1st inning: 8-10
2nd inning: 8-10
3rd inning: 5-13
4th inning: 10-8
The Giants lost the last two games in LA by a score of 18-2 but have otherwise had a decent stretch in the month of June (9-7). Not that it matters much as the team sits in last place at 31-41 (.431). The Giants have scored 97 fewer runs (271) than they have allowed (368).
FanGraphs rates the Giants hitters as 29th out of 30 teams in wOBA (.282). They rate the pitchers as 21st out of the 30 teams by FIP (4.66). They stink on both sides of the ball, but we knew that already.
Madison Bumgarner goes tomorrow night, 7:10 Pacific.
Go Giants!
--M.C.
7 comments:
Way back sometime in May, the Giants were ranked pretty well in pitching. Which leads me to think about the vagaries of "ranking." I suspect a couple of 9 run losing efforts tends to tank pitching stats just enough to make a ranking difference, even if, over the course of a season, the statistical significance is minimal. After all, a 4.61 FIP ranks better than a 4.68 FIP (today's Giants FIP behind the Rockies at #21). Clearly, the teams that rank better in broad offensive and defensive categories are better teams in the rankings that matter, won - loss records. Still, a loss is a loss, whether by 1 run or 8. I guess, overall, 10 - 8 is an improvement. Sigh.
The Giants were pitching pretty well earlier in the season and then the rotation collapsed. The differences in performance are real: they gave up 111 runs in 26 games in April, and they gave up 175 runs in 26 games in May. 64 more runs in the same number of contests or 2.46 more runs per game. That's 10 more runs allowed every four games! The records are almost the same, though, 11-15 in April and 10-16 in May.
Giants have 14 losses of 5 runs or more. Good teams don't do that, at least not without winning a similar number of blowouts. The Giants have FIVE such wins.
I know that what I am going to say will sound a lot like whining, or is whining, but I think there is quite an element of truth to it. Yesterday even Kruk and Kuip could not contain their comments, and they have been very good at not making disparaging comments about the umpiring. But for the last two games it seemed quite obvious that the umps came with two different strike zones. One for the dodger pitchers and one for the giants pitchers. The giants should have gotten out of the first inning unscathed as the first 3 pitches to Turner were all over the plate. For some reason the second pitch was called a ball. He swung and missed the third pitch which should have been strike 3. Instead of an out he ended up with a hit just outside the reach of the might Evan Longoria. That was just one of many, and going the other way, our hitters had pitches called strikes that were not even close. If this just happened one in ten games, and sometimes it went the other way it would be much more tolerable. It seems as if the giants, even with Bochy as manager, have not gotten the respect needed to have games called fairly. All that being said the giants still are way below 500. I am at the point now that I am thinking how many pitches into a game will the giants start to get screwed? I cannot be the only fan seeing this. I would love to see some really good metrics on this issue. If all things even out with bad calls it should not make a difference over the season, but it is likely that their is a random distribution curve, where some teams benefit in the extreme, and some teams lose in the extreme, while most fall in the middle and are close to being evened out over the season. I am afraid so far this season that the giants are on the far end of the bad call spectrum. All that being said, Go Bumgarner. Toss your first "NO HITTER TONIGHT" or as Kruk might say toss your first "None" hitter tonight.
I think it is a case of poor pitching overall. The umpires are human, and when a pitcher is hitting his spots he gets the close calls. When pitchers are all over the place the umps tend to miss the close ones. Giants pitchers--for whatever reason--are not ready to pitch when the game starts.
I'll be really surprised if we don't get an entirely new crew of coaches once the season is over. I cannot believe major league pitchers are so unprepared to throw their best pitches when the game starts. I cannot believe it is all on the ballplayers. Somewhere they are not getting the proper warmup routines, the necessary instructions in practice times, or the scouting reports on who they are facing. That's a management-level problem. I hope FZ "cleans house" and brings in the guys who will implement the needed changes.
I have said before that the team is not prepared for the game to start, both on the hitting side and the pitching side. It has gone on too long to not be something that management has to fix. I had a bowling team a few years ago that was very good in games two and three but we sucked in game one. Our season was divided into quarters. It just worked out that 3 of the five guys on the team were able to get to the lanes early during the fourth quarter, and we decided to rent a lane and bowl a game or two before the league started. Low and behold, we started winning the first games. In a league of thirty two teams, we were in the middle the first 3 quarters. Our little self imposed intervention, got us first place for the last quarter. I wondered if some of the pitchers should throw more warm-up, even if it means they have to go one inning less, as long as they do not start behind in the first inning, having already thrown two or three innings worth of pitches. Not sure how the hitters can adjust but they have to be mid game ready when the game starts. I suspect if you erase the first inning this year, the giants are probably at least a 500 team, if not better.
Fangraphs actually tracks each pitch as to the location and call. Going through it would be very laborious, although I bet a savvy person could write a program to pick out the strikes called balls and vice versa for any given game, by team.
Kruk and Kuip could not contain their comments
Well, a few days ago, Kruk was on KNBR saying how much he'd hate to see robo-umps.
Calling the zone accurately dictates every AB - check outcomes of 0-1 vs 1-0 or 1-2 vs 2-1.
The umps each have their own strike zones that change during the game?
LHB & RHB have different SZ?
Batters ahead in count get close pitches called strikes.
Pitchers ahead get same pitches called balls.
All above is all well documented by hundreds of thousands of calls.
Umps are being tasked with a job that no human is capable of beyond their current 90% correct rate.
That isn't good enough. Especially for generations that grow up with computer accuracy in their gaming.
Sorry for the rant, but if baseball wants to avoid an anachronistic death, they need to fix this bullshit 'human error' in the heart of the game.
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