The Giants were up 7-1 in the top of the 5th after a grand slam from Alex Dickerson, a man who needed a grand slam to break out of his season-long funk. Gabe Kapler then sent a shaky Anthony DeSclafani out for another half inning of work and he promptly gave up two two-run homers. In the 7th, protecting an 8-5 lead, Jay Jackson loaded the bases and gave up a run but was one strike from getting out of the jam when he gave up a game-tying double. It was that kind of game. The Giants broke the 8-8 tie in the top of the 10th with a nice sequence: Posey double to score BCraw (the magic runner), he moved to third on a lineout by Dickerson, Austin Slater was walked, Steven Duggar singled to drive in Posey and move Slater to third, and Donovan Solano squeeze-bunted him home. Jarlin Garcia pitched a scoreless 9th and 10th to get it done. Yaz got the scoring started with a two-run homer in the 3rd and Wilmer Flores, pinch-hitting for DeSclafani in the 6th, hit a solo shot.
LA and SD were idle so that's a half-game bump. Madison Bumgarner goes for the Diamondbacks tonight, he's matched up against Johnny Cueto at 6:40 PT.
Go Giants!
--M.C.
4 comments:
Mike Tauchman went unclaimed and the Giants outrighted him to AAA.
I think that is Good news on Tauchman, as perhaps our coaches can figure out why he was not hitting this year and reverse it. His fielding is well worth the effort. Perhaps I am being a bit too picky, and as a fan what do I know. But as someone who is now in his 70's and still remembers every pitch he saw in the little league, Pony league, high school and rookie ball, I was not that happy with Posey's pitch calling last night especially as the game went on. Of course one would say that Jackson hung a slider, but the way he has been pitching the last few outings it was really not unexpected. I did think that Cabrera on the Dbacks had himself quite a tiny strike zone last night. I thought he did some damage after he was legitimately K'd. But that is baseball. I could not find the stat, but I wonder how Posey's CERA compares to Casali's CERA in 2021. I suspect with some of the baseball GURU's on this site that such information may be available. Perhaps Jackson has been a journeyman because he cannot sustain long periods where his secondary pitches are grade A. Seems as if for a week or two all his pitches looked great. But now that his slider is not biting, Kapler keeps putting him out there expecting a different result, and unlike Roger's quick and unexpected turn around, the same was not true for Jackson. Giants staff has fixed quite a few pitchers this year, I hope they can do the same for Jackson.
Not sure I buy into catchers-ERA. Not that catchers aren't important, but that c-ERA probably doesn't capture their value. Over time I suspect c-ERA will drift closer and closer to the team ERA.
You can imagine how hard it would be to create a "measurement" of pitch-calling. You'd have to include the batter's decision-making as part of it, wouldn't you? And pitches are not just the catcher's choice: the pitcher can shake him off, the bench could call the pitch, a sequence could have been agreed on before the game or in a mound meeting, any number of things. The variation in batters, ballparks, game situations, etc. makes it seem really hard to model those events. And will the catcher get "credit" if he signals low fastball but the pitcher throws it high and gives up a homer? And we've all seen pitchers miss the target--make a mistake--and still get an out. Who gets statistical "credit" for that? And we've seen hitters hit "perfect" pitches, too. Does the catcher get statistically penalized for that?
Marcel Lichtman once argued quite convincingly that pitch sequences would work just as well if they were entirely random!
Baseball Savant does rate catchers on framing ability. Catchers are scored by how frequently they receive a pitch in such a way as to increase its odds of being called a strike. At least you can use Statcast data to create a model for something like framing, even if the stat seems a little hinky. Catching a ball is a real thing, it can be observed and measured.
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/catcher_framing
One might have to assume that the number of missed directed pitches, and hitters getting lucky, and the number of shake offs may be somewhat of a constant, and then, factoring that out one could see a pitch calling effect. But as metrics get more and more sophisticated one can then see how often a particular pitcher misses his spot, and how frequently a particular pitcher shakes off a sign etc. It seems to be all measurable, at least to the math geeks, and baseball is buying into these analyses more and more every day.
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