February 29, 2008
Rotation Evaluation, San Francisco Giants
The series looking at team pitching rotations using the Marcel the Monkey projections continues with the San Francisco Giants. Their starters posted 4.24 ERA in 2007, fourth in the National League.
Note that in figuring ERAs, I'm using Marcel's mIP and mER columns. The ERA listed in the spreadsheet uses the average of mER and bsrER. I wanted to avoid posting 1/2 runs in the table. Pitcher order is taken from the CBSSportsline depth chart.
Matt Cain
Photo: Icon SMI
Marcel predictions for the San Francisco Gaints top five starters for 2008.
| Starter | Innings | ER | ERA |
| Barry Zito | 180 | 84 | 4.20 |
| Matt Cain | 179 | 75 | 3.77 |
| Tim Lincecum | 133 | 60 | 4.06 |
| Noah Lowry | 154 | 72 | 4.21 |
| Kevin Correia | 87 | 37 | 3.83 |
| Totals | 733 | 328 | 4.03 |
The Giants rotation is going to be the strength of the team this year. They need to find about 240 more innings, however. Given the predictions for the top four, you can only expect about 100 more innings there, bringing each of them close to 200 innings. The fifth starter slot, given the poor offense on this team, is going to be a black hole for wins.
Still the top four post excellent ERAs, and they'll need every run they save if this team is going to compete in the NL West this season. The Giants could end up paying $18 million for a fourth starter.
Previous posts in this series:
Wow - honestly, I'm shocked at how well they're projected. Not that I think it looks "wrong" - just that I didn't realize they had such a lack of weakness. Most teams seem to have at least one or two people with 4.50+ ERA projections. I realize it's in the NL, in what I think is a pitcher's park, but still. This is what's going to keep them from being one of the historically terrible teams of all time.
If they don't get 200 IP out of a couple of those guys and more than 133 out of Lincecum they're going to finsih below last place.
These Five Giants starters last year combined for 128 Starts and 775 Innings as starters (including Lincecum's 5 minor league Starts for 31 Innings). In addition Kevin Correia and Barry Zito combined to pitch another 56.2 Innings in 52 relief appearances. Just converting these 52 relief appearances into 10 more starts would result in these five Giants starters combining for 138 Starts and 831.2 Innings. Marcel is so underpredicting the Innings for these five guys that frankly it is ridiculous.
Yes, the Giants could have to find about 24 starts and 140.1 Innings from Jonathan Sanchez and Patrick Misch but this should not be difficult and according to Marcel their should not be that much of a performance drop off as the Monkey sees 4.80 and 4.25 ERAs repectively.