Nationals' Treasure

Congratulations to the Washington Nationals, World Series champions! During this entertaining World Series and the postseason series, the Nats more than a few times reminded us of our own Giants in their championship years, battling back against adversity, taking merciless advantage of late-inning pitching changes, and winning the World Series on the road.  And congratulations to former Giant Dave Martinez, manager of the world champions. Martinez, by trade an outfielder, stepped in to play first base in 1994 after the Giants realized they'd been unable to replace Will Clark. He wasn't Will, but he was well good enough to help the Giants back into contention before the strike and lockout ruined everything. Now 55, he outmaneuvered one of the best, Houston's A.J. Hinch, when it counted.

It was a Game Seven that should have been remembered for a great pitching performance by Zack Greinke, who over six near-perfect innings finally justified the Astros' Big Midseason Trade. But after Greinke opened the seventh by giving up a leadoff homer to the unsinkable Anthony Rendon and walking the amazing, just-turned-21 Juan Soto, manager Hinch pulled him in favor of ace reliever Will Harris. And we had immediate flashbacks to 2002 Game Six, Dusty Baker, Russ Ortiz, and Felix Rodriguez. Felix had worked all five games when he was summoned back then; Harris had worked four before last night's appearance, though only four innings. In any case, the result last night was not as ugly as it was back then, but it was equally emphatic: Harris gave up a game-changing two-run homer and Washington took the lead they'd never lose. Fittingly, Howie Kendrick, whose grand slam in the tenth inning of NLDS game five knocked the entire baseball universe off its axis and jump-started Washington's amazing post-season run, delivered the blow.

Greinke, both for his achievement and for the might-have beens, overshadowed Max Scherzer's gutsy five innings, over which he stranded ten runners while allowing only two to score,  Patrick Corbin's own trade-justifying three shutout innings, and Daniel Hudson and his perfect ninth. Add series MVP Stephen Strasburg's two wins-- both on the road, in Game Two to set the Astros into desperation mode, and in Game Six to halt Houston's just-regained momentum-- and the wild-card Nats had just enough to overcome the overpowering Gerrit Cole, the disappointing Justin Verlander, Game 4 hero Jose Urquidy, and, finally, Greinke. It was indeed a fight, and the Nationals finished it.

So Washington City gets its first world champion since 1924, and it's about time. This benighted franchise had never won a postseason series of any type, excepting only the abbreviated NL East playoff after the strike-shortened 1981 season, when they were the Montreal Expos and were managed by Dick Williams. Thirteen years later the Expos were 74-40, best in baseball, when the other strike was called, ruining that season. Montreal never recovered. Eleven years later they landed in Washington, at old RFK Stadium, which even the beloved Redskins had abandoned years before.

It was that September, in 2005, that a rookie named Ryan Zimmerman made his MLB debut for the newly-christened Nationals. For years he was the lone star on a bad team. Then he endured the disappointments of 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2017, when his team lost in the first round each time. He was in the dugout in October 2014 when former Giant Matt Williams made that ill-fated pitching change in the ninth inning of NLDS game two-- and was still in the dugout nine innings later when the Giants won that game in the 18th and doomed Washington to another postseason letdown.

Five years later, now 35 and the team's senior member, Ryan Zimmerman celebrated with his teammates in Houston, a world champion at last. As any Giants fan can testify: brother, it was worth the wait.

End of the Regular Season

Final National League West Standings

W L GB LA 106 56 -- Can they finally win a World Series? Arizona 85 77 21 Not bad at all for rebuilding ballclub. GIANTS 77 85 29 Flirted with contention for a month. Colorado 71 91 35 Far from third straight postseason. San Diego 70 92 36 Still haven't won since Boch managed.

That's seven straight National League West championships for those blasted Dodgers, which is now third all-time behind Atlanta (14, 1991-1993 and 1995-2005) and the Yankees (9, 1998-2006). Has any team ever gotten less out of such dominance? We're not trying to tweak the LA fans out there; it's just an odd fact of recent history that two teams (the Bobby Cox Braves and today's Dodgers) were so dominant they could win 21 straight division pennants between them, but with a grand total of one World Series championship-- so far. 

Well, let's get back to the Giants (winners of three World Series in five years despite only two division titles, mind you). For the first time since 2016, the San Francisco Giants played consistently winning baseball for an extended period of time. From June 30 through July 31, the day they decided not to trade Madison Bumgarner, the Giants went 20-6 (.769) with a 7-game winning streak as the centerpiece, climbed from 12 wins below .500 to two wins above it-- and pulled into second place in the division and within three games of the wild-card leaders.  No, it didn't last; both August and September yielded 11-16 records and the final month was devoted to a lot of new faces getting playing time as well as the growing groundswell of appreciation for Bruce Bochy that culminated in Sunday's love-fest.  That red-hot July was fueled by 15 road games (12-3) against only eleven at home (8-3), and as we pointed out earlier in the year, the Giants' home-field disadvantage did as much as anything, at least from a statistical perspective, to keep our boys on the bad side of .500 for a third straight year. 

So they may move the fences in a bit next season, to get the bullpens off the sideline and out of the field of play, but Larry Baer has already said he doesn't want to lose "Triples Alley," so any dimensional adjustments are likely to be modest. And remember that opponents averaged 4.6 runs per game at Oracle Park while the Giants managed a paltry 3.4. There's no guarantee that more homers and more runs for the orange and black will equate to more wins, since the other teams are likely to to receive the same anticipated benefit. There's also no guarantee that this weird home/road split was anything more than a one-year aberration-- generally these Giants, in good times as well as bad, have played better at home over recent years even with the current spacious dimensions.

Besides, the Giants' team ERA, 4.38, was ninth in the league, and all the teams finishing ahead of the Giants are considerably better (excepting Milwaukee and Philadelphia, right behind). For most of the year, the San Francisco starting rotation was Madison Bumgarner, Jeff Samardzija, and God-help-us; according to the "Wins Above Average" stat, only Pittsburgh got less from their starters-- and in case you were wondering, the Giants' minus-4 wins in this department equates precisely to their final record of 77-85, all by itself. The bullpen was outstanding by comparison even after the mid-season trades, finishing second-best in the league behind the Cubs. But the ongoing travails of rookies Beede, Anderson, and Webb, as well as the departed Drew Pomeranz and Derek Holland, and the mystifying Dereck Rodriguez, dragged even the yeoman work turned in by "Bum" and "Shark" far past the point of no return.

When you score only 3.4 runs per game at home and finish next-to-last in runs scored, though, it's hard to blame 77-85 on the pitchers. The Giants were below-average at every single position in the field except third base. The outfield was actually better than the stat shows, because of Mike Yastrzemski; he was switched between left and right so frequently that his statistical impact was diluted at both spots. At third, Evan Longoria had a better year in 2018 than in 2017 (not that that was too hard to do), recovering well on defense especially, and walking more. His numbers are still a long way from what they were in Tampa, and he's grossly overpaid, but he wasn't a weakness this year. Kevin Pillar, despite absolutely refusing to take a walk, led the club in just about everything: at-bats, hits, runs, RBI, doubles, and tied with Yaz for the team lead with 21 homers. "Longo" added 20, and so the San Francisco Giants had three players with 20 or more home runs for the first time since 2006. You can look it up.

The greatest disappointments this season were courtesy of Brandon Belt and the departed Joe Panik. After missing nearly half of the last two seasons with various injuries, a healthy Belt started 156 games, and we said as the season began that a healthy Belt would be the key to this offense. Indeed he was-- .239, .334, .403, well off his career averages, and for much of the season those numbers were a lot worse (he spent about half the year trying to reach .220). Drawing 86 walks and batting at or near the top of the order, he scored 76 runs, which tells us that when he got on base people were there to drive him in. (We'd expect few other .234 hitters scored anywhere near 76 runs.) But he simply didn't get on base often enough to lift the offense out of the miry clay, and he was the guy who needed to do just that. He has two more years on his contract and $34 million due him, and he'll be 32 in April. You can't trade that, and what are the chances he'll get back to, say, .275/.394/.478, as in 2016? We've been Belt defenders for years now; his defense saves runs, and he's been a very good on-base guy in the past. Right now, all he has left is defense. 

With a heavy heart, the Giants released Joe Panik and his .627 OPS over the summer; he did better after landing in Long Island with the Mets. But at the time, journeyman Donovan Solano was outplaying him, and rookie Mauricio Dubon (.754 in 28 games) may turn out to be a trade steal, considering he also enabled us to get rid of Drew Pomeranz. It was only four years ago that Joe Panik was a deserving All-Star, and it was he who made the signature defensive play of the 2014 World Series.  We wish him well playing in his hometown.

Getting back to Belt, and first base, the long-discussed option of moving Buster Posey from the rigors of catching to the relative ease of first base may have lost some of its luster. At the moment, the only skill keeping Buster at the center of this team is his outstanding play behind the plate. JT Realmuto is the unquestioned defensive king of the position right now, but Buster remains one of the best in the business. As a hitter, though... well, .688, with seven homers, 38 RBI, 43 runs,  and a .368 SLG-- can we really lay all this off on the physical toll of catching? He's never had an OPS below .741, not even last year when his hip was so bad he needed off-season surgery.  "Healthy", he played in 114 games, nine more than last year when he could barely walk.  Buster's a Hall of Famer, as we see it; he's the face of the franchise, he will never be traded, and he is still one of the league's best catchers. But he'll be 33 before the season starts, and if he hits like this at first base his numbers will be lower than Belt's. Consider Hall of Fame catcher Bob Boone, who after age 31 had one season above .700 OPS, catching 120-140 games a year for nine years.

Brandon Crawford is two months older than Buster, and while he remains a good shortstop, his OPS was even worse then Posey's. He drove in and scored more runs only because he played more games. This litany will sound familiar-- "Craw" is the greatest shortstop in San Francisco history, he is a popular face of the franchise, he has a no-trade clause, and he still has value in the field. On a team with some serious power-and average guys, he'd be a no-doubt-about-it asset. On a team that needs him to hit with authority-- well, the hard numbers show the Giants were a win below average at his position, and he's the only one there. He has two more years on his contract and $30 million coming due. Head-shaking time: neither Buster Posey nor Brandon Crawford were among the top 12 Giants in WAR. Who saw that coming? Stephen Vogt, as fine a  backup catcher as there is, and Sam Dyson, who left the club in July, outperformed both.

Now for some good news. The Giants' top position player was the miraculous Mr Yastrzemski, who has to be considered the starting left fielder for 2020. Kevin Pillar, who is arbitration eligible, delivered a lot for his relatively modest six million. Our bet is the Giants offer him a deal before the year is out, keeping mind he will be 31 in January but remains in excellent shape and may be the fastest man on a team that needs speed.  And we've been waving the flag for Austin Slater for three years now-- his average fell way off after a hot midseason start, but his walks, power, and defense are good. He's about to turn 27, he's cheap, and we hope he gets a chance to prove he can be more than a fourth outfielder in 2020. It'll likely be his last chance, if he gets it.  If the Giants sign a power-hitting outfielder, well...

The Giants jettisoned some $27 million in payroll, mostly owed to veteran pitchers, with a series of midseason trades. Another twelve million comes off the books, for now, as Madison Bumgarner's contract expires and he enters free agency. We've already noted that in our opinion both "Bum" and the Giants have shown an interest in keeping him here; the Giants by not pulling the trigger on a trade, Bumgarner by specifying only contenders on his no-trade list. At the same time, the 2020 Giants could well be a completely different ballclub with a new manager and Farhan Zaidi in his second year as GM; and other than Posey, Belt, and Crawford, few Giants remain from "Bum's" early years. He may feel that rather than "leaving home," it was "home" that left him with Bruce Bochy's retirement. In any case, the Giants' plans regarding their long-time ace will be a major point of discussion with any new managerial candidates. 

A best-case scenario sees Johnny Cueto returning to something resembling 2016 form next year, and Jeff Samardzija, who at 34 has one year left on his overinflated deal, managing one more season like he had in 2019. That still leaves two or three rotation spots wide open, and we have no idea whether any of the newcomers who tried their hand this year are ever going to become major-league starters. It wasn't that long ago that some were waxing hopeful about the likes of Ty Blach and Chris Stratton-- and Dereck Rodriguez.

Will Smith is a free agent. Will the Giants match the expectedly huge offers he'll get elsewhere? Tony Watson is also a free agent, with a player option for 2020; whether he exercises it probably depends on his health. With Reyes Moronta shut down for most of the upcoming year, that leaves the bullpen wide, wide open. The club will certainly hang on to Trevor Gott, now rehabilitating after surgery, and Sam Coonrod and Jandel Gustave looked pretty good in late, limited duty.


The Giants were 38-16 in one-run games this year, a .704 mark, but 6-17 in blowouts (7 run margin or more). Likewise, in pitchers' duels (a category that's becoming rarer as well as harder to define), they were 23-12. Slugfests were rare for this club, but they did well: 6-3 in nine contests. They were downright exceptional in extra-inning affairs, with a 13-3 mark. Six of those games were decided in the tenth, three in the eleventh, two in the 13th and 15th, and three others went 12, 16, and 18.

With all the five- and even four-inning starts these days, pitchers' W-L records are more and more unreliable for all but a few workhorse types. Bumgarner was 9-9, "Shark" 11-12; we are guessing those numbers don't mean much. Let's look at how the team did in games started by the various starters: 

Bumgarner 19-15, Samardzija, 17-15, Beede 11-11, Pomeranz 7-10, Anderson 9-7, Rodriguez 5-11,
Holland 1-6, Webb 4-4, Cueto 2-2, Menez 2-1, Suarez 0-2, "Opener," 0-1.

"Cheap wins" are becoming almost nonexistent these days; Jeff Samardzija had the only one for the Giants this year; he won on June 21 at Arizona, 11-5, despite a Game Score of 38. That was the day newly-arrived Alex Dickerson had 6 RBI.

Tough losses there were aplenty; 15 of them. "Bum" had six, Samardzija 3, D-Rod and the departed Derek Holland two each. Rookie Logan Webb and Pomeranz also suffered.

Bumgarner beat the Colorado Rockies three times, the only Giant to win that many against one team. He beat the Padres twice, as did Samardzija; "Shark" also beat Vince Velasquez of the Phillies twice in ten days. Rookie Beede, bless his heart, beat LA twice, but he also lost to fellow rookie Alex Young of Arizona twice.

Bumgarner had "issues" with the Dodgers; they beat him three times, the only team to beat him more than once. Drew Pomeranz, in his short stint with the Giants, was the epitome of democracy, losing once to ten different teams (including Baltimore!) '"D-Rod" lost to the Padres and Dodgers twice, and "Shark" lost a couple of tough ones to Washington.

Walker Buehler of the Dodgers and San Diego's Matt Lauer each beat the Giants three times this year.
Pitchers who beat the Giants twice include Hyun-Jin Ryu, German Marquez, Max Fried, Dakota Hudson, and two rookies from Arizona-- Merrill Kelly and Alex Young.

Seven pitchers lost twice to the Giants; Clayton Kershaw tops the list, along with Jon Gray and Chi-Chi Gonzalez of the Rockettes, San Diego's fine young southpaw Joey Lucchesi, Arizona's Taylor Clarke and Zack Godley, and the aforementioned Vince Velasquez.

Someday MLB will start to keep team inherited runners/scored statistics, and when they do, we'll publish them. We ain't going back to counting them every day.


Roll the Statistical Parade

Kevin Pillar tied for 8th in the league in doubles with 37. Brandon Belt is 10th with 83 walks. That's about it for Giants' hitters, though Buster Posey was, unhappily, fourth in the league with 18 ground-ball double play balls.  Had he enough at-bats to qualify, Mike Yastrzemski's .852 OPS and .518 SLG would both be in the league's top 15.

On the other side, the Giants as a team were fourth in the league, turning 143 DPs themselves, and their team DER was fifth in the NL. That's a significant improvement from a year ago. Posey threw out 33% of base stealers, better than most though far from Realmuto's otherworldly 47%.  Longoria showed fine range at third; his 15 errors were high but as much a product of his total chances as anything-- the top defensive third basemen were Nolen Arenado and Arizona's Eduardo Escobar. Crawford's range is still good at short, though he made twice as many errors as did Trevor Story in the same amount of innings. Meanwhile St Louis' young Paul DeJong made only 7 errors and turned 119 double plays. In the outfield, Kevin Pillar was third in range; we'd bet his five errors were on balls few other fielders could reach. Bryce Harper of the Phillies and San Diego's Hunter Renfroe, who used to be with the Phillies, tied for the lead among all outfielders with 13 assists.

Jeff Samardzija was 14th in the league with a 3.52 ERA; he was 10th with a 1.11 WHIP, just ahead of Madison (1.13) Bumgarner. "Shark" was 8th in homers allowed; "Bum" surrendered 30, a career high, exceeded only by Yu Darvish and Miami's Caleb Smith. No Giant was anywhere near the leaders in walks. Bumgarner's 4.7 K/W ratio was fourth-best in the NL, he's 12th in strikeouts, and trails only Stephen Strasburg-- who had the all-around breakout season so long expected, with 18-6, 3.32, 1.04 WHIP and 251 strikeouts-- in innings pitched.  Will Smith tied for third in the league with 34 saves and blew only 4; only Kirby Yates of San Diego did measurably better (41/44).

Christian Yelich remains the best player in the league, though Cody Bellinger will likely win the MVP. Yelich led the NL in OPS, SLG, OBP, and average. He's also the best base stealer: 30 for 32. That's how it's done!  The Mets' Pete Alonso's 53 home runs are a National League rookie record; he backed it up with 103 runs, 120 RBI, and .358 OBP, walking 72 times in 597 ABs. He's only 24! Cincinnati's Eugenio Suarez had his second great season in a row, yet somehow missed the All-Star game despite 49 homers and 103 RBI-- at third base. He'll take a walk, too. A total of 37 National Leaguers hit 30 or more home runs in 2019, though only nine hit over .300. Eighteen struck out more than 150 times; four exceeded 100 walks. We have to get 'way down on the list to find one player who walked more than he struck out: Washington's Asdrubal Cabrera, who in 124 at-bats walked 19 times and fanned only 18. For those of you scoring at home, our old friend Joe Panik, who's done it before, just missed: 37 BB, 43 K.

Strasburg's 18 wins were best in the league; we think he's got the inside track on the Cy Young Award that seems to go annually to teammate Max Scherzer. Steve's got the wins, Max the ERA, both have microscopic WHIP and both are right behind Jacob DeGrom in strikeouts. DeGrom won it a year ago, and with a 0.97 WHIP and 2.43 ERA probably had a better year this year. But, the voters having overlooked the traditional stats to award him a season ago, we see the pendulum swinging back and the top winner getting the prize in 2019. Hyun-Jin Ryu, Walker Buehler, and Clayton Kershaw were a combined 44-14 for LA and all had WHIP between 1.00 and 1.04, though only Buehler exceeded 200 K. Max Fried, 25,  and Mike Soroka, 22, lead the way for Atlanta, while Dakota Hudson and the venerable Adam Wainwright pace the Cardinals; all are among the league leaders. Milwaukee still has the scary Josh Hader and his 16.4 K/IP with 37 saves, but their starters appear to be the least among the NL's top five.

Over in the American League, Mike Trout did not hit .300, but led the league in OPS, SLG, and OBP; he was second in homers with 45, scored and drove in over 100 runs, a big jump over last year, and was second in walks. Mike Trout versus Christian Yelich: whom you gonna call?

Another great player on a team going nowhere is Kansas City's DH Jorge Soler, who burst out after four entirely unmemorable part-time seasons to belt a league-leading 48 homers with 117 RBI, and despite striking out 178 times maintained a OBP of .354 because he walked 73 times.  Another DH is Minnesota's Nelson Cruz, at 39 quietly setting his sights on Cooperstown: .311, .392, .639 with 41 homers, which pushed him over 400 for his career. We remember him striking out to end the 2010 World Series. Unlike Trout and Soler, he's back in the postseason.

Tim Anderson, shortstop for the Chicago White Sox, led the AL in batting at .335 though he's perhaps the most impatient hitter in the game, even more than Kevin Pillar: fifteen walks in 498 at-bats, and that may explain why he scored only 81 runs despite 50 extra-base hits and a .518 SLG. Still, a shortstop who hits .335? Hang on to him... Elderly Edwin Encarnacion hit 34 homers in 109 games for the mega-successful Yankees; Gleyber Torres led the club with 38, while Aaron Judge missed 60 games and finished with 27, less than the eternal Brett Gardiner, who is older then Edwin Encarnacion. The Yanks' go-to guy appears to be D.J. LeMahieu, the only man on the team with more than 100 runs scored and RBI, and that's a real good guy to go to... Houston, best in the business, has the hydra-headed Bregman, Springer, Altuve, and the 1B/DH combo of Ying and Yang, or Yordan and Yuliesco, Gurriel and Alvarez, who combined for 58 homers... One name we were sorry to see missing among the leaders was Cleveland's Jose Ramirez, with ordinary numbers in a disappointing season for the Tribe, who couldn't catch Minnesota and couldn't stop Oakland. Bob Melvin's A's have seven players with 20 or more homers, three with over 30, none of them, yet, a household name.

Why is Houston the best? Well, they have the major leagues' only 20-game winners, the only AL starters with ERA below 3, and the only two pitchers with 300 strikeouts. Those would be Justin Verlander, with 21-6, 2.53, 300 K, 0.80 WHIP, and Gerrit Cole, who's 20-5 with a 2.50 and 0.89 and 326 strikeouts. Will they split the Cy Young vote and let former teammate Charlie Morton (who starts for Tampa in the AL wild-card playoff tonight) slip in and grab it? He's 16-6 with a 3.05. That's real good, but it's not the best. Verlander won the award eight years ago with Detroit; this year we say it goes to Cole.  The Yankees won a ton of games, and their two-fisted combo of Domingo German and lefty James Paxton went 33-10 between them, but pitched only 281 innings combined. Neither qualified for the ERA title. Really, nobody is close to Verlander and Cole this year, although new teammate Zack Greinke may be come playoff time.


News of the Weird 

Welcome to Outlier Central... Oakland's lefty Brett Anderson gets more ground balls than any pitcher in baseball, and the Cardinals' Dakota Hudson is the only one to get more than twice as many ground balls as fly balls... No Giant was anywhere near this list. Work that big outfield, boys... And true enough, our own "Shark" and "Bum" were high on the list of fly-ball pitchers. Verlander's right up there, too. Detroit's Matthew Boyd gets a higher percentage of balls-in-the-air than anyone... Hudson is the wildest pitcher in the game, walking 86 in 147 innings, but still finished 16-7 with a 3.35 despite a 1.41 WHIP... Former Giant Mike Leake, now with Arizona, is his opposite number. Similar WHIP, but he gave up a MLB-worst 227 hits in 197 innings while walking only 27. That left him with 12-11 and 4.29...  Stats say it's hard to hit off Stephen Strasburg. Among those with a low WHIP he issued the most walks, but allowed less than 7 hits per IP. That's terrific-- or so we think until we look at Cole and Verlander...  Wild man! Wild man! Lance Lynn, formerly of St Louis and now with Texas, uncorked 18 wild pitches in 2019, tops in MLB. It didn't bother him much; he had a good year... Need a double-play ball? Call in the White Sox' Ivan Nova. He got 30 of 'em... Need a double-play ball? Work Nova's teammate, Jose Abreu, low and away. He grounded into 24, as did Manny Machado. Both are fine players, of course; they combined for 65 homers and 208 RBI...  Yelich, as we said earlier, is the best base-stealer in the game. Seattle's Mallex Smith stole 46 to lead everyone, but was caught 9 times. That's 84%, still a net positive... Someone tell the Mets' Amed Rosario and the Royals' Whit Merrifield to just stay put, please. Both were caught stealing ten times with only 19 and 20 successes, respectively... Maybe Mallex Smith can give a tutorial to teammate Dylan Moore? He was 11-for-20, which is awful... Boston's Rafael Devers is an exciting young player: .311, 32 homers, 129 runs scored at age 22. Teach him when to steal and when not to (he stole 8 and also was caught 8 times) and he might score more...  Once again, the Cubs' Anthony Rizzo is king of the statues: he was hit by 27 pitches, best in the bigs... Why do we never see any Giants anywhere near this list?... Watch out when Rizzo digs in against division rival Cincinnati's Trevor Bauer, who led the majors with 19 hit batsmen. How many of those were Rizzo, anyway?


Onward

No, we're not going to "get into" the search for a new manager, or the new GM Zaidi says he wants, or the likelihood of Madison Bumgarner returning to San Francisco. Over the next 30 days the baseball postseason, all 43 potential games of it, will unfold.

The first el foldo was that of the Milwaukee Brewers last night, as they took a 3-1 lead into the bottom of the eighth at Nationals Park, only to see Washington erupt for a three-run rally that carries them into the division series against the Dodgers beginning tomorrow night. The "Kid," Juan Soto, not yet 21 years old, got the big hit against Josh Hader in a rally that reminded us of a Giants comeback against Hader earlier this year. It's only one win, and they have won other individual postseason games, but this is the first time the Nationals have advanced in the postseason since 1981, when they were the Montreal Expos.

The hottest team in baseball at season's end, the perennially-overlooked Oakland A's, host the Tampa Bay Rays tonight in the AL game.  Things kick off in earnest tomorrow as the National League tournament begins: Atlanta hosts St Louis followed by the LA-Washngton game. Friday night the American League starts with the Yankees hosting their personal postseason "pets," the Minnesota Twins (New York is 4-0 against them since 2003), while Houston gets the winner of tonight's game.

We admire the Astros; they're our AL pick. We sympathize with the Nationals, and they're our NL pick. Our own Giants overcame 52 years of negativity to win it all in 2010; can Washington finally lose the "loser" label this year? Stay tuned. 

The Luckiest Man

Winding up his gracious farewell speech to the Giants fans, players, executives, and friends who filled Oracle Park yesterday to thank him, Bruce Bochy, ever the baseball man, mindful of the game's tradition, and resolutely modest about himself without conceding any of the glory his team accomplished during his 13 years as manager, echoed the words of Lou Gehrig as he surveyed the scene before him. "Today," Boch quoted, "I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth." Facing the sea of fans whom he had just thanked for their "kindness," the greatest manager in San Francisco history doffed his cap to the crowd in salute, and then stepped away, joining his beautiful wife Kim and riding off into history, serenaded by the voice of Tony Bennett, and the heart he left in San Francisco.

Tim Lincecum was there, cap on backwards, Giants jersey failing to hide a trademark unbuttoned flannel shirt underneath. He walked right up to the man who never stopped believing in him, and they embraced in a warm bearhug as throats all over the place tightened. Brian Sabean, who never stopped believing in Bruce Bochy, stood alongside Larry Baer and the new guy, Farhan Zaidi. Madison Bumgarner, who has nothing in common with Lincecum except that same undefinable presence on the mound, stood somberly on the infield dirt, watching the only man he's ever played for say farewell. A happy crew of Giants from the 2014 World Championship team, perhaps Bochy's crowning achievement, clustered together on the grass nearby-- Ryan Vogelsong, whose storybook career owes so much to Bochy, and Jake Peavy, effusive as always, who can certainly say the same. A familiar bearded presence among the throng revealed Brian Wilson, and Aubrey Huff's beaming face lit up the infield.

All of these guys, and more, were there because Bruce Bochy's genius as a manager has never been focused on strategy and tactics-- though he has those and other in-game skills in spades-- but on the people whom he gathered around himself and who gathered around him. His whole farewell speech was about everybody else-- the fans, the players, the executives, the friends. Before and after Bochy's own address, over and over came the same comment, delivered in many different ways in many voices: he changed me, he believed in me, and he made us all better; for many of us, he made us better than we thought we could be.

In that moment, for those of us whose lives were enriched by Bruce Bochy on and off the baseball field, we all had right to consider ourselves the luckiest men on the face of this earth.

Fare Thee Well

Robert Burns Hunter, who passed away earlier this week at the age of 78, was a throwback and a visionary at the same time. As a lyricist who wrote songs to be sung by someone other than himself, he worked in the great tradition of Lorenz Hart, Sammy Cahn, Oscar Hammerstein, and rock & roll's own Jerry Leiber. But he also delivered his songs, co-written mostly with his best friend Jerry Garcia, specifically for performance by one of the most innovative, unpredictable, and musically challenging bands of the last century, the Grateful Dead. Though he professed himself often astonished by the tunes Garcia and the band chose to frame his words, Hunter had a poet's gift for rhythm, for emphasis, and for timing.  The Dead's songs, which unabashedly celebrated American exceptionalism while also humorously poking holes in its paper facade, were a lot more, well, interesting-- and provocative-- thanks to Hunter's contributions.

He was a prolific writer and poet who produced a lot more than just Grateful Dead tunes; on several occasions he formed his own backup group and took his songs on the road, singing them in his earnest, sometimes strained, everyman voice. We remember a two-man folkie-type show in spring 1979 at the Other End in New York; we also remember a time he rehearsed what he hoped would be a full-blown stage musical, complete with sets and chorus girls.  As the Dead's cult-like popularity became something of an albatross, the publicity-shy Hunter may have been hoping to extricate himself from its burdens by branching out into other forms. But over time, his obvious gifts led him to work with just about everybody; to cite just one example, Bob Dylan's wonderful "Together Through Life" (2009) is almost entirely co-written with Hunter.

Geoffrey Himes at Paste magazine has written a fine and fitting tribute to the man; it can be found here.  The article is worth reading if only for the hilarious anecdote on how the key line in the Dead's signature tune, "Uncle John's Band," came to be.

Robert Hunter's best-remembered lyrics came during that amazingly fertile period from 1970-1977 when he and Garcia (and occasionally Bob Weir) wrote the Dead's most beloved songs. There are so many, it would be hopeless to list them. But one thing both he and Garcia noted at the time was that this golden age came about when Hunter learned how to phrase his lyrics to fit the way the band played. Perhaps the ideal blend was the serendipitous composition of "Terrapin Station," certainly among the more complex and challenging of Hunter's pieces, yet one that fit perfectly into Garcia's theme. In that song, Hunter writes, and Jerry sings,

                                             The storyteller makes no choice,

                                             Soon you will not hear his voice--

                                             His job is to shed light, and not to master.

At his best, Robert Burns Hunter did both.

With America under renewed attack from within and without, from those overseas who've never given up in their efforts to destroy her, and from those within who seek to "transform" (that's the latest euphemism for "destroy") her, it seems appropriate on this day of remembrance to remember how it all began, and what it cost, and what it still costs. God bless America.

Yaz Sir, That's My Baby

Without getting too awfully worked up about it, we've been poring through the record book as well as various articles, stories, compendia, and other baseball minutiae, trying to determine if we San Francisco Giants fans, in the middle of a mediocre season of transition, are seeing something not just special, but actually unprecedented, unfolding before our eyes.

Or whether we're just seeing the latest version of a story that's already played itself out too many times.

We speak of Mike Yastrzemski, grandson of Hall of Famer Carl, lately a stalwart outfielder for our Giants and, if the whole thing isn't half a season's worth of mirage, a most unusual player indeed.

Mike Yastrzemski turned 29 years old two weeks ago. He made his major-league debut-- not his Giants debut, mind you, but his MLB debut-- on May 25 of this year, at age 28 years and 275 days.

And in the the three-plus months since, Mike Yastrzemski has shown every indication of being a solid, reliable, everyday starting major-league outfielder. His numbers across the board are good; not All-Star worthy, perhaps, but good: .270/.326/.531, a .857 OPS, which is best on the team among regulars. He's hit 19 homers in 307 at-bats; his 162-game projections show 34 homers, 95 runs, 92 RBI. Come to think of it, those are All-Star numbers, especially on this team. Having missed the first eight weeks of the season, he's fourth on the club in WAR, just behind Evan Longoria among position players and well ahead of the next guy, Kevin Pillar, and that's playing in significantly fewer games than either.

We're not aware of this ever happening before; we mean in, like, ever. When was the last time a 29-year-old career minor league position player with no major-league experience came up to the bigs and established himself like this? For that matter, when was the first time? Is this it?

It has been our contention for some time, backed up by solid evidence, that this doesn't happen. Sure, pitchers can, and do, rediscover themselves after a decade or so of mediocrity and turn it around-- R. A. Dickey, for example, or Hoyt Wilhelm, or the all-time late bloomer, Hall of Famer  Dazzy Vance, a rookie at 31. But hitters? No, it just doesn't happen. By the time you're 27, if not at 26, you are who you are. Potential no longer exists. A 27-year-old minor-league hitter is a finished product-- what you have seen is what you will get. In recent years we watched the trials of Jarrett Parker and Mac Williamson, two guys who put up fine minor-league numbers for years and years, finally getting their shot at the bigs at age 27 or so. And while fans desperate for new faces issued hopeful comments about "giving the kids a chance," there we were, ready to tell them that no, these guys ain't "kids," they're veterans, and second, hitters don't all of a sudden "find it" as they're approaching 30 and magically turn from "AAAA" players into major-league regulars. Oh sure, we see some of them hang on for a year or three as fifth outfielders, pinch hitters, commuters on the AAA shuttle, and so forth, but 150-game regulars? Starters? Never. Seriously. Never.

Until now.  "Young Yaz" (relatively speaking) has shown no indication of cooling off. He's batted all over the lineup and done well. He gets on base enough to be a competent leadoff man, but he could bat third, fifth, or eighth. He doesn't strike out much. After 307 ABs, there are no more small sample sizes, no more well-that-was-the-Padres excuses, no more nothing. He's a major-league regular, he is hitting better at 29 than he has in any season since he was 24, and we have no explanation or precedent for it.

We know players coming out of college increase the age floor for rookies; what scouts and coaches looked for in 18- and 19-year olds three decades ago, they now expect to see at 21 or 22. Twenty-year old rookies were once common; now only the Mike Trouts, the Bryce Harpers, the Vlad Guerrero juniors, the generational talents make it to the bigs at that age. So yes, we see a lot of 25-year-old rookies now. Maybe, in time, we'll see more rookies at 29. But folks, we've never seen one like this before.
 
Looking for clues in his minor-league career, we see Yaz's Peter Principle kicked in every time he reached Baltimore's Bowie, Maryland, AA team in the Eastern League. A fine hitter coming out of Vanderbilt at 23, Yaz would put up good numbers again and again in A and A+ ball, then be promoted to AA Bowie, and his numbers would fall off. This Sisyphean journey continued for five full years. He hit well at Norfolk in AAA ball in 2017, and that could have been the turning point-- but last year his numbers dropped, and then cratered when he landed back at Bowie: .202/.276/.327.  The Orioles-- the 100-game-losing Orioles, mind you-- looked him over one more time, shrugged, and traded him to the Giants for a guy you never heard of. Looking at the numbers, it's hard to blame them.

Reviewing Jarrett Parker's minor-league stats over a similar span of years, he looks like the better player. Parker was always willing to take a walk, he had real power though his strikeout rate was appalling, and even accounting for the hit-happy PCL he grades out as a better minor-league player in 2017 than was Yaz a year ago. Yet Yaz is tearin' it up for the Giants and Parker languishes in the Angels' system. (Well, he was languishing-- he got a September 1 callup and so far has gone 0-for-12.)

What's the chance Yaz will still go the way of Parker, of Mac, of any number of players who looked promising but ultimately reverted to what their minor-league numbers said they were all along? (Chris Shaw, a favorite of those same hopeful fans, is reaching the same threshold now.) There is no way to tell. Yaz can certainly still improve-- we'd like to see him walk more, as he did in the Oriole system, and given the way he's turned his hitting around, showing a little more discipline up there shouldn't be a stretch since he's done it before. Defensively, he's a good fielder with average range, and skilled enough to play both left and right. On the Giants, he even has something of a comp-- Alex Dickerson, another 29-year-old minor-league veteran who started blasting the ball as soon as he arrived, but who has battled recurring injury throughout his career and is currently out of action. To us, that gives Yaz more upside. It's hard to believe at this point that he hasn't earned a job as the starting left fielder going into 2020. The question is, of course, can he keep it? Can he take what he's started here and have a five-to-six year career as a major-league regular?

Well, we don't know, and you don't either, because as near as we can tell this is uncharted territory.
 
On the fine Bleacher Report site, David Cucchiara posted a list of the "ten most legendary late bloomers in baseball history." Of the three position players-- Jose Bautista, Dante Bichette, and Lefty O'Doul-- none are really comparable. Bichette and Bautista hadn't done much before they exploded on their respective scenes at age 29, it's true, but both were legitimate major-leaguers for several years before that-- Bautista got 500 at-bats with the Pirates at age 24. O'Doul was a star in the old PCL, a strong independent minor-league in the 1920s; that he didn't sign a major-league contract until he was 30 doesn't mean he couldn't have played well in the big leagues if he'd wanted to. He certainly did once he arrived.

But if anyone out there finds another 29-year-old true rookie putting up these kinds of numbers as an everyday starting outfielder over three-fourths of a season on a major-league team, we'd like to hear about it, because we haven't found him.

Home, Home on the Road

WHILE it may be particularly apropos to the continuing fortunes of our San Francisco Giants this sunny afternoon, we can't take credit for the above witticism. It's the title of a mid-1970s release by the hippie/cowboy band of some past renown, the New Riders of the Purple Sage. Yes, once upon a time your humble scribe here was given reason to believe he might be in line for an audition with that popular local band, who were looking for a new bass player. The advice given, by a good friend of Mr David Nelson, was to sharpen up by practicing to the songs on that live album, because it was the best representation of the group's then-current material. Well, that brief chance for a shot at the Big Time came and went quietly, but even after we wore out the grooves, the album remained in our collection for a few years, and the title was always worth a chuckle, and occasionally a "How true!" from fellow musicians.

The Giants have managed to stay on the outskirts of the National League wild-card race despite playing 68 of their 130 games on the road. Well, that's a bit misleading. It can be persuasively argued that the Giants have remained in contention because they've played the majority of their games on the road. Those of you who regularly visit this spot know we like numbers almost as much as we like music, and folks, the numbers back up our statement. Do they ever.

On the road, the Giants average a robust 5.4 runs per game, more than half a run better than the league average and only a tiny bit less than what the mega-successful LA Dodgers average overall.  At home, well... it's a smoking crater by comparison. The Giants average a mere 3.4 runs per game at Oracle Park. No other team in the league-- no other team in baseball-- has a two-run-per-game home/road mismatch, in either direction, either in pitching or in hitting. And it's all about the offense. As far as pitching goes, the Giants allow 5 runs per game on the road, 4.6 at home, neither very far from the league averages.   If you weigh those four numbers-- 5.4, 5.0, 4.6, 3.4-- only one stands out like a you-know-what in a you-know-where. Consider that the Big O is only slightly below-average for opposing hitters, who average 4.6 against the league average of 4.8. Other teams aren't especially struggling with the park's allegedly daunting dimensions. Only the local boys are.

Here's another take. If the Giants played all their games on the road, they'd project to about 69-61, which is the Chicago Cubs' record today, good enough for the second wild-card spot at the moment. But if they played all their games at home, being outscored by 1.2 runs per game for 62 games, they project out to 46-84, worse than the Marlins, worse than any team in baseball except Baltimore. 

Now, as the daily standings remind us, the Giants are sitting at .500 even though they've been outscored by almost half a run a game and should be at 60-70. (The reason they project to 60-70 on overall runs scored/allowed, instead of 58-72 as our runs-per-game average would have it, is because as we said before, they've played six more games on the road, which skews the overall projection by about 4% to the good.)  They are 36-32 in those road games, which is right in line with their projected road record. But at home, where the projection has them at 22-40, they're 29-33-- still bad, but not terrible. So the skew between actual wins-losses and projected wins-losses is entirely a factor of how they've played at home. What's caused the Giants to win seven more games than they should in the Not-So-Friendly Confines, despite the most anemic home-field offense in the sport?

The first thing comes to mind is one-run games, and do the Giants win a lot of those! They've played 22 one-run games at home-- and won 17 of them, a .772 mark. (They're 13-8 on the road in one-run games.)  The second thing comes to mind is blowouts.  We define a blowout as a seven-run margin or more; the Giants are 0-5 at home in those. They're not so hot on the road, either, at 5-8, but quite a bit better than winless.  Now, some of you will recall that disastrous series at the O at the end of May, where Arizona took it to the Giants in three straight games by a combined 34-8. Those three games alone account for more than half the Giants' current run deficit of 50.

So when Miller and Kuip and Fleming cheerfully tell us that down the stretch the Giants have 19 games left at home and only have to play 13 on the road, does that provoke us to cheer-- or to cringe? Because ladies and gentlemen, if this team is gonna win, say, 86 games-- which means 21 out of the remaining 32-- they're gonna do it with the bats, not with this two-man starting rotation and the most overworked good bullpen in baseball.  And if they score only 3.4 runs per game in those 19, that means we'd best start taking a look at what John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan have on tap for us, because theirs will be the only San Francisco team playing in October.