A crisp and efficient Ryan Vogelsong mowed down his favorite club to pitch against (4-0, 0.96 ERA vs. Colorado) and the Giants secured second place with their 85th win. The 34-year old righty goes to arbitration after this season and is a free agent in 2013. He leads the team in ERA (2.71, 4th in the NL) and is tied for the team-high in victories with 13. Not a bad place to be when you go to the bargaining table. FanGraphs rates his season at 2.6 WAR, just behind Shaun Marcum (2.7) and just ahead of Derek Lowe (2.5) for the 23rd spot in the league. The Giants have three guys in the top ten: Matt Cain (5.4, 4th), Madison Bumgarner (5.3, 5th), and Tim Lincecum (4.6, 10th). Only the Phillies can boast better with the 1st, 3rd, and 6th spots. Voglesong is also 21st in the NL in FIP, 22nd in Quality Starts, 10th in Average Game Score, and 23rd in WHIP. Not bad for a fourth or fifth starter.
MadBum goes tonight. He will likely top 200 IP for the season. If Cain goes Wednesday afternoon as scheduled he will likely reach his career high in innings as well.
The Giant wasted one hell of a lot of good pitching this season.
--M.C.
5 comments:
I went to see "Moneyball" yesterday. I didn't find it to be particularly entertaining, maybe because I just can't give a darn about the As. It was more about Billy Beane than about baseball itself. Marty Lurie on KNBR was griping that it made Art Howe and others look bad. Maybe, but I didn't think it went too far in this regard. I liked it when one of the old-timer scouts said he didn't like a player because he had an ugly girlfriend and that meant he lacked self-confidence. And comments like,"He has a good jawline." That cracked me up because I used to have a theory about Roger Craig, that he used to enjoy having a locker room full of men with nice jawlines, eg. Brett Butler.
Vogelsong was a gift from heaven for the Giants this year. Imagine how we would have ended up without him. Going into next year, it gives us four strong pitchers, and two question marks from which to fasion a fifth. That's pretty good.
It's been a while my friends. Sorry for the lack of commenting these last few months. I actually haven't been watching the games as often. I'm not sure why. I've been good though. I hope everyone's healthy.
I promised an updated image of Matt Cain back in May I believe. I think I'll have it available this weekend. Despite the way the season has turned out, there were plenty of good things to take away from it. Go Giants!
Hey Francisco, welcome back. Looking forward to seeing Matty.
I'm not exactly sure how they calculated wins above replacement for these pitchers, but Vogelson has to be a lot better than Lowe, He should be way better than 2.6. Kershaw should be number 1, not a Philly. It turns out that Bumgarner matches or even surpasses Vogelsongs performance from last night. Now its up to Cain to keep the pitching line going. The way the braves have folded, if only the giants could have won a few more games. The Houston series, or the Pirate series, or the first home series vs the Marlins. A couple of more win vs. Arizona would have been nice. If Timmeh could have beaten Kershaw just twice it would have been different. It looks like as someone said, we have 4 solid starters, and possible 3 men for the 5th starter slot. I would not get rid of Sanchez, he is due to rebound. Timmy's arm is about to fall off. Zito needs to retire.
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