San Francisco Giants Preview Part I

With the Super Bowl now far in the rear view mirror, and the regular season now in full swing (no pun intended), it’s time to turn my attention from the NFL to Major League Baseball. Since most of my posts surround around the 49ers, you can probably guess that my baseball team of choice is the San Francisco Giants. The Orange & Black stumbled last year in their 2012 title defense, finishing with a 76-86 record, good (bad?) enough to tie the Padres for third place in the standings in the NL West. Unlike 2011, when you could point to Buster Posey’s broken leg as the reason behind the precipitous drop, in 2013, the Giants were just bad. Unfortunately, this was the year I was able to take in the most games in person (three), with two being losses.  It was a bad year for the Giants, and they’re hoping that they can improve on their record in 2014. There are questions to be had at every position, even with their best player, Buster Posey. I’ll address what I see as the biggest question marks for the Giants in 2014, question by question.

How Much Catcher Does Buster Posey Play?
Last season, the Giants locked up the face of their franchise until 2021 (with a club option for 2022) last year, giving Posey a massive 9 year, $167 million contract. The moment the ink started to dry on the contract, a big career-spanning question popped up: how long can Posey be behind the dish?  The Giants have already started to think about this problem, with Posey starting at first base in 18% of his 427 career starts. They’re clearly looking to avoid a Joe Mauer situation here with Posey.

Joe Mauer was signed by the Twins to a massive deal to be the catcher and the face of their franchise, but has had serious durability issues.  His contract closely mirrors Posey’s; 8 years, $184 million, and his position trajectory is one that Posey can expect, as well. Due to an inability to stay on the field (he’s been over 140 games played twice in his career) and Justin Morneau moving on, Mauer has been moved to first base this year. This is a situation that the Giants would like to kick down the road as long as possible, hence, them putting him at 1B at nearly a fifth of his games. This will alleviate the wear and tear (and stress) put on Buster’s body and will allow him to stay behind the plate, where his bat becomes even more valuable.

Doing this very thing hasn’t been a problem in the past, as the first base position has been one of weakness for the Giants during Posey’s reign behind the plate. Last season, however, saw the rise of the Giants’ best hitting first baseman in years, Brandon Belt. The next question that the Giants need answered is…

What is to be Expected of Brandon Belt?
Last year, Brandon Belt had a mini-breakout, upping his Slugging from .421 to .481 while maintaining his on-base-percentage. This translated into ten more homeruns in about 100 more plate appearances. In fact, this power breakout almost exactly doubled his homerun rate from the year prior. In 2012, Belt hit a homerun in 1.48% of all his plate appearances. In 2013, that number spiked to 2.97%. There is a lot of rumor and speculation around the league that Belt will continue his upward progress. According to an article last August by Alex Pavlovic in the San Jose Mercury News, Belt adjusted his swing after visiting the Philliles and discussing it with Domonic Brown. In the same article, Pavlovic notes that Bruce Bochy & (hitting coach) Bam-Bam Mullens begged belt to move backwards in the batting box. Both of these adjustments translated to a better result for Belt on the field.

When a player improves or worsens, you want to look for the impetus of that change. In this instance, Belt has a definite reason why his power numbers spiked and his average went up. His OBP staying the same indicates that his slugging spike doesn’t mean he’s trading taking good pitches for mashing the baseball. He took less walks, yes, as evidenced by his OBP staying the same while his AVG jumped, but this all could be attributed to seeing the ball better purely by knowing where to stand in the batters’ box. His BABIP is pretty high 0.351, but he maintained that across two seasons thanks to a ~25% line drive rate.

Full disclosure: before I looked all this up, I thought Belt’s power spike was a bit of smoke & mirrors. I no longer think that. In order to prevent from skewing my bias, I dialed up expert projections on FantasyPros.com. They average out to the following (2013 included for reference):

2014 Proj                             2013
AVG       .280                        .289
OBP       .356                        .360
SLG        .466                        .481
OPS        .822                        .841
HR          17                           17
RBI         75                           67
SB           6                              5

Now look at those numbers and tell me what you see. Experts agree on a Brandon Belt regression (except for one more stolen base and 8 extra RBI), while concurrently listing him as a breakout contender. I’m a bit more bullish on Belt. I like the idea of having him stand further back and adjust his grip over the course of a half season & a spring training. It will really allow him to adjust & capitalize on these adjustments. If it were up to me, I would probably change his slash line to something like .283, .360 (I like that OBP for him) and a slightly higher SLG, say, .500.  I would definitely peg Belt for somewhere in the low-20s for homeruns (though AT&T Park may repress a couple into doubles).

When it comes to all things Giants, I tend to bounce my ideas off my friend Joeburg. I hesitated to ask him, since he’s the world’s biggest Brandon Belt fan. He put the ceiling and floor as this:

Floor:
.280/20 HR/85 RBI/75 R/8 SB/.810 OPS

Ceiling:
.305/25 HR/105 RBI/85 R/15 SB/.870 OPS

I would be happy with anything that pops up between either of these projections, but I am cautious on Belt.  His career year in HRs will probably be 25, and I doubt that this is going to be his career year. Cavernous AT&T Park tends to suppress dingers (adjusted for Barry Bonds) but promotes doubles and triples. This will be a boon for Belt, who doesn’t have massive power (but has power nonetheless). Last year Belt hit 39 doubles, and this year I could see that boosting up to the mid-40s if not the low 50s.

No matter what Belt does, as long as he improves on his last year, he’ll be the best first baseman the Giants have trotted out there since JT Snow retired (no offense to Travis Ishikawa, John Bowker, Ryan Klesko and Shea Hillenbrand).

As I was going through the Giants starting first basemen since Snow retired, I found that there were a lot of underwhelming aging veterans populating those squads. Speaking of which…

When Will Marco Scutaro Be Healthy (And Will He Stay That Way)?
After the 2012 World Series win, Scutaro received the Brian Sabean Memorial Terrible Contract for an Old Man Coming Off a Career Year (AKA the Aubrey Huff Award). He didn’t play at all in the Cactus League this year and is just now taking grounders and swinging a bat. This isn’t a big deal if you’re a 22 year old young buck who can bounce back into game shape quickly. Scutaro is just about 6 months shy of his 39^th birthday, so a young buck he is not.  He has been dealing with soft tissue back and hip injuries. These types of injuries tend to recur even in those that are in the best of health. With current reports indicating that there is no timetable for Scutaro’s return, we could be seeing more of Joaquin Arias that we initially anticipated this year.

The recurrence issue is one that really gives me pause. Scoots is very old in baseball years and very old baseball players don’t recover all that quickly or all that thoroughly. While I doubt Scutaro will be out for a very long time with these issues, recurrences are really what I fear. Given that Arias is the super-backup and he’ll be posted at 2B full time. Scutaro is breaking down, and I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if we saw more non-Scutaro players at 2B this year than Scutaro.

Speaking of recurrence of issues…

How Much Weight Does Pablo Sandoval Regain?
Tell me if you’ve heard this before: Pablo Sandoval doubled down his off-season efforts to whip himself into shape and he’s entering the season. Sandoval fooled the world a couple seasons ago when he cut weight prior to the season beginning. He’s done it again this year, cutting a tremendous amount off his hefty frame. Given that he doesn’t have hamate bones to break this year, and that it is his walk year, AND that he has already made outrageous contract demands, Sandoval is likely to keep his weight off. I don’t know how to put this without making it sound terrible, so I’ll just say it: Sandoval acts like a child.

Now, he isn’t like a child in that he throws tantrums or is petulant in any way. He’s shown time and again that he will do something if it benefits him. He was quoted as saying he would worry about his weight in his walk year, meaning that he would stop indulging in short-term delicacies when it meant he could pull millions of dollars out of a team. That year has come, and I believe Sandoval will keep the weight off. Not because he will be a hard worker, but because he sees dollar signs.

I didn’t realize I was writing this thing into giant (pun intended) unmanageable chunks, so I’ll be following up with Part II tomorrow!