End of the Regular Season

Final National League West Standings
LA	92	71	--	Won sixth straight NL West title.
Colorado	91	72	--	Wild-card game at Wrigley Field today.
Arizona	82	80	9	Lost 19 of 27 games in September.
GIANTS	73	89	18	Lost 21 of 26 games in September.
San Diego	66	96	25	This is getting to be an annual event.

With victories yesterday in the back-to-back playoff games, Milwaukee and the Dodgers now can prepare to host the wild-card winner and the Atlanta Braves, respectively, starting on Wednesday. The Rockies and Cubs will play the loser-goes-home game tonight.

We've rarely seen two players so transform a team as have Christian Yelich and Lorenzo Cain with the Brewers. Some of you may remember that both names were bandied about in the offseason as possible Giant acquisitions-- Yelich in a proposed trade with Miami and Cain as a free agent. Cain's age-- he turned 32 two weeks after Opening Day-- scared some people off: oh, no, not another veteran outfielder on the decline. Meanwhile, the estimated price to pay for a superstar-in-the-making like Yelich scared a lot of others: oh, no, let's not sell the farm. We're left to wonder if  Christian Arroyo, Denard Span, and two minor-leaguers (the price eventually paid for Evan Longoria) would have pried Yelich loose from the Marlins, or perhaps if adding Kyle Crick, another prospect, and some cash (the eventual price paid for Andrew McCutchen) would have made the nut. Hard to dispute that Yelich (7.6 WAR) brought a great deal more value than Cutch and Longo combined (3.9), even if that meant Pablo Sandoval and Alen Hanson starting at third base all year.

Cain signed with Milwaukee for 5 years and $80 million; the Giants took on Longoria for 5 years and $68 million (with Tampa kicking in money as well); the club can buy out Longoria after 2022 for $5 million or take a $13 million club option. Bottom line: if Cain is "too old" at 32, then Longoria, six months older, is certainly too old as well. Is anyone getting the message that, despite all the hype about teams getting younger, age is not the primary factor in player value?

Both Yelich and Cain are MVP candidates, but Yelich, who came as close to the Triple Crown as any National Leaguer in recent memory-- he's first in average, OPS, and slugging, second in runs and RBI, third in homers and OBP, plus he stole 22 bases in 26 attempts-- has our vote.

The Dodgers, who already send Clayton Kershaw, Rich Hill, Alex Wood, and Ross Stripling to the mound on a regular basis, got a one-hitter from rookie Walker Buehler yesterday in a rather important playoff game. We like our young pitchers, too, but where do you find these 21-year-olds who hold Nolan Arenado & Co. to one hit over seven innings? The Dodgers seem to grow them like hothouse tomatoes.  

In case we haven't sufficiently tipped our hand, we see the NLCS coming down to these two teams. In the AL, we're pulling for Bob Melvin's late-inning wonders, the Oakland A's, to upset the Yankees-- but we see the winner of the Cleveland-Houston matchup in the upcoming ALDS as the eventual American League champions.

Roll the Statistical Parade

As we previously indicated, no Giant is among the league leaders in any batting category, and in several no Giant even cracks the top 50. Andrew McCutchen is tied for tenth in caught stealing, which is not exactly what we're looking for; he led the team with 13 steals but being caught 6 times indicates he'd have been better off  staying put. Alen Hanson is tied for 19th with 5 triples; McCutchen and Brandon Crawford are 34th with 28 doubles each. Had Buster Posey managed to qualify, his .359 OBP would have nudged last year's batting champion, Charlie Blackmon, out of 16th place. That's about it.

Among pitchers, Derek Holland is 10th in ERA, 15th in strikeouts, 21st in WHIP, 23rd in innings pitched. Will Smith and Hunter Strickland both have 14 saves and rank 16th; combine 'em into one guy and they'd be tenth. Crawford remains the best defensive shortstop in the league now that Andrelton Simmons is in Anaheim, and Joe Panik is as good a defensive second baseman as anyone.

That's it for local highlights, gang.  Onward...

The NL Cy Young battle has four contenders from this perspective: the inevitable Max Scherzer (a league leading 300 strikeouts and 221 innings, with a 0.91 WHIP, 2.53 ERA, and a 18-6 mark), the brilliant Jacob DeGrom (1.70 ERA, 269 K, only ten homers allowed in 217 innings), Patrick Corbin of Arizona, the league's top lefthander this year, and the dark horse, Aaron Nola of Philadelphia (2.37, 224 K, 0.97). We'll say this: a win for DeGrom would be a great step forward in understanding pitchers' value apart from won-lost record, which is perhaps the most team-dependent major statistic in the game.  And we have to mention the Nationals' brilliant lefty reliever Sean Doolittle in this conversation. He saved 25 out of 26 opportunities with a brilliant 0.60 WHIP and 60 strikeouts versus just 6 walks in 45 innings pitched.  

Apart from Yelich, MVP candidates would include Cain, Nolan Arenado and Trevor Story from the Rockies, and usual suspects like Paul Goldschmidt, Matt Carpenter, Javier Baez, and Freddie Freeman. No one put up a single eye-popping stat in the NL this year. No one reached 40 homers, 200 hits, 50 doubles, or 20 triples, but a lot of guys put up great numbers across the board. Baez, Yelich, and Arenado all scored and drove in more than 100 runs. So did Bryce Harper, who keeps getting mentioned in Giants gossip; he led the league with 130 walks, boosting his .249 average to a .393 OBP to go with his 34 doubles and 34 homers. Yes, he's an outstanding ballplayer by any measure.

Big numbers tend to belong to the American League anyway, don't they? As usual, Mike Trout is off the charts, leading the world in OPS (1.088), though Boston's dynamic duo of young Mookie Betts and veteran free-agent J.D. Martinez are both over 1.000 and right behind Trout. Betts, listed generously at 5-foot-9, ought to team up with last year's MVP Jose (.837) Altuve for a series of confidence-building TV spots aimed at normal-sized kids. Oakland's Khrys Davis led the majors with 48 homers; Martinez and Texas' Joey Gallo also exceeded 40. Trout, who bats second, led everybody with a .460 OBP and stole 24 out of 26 bases, but the Angels didn't hit all that well this year and he scored "only" 101 runs, well behind Betts' 129. Twenty-three-year-old Miguel Andujar teamed up with Giancarlo Stanton to lead the Yankee parade; Andujar slugged .537 with 47 doubles and 27 homers, and all he needs to do is learn to take a walk (25 in 573 AB, which helps explain why he scored 83 runs instead of, say, 103). With Stanton belting 38 homers and driving in and scoring over 100 runs, the Yanks weathered the midseason loss of Aaron Judge (.919 in 112 games) quite well. We can't go on without mentioning a personal favorite, Cleveland's Jose Ramirez, still only 26, who has put up MVP numbers (.939 OPS, 110 runs, 105 RBI, 106 walks, 39 homers) for the third straight year.  

The eternal Corey Kluber and Tampa's fine young lefty, Blake Snell, are the majors' only 20-game winners this year. Kluber walked only 34 in 215 innings; Snell walked 64 in 181 but held hitters to a .178 average. Houston's Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander are 1-2 in strikeouts, won 15 and 16 games respectively, and are first (Verlander) and fourth in WHIP. If they split the Cy Young vote, watch out for Chris Sale (12-4, 2.11, 0.86) who was just short of enough innings to qualify for the ERA title (he'd have finished second to Snell's 1.89). One reason we relish the Indians-Astros series is that between them, the two teams have seven pitchers in the top 13 in WHIP (Trevor Bauer, Carlos Carrasco, and Mike Clevinger join Kluber in Cleveland's all-righty array, while Charlie Morton nicely backs up Verlander and Cole). 

It's not a happy sight as we have to go 'way down the list to find the future Hall of Famer, Albert Pujols, who put up just .245/.289/.411 for LA, with 19 homers. Back in St Louis he walked 80 or more times seven straight years, now he hacks at anything-- 28 walks in 465 AB. He's never hit triple-digits in strikeouts and only had 65 this year, but he'd help the Angels more if he took a few more pitches. Adrian Beltre, who might also find his way into Cooperstown someday, put up similar numbers in Texas. He's 39, Albert's 38.

The best base-stealer in the game is Jonathan Villar, of the miserable Orioles, who stole 35 while only being caught 5 times... Baltimore's 47-115 (.290) finish is the worst since the 2003 Detroit Tigers (43-119) and only five wins ahead of the worst in the modern era, the 1962 expansion New York Mets' 42-120. The Orioles ended up 61 games behind Boston, which is second-worst of all time, half a game worse than the '62 Mets and only half a game better than the Boston Braves of 1935, who were 38-115...  Speaking of the Orioles and ignominious records, Manny Machado, the most sought-after player in the midseason trade market, led everyone by grounding into 26 double plays-- 14 with Baltimore, 12 with LA. Hey, an equal opportunity rally-killer... Just kidding. Manny's great. A .909 OPS and 37 homers? He'll help LA big-time in the postseason... One reason the Padres may not be too thrilled with Eric Hosmer is that he's the most extreme ground-ball hitter in the major leagues. He hit almost three times as many grounders as fly balls or line drives, including 18 double-play balls. One the other end of the spectrum we have a preponderance of sluggers like Trout, Ramirez, Washington's Anthony Rendon, and Matt Carpenter, who put nearly twice as many balls into the air as on the ground-- and who, in 564 at-bats, did not ground into one double play!...  Cincinnati second baseman Scooter Gennett has the best range of any position player (excluding, for obvious reasons, catchers and first basemen)... We hate to rag on players, but the Yankees should seriously consider starting Austin Romine, not Gary Sanchez, at catcher tonight and, if necessary, going forward. Sanchez allowed 18 passed balls in just 76 games behind the plate (Romine 5 in 74). Oakland's Jonathan Lucroy, in 125 games, allowed ten...  Zack Godley, one of two Zacks in the Arizona rotation, led the majors with 17 wild pitches, but the Angels' snakebitten Garret Richards, before his injury, heaved 15 to the backstop-- in just 16 starts... Godley was consistently wild as he finished fourth in the majors in walks. The leader was the Cubs' Tyler Chatwood, who had an all-around awful season... Three major-league hitters exceeded 200 strikeouts this year, with the White Sox' Yoan Moncada setting the pace with 217. Incredibly, the Sox let him lead off in 97 games, 449 at-bats, one-third of which ended in K's. They went 62-100 and Rick Renteria should be fired... Stanton fanned 211 times to go with his 38 homers, Joey Gallo had 207 (and 40 homers)...  And oh goodness, what about Chris Davis? Did he typify Baltimore's season from hell? The man who hit 200 homers in a five-year span from 2012-2016 managed only 16 this year while batting .168 in 470 at-bats and striking out 192 times.

Bringing It All Back Home  

In 162 games, Giants starters put up 87 quality starts. The team won only 53 of those games while losing 34, which we would guess is a lot worse than the major-league average. 

It breaks down like this:  Holland 17, Rodriguez 15, Suarez 15, Bumgarner 14, Stratton 12, Cueto 5, Blach 5, Samardzija 3 (no, really!), Kelly 1. 

Cheap wins: Stratton 4, Holland 3, Bumgarner, Suarez. Team total 9.

Tough losses: Bumgarner 4, Stratton 4, Holland 3, Rodriguez 2, Stratton 2, Kelly. Team total 16.

We get the feeling if we counted team cheap wins and tough losses the numbers would be even more lopsided.

The best start was by Chris Stratton, on September 14 at home, against the playoff-bound Rockies, in the midst of that horrific mid-September free-fall. In fact, it was the game that broke the Giants' all-time franchise record 11-game losing streak.  Complete-game two-hit shutout, two walks, seven strikeouts. Game Score 93.

The worst start was also by Stratton, on August 3 at Arizona: three innings, ten hits including two homers, four walks, six earned runs allowed. Game Score 4.

As a group, the Giants relievers pitched better coming in in the middle of an inning, often with runners already on base (1.04 WHIP, 1.79 ERA), than they did starting off an inning fresh (1.32 WHIP, 3.18 ERA).  Having never done a league-wide study, we have no idea if this is normal or abnormal, though it seems to generally go against the grain of what we think we know about relief pitching. 

Giants middle-inning relievers inherited 232 runners and allowed 71 of them to score, about 30%. Again-- normal or unusual?  Until MLB starts keeping track of this essential stat-- perhaps the single most important stat for relievers-- and ideally as both a count and a percentage, we will have no control group to average against, and we haven't the time to count them individually for each team, for heaven sakes. It was tough enough just doing the Giants, from box scores. 

They opened an inning a total of 444 times, facing 2061 batters and recording 1427 outs. Mid-inning totaled 148 appearances, 348 batters, 266 outs. Strikeout-to-walk ratio and K-per-9 ratio were about the same. 

Counting only those who made the majority of appearances-- Watson, Dyson, Moronta, Smith, Strickland, Melancon, Blach, Johnson, and Black-- we get this:

Watson and Smith were equally outstanding in both roles. Dyson also did well in both, though not to the same degree.  Neither Blach nor Black showed much difference either, though their mid-inning appearances were few and may not be large enough to represent. 

Strickland and Melancon did much better starting off an inning fresh.

Moronta and, surprisingly, Johnson did better coming in and working out of a jam. Moronta especially showed a large differential. Starting off an inning he had a 1.27 WHIP and 2.59 ERA, with 31 walks in 49 apperances. Mid-inning he was lights-out: 0.82 WHIP and 0.42 ERA with only 7 walks in 28 appearances.  Moronta stranded 32 of the 41 runners he inherited. Johnson also did much better in those situations; he was lit up opening innings, allowing 50 runners in 30 appearances. Mid-inning he allowed 8 in 13, though he did allow 7 of 17 runners he inherited to score.

We have no idea if Bruce Bochy, or any manager in the game, makes these distinctions when evaluating his bullpen. We'd all like our relievers to be able to handle any situation with aplomb. But the facts tend to suggest they don't, and long ago we decided it was better to live in the world of "is" than in the world of "should."


A few Giants fell off the radar this year; guys we'd been keeping track of, who had made recent contributions, but who ultimately did not show enough staying power. Chris Heston, Nori Aoki, Eduardo Nunez, and Cory Gearrin are hereby dismissed.

Chris Stratton's ten wins earn him a reprieve for now. Sam Dyson and Mark Melancon are still on the list.

New Giants coming on board, welcome:  Tony Watson, Reyes Moronta, Evan Longoria, Steven Duggar, and Austin Slater.

So long, Bobby Evans. You gave it a shot, and you fell short. We'll see who comes next, and what happens next, on another day.


And finally, happy trails, Hunter Pence. As did Matt Cain, Pence as much as anyone exemplified the spirit of the three-time World Champion San Francisco Giants. When we were great, he was great, and we won't forget that any time soon. His farewell to the fans on the season's last day was generous, funny, and above all, one of  a kind, as is he. Hunter Pence will be a San Francisco Giant forever.