The Giants lineup was everything that had been prognosticated last night, failing to mount anything resembling an offense despite a less than dominant performance from Brad Penny. Gotta say, it couldn’t have happened to a better team. Then again, do we have the right to talk? After all, just five years ago, we assembled a lineup that was similarly anemic. But, did we suck harder than the Giants do this year? So, in the tradition of “my dad could get his ass kicked by yours” I wanted to see just which team’s general manager was more myopic when he saw their lineup and said “yep, this’ll get us to the playoffs”. Nothing too scientific here (compared to the usual assortment of acronyms I throw out there), I’m just going to use the combined OPS+ of the eight starters from both teams. The Giants would get killed in a matchup of just straight OPS since AT&T Park is one of the most pitcher friendly in baseball, OPS+ corrects for this. The Giants OPS+ numbers are derived from their ZIPS projections and their park factors from 2005-2007. The 2003 Dodgers starters were determined by whoever Baseball Reference said the starters were.
|
|
OPS+ |
|
Bengie Molina |
80 |
|
Rich Aurilia |
83 |
|
Ray Durham |
81 |
|
Jose Castillo |
77 |
|
Brian Bocock |
34 |
|
Dave Roberts |
84 |
|
Aaron Rowand |
98 |
|
Randy Winn |
97 |
|
Total |
635 |
|
|
|
|
Paul LoDuca |
91 |
|
Fred McGriff |
99 |
|
Alex Cora |
67 |
|
Adrian Beltre |
88 |
|
Cesar Izturis |
60 |
|
Jeromy Burnitz |
69 |
|
Dave Roberts |
73 |
|
Shawn Green |
116 |
|
Total |
663 |
I was going to also put the 2003 Tigers on here, but Dmitri Young’s 144 OPS+ that year quickly takes them out of the running. As a comparison to how low these numbers are, Barry Bonds had an OPS+ of 268 in 2002, 42% of the entire Giants’ lineup this year.
As of right now, this current Giants team is probably the most pathetic offense assembled in recent memory, but that’s going to stop once the Giants install some waiver bait like Ramon Martinez at short instead of Brain Bocock. Once they do that, their offense will at least be able to match the show the 2003 Dodgers put on. Of course, without a rotation that pulled a good season out of Kaz Ishii and a bullpen where Tom Martin retired 95% of his inherited runners, the 88 wins that team put up is well out of the Giants reach.
Update>>April Fools Day tends to be the worst day on the Internet, but Grant from McCovey Chronicles managed to actually pull off a subtle April Fools joke.