by Jim Jividen

Created on: December 10, 2008

San Francisco's had 18 primary second basemen, they are listed below. Joe Strain and Joe Straint variants are not listed; I've assigned a second basemen for each season of San Francisco Giants baseball with his WARP3 total while a Giant (not necessarily just at 2B) and his best season(s) as a Giant.

Why?

'Cause I feel like it. Go Giants!

RAY DURHAM
2003-08
27.9
2003 (6.5)

-Durham's career WARP is in the mid 80s, but his six best seasons were with the WSox.

JEFF KENT
1997-2002
58
2002 (12.3) 2000 (12.1) 2001 (10.5)
-Obviously, he'll be on my list of the 200 greatest players in major league history and he should go to the HOF. He's the greatest SFG second baseman ever. Spoiler alert only for readers of Helium (that's you! You! Wheeeeeeee! Kent's going to check in as the 102nd greatest major leaguer ever, I haven't gotten there yet on my blog, where I'm only up to 168)

ROBBY THOMPSON
1986-96
57.2
1993 (9.7)
-Robby's second. Kent just exceeded Thompson's value as a Giant. Thompson's 4 best seasons are all better than any Durham year in SF.

MANNY TRILLO
1984-85
4.4
1984 (2.2) 1985 (2.2)

-A terrible baseball player. His career WARP3 in a 17 year career was 37.1 He was 6500+ plate appearances of lousy. He got 505 plate appearances for the '85 Giants and (untranslated) his OBP was .287 and he slugged .288. This is why performance analysis is a good thing - it isn't that these metrics weren't valued in 1985 as they are today so Trillo should only be evaluated on his batting average (which was .224 in '85, so who was he foolin', exactly? - I'm looking at you Jimmy Davenport) its that many in positions of power (front office and media) didn't recognize what it was that made someone a good baseball player. We have all of these sportswriters (and Steve Hirdt) spouting this nonsense about how "feared" Jim Rice was. We don't need to talk in cliches - we have data. We can see what actually happened - and we could see it then too - it's not like they are declassified Societ memoranda - we don't need John Gaddis to explain (wrongly explain, I might add) the Cold War to us in hindsight, the numbers existed then, had you read Bill James, you wouldn't have given Manny Trillo 505 plate appearances and you may not have lost 100 games.

That's not presentist speak - I was reading Bill James in 1985 - we didn't have WARP3, but I knew Manny Trillo was an out machine.

There's no excuse for baseball executives and opinion makers, in 2008, not to understand what happens on a baseball field. Just today, literally

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>