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Fred Lewis was the lead in the AP game story about the Giants‘ 5-4 win over the Diamondbacks last night. Pinch-hitting with the bases loaded and one out in the eighth, Lewis hit a ground ball to second base that well could have been an inning-ending double play. He beat out the relay throw to first, however, which allowed the go-ahead run to score. The Giants’ bullpen held onto the lead over the last six outs, moving the team to four games behind the wild-card leading Rockies with 12 games to play.

It’s a nice story and a good moment for a player who I like a lot, who I’ve written about before, pushing for him to play. My question is: Why the hell was he available for use as a pinch-hitter? Why wasn’t he starting?

Bruce Bochy‘s decision-making with his outfielders this year has left a lot to be desired, and in no case is that more obvious than his decision to bury Lewis in favor of Nate Schierholtz, and to a lesser extent Eugenio Velez, back in June. Lewis is the third-best offensive player on the Giants, behind Pablo Sandoval and, oddly, Juan Uribe. He is the only regular other than Sandoval with an above-average OBP, making him water for an offense thirsty for baserunners. Yet Lewis has started just 20 games, about twice a week, since June 9, a time during which the Giants as a team have an execrable .305 OBP.

Lewis opened the season not only as the starting left fielder, but as the #3 hitter. A hot two weeks (.429/.545/.571) got him promoted, in a way, to the leadoff spot, at which point he caught the other end of the variance (.215/.311/.262) for his time atop the lineup. Bruce Bochy took exactly the wrong lesson from this sequence; instead of looking at Lewis as one of his best players, with a season OBP of .398 and the only Giant willing to work a walk, he dropped Lewis to seventh, saying, “We’re just going to lighten it up for Freddy a little bit by dropping him down and see if that helps.” (Mychael Urban, MLB.com)

Lewis proceeded to play well over the next month, batting .254/.329/.492 while starting 17 of 19 games, and settling into the #5 and #6 slots in the lineup. His season line at that point was .276/.372/.417-he was basically the only Giant other than Sandoval doing anything helpful. It seems, though, that Bochy looked not at Lewis’ OBP, which his team desperately needed, but his RBI count: eight. Lewis wasn’t driving in runs, but then again, how exactly do you drive in runs behind two of the slowest players in baseball (Bengie Molina and Sandoval), one of whom is never on base? Prior to that, he’d batted third behind guys who weren’t getting on base and leadoff behind the bottom of a terrible lineup. Lewis was doing a perfectly fine job, but his manager couldn’t see past Harry Chadwick’s worst invention.

In any case, Bochy began messing with Lewis’ playing time, using Andres Torres and Schierholtz in the outfield, even playing Velez, a middle infielder by trade, in left when the latter came back in late July. Through June 5, Lewis was hitting .269/.365/.407 as more or less the everyday left fielder, with 46 starts in 53 games. He was a significant contributor to the Giants, if a misplaced one, an OBP guy without great power batting behind the productive bats with no speed and ahead of the terrible bottom of the lineup. Since then, Lewis has started consecutive games just three times and has just two starts since August 17. Schierholtz and his half-empty batting average have gotten most of the inherited time since June 11; he’s hitting .282/.320/.435 since that date, not as good as Lewis, but with the kind of line that accumulates RBI. Velez has also played a lot at Lewis’ expense, when the team would have been better off using him at either middle infield spot in place of Edgar Renteria, who’s been awful, or in lieu of trading for Freddy Sanchez.

In a season in which his team desperately needed baserunners, Bruce Bochy took a .398 OBP guy out of the leadoff spot. In a season when he usually started seven guys with below-average OBPs, Bochy benched one of his only OBP guys because he fixated on RBIs, and beyond that, couldn’t recognize that Lewis’ lack of them wasn’t as much a failure on his part as a lack of opportunity. Bochy exacerbated the OBP issue by taking Lewis’ playing time and giving it to players who didn’t get on base as much, from Schierholtz to Velez (or the middle infielders he could have been replacing) and Randy Winn, the veteran having a lousy year.

Bochy simply didn’t use Lewis properly. He had the right idea at the start of the season, using him in the top three spots in the lineup, so that he could be on base for what power exists on the Giants. But Bochy overreacted to small-sample performances, moving Lewis to leadoff after two good weeks and then down to sixth after three bad ones. If he’d simply evaluated Lewis based on the body of work to that date-a .398 OBP on the season and a .359 career mark coming into 2009-he would have left the outfielder at or near the top of the lineup. Instead, he then made the mistake of batting him where his skills would be the least valuable, the six hole, and finally, demoted him to the bench for not driving in runs despite having had precious few opportunities to do so in the season’s first two months.

The Giants are going to miss the postseason by a small amount of wins. Bruce Bochy’s decision to bench Fred Lewis will be significant part of the gap between playing into October and not, and when you look back at the process, you can see that it’s an embarrassing display of incompetence. A good manager would have made use of Lewis’ skills, skills unique on the Giants’ roster. Instead, Bochy jerked the player around and then used bad performance analysis to bury him. The Giants and their fans deserve better than that kind of incompetence.

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rweiler
9/22
I think Bochy actually let the fans make this call for him. There is, and has been, a torrent of abuse for Lewis because aside from the lack of RBI, he strikes out a lot, and he dropped and/or misplayed a couple of routine fly balls. In most fans minds, those couple of dropped balls completely overshadow Lewis' demonstrated ability to get on base, and also the face that even with some memorable flubs, Lewis gets to about as many balls as most left fielders. Bochy's transgression is amplified by the fact that for most of the season, he insisted on putting Edgar Renteria and is .300 OBP in the #2 spot. One can only imagine that he was making out his lineup with the Edgar Renteria that he remembered from a few years back instead of the Edgar Renteria that he actually has playing for him now.
jsheehan
9/22
When I started looking into this, I expected Lewis' defense to be a point against him. As it turns out, he's basically average in both +/- and Clay's system, even though he can look awkward at times.

So there's no defensive case to be made here. He should have been playing.
rweiler
9/22
I completely agree with you, but as I said, the perception created by those couple of dropped balls and the fact that Lewis often makes routine fly balls into an adventure out weighs the reality that shows that Lewis is at least an average defender. Whether Bochy caught it from the fans, or decided to bench Lewis on his own, I can't say. If there is any defense to be made, Lewis has done extremely well as a pinch hitter, but of course, he could have been doing that 4 times a game instead of 1 time every couple of games.
Chomsky
9/22
Sabean and Bochy, what a team.
oira61
9/22
I totally agree with you, Joe, but that said, I don't know how you can rip Bochy for his lineup choices without mentioning the atrophying statue in the corner of the dugout that used to be the Giants' top AAA hitter, Buster Posey.
rweiler
9/22
The Giants handling of Posey is beyond ridiculous. He could have been getting AB's in the minor league playoffs either with Connecticut or San Jose, and instead he has spent that time hanging out in the dugout. If the Giants needed a 3rd cathcer, they could have brought up Steve Holm who in extremely limited MLB at bats has at least shown that he can get on base at a reasonable clip (career 364 OBP). I don't know why the Giants management hate OBP so much.
rweiler
9/22
One more quibble - Pablo Sandoval is faster than you might think. He has 5 SB, though he has been caught 5 times as well, and he scored from 2nd on a ball hit to short center last night. That isn't to say that he is in a class with Ricky Henderson, but he shouldn't be lumped with Bengie Molina either.
Richie
9/22
Thank you for the Giant expertise, rweiler. It's very helpful.

Regarding Lewis' alleged failure at accumulating RBIs, has he hit poorly in his few such situations? Not that I consider that predictive going forward, but we ought to glance at it before blaming his low RBIs entirely on the guys hitting in front of him.
abcjr2
9/22
I am not sure what your stats show but Lewis is regarded by Bay Area fans as a poor outfielder with a minus arm, and Schierholtz is regarded as superior to him in both respects. Lewis has put up 266/355/404 while Schierholtz has put up 272/305/409 -- a little better for Lewis but can you really say that is the reason for a five game gap behind Colorado?

Why no mention of the highly paid Randy Winn, who carries around a 262/320/355 over 569 plate appearances?

DrDave
9/23
50 points of OBP is not "a little better". It's a bigger difference than 50 points of batting average.
vgalloro
9/23
Fifty points of OBP is more than just a little better, especially in a lineup with a crippling lack of hitters who get on base.
abcjr2
9/23
They each have around 300 plate appearances, the 50 point difference in OBP translates to 15 extra baserunners over 300 plate appearances; leaving aside platoon differentials, if you assume either one would have put up the same stats given all the plate appearances, the decision to split them between the two players "cost" the Giants 15 baserunners over the course of this season. To me that means Lewis' offensive stats are a "little" better but don't make the difference of five wins by which the G'ints trail the Rox, Joe's original premise.
BeplerP
9/24
Sorry, I don't believe it. Let's see the math.
coanders
9/23
He doesn't have a poor arm. It's average to above average. It doesn't look good next to Schierholtz's Francoer-like howitzer, though.
begonias
9/22
Just to add another Giants' fan's two cents, Lewis is indeed considered by fans to be a terrible fielder. Given that Giants fans have put up with years of having an idiot in the GM office, I'm not sure they're all that trustworthy. Bochy's failures, in regards to Lewis and Posey among others, are worth our criticism, but it's Sabean who built a club where Fred Lewis is one of the best hitters on the team.
Bernstein
9/23
While I'm not in the Bay Area, I hear most games on radio, and it's certainly true that the radio team ragged on Lewis's glove quite a bit this season.

I also really agree that this isn't a Bochy problem, it's a Sabean problem. I know Joe loves Fred Lewis, but he's not really a .390 OBP guy...he's really a 4th OFer, and even though he's probably a bit better than Winn, Velez, or Schierholtz, I'm not convinced it's enough to make a difference.

The real problem is, as the previous poster said, the lack of actual good hitters. Especially at first base. How you can go five years without having a 1B reach 100 OPS+ is beyond me.
rweiler
9/22
Lewis hit very poorly with RISP in the limited chances that he had, right around .200, however he only had runners on base in front of him in 114 of his 284 ABs, which isn't a very large sample size. Over his career, his numbers with RISP are just about the same as his overall numbers. Either pitchers figured him out this year, or it is small sample size.
Richie
9/22
I'm confident it's a small sample size, but it's still good to know. Thanks much, rweiler!
baserip4
9/23
When I was playing in college I had a coach tell me that I wasn't a regular because "We need your bat at the end of games to come up in big spots." There is a lot of very bad theory in baseball. My question is how does a multi-million dollar corporation (the Gians) employ these people?
LindInMoskva
9/23
If you google Fred Lewis Giants Defense, you will find a great deal of opinion that Fred is a horrible defender and no one who will claim that he is a good defender. This seems like a reasonable, logical starting point. That a leftfielder with poor defense and a .400 slugging percentage could be useful as a pinch hitter/platoon player.

The "We need your bat at the end of games to come up in big spots." was something I heard in little league because I wasn't good enough to start but the coach didn't want to tell me that. So he made up a cliche to make everyone feel better.

The Giants have made their share of mistakes (Zito). But they have Pablo Sandoval in the starting lineup, someone that none of the prospects blogs picked up on early to be any sort of a prospect. They have Matt Cain who was drafted 25th after Bullington, Gruler, Loewen, Everts etc (there were was good choices in that draft like Hamels and Grienke). And they have Lincecum who drafted after Hochevar, Reynolds, Morrow, and Miller.
rawagman
9/23
Zito, at this year's production level, doesn't look so bad.
stephenwalters
9/23
Great observations, Joe. A manager's greatest contribution to his team's performance comes in his allocation of playing time (which includes decisions about pitcher use) rather than strategic issues like bunting, stealing, etc. Yet sabermetricians (to my knowledge) have yet to formulate a good evaluative tool to judge which managers use the talent available to them most efficiently. Tough task, but time for some bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young stathead to develop that metric.
hossypoo
9/23
as a giant fan i've been pissed about a lot of bochy lineup decisions - but getting lewis out of there is not one of them. for some reason lewis is a disaster in left field, whatever the metrics show. even many balls he has caught have been adventures on what should have been easy plays. maybe bochy should have given him more chances to work his way back into the lineup on this obp starved team, but at the time he was removed he had been killing us defensively AND offensively for an extended period - terrible terrible at bats, many in key situations - the flailing swings and misses seemed to have no relationship to the pitches thrown. he was so lost he had to be removed.

harderj
9/23
I'm a Giants fan living in Virginia, but whenever I travel to the Bay Area I try to at least catch games on radio.

I love Freddie's on base percentage (especially on the Jints) and also think the lineup would have been consistently better with him in there, especially over Winn.

But to echo the fan sentiment thread, I remember driving from Yosemite in the snow on opening day this year listening to the KNBR signal as it faded in and out.

Lincecum had struggled and was gone after 3, but the Giants were ahead 4-3 in the top of the 4th as rookie Joe Martinez took over. With one out, he hit Weeks with a pitch and Weeks stole second. Then Corey Hart singled to left and Lewis "airmailed" one home, allowing Weeks to score to tie the game and Hart to go to second, only to score when Fielder singled. Krukow and Kuiper were pretty incredulous, as I recall (something like "wow, a major league left fielder has to make a better throw than that"). A double play ended the inning and later a Rowand homer gave the Giants a lead they didn't relinquish, but since Randy Winn homered later in that game, and Fred made a crucial error, Lewis's fate was cast. Maybe part of Bochy's problem (consistent with decisions made on small samples) is that he has a "primacy" bias, and remembers opening day's comeback (and the need for it) too well :-).

Can Velez play short (or third)? Uribe to third, Pablo to first, Sanchez at second, Lewis, Rowand, Schierholz, and "Oh Please, Oh Please, Oh POSEY." You know, Bengie Molina's bat is *much* too valuable off the bench to put him in the starting lineup...

coanders
9/23
Velez is a menace on the infield. He's transformed himself into a passable outfielder, and that took work. But he's an atrocious defender at second.

Both public opinion of the fans and UZR agree on that.
harderj
9/24
Thanks for the Velez defensive facts. My long-distance, uninformed, diehard fan's hopes die hard...
coanders
9/24
No prob. Velez's IF defense really has to be seen to be believed.
doncoffin
9/23
Checking Freddie Lewis's career stats, I find he has a .357 OBA and a .424 SA. Thinking about Dan Malkiel's recent posts on BP about when to replace a veteran (and, OK, Lewis is only 28, not clearly in the decline phase of his career), it's not absurd to think that Sabean and Bochy think that the replacements Bochy has been using (particularly Schierholtz--who is only 25 this season--, whose career minor league numbers are .355 OBA, .516 SA; not so much Andres Torres) have a good probability of outperforming Lewis.

The fact that this judgement turned out to be wrong does not mean that the decision was wrong. It didn't work out, but it was not, on its face, a clearly incorrect decision. I think the most that can be said was that Bochy has persisted in not using Lewis past the point at which it should be clear that he remains, at least for now, somewhat better than Schierholtz (whose career major league OPS is .740, compared with Lewis's .781).
Bernstein
9/23
I agree, although I'm not sure that Lewis was the guy to bench. PECOTA going into the year predicted these EQA numbers, and then their OPS+ and PA this year:
LH Hitters
Lewis 277 98 322
S'Holtz 285 85 298
I'kawa 246 91 304
RH Hitters
Aurilia 267 47 127
Bats Both
Winn 297 77 570
Velez 259 99 256
Torres 234 129 118

I don't know the L/R splits for the switch hitters...I'd say:
1. None of these guys is helping you at the corners.
2. The spread around predicted and actual results is big enough to justify almost any choice.
3. As it turned out, the big mistake (given the personnel) was to stick with Winn...but he had the best PECOTA projection.
4. The odds that Velez could hit like that in 500 PAs seem very low to me; the same is probably true of Torres (who hit well in AAA in 2007-2008, but PECOTA didn't believe it).
5. This is the fifth consecutive year that the Giants had their regular 1B, and their overall hitting at 1B, fall below 100 OPS+.
6. This is the fifth consecutive year that the Giants had their regular 1B, and their overall hitting at 1B, fall below 100 OPS+.
7. This is the fifth consecutive year that the Giants had their regular 1B, and their overall hitting at 1B, fall below 100 OPS+.

GM problem, not a manager problem.


harderj
9/23
What may have been telling in the coaching staff's perceptions are his strikeouts (as hossypoo alluded to) and his inconsistency month to month (recognizing the problem with small sample sizes and that lack of playing time may have actually contributed to that...chicken/egg).

Here's how it looks to me like he got buried.

After a 7 game hitting streak to start the season (while the Giants went 2-5), and carrying an OBP of over .500, he went 0-4 with 4 strikeouts in the Giants' loss to the Dodgers. The next game, he got flip-flopped with Sandoval from 3rd to 5th in the order, and he went 1 for 1 with two walks, albeit another Giants' loss. His OBP then stood at .514, and Pablo's was at .278, fwiw.

He went 4 for 6 with a walk in the first two games of the Arizona series, hitting fifth and getting his first steal (and caught stealing) of the year, then was moved to leadoff for the series conclusion, with his OBP of .550.

Apparently, this is not what he is cut out for, and I suspect Bochy noticed that over the remainder of the month.

First two times up, called third strike. Third time up, a walk. Last time up, a swinging strikeout.

Next game, 1 for 3 with a walk, then 0 for 4 with a walk and strikeout, then 2 for 5 (1K), then another 0 for 4 with 3 K's (1 swinging, 2 looking), but also an outfield assist and a double play to his credit.

And then the next game, perhaps because of the 3 strikeouts, he sat and Randy Winn with his sub-.300 OBP hit leadoff. Lewis did have a pinch hit double to raise his OBP to .463.

Over the next three games at leadoff, 1 for 12, 7 strikeouts, 1 walk.

He finished April at .299/.420/.403, with 27 k's in 67 at bats and a k/bb ratio of 2.45. That's not quite Jose Hernandez (or Alfonso Soriano) numbers, but it's pretty bad, especially for someone with a slugging percentage lower than his on base percent.

To that point, his leadoff numbers were 4 hits in 31 at bats (3 singles and a double) with 4 walks and 15 strikeouts, 4 runs scored and 0 rbi.

For May hitting some leadoff and then primarily 6th or 7th as the article points out, Lewis was .258/.340/.438, but still striking out more than twice as many times as walking, 21 k's, 10 walks.

He did pretty much nothing with his limited playing time in June, a Bochian self-fulfilling prophecy, recording a .167/.186/.262 month. 11 more K's to go with only 1 walk. His OBP declined steadily, as there was only one day in June when his OBP was higher than the day before.

So, could he have helped the Giants? It's hard to say if more playing time would have netted better results than he got in June, but other than April and August, he has had a pretty poor season.

I want to be a Freddie Lewis believer, but looking more into the numbers it looks to me like he kind of fumbled the opportunity he was given with a sub-par May while playing regularly, though being bounced around in the lineup probably didn't help any.
MJMcC0
9/23
What surprises me in both this article and the comments is that no one has discussed OBI. Clearly a batter can't bat runners in if there are no runners. But one of the appeals of the RBI Opportunities report () is that it relates that dubious counting stat to a somewhat more relevant rate stat. And in the case of Fred Lewis, the rate is terrible. So far this year, he has brought in only 9% of the runners on base in front of him. This is a similar rate to Matt Cain (and admittedly not much worse than Freddy Sanchez's 11%).
By contrast, the three players Sheehan pillories have been converting those opportunities at rates between 14 and 21%. Perhaps most disconcerting to his manager has been his inability to bring in runners from third. Nearly 30% of his opportunities have been with runners on third (38 out of 133) but only 10 of these (26%) have scored. The other three have only had 76 such opportunities (2X in 2.1X the PA) but have brought 30 (40%) home. As the article and the commenters acknowledge, you can't score if you don't get on base. But it's also true that it does no good to get on base if you can't maneuver those last 90'.
MJMcC0
9/23
Sorry, I meant to put in the link to this report: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/statistics/sortable/index.php?cid=204019
garbinowitz
9/23
If abcjr2 is to be believed, I'd argue that Schieroltz in the outfield probably makes up the differece of 15 baserunners over the course of a season. If the metrics don't show Freddy's weakness in LF, then something's wrong with the metrics. Sometimes, you have to watch the games.
coneway
9/23
It's Henry Chadwick, not Harry.
eighteen
9/23
"Lewis is the third-best offensive player on the Giants, behind Pablo Sandoval and, oddly, Juan Uribe."

What an indictment.
mhmckay
9/25
Sabean doesn't understand the game well enough to have his job. Barry Bonds masked his stupidity for years. My favorite was Armando Benitez who with his 45 saves for Florida had a BABIP of .152. How many standard deviations is that away from the mean? 3 years! He is classic for buying the blip year. Rowand's blip, Winn's strong second half, Durham's blip, Zito wasn't so much of a blip but a failure to see what any decent baseball person and a calculator could see. He failed to see Joe Nathan gave up 40 hits in 70 innings. What they hell does he base his decisions on? They almost traded Cain for Alex Rios. How many 23 year olds have put up his type of numbers? (KNBR idiot Ralph B supported than one - the same guy who wants Lincecum to pitch into the 8th even if it puts him into the 120's).

With history as a predictor of the future... My prediction for next year. They will sign Uribe to a multi-year deal - similar to the Winn blip. They will keep Molina to groom Posey and then give Molina most of the at bats when Posey has a bad week. They will sign another Renteria type to a multi year deal - oh wait Sanchez will end up being that guy...

Time to clean house and get a 30 year old with some basic math skills...
joeboxr36
9/25
Evaluating talent is a two-fold operation: what you see and what the stats tell you. And this is a classic argument for giving too much weight to what the stats say versus what you see. Fred Lewis completely botched the most fundamental plays, and had some of the worst at bats I've seen in the while. I was HUGE fred lewis fan coming into the season, but he was a complete flop. He merited no starting playing time at all. From all the +/- I've seen, clearly all the readers are in complete agreement with Sheehan on this. But I'm telling you, Fred Lewis has no business in the starting lineup from the eyes of someone who watches every game year in and year out. I know this is a stats website, so no one will agree. But stats is not greater than scouting, nor scouting greater than stats. It's a two headed beast. Don't forget it.
mhmckay
9/25
Agree. As a former college and semi pro player I would agree you need to see the player. Some pitchers go belly up when the game gets tight or worse soft when they get a big lead (I would love to see stats that had effectiveness swinging from -4 runs behind to +6 runs ahead - Zito can't seem to pitch with a lead) I am merely saying that Sabean, like several managers at my current non baseball corporation, manages by exception. Fred Lewis is not an adequate major league baseball player. Neither are Bowker, Schieholtz, Ishikawa, Burriss, Velez etc...Bengie Molina, when viewed properly is not helping the Giants win ball games. The issue here is selecting from the trash in your heap.
jcjaxson
9/28
Before Pablo, the Giants had not produced an above average position player since Bill Mueller.

Debating whether or not to play Fred L is indictment enough of Sabean. Bochy was given a pile of turds to rearrange. A team with no power, no avg, no OBP. How this collection of players devoid of any offensive skills all ended up on 1 team is staggering.

Never seen anything like it outside of an expansion team.