Another win! Another W for Madison Bumgarner, although, perhaps, not his best outing. He went 6, 99 pitches worth, and threw 61 strikes. Madison gave up 3 runs on 4 hits, uncharacteristically walking 2 and gave up a home run. Madison also got a hit and scored a run. After a solo home run in the 4th by Aramis Ramirez, the damage to Madison was done in the 6th. George Kontos pitched the 7th, and Sergio Romo found the last out in that inning and then went through the 8th. Santiago Casilla got a save for a 2 hit, 2 K 9th.
Nori Aoki had another fine night with 3 hits. 7 other hits were scattered throughout the lineup, with Matt Duffy delivering a 2 run homer and Brandon Belt adding a solo shot in the 7th to top off the score at 6 - 3.
In the 8th, Sergio Romo came to the plate. No doubt Ron was apoplectic. Sergio had a chance to tie Madison Bumgarner for home runs in 2015, but, as it turned out, he did not get a hit. Nor did he hit into an out. In fact, he struck out looking. No matter, though, as he held the Brewers scoreless in the bottom of the 8th. I personally believe the man has a hit in him somewhere, but perhaps tonight was just not the night for it. Sergio will make it known when the time is ripe.
10 comments:
Your damn right I am apoplectic (nice use of that word) - Strickland & Romo have now both had at-bats during which they have been instructed to never take the bat off of their shoulders. Is this what we want to see? Aside from the goofy 14-Pitcher Rosters, we have Santiago Casilla's heroic effort in 2014 to blame for this.
Not only are we winning a lot of games, but we still have McGehee available, if he can turn things around - today's story is that he was never DFA'd & has now been optioned to Sacramento.
What is the Atlanta Braves' plan this year? I guess that we get to see it up-close over the weekend. Now, they have brought in Juan Uribe in a weird trade for a guy (Alberto Callaspo) who supposedly didn't want to go to LA. OK.
Grammatical faux pas: 'You're damn right', not 'Your damn right'.
I only count 13 pitchers on the roster. Am I missing something?
Three homers by the Giants! Wow. When does THAT happen?
Weird trade by the Dodgers, for sure. Maybe the Braves can win a game down there, eh?
McGehee was at third base last night for the River Cats. He was 1 for 4 as the home team dropped its 7th straight game 3-0 to The Nashville Sounds, the A's new AAA team. Adam Duvall played LF. His average has "plummeted" to a human-like .315. The hot bat lately has been SS Adrianza, whose average sits at a gaudy .352.
The big news is WP Barry Zito who threw 6 strong innings.
Fuck Barry Zito.
Peavy pitches for Sac. tonight. I'm thinking of going.
14 Pitchers was just a carryover from my (poetic) exaggeration of the previous day - more like 'What's next? ... 14 Pitchers?'
Re McGehee: being a veteran (5 years) he did not have to accept a minor league assignment. He consented, so that made things easy on the Giants. If he was DFAd he would have had to clear waivers before going to AAA.
I think that's right. It's damn Byzantine, all that roster stuff.
Yes, Mark, 3 home runs. Forgot to credit Pence for his first inning blast.
From the Chronic's Henry Schulman today: "With days off on the horizon, the Giants might drop their 13th pitcher and restore a 5-man bench. Promoting McGehee would be an option if he starts hitting in Sacramento."
The paper this morning also says the Callaspo for Uribe trade was vetoed by Callaspo, but it was printed before this, which says that he was given an "inducement": http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2015/05/braves-dodgers-re-open-callaspouribe-trade-talks.html.
It's byzantine but something that should be easily available information somewhere, you would think that someone somewhere is keeping track of this.
And at worse, baseball-reference.com should be able to note when a player should no longer have any options left, it's pretty easy, any season with major league and minor stats starts the clock, plus two more minor league seasons, then there is the odd cases where a player has four options, so a link could be provided to that guideline so the user can check on their own whether that applies to the player.
Wouldn't it be ironic if the Dodgers started to do better in the playoffs without Uribe? He leaves the Giants after the first ring, definitely missed the second ring and probably missed the third ring too, and now will miss what the Dodgers might do (they have too many young studs not to do something, unfortunately, but bring it on!).
That would be up there with Adam LaRoche taking too long to get back to the Giants regarding their contract offer, so they sign Huff instead. He definitely missed out on the first two rings (and who knows, maybe he don't hit well enough for us to win in 2010), and most probably the third as well, because he was slow. I wonder if he's zen about it or kicks himself every day for missing out. Meanwhile, Huff is chuckling in his new gig with two rings to show for it (and similar money ultimately that LaRoche missed out on).
Molina would have been in this list if the Giants didn't resign him to keep the catching position warm for Posey in 2010, and instead ended up being the first and only player (probably) to have a ring from both the winner as well as the loser of the World Series. Not too shabby an ending for a career, though I'm surprised that no team signed him up, he was a good defensive catcher, and still showing good command of the strike zone, not striking out much, though not making good contact either. He was still positive WAR defensively in his last season.
I assume the title was being facetious, but ideally, all our pitchers take hitting more seriously.
I analyzed what would happen, using the lineup calculator, if a pitcher could hit as well as poor hitter (back then, it was Vizquel) and found that if a pitcher could hit that well, then he could turn a loss into a win. Thus a .500 pitcher, 15-15, would become a 16-14 pitcher, and over 10 seasons, 150-150 becomes 160-140.
Over a full rotation, an 81-81 team becomes an 86-76 team. So basically, with pitchers learning to hit like a poor position player, an average team becomes competitive for a wild card playoff spot. In addition, that potentially gives the team a handful of pinch-hitters that they can use in extra innings, plus allow you to keep pitchers in there without the need to pinch-hit, if they hit well enough.
If you'll recall, The Caveman, Don Robinson, was used by Humm Baby as a PH sometimes, he's probably the last HR hitting pitcher the Giants had before Bumgarner.
And it's a shame because some of the pitchers used to be good hitters. Hudson has bragged about how well he hit when he was in college, he set some sort of RBI record, from what I recall.
Oh wow, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Hudson
He was Babe Ruth for his team, Auburn. 15-2 W/L with 2.97 ERA, to go with 18 HR and 95 RBI (he started in the OF when not pitching). Why an NL team didn't sign him, I don't know why. Why he didn't keep up his hitting skills, is a shame. Still, he has a career .195 OBP and .205 SLG for a .401 OPS batting line. In 2014, average MLB pitcher hit .156 OPB, .155 SLG for a .312 OPS batting line. So relative to other pitchers, he's a good hitter (like an .800 OPS vs. a .700 OPS hitter, or better if you do it by proportions).
If I owned a baseball team, I would make batting practice mandatory for all my pitchers (it is not like they throw all day, there must be some time for batting instruction) throughout the whole system, and I would sell it as, "it is all about doing everything you can to win, from hitting home runs to moving a runner into scoring position to knowing how to field properly."
It would require them, I think, to hit in the minors, that is, no DH rule. If they go several seasons without hitting and then try to hit in the majors they have too big of a hole to dig out of, IMO. But I'd be all for it! I think the NL rules will disappear eventually. I'd prefer they were universal, but I just don't see it happening. And the DH rule does have some nice benefits, like using Mike Morse in the World Series to get the game winning hit!
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