Dip In Strikeouts Has Hurt Giants

Remember when the Giants’ pitching staff used to be lights out? Those were the days...

It's not that they're bad now, it's just that they're not nearly good as they once were.

I wrote an article yesterday about Matt Cain’s struggles, but Tim Lincecum’s fall from greatness has been even more pronounced--and costly.

Let’s look at Lincecum’s numbers over the last 6½ seasons:

Year	ERA	K/9	HR/9	LOB%	Avg. FB Vel.
2008*	2.62	10.51	0.44	77.9%	94.0
2009*	2.48	10.42	0.40	75.9%	92.4
2010	3.43	9.79	0.76	76.5%	91.2
2011	2.74	9.12	0.62	78.5%	92.2
2012	5.18	9.19	1.11	67.8%	90.4
2013	4.37	8.79	0.96	69.4%	90.2
2014	4.90	8.38	1.09	70.6%	89.8

*Won N.L. Cy Young Award

You'll notice a sharp drop in production in all five categories. The ERA has ballooned; the strikeouts have fallen steadily; the home runs have ticked up; and he’s stranding fewer runners. Perhaps the most significant trend is the drop in average fastball velocity. This seems to be the key issue that’s caused Lincecum’s demise.

As Lincecum has suffered, so has the staff as a whole. Once elite, Giants starters are no longer arguably the best in baseball. Though Madison Bumgarner and Tim Hudson are pitching great, the Giants’ rotation is formidable, but no longer even close to what it used to be.

Here’s how the Giants pitched in 2010, 2012, and so far in 2014, with the N.L. rank in parentheses:

Year	ERA	K/9	HR/9	HR/FB	LOB%
2010	3.36 (1st)	8.20 (1st)	0.83 (3rd)	8.0% (1st)	77.0% (1st)
2012	3.68 (5th)	7.67 (7th)	0.88 (5th)	9.9% (4th)	73.6% (5th)
2014	3.41 (6th)	7.52 (13th)	0.78 (11th)	9.3% (10th)	73.7% (9th)

Again, there’s a steady decline in some major categories. Even when numbers don't decline, the N.L. rank does--sharply--in four of the five categories.

The steepest declines are in K/9 and LOB%, and they’re closely related. 

Just four short years ago, the Giants struck out more batters per nine innings than any other team in baseball. That helped them get out of jams without having to rely on defense (think infield hits, bloop hits, range issues, errors). This season, their 7.52 K/9 is third worst in the N.L., so teams are putting the ball in play much more often against the Giants.

Giants pitchers used to get big strikeouts in big situations (men on base), and the result was that their LOB% was an MLB-leading 77% in 2010.

Now that they’re not striking out as many hitters, their 73.7 LOB% is only 9^th-best in the N.L. this season.

As fangraphs.com puts it, “Pitchers that record a high number of strikeouts can pitch their way out of jams more easily than pitchers that rely upon their team’s defense, so they are able to maintain LOB%s higher than league average.”

Indeed, when the Giants went from being an elite strikeout team to a below average strikeout team, their LOB% suffered, leading to more runs scored and a higher team ERA relative to the rest of the N.L.

Lincecum’s fall from dominance has hurt the Giants dramatically, and it doesn’t help than Cain has struggled lately too.

The good news for Giants fans is that Bumgarner is a bona fide ace and he will likely continue to improve (he’s only 24 years old), and Cain should re-discover his winning ways.

But for the Giants to re-establish themselves as an elite pitching team, they’ll need to bring back the strikeout and the magical mojo that accompanies it.