In Zaidi we trust - The Giants

Last night's game sounds like a classic but I missed as I was at Slowdive.

PATRICK BAILEY CALLED GAME ‼ pic.twitter.com/vB8jOVXkEk

— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) April 27, 2024

Patrick Bailey made history with the walk-off blast, becoming the first catcher in MLB history to turn a double play, catch a shutout and hit a walk-off home run in the same game, per OptaSTATS.

This was nice, I like it when people are classy:

"There's some really good people here."

Joey Bart, now on the Pirates, tells @PavlovicNBCS how much he appreciates his time with the Giants pic.twitter.com/faLoEkJcHt

— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) April 27, 2024

xp that's some reaching but I guess with baseball there's such a huge sample size of games it's hard not to be surprised when the first of anything happens.

xp it wasn’t him sneering about him being DFAed. Giants fans were gloating for whatever reason. Good for him.

6 - 4 on this home stand with two series wins and one split. One month in and one game under .500, will take it. No help from Snell but still doing okay.

Was watching Lee the other day, his batting approach is rather unique so I looked up his first 5 weeks of MLB stats.

He primarily bats lead off so you'd expect him to walk a lot... yet he doesn't: 7.2% BB/PA.

That said he doesn't strike out a tremendous amount either: 8.6% K/PA

His MLB OBP (.304) is tracking about 3/4ths of his KBO career (.407), which is worrying enough but his power has simply evaporated in MLB (.071 ISO, .317 SLG) compared to his .340/.407/.491/.898 KBO career line.

He's performing barely replacement level which is a tough swallow for an untradeable OF due to make >$20M/yr in the next 5 years.

You could also calm down about a guy adjusting to a league that’s notably more difficult than the one he came from *checks notes* just over a month into his MLB career

The Giants big offseason signings fWAR descending:

Hicks: 0.7
Chapman: 0.3
Lee: 0.2
Snell: 0.1
Soler: 0.0
Tom Murphy (?): -0.3
Ray: n/a

Totalling $354M spent for a cumulative 1.0 WAR.

For comparison, the Giants are paying Patrick Bailey $748k and getting 1.1 WAR from him.

It’s a month into the season

fyi I’m not going to shed a tear about Charles Johnson spending money on players rather than donating it to Christian extremist superpacs or whatever else he does with his fortune

Yeah no, seem to recall a survey of MLB GMs that rated Lee's contract the worst signing of the offseason. 😬

Checked his savant page and it was a sea of blue as expected.

...but I'm here for the optimism!

I don’t mean to be mean but who gives a fuck? It’s one month in.

Suggest you see an opticians if this is “a sea of blue”
https://i.postimg.cc/dtbm4H5X/IMG-0373.png

For comparison, the Giants are paying Patrick Bailey $748k and getting 1.1 WAR from him.

Well yeah, for all the chasing after free agents and losing and then making questionable panic signings the core problem with the Giants is an inability to identify and/or develop young hitters. Hard to buy your way out of mediocrity.

Giants haven’t developed an actual slugger type since ooooh Posey? Belt? That seems common for lots of teams around the league though. They develop pitching or hitters, but usually not both.

#CaptSaveAHoo 😂

(truly terrible joke, I am in transit back home and will address Lee's blurple statcast sometime later this week!(?) )

Sorry gyac, full plate atm, wish I possessed the bandwidth for daily content creation 😔

Pat the Bat & Andrew Baggarly both agree with me!

https://theathletic.com/5480930/2024/05/09/sf-giants-jung-hoo-lee-season-start/?source=user_shared_article

The league-average whiff rate on four-seam fastballs is 21.8 percent. Lee’s rate of 6.9 percent on four-seamers is the fourth lowest among 76 players who have been thrown at least 175 of them. More notably, Lee’s whiff rate on four-seamers at 95 mph or faster is just 3.1 percent. That’s the second-lowest rate among 207 major leaguers who have seen at least 40 such pitches, behind only Cleveland’s Steven Kwan (who hasn’t swung and missed at any of them).

Lee’s overall contact rate of 91.3 percent is the third best in the majors, trailing only Kwan and Luis Arraez, the two-time batting champ whom the San Diego Padres just acquired from Miami for four prospects. (One of those prospects, minor-league relief pitcher Woo Suk Go, is Lee’s brother-in-law.)

Lee’s batting average on all fastballs is .241. Based on the quality of contact, though, he should be hitting close to .300 on heaters.

All of this to say: high heat isn’t knocking the bat out of his hands. Which is important. Because he doesn’t walk much (which is partly a function of his high contact rate), his on-base skills are heavily reliant on his ability to hit for average.