Sliiider

Againts the Diamondbacks 5/28:

Inning	Batter	Velocity	Result
4	C. Jackson	85	Ball
5	J. Salazar	84	Ball
5	J. Salazar	83	Ball
6	C. Jackson	82	In play, pop-out
8	S. Drew	82	Ball

Not too much to speak of here, since Lincecum threw only 5 sliders. The only point of import to note is that he threw the slider to two lefties, Salazar and Drew, and one rightie, Jackson.

I don’t have the exact percentage, but I’ll take a wild guess that he throws the slider at a lesser clip than 17.9% and 13.6%, the respective rates for his changeup and curveball. Last season, those rates flip-flopped, because Lincecum gradually developed the change-up into one of his most effective pitches. As before, though the slider is this year’s “project pitch,” batters have not yet picked up on it. With the success he’s had so far, the number of sliders thrown should increase by the ending of the season.

Mo' Money Mo' Speights

What the Warriors need address during the offseason:

• rebounding, obviously
  
• backup point guard
• swingman

This year's draft class is weaker than last, especially outside the top 10. Even though the Warriors pick 14th, there is one player that can fill the void--Marreese Speights--who happens to fall right into the no man's land of the draft.



Speights, a legit 6'10 F/C out of Florida, has a developed body coupled with a long wingspan. Although he is still quite raw, which seems to be the theme of the draft, he was a highly productive player in college and has considerable upside. Two aspects of his game that would put him into Nellie's good books are his inside-outside game and his jumper.

How would he help the Warriors?

His wingspan lengthens the already stretchy frontcourt of Biedrins and Wright. The Warriors' big men aren't going to push anyone around anytime soon, so length will be the main focus to match the Lakers' Odom/Gasol/Bynum and frustrate the likes of Boozer and Duncan.

His jumper, as mentioned earlier, stretches the defense and allows Nellie to draw up some gimmick plays. If Wright can hone his jumper, imagine how difficult it would be for opposing teams to defend five players who can all stretch the floor. I realize that's putting conditional on conditional (if Wright actually plays, if Speights actually plays, if Wright and Speights actually play together), but it's nice to think about.

Additional links:
HoopsWorld: Pree explains Speights and the Warriors' other draft needs in a much more eloquent fashion than I do.
Draft Express
YouTube: Grainy and short, but displays Speights' athleticism

Ask the Magic Eight Ball

Mattel is the largest toy company in the world. You probably got a Hot Wheels car with your Happy Meal when you were 6. Nothing, though, not even the original 1959 swimsuit Barbie beats Mattel's Magic Eight Ball.

As we know, this spherical oracle is just a blue polyhedron floating in some liquid and is not meant for life decisions. But, it is pretty useful to determine the All-Star fate of a few chosen Gigantes.



Lessee, in 69.7 innings pitched pitched (including the rain-delay relief appearance), Lincecum has:

7-1, 2.33 ERA, 1.28 WHIP, 76 K:28 BB

What good are numbers without some context?

• Every start he has pitched has been a quality start.
• The Giants are 6-0 when Lincecum starts after a loss.
• If the Giants continue their win rate for this season, they will win 69 games. If Lincecum continues his win rate, he will contribute 23 wins out of the 69.
  
• Currently, he is second only to Reds phenom Edison Volquez in ERA and tied with Volquez in strikeouts in the National League.

Barring an implosion of epic proportions, Lincecum is a lock for the All-Star team. Magic Eight Ball, you got it right.



Lincecum has a 2-to-1 shot at starting the All-Star Game. Him, Volquez, and Brandon Webb are the leading candidates, with Volquez in the lead at this point.



Last season, Molina had the numbers to make the ASG as at least a backup. But nooooo, Tony LaRussa favored Yadier instead. This season, his 10-game rampage with 23 hits, 15 RBIs, and .333 batting average is more than enough to make a case for a selection by Clint Hurdle.



Exactly. Geovany Soto leads the All-Star balloting, and rightfully so, followed by Brian McCann and Yadier. If Giants fans can overload the MLB's ballot counting computer, Clint Hurdle might select Bengie as a backup, though.



He's batting much better than I expected him to this season, given that he's played (or still playing) with an injured rib and has been beaned at least 3 times this season. Rowand has a previous All Star tag and his numbers are special enough for Hurdle to notice. The top 3 vote-getters so far are corner-fielders, so there is a chance that Rowand could make it as center-fielder.



* Thanks to the Magic 8 Ball

Vote or Die!

Lincecum is dealing, Molina is raking, do they deserve to go to the All Star Game?

Yeah.

Will they?

I'll elaborate on that later, but for now, go voice your opinion in the poll.

Self-Assessment

As part of my final grade in English, I'm supposed to write a letter of self-assessment about my body of work as a whole. You know the deal: look over my essays and write about how my flawed logic doesn't address the text and how my paragraphs don't have sufficient transitions. I'm thrilled.



Instead of spending a couple hours doing that, I think I'd have a bit more fun assessing the Giants' young'uns. The Giants have kept their word to initiate a youth movement, even though their definition--calling up players who would benefit from more time in the minors--doesn't equate with that of some fans. Hey, it's a start.

To date, the Giants have called up 8 minor-leaguers, which outstrips last year's total of 3 by May.

Brian Bocock SS: His glove came as good as advertised. The same can't be said for his bat. The Giants brought him up primarily as an interim defender until Omar came back, so one could argue that he wasn't expected to contribute offensively. He showed flashes of good plate discipline, with 12 walks in 77 at-bats, but it was clear that he was overmatched by big-league pitching: 29 strikeouts in 77 at-bats. I don't think the Giants did him any favors by rushing him into the MLB, especially since he struggled mightily in San Jose.

Emmanuel Burriss SS/2B: Simply, he's Bocock with a slightly superior bat and a slightly lesser glove. He is one of the fastest players in the organization, if not the fastest, but the Giants' upper system comprises of quick, slap-happy hitters. He can leg out slow grounders or stretch a single into an extra-base hit; it's only the matter of if he can do so consistently.

Another problem is playing time. With Omar's comeback and Durham's rebound, Burriss has seen his playing time diminish to spot starts and pinch hitting. The kicker: Omar needs off-days to rest his post-op knee, but those come once every 4-5 days. Durham's .283/.363/.375 is a perfect opportunity for Bochy to showcase for the trade deadline in July. Shiny shiny.

Steve Holm C: I'm impressed. Here's a guy who has paid his due in the minors for 7 years and made it to the bigs with a strong performance so far. Holm manages his pitchers well and shuffles through their pitches well, and as Kruk has stated a few times on broadcasts, our pitchers love throwing to him.

Offensively, let's just say that Holm has a knack for the dramatic.
Phillies 3 - 4 Giants
Giants 3 - 2 Rockies

John Bowker 1B: Bowker joined the ranks of Will Clark by hitting his first home run in his debut start as a Giant. The day after, he set his own standard by mashing another home run, becoming the first Giant to hit 2 home runs in his first 2 starts. Needless to say, a feat like that got everyone at China Basin pretty excited. He hit his first wall shortly after, going 3-35, but rebounded with a hot series in Philly.

Bowker has power and very well could be the Giants' first-baseman of the future, but he heats up and cools off rapidly.

Pat Misch SP: Ouch. 0-5 in 25 games. In a few of those games, he pitched well enough to earn a win, but no dice. As for the rest of those games, he gets hit hard. A bit reminiscent of Barry Zito, except with an 89-mph fastball.

Thanks to Josh Kalk, we can see why Misch gets in trouble so often. Other than looking like some sort of blotchy spiral, the graph above shows where his pitches turn into hits, right at the intersection of 10 in. on the x-axis and 35 in. on the z-axis. Belt-high and out over the plate against righties. I believe that Misch can become a decent 5th starter, but he has to get his pitches lower in the strike zone.

Alex Hinshaw RP: Is it too early to call Hinshaw the Tim Lincecum of the bullpen? He is already one of my favorite young players to watch. He hit the mid-90's with his fastball in a recent outing, and as a whole, struck out 8 hitters in only 3 2/3 innings of work. For a better sense of him, check out his numbers in Fresno:

15 1/3 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 4 BB, 21 K

Comical.

Billy Sadler RP
Travis Denker 2B

I haven't seen much of Sadler, even though the Giants called him up a couple weeks earlier than Denker, so I can't say much about him. Looking at his Fresno numbers, though, he seems like the type of pitcher with good stuff but not control. Can anyone enlighten me?

As for Denker, he was the PTBNL in the Mark Sweeney deal. I'm still puzzled how Sabean managed to get a prospect for Sweeney, but I'm not complaining. He tore it up in high-A and AAA (not so much at Dodd, where hitters go to die), but those too small sample sizes to predict how he'll do up here.

Comment-starter: Who do you think will have the most success out of this bunch? Who else do you think will get their cup of coffee this season?

Zito Does Not Make History

As I'm typing this, Zito left the 2/3 of an inning ago with a 7-1 lead and Jose Castillo just hit a home-run, the third in the game for the Giants. That's right 7 runs. The Giants scored more than half of the runs scored this season for Zito in one game.

So Barry, today's your lucky day. You won't be the first Giants pitcher to begin a season 0-fer-9.

Buh-Bye Baron?

From Inside Bay Area:

A source close to Davis said it's now a 50-50 chance that the Warriors' captain, coming off a season in which he averaged 21.8 points, 7.6 assists and 4.7 rebounds, will not remain beyond next season after various contract offers that were so low as to be practically hurtful.

In short, it's no big deal. The whole issue is nothing but expected posturing by Todd Ramasar, Baron's agent, to maximize Baron's leverage.

A couple of notes:

• No team in the league can afford to take on $17.8 million next season, let alone any amount greater than that.
• Mullin's job is to make sure that the Warriors receive good value for signing a player. At some point, talent doesn't justify the amount of money spent.
• Baron played an 82-game season for the first time since 2001-2002. Just because he stayed healthy and played well for the majority of the time, doesn't mean that he will do so again. It's especially doubtful considering he'll turn 30 and the eternally dubious condition of his legs.
• If Baron indeed decides to opt out, the Warriors will have $28 million under the payroll to play with. That's plenty of room to resign both Biedrins and Monta and go after virtually anyone on the free-agent market. Which is 1000 times superior to last season's market. Just look at the list of potential free-agents:

  Josh Childress, Josh Smith, Emeka Okafor, Luol Deng, JR Smith, Elton Brand, Corey Maggette, Shawn Marion, Stromile Swift, Andre Iguodala, Jose Calderon, Jamario Moon, Antawn Jamison, Gilbert Arenas.

• Don't forget about that $10 million TPE from the Richardson trade. It expires on draft day, but the Warriors could still use it to bring in a player without paying.
  

LOL Giants

This is definitely not mine, but how I wish it was.

The Giants make headlines in the Onion for the second time this year.

Tracking the Slider

I'm thinking about making a weekly feature about Lincecum's slider. What say you?

The first installment:

4/29 vs Rockies (known thereafter as the Gary Darling game):


In this game, Lincecum did not throw as many sliders as compared to the number thrown in his first start against the Cardinals. Out the sliders he did throw, 10 of them were to right-handed batters (the lone pitch was to Todd Helton, a lefty). The slider is becoming quite effective because it breaks down and away from righties. It doesn’t break as much as his curveball, but the extra 4 MPH compensates for downward movement. Once Tim completely masters the slider, I expect that he can easily get lefties out with it, since it breaks down and into a left-handed batter.

More information about Tim’s pitches and movement, among other goodies, on his player card provided by Josh Kalk:

Tim Lincecum's Player Card

Also, to celebrate the anniversary of Tim's arrival at the bigs: sharksrog on McCovey Chronicles has started a discussion about the origin of Tim's middle name, LeRoy. For starters, it's not pronounced LEE-roy. It's Luh-ROY. And, his name originates from "Le Roi," French for "The King." Apt, no?


All hail King Timothy (photo from Yahoo! Sports)

Happy Lincecum Anniversary Day!

More to follow, but here's a gem of a quote from Charlie Manuel:

"I like him. To me, he looks like a little clubhouse guy or batboy with long hair. But he's got a fastball. I wouldn't say he's real pretty, either. They call Cole Hamels 'Hollywood.' I don't think they'll call Lincecum 'Hollywood.'"