A Graphic Look at Replacing Runs in FA: San Francisco Giants

I’m guessing it’ll be a Cabrera/Pagan/Schierholtz configuration in the outfield, with Huff at first base to start the year.
Then hopefully shortly thereafter, Belt will take over as starting 1B — which I guess makes it a Huff/Pagan/Cabrera outfield.

And shift Cabrera to a corner spot. The logical choice would be LF leaving Nate in RF. Seeing as this is the Giants, it will most likely be the other way around. How does that change the graphic?

Crawford came up as a very average hitter, going straight from AA to the major leagues. He was predictably awful at the plate.

To assume he will be just as bad in 2012 is a bit of a stretch. I don’t think Crawford is likely to morph into a young F. Sanchez with better shoulders but I think it’s silly to assume he will continue to be a worse replacement than Orlando Cabrera (which this graphic does).

Expecting that Crawford has not matured at all but, rather, will always be a .180 batter is as unfair as it is silly. I realize it wasn’t your job to write in this cavaet but .230-.240 seems a more reasonable expectation. I’d be hard pressed to say, off the top of my head, how that would convert to wRAA except to add that his RE24 looked a lot better than Tejada or Cabrera’s did in spite of his low average. Unless his situational hitting is awful, he should be able to contribute pretty well in the 7 or 8 hole.

He produced better than a lot of players in Fall League as well, showing a fair bit of maturity in spite of a skid in the last two weeks of the Arizona season.

Since you designate SS as a position being replaced, you should also have looked into the change at C because Posey was there for less than two months and Whiteside and Stewart had a lot of playing time there that they (particularly Whiteside) will not get in 2012.

This is exactly what a lot of Giants fans are forgetting, that Posey should be in the lineup for most of the season in 2012, which should be a huge difference for the offense.

In addition, Pagan should be the CF, with Melky in one of the corner OF positions. Pagan is better defensively there than Melky, at least in recent seasons. Right now, Schierholtz is considered the starting RF by Bochy, it is his to lose, so that would put Cabrera in LF then.

But it will be a competition between Belt and Schierholtz for a starting position (Belt for 1B and Schierholtz for RF) in spring training, the way I understand it. Bochy said that Huff could play more games in LF in 2012, as they want to make Belt more comfortable, if he wins a spot, by playing Belt at his natural position, 1B. So the OF could become Huff/Pagan/Cabrera, as well, should Belt win a starting spot.

I would note that while Belt will be better than Schierholtz, most probably ,some day, just because he’s projected to be better does not mean that he will have suddenly figured out how to avoid strikeouts at the higher levels (he’s been pretty bad at both AAA and MLB levels) that has been his huge weakness as a hitter. He needs to control that while hitting for average, OBP, and power, to beat out Schierholtz.

Question: are the Bill James projections that you used adjusted for playing time? Also, you compare to Beltran but he wasn’t here all season. The OF was really a combination of Beltran, Belt, Huff, Torres, Burrell, Ross, Schierholtz, for the most part. Is there a way to take each of the composite Giants LF, CF, RF batting lines (like in the splits in BB-Ref) and calc the wRC values for them?

would move them up into 28th place or something?