Beane Experiment

In looking at some basic tenants of SABR style gameplay, the Giants have are at the bottom of the barrel in the cumulative Beane Count, which ESPN uses to rank teams on walks given, walks allowed, home runs hit and home runs allowed. The Giants have issued 53 free passes this year, second worst to the Philadelphia Phillies in the National League, who have walked 54 batters.

But the Phillies hitters have at least walked 54 times themselves, whereas the Giants group has only worked 36 walks., while striking out 101 times, second worst in the league.

When you look at the Giants staff, there's at least some reason to smile. The club has struck out 108 batters, more than any other staff in the league.

A lot of walks and a lot of K's say one thing: high pitch counts. Indeed, the Giants are in a statistical dead heat for the highest pitch totals per plate appearance in the National League.

This of course means the Giants pitchers are trying to be extremely fine, likely the result of having the second worst run support in the league. Because it's an expected result that the team will not score more than three runs in a game, the pitching staff compensates by trying to end things with the K, which means lower percentage pitches, and higher walks. Cain leads the way in this regard, hurling 4.08 pitchers per opponent's plate appearance, the highest mark of his career. Bochy needs to settle him down a bit or one of two things will happen: Cain gets hurt, or Cain throws the fewest innings of his career. Neither is a good option.

Bochy Time

Joe Sheehan of BP takes offense to Bruce Bochy's tactics:

Sum it up: Bochy cost himself two players, Davis and Lewis, for the benefit of having an inferior hitter bat in a game-critical situation, and made his defense worse in extra innings to boot. He gave Black an easy out–walking the best hitter Bochy had left–and a clear path out of the inning through the worst hitter on the roster. That’s terrible. I mean, that’s just this side of managing to lose. For Bochy to send up Lewis in that situation, and not be able to see what that would create, is incompetence. We can talk about managers being leaders of men, and barriers between the team and the front office, and liaisons with the media, but if you can’t avoid self-destructing in the ninth inning of a tied game, none of that other stuff matters.

Right. It's going to be tough enough for the Giants to win with the players they have without adding additional levels of difficulty.

Bochy Ball

After Dave Roberts laced the single to center to lead off the game, he was thrown out trying to steal second on what Bochy lated revealed as a hit-and-run. Penny fired high, Aurelia couldn't connect, and Roberts was hosed. Now, I don't like Roberts chances against Martin in any circumstance, and we should know better to run on a man whose middle name is Coltrane.

It may have been a case of the Frenchman (Bochy) not respecting the French-Canadian (Martin), but it at least sends the message that the Giants are not going to play by house rules all season. When the Giants lose, its going to be either spectacular or filled with ridiculous, and futile gestures, as was the case on Opening Day; they're not going to try and play small ball, "smart baseball" or percentage based ball. Based on yesterday's performance, SF isn't going to out-execute anyone, so to take back the advantages they give away, they'll need small chance risks to pay off.