Zito v. Eovaldi

After hyping the rivalry in the last post, I may as well talk about the games themselves. Admittedly, this is much easier to do when the Giants win. Let's face it. We didn't know what Barry Zito was going to bring to this game. Down in Los Angeles, on May 7th, in six innings he gave up 3 runs on 8 hits and four walks, striking out 3. 

Maybe you'll want to stop here and look at the box score for a moment. It will all come back to you--the game with late inning errors by Conor Gillaspie,  Steve Edlefsen, and Buster Posey. By the end of it all, the Dodgers had blown it open (with a handful of bunts!), winning 9-1. You might  also recall that Travis Blackley and Brett Pill also made appearances in this game, and Blanco was still a bench player back then. Things can change quickly, can't they?

Tonight, the Giants turned the deficit around and won 8-0. That's more like the answer to the trivia question than it is a proposition concerning the iron law of baseball necessity, since I wouldn't want the Dodgers to turn around Ryan Vogelsong's 2-1 victory over Clayton Kershaw in their rematch tomorrow. Not at all. Zito struggled a bit with command, but in seven innings, he gave up only three hits (with two coming in the seventh), three walks, and struck out four.

What's more important after a disappointing road trip is that the Giants jumped out front early on offense. Gregor Blanco, Melky Cabrera, Angel Pagan, and Pablo Sandoval all had multi-hit games, snapping out of their more-or-less slumps at the same time. Joining them in the parade was Hector Sanchez, who went 2-for-4 with two RBIs. Despite the odd fact that Sanchez has a higher batting average than on base percentage, we should recognize that he continues to be one hell of an overachieving backup catcher. 

Revel in those eight runs and thirteen hits while you can. Tomorrow is Kershaw.

The Case for Hector Sanchez

The good news is that Buster Posey is healthy. Yesterday, we all saw a preview of how Posey will not be caught up in dangerous plays at the plate. Today, he went 2 for 3 with a double with a pair of RBIs. But we all know that he won't be playing, at the very most, more than 120 games behind the plate. One hundred games, give or take a few, might be more realistic, given that nobody quite knows how his ankle will react to a relatively full-time schedule.

This scenario opens up around 60 games for the backup(s). If Hector Sanchez is to open the season in Fresno, I think (for whatever that is worth) that Chris Stewart is a better choice than Eli Whiteside. However, like anybody else who's been paying attention to the fake games, I now doubt the premise that Sanchez should start the season in AAA. 

That doubt began when it became more than likely that Freddy Sanchez will start the season on the DL. Now, it's not exactly clear why decisions about Freddy have anything to do with Hector, but during the off-season the management promised that the offense couldn't get any worse than 2011, since Posey and F. Sanchez would be back in 2012. With Freddy's return in doubt, the Giants might not be able to afford to field a backup catcher who, like Whiteside or Stewart, hits in the low .200s. Sixty games could mean 180-200 at bats, which would be a lot of outs with not much power in return (not to mention the whole battle of first base taking at bats from an important prospect).

Which is why Hector Sanchez is starting to seem like a good alternative for backup catcher. He's not going to post video game numbers (his .452 AVG and .935 SLG) during the regular season, but I'd like to think that he won't slump into the low 200s. Last season, he hovered around .260 AVG and .320-.330 OBP in AAA and the majors. 

What seems to be keeping him away from the 25 man roster is that magical thing called experience behind the plate. I don't believe in magical intangibles. It's more likely that the Giants aren't ready to part with their current catching depth. Cut both Stewart and Whiteside and something goes wrong, those two are probably playing somewhere else by then. 

Which is why an injured Freddy might have something to do with Hector: with an extra spot on the roster--there's even enough room that the Giants are shopping either Mike Fontenot or Ryan Theriot--maybe the Giants will start the season with three catchers. Even Bruce Bochy's warming to the idea:

“You’d have to say he’s in the mix, particularly with how he’s playing,” Bochy said. “Of course, you come up with the idea of, `Is he better off playing every day or playing a couple times a week and coming off the bench?’ These are the things we’ll discuss this week.” [...]

“He’s a nice player. He had a nice winter ball,” Bochy said. “He’s got the ability from both sides, a good eye, uses the whole field. He really doesn’t have a hole, and he’s a smart hitter. He knows what he wants to do up there. He’s got a great gift there.”

When Bochy started describing Gregor Blanco in these kind of terms, it became clear that he's making the team. Is Hector Sanchez next? And will he have the opportunity to make his case to stay before Freddy returns? 

What Can the Winter Leagues Tell Us?

I spent Friday evening having a few drinks and talking baseball with Tao of Stieb, whose blog is responsible lately for most of the traffic to this site. When the conversation turned toward the fall leagues, I mentioned that I had discussed Hector Sanchez's offseason in Venezuela not so long ago. I had written:

They could rush Sanchez because he projects potential at the plate (with that .381/.458/1.030 line in Venezuela--in 21 at bats). However, Sanchez could use more time behind the plate in Fresno (I know, it does sound like a total bummer when you say Fresno) than he would get in San Francisco.

I feared that a more sabermetrically inclined reader would figure that, despite those bold numbers, I should know that it's a small enough sample to be virtually meaningless. Now, I did say projects potential as a signal that I knew better than to draw too much of a lesson from those 21 ABs. And I won't try to draw a lesson from his current sixty ABs and the .400/.446/.600 AVG/OBP/SLG line, especially because this doesn't speak to his needing regular work behind the plate (on a different note about the previous post: I admit that I can't figure out why I thought he might be used as a trade chip...but that was the pre-Melky era).

And yet I think in the case of Brandon Crawford that the Arizona Fall League can tell us something about the Giants' 2012 roster. We can safely put aside the .304/.329/.456 line (in 79 AB), because Crawford is 30 spots behind Jedd Gyorko's league leading .437/.500/.704 (71 AB). We can assume, with those numbers, that the hitting is outclassing the pitching in the AFL. Instead, we should look at any numbers that point toward aspects of Crawford's performance that require more work--or, more succinctly, weaknesses at the plate. Or, more specifically, trouble with left-handed pitching.

v. RHP: .356/.387/.542 (59 AB) 

v. LHP: .150/.150/.200 (20 AB)  

Again, it's a small sample, but the difference throws his 2011 numbers in a new light: against righties he hit .217/.301/.307, and against lefties .133/.212/.233. Which leads me to believe that we can expect the shortstop position to be a Crawford/veteran platoon in 2012. Then the question is: who? I doubt they'll be sewing "Reyes" on a Giants uniform any time soon, but there was talk of Willie Bloomquist (who ended up sticking with the Diamondbacks), speculation about Jimmy Rollins, and then Andrew Baggarly's twittering: "Giants are looking for a SS as a fallback to Brandon Crawford. I can tell you Clint Barmes has some big fans on the Giants coaching staff." I want to say something about Miguel Tejada or Orlando Cabrera, but I just can't do it. And I can't quite bring myself to end it on that 'eighth spot in the lineup' note...

So Tao mentioned that he sometimes wished they would broadcast the Arizona Fall League games, for those of us coming down from watching the Majors all summer. However, he noted then that we'd be left looking for the next league after that, until spring training, until...what? MLB.com has a year round package? Maybe that's not so bad. But maybe it's too soon to cast the harsh light of the camera's eye on the Jedd Gyorko's and the others who are hashing it out in the minor leagues.