MIL 3 SF 1
Madison Bumgarner pitched a great ballgame but got no support from the lineup and the team fell below .500 for the first time in over a month (they were 38-39 on June 22nd). On July 1st the Giants were 45-40 and have gone 7-12 since. That .530 mark was the high point of the season. Bumgarner looked very sharp over the first five but yielded single runs in the 6th, 7th, and 8th to turn a 1-0 lead into a 3-1 deficit. The first two runs were manufactured by a pesky and lucky Brewers lineup, both coming on ground outs. I'll give them credit for good situational hitting as MadBum kept their big power bats in check. The third run needed a nifty poke by Ryan Braun on a two-out, two-strike pitch well out of the zone. Sometimes you make a good pitch and still get burned. But the real issue was the feebleness of the Giants offense. They got back-to-back doubles in the 2nd (Buster Posey and Brandon Crawford) but that was it. They briefly conjured up something of a comeback attempt in the 8th but it went for naught. They are 2-5 since the Break (and 3-7 in their last 10) and making a case for irrelevance.
Johnny Cueto at 6:05 Pacific tomorrow. Go Giants!
--M.C.
9 comments:
The Giants have three days to decide if they are buyers or sellers. At this point they look like sellers, but it's not like they are stocked with desirable pieces. The veterans are too costly and the new guys unproven. Perhaps Tony Watson or Will Smith would be attractive, but then the team would have no bullpen at all. (I still think Reyes Moronta should be the closer!)
Over the Break MLBTR posted their take on the likeliest players to be dealt by the deadline, there are 75 listed and not one wears orange-and-black. Some of the key names have already been moved (Machado, Familia, Cabrera, Hamels, Moustakas, Escobar). The Giants just don't have the goods as their talented players are on multi-year deals and their youngsters aren't making an impact. I doubt the club will trade it's best prospects (like Heliot Ramos). Supposedly the Giants are linked to Brian Dozier, but that's a thoroughly horizontal move, as his age and salary would offset any potential gains in performance. I suspect that is just a rumor, nothing more. I can't think of any particular thing the Giants could do to improve their standing in the pennant race other than the old guys-we-have-must-play-better routine.
As far as selling and/or shedding salary with expensive vets, someone has to want, say, Johnny Cueto or Jeff Samardzija or Mark Melancon or Evan Longoria and their long-term costs and questionable future performance. And I doubt if the Giants are ready to ditch any of those players and eat the sunk costs.
The "true" Giants who are still performing well (Posey, Belt, Crawford) are locked in and part of the team's image and marketing. I can't see popular players like that shipped off, not only because they are all signed long-term but because it would be "throwing in the towel" on the season and The Brain Trust won't do that. Not to mention it would take a catastrophic injury to a star player on a playoff-bound team to open a spot for an everyday 1B, C, or SS. Those players have trade value, but they really aren't trade-able.
Perhaps we'll get some movement after the deadline but such players would have to go unclaimed off the waiver wire before they could be dealt. Unless they are ten games out and plunging and/or otherwise desperate I doubt they'll risk that, best to have those one-year salaries (Pence, McCutchen) simply come off the books for 2019. Freeing up $30+M is worth the wait, I imagine.
Whatever deadline deal the Giants make, if they make one, is likely to be of marginal interest or impact. The only really marketable impact player they have right now is MadBum, and Evans has said he's a no-go. And that's OK with me, they've got an option on him for next year and I expect they'll try to sign him for a longer deal before then. 30+ WAR 29-year old lefties are rare enough. His K-rates are dropping and his BB-rates are up but I suspect a season of full health will show him returning to his career norms. We need an ace pitcher and he's our best hope.
I meant "its" best prospects, not "it's" best prospects!
It's all spilling out of me, it seems, this looming deadline has my brain spinning about what the Giants need to do and what they likely will do. I think that even if they pull off a Machado-like deal for an "impact" player it is not enough without full health and production from all the other spots. Cueto especially, as well as Belt and Panik (and even Strickland). Odds aren't good that all of them will be all together and performing their best any time soon. I think Samardzija is done for the year so the two rookies and Holland will have to stay on the beam the rest of the way. And Shark's value is his durability, being able to give you 30+ ML-average starts per season: that's already moot. Best he be shut down, it seems to me, nothing like having a 200-IP guy in your pocket for next year (or the off-season trade market).
If the Giants go nuts in the off-season and sign, say, Bryce Harper, that will be exciting but they'll still need a righty masher to complement him. I'm not sure who is out there to fill that spot. In other words if they succeed at what they tried to do this year and failed (get a BIG NAME) that will make fans happy but it won't be enough, there are still significant worries (like Cueto, Melancon, the OF, etc) that it might be a mis-use of resources. Then again horse-trading for support players means you have team of support players instead of an MVP-candidate!
I don't know. It just seems like the long-term contracts and payroll issues seriously hurt the team's ability to pay for talent and that the farm system is not quite ready to produce impact players like it did a few years ago. The team is "stuck" where they are and that means the guys they have have to do what they are being paid to do and start winning. Despite the apparent closeness of the race in the West the Giants are the 11th-best team in the NL. They really aren't showing themselves to be playoff-bound, more like holding on and hoping to finish .500, which is not an easy task at this point.
They made a lot of superficial changes after last year's debacle, if they fade away next month I think they'll have to do more than that. Let's hope they start winning.
7.5 games out with 2 months to go is certainly within the realm of not being sellers. I know Cueto may need surgery, but even so, a good week or two could turn that into 3.5 games or so, with 6 weeks to play. Other teams as well as the giants have won the pennant being 7.5 games back at this stage of the season. Not only that, but in the past the giants have blown the pennant with a lead of about 7.5 games at this time. It is baseball, the bums, the rockies, and Arizona are not immune from slumps. The giants just had one, they need to rapidly turn it around. Perhaps as the entire team seemed to slump at once, they can all get hot at once. Let management give this team a chance to win.
The G's have found:
Two solid rotation pieces in Suarez & Derrick
Two above solid pen pieces in Black & Moronta
A D-Whiz CF not lost @ the plate in Duggar
Time to trade Cutch and play Slater in RF, along with Dyson for whatever.
This season's gone, but not a disaster at all.
Trading Cutch would require eating his salary. And Slater may not be able to hit ML pitching! It's easy to say "tank it" and dump players but I don't think the organization will do that. They believe in keeping up the good fight, however poor their chances.
MLBTR links the Giants to this guy. 25-yr old closer. But like the name says, it's just a rumor.
Cleveland would be thrilled to pay Cutch his remaining $4.5 mil, as their OF is a hot mess. Adding Dyson compliments their SD pen trade, and sets their roster for the stretch.
I don't see it as tanking to see if Slater is a viable OF option going forward - better now against MLB pitching than in ST. Seems a sensible part of the G's rebuild-on-the-fly.
Sometimes fighting the good fight means attacking to the rear.
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