The Marlins leave town today and don't return to San Francisco until 2015. I imagine everyone is happy about that. The team based in Miami seems to only bring their good bats when they play at AT&T. Fortunately Ryan Vogelsong had his throw-strikes & work-the-corners thing going on this afternoon and that kept a lid on the Fish and the Giants pulled off a win. The home team struck first in the 1st with some Gregor Blanco action and made it hurt four batters later with consecutive two-out RBI singles from FNGs Brandon Hicks and Tyler Colvin. You have to love contributions from the bottom of the order. Pablo Sandoval added a solo homer in the 5th and Vogie made it seven scoreless and that was enough. Jeremy Affeldt was a little rocky in the 8th but Santiago Casilla eventually got the big outs and Sergio Romo finished up. Good start, good defense, clutch hitting, strong 'pen--we know the formula and it's beautiful when it works.
Giants get an off-day tomorrow before heading to Colorado. The Rockies have the best run-difference (+49) in the NL and are a much-improved club. It's a quick trip and the boys will be back home for an inter-league series with the Minnesota Twins on Friday.
--M.C.
11 comments:
The Marlins in San Francisco in 2013 were 3 - 1. In 2012 they were 3 - 0. In 2011 they were 3 - 0. So I guess that is an improvement.
Frickin' Marlins and their sideshow of horrors can go rot in the Florida swamp. Glad to get out 2 and 2, hope Pagan's shoulder is good. I noticed the Rocks are doing well, especially that run differential. Got to go score runs for 3 days, we can't have Bumgarner throwing another gem and losing at Coors.
Apparently Belt's injury is the event that jump-started Sandoval's improvement. Ever since he was placed in the cleanup spot in the order Pablo has been raking the ball.
The story that Belt's injury and the batting 4th supposedly jump-started Sandoval is a story that some in the media jumped on, but I would point out this article by Schulman, where he noted the nonsense of that story and said the more logical thing:
There was no cause-and-effect, of course. Sandoval has not forged a nine-game hitting streak because of where Bochy batted him in Game 2. Bochy batted him fourth because he saw something in Sandoval’s swing that said, “Here he comes.”
The thing is, had Hudson not been pulled, in all likelihood, we would have won game 2 and been 3-1. And yes, 2-2 vs. the Marlins winning 3 is an improvement.
The thing to remember is that the Giants are not going to win every series they play at home. To expect that is unreasonable. So I'll take a split, we had a OK homestand and went 11-7 in this long stretch without a day off, not even travel days, by having a great road trip.
Now we need to rock the Roxs, and reduce their run differential some.
Sorry, here is the link, read the start of the main article for what I'm talking about:
http://blog.sfgate.com/giants/2014/05/18/sandoval-continues-surge-in-sf-giants-victory/#23484101=0
So far looking at the rotation it looks as if our 4th and 5th starters should be Cain and Lincecum. These two super talented individuals really need to straighten themselves out, when a journeyman like Vogelsong can out pitch them. The last few relief appearances, Affeldt has been awful. He had gone 9 innings giving up only 3 hits, in the last 4.1 innings he has given up 10 hits. His ERA would be higher but Castilla and Machi have saved his stats. I am not 100 percent how relief pitcher WAR is tabulated, but it seems odd to me that Machi is 1.0 WAR, which seems ok, but Romo is only 0.6 WAR, which seems bizarre.
The Giants had a real shot at 3 of 4--they were tied in the 9th on Friday night and Affeldt/Casilla gave it up. I can live with that. 2-2 v. the MiMars is pretty damn good. This series with the Rockies will be real interesting--they are much tougher than last season.
You knew Panda was going to heat it up sooner or later. Just glad that it's now--picking up the slack for Belt's injury. Giants are on a 100-win pace! Not sure they can keep that up, but they just might be able to win consistently enough to finish in the upper echelon. I think the West is scary. There's talent out there on all the teams, any one of them could go on a serious run. Giants have to keep grinding!
Actually, Bumgarner has been a bigger problem than Cain and Lincecum has been, just looking at pure quality starts.
He has had a lot more disaster starts then Matty. And Lincecum has been pitching much better after starting off the season a little shaky, he has had 5 quality starts in his last 7, best on the staff in the last 7 turns of the rotation.
On top of that, Lincecum is in the 4th spot, where you can expect a number of disaster starts generally, whereas Bumgarner is in the Ace spot and so far he has not delivered.
Vogelsong has been the best overall in his last five starts, took him about four starts to figure things out.
Regarding Machi vs. Romo, not sure what is not understood about that, as good as Romo's numbers are at 2.20 ERA, Machi has a 0.42 ERA. With the average being around 3.2 RA/9, he is just that much further away from the average than Romo is.
WAR is a counting stat, so it is a function of how many innings pitched and how good the pitcher was in preventing runs, generally, though perhaps the saber definition of that relies on DIPS theory instead of strictly actual runs. They have the same number of innings, so it is a matter then of how much better than average that they are.
The bizarreness that you mention, I assume you mean by how low it is, that's because, again, WAR is a counting stat, and relievers do not pitch that many innings. Both of them are barely over two games in IP, 20-22 IP.
Hope that helps.
I totally agree MC.
I think the Giants can keep on that 100-win pace if Lincecum and Vogelsong can continue to pitch well in the bottom of the rotation for us, because our offense is so good up and down when we have everyone, there are no real holes so far, except for maybe Hicks, but batting 8th, every team has a hole there, and even at that, his career numbers would make him average there, which is fine for us, we have Pagan, Pence, Posey, Morse and now Sandoval to provide above average production up top, more than enough to be above average as a team. That was my upper range for the team if everyone played to where we thought that they could achieve, a season like 2003, and so far, sooo goood!
The beauty is that we have so many offensive weapons that if one is down in the dumps (Pablo), then there are others who can pick things up for him (Crawford and Hicks). Plus, Pagan, Belt, Posey, Morse has been generally good all season, which provides for a very steady offense.
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