Friday philanthropy

If my links this week are a bit heavy, it's primarily because I am listening to Queens of the Stone Age this morning while drinking a homemade latte.

Jon Bois' latest in a (brilliant) month-long series entitled Letters From Spring Training: Kansas City Royals 

A great piece by Mike Fast of Baseball Prospectus: How Accurate Are BIS Pitch Locations?

A baseball 'Rooting interest flowchart.' I honestly got to the Giants, no lying. Why would I be afraid of eating sushi at a ballgame?
 
Our friends at Bay City Ball were on the SweetSpot this week. Here's a piece on Pablo Sandoval's potential bounce-back year.
 
Another awesome piece by Wezen-ball: Duke Snider, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays... and Charlie Brown! Enough said.
 
Shameless self-promotion... Some really smart guy wrote all about Aaron Hill's crummy 2010.

That's all I got. What's more, you guessed it, this is everything I RTed (retweeted) this week. Guilty.

NL West 2011 ZiPS Projections

I have to admit, there’s almost nothing I can think of that’s interesting enough to write about right now regarding the Giants. I mean, I could talk about their potential sixth starter (few options here, Dan Runzler?) or their middle-infield depth (Ryan Rohlinger and Emmanuel Burriss). But if I did I would probably fall asleep at my laptop.

The Giants don’t appear to have anything interesting in the works, so I’ll just have to get a lot more creative and soon. Until then, I’ll provide a few Giants-related links and my thoughts on them:

Fangraphs’ list of Top 10 Prospects: San Francisco Giants

I did my own list a while back, see here, and Fangraphs and I agreed on 8 of 10 players, though in somewhat different order. I like the list they compiled, and I especially enjoyed their mention of Eric Surkamp who "narrowly missed" the list. I had him at no. 10 as my "sleeper pick."

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Dan Szymborski’s 2011 ZiPS Projections for the Giants (Dan: "ZiPS is more bullish on the Giants offense than it has been in years..."

I fooled with the projections a bit and tried to put together a reasonable season of at bats - I basically scaled all of the projections down to a similar number of at bats for 2011 to their 2010 total - and got to 800 runs. Now, projections are just that, projections. But the mere fact that Dan's system likes them this year better than it has in years is excellent news. The 800 runs is obviously wildly optimistic, but the fact that I got to that many runs (using the Runs Created formula) without fussing with it much, is awesome.

Also: the 2011 ZiPS Projections for the Colorado Rockies (Dan: "They can't match the Giants starters, but the Rockies are more prepared for injuries to pitchers than San Francisco is and it should be an exciting divisional race…")

I see the Rockies, with their strong offense anchored by Troy Tulowitzki and Carlos Gonzalez and good pitching depth with Ubaldo Jimenez leading them, as the biggest threat to the Giants.
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Los Angeles Dodgers (Dan: "...a good rotation gives LA as good a shot at the division as any of the other teams…"

The Dodgers dropped all the way to below .500 last season after going to back-to-back NLCS'. They still have very good starting pitching, especially if Clayton Kershaw continues to develop into an Ace. And if Matt Kemp gets back to where he was in 2009, they might start rolling again with a little luck, a little health, and a decent mid-season acquisition or two. No one should write them off.
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San Diego Padres (Dan: "The way the season ended was extremely disappointing, but the Padres should still come away from the 2010 season pleased with how the team performed.")

They probably won't be as strong of a contender next season, but of course we've heard that before. Their special blend of a solid defense, shut-down bullpen, quality starting pitching -- Mat Latos is a formidable ballast -- and just-enough offense, wins games. It's especially effective in their offense muting ballpark. The question becomes, though, with the departure of Adrian Gonzalez, does their just-enough offense become: just-not-enough?
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and Arizona Diamondbacks (Dan: “I'd still put them below .500, but they should at least get the win total back into the 70s.”)

The Diamondbacks have some starpower on their roster, most notably Justin Upton. While I agree with Dan here, that they likely won't contend in 2011, I also think they are probably a year or two away from it. Honestly, if they could have their bullpen improve from atrocious to average and add a decent starter or two,  they'd almost instantly be in the mix.

Free World Series DVD's, other stuff

Graham at Baseball: Past and Present spent a great deal of time putting together a post on the 50 greatest players not in the Hall of Fame. It is important to note that it’s not a list of 50 who necessarily belong, an important distinction, though I’ll submit a good number of them do. It turned out fantastic, and I myself contributed by casting a 50 player ballot. I can’t say who I voted for – or maybe I can – but I’ll just say I was not one of the 7 that omitted Bert Blyleven.

I am contributing a piece to that same space in the next day or so: Does he belong in the Hall of Fame: Ted Simmons. He landed on the top 50 list at #13, grabbing 44 of a possible 63 votes.

Congratulations to Jay Jaffe of Baseball Prospectus and founder of FutilityInfielder.com for being voted into the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) today. The internet writers are slowly making progress.

Comcast (CSN Bay Area) will be re-airing six pivotal Giants playoff games as they marched to their first World Series in San Francisco history. You won’t have to listen to (and harshly ridicule) the Fox team of McCarver and Stockton this time, because they’ll essentially be dubbing it with Krukow, Kuiper, Flemming and Miller – this, a courtesy that wasn’t offered to us during the actual events. Watch them, DVR them, and relish in them, I personally can hardly wait.

12/09/2010, 8:00 PM – NLDS Game 1, SF (Lowe V Lincecum)
12/11/2010, 7:00 PM – NLCS Game 4, SF (Blanton V Bumgarner)
12/15/2010, 7:00 PM – NLCS Game 6, PHI (Sanchez V Oswalt)
12/17/2010, 7:00 PM – World Series Game 1, SF (Lee V Lincecum)
12/23/2010, 7:30 PM – World Series Game 4, TEX (Bumgarner V Hunter)
12/24/2010, 8:00 PM – World Series Game 5, TEX (Lee V Lincecum)

Finally, I received a couple free World Series DVD’s thanks to Shout! Factory, which was in addition to my invitation to attend the private viewing. I’d like to do some sort of trivia contest – it will likely be a non-Google-able question about the Giants, much like those done by Rob Neyer some late nights on Twitter – in order to give the DVD’s away. Please let me know if you’re interested by emailing me at http://www.blogger.com/PaapFly@gmail.com. If I do in fact get enough interest, I will come up with a question and post when exactly it’s to be asked. The first two who email me the correct answer will get the prize (World Series DVD).

I also recently joined the Baseball Bloggers Alliance. I just thought you should know.

--Paapfly

Good reads and an UPDATE

I posted a small UPDATE on my blog about Lincecum and Zito's fastballs...

Here are a few thing's I read recently and either enjoyed or at least found interesting...

New FanGraphs writer Paul Kawlikowski explains 4 reasons why teams are not jumping to sign Jermaine Dye.  Actually, teams are more or less flat out avoiding him.  Dave Cameron posted a very interesting take on the 5th reason. 

I guess there is a new bio out on Willie Mays which is getting rave reviews and is more than just worth reading.  It appears that a lot of people are intent on exaggerating Mays' legend, however, Rob Neyer did a comparison on the yards he played in to determine whether or not Candlestick hurt his HR numbers. The historical, word-of-mouth consensus is that it absolutely did. Lon Simmons: “No doubt about it.” Well, Neyer very eloquently provides evidence that Candlestick did no such thing, aside from one season. It’s a must read. He doesn’t try to downplay Mays’ greatness or anything, rather, he just wants to make sure people don't turn his legend into a Paul Bunyanesque tall tale. Neyer's stuff is always enjoyable, or at the very least thought provoking.  And, because he writes so many pieces, you don't have to wait very long for another little nugget of gold to come along. 

Like this.  Keep in mind that Neyer is a huge Royals fan and at least has a sense of humor about their incompetence.  I can relate.

And here's some more Royals stuff (ridicule) from Joe Posnanski.