ichiro’s contract extension. I wonder why someone making $17 million a year — or if you prefer, $12 mil because of the deferred money — needs a housing allowance and a car provided to him, as well as four-round trip tickets to Japan, etc.? Why can’t he just ask for more money in the contract? Is it a matter of convenience, i.e., Ichiro can’t be bothered to call — or to have his personal assistant call — the travel agent, realtor, and car dealer? Has it to do with taxes? I’m genuinely puzzled.
* Quote of the Day, from this Baseball Prospectus article about the Brewers’ turnaround:
“A lot of times people would ask why I didn’t bench J.J. Hardy or pinch-hit for him in a tough situation,” [manager Ned] Yost said. “They would ask why I didn’t take Rickie Weeks out for defensive purposes in the late innings when we had a lead. If I had made those moves, perhaps we would have won a game or two more in the last couple of years. That wasn’t what we were looking for. We were taking the long-term view of things, and that was to make this franchise competitive again. To do that, it meant playing the young guys and letting them learn.”
Ha, good topic, I just wrote some stuff about the Brewers rebuild, I tweaked as I missed some updated stuff (don't subscribe to BP so haven't read). People think rebuilds are quick, easy, and/or youth only but they aren't:
OK, lets hit the Brew crew next. They have been losing for 14 straight years now, from 1993-2006. They struggled with staying around .500 for about 8 years before doing what I advocate for a quick rebuild: sink to the bottom. From 2001-2004, they lost 94 games 3 years, 106 one year. That gets you a lot of high draft picks.
Let's go over their draft results, from 1997 as that is the year Sabean took over the Giants, plus I'll throw in Baseball America's top 10 prospects:
1997: No current member of Brewers drafted, nor any good player drafted period (0 out of 50).
1998: Bill Hall, he's a round 6. Everyone else pretty much sucked (1 out of 50).
1999: Ben Sheets, #1, 10th overall (1 out of 49).
2000: Corey Hart, 11th round (1 out of 50).
2001: J.J. Hardy, 2nd round, 56 overall (1 out of 50 and prospects)
2002: Prince Fielder, 1st round, 7th overall; Dana Eveland 16th round, has MLB experience (1 out of 50 plus prospects)
2003: Rickie Weeks, 1st round, 2nd overall; Tony Gwynn, 2nd round, 39th overall, #17 BA but made MLB; (1 out of 50 plus prospects)
2004: Mark Rogers, 1st round, 5th overall, #5 BA; Yovani Gallardo, 2nd round, 46th overall, #1 BA; Lorenzo Cain, DFA 17th round, #6 BA; (1 out of 50 plus prospects)
2005: Ryan Braun, 1st round, 5th overall, #2 BA; Will Inman, 3rd round, 85th overall, #3 BA; Mat Gamel, 4th Round, #10 BA; Steve Hammond, 6th round, #7 BA (1 out of 50 plus prospects)
2006: Jeremy Jeffress, 1st round, 16th overall, #4 BA; Cole Gillespie, 3rd Round, 92nd overall #8 BA (0 out of 50 plus prospects)
Thus, over a 10 year period, the Brewers found 8 players who are currently on their roster. The Giants have 9 players. Clearly, they have much better players on the whole, but 2 of them were Top 5 overall picks (Giants had none), 2 more of them are top 10 picks overall (Giants had 2 during that time) and 2 were from the 2nd Round.
The Brewers were 67% on their Top 5 picks (Rogers still developing so could be 100%), 100% on their 6-10th picks overall, 0% (out of 6) on picks in the 11-19 overall range. They are 4 out of 10 for their first round draft picks, but if you use more comparable picks with the Giants (10th to 30th), they are 1 out of 6 or 17%. The Giants have selected Cain, Lowry, and Lincecum with their 10-30 picks.
So, the winning Brewers of today have been slowly rebuilt via the draft (and trades) over a 10 year period. Thus, by selecting the Brewers as your example of a good rebuild, you are advocating that the Giants suck for 10+ years, get a lot of draft picks high, so that you can be happy with a team rebuilt the right way.
By the way, they overpaid an 32 year old Jeff Suppan to be a starter on their team. Apparently they could not develop enough young starting pitchers to fill their rotation. They are also forced to use mediocrities (this year)like Dave Bush (4.84 ERA), Capuano (5.16 ERA), and Claudio Vargas (4.47 ERA) as starters, plus Sheets is no good to them on the DL. Their pitching is so bad that they were forced to resort to using Elmer Dessens on their staff.
And of course, in rebuilds, you don't sign pitchers who are old and past their primes, you have to use young prospects only, vets are verboten!
Also, by the way, they kept Geoff Jenkins and Tony Graffanino plus re-signed Craig Counsell, guys who, under the rebuild theory, should have been traded away already for prospects, or better, not re-signed in the first place with Counsell. Damian Miller too.
Addendum: so, over 10 years, almost 500 draft picks by the Brewers, they have developed 8 players who are on their roster (nobody has been traded who is on another MLB roster). That is 1.6% success rate, and that is with the great picks they got early in the first round four times.
Drafting is not the holy grail of rebuilding, it can be nasty, slow, frustrating, much like adding rings on a tree. The Brewers didn't add more than one player a year, to their roster, based on results thus far. If they are rebuilding at that rate, they will fill out a roster in 25 years, by which time the first ones will have retired already and they would have had to trade for young prospects to try to keep the talent level going.
Of course, some of the players they have selected in 2004 through 2006 are probably still valid prospects, but obviously that is yet to be seen.
Rebuilding is not the easy turnaround that people think they are, it normally take many years of losses, particularly with out and out stinkers, they are always done with some vets on the roster, some (a lot in some cases, like Atlanta) free agent signings, and the rebuild will have mistakes made.
I think the Tigers are the closest model to how we are progressing, until last year, the only position prospect they had is Brandon Inge and he's very Pedro Feliz like in his stats. They are focused on their pitching, first Bonderman, now Verlander, and Miller appears to be next, and they obviously hope that Porcello, their 2007 1st round pick, will be the 4th starter eventually.
And they have a pitcher's park, unlike our park which has been neutral the past few years but is still viewed as a pitcher's park because of the way it suppresses HR hitting for both right-handers and left-handers.
And they took many many more years of losing than we did to reach their current state, they have basically been struggling since 1989, for 17 years, before winning. The turnaround was shorter, once Dombrowski took over, but still, that's the danger of switching, you don't know what you are getting. Just because someone is a sabermetric-prone GM does not mean that he has the people skills that go into being a GM.
Meanwhile, 3 years of losing into this rebuilding, the Giants have their pitching staff pretty much filled with internally developed pitchers and a few position bench players, Frandsen and Lewis who appear headed for a starting position hopefully next year.