Mets Hire Brodie Van Wagenen As General Manager

The Astros used just 2 top-10 Draft Picks (Corerra and Bregman) and had merely the 18th highest payroll when they won it all last season

You cannot act as though the Astros are just lucky when they created most all of that luck through their understanding of the game and how to best better themselves for the future. Anyone can do the work to target the right international free agents, including the Mets. And yes, Correa and Bregman would of course help anyone – but just having high draft picks does not mean you are going to be able to do anything with said picks

Take, for instance, the Twins. From 2012-2015 Minnesota had the same amount of top-6 DPs as the Astros (4 – Bregman was merely a repick for not signing Appel). The big difference between the two clubs is the Twins have almost no analytics going on, while the Astros are one of the single most advanced in the game. The Astros therefore drafted, signed internationally, traded for, developed and used talent to become a force within a short amount of time. The Twins meanwhile are languishing away wondering what to do next

You use two accounts to have one conversation? Interesting…

So no one is creating any strawmen anywhere. You specifically asked for teams who won without huge payrolls or a bunch of top-DPs they were using – you were given them, but still try to dismiss it. You say the Giants won without analytics, get shown that they actually had PITCHf/x and DEFENSEf/x years before any other clubs, and then you dismiss it. You obviously have what you want to believe and any facts to the contrary get dismissed so you can hold dear to what you wish was the case instead.

Now youre trying to change your argument to “No team can point to analytics as the MAIN reason for its playoff success.” – a completely faulty argument as of course not only using Analytics will cause victories …well, unless you are the Rays of course; they won 90 this year with almost no payroll and only 1 top-10 pick since 2000 (a 2017 pick who is still in the minors)

“Did they use analytics? Of course. But less than almost anyone overall, and won 3 championships…”

You act like all these teams were using analytics back in the mid/late 2000s – they weren’t, or were using only minimal, now archaic stuff (basically the mid-2000s Moneyball “OBP = good” idea) not remotely comparable to what the Giants had.

What the Giants had is something that NO ONE had at the time – PITCHf/x and DEFENSEf/x. The data is now common in probably most every front office, but back in the mid/late 2000s it was still merely an idea Sportvision was developing and perfecting in AT&T Park. That is data that only the Giants had, that they were using and developing their theories off of, and that was cutting edge technology for the time. “Defense is the new OBP” is a phrase from 2010-2012, years after the Giants had already been using the most advanced technology in the game.

“Twins stink now and Astros are good. But 5-10 years ago, it was reverse. So, it doesn’t say much about more vs less analytical approach”

Again, 10 years ago very few clubs were using anything near the analytics of today, and most of the now sabermetric clubs weren’t using it at all. Cubs, Astros, Pirates, Dodgers, Mets, Nationals, Brewers, Mariners, and on and on – none of those clubs had any real Analytics at that time. Maybe they were tossing around that Moneyball “OBP = good” idea, but that’s about it. It was basically just the A’s, Indians, Blue Jays, Red Sox, Yankees, Rays, Cardinals and Giants that were trying to use them as a science in the mid/late 2000s.

And to your FIP stuff …huh??? I honestly don’t think you know even the slightest thing about FIP if you really believe it’s more about the ballpark and that somehow playing in a pitchers park will decrease a pitchers FIP – playing in a pitchers park actually increases your FIP as a hit suppressing stadium is an advantage that would get neutralized in the calculation.

Your error boils down to this completely backwards belief:
“You countered and said No, the FIP is NOT due to the ballpark because it yields non-HR hits at an average or greater level. BUT, the latter don’t count against FIP”

The entire idea behind FIP is Hits Allowed (specifically, BAbip) – it is determining how many hits you should have allowed, based off your contact rate, with an average defense in an average park with average luck behind you. It does little other than neutralize BAbip to the average expected and then assigns you additional hits (or the reverse.) If you play in a pitchers park, your BAbip will be lower than average and when neutralized, your FIP will go up.

So yes, your belief having a top-3 FIP is caused by playing in a pitchers park is absolutely, completely backwards.

I honestly don’t think you have a point and are merely continually changing your arguments in an attempt to try and find one – now specifically trying to focus on my non-important use of FIP as if it somehow proves your point that the Giants didn’t use analytics; by your first saying FIP is created by ballpark and doesn’t factor for hits, but now trying to switch to FIPs lack of inclusions of HR …an argument that still doesn’t hold up because:)

The Giants had the 5th lowest ERA, tied for 3rd lowest FIP (in a clump of #3-5) and 7th lowest xFIP (in the #4-#8 cluster)

They had that Pitching because they ignored traditional scouts (see, Romo, Timmy, etc) and instead focused on Analytics (specifically PITCHf/x and DEFENSEf/x, that only they had at the time) to ensure they had the best possible Defense (ranked 6th in game over that time) and high K/contact controlling pitchers (3rd highest K/9, 2nd lowest Hard Contact) to play up to the specific park they were playing in, best positioning themselves to win (exactly what the Royals identified they were doing and started copying a few seasons later)

As far as mid/late 2000s go, the Giants were one of the single most forward thinking Analytical clubs in the entire game, and proved the “Defense is the new OBP” theory that took hold in the early 2010s. No matter how much running around in circle trying to stay off topic you do, that will not change

Your question is childish gibberish as it is just a desperate attempt to avoid the clearly incorrect statement you initially gave (that the Giants aren’t one of the earliest users of cutting edge Analytics and instead were instead a club to use it the least,) and try to now hide behind the use of one term where plenty of others could have been used just as easily instead

What you can not do is just accept the reality that you were comically wrong in your assertion. And just how wrong?

(another long article quote ahead)
““This is like Moneyball 2.0,” said Hank Adams, chief executive of Sportvision, the company perhaps best known for augmenting reality on football fields with the yellow first-down lines. The company’s Pitchf/x technology, developed in Mountain View and pioneered by the Giants, tracks a pitched ball at 60 discrete points in its half-second flight from the point of release to the catcher’s mitt, measuring speed, arc, spin, break and location in the strike zone.

In stealth mode, the Giants are now able to track the ball in the opposite direction. Fieldf/x, which the Giants are fully deploying for the first time this year, tracks the hit ball and the defensive players as they react to it. For the first time since baseball statistics have been kept — we are talking 150 years — baseball statisticians will soon have objective data on how quickly fielders react to balls in play, how fast they get to the ball, and the accuracy and location of their throws.

On deck for the Giants: Controlf/x, which shows precisely where a pitch goes in relation to the spot where the catcher sets the target. Some catchers are better at framing a pitch for the umpires, Adams said, resulting in more strike calls, which in turn leads to as many as 20 extra outs a season. It does not sound like much, but it equates to two extra wins a season and potentially millions of dollars in extra revenue.

“That’s just one tiny example that a catcher might be undervalued,” Adams said.

Keeping a video eye on the ball during just one game generates as much as 2 terabytes of data, Adams said, requiring advanced algorithms, powerful graphics-processing chips developed by nVidia of Santa Clara, data storage tools and other technologies that are abundant in Silicon Valley.

The Giants were also the first team to adopt motion sensor suits, the same technology used to digitize human movement in video games and movies, to capture the nuances of a pitcher’s motion or hitter’s swing on a computer. They were first in the major leagues to embrace wireless Internet service in the stadium, to set up Internet kiosks and to welcome iPods and iPads into the locker room and stands.
…
Like Pat Gillick, Sabean is a firm believer in delegating authority and hiring good people and letting them do their jobs. Bob Evans, the Giants’ vice president of baseball operations, oversees many of the team’s free-agent negotiations and other daily operations. The Giants are also more progressive and Sabermetrically inclined than their reputation suggests. No move is made at either the major or minor league levels without statistical analysts Jeremy Shelley and Yeshayah Goldfarb crunching the numbers first.”

…
San Francisco Giants – the very first team to use PITCHf/x, DEFENSEf/x, CONTROLf/x, Motion Capture technology on hitters and pitchers, wifi to have the data available in the dugouts at all times, and they ran the analytical data on every single player before making a decision on them …yet “built 3 championship teams NEVER touching analytics” because “were notorious for using them the least” (in your world, at least)

So go ahead, continue with your strawmen and squirrels to avoid how embarrassingly incorrect you were in your initial assertion