A warm night at Municipal Stadium — perfect for comical baseball. (Jen Mac Ramos)

To say that the game began smoothly would be irony. Base hits and errors littered the field through the first three innings with the Giants on defense. Though only two of the runs were charged to San Jose starter Adalberto Mejia, they quickly trailed the Quakes and weren’t able to recover.

The Giants offense was non-existent through most of the game. The first hit of the game came on a Shawn Payne single in the 4th inning, then promptly was caught stealing. The offense mustered up four hits — two belonging to Ryan Cavan — and had one man on base because of a hit by pitch, but nothing came out of it.

The defense, to put it simply, was shoddy. It didn’t help that the ball was bouncing around in the infield, hitting the bases and causing infielders to take it on a bad hop. Myles Schroder had the most errors in the game, with two being charged to him: one on a pickoff attempt and another due to fielding. Angel Villalona had one error on a fielding attempt and Mac Williamson had a throwing error in the 1st inning.

The pitching might be in line with the defense. Mejia was very hittable — giving up seven hits in five innings of work, a drastic change from his last start against the Modesto Nuts where he only gave up one hit and took a perfect game into the 6th. All four errors in the game occurred with Mejia on the mound, which clearly didn’t help matters for San Jose.

Luis Rojas came in to relieve Mejia, but only lasted 0.1 innings. His command was off and out of the 28 pitches he threw, 12 were for strikes. The first two batters he faced ended up walking and then scoring when Noel Cuevas hit a single with one out.

Kelvin Marte, Cody Hall, and Josh Osich were able to keep Rancho Cucamonga’s bats quiet for the last three innings. That wasn’t enough for the Giants, who were then trailing 6-0.

Garrett Gould, Juan Noriega, and Craig Stem managed to dominate the San Jose offense. Gould only gave up three hits in six innings and struck out eight. Noriega had one inning of work, where he gave up one hit and hit Villalona. Stem took the mound for two innings and allowed no base runners. All three Quakes pitchers did not walk any Giants hitters.

Rancho Cucamonga has the 2-0 avantage in the series. At 1:00 p.m., they will go for the sweep against San Jose, and then the San Francisco Giants will be going for the sweep against the Los Angeles Dodgers at 5:00 p.m.

The easiest place to start is with those home runs. Cain’s given up 9 of them, and he’s currently sporting a HR/FB percentage of 19.1%. This, quite frankly, is unsustainable. The league average HR/FB percentage is usually around 10%, and Cain’s career rate is 7.1%. So we can expect his HR/FB percentage, and subsequently his HR rate, to go down over the course of the season.

The home runs are the main concern, because if you assume a league average HR/FB rate, instead of one almost double the league average, Cain’s been roughly the same pitcher he’s been for the last few years. He’s striking out more batters, but also walking more batters, than he has in the recent past, but for the most part he’s the same guy. The pitching statistic xFIP, which measures only a pitcher’s walks, strikeouts, and home runs allowed, and also assumes a league average HR/FB percentage, has Cain at just slightly better than his career average and slightly worse than the last two years. SIERA, a statistic developed by Baseball Prospectus that includes a lot more variables but measures roughly the same thing, agrees – Cain’s pitching about the same level he’s always pitches, maybe slightly worse, but nothing to get too concerned about.

But anybody who’s watched Cain’s recent starts has wondered if his traditional stuff has been there to start the year. I know I have, so I decided to take a look at the Pitch F/X data. According to the data, um, he’s kinda got his stuff? It’s just different. I’ll explain.

Cain has four main pitches in his arsenal: fastball, slider, curveball, changeup. He uses his fastball between 45-50% of the time, his slider around 20%, and his curveball and his changeup each around 15% of the time. I compared this April’s data to both his full-season numbers last year as well as the data from April only. The reason for this is because while doing my analysis I noticed that Cain has a tendency to increase his velocity over the course of the year.

His fastball’s been mostly par for the course. So far this year he’s throwing it 51% of the time with an average velocity of 91.35 mph. Last April, he threw it 49% of the time with an average velocity of 91.33 mph. The difference so far between this year’s fastball and last year’s is that he’s getting a different break on it. This year’s fastball breaks less downward – awkward wording I know but “breaks more upward” sounded worse – and more inside to a RHB. The pitch has been less effective so far this year than in year’s past, and the loss of some downward break could have something to do with it – the swing-through percentage on his fastball this year is about half his career rate.

His slider has been one of his best pitches historically, and he’s using it more than ever this year — 23% of the time. The slider he’s throwing this year is clearly different from the one he threw last year. In the past, his slider has had what’s called a two-plane break; that is, it breaks downward and also away from righties. But this year’s slider has almost no horizontal break at all, and instead has a more pronounced downward break. He appears to be releasing the pitch slightly lower than he did last year as well, which could have something to do with the difference in break. Another thing that’s curious is that the spin rate on his slider – the average number of times the pitch spins on it’s way to the plate – is 8.6% lower than it was last year, and 5.0% lower than it was last April. What does this mean? I don’t really know. It could mean lower arm speed – less torque on the ball means less spin, but then wouldn’t velocity be affected as well? It also almost certainly affects the break of the pitch. Less spin means the forces the air puts on the baseball are reduced.

His changeup is another pitch that’s about the same as last year. Cain’s changeup is unusual in the fact that it’s only about 6 mph slower than his fastball. Conventional wisdom holds that there should be about a 10 mph difference between a pitcher’s fastball and his changeup in order to successfully keep hitters off balance. Despite this, Cain’s changeup has been an effective change-of-pace pitch in recent years, and the raw data on his changeups this year is largely in line with that of last year. The velocity, break, and spin rate of the pitch is all roughly the same. Nothing to see here.

His curveball is another story. Historically, Cain curveball has been his worst pitch, if you believe Fangraphs’ pitch values (which the jury’s out on, but I’m running with it). This year, however, the pitch has been worse than ever, and you don’t need an advance statistic to see it. The pitch is breaking about two inches less vertically and one inch less horizontally, and the spin rate this year is almost 35% less than it was in 2012. Like his slider, his release point on his curveball appears to be about 4 inches lower than it was last year. Is this a coincidence? It could be. But it also could indicate a subtle change in mechanics that could be to blame for Cain’s poor start – and could indicate that the poor results he’s seen so far this year won’t change until he gets back, mechanically, to where he was last year.

Cain’s struggled in 2013, there’s no doubt about it. The easy explanation is that he’s given up a lot of homers – way more than is normal for him or sustainable over the long term. Remember, we’re talking about a grand total of 34 2/3 innings here. But there are a few indicators if you take a deep look at the raw data that indicates that some things are a bit different about this year’s Matt Cain as compared to last year’s. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. It’s definitely something to keep an eye on, though.

Cain’s next scheduled start is Sunday, Cinco de Mayo, against the Dodgers and Hyun-jin Ryu. While you’re watching, keep an eye on his breaking pitches. They’ve been Cain’s torment thus far this season, but with a few adjustments he’ll be back to the guy we’re used to watching.

Don’t Panic. See, the button even says it. // image Jim Linwood via flickr

On May 1, 2012, the Giants were 12-11, four and a half games back of the first place Dodgers and in fourth place, with a run differential of +3.

Today, May 1, 2013, the Giants are 15-12, just one game back of the first place Rockies and tied with the Diamondbacks, and a game and a half up on the fourth place Dodgers, with a run differential of +4.

From another angle, through 27 games in 2012, the Giants were 13-14, five games back of the first place Dodgers with Arizona and Colorado just half a game behind, a +2 run differential, and just one win removed from fourth place, a negative run differential, and a four game losing streak after being swept at home by the Marlins. The Marlins. I was at the last game of that series and it was pretty miserable, let me tell you.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the Giants are somehow guaranteed to have the season go their way because they’re a bit better off than they were at this time last year. As we should all be painfully aware by now, baseball is strange, unpredictable, sometimes cruel, and basically always capricious. Everything could click into place, mechanical issues and nagging injuries could resolve themselves, and the Giants could go on to win 100+ games, or the bottom could fall out and they could end up missing the playoffs, there’s no way to know right now. But that’s exactly the point, there’s basically no way to know right now. This time last year Angel Pagan looked like he might never hit again and that he was an awful fit for the lead-off spot without any obvious replacement, most of us were still quietly praying that none of Buster Posey’s limbs fell off, and Pablo Sandoval was about to miss yet another month-plus with his second hamate fracture in as many years. And yet, the t-shirt currently sitting next to me in a pile of laundry waiting to be folded tells me that the Giants went on to win the division comfortably and then win the World Series.

Am I expecting the Giants to win the World Series again? Not expecting, no. Repeating is incredibly hard and there are so many things that have to go right that it would be the height of arrogance and probably delusion to be certain. But saying that I’m as close to certain as is reasonable that they’ll have a good season? That I’m comfortable doing. Be frustrated when they play like they’re literally wearing clown shoes and trying to catch the ball with one of those plastic squirty flowers, wonder what mechanical glitch is causing Matt Cain to periodically go all dingerpalooza on us after pitching well for a few innings, but the panicking, hair tearing out, shrieking, wailing, lighting yourself on fire and walking into traffic level I’ve seen from some quarters lately just makes me sad. Not for the team, because I really do believe the team is going to be fine. Matt Cain will figure himself out, Buster Posey is being Buster Posey, Brandon Crawford is inexplicably also being Buster Posey, Pablo’s looking svelter to the general public with each murdered baseball and diving stop, and Madison Bumgarner is slidering and cuttering and sluttering the competition into small pieces on the regular. Hell, for that matter, Tim Lincecum is looking more like someone you don’t cringe at the thought of taking the ball and Hunter Pence seems to be swinging it better with his moulting cycle finished and his new carapace in place. But it makes me sad that people aren’t able to enjoy any of the good or interesting things because they’re so busy rending their garments.

There are good things afoot, but only if you don’t panic.

(Photo by SD Dirk/flickr)

After his home run in the 4th inning on Apr. 16, Brandon Crawford is hitting .304/.407/.500 in 54 plate appearances. Now, in truth, there is nothing we can read into that. Voros’ Law states that anyone can do just about anything in 60 plate appearances. However, I’ll be darned if it hasn’t been a good deal of fun so far. Brandon Crawford is an exceedingly fun player to root for, in no small part because he is a defensive wizard. In the years I have been a Giants fan, I have seen the following shortstop (in chronological order): Royce Clayton (distant past), Aurilia, Omar Vizquel, Juan Uribe, Edgar Renteria, and Crawford. Of that group, Vizquel was the best defender — he did win 2 Gold Gloves as a Giant and the defensive stats, unreliable as they are, back up the assertion that he was still a superior defensive shortstop. But Crawford isn’t far behind. I’d say that Vizquel had slightly better hands and instincts, but Crawford has an enormously better arm. And as much as I love a guy that does nothing but mash taters — Blogmother Mac teases me about this on Twitter constantly — Crawford’s defense is immensely fun to watch.

Crawford’s defense was, by and large, a known quantity when he debuted almost two years ago, and despite a brief run-in with the yips last April has been as advertised. His bat was the question mark. After he was rushed to the majors in 2011 — he only had 1081 plate appearances in the minors, or roughly two season’s worth — he hit terribly. A 67 wRC+ is really awful, but there was a couple bright spots. One was his .228 BABIP, which indicated a good deal of bad luck that stood to improve just because of random chance. Another was his outstanding defense, which let the Giants run him out there day-in, day-out without having to worry about his bat too much. And it paid off — he continued to play outstanding defense, his BABIP normalized (all the way up to .308), and his wRC+ rose to 79. All told, Crawford was worth 2.5 wins last year according to Baseball-Reference. Not bad from your #8 hitter.

Crawford turned 26 this offseason, and he made some comments about how coming into he felt better than he had at any point in his professional career. Players say this kind of hogwash all the time, and usually I’m inclined to disregard it, but he’s come out of the gates absolutely on fire so far. He’s got a team-leading 156 wRC+, and thus far this season he’s gotten into some really good habits. Last year, he swung at 33.4% of pitches he saw that were out of the strike zone – far above the league average. This, no doubt, contributed to his 20% K-rate. This year, he’s cut his O-Swing% (percentage of pitches out of the strike zone swung at) but more than 6.4%, undoubtedly a factor in his 12% walk rate this season.

Crawford’s hot start has led to speculation as to what he could be. Twitter has been abuzz with the possibility of a 20 HR season, or a 100 OPS+ or better, from Crawford this season, and to be honest such assertions are ridiculous. I mean, the guy’s got a .343 BABIP for goodness sake. If Crawford hits 10 home runs this season I’d wager it’ll be his career high. But here’s the thing: the Giants don’t need Brandon Crawford to hit .300 or 20 home runs or anything like that. He’s already a terrifically valuable asset for the Giants to have. If Crawford can continually put up an OPS+ in the 80-85 range and play +10 defense at shortstop, he’ll be worth around 3 wins a year. That’s outstanding production from a guy who’s usually going to hit eighth in your lineup most days.

I’ll admit, I was very skeptical Crawford was ever going to be of much value when he came up in 2011. To me, he seemed like the kind of all-glove, no-hit shortstop that a lot of teams have stashed away in case of emergency, who could be used as a placeholder until a more permanent replacement could be found (oh, how I pined for J.J. Hardy). But Crawford has matured nicely into a player who’s more than an automatic out at the bottom of the lineup, and should be a fixture at short for many years to come.

Okay you shouldn’t feel bad, but you should reevaluate methods and reassess your conclusions probably.

If you’re an analytically inclined baseball fan, April truly is the cruelest month. Okay so yeah, I admit that T.S. Eliot wasn’t actually talking about the month (or more) long battle of wills between people quoting month (sometimes only weeks) long data samples as if they mean something and the people screaming “small sample size!” into the yawning void. That said, it can be difficult to know when the “roots that clutch” are solid enough to start to trust what the statistics are telling you, but we (and some much smarter people from other parts of the internets), are here to help.

There are a few key things to understand about advanced metrics, especially early in the year.

The first, and this is really a general key to using and understanding statistics, is that the data is only as good as the person analyzing it. The vast majority of the time when statistics seem to be telling us something nonsensical: it’s not that the data is wrong, it’s that whichever of us is looking at the data doesn’t clearly understand what the data is really measuring, or someone is willfully misinterpreting the data to prove a point. This is simple when dealing with basic counting stats like home runs, because there’s not a lot to analyze or interpret. Someone hits a lot of home runs or they don’t, and while you can get into things like park factor, you’re talking about reasonably minor tweaks to the raw data, not wholesale redefining of what a number or set of numbers means.

Advanced metrics, unfortunately, have a barrier to entry in that what they’re really measuring isn’t immediately apparent without some research. The key is to remember that if a stat just doesn’t make sense, either you need to look harder at what the stat is really measuring, or what you’re looking at is an anomaly that in a larger sample size will even out.

Small sample size is something you’ll see people shouting a lot this time of year, and for good reason. It’s so easy to be lured in by the shine of favorable statistics for players you want to have big years (Hunter Pence has a 143 OPS+!) or to needlessly worry about players who are starting out slow (Buster Posey only has four extra base hits and NO HOME RUNS OH MAYS SAVE US ALL!).

The thing is, though, neither of them have had 60 at bats. Posey hasn’t even had 50 plate appearances yet, and as Voros’ Axiom (or Voros’ Law, if you prefer) states, “anybody can hit just about anything in 60 at bats.”

Take for example how well Joaquin Arias hit when he took over while Pablo Sandoval was on the DL last year. It seemed like he was on base every game, he was great with RISP, but this was a guy who had never put up an OPS+ that was even league average over an extended sample at any point in his career. Don’t get me wrong, it was a hugely positive development for the Giants that Arias hit well enough to hold down the fort while Sandoval was out, and given Arias’ injury history early in his career it’s certainly not hard to believe that Arias is better than the 60 OPS+/ 56 wRC+ he put up in 2010, but he’s fundamentally an average hitter with limited power. Useful to have, absolutely, but not Babe Arias like he was for that random short stretch last summer.

But anybody can hit just about anything in 60 at bats. In fact, most hitting statistics take 100 at bats or more to stabilize, and pitching statistics take even longer.

When in doubt, I suggest two things. 1) Consult this handy reference guide for the number of plate appearances or batters faced it takes for various statistics to stabilize. 2) Consult career statistics where available. Larger sample sizes are more reliable, unless there is some extenuating factor to make them not relevant (before and after a major injury, for example), and over time most players tend to fall in line with their long term trends. It’s obviously more difficult with players with limited playing time, but when you’re talking about cases of a big star off to a slow start or a journeyman off to a white hot one, the career numbers will guide you.

And when in doubt, repeat to yourself over and over that “xFIP is the mind killer, Matt Cain fears no xFIP”, and remember that Buster ain’t havin’ it. And in this case, “it” is a bad offensive year.

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Hunter Pence ties the game in the 9th.

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And that was the ballgame.

(Flickr/daver6sf)

Ty Blach took the mound for the San Jose Giants. Blach isn’t necessarily on the the radar for most top prospect lists, but he was impressive in this outing.

Going six innings, Blach threw 75, with 52 of those for strikes. He gave up three hits, two walks, and struck out five. His fastball velocity averaged 90 MPH, going as high as 93 at times. Blach was also able to get strikes using his offspeed pitches.

Bryce Bandilla came in on relief in the 7th, where he promptly retired the Rawhide with a 1-2-3 six pitch inning. His second inning of work wasn’t as easy, having to throw 32 pitches and loading the bases. Bandilla’s velocity was constant, with pitches averaging about 91 MPH, but control looked to be off at times. Eventually, he struck out the side. (Reminiscent of San Francisco Giants baseball, much?)

To close out the game, Hunter Strickland came on to pitch. Aside from one walk given up, he looked like he was able to command his pitches and get two batters out on the first pitch. His pitches averaged at 93 MPH, going as high as 95 on the last pitch of the game.

On the offensive front, there were a lot of runners in scoring position, and just as much left on base. The game’s only run came on a Myles Schroder home run in the 4th inning.

Shawn Payne impressed with his speed. In one instance, he went from first to third on a throwing error during a pickoff attempt. He was caught stealing home in the 5th to end the inning, after Elliott Blair was able to get to second base.

All of this is small sample size, of course. But it’s a good start to the little Giants’ season, I must say, especially with pitching looking like that so far.

The San Jose Giants finish off a four-game series against the Visalia Rawhide this afternoon at 1 p.m.

Sanchez’s hitting woes could take up an entire separate post, but I wanted to focus on one very specific part of Sanchez’s game that he struggles with – framing pitches. Now, this has been a somewhat popular subject recently, having been the subject of posts by Baseball Prospectus’ Sam Miller, and McCovey Chronicles’ Grant Brisbee. Both articles are excellent, and you should read them both if you haven’t. The BP article has lots of GIF’s if your interested, as well as the nitty gritty details as to some of the reasons why Sanchez struggles with this particular skill. In short, the key to getting more calls on borderline pitches is to be as quiet with your movements as possible. Don’t move the glove or your head around too much and you’ll get your fair share of borderline calls. Sanchez, however, is the opposite of quiet. His head especially is all over the place, as you can see in the GIF’s in the Miller article.

Research from 2008 came to the conclusion that the run difference between a called strike and a called ball was 0.13 runs.  Now, that may not sound like much, but pitchers throw around 3000 pitches per season. In the Brisbee article I linked to above, Grant notes that for every 27.3 pitches thrown to Sanchez, Hector loses a strike call he should have gotten. Over the course of a 3000 pitch season that’s 109.9 missed strike calls – or over 14 runs lost per season. Now, obviously, this isn’t taking everything into account. For instance, I didn’t look at the number of pitches that should have been called strikes that Sanchez successfully framed.

That being said, digging yourself into a 14-run hole before taking all the good things into account is less than ideal. And the fact of the matter is right now Lincecum needs all the help he can get. As I write this he’s given up 6 runs in 5 innings with 4 walks, bringing his season total up to 11 in 10 innings pitched. He walked Rockies pitcher Juan Nicasio – twice. His fastball is dead-straight and getting crushed, and his breaking pitches can’t find the zone (luckily the Rockies are swinging at them anyway).

And, of course, there’s a measure of overreaction going on here. Sanchez’s struggles last game were historic for him – 9 pitches called balls that should have been strikes is a career high – and indeed in the game I’m watching right now he’s been better. But if Lincecum is going to continue to trot out there every 5th day, and as long as Sanchez continues to catch him, this is something to keep an eye on.

(Flickr/sjsharktank)

Now, at this moment, using the 2012 run environment – since the 2013 season is still too young to have accurate data – the Giants should be expected to score 1.44 additional runs this inning. The next hitter was Marco Scutaro. Now, Scutaro has been struggling. He admitted as much to the beat reporters, saying he’s been pressing a bit trying to get going this season. His .167/.212/.167 line certainly reflects that. And, naturally, he sac bunted. I hate the sac bunt. In nearly every scenario, the sac bunt lowers the number of runs a team can expect to score. Indeed, that was the case in this scenario – the run expectancy with runners at 2nd and 3rd with 1 out in 2012 was 1.29, meaning that play was worth -0.15 runs to the Giants.

Here’s the crazy part though – the Rockies followed up the sac bunt with an even stupider strategic decision. They intentionally walked Pablo Sandoval to get to Hunter Pence. The run expectancy with the bases loaded and one out last year was 1.54. The intentional walk raised the run expectancy 0.25 runs, and the Giants now sat at 0.10 runs higher than at the start of this little dance.

So what happened? Pence singled sharply to right, scoring Noonan, and the Brandon Belt grounded into a double play. So after all that, the strategy paid off for the Rockies – the Giants scored 0.54 runs fewer than expected.

This is a good example of process vs. results. Even though the results worked out from the Rockies perspective, a look into the numbers shows that the process was flawed. On one hand, it was counterproductive to sac bunt with Scutaro – no matter how much he’s struggling, he’s a decent threat to get a hit there. On the other hand, it was even more counterproductive to walk Sandoval – a double play ball isn’t something you can count on, especially with two of the Giants’ best hitters due up. The basic lesson here is this: outs are precious and you shouldn’t give them away. You shouldn’t give away opportunities to record them on defense, either.

Cries of “he’s too fat to play baseball” usually are the first thing seen when you check in on what Giants fans and media have to say.

Here’s some annoying commentary from San Francisco Chronicle sports columnist Ann Killion.

Sometimes, it comes from writers of other teams, too.

Joe Strauss of the St. Louis Post Dispatch spews some offensive and unwarranted venom toward Sandoval’s way.

Backhanded compliments, playground bullying, it’s all there. None of it is okay.

To say that Sandoval is “overweight” is purely subjective because, honestly, for however fat you think he is, he won the World Series MVP award at a weight that might not be considered “athletic.” He makes slick defensive plays and can rake with the best of them.

Sandoval’s baseball abilities are there because he can play the game.

Wait, what is this concept? Is it … logic? You mean to tell me that one’s weight does not have correlation to how athletic a person is?!

Shocking.

This is where fat shaming culture kicks in.

To fat shame is to tell someone that they are not worthy of X or Y because of their weight. Jokes are made at their expense because if you’re fat, society says you’re not their ideal person to look at. Nothing about your personality or intelligence or — yes — baseball abilities are considered because why would you (general you) even consider that when you’re talking about someone who’s fat, fat, fat.

A common misconception is that if you’re fat, it must men you love to eat. That’s not true. There are so many different factors that can contribute to one’s weight, such as a slow metabolism.

Do we know if Sandoval has a slow metabolism or X or Y or Z that may cause him to be at this weight? Not really. Is it any of our business? Not at all.

Because society and the images in the media project this unrealistic image of people — women have flat stomachs and big breasts while men have sculpted muscles — the every person is subjected to have feelings of superficial inadequacy. Which is not right at all.

By taunting someone about their weight or only looking at a person because of their weight, you (again, general you) are dehumanizing them. Yes, that’s right — that means you are only looking at a person as if they are an object, which is the way society implies a person should act. Because if this, there’s no respect being shown. This person, for whatever weight they are, is not being treated like a human being.

Pablo Sandoval is a good baseball player, regardless of what you think of his weight.

If Sandoval, or anyone really, wants to be fit and in shape for their own personal reasons and it’s something that will make them feel better, then it’s their reasons and it’s not for anyone else to judge. If a medical professional or a trainer with the Giants or someone who has the knowledge in this capacity suggests Sandoval lose weight for his health, then it’s Sandoval’s call.

Would you enjoy it if you walk onto your porch to get some fresh air and people started shouting at you, “Hey! What are you doing breathing air! You love air too much! Get rid of that! Stop it!”?

No. No one would enjoy that. It’s the same with weight.

If Sandoval or anyone else doesn’t want to lose weight because it’s what they want, then no one is in any position to judge because it’s not their life to live.

You may think that you’re well meaning and that you’re only there to help, but it’s not necessarily the best course of action for that person. Everyone’s bodies works in different ways and no two bodies work the same way, just as no two people have the exact same opinions on anything. No one knows their bodies better than the people with those bodies.

Unless you’re a medical professional or a trainer who is concerned about your health (health does not necessarily equal weight!), then it makes sense because they should be trained to watch out for these things and properly diagnose what’s going on in your body.

And if Sandoval is playing well, what’s it to a fan who wants to see their team win? If a person thinks the Giants can improve by having Sandoval lose weight when his playing ability is not necessarily of concern, then it’s not a problem with Sandoval and a reflection on a person’s view of bodies and whether or not this person is subscribing to an altered view of reality.

In short, a person is not to blame for their body image. Repeat after me: A person is not to blame for their body image.