CHC 1 SF 0
The Giants finally got the well-pitched game they needed but it was all for naught as they got shut out for the eleventh time this season. Jeff Samardzija threw seven innings and allowed only two hits but one of those was a two-out RBI and that was the ballgame. The Giants got swept right out of the Windy City and come home to play the Athletics in Oakland tomorrow and Sunday. This is their first and only Friday off-day.
FanGraphs rates Saturday's starter, Madison Bumgarner at 3.0 WAR. (There are thirty pitchers above him. Drop down twenty-five spots and there's Shark's 1.6 WAR. Max Scherzer is number one with 5.6 WAR.) Bumgarner was worth a total of 3.0 WAR for both 2017 and 2018 (240-2/3 IP, 38 starts). We can see that he is healthy and pitching better, and the numbers aren't lying either, and that's encouraging going forward. I'm assuming that holding on to him means they are going to try to sign him to a multi-year deal. If you want some comps to grasp fWAR for a pitcher, try Zack Wheeler (3.5), Clayton Kershaw (3.4), Marcus Stroman (3.1), Kyle Hendricks (3.0), Jon Gray (3.0), Aaron Nola (2.7), Masahiro Tanaka (2.6), and Tanner Roark (2.5).
The Giants need to get back on the beam and start winning some ballgames!
--M.C.
3 comments:
Smardj reached ten years of service time in the bigs and also spoke off-the-cuff it seems on a labor point. He thinks it will be harder going forward for young players to hit the 10-year (i.e., vested) milestone due to the increased roster-shuffling and use of team options. It is an interesting point, and probably true.
It is pretty impressive to last ten years in any professional sport, and baseball chews up a hell of a lot of pitchers. Shark is just about the definition of a "league-average" pitcher, and it makes you realize how important "league-average" players are to team-building (there's only a handful of superstars), and also how many major-leaguers are NOT that good. It is hard to be "average" in the bigs, and even harder to last 1500+ innings. Tim Lincecum, for comparison, finished with 1682 IP, and Matt Cain with 2085. You get into some cool company when you chase 2000 IP.
I have the same solutions for all baseball labor issues: make everyone a free agent from the beginning, and eliminate the draft, arbitration, options, service time, etc. This is America. If you want to play ball you should be able to "apply" for any job out there!
No shit the Giants have to get back on the beam. They went 19 - 5 at one point. That seemed too good to be true, but they did make themselves legitimate contenders for a wild card. That dream is setting like the August sun. It gets especially hard for the Giants because so many of the teams in front of them (Philly, NY and Washington)(Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis) play each other a lot in the coming weeks, so one of the contestants has to win and that means the Giants don't move up.
Another thing. The 11 - 12 game Wednesday was one of the most boring games I've ever seen. If that's the future of baseball with juiced balls and three true outcomes, I'll be watching a lot less. It seemed like the Giants pitching consisted of walking Cubs and giving up home runs. Rizzo and Schwarber, are they this generation's Matt Stairs? I could hardly sit through their at bats. The outcome wasn't decided until the end, but then, neither is a slow pitch softball game. Fuck those guys and the Cubs in general.
And they followed that with a 1-0 game!
The ball is juiced, certainly. My guess is they will tweak it, but not too much, and try to stay under the radar about it. MLB does not want to admit they have an oversight and quality control problem with their baseball supplier.
I don't have a beef with homers or high-scoring games. There's all kinds of ways to play ball. The only "right" way to play is the way that helps you win ballgames.
We've seen the waxing and waning of certain aspects over the years. There's more to come. Things will evolve. I don't expect this "version" of baseball to be static.
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