This was supposed to be a story about Madison Bumgarner, ideally one in which he would dominate the doggers and the Giants would put a dent in the playoff and division championship hopes of LA. Instead, it was a just OK Madbum and too, too much of the same old, same old 2018. Too little offense. LA 3, Giants 1 in our park.
Madbum threw 6 innings, he had to pitch around an error and a hit in the 1st, but held LA scoreless. By the end of the 2nd, he was already at 40 some-odd pitches, and had given up another hit. LA scored in the 3rd, and then Justin Turner hit a 2-run shot in the 5th. Madison was done after 6, with 6 strikeouts, 1 walk, 7 hits, 3 earned runs and 112 pitches. Duane Kuiper reported that he had asked Madbum when during the year his mechanics felt best, and Madbum said it was at the end of spring training. That was right before he got his hand broken.
Todd Hundley launched a home run over the Chevron car in left in the bottom of the 2nd. Of course, no one was on base. The Giants loaded the bases with 1 out in the 4th, but grounded into a double play. The Giants grounded into 5 double plays on the night, including in the 8th and 9th inning. So that effectively erased all their hits except the Hundley home run (although the Giants actually were the beneficiaries of 3 walks and 1 error). No matter, it was a punk effort that came up short. It is going to take better than pretty good pitching to win with this offense.
I was going to post some numbers and thoughts about Madbum, but it's late, and I'll get to that later.
3 comments:
Dodgers are just too deep. They had Puig and Bellinger on the bench. Both came in as late game replacements. Giants are completely over-matched. Their hitting is atrocious. All the Dodgers hitters wore MadBum out, fouling off close ones, forcing up his pitch count. Giants either struck out or hit grounders. Turgid stuff, indeed.
Thinking about next season and Bochy, the final year of his contract, and guys like Mike Sciosia who are possibly getting the boot. (Good article on Sciosia and the Angels here if you can stomach the 2002 references.) Bud Black, Joe Maddon, and Ron Roenicke were all coaches on that LAA team. I'm always interested in the "family tree" of these guys and how they get one of those Only-30-in-the-World jobs! Plus I've always respected Sciosia despite his Dodger Blue days when I hated him with a passion. And Dusty got out-managed in '02 as we all saw. Short series really bring out the poker player in a manager and we sure got to see a master when our turn finally came. Boch is really good at those go-for-broke moments.
This November will be a very interesting time. How much change will our Giants be willing to accept? How "fresh" and NextGen will our new GM/VP be? I hear it may be two people, a VP of Baseball Ops, basically a Sabean replacement (he'll move further upstairs or go the "emeritus" route). And a GM to replace BobbyE. The GM will report to Baer/ownership, not Baseball Ops, that's a bigger umbrella involving international players, minor leagues, scouting, analytics, blah-blah-blah.
We'll see. In the meantime let's score some goddamn runs! Some time in my life I'd like to see the Giants light up Clayton Kershaw. (And at least make these guys fight for the Wild Card fer chrissakes, don't just roll over and die.)
The Cardinals beat the Cubs today, but they still need to win tomorrow, and LA needs to lose 2 to set up a tie. Go Giants!
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