I Was Off by a Year

A player I really wanted the Giants to sign during the 2008/2009 was Ty Wigginton.  He had a big year for Houston in 2008, and I thought he would be great low-cost way to fill the hole the Giants had at third, since I did not then know that Pablo Sandoval would actually be able to field an adequate major league third base.

Wigginton signed a very reasonable two-year $6 million deal with the Orioles, and it still looked like too much money in 2009.  He ended up with a .714 OPS, which is pretty much the definition of mediocre for a guy mostly splitting time between the two corner infield positions.

It now appears that it just took a year for Ty to refamiliarize himself with play in the Junior Circuit.  He hit his tenth HR of the young season to beat the Twins tonight and now has a 1.076 OPS.  If he goes on to have a good year, he will turn out to have been the bargain I predicted when the O’s first signed him.

Today my father asked me, as the alleged “expert”, what I thought the reason for Barry Zito’s big turn-around this season was.  Zito, of course, says the change is all mental, but as my dad noted, players always say that, and it’s almost never true.

I’ve only seen Zito pitch once or twice on TV so far this year, so I can’t in all honesty say with certainty what the change is.  What I noticed, however, is that he appeared to have more life on his fastball, more break on his curveball, and better command, at least compared to his nadir last year when I was writing about how I thought Barry had lost arm strength, and his fastballs tended to float up to the plate like creampuffs.

If Zito has his arm strength back, it would certainly explain what appeared to be an extra couple of miles per hour on his fastball and his sharper curve.  Might also explain the better command.

What the stats say is that Zito’s command has shown a huge improvement.  In 42.1 innings pitched so far this year, he has allowed 12 walks and recorded 28 strikeouts.  Barry hasn’t had a 2-to-1 Ks-to-BBs ratio for a full season since 2004.  However, his 1.90 ratio in 2009, after his strong second half, was his best since 2005 (1.92 that year).

It makes me wonder if the Giants didn’t sign Zito to his huge contract at exactly the worst possible moment.  Zito pitched a tremendous number of innings in his career as an A, and he may well have had a dead arm for the Giants the first two and half years on the west side of the Bay.  He has yet to throw 200 innings in a season since becoming a Giant, and his arm may be coming back, starting in the second half of 2009.

One thing that annoyed me when I perused the Giants box score tonight (and there wasn’t to complain about given that the Giants won 6-3 to sweep the Marlins) was that Matt Downs didn’t start tonight’s game after going two-for-two with a double and two walks in last night’s game.  How do you bench a guy after a game like that?  What kind of message does that send to a young player trying to establish himself?

After missing four games with a groin strain, someone apparently thought that Edgar Renteria was ready to go back out there, so he started at SS and Juan Uribe moved to second, leaving nowhere for Downs to play.  Renteria re-strained his groin after only one plate appearance.  He came out, and Downs went in.  Downs hit a sacrifice fly to drive in a run in his first at-bat and later walked, finishing the night an official 0-for-1.

Hindsight being 20/20, taking Downs out of the line-up so the Gints could rush Renteria back in was just an incredibly foolish move.  Groin strains, like hamstring pulls, are very touchy injuries, and the Giants obviously should have given Downs at least one more start and Renteria at least one more day to heal.  You can bet that Renteria will miss at least the next four or five games because they tried to put him back in there a day too soon, and it just wasn’t necessary at all.

For Downs, all’s well that ends well.  He’s virtually guaranteed a few more starts before Renteria recovers from his re-injury.  In limited playing time, Downs is now hitting an even .400 with a 1.180 OPS.

I say, let Downs play until he stops hitting.  Most likely, that will be soon enough.