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Barry Laminack: Why you shouldn't be freaking out about Ken Giles...yet

Barry Laminack: Why you shouldn't be freaking out about Ken Giles...yet
Your Ken Giles panic is unwarranted. Al Bello/Getty Images

It seems like the cool thing to do early in the 2018 Astros season is to freak out over Ken Giles.

Now let me start this by saying I'm not a Ken Giles apologist.

Did he have a bad World Series? Yes.

Is he frustrating? Yes.

Is he a good closer? Yes.

Is he an elite closer? No.

But to say Ken Giles isn't any good, or needs to lose his job (as I've heard a few folks say already this year, 13 games in to the season) is just silly.  

The first thing these freaker-outers (totally just made that up) point to is how much he sucked in the World Series, and to that I say, no doubt! He did suck, and so did Josh Reddick, but nobody is calling for him to lose his job. Corey Kluber won the Cy Young and then posted a sweet 12.79 era in the postseason last year, higher than Giles 11.74 if you can believe that.

Besides, Astros fans should be used to their big named starters sucking in the playoffs, right?

Remember how Bagwell and Biggio had bad playoffs seemingly EVERY playoffs?

Remember how Jose Altuve hit .154 in the playoffs in 2015? BTW, THATS ALSO WHAT HE SLUGGED!!

Oh, say, do you guys remember when the best closer in baseball, Kenley Jansen, had a blown save (game 2)  and a loss (game 5) in the 2017 world series?

This is fun.

Anywho…

...oh and before we get to the data, a word for you "eye testers" out there, because inevitably somebody will say, "Hey stupid, I don't need stats, the eye test is all I need!!!!"

Well, just remember that you probably focus more on the bad than the good with your eye test (and memory). That's what numbers are for, to show the truth..aka facts.

So when you look at the numbers last year Ken Giles was one of the better closers in baseball.

He ranked 8th in saves with 34.

Among closers who ranked in the top 10 in saves he was tied for third with only four blown saves, and only three others in the top 10 had an era under 3.00 like he did.

Now let's get nerdy.

There's a new stat that I found the compared something called shutdowns and meltdowns and it was basically a better way to quantify how good of closer is based on whether they shut down a situation or melted down in that situation.

More on SD and MD from Fangraphs.com:

"Shutdowns (SD) and Meltdowns (MD) were created as an alternative to Saves and Blown Saves in an effort to better represent a relief pitchers value. While the Save rule is odd and complicated, Shutdowns and Meltdowns strip away these complications and answer a simple question: did a relief pitcher help or hinder his teams chances of winning a game? If they improved their teams chances of winning by a certain amount, they get a Shutdown. If they instead made their team more likely to lose by a certain amount, they get a Meltdown.

Think of Shutdowns and Meltdowns as a simple way to determine whether or not the pitcher had an effective outing or not.

...40 shutdowns is roughly as impressive as 40 saves or 40 holds. Dominant closers or set-up men will typically have 35 to 40+ shutdowns and a handful of meltdowns.

Meanwhile, meltdowns are more common than blown saves, and they can happen to both closers and non-closers alike. The worst relievers will rack up around 10 to 15 meltdowns in a season."

Here's a nifty chart showing how Giles stacks up against the games best closer (Jansen, Kimbrel and the up and coming Corey Knebel):

As you can see, Giles had just as many “meltdowns” and Kimbrel last year, and both only had 2 more than Jansen.

If you look at their shutdown percent and meltdown percent (not shown) it shakes down as follows:

SHUTDOWN PERCENT (higher is better):

Jansen 64.62%

Knebel 60.53%

Kimbrel 46.27%

Giles 38.09%

MELTDOWN PERCENT (lower is better):

Jansen 4.62%

Giles 7.94%

Kimbrel 7.46%

Knebel 11.84%

Does Ken Giles make you cuss? Sure.

Doe he have bad outings? Yep.

Dallas Keuchel hasn't been great thus far, nor has Lance McCullers, and everyone's bullpen darling Brad Peacock took the L yesterday vs. the Twins after he couldn't get the job done, yet nobody is asking if these guys should lose their jobs, so chill out with Ken Giles.

At least give him a chance because guys like him, with stuff like he has, don't come around very often.

And lets not forget, Giles is still relatively young in baseball years. In fact, I was surprised to find out when somebody asked if he should be sent down, that he actually could because he only has 3.1 years of service time. That's very young for a closer.

He is got a lively, gifted arm and when he's on he is electric. The problem is he is young and inconsistent and still needs to mature in his role, and that can take some time and drive fans crazy.

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The Thunder beat the Rockets, 111-96. Photo by Alex Slitz/Getty Images.

It was midway through the third quarter of the Oklahoma City-Houston NBA Cup semifinal matchup on Saturday night. Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had just made a short jumper in the lane and, to his delight, a time-out was immediately called.

He needed it.

He retreated to midcourt, crouched down, propped himself up by his fingertips and took deep breath after deep breath. It was that sort of night. And given the way the Rockets and Thunder have defended all season long, such a game was predictable.

In the end, it was Oklahoma City 111, Houston 96 in a game where the teams combined to shoot 41%. The immediate reward for the Thunder: two days off to recover. The bigger reward: a matchup with Milwaukee on Tuesday night for the NBA Cup, with more than $300,000 per player the difference between winning and losing.

“That's what defense does for you,” said Thunder coach Mark Daigneault, whose team has held opponents to 41% shooting or worse a league-best 11 times this season — and is 11-0 in those games. “It keeps you in games.”

The Rockets-Thunder semifinal was basketball, with elements of football, rugby, hockey and probably even some wrestling thrown in. It wasn't unusual. It's how they play: defense-first, tough, gritty, physical.

They are the two top teams in the NBA in terms of field-goal percentage defense — Oklahoma City came in at 42.7%, Houston at 43.4% — and entered the night as two of the top three in scoring defense. Orlando led entering Saturday at 103.7 per game, Oklahoma City was No. 2 at 103.8, Houston No. 3 at 105.9. (The Thunder, by holding Houston to 96, passed the Magic for the top spot on Saturday.)

Houston finished 36.5% from the field, its second-worst showing of the season. When the Rockets shoot 41% or better, they're 17-4. When they don't, they're 0-5.

“Sometimes it comes down to making shots,” Rockets coach Ime Udoka said. “Especially in the first half, we guarded well enough. ... But you put a lot of pressure on your defense when you're not making shots.”

Even though scoring across the NBA is down slightly so far this season, about a point per game behind last season's pace and two points from the pace of the 2022-23 season, it's still a golden age for offense in the league. Consider: Boston scored 51 points in a quarter earlier this season.

Saturday was not like most games. The halftime score: Rockets 42, Thunder 41. Neither team crossed the 50-point mark until Dillon Brooks' 3-pointer for Houston gave the Rockets a 51-45 lead with 8:46 left in the third quarter.

Brooks is generally considered one of the game's tougher defenders. Gilgeous-Alexander is one of the game's best scorers. They're teammates on Canada's national team, and they had some 1-on-1 moments on Saturday.

“It's fun. It makes you better,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “That's what this league is about, competing against the best in the world and defensively, he is that for sure. And I like to think that of myself offensively. He gives me a chance to really see where I'm at, a good test. I'd say I handled it pretty well.”

Indeed he did. Gilgeous-Alexander finished with 32 points, the fifth instance this season of someone scoring that many against the Rockets. He's done it twice, and the Thunder scored 70 points in the second half to pull away.

“We knew that if we kept getting stops we would give ourselves a chance,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “And we did so.”

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