How Angel Pagan and Brandon Crawford's Defensive Struggles Are Killing Giants

In basketball, the Princeton Offense Strategy is premised on playing good defense and complementing that with an offense that utilizes almost every second of the shot clock in order to limit the possessions of the opponent to force a low-scoring game. The baseball version of the Princeton Offense Strategy is to build around pitching and defense to play similarly low-scoring games. 

The San Francisco Giants began employing the baseball version of this strategy in 2009 leading to three straight winning seasons—culminating in a World Series title in 2010. No team has allowed fewer runs over the past three seasons than the defense- and pitching-oriented Giants. 

A key part of the strategy is the need to play outstanding defense to complement the pitching staff. On the defensive front, the Giants have finished in the top part of the league in every statistical category over the past three seasons. 

According to the Baseball Prospectus team stats on defensive efficiency, which measures the rate at which balls in play are converted into outs by the defense, the Giants were the third-best defensive team in 2009 and the sixth best in both of the last two seasons. 

Another defensive metric, Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR), used by the website FanGraphs to measure the amount of runs the defense saves or allows, placed the Giants as the third-best defensive team from 2009 through 2011, with 128 runs saved over that span.

The metric Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) created by the organization The Fielding Bible pegged the Giants as the 10th-best defensive team since 2009. 

The more traditional fielding metric, fielding percentage, which simply divides the total number of putouts by the total number of chances, placed the Giants as the sixth-best defensive team since 2009 with only 265 errors committed. 

Whether you prefer the new, advanced metrics like defensive efficiency, UZR and DRS, or the more traditional statistics like errors and fielding percentage, the Giants have measured up as one of the best defensive teams in baseball over the past few seasons.

Unfortunately, during the early part of the 2012 season, the Giants defense has fallen part.

Entering last night's game, the Giants had committed a league-worst 41 errors, ranking them dead last in fielding percentage.

DRS and UZR both rank the Giants defense as the sixth worst in the game. DRS credits the Giants defense with minus-15 runs saved, meaning they have allowed 15 runs more than an average defense. 

Angel Pagan has been an unmitigated disaster in center field—getting poor reads, taking bad angles and looking like a player that needs to be moved to a corner outfield spot. 

Brandon Crawford is in the big leagues solely for his outstanding glove and ridiculous range, but he has booted several routine plays en route to the team lead in errors. Given his stellar defensive reputation, Crawford's defensive woes might be attributable to a hand injury that he suffered at the end of spring training. 

Shortstop and center field are two key defensive spots, and the Giants are not getting good enough defense from Crawford and Pagan right now. Another key defensive position, catcher, has also been a problem. 

Buster Posey has looked rusty behind the plate and at first base, which is to be expected given the catastrophic nature of the injury he suffered last season. His backup, Hector Sanchez, is here for his bat, not because of his average defensive reputation.

Manny Burriss has yet to get an extra base hit at the plate, so you would assume he's in the big leagues for his glove. Sadly, Burriss is also below average defensively, making it unclear what exactly his utility is.

Moving to the hot corner, Pablo Sandoval's range had declined significantly before he went down with a hand injury and his replacement, Conor Gillaspie, was even worse, struggling to even make the throw across the diamond, forcing his demotion back to the minors. 

One of the main culprits to all of these defensive woes might be the constant game of musical chairs that Bruce Bochy plays with his lineups every night.

One day Buster Posey is catching, the sure-handed Brandon Belt is at first and Melky Cabrera is in left, then the next day Posey is at first, Belt is on the bench, Cabrera is in right and first baseman Brett Pill is somehow in left field. If you value defense at all, you can't put a slow first baseman like Pill in the outfield.

The Giants have an excellent pitching staff, although they badly need Tim Lincecum to break out of his funk.

The offense looks well below average right now, but part of that is due to the injury to Sandoval, the team's best hitter, and the horrible slump that Posey is currently enduring. When Sandoval returns and Posey gets right at the plate, the offense will look a lot more competent.

It is the Giants defense that will be the key to the remainder of the season. Even with the offensive problems and Lincecum's woes, if the Giants had played better defense to start the season, they would be much closer to the first-place Dodgers. 

Defense may not when championships on its own, but the Giants overcame a mediocre offense to win the whole thing once before with elite run prevention. If they have dreams of another postseason parade, the defense must improve immediately.