Sabean and Bochy, what a team.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

I'm confident it's a small sample size, but it's still good to know. Thanks much, rweiler!

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?

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.

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.

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.

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...

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).

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.

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'.

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.

It's Henry Chadwick, not Harry.

"Lewis is the third-best offensive player on the Giants, behind Pablo Sandoval and, oddly, Juan Uribe."

What an indictment.

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...

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.