This is what he gets for disturbing that mummy

So through seven innings Wednesday Greg Maddux and Matt Cain had nearly
identical lines. Maddux had given up one run on a home run with one
walk in 94 pitches. Cain had given up one run on one home run in 95
pitches. The only difference was Cain had six strikeouts to Maddux's four.

One inning, two hits and a walk latter Maddux was out of the game but
it was Cain who was feeling the pain. Maddux was lifted for a reliever
while Cain was left in for the eighth and gave up a double, a single and
a walk before getting pulled, eventually getting tagged with two
additional unearned runs.

At what point does Cain start catching some breaks, because this is just
getting crazy. Pitching into the eighth and giving up only two runs by
the time you leave should be better than just another loss, especially
one that leaves a pitcher 2-9. In nine of his 16 games Cain has allowed
two or fewer earned runs and two of those he got a win. Eschewing the
vagaries of the win stat, those were also the only games the Giants
have won with Cain on the mound.

And it's more than just poor run support. Barry Zito, Cain and Noah
Lowry all rank between 99 and 107 in run support with between 4.05 and
3.71 runs per game. Zito is 6-8 and Lowry is 7-6.

This isn't a new subject. David Pinto brought it up in his Games
of the Day post yesterday. But after another incredibly tough loss
I'm just amazed that it keeps going. I'm not a big math guy but doesn't
that whole law of averages thing kick in eventually?

Just hook it to my veins

It ends on a flair and nobody cares.

Those were Kuiper's words seconds after the Giants outlasted the Yankees 6-5 in 13 innings today.

As painful as this season is and will be, that was fun. That was why we're all fans. Really, as much as I complain and say I'll never watch or pay attention until things change, it's all a lie. I'm hooked. The excitement of holding your breath as you hear the call over the radio, waiting to find out if it fell and Kelsko will make it home, that's really all it takes.

Stupid baseball.

Abuse me

Friday found the Giants losing yet again, this time to the New York Yankees. Yes, Barry Bonds hit yet another home run, but for me that means very little while watching the team play so poorly.

So my thoughts have been drifting off to next season and the years to follow. While there seems to be no immediate help coming to fix the team’s biggest need, offense, the Giant’s young rotation of Matt Cain, Tim Lincecum and Noah Lowry (plus the ever present specter of Barry Zito) seems to point to a at least a semi-above average staff.

But is Bruce Bochy keeping the staff ready for next year? I checked out Baseball Prospectus’ abuse points leader boards to see if we can expect anything terrifying in the future from this core of pitchers. And I wasn’t happy.

First off, I would be much less happy if I was a Red Sox fan. So far Dice-K leads the majors in Stress at 45. In his 2004 article outlining BP’s changes to PAP, Keith Woolner estimated that anyone with over 30 had a 20 percent chance of a major arm injury sometime in their career.

Now the Giants don’t have any major cases such as Dice-K. What they do have is a consistent pattern of pushing their starters to their limit, putting five pitchers (Zito, Cain, Morris, Lowry and Russ Ortiz) into the top 16 of Stress and PAP per start. Only one team -- Cincinnati, With Bronson Arroyo and Aaron Harang – had more than one. Even throwing out Ortiz with only five starts, having 4/5 of a rotation that high in PAP rankings seems like a warning.

One thing I wanted to put out there right now is that the pitchers don’t astronomic Stress numbers. Between Lowry at 14 and Jeff Francis at 31 there’s only a four-point drop. The chart below shows the range of Stress points for the five Giants pitchers in the top 15.

NAME	GS	TOT_NP	AVG_PAP	STRESS
Barry Zito	15	1568	2868.8	27
Matt Morris	14	1416	2183.07	22
Matt Cain	15	1597	2239.33	21
Russ Ortiz	5	481	1852.2	19
Noah Lowry	14	1438	1412.36	14

But like I’ve said, what concerns me is the systematic over-use of pitchers, even if it is only by a small amount. Especially with younger arms such as Cain and Lowry I would hate to see high workloads in a season such as this ruin the team’s rebuilding plan (if such a thing exists).

One other thing I wanted to point out is Bochy’s willingness to send his starters deep into games. BP splits starts up into five categories, with CAT_1 under 100 pitches and Cat_5 starting at 133, with breaks roughly every 10 pitches between. So far there have been no CAT_5 starts this season, but there have been 26 CAT_4 (122-132 pitches) starts, with the total split amongst 18 pitchers. Four of them have been Giants. Only two other teams, the Reds and Mets, have even two.

With six total starts the Giants account for almost a quarter (23 percent) of CAT_4 starts. Barry Zito has been the culprit in three of those starts, not a good sign for the player the team just gave a 347 year contract for $Umpteeneleventee million. What’s even worse, at least from a strategy point of view, is that his three CAT_4 starts haven’t even been that great. The classic example of an OK use of 120 pitches is the player finishing off a complete game. Zito’s starts haven’t lasted longer than 7.1 innings, though he has been effective, giving up only two runs in the three starts. But seriously, 122 pitches in 7.1 innings?

Before I leave this, I wanted to point out that this is only half a season’s worth of data and may be colored by Bochy’s feelings about turning over close games to his bullpen. But even with that, the thing that scares me the most is that of the top 10 players in Stress, Cain is the youngest by almost two years. It will be interesting to see if this changes by the end of the year with the team out of contention, but right now I’m a little concerned.

Summer of my discontent

One of my favorite things about baseball is how much is going on that can't be immediately seen. Who watching a game in person would think that a walk could be one of the keys to a productive offense (well, that and the three-run homer)?

Digging through statistics and trying to find why John Maine had such a great start or what events best predict how a team will score runs in the future is exciting to me. I like trying to understand why certain events have happened and what that means for upcoming games. And that's one of the reasons this season is so painful as a Giants fan.

When the team kept crossing the .500 mark last year I could dig through the stats pages (no game watching in Eugene, Ore.) and read the articles and figure out who was doing better or worse and why, what the team had to improve on to get better and whether that was something I could expect.

This year that is lost. It's pretty simple. The team is bad. Nothing I find at BaseballProspectus is going to change that fact or suggest anything different. Whether it's Zito's HR/FB or Rich Aurila's WARP3, every marker is pointing strongly to suck. Most of it is in the batters box. In the Holy trinity the Giants rank 14th/14th/13th, combining to rank 15th in runs scored.

And that has pretty much cancelled out what has been pretty decent pitching. While it has been depressing watching Zito and Lincecum losing their last two starts while pitching poorly, it's been even more depressing watching Matt Cain lose 2-0 and 1-0.

Today I saw a comparison to the Washington Nationals, which suddenly makes me contemplate 100 losses. Right now the team's .423 winning percentage is on-pace for 68 wins, only six losses away from triple digits so it seems a possibility.

That's the bad news. The good news? Probably that I'm a little cranky after a seven-game losing streak, which I can only assume is making me look at things through ick-colored glasses.

But I'm not ready to think too much about the team starting a fire sale. My main reason is that I've been looking forward to it for too long, and I'm paranoid that if I start believing it will happen it will once again be put off. But I hope it comes and comes this season. I'm ready to give Sabean once last chance to save himself and prove he is really one of the premier GMs in baseball. But I don't expect anything to happen until we get into July.

The Ugly

I haven’t been keeping up on the standings in the NL West as much as I should recently. I’ve been watching and reading about the Giants games, following their steady decline below the .500 mark and losing more and more interest in how far ahead the Dodgers and Padres are. So I was a little surprised to see just how well the Diamondbacks have been playing recently when I was checking up on them with the series starting tonight.

I started looking through their Yahoo page to get the basics: leaders in batting average, ERA, etc. Absent was Randy Johnson, mainly because after missing most of April he doesn’t qualify for the ERA title yet. But over the last month or so he has been one of the best pitchers in baseball.

His first start on April 24 against the Padres was a mini-disaster. The Unit gave up six runs in five IP, including two home runs and four walks. But since then he’s given up five runs only once, striking out at least nine in three straight games.

For all pitchers with at least six starts since April 25 (taking out his Padres breakdown), Johnson is second in K/9 with 11.29, with only Jake Peavy ahead. But what’s remarkable has been his walk numbers. Johnson is also second in that period with .74 BB/9. He’s given up exactly three walks in 36.2 innings in that stretch. So that’s a K/BB of over 15. Frightening. That’s downright Lincecum-esque.

But I’m still out on the Diamondbacks’ chances the rest of the season. Before the season I was ready for them to take off and start challenging the top of the division, but maybe fall a bit short. So far their young hitters haven’t really broken out, leaving Eric Byrnes as one their top producers. Anytime that happens something isn’t going right. But there is so much potential oozing from Arizona you can never say it’s a fluke.

The Void

The Mando Move yesterday is a clear signal that things are not going well in Giant land and the fans aren't the only ones that think so. But Brian Sabean made a good, if obvious point yesterday in his response to the criticism about Mando: It's not all his fault. He's not the reason the team has the second worst run differential in the NL West (thank you Colorado!) and is hoping to climb back to .500.

But after looking solely to Mando for so long, who are we to blame now? Pedro has had his turn and frankly doesn't really interest me. Omar is hitting terribly but is also Omar, Dreamy Fielder of Wonder, and really too nice to have to worry about anything but how awesomely great he is. Same for Rich Aurila, without the DFoW part.

Really, beyond Barry's chase of the Record That Shall Not Be Named, what is there to keep us interested in the Giants besides the deep rooted psychosis our parents passed down to us and/or the curse brought upon us by that terrible night at the lake? The team is filled with mediocre or super-mediocre players in the later-part of their careers desperately trying to be just slightly above average. Beyond the Barry's the only players with a hint of excitement are Lincecum and Cain.

It might be too early to give up on the 2007 Giants, but even though they're only 5.5 out on June 1st, there isn't much to look forward to. The team has the third-worst OBP in the NL (.313), only .001 away from a three-way tie for last. Pedro Feliz is leading the team in extra-base hits. The Linden Experiment is over and all we can hope for is that names like Lowry and Sanzhez aren't stitched on Mariners jerseys in August.

So Lincecum and Cain are going to have to be it. With Mando taking my villain away it's time to focus on the heroes and there isn't anyone else in sight. Until Vilalona, anyway.