This was a game that reminds us cynics of why we were baseball fans. It reminds us that baseball is, perhaps, the most human of sports. The Giants scored in the 1st inning, a Belt sacrifice that scored Steve Duggar. He hit it to triples alley, deep towards the 421 sign, but it was an out. It would be a shame not to see that next year, even if it does give Belt a few more home runs. Hyun-Jin Ryu, on the mound for LA, quickly found his groove and the Giants were pretty much shut down for the rest of his 8 innings.
Madison Bumgarner pitched the best he has this year. That was the opinion of one authority, Buster Posey on the post-game show, and confirmed by the radio and tv announcers. His fastball had the best velocity of the year, and he used it the most he has this year. His slider had some snap, too. Madison struck out 8 in 6 IP, threw 114 pitches and walked 2. He gave up 4 hits and 1 run. That run came in the 6th, Kike Hernandez doubled, then Bum got the next two batters out, then Bellinger hit what might have been the 3rd out, an infield dribble. It would have probably required either a slower runner or a faster pitcher, Madbum didn't cover 1st, and it probably wouldn't have mattered. Meanwhile, Kike Hernandez scored from 2nd on what was a ballsy running play. But it tied the game.
Madbum batted in the bottom of the 6th, which gives you an idea of what the Giants offense is like, but did not pitch the 7th. That meant that Reyes Moronta, Tony Watson, and Will Smith had to hold LA to 0 runs, and that is not easy. Reyes put 2 runners on (1 hit and 1 error on Brandon Crawford), Watson had a 1-2-3, and Will Smith then put another 2 doggers on before getting out of the inning unscathed.
Then came the 9th. A groundout by the Panda hitting in the pitcher's spot. Then Duggar, the only guy on the Giants who could be called a speedster, got his 3rd hit of the night off of Julio Urias. Parra singled him to 2nd before Brandon Belt struck out. LA brought in Pedro Baez to face Buster Posey and Buster, on a 3 - 1 count, lined to left. It had to have been Buster, and anyone but Duggar would have had to stop at 3rd or been thrown out, the line drive just wasn't deep enough. The Giants scored on a Buster Posey walk-off single, beating LA by a score of 2 - 1. Oh yeah, Bochy got tossed somewhere mid-game.
So here we are. We beat LA 2 of the 3 games on what was looking like a real dumpster fire of a homestand. We got some measure of redemption on what is sure to be a season to try men's and women's souls. Why can't we summon that intensity against anyone else? The doggers score tons of runs and we held them to 1. And scored twice.
Tyler Beede is slated to start in Cincinnati Friday.
12 comments:
Madison Bumgarner has received 2 runs of support or fewer in 8 of his last 9 starts against LA. He has become Matt Cain.
Nice to see Bum pitch like Bum!
Belt's blast in the 1st should have been a 3-run homer. He got robbed again. He is the Matt Cain of hitters. In fact I'm willing to assert that no player in the game is more impacted by his home field than Brandon Belt. I won't miss Triples Alley. It will still be a big yard. It will still be a pitchers park. It will still require rangy outfielders. It just won't be stupid. A guy launches a 415-foot bomb he should get a homer.
Regardless, it was a dandy win.
So you're saying that this should have been a home run?
I realize that is a sacred moment in Giants fandom but it happened 5 years before I was born and is mostly irrelevant to me (other than being a bit of baseball history, which I enjoy). I don't suffer from nostalgia. The fact that Wertz' ball would have been a homer in any other park is irrelevant, too. Mays made a great play but would only have made that play in the Polo Grounds, so that is great stuff for 1950s New York Giants fans but of little value to me. Other than a bit of history, which I appreciate, but no more than Merkle's Boner, Ruth's called shot, Enos Slaughter's mad dash, etc. Fun and interesting but certainly not justification for having a freakish outlier ballpark. Note that NO PARK in baseball is anything close to the Polo Grounds (which closed in 1963).
Reliever Adam Ottavino talked to Eno Saaris at The Athletic and he had this to say about hitting:
“You’re seeing more of that Dodger-type approach: Get your A-swing off all three times but be really good at commanding the zone,” Adam Ottavino told me this week. “Selective, but powerfully selective. The old swing used to be to see the ball deep — so that you could take the fastball to the opposite field or catch the breaking ball out in front — but now people have now seen the Justin Turners of the world, where they are really selective, but when they get their pitch they’re ready to hit it early and out in front. If you get your A-swing off and it ends up being a bastard pitch, they’re okay with it because they’ll miss it and they’ll have another chance. Don’t put it into play weakly.”
This seems like the Barry Bonds approach which is just an upgraded version of the Ted Williams approach. Rule One is get a good pitch to hit. Rule Two is hit it as hard as you can. Rule Three is stick to Rules One and Two.
Mays catch was estimated to be at 420 feet, but it was not the only park with large dimensions compared to today's bandboxes.
Forbes Field (Pittsburgh): 435 feet to center
Sportsman's Park (St. Louis): 420 feet to center
Tiger Stadium (Detroit): 440 feet to center
Metropolitan Stadium (Minneapolis): 425 feet to center
Colt Stadium (Houston): 420 feet to center
Polo Grounds 455' to CF--it was an outlier even then.
Like I said, no disrespect to Willie, it was one play in one game. I LIKE baseball history but there have been LOTS of great catches and great plays. I'm way more interested in baseball RIGHT NOW.
Peter Magowan, God Bless His Soul, was the nostalgic type. He wanted a mini-Polo Grounds as a link to his boyhood. Hey, when you own the team you can do what you want. Me, I'd like to see our lefty hitters catch a break at home now and then.
And that earlier comment about hitting (from Eno Saaris and Adam Ottavino) was apropos of nothing. I'm interested in players talking about their craft.
The Polo grounds was 475 feet to straight away center field. Yankee stadium at the time was 457 feet to straight away center field. I notice that the giant pitchers can give up less hits, and less walks than their opponents but still throw more pitches. Both the Yankees and the Dodgers did a great job at fouling off a number of excellent pitches that otherwise would have been strike 3's or would have been put into play weakly. Even though Bumgarner had an 8 pitch first inning, he ended up throwing 114 pitches through 6 innings despite giving up only 4 hits and 2 walks. The Yankees did the same thing to our pitchers. I think getting your pitch and hitting it hard is helpful, but the third part of that should be to hit it where there are no fielders. Get a pitch to hit, hit it hard, and hit it away from the defense. Tony Gwynn was a master at all three. So glad that Posey is starting to come through in RBI opportunities. It would be nice if Crawford would do the same.
The good-hitting teams have strike zone discipline. They don't swing at balls. We saw that with Bonds. He almost never swung at a pitch off the plate.
Today's player looks to pull the ball and put it in the air. That's where they get the good results. It means fewer balls in play but bigger hits.
Things come and go in baseball, the all-field line-drive hitter will make a comeback. It depends on the economics of the game. What do fans want? Wins. Whatever "style" of baseball has the upper hand in the standings is the style that teams will pay for. High walk, high-homer guys are in demand, just like uber-fastball pitchers. I don't think things will stay this way, the game will keep evolving as it always has. It will just be a faster evolution.
If you want teams to put the ball in play and create more "action" (not necessarily more "excitement") then find a way to incentivize that type of hitting. Pay players (or teams) for low-strikeout, high-contact hitting. Pay teams for shorter game times--give teams some kind of bonus at the end of the season for keeping games times under three hours. Players are professionals. They respond well to bonuses and financial encouragement.
Very nice article on hitting by Craig Edwards at FanGraphs.
In short, pitchers are harder to hit because of the surge in velocity. Also, pitchers are throwing more sliders and curves outside the zone. Those pitches are hard to hit even if they are in the zone so players are laying off the breaking stuff and becoming more selective. When they get fastballs in the zone they are swinging to pull and elevate the ball because they get better outcomes. So, more walks and more homers and fewer balls in play. Here's the concluding paragraph:
None of these developments will put more balls in play unless pitchers start pitching in the zone more. The talent level on the pitching side has forced hitters to take an all-or-nothing approach and think harder about fishing for a walk. No rule banning the shift or requiring a three-batter minimum is going to put a significant number more balls in play. The talent on the pitching side would need to be thinned by a fair amount to decrease the strikeouts that have forced hitters into more extreme approaches. When it comes to pitching versus hitting, batters are beginning to adjust to try and level the playing field. It’s meant more offense, but not more action.
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