The Lincecum Contract

The San Francisco Giants, who have won two of the last three World Series, have been forgotten by most of the media, partially because they had such a poor season and partially because it was such a long time ago. In 2012, to refresh our memories, the US was fighting a war in Afghanistan, Barack Obama was president and Miguel Cabrera was viewed as baseball's best hitter. Many of the things that make the Cardinals a great organization were true of those 2010-2012 Giants as well. They developed a core of great young players like Buster Posey, Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain. They invested wisely in players thought to be washed up such as Aubrey Huff, Ryan Vogelsong and Andres Torres and they had a strong and deep bullpen. The Giants also had a manager who was at his best in the post-season. It is worth remembering that one of the reasons the Giants won in 2012 is because Bruce Bochy ran circles around Cardinal manager Mike Matheny in the NLCS that year.

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Platitudes and Tautologies in Post-Season Baseball →

The advantage of platitudes is that they do not have to be accurate, as they are generally untestable. Asserting the winning team has good chemistry might be true or it might not be. A fight in the locker room, for example, can be attributed to bad chemistry if the team goes on to lose, or just the right thing to motivate the team if they go on to win. The team that wins the World Series will likely have the right mix of veterans and young players because all teams have a mix of these types of players. David Ortiz, Tori Hunter, Brian Wilson, Bartolo Colon, AJ Burnett and Carlos Beltran and several others on post-season rosters are all capable of providing veteran leadership and will likely be credited with doing just that if their team wins.

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It's Getting Tougher to Improve in Mid-Season →

Given the new structures and trends in baseball, player development may be more important than ever, but player development takes time. Between 2007-2011, the Giants had a very productive farm system, but have hit a bit of a downturn. That may change in the future, but is unlikely to change in the immediate future. Teams like the Giants who are looking to improve mid-season may look less to make big trades for name players and more towards adding international players or trying to bring players out of retirement, but as quick fixes these are less reliable and more difficult than simply trading for a player approaching free agency was in the past.

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Is Buster Posey Having the Greatest Season Ever for a Giants Catcher

Posey, only about fifteen months removed from a horrific injury which caused him to miss most of 2011, is hitting .329/.394/.541 for an OPS+ of 167. It is unlikely he can continue that pace, but he will not need to do that to accumulate 1.6 more WAR and break Breshnahan’s record. Posey is likely to record the greatest season ever by a Giants catcher, to some degree because catcher has been a weak position for the Giants throughout most of their history. Posey is, despite that context, still having a great season for a catcher. If he continues at this pace, he will have 6.6 WAR by the end of the season, good enough for a tie for 17th best season for a catcher and eighth best ever for a catcher under 26 years old.

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Spring Training Scenarios

Closely related to these hopes are the what if scenarios that fans of most teams are putting together for 2012. A key component to these scenarios is for fans to highlight all the things that went wrong in 2011 and suggest that if those things go right their team will win a pennant in 2012. These what if scenarios are essential for fans, but most are wrong and do not come to fruition. The reason for this is that too frequently the good luck from the previous season is overlooked. Giants fans, for example, believe, perhaps rightly, that Posey’s injury cost the Giants a playoff spot. While this may be true, it is wrong to extrapolate from that assertion that the Giants suffered from bad fortune in 2011. The team got unexpectedly great years from Pablo Sandoval and Ryan Vogelsong that in terms of impact on the team probably ameliorated much of the loss from the Posey injury.

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Lincoln Mitchell