Moving Day

I've decided to move this blog to Word Press. You can now find it here.

Linky

That word sounds dirty, doesn't it? I have a shorter break at work today so this will be a little short.

I will be continuing my arbitration predictions but I recently found some recent cases missing from my database so I'm going to try and fix that before continuing. I have a terrible feeling I'll be digging through news reports from MLB.com for a few days.

Jim Callis laid out the first five picks in next summer's draft with our San Francisco Giants holding on at No. 5. He predicts the Giants take first-baseman Justin Smoak out of South Carolina because apparently the team is bereft of position prospects. Who knew?

Not to make a fuss but isn't that the exact same reasoning from last year when Sabean started off by picking two starting pitchers?

The Hardball Times finished off it's greatest World Series games series by grabbing the top-10 game sevens. The Giants lose three of the top-5, not counting 2002.

Finally, the Giants are looking into developing a parking lot near Mays Field into some kind of shopping center. I haven't been to a game in a few years since I'm now 500 miles north so I'm not sure how that would affect everything in the area. But I know that I haven't enjoyed driving out there when I have gone and normally BART it. The article suggests that other parking options would need to be created, but it still seemed intersting enough to pass on.

Arbitration Goodness

Looking at this post over at Biz of Baseball, I wanted to take my hand at predicting arbitration cases.

The one that seemed most interesting to me was Ryan Howard. He has the largest gap between the player and club offer and will get the highest raise of any player regardless how the case is decided.

Howard is asking the Phillies for $10 million and the club is only willing to pay $7. Another thing that interested me was that those figures are almost exactly what Albert Pujols and the Cardinals proposed four years ago.

Pujols lost that case despite hitting more than 40 home runs that year.

The first stumbling block for Howard is that his offer is so much higher than the club's. Since arbitration started more than 30 years ago 116 cases have been decided where the player had an offer more than 45 percent higher than the club. Players have won those cases nine times.

Howard comes in just under that mark at around 43 percent but I think those numbers show just how hard it is for a player to get closer to market value in arbitration. Matt Holiday recently opted for a 2-year, $23 million deal with the Rockies.

Pujols' case is the best comparable. In 2003, the year before his case, Pujols posted an 11.6 WARP and a line of .359/.439/.667. This last year Howard had a 6.4 WARP and hit .268/.392/.584. Pujols was second in the MVP voting and Howard was fifth.

The average player salary has gone up about 15 percent between 2004 and 2007, which would make Pujols' award just over $8 million now and probably more once the 2008 average comes in.

For now it looks as if Howard's best shot is to try and work out a deal with the Phillies before the case is decided.

Approach the bench

Today is arbitration numbers day! Hooray!

Players and clubs exchange figures today for what we can only hope become horribly divisive arbitrations hearings to determine their 2008 salaries. It's helped the Giants out before.

Coming into today the Giants had three players eligible for hearings, but that changed with Brad Hennessey agreed to a $1.6 million, one-year deal.

That leaves Kevin Correa and Vinne Chulk as the two remaining cases. But don't expect them to get all the way to the bench.

The Giants have had only one case in the last 10 years reach a hearing, losing a decision to A.J. Pierzynski in 2004. The team offered $2.25 million, he wanted $3.5 million, and by God he got it.

Since arbitration began in 1973, the Giants have had (as far as I can find, anyway) only six cases reach a hearing but they lost all but two. The lost their first case in 1981 over a $20,000 difference with Johnnie LeMaster. Pierzynski's millions are the most ever awarded, be it a win or a loss.

One intersting thing about the Pierzynski deal was that it is currently the 13th greatest difference ever between a team and a player. The tops is still Albert Pujols' $3.5 million gap in 2004. In 2003 he made $900,000 after hitting .359/.439/.667 for the Cardinals. He wanted $10.5 million, the team offered $7 million and the team won out. Still, the $6.1 million difference between his 2003 and 2004 salaries is the second-greatest difference awared in an arbitration case. The tops is the $6.9 million difference Miguel Cabrera was awarded in a win over the Marlins last year.

No wonder he's a Tiger now.

Link dumps are fun!

• John Sickels: Giants' Top 20 Prospects
  John Sickels at Minor League Ball lays out the preliminary Giants top 20. The top is mostly as expected with Manny Burriss a little lower than I had hoped, as John really is wary of Manny's bat. Henry Sosa is No. 2 overall which surprised me a little bit. A lot times I lose track of players during the season and since he wasn't among Baseball America's top 30 last year I sort of didn't climb him in my mental list despite a good 2007.



• We're really getting bored now

  Wouldn't Johnny Estrada be a more suitable option for a backup catcher than what we have already?

  -- Randy S., Paradise, Calif.

  
  That's a question from Chris Haft's recent mailbag. Are we all getting desperate for action? Even discussing who would be a better backup catcher for the 2008 Giants is so far from useful I can't imagine how Randy S. spends the rest of his days. Arguing with his wife over the color of garbage bags? Agonizing over which copy of Harlan County War to rent at Blockbuster. Sure they're the exact same thing but you can tell from the box which one may have more scratches.
  
  Haft does have some good answers to mostly on point questions but occasionally he'll slip something like "... ideally, the club will address the third-base issue and add a veteran reliever to provide experience and stability before pitchers and catchers report on Feb. 13 ..." in there just to mess with me. He seems to hint at times he gets the whole stathead thing and then something like that will just make me twitch a little bit. We don't really need veteran anything. We need to throw as many young arms at the wall as possible and keep throwing until enough stick.




• Chris Shelton and other players who wont be on the 2008 Giants
  Chris at Bay City Ball rounds up the 15 spring training invitees and continues the discussion over Chris Shleton being DFA'd by the Rangers. Sure Shelton would be an excellent pick up but these players always seem to elude the Giants, even with the glaring need they have. That's why Craig Brazell will be playing in Japan this year.




• Steroids climb the ladder
  I try to stay away from the whole steroid issue - it just doesn't interest me at all. The steroid era is just that, an era in the game where all the players did something that changed the environment. Stop the holy war.But when the commissioner of baseball openly, in a way, discusses sanctions against your team's general manager, well, maybe I'll start to pay attention. Selig only responded when directly asked whether he would consider punishing Brian Sabean and I don't think this will ever go anywhere, but in this environment where everyone is so in need of at least one head at every level to role, well, it's hard to tell.

Pete Happy has a friend

Check out this Ken Rosenthal article on possible landing places for Pedro Feliz. Interested teams - besides the Giants, of course - are the Dodgers, Brewers and Phillies.

Rosenthal doesn't see the Dodgers as fitting and with the signing of Mike Cameron I can't see there being enough space on the BrewCrew for Feliz unless Bill Hall finds a new address.

But after you read and digest it go back to the lede. If it still says Feliz's career OBP is .248, congratulations, you just read an error in a Ken Rosenthal column.

And the lede itself is kind of weird. It suggests that since The Worst Third Baseman in the Major Leagues has averaged 21 home runs the last four years in an environment such as Mays Field, if he only had an OBP 60 points higher than his career average (though in the article it's written as 100 points) he would be getting $10 million a year.

(OK, quick aside. Feliz was not TWTBITML last season. That was Nick Punto, based on RC/27. But I'm sure we can all agree anything that happens in Minnesota doesn't really count, at least when it comes to offense.)

Last year Feliz drew 29 walks in 2007. To get to .348 Feliz would have needed to reach base an extra 34 times based on his PA from 2007. That means replacing 34 strikeouts with walks, hits or being hit by a pitch. If Ken Rosenthal magically extended the season the walk Pedro Feliz to respectability and treasure it would take around 55 straight walks to get him there. That would be about 14 extra games of walking in every plate appearance.

So yeah, Pedro Feliz is close to a $10 million player. All he needs is 14 games a year against a 10-year-old who really just wants to go home and play X-Box instead of the stupid Little League game his parents signed him up for. That is all that separates Happy from his rightful glory.

Doing it right

As a journalist who feels that online is the only way to distribute and digest information I have a deep appreciation for people and organizations that know how to get the word out. Conversely, I have an intense loathing for anyone who can't figure it out.

I have 11 Giants related feeds in my Google reader. That's mainly because I'm still selective about the information I receive directly sent to me. I'm more a person that wants the very best at my door and I'll follow links to the rest when they warrant it.

One of the chosen few is the Chronicle's Giants feed. I also subscribe to Henry Schulman's podcast on iTunes. While the podcast can be nice occasionally while I'm reading something else the feed itself is terrible.

Today I had seven new entries waiting for me. One was Giants related, this Schulman piece on the Pedro Feliz talks which has made the rounds. Two others were on the hall of fame vote and four were about Roger Clemens and steroids.

Those six other articles may have something Giants related. The hall of fame articles could compare Jim Rice to Orlando Cepeda or tell some interesting story of Goose Gossage discussing facial hair with Gaylord Perry, a renown barber from his college days in Akron, Ohio. I don't know. I didn't read them.

San Francisco is in the middle of one of the most technologically advanced areas in the country and it can't even put up a blog on it's hometown team that does more than post a comment starter every few days. What I want, and I'm guessing others like me, is something like what the Mariners have at the Seattle Times.

I know the Chronicle shouldn't be considered the premier source of Giants information for the stats based community, that would most likely be the San Jose Mercury-News. But shouldn't we as fans expect more information from the city's paper?