Hitting The Cutoff Man

2009: 88-74, 3rd in NL West. Pythagorean record of 86-76.
Key Additions: 1B Aubrey Huff, LF Mark DeRosa, SP Todd Wellemeyer
Key Losses: SPs Randy Johnson and Brad Penny, RP Bob Howry, OF Randy Winn, 1B Ryan Garko 2010 Projections: PECOTA – 81-81, 4th in NL West. CHONE – 76-86, 5th. CAIRO – 78.3-83.7, 4th.

Pitching: 2009 – 3.85 FIP (4th in MLB), 3.85 for starters, 3.86 for relievers
2010 – The No. 1 spot in the rotation obviously is taken care of here, and Matt Cain is a solid No. 2. Thankfully for the Giants, it appears Barry Zito might have figured out a way to provide a little bit of value for the remainder of his insane contract.
Hitting: 2009 – .305 wOBA (30th in MLB)
2010 – The Giants, desperate for offense, signed DeRosa and Huff and brought back Freddy Sanchez. These guys probably are upgrades over the players San Francisco otherwise would have penciled in at those positions, but it's also not clear the difference is going to be nearly great enough to pull the team out of its offensive stupor. Nate Schierholtz might be the only player besides Pablo Sandoval in the everyday starting lineup under the age of 32.
Fielding: 2009 – UZR of 51.2(4th in MLB)
2010 – Replacing Winn with DeRosa in the outfield subtracts defensive prowess, and if Huff takes a lot of innings away from Travis Ishikawa at first, that will hurt the run-stopping as well. The Giants also have a couple of once sterling defenders up the middle in Aaron Rowand and Edgar Renteria who are starting to show their age with the glove.

Reasons to Watch
1. Pablo Sandoval: Kung Fu Panda has the best nickname around and the talent to back it up. In his first full major league season last year, he hit .330/.387/.556 and finished 16th in MLB in wOBA. It was an impressive display, to say the least. But there is one issue with Sandoval: his weight. The Giants want to improve his fitness, even instituting an "Operation Panda" program this offseason, and San Francisco Chronicle columnist Scott Ostler believes Sandoval needs to get in better shape in order to enjoy a long and successful career.
2. Tim Lincecum: Not only is Lincecum the best pitcher in baseball, with two Cy Youngs to his credit at age 25, but he is also unique due to his unorthodox pitching style and delivery. Of course, those factors also lead people to question if The Freak will stay healthy, especially with more than 450 innings on his arm over the last two years. Injuries are always lurking in the shadows for any pitcher, but it's certainly possible Lincecum has found something that will keep his arm going. That would be bad news for MLB hitters, who have put up a line of .217/.290/.318 against Linecum in his career (in other words, Adam Everett-type production).
3. The catcher situation: Bengie Molina will turn 36 this season and put up a .308 wOBA in 2009. Yet, the Giants chose to bring him back for 2010, when he will most certainly poach at-bats from Buster Posey, the team's first-round draft pick in 2008. Posey just turned 23 and tore the cover off the ball in both Class-A and Triple-A last season. The bat seems ready, and he apparently is strong behind the plate. Despite this, it sounds like Posey either will start the year in the minors or get moved around to different positions. The Giants don't figure to make the playoffs in 2010, no matter who their catcher is, but making Posey their primary backstop would help.

Paint By Numbers: Molina's 2.5 percent walk rate was the lowest of any qualified hitter last season and held his OBP down to .285 despite a .265 batting average. ... In 2009, the Giants as a team drew 29 fewer walks than anyone else and finished last in OBP. Fred Lewis and Andres Torres were the only San Francisco players with at least 100 plate appearances to post a walk rate of better than the league average of 8.9 percent. ... Barry Zito's 4.31 FIP last season was his best since 2005. A big reason why was Zito's strikeout rate of 7.2/9 IP, which was actually slightly better than his mark in 2002, when he won the AL Cy Young Award.

Blog Jog: Grant at McCovey Chronicles analyzes news involving Matt Cain and Nate Schierholtz and also weighs in on the Brian Wilson contract extension. ... Raising Matt Cain's M.C. O'Conner looks at the Giants' chances of scoring some runs this season. ... This shirt featured at El Lefty Malo is kind of awesome.

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My last post about Eric Chavez was an apt lead-in to yesterday's news that Nomar Garciaparra was retiring. As Rob Neyer phrased it, Nomar's career was "an excellent object lesson in the non-inevitability of immortality."

Garciaparra was on his way to becoming an absolute, no-doubt Hall of Famer until the injuries started chipping away at him.

It's amazing to look back now on the 2000 season. That year was Nomaaaaaaaah's best, as he hit .372/.434/.599, won the AL batting title and punched up a career-high 155 OPS+.

It's funny though -- immortality is certainly not inevitable, but even if Nomar isn't a Hall of Famer, he's a guy people will remember for a long time. If you look at other guys who had great seasons in 2000 (just 10 years ago!) it's stunning how quickly players of a somewhat lower quality become completely irrelevant.

For example, who were the top 10 in batting average in the majors in 2000? Nomar was one, and Todd Helton, Manny Ramirez, Vladimir Guerrero, Carlos Delgado and Derek Jeter appear on the list too.

The rest of that list inspired me to scratch my head and go, "THAT guy?"

In 2000, it's difficult to remember, Darin Erstad and Moises Alou hit .355, Jeffrey Hammonds hit .335 and David Segui hit .334, all finishing in the top 10. This same year, Richard Hidalgo finished fifth in home runs, and the top 10 in ERA included Jeff D'Amico, Chan Ho Park and Rick Ankiel.

The fact is, nothing is inevitable in baseball. If you look at last year's leaders, you can confidently predict that Albert Pujols and Joe Mauer will go down as two of the greatest players of all time, Hanley Ramirez and Miguel Cabrera will eventually cruise into the Hall and Joey Votto and Pablo Sandoval have years of All-Star games and MVP votes ahead of them.

But reality is a lot messier than that. Chances are, injuries will sap somebody's potential before it fully blooms, and someone else's career will fizzle out just as quickly as it erupted in the first place.

We'll just have to stay tuned to find out who.

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It’s a great time to be a baseball fan, possibly excluding those poor souls in Kansas City, Pittsburgh and a few other places. But as you will see, even those fans have reason for some excitement.

While the scourge of performance-enhancing drugs certainly has not passed on entirely, the game has been blessed with a fresh generation of stars that plays the game clean (so far as we know) and incredibly well.

In an effort to illustrate the stunning collection of young talent already at the Major League level, I will compose an entire 25-man roster of players who have at least 100 plate appearances or 50 innings pitched in the big leagues but were 25 or younger at the start of 2010. Since a player’s prime usually begins around 26, this gives us a look at guys who are likely to be on the upswing.

Today we’ll do the position players, and tomorrow we’ll move on to the pitchers. Feel free to let me know if I missed someone in the comments.

C – Brian McCann, ATL, 25 years old. It’s hard to believe McCann is still 25 (he turns 26 next month), but he made his Major League debut at 21 and was an All-Star at 22. McCann is no Joe Mauer, who is a little too old for this list, but he has an .853 career OPS and the most home runs of any MLB catcher since 2005.

C – Matt Wieters, BAL, 23. Wieters came up last season with tremendous hype, and while his performance wasn’t awe-inspiring, it was solid and encouraging for a 23-year-old catcher getting his first taste of the Majors. Even with his inexperience and position, he was about a league-average hitter.

1B – Prince Fielder, MIL, 25. Fielder isn’t the type of player (big and slow) who is likely to age well, but he sure is fun to watch right now. In a little more than four full seasons, the big man has 160 home runs, and last season he was third in the big leagues with a 1.014 OPS.

1B – Pablo Sandoval, SF, 23. Kung Fu Panda has played mostly third base thus far but is expected to move across the diamond this season after the Giants signed Mark DeRosa. And make no mistake – the guy can flat-out rake. In 717 career at-bats, he’s put up a line of .333/.381/.543 while playing half his games in a terrible hitters’ park.

2B – Asdrubal Cabrera, CLE, 24. This is cheating slightly, as Cabrera played mostly shortstop last season, but second base is the weakest position in this age group and Cabrera played there a lot in 2008. He had a breakout year with the bat in ’09, and while he was a bit lucky, the Bill James projection still has Cabrera OPSing a respectable .779 next season.

3B – Evan Longoria, TB, 24. According to Fangraphs, Longoria was the seventh most valuable player in baseball last season despite being in his second year. How? He’s a solid hitter with good patience and excellent power, and he plays a beautiful third base. Over the past two seasons, Longoria’s Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) of 33.4 is the second-best mark of any player at any position, behind Carl Crawford.

3B – Ryan Zimmerman, WAS, 25. Not a lot of people know about Zimmerman, who has the misfortune of playing for the woeful Nats, and that’s a shame. He isn’t quite Longoria, but he’s awfully close. Last season, he was second to Longoria in UZR at third while putting up a career-best .888 OPS.

SS – Troy Tulowitzki, COL, 25. Hanley Ramirez is slightly too old for this exercise, so Tulo gets the nod here. After a rough, injury-marred 2008, he bounced back in a big way last season. Although he didn’t play up to his capabilities defensively, he had a career year with the bat, producing of a line of .297/.377/.552, with 32 home runs.

SS – Elvis Andrus, TEX, 21. Erick Aybar would also be a solid choice, but Andrus is four years younger and already better defensively. He was third among MLB shortstops in UZR as a rookie last season, and while the bat wasn’t anything special, he has plenty of time to improve in that area.

OF – Matt Kemp, LAD, 25. The Bison made his big league debut in 2006 as an extremely raw package of skills and has developed in leaps and bounds since. He hits for average (.299 career mark), has learned to take an occasional walk, has prodigious power that still hasn’t fully materialized, and is shockingly fast for someone who weighs in around 230 pounds (69 steals the last two years). He’s still not a great center fielder because he takes some bad routes to fly balls, but there are few players in the whole league with a higher ceiling.

OF – Justin Upton, ARZ, 22. Upton was first called up to the Majors as a teenager in 2007 and quickly has become one of the best all-around players in the game. He hit .300 and slugged .532 last season, stole 20 bases and was fourth among MLB right fielders in UZR. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to imagine him as this generation’s Ken Griffey, Jr.

OF – B.J. Upton, TB, 25. Justin’s older brother had an excellent year with the bat in 2007 and a solid one in 2008 but tailed off badly last year, putting up a .686 OPS. He is likely to rebound, however, and if he does he will be extremely valuable, as he already is one of the top few defensive center fielders in baseball.

OF – Andrew McCutchen, PIT, 23. The Pirates don’t have much, but at least they have their center fielder and leadoff man of the future (until they inevitably trade him, at least). McCutchen stormed onto the scene as a rookie with an .836 OPS, 12 home runs, 22 steals and average defense in center after getting called up in early June.

OF – Colby Rasmus, STL, 23. Adam Jones and Denard Span also were great options here, but Rasmus wins via music video tiebreaker. Rasmus is already a top-five defensive center fielder, so it’s just a matter of his bat developing after an unspectacular rookie season. More patience and a better performance against lefties would help, but Rasmus did show his power potential with 16 homers in 474 at-bats.

Here’s a potential starting lineup out of that group.
1. J. Upton, RF
2. M. Kemp, LF
3. E. Longoria, 3B
4. P. Fielder, 1B
5. P. Sandoval, DH
6. T. Tulowitzki, SS
7. B. McCann, C
8. B. Upton, CF
9. A. Cabrera, 2B