Giants fans got their money's worth this afternoon. Jung Hoo Lee had a terrific four-hit day, Landen Roupp pitched a great game, and Casey Schmitt had a big late-inning homer. And it was a come-from-behind victory to boot!
This team needs a whole heapin' pile o'wins just like this one. Roupp had one rough patch and he got burned on one gopher ball (the guy put a good swing on a low pitch). Otherwise he was dominant, retiring 18 in a row at one point. He gave the team a chance after the early deficit and they clawed back to tie it in the 6th and go ahead in the 7th.
The Giants took 2 of 3 in DC from the Nats, took 2 of 3 from LA at home, and just pulled off 2 of 3 from the Marlins. Now they take their act on the road, starting Tuesday, to Philadelphia for three and then another three in Miami. They'll be home against the Padres on Monday, May 4th.
Go Giants!
--M.C.
18 comments:
Good to see them winning now, more than they are losing. Still low in home runs, stolen bases and walks. First inning, lead off triple. Then 2 easy outs, Casey up with a full count. Takes a definite ball 4, called a strike. He doesn't challenge. It would have been a nice momentum shift. Giants are not that great at using their challenges.
Statcast (Baseball Savant) agrees with you!
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/abs
Giants are low everywhere.
Watched the dodgers come back in the ninth to beat the marlins. The key for the dodgers was patience and taking the walks. The giants would probably have struck out by swinging wildly at some of those pitches. Dodger management has done a good job with their players as far as strike zone management. Under Kapler giants seemed decent at it. Maybe they can get back to it.
Phillies fired their manager!
giants are doing what bad teams do. They seem to find new and creative ways to lose each day. Gilbert not scoring on Ramos' hit should end up in someone being fired. That could have cost the giants a game. With the phillies then coming up, with one of the best bunters in the majors and a free man on second, why not just walks the guy. The winning run was already on second. This way we create the force. Batting Devers and Adames back to back seemed to create a black hole in the lineup. My hope is that these guys get hot, and can carry the team to a nice 3 week win streak, but the longer the season goes on, it seems as if something is crucially wrong with Devers. So far Devers has 2 homers and Chapman has one. Although Chapman has a lot of hits so far, in crucial moments when the opposition needs a K against him, (runner on third less than 2 outs), a K is what they get. The giants low walk rate has to be fixed, and being it is a team problem, I suggest that it is a management problem. The giants have just been flat out horrible in using their challenges. Losing those last 2 games to the Phillies reminds me of the giants 100 loss season. Batters need to have a much better idea of when to invoke their challenges.
I thought there was some light at the end of the tunnel--I thought they were starting to turn things around. But this latest clown show is very discouraging.
A .406 win percentage would be 66 wins. Yuck. FanGraphs is projecting 77-85 (.467). That would mean 64-66 the rest of the way. I'd love to see some .500 baseball.
Buster may have to think seriously about selling at the deadline. I hate to have that thought, but if this team is still worse than the Rockies by the end of the month (1/3 of the season) then something has to give.
The Giants don't like to blow things up and start over but they have to meaningfully improve/change/evolve by the trade deadline (Aug 3) or the fans will revolt. Buster may be an Organizational God to the all of us in the loyal fanbase but the team still has to start winning!
If Farhan did what Buster and his GM did this off season, and the results were what we have now, there would be a large fan base demanding that Farhan be fired. To many fans Posey is basically a Giants God, and even though the minor league update looks real, the moves he made to improve the major league team for this year, SO FAR, have been big mistakes.
Yeah, Buster (deservedly) gets a longer leash. He's Buster Posey! He's the face of the championship years. Fans will give him a break.
For a while. Then, there will have to be results. Or at least a young, exciting team with a feeling of "upside." Kind of like (I hate to say it) the A's.
The Vitello move was always a risk but I don't think he's the problem. I think it is more of an "implementation dip." He'll grow into the job. He's not the reason the players are not performing.
The signings of people like Adames, Chapman, and Devers are, ultimately, stopgaps. The team had no real talent pipeline and desperately needed seasoned professionals to man the fort until the youngsters could arrive and replace them. The organization would not simply "tank" and not at least TRY to upgrade the roster via free agency.
Those youngsters are not here. Bryce Eldridge is the closest. The pitchers (like Harrison) have not panned out, except maybe in the 'pen. The position players aren't quite good enough. There are no stars-in-the-making.
The Giants have good veteran players but like all veteran teams age and wear-and-tear and injury and regression-to-the-mean are a constant threat. We are seeing the results of that right now.
The team's veteran core will probably, like last year, finish near their career norms. But it won't be enough. There's not enough young talent to fill in the gaps.
I'm hoping the Buster Regime Change is happening at all the levels and is getting coordinated at the top and the talent pipeline will get renewed and the team will start to get better overall. But that will take some time. and sometimes you have to have a "dip" before the new scheme can start to work.
The alternative is that Buster is lost and the team is directionless. I don't buy that. There's always a chance a team can play like crap even if they have the talent to play better. I think that baseball is really hard and even a guy like Buster is finding his new job in ownership/management a lot harder than his old one donning "the tools of ignorance."
The question is will Buster & the Organization rise to the challenge? The other question that comes to mind is: if not Buster, then who?
Dammit Giants, just win some games already!!
Vitello may not be the problem, but he deserves some blame for very questionable decisions Thursday. Pitching to Schwarber after he had 3 hits that game with a base open, and then throwing him a slider over and over until he connected? That was questionable, to be kind.
I was reading the other day and article about how the Baseball is moving away from a set closer towards situational pitching depending on who is up. I don't know, though, it seems like the Giants could use a reliable closer.
I think if you have a closer, you are lucky, and you use him that way. I think there are probably not enough closers! So teams have to employ other strategies.
Yeah when a team sucks everyone is to blame, just like everyone gets credit when they are winning. I don't subscribe to the "it's the manager's fault" when teams under-perform. They are just one piece of the puzzle. And every manager is going to get burned. Own it and move on, I say. The players have sucked, mostly. Time for them to "own it" and to move on!! They've got about a month to turn things around before stuff starts happening.
Hunter Pence made a good comment about walks today. If you're not hitting balls over the heart of the plate, or hitting them into outs, you're not going to see enough balls to walk.
That's a good point!
With this shitty start I've been thinking about Buster a lot and how many other ex-players became execs. Y'know, moved from the field to the front office. Then I came across this bit in David Laurila's column on FanGraphs about Bob Watson. Remember him?
Bob Watson was a productive hitter before going on to become the general manager of both the Houston Astros and New York Yankees, and later a vice president of Major League Baseball. A first baseman/outfielder who played from 1966-1984, mostly with Houston, Watson twice drove in over 100 runs, and finished his career with 184 home runs and a pair of All-Star berths.
Except swinging at balls way off the plate, and being almost incompetent at using the challenge in a year when the strike zone has shrunk by approximately five percent, is resulting In a record low walk rate. No team walks so infrequently. Milwaukee's other hitting stats are not that much different than the giants, except they have taken about 100 more walks, and are scoring a lot more runs. When the whole team is not taking walks, this starts to appear to BE a management PROBLEM as much as an individual hitter problem.
Al Rosen, former giants management was a solid major league player.
Of course, Al Rosen.
We were driving to Candlestick early one weekend morning well before game time (we used to tailgate in the lot) and got cut off by one of those big "land boat" luxury cars. Cadillac or Continental or somesuch. We used to use the surface streets, "the back way" on Gilman. Anyway, it was Al Rosen! His license plate was personalized, I can't remember it exactly. I could tell he never saw me or even bothered to look in his rearview.
He was a hardass. Amateur boxer, WWII Navy vet, stockbroker, even--get this--worked for a casino! I remember when Willie Mays got in trouble for doing that.
Anyway he was a Lurie man and left when the Magowan group came in. Only former MVP (1953) to be a World Series winning GM (1978). He was on the last Cleveland (1948) WS winning team.
Good stuff. On Sunday, Giants found another way to lose. This road series was a poor offensive one for Chapman. Still played some great defense. Tampa's defense was excellent.
Just saw a report that Eldridge and Rodriguez are being called up and McDonald is starting tomorrow. Did not hear about any corresponding moves. Hopefully you folks out in California can find this stuff out soon. I remember a few years ago, hearing some reports about the giants on the Marlins station which turned out to be false.
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