NLDS Preview with Chris Quick
October 5, 2010 at 8:28 pm by Capitol Avenue Club under Atlanta Braves
The National League Division Series starts at 9:37 PM EST on Thursday. Today the team held a workout at Turner Field before they embarked on their journey across the country to face the Giants. Tomorrow they’ll probably hold a short workout in San Francisco, but mostly they’ll be enjoying the much-needed time off. Hopefully with three days of rest, the team will be fit and ready to go Thursday night.
In the mean time, fellow SweetSpotter Chris Quick of the Giants-centric Bay City Ball was kind enough to answer a few questions about the Giants for us Braves fans. His expert insights are much appreciated, and without further ado:
1. The strength of the Giants seems to be their starting pitching. Which starters will the Braves face in the NLDS?
Right now, it appears that the Giants are considering leaving Barry Zito out of the NLDS rotation — and maybe even the NLDS roster. If so, Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, and Jonathan Sanchez should get the first three starts in the series. If Barry Zito isn’t an option — and he probably shouldn’t be — the Giants will either go with Madison Bumgarner in game four or Tim Lincecum on three days rest.
2. Buster Posey’s rookie season has drawn a lot of attention, but Madison Bumgarner’s rookie season has also been quite impressive. Will we see Bumgarner in the NLDS–either as a starter or as a reliever–and if so can you give us a quick scouting report on the 21-year-old lefthander?
Bumgarner’s status is kind of up in the air right now. If the Giants are up, say 2-1, he could very well start game four. If game four is a must win, they might start Linceum on short rest. I like the idea of having Bumgarner in the bullpen but Zito’s crash and burn from August to October (11 GS, 55.2 IP, 38 ER, 6.14 ERA) may very well force the Giants’ hand.
Bumgarner’s scouting report is this: strike-thrower, somewhat deceptive pitching motion (throws across his body), works primarily off of a 88-92 mph fastball and a 82-84 slurvy breaking ball. He’ll also mix in a changeup now and then. He has made some nice strides this year with his offspeed stuff and after his velocity was down in Spring Training, it’s climbed back to acceptable levels.
3. With Andres Torres, Pat Burrell, Cody Ross, Jose Guillen, Aaron Rowand, and Nate Schierholtz in the fold, the Giants’ outfield is difficult to figure out. What outfield alignment do you think the Giants will use? (note: they won’t be facing any left-handed starters in the NLDS)
I expect that we’ll see Burrell in LF, Torres in CF, and most likely, to the disappointment of Giants’ fans, Jose Guillen in RF. Personally, I’d much rather see Cody Ross or Nate Schierholtz in RF. Guillen is a notoriously bad fielder and his batting line with the Giants (.266/.317/.375) isn’t nearly enough to compensate for his diminished range. Cody Ross started slow, but he’s now OPS’ing over .800 with the Giants and his defense in RF is a plus. If the Giants were smart, they would bench Guillen and replace him with Ross.
4. Apart from Brian Wilson, which relief pitchers should the Braves be concerned about facing?
Sergio Romo (2.95 FIP) is a favorite among fans. His goofy frisbee slider is almost unhittable and he throws it nearly 40% of the time. Santiago Casilla has been a great addition this year’s ‘pen. He throws in the upper-90′s and he’s posted a 3.15 FIP this season. Javier Lopez is our lefty specialist and you expect that he’ll match up with Jason Heyward at least a few times in the series.
5. Aubrey Huff: best FA signing of the year?
One of the best, if not the best. Huff’s season in San Francisco has been unbelievable. After his -1.4 win (yes, that’s a negative) season in 2009, Huff was basically the Giants’ “Plan C” after the team failed to sign Adam LaRoche and Nick Johnson. Huff has looked incredible all year long, showcasing power (.216 isolated power) and patience (12.4% walk-rate). It’s all been worth 5.9 wins above replacement for the Giants. He’s a major reason that team has been competitive this year and all for just a salary of $3M.
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Thanks a bunch to Chris for the thoughtful answers, it was a pleasure working with him. Be sure to check out Bay City Ball throughout the postseason and beyond for all your San Francisco Giants analysis needs.
Update: I answered some questions for Bay City Ball as well.
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[...] answered a set of Giants-related questions for Capital Avenue Club, be sure to head on over and check them out. Thanks again, [...]
I don’t know who this ‘Chris Quick’ fellow is, but he sounds brilliant!
the poster above me is actually Chris Quick.
His cover is blown.
@CAC: I guess it wouldn’t be on the same level, but it looks like Martinez is replacing Saito on the 25-man roster. Via AJC, I found that “Saito was told that he would not be on the roster.”
How do the Braves fans feel about the Giants being favored? I know Cox didn’t agree with Vegas…
don’t know who’s been feeding you information but for more than 2 months Bumgarner’s fastball has been 92-94 and in his last two starts he’s begun mixing in a nasty Randy Johnson type slider. Plus the kid has ice water in his veins.
Warren, No.
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/analyzing-madison-bumgarners-pitches/
Also, there is nothing wrong with Bumgarner having an 88-92 mph fastball. He appears to be plenty effective with it, and has other nasty plus pitches to go with it.
I remember Braves fans adamantly trying to argue that Tommy Hanson throws 94-97 (consistently). Tommy throws in the 92-94 range mostly, and there is nothing wrong with it. He’s very effective.
Agreed, Todd.
92-94 is above-average for a right-hander. Even so, fastball velocity isn’t something to be overly concerned with WRT Hanson, his fastball is his 3rd best pitch, behind the two breaking balls.
With regards to the question on the BCB side on Heyward or Posey for ROY, Im glad you picked Heyward. Looking at the basic numbers only, most people will think that Posey deserves it over Heyward. Thats the argument I get when talking to my local Northern CA Giant fan friends. But even with those numbers they always use to tell me Im out of my mind for thinking it should go to Heyward, if you look at his numbers outside of that 21 game hitting streak, they arent very good. Its still a solid season, and I really enjoy watching Posey play, he has a ton of talent. But just splitting up his 21 game hitting streak and the other 3 months he played gives a different story. Here is what I came up with the other day. Posey went 6 for 9 (.667) in his first two games. From May 31 to July 3 he hit .268,
before going on his 21 game hitting streak July 4-28 (.440BA .443BAbip). From July 29 to the end of the season he hit .255. Does 3 weeks of great play attached to 3+ months of mediocre play earn you a ROY award? He already won player of he month for July for his great 3 weeks, I think thats all he deserves for it. Just my argument. Does that make sense to anyone else? Or am I trying to take too much away from him and what he accomplished?
Posey had an incredible season and had he been up the entire season he very well may have won the award, or maybe he would have started poorly and everyone would have remembered that. Offensively, Heyward was better, and over a longer period of time. Assuming even that his thumb hadn’t healed as fast, but the Braves at least didn’t play him while he was hurt, his rate numbers would absolutely destroy Posey. But like with Posey’s torrid start, you have to include all the numbers streaks and slumps.
Posey’s great value and main impetus for a ROY push is because he is a catcher who performed very well offensively. Both of them played very well and there really isn’t a wrong choice. Posey missed basically two months then played a month at 1b while Heyward was horrendous in June.
Also for Todd, despite being like 90-91, Fangraphs actually has Hudson as having the best fastball this season of pitchers over 100IP. Movement and location are also important. AJ Burnett always had good speed but his FB was never that good. You are right, effective over speed is much better.
@11/Mark
Think you are taking to much away from Posey. You can’t remove his hot streak and then compare to Heyward. All players go through some kind of streak. There was a big argument on this blog several posts ago about removing outlier data, you just can’t do it unless there is a reason to think its faulty.
Unless Posey was cheating, all those hits during his hot streak count as real hits. You’re right that he got lucky during that stretch, but all players get lucky. Look at Jorge Sosa ’05.
I’m lazy at looking for stats, but Heyward I’m sure was assisted w/ extra hits at some point by an abnormally inflated BABIP.
I agree with you that Heyward deserves the ROY over Posey, profound difference in OBP (H: .393, P: .357), higher fgWAR (H: 4.9, P: 3.9). I’m sure someone can point out other stats where I’m totally wrong, so this is all IMO obviously.
Regarding the ROY talk, they’re both deserving candidates, but I’d give the edge to Posey because he plays by far the more difficult defensive position and plays it really well. His defense often gets over looked because of the hitting, but threw out 38% of would-be base stealers. It became pretty obvious that once word got out about his arm (former 90 mph pitcher) that very few runners were willing to test it.
He’s played catcher in less than 75 percent of his defensive innings. He’s about 3/4 catcher, 1/4 first baseman.
Still, the point is valid, but that doesn’t close the 180 PA or 36 points of OBP gap for me.
Wish you’d have asked him if he understood why the Giants were being so unanimously picked in this series and if the general consensus in the Bay Area was the same.
That’s the one thing I don’t understand… Yes, the Giants have very good pitching, but ours is no slouch and as poor as our offense can be, theirs has actually been worse. Our ‘pen is better, our bench is better. Their defense is better. We won the season series 4-3 and two of our losses were blown saves won in extra innings by the Giants.
I think the Giants are the clear favorites. The Braves have the better bullpen, but in this series it would be nice to have more than two reliable right-handers (Kimbrel and Moylan) since the Giants have mostly righties (Huff is the only good lefty; Torres is a switch-hitter who hit better left-handed this year but not in his career). So the bullpen isn’t as big an advantage as it could be.
But the Giants SPs are better, no matter how much we try to convince ourselves that Lowe will be September Lowe, a rested Hudson will be pre-September Hudson, and Hanson is going to continue his September low-BABIP ways while getting his K rate back up. The Giants offense is better, but not by that much. It certainly is deeper. I don’t think you can make a credible case that the post-Chipper, post-Prado Braves offense is better.
And I know Panda, Burrell, Huff, and Uribe are no defensive wizards, but Posey looks pretty good and Conrad has made clear recently why his highest and best use is pinch-hitting.
Trying to recover from the mind fuck of an influx of comments I just got–most of which didn’t get approved.
Note: if I see a comment in the queue that contais the string of characters ‘RBI’ it automatically gets deleted. Blog policy.
Both Uribe and Sanchez are really good defensive players. And Torres is pretty great in center. With Posey behind the dish, the Giants are very, very solid defensively up the middle, which is the most important thing. Hopefully Guillen plays over Ross, but even if he does I’d take the Giants’ defense over that of the Braves in a heartbeat.
Then again, I’d take most defenses over the group the Braves regularly run out there.
Uribe is a really good defensive player???
We may get past the Giants, but that’s as far as we go. We don’t have the bats to compete with the Phillies. What big outfield bats are out there that we can sign for next year? Dunn? Can [will] we afford him, and if not, who’s our next option? CAC?
Dunn is not worth the money he’ll get if he has to play the outfield. They need a right-handed bat, anyway. The only thing I really like on the FA market is Pat Burrell, may have to pull off a trade.
Not positive the Braves “have the better bullpen.” they have got to be comparable at the least. The giants had a 50 inning stretch in September of giving up two runs in the pen.
Also, I don’t believe the Giants are clear favorites, nor do I believe that’s the general feeling in the Bay Area. That’s my two cents.
On RoY: Heyward has him beat in OBP hugely, frankly, but has hit for less power and punched out more. The wOBA gap ia only 8 points, .368 Posey and .376 Heyward. He had the hot and lucky August, but also did horrible on balls in play during September. The position gap does a lot to make up for the Heyward hitting advantage. Isn’t this a toss up?
fWAR, Heyward: 4.9, Posey: 3.9.
b-refWAR, Heyward: 4.4, Posey: 3.0.
Not a toss up.
Rate stats they are similar, but they are misleading because Posey didn’t play during April or May. When he did get called up, he spent most of June as a 1b.
Posey basically played three months of catcher, and unless he hit like Carlos Santana that entire time he wouldn’t take it away from Heyward.
Both are good and have played well. If they played like this over a full season and Posey was entirely at catcher, then he’d probably win. But also remember that Heyward spent June trying to hit with one as well. Unlike Posey’s first two months which were nonexistant, that month for Heyward actually makes him look worse than if hadn’t played.
Would not more mediocrity of Posey over those 2 months mean that his numbers would be lower? He got one good month, as everyone is saying, and has hit around .250-.260 the rest of the time. Heyward had a few stretches where he was hitting .330 plus and only has that one month where he played with the thumb injury that seems to drag his stats downwards.
Their WAR’s per game are very comparable. Is it Posey’s fault he spent two months in AAA?
Re: #27 Jon
Let me preface this comment by saying both are worthy of winning the award. I think it comes down to your preference of playing the whole season vs. position relativity.
Are we relegated to using only batting average when discussing Posey’s “mediocre” last two months?
For example, if you look at September/October, Posey hit only .233 which is not great obviously. However, his slash line was .233/.313/.505 for an OPS of .818. Furthermore, his BABIP for that period was .198 which I think we can all agree on is more indicative of luck than his “mediocrity” as is equally as unsustainable as his July BABIP of .424.
For comparison, Heyward hit .275 in Sept/Oct however his slash line was .275/.415/.385 for an OPS of .800. So, it’s not like Heyward blew him away.
While Heyward has an obvious OBP advantage, would you rather a light-hitting RF or a power-hitting C?
Obviously, these time periods are arbitrary and both players are more than deserving of the award but to call Posey’s months besides July mediocre is incredibly misleading. Unlucky might have been a better word.
In conclusion, to promote one there is no need to disparage the other.
Their WAR’s per game are very comparable. Is it Posey’s fault he spent two months in AAA?
No, but that doesn’t mean he should get credit for shit he didn’t do. Look at it as the Giants front office possibly costing Posey the ROY if you want. But we can only credit players for what happened. And Heyward was the more valuable asset, mostly because he played more (but also because he displayed elite patience that Posey didn’t).
There is a new post up.
All the talk about calling his non July months mediocre is beyond ridiculous. I’d say Nick P put it about perfectly. Elite patience? Agreed. But with less power and more strikeouts. He wasn’t more valuable when he played, but does deserve the credit for playing more, certainly. The only gap is in playing time.
I agree. Like I said, the Giants FO might have cost Posey ROY. It’s also possible the extra time in the minors was disproportionately beneficial for Posey, but I doubt it.