I went to Yahoo Answers yesterday and posed the same question I posted here. Got sixteen responses, some voting twice, some not at all. Here’s the result:
I’ve got baseball on the brain, but at the same time I’m trying not to spend too much time and effort over analyzing every little thing about today’s game. So instead I revisisited one of my favorite baseball sites, Flip Flop Fly Ball to see what latest and greatest graphs and charts were available to peruse. And much to my delight, there was a bobblehead chart! Check it.
I haven’t posted since we got swept by the A’s back in May. Maybe I was too depressed. Maybe I’ve been too busy at work. Maybe I have a hard time coming up with new ways to say “Yeah we won!” or “Boo we lost!” on a daily basis.
In my absence, the Giants played the Nationals (2-1), the Diamondbacks (3-0), the Rockies (1-3), the Pirates (2-1), the Reds (2-2), paid back the A’s by sweeping ’em (3-0), the Orioles (2-1), Blue Jays (1-2) and the Astros (1-2). In sum, we’ve won five series, lost two and tied once. And we’re back in second place, with the Dodgers a half game behind us. Not bad!
Oh and my family and I were there for Friday night’s A’s game, Lincecum pitching, first of the sweep. It was awesome.
The day after the game, I ran in the Giant Race, which I won’t go into too much, other than to say it’s the farthest I’ve ever run, I don’t think I ate enough, I was pretty slow and it hurt really bad and I’ll probably do it again next year. Oh and I got to touch home plate after the finish line, which was the only base I wasn’t able to touch during Fan Fest this year. Here’s me almost dead.
Boston is in town, everyone is quite excited. In the history of baseball, the Giants have only faced the Red Sox twice: in 2004 and in 2007.
| Date | Tm | Opp | RS | RA | W | L | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2004-06-18 | San Francisco Giants | Boston Red Sox | L | 9 | 14 | 0 | 1 | |
| 2004-06-19 | San Francisco Giants | Boston Red Sox | W | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | |
| 2004-06-20 | San Francisco Giants | Boston Red Sox | W | 4 | 0 | 2 | 1 | |
| For 2004, NYG and SFG won 2, BOS won 1. | ||||||||
| Date | Tm | Opp | RS | RA | W | L | ||
| 2007-06-15 | San Francisco Giants | @ | Boston Red Sox | L | 2 | 10 | 2 | 2 |
| 2007-06-16 | San Francisco Giants | @ | Boston Red Sox | L | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| 2007-06-17 | San Francisco Giants | @ | Boston Red Sox | L | 5 | 9 | 2 | 4 |
| For 2007, NYG and SFG won 0, BOS won 3. | ||||||||
Our overall record with them is 2-4, which is not so hot. The Giants are second place to the Red Sox third in their respective leagues right now, but the Sox have juuuuust a bit higher win percentage, and they’re on a winning streak while the Giants have just lost two:
| Rk | Tm | W | L | W-L% | GB | Strk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | SDP | 42 | 30 | .583 | — | L 1 |
| 2 | SFG | 39 | 32 | .549 | 2.5 | L 2 |
| 3 | LAD | 39 | 33 | .542 | 3.0 | W 1 |
| 4 | COL | 38 | 34 | .528 | 4.0 | L 1 |
| 5 | ARI | 28 | 45 | .384 | 14.5 | L 2 |
| Avg | 37 | 34 | .517 |
vs
| Rk | Tm | W | L | W-L% | GB | Strk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | NYY | 45 | 27 | .625 | — | W 2 |
| 2 | TBR | 43 | 29 | .597 | 2.0 | W 1 |
| 3 | BOS | 44 | 30 | .595 | 2.0 | W 1 |
| 4 | TOR | 39 | 34 | .534 | 6.5 | W 1 |
| 5 | BAL | 20 | 52 | .278 | 25.0 | W 1 |
| Avg | 38 | 34 | .526 |
As far as pitching goes, we’ve got Sanchez, Martinez (who?) and Lincecum:
| W | L | W-L% | ERA | G | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tim Lincecum | 8 | 2 | .800 | 2.86 | 15 | 100.2 | 83 | 34 | 32 | 5 | 39 | 113 |
| Jonathan Sanchez | 5 | 5 | .500 | 2.90 | 14 | 83.2 | 62 | 32 | 27 | 5 | 39 | 82 |
| Joe Martinez | 0 | 1 | .000 | 4.91 | 2 | 7.1 | 10 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
The Red Sox have Wakefield, Buchholz and Lester:
| W | L | W-L% | ERA | G | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jon Lester* | 8 | 3 | .727 | 3.03 | 15 | 98.0 | 73 | 34 | 33 | 5 | 40 | 102 |
| Clay Buchholz | 10 | 4 | .714 | 2.47 | 14 | 91.0 | 76 | 31 | 25 | 3 | 37 | 62 |
| Tim Wakefield | 2 | 5 | .286 | 5.33 | 15 | 79.1 | 84 | 50 | 47 | 12 | 17 | 44 |
Saturday might be hairy, as Joe Martinez hasn’t put in enough time to really make a prediction about him, but otherwise we’re looking good in the ERA category.
Still it’s the Red Sox, and that name comes with some heavy. Aside from the Yankees, they’re probably the only team that has fans that are just everywhere. You don’t see Giants hats in Utah or Rhode Island, but you’ll see Red
Sox hats. They seem big, bad and scary, somehow.
Needless to say, everyone is excited. Nose bleed seats are $90 a ticket, which I believe is the highest price venue for this season (but don’t quote me on that). Regardless of the outcome, can’t say I’m not looking forward to it!
GO GIANTS!
Bay Area Slaughter?
That’s two sweeps in a row. I watched enough of Friday’s game to see Zito give up three (of six) runs. Watched all of Saturday’s torturous struggle, on a big screen no less, just to really give it resonance. Could have watched Sunday’s game, but opted out after three innings because it felt like a repeat of Saturday, and frankly I was just bored. Three games and one run, how is that not boring? Sorry Giants.
In exchange for me crossing my fingers for the Yankees, Jane Heller was supposed to cross her fingers for the Giants on Friday. Yankees won, Giants didn’t. What’s up with that Jane?
We started out so strong, and now it feels like we’ve lost any momentum we managed to generate. Still have more than half a season to go, but I feel like fourth place is looming dangerously close!
Well, it’s official!
The D-Back, of all teams, officially knocked us down a peg. Weird game. We lose by one run, which is ridiculously usual for us, but Golden God Tim only pitches five innings, walking five and surrendering five hits, including a home run. And even weirder, the score on both sides exceeded one run. In fact, at one point, both teams scored five runs back to back. Unheard of this season! Bochy ejected? Affeldt allowing a stolen run to home? Weird game.
I was really expecting to sweep the D-Backs, not get swept. But it occurred to me that I should have known better. Here’s my theory on what happened. Behold this man:
That is my father-in-law. He’s one of those guys that are good at winning. He’s the guy who’s ahead of you in your fantasy football league. He’s the guy who’s going to take all your chips if you sit down with him at the poker table. He’s the guy who’s going to draw the elusive domino needed to go out in Mexican Train.
And this year he’s decided to get into baseball again, and since he lives in Arizona, he’s decided to be a D-Backs fan. And sure, they’re in last place, so one could argue that his winning powers aren’t all that. But that’s now how it works, folks. How it works is, he wins when it’s important. He wins when brother-in-law and I are dying to rub it in that the Giants creamed his team. THAT’s when his powers kick and we get swept. So again Giants fan, this guy is why we lost:
Bay Bridge Series next! Would love a win or three, but fun either way. Zito’s up tonight, pitching against his old stomping grounds, hopefully doing better than he’s done previous:
| Rk | Date | Tm | Opp | Rslt | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | HR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2008-06-13 | SFG | OAK | L 1-5 | 5.2 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 0 |
| 2 | 2007-06-09 | SFG | OAK | L 0-6 | 4.0 | 9 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| 3 | 2007-05-18 | SFG | OAK | L 3-15 | 4.0 | 6 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 2 | 1 |
Apparently he doesn’t like being booed. But he’s doing great this year, reinvented himself, so here’s hoping he’s got thicker skin tonight.
SF @ CIN
SF @ KC
OAK @ SF
Nice to see balance restored with a win over the A’s. Whoever was pitching in the 8th during the Reds game…yikes!
I think I’ve decided that spring training is stupid from a spectators point of view.
Either your team or player of choice is doing awesome, so that’s officially what you can expect for the upcoming season, or they suck so it doesn’t count because they’re just experimenting and spring training means nothing.
Either you’re a veteran player who is using springing training as practice to try out new things so your numbers mean nothing, or you’re a wannabe rookie trying to work his way up into a position and your numbers mean everything (except even then they should still mean nothing because you’re playing against veterans who may or may not be doing what they would normally do AKA their best).
So I wonder if I should continue to post and comment on these scores, because what can you really comment about? “Oh he looks good (but it doesn’t matter!).” “Oh, he played horrible (but it doesn’t matter!).” Yeah, that’s pretty much it.
But I started it, so I guess I’ll finish it. What else am I going to do with this blog? Come up with something original? Ha! As I’ve been under the weather for the past week, I’m a bit behind.
SF @ OAK
CLE @ SF
CIN @ SF
SF @ ARI
TEX @ SF
Five games, five wins, still #1 (but it doesn’t matter!).
Eeks, I’m behind. That’s what happens when your weekend looks like this, I guess!
SEA @ SF
Sigh. 7-2. Creamed too. Three hits in five innings. Sounds like the the hitting problems of last year may not be completely fixed, eh? Lincecum still not doing so well because he had a huge raise and contract now and that’s why the word “ironic” was invented. Actually I’m going to chalk that up to it being spring training and he’s just experimenting. Yeah, that’s it. DeRosa continues to play some decent small ball.
SF @ COL
Yay! 8-2. Creaming the opposition this time. (Wait, that sounds gross.) Way to go Todd Wellemeyer on having your best spring training game yet, four scoreless innings and no walks!
OAK @ SF
Awww, bummer! 8-3. First “rivalry” loss, and soooo close too. Better than being clobbered, I guess. Matt Cain not doing so hot this round, giving up five runs and eight hits. Buster Posey still making hits though. I like that name, Buster Posey. Totally “famous” sounding baseball name. How can a guy named Buster Posey not make it in baseball?
SF @ SEA
W00t! Fine, you clobber us? We’ll clobber you back! 9-3. Kevin Pucetas retires nine Mariners and extends his scoreless inning streak to lucky number seven.
MIL @ SF
And we end with a bummer. 9-4. Nuff said.
Three wins, two losses and one new faucet. Not a bad weekend, all-in-all. It feels kind of redundant to keep recapping all this stuff, especially when there are people out there doing a way better job of it than I. But I guess I’ll keep doing it, because what else is there to talk about? Would be great to actually SEE one of these games sometime, but apparently MLB.tv only likes the Yankees and Red Sox.
Still on fake-top!
With the real season coming up here quick, let’s take a moment to see what we look like in the grand scheme of things before we add another year of numbers. (AKA, another excuse to make charts in Excel!)
From beginning of time to last season, the Giants rank #2 in the league for win percentage. Not bad really. The Yankees are the winner, of course, and it doesn’t look like they will be dethroned anytime soon. Dodgers are catching up, but we still got a decent enough gap there. (And just as an FYI, we rank #1 in total actual wins, but since not every
team started in the 1800s, that standing isn’t exactly a fair comparison.)
And since I was at it, here’s the rest of the league, for my imaginary readers whose team didn’t make the top 15:
I’m betting Rays fans are hard core.
Now about some head-to-head? How do we compare to other teams on a face-to-face level?
Giants are still beating out everyone else in the National League. They have more wins vs losses than each and every team, though it looks like the Dodgers are a few wins away from pushing that bar to the left. But that’s what makes good rivalry, right? Who wants to have a rivalry with a team that sucks?
American League is kicking our butts a bit harder. Of course, we face them much less, which makes each loss much more powerful than the National League chart. Looks like 6 out of 14 teams are beating us more than we’re beating them, including the A’s, which…sucky! Still above average though.
All-in-all not a bad state of affairs. Again though, this is over the Giants entire history, so I’m betting a lot of their momentum was built back in the day. Best make sure we keep things going so we can stay on top, eh?
Craig Robinson’s Flip Flop Fly Ball site is my new favorite thing. As self-described:
A love of baseball plus a love of infographics equals Flip Flop Fly
Ball.
The thing is loaded with fun statistics in graphics form, and while I haven’t perused them all yet with equal scrutiny, here’s my current favorite (so far):
CLICK FOR FULL SIZE
It’s crazy that the “best team” has only won the series three times since 1995, isn’t it? (Since the Wild Card system has been in effect.) I suppose that’s what playoffs are for, but so much for the reliability of stats, eh folks? Also specifically interesting to the theme of this blog, the last time the Giants made it to the series was the only time that that two Wild Card teams went head to head. (Giants lost of course – boo!)
Just a Bit Outside... 