Giants' bullpen: Shutdowns & Meltdowns

I wrote about a couple of stats -- shutdowns and meltdowns -- I learned of on FanGraphs yesterday, thanks to Steve Slowinski, over at Bay City Ball. I wasn't shocked to learn which Giants' relievers had the best shutdown to meltdown ratios. Here's an excerpt:

I’ve also recently heard such ridiculous statements as: “I just don’t trust Romo, he’s always giving up big hits.” Well, he may not be Wilson, but he’s more trustworthy than Affeldt, Lopez, etc. Things like giving up game-wining home runs to Manny Ramirez tend to stick out in fans’ minds, while the countless number of times he whiffed batter after batter with his patented Frisbee slider do not.  Biases develop throughout a long season and throughout several seasons while fans follow a team. The most significant moments often cloud the judgement of the observer. Be mindful of this – Aaron Rowand is not the worst player of all time, Barry Zito‘s not the worst starter. And no, Jack Morris is not a Hall of Famer despite his heroic, 10-inning shutout in game seven of the 1991 World Series; these biases go both ways.

Read it all at Bay City Ball, and don't miss Chris' Brandon Belt graph or Otis' thoughts on last night's hams, either.

Cody Ross and the Giants' arbitration eligibles

The Giants settled on contacts for four of the six players they have that are arbitration eligible today, and are optimistic the remaining two won't go to a hearing. I wanted to break them down a bit here, and provide a few thoughts.

Just as a quick primer: the market value for a win* is about $5 million dollars in the current market, which is up quite a bit from 2009 and 2010. Also, it’s worth noting that players who are arbitration eligible – this is for players who have more than three years of MLB service, but fewer than six -- typically get 40 percent of their free agent value in year one, 60 percent in year two and 80 percent in year three. A lucky few players are awarded Super Two status – this is for only those in the top 17 percent of players with at least two but less than three years of MLB service, who also accumulated at least 86 days in the previous season -- which means they go to arbitration one year earlier and thus get to go through four years of arbitration. Giants fans should recall that Tim Lincecum was the benefactor (and the Giants the victim) of this caveat last season.

*Whenever I say a “win” in terms of a player’s value, what I mean is a Win above Replacement, or 1.0 WAR. A replacement player should not be mistaken with a league average player. A replacement player is a four-A type player, one that can easily be plugged in at a position at league minimum cost, usually plucked from the minor league system, waivers, or perhaps via trade for a minimum cost if depth is an issue. An average player is above replacement.

NOTE: Instead of just choosing to go with either Baseball-reference or Fangraphs, I’ve chosen to take each player’s WAR from each site and give each a weight of 50 percent; this is in the hopes to come up with a decent idea of their consensus value.