For a team that puts more effort into their myriad of uniform color schemes than they do into their baseball, Arizona certainly has had their way with us so far.
That's a grand total of 2 wins for the Giants of 7 meetings between the teams so far this year. Ty Blach on the mound, he pitched well enough to win. Not well enough for the Giants to win, but for another team. He allowed 2 runs in 6 innings, threw 92 pitches, gave up 3 walks and 6 hits. That seems pretty typical of what we can expect from Ty - he can keep us close and generate a lot of ground balls by which to get outs. He struck out 4 tonight, he only has struck out 13 in 5 starts. Tonight's score in yet another losing effort was 3 - 1. Moronta gave up a run - his first on the year. Brandon Belt hit a solo home run.
This was the Giants' 18th game - 1 inning as it were. I'm sure Mark has some thoughts to post about that. Some brief thoughts of mine: This was the 10th time that the Giants have not been able to score more than 1 run. 10. Of only 18 games. Is this team even capable of playing .400 ball? I am finding it very difficult to watch Giants baseball.
4 comments:
Mac Williamson to the rescue ... Pence to the DL. After an insane start to his AAA Season, this is really Williamson's last big chance to show that he can be legit at the ML level.
51 runs scored: worst. 68 runs allowed: 3rd fewest.
I think Pence is done as a player. I've been expecting some move to free up his spot.
I guess this is as good as anywhere to throw out another of my pet peeves. That is, the discussion of "age" as though it had some meaning, and specifically, as though the ranking of which team is older and which team is younger had some meaning. This is a classic example of the use of statistics without any thought behind them. According to this: http://www.espn.com/mlb/stats/rosters, sorted by age, the Giants are the second oldest team on the field in 2018. The average age is 30.1. The oldest is Toronto, and nudging up against the Giants, in 28th, is the Nationals. The last time I looked, the Nats were a pretty good team.
I have several questions about this. First, they have the Giants with an average age among 28 players. On the Nats they use the 29 players. Why is that? Isn't the active roster 25 players? Have they counted each substitute (such as Holland subbing for Cueto) and have they amortized their service in the average? Of course, I have no idea. Secondly, why use pitchers at all? Should a specialist who, maybe, comes in and throws funky, old-man pitches to a left handed batter now and then a liability? Or is he the same liability as an old center fielder? Is Bartolo Colon (the old guy who nearly threw a no-hitter just the other day) a liability, and if so, is it because of his age?
I'm well aware of the performance curves for baseball players. Those are averages, not prescriptions. And yes, I am well aware of how outfielders slow down and are not able to cover quite the territory they once did, like Denard Span and Hunter Pence. But here we are about to sub Mac Williamson for Hunter Pence. That trades out a 35 year old for a 27 year old. That knocks 0.3 years off of the average age. One more trade out like that and we could be better than the Nats! But it doesn't work like that, does it? Mac Williamson will not improve the Giants because he is younger, and if he does improve the team, it will be because he hits the ball better than Hunter Pence has done so far this year. (Hunter Pence is sub-Mendoza, thus far, and evidently, injured.)
So let's can it with "the Giants need to get younger" unless that statement can be appended with something to make it have some meaning.
Well, we've been using meaningless statistics in baseball for years, so it's not so surprising we'd add a few more. But the perception that the Giants need to "get younger" is probably due to the presence of Corey Seager and Cody Bellinger--in arch-rival blue--in the World Series last season. Those guys made an immediate impact as fuzzy-faced youngsters. Remember Buster Posey and Madison Bumgarner making their debuts? That kind of buzz is what the fans want. Not that you can't win a championship with old guys, just that RoYs are more fun and create the impression of a "young" team even if the numbers don't bear it out.
Post a Comment