PHI 10 SF 2
Dereck Rodriguez got called up for this start but seemingly had no fastball command and wound up getting clobbered. Andrew Suarez relieved him but did not fare well, either. I thought the Giants might try to get another starter for the stretch
run but I suppose they will have to stick it out with the youngsters. Rookies Sam Selman and Jandel Gustave made their debuts, and I expect we'll be seeing more of those two what with the re-shuffled bullpen. The lineup got ten hits but could not put together any kind of sustained rally.
Shaun Anderson gets the ball at 5:40 p.m. PDT in Denver tomorrow. Go Giants!
--M.C.
p.s. Giants split four with the D-Backs at the end of June, then swept the Padres, took 2 of 3 from the Cards and Brewers, swept the Rockies, took 3 of 4 from the Mets, and 2 of 3 from the Cubs and Padres before this series against the Phillies. That's seven series wins in a row before today's loss. The Giants have not won a series in Philadelphia since 2015.
10 comments:
I hope the effects of the trades and the I.L. for Dickerson are short lived. I firmly believe that without the awesome bullpen that we had, there would have been no way that the giants did what they did in July. We literally had the best bullpen in baseball, and despite being near the bottom in hitting and starting pitching for the year (not July), it was our deep pen that saved us. From Gott, Moronta, Meloncon, Dyson, Watson, and Smith, and either prior to last week either Holland, and later Pomerantz for added depth, made our bullpen help the giants stay in games. If one day, Moronta, Dyson and Smith went out, the next day Meloncon, Watson or Gott, and then Smith if he was available could pitch. Keeping our deep bullpen fresh, and ready most of the time. I thought that if we were going to trade a couple of these guys, maybe we would go back after Zack Wheeler, to bolster one of the worst starting rotations. Despite the giants great July, they actually went a long stretch without a starter going more than 5 innings. I am just a bit worried that the giants had part of their magic traded away. I hope I am wrong, but it seems clear that Rodriguez and Suarez have regressed this year. Maybe some other form of magic could come forward and help the giants, but for me when things are not broke, they do not need to be fixed. I can only hope that some of our minor league acquisitions either help us down the road either as players, or chips for some other trade acquisition, in the near future.
I think it would have been a mistake to stand pat. There's always the risk that you'll "mess things up" with trades but you also need fresh blood for the stretch run. And they really got better when they finally added some offense to the pitching.
I think the Giants did well to deal from their strength and try to bolster the 40-man and the farm system and perhaps get a piece or two to help right now. It's a balancing act, and they took a reasonable risk dealing Dyson and Melancon.
“Things are not broke”— one might usefully say that things are always broke and need fixing, otherwise we’d still be using horse and buggy, chamber pots, and typewriters. But surely the Giants were broke despite their brilliant play in July. They eked out wins, taxed their pen with continual high-leverage situations, and made regression more likely. I agree with MCO’C that they could not have afforded to stay pat, thus paying a opportunity cost. Whether they, or any team, will turn out to have acted wisely, no one knows, because the contingencies of success are so diverse and causally obscure. But they did have to act. Doing nothing is in fact doing something. The fragility of their success so far, which nomisnala rightly points out, is itself a kind of brokenness-in-waiting that required preemptive attention.
Yeah I think that "regression to the mean" or perhaps it is better said as "reversion to form" is a genuine concern for the Giants. You can't sustain .760 for much more than a month. They were 14-13 in June--that's two winning months in a row! 52 games to play, I hope they can win 27 or 28 of them. 30 wins would be .577 ball. That seems unlikely.
While it was disappointing to watch them lose two games in a row for the first time in weeks, it was pretty much inevitable. We don't have a lot of strong starting pitching and that has not changed all season. Remember when we started every game giving up multiple runs in the first inning? Am I the only one who got dizzy trying to keep up with all the callups from Sacramento? What changed in July was that our offense woke up. Let's see what happens tonight in Colorado. If we get less than four runs in each game that would be a very bad sign that our offense has gone back to sleep. I am still hopeful that we will end up well above .500 and might even make the playoffs. Too early to give up.
I don't like to think about the wild card. If the team plays well this month and is still close to a shot in September then I'll allow myself that luxury.
This is a team, it seems, finally reaching its "true talent level", that is, +/-.500 rather than cellar-dwellers. They need to stay healthy and get some decent starts from the youngsters to continue this improvement.
I think there is a good chance that an injury will loom large (I wonder when Belt will go under the knife for his knee, for example) and one of the FNGs will play a big role because of it. If we can get a late-season surge from one of them, similar to Dickerson's arrival, that would really help.
In case there wasn't enough excitement for you, remember that teams can still acquire talent after the deadline. Some of the rules have changed, but if you are interested, this article on MLBTR outlines the ways players can still find their way to ML rosters:
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2019/08/so-what-can-teams-do-in-august.html
Here's a link.
What we might look for are ML players on minor-league contracts. Plus there are "outrighted" and otherwise released ML players who may become free agents. I expect there will be the usual roster-churning with the current 40-man, all players with options should expect to be optioned, for example, but I also expect FZ will still go bargain-hunting. International players and players from independent leagues can also still be acquired.
If we were going to trade away our "STRENGTH" than we should have helped our weakness. We helped a key weakness at this point without losing anybody in getting Scooter Gennett. Then for this year if we were going to rid ourselves of a closer or two, may have been a good option to try to land a starter whether it be Zack Wheeler, or someone else, that could go more than 5 innings once in a while, so our new bullpen would not have to be over taxed. The fact that we had 6 or 7 solid major league relievers is what led us to having a bullpen that was not as over-taxed as one might think, because it was not necessarily the same 3 guys going out there every day, but just look at the stats for giants starters and relievers this year. We did not do much to bolster our starting rotation, and it is still undetermined if Cueto will play a role down the stretch. Now we still have only one and a half starters who usually go 6 innings, assuming that Samardijah can do it 50 percent of the time. We needed a solid starter, or two, and a bat. We may or may not have gotten that bat in Gennett. We also picked up some minor league pieces, at least one that seems to be a decent prospect. There is no way that this team goes 19-6 without that pen. It seems as if we found some magic, and folks do not want to believe it, so they dismantled the magic. and now we are left with what most likely will be significant regression. I hope that is not the case, but assuming that these young arms will do as well as our polished relieve core, it taking a big chance. I had written before that the value of a good pen is very under-rated. It still is. We should take a lesson from what we saw in July. Even a crappy hitting team can eke out wins, especially in extra innings, if our pen can hold down the opposition. Just one run given up in many of those games to the opposition would have meant a giants loss. I hope with Solano, Gennett, and possibly Dickerson if healthy along with Vogt, and Yaz, that these new pieces make the giants capable of still winning. The team reminds me a bit of the 69 Mets, though without the great pitching. That team did not have great hitters, save for Cleon Jones, but the platoon system seemed to be very effective that year, plus they had good table setters in the one and two spots of the lineup. The platoon is what did it that year for the miracle Mets along with good pitching.
I appreciate your enthusiasm about the club's chances even if I don't share it. I look back at July and think "FINALLY!" we had a decent month of baseball. Well, it has been two months of good play (33-19, .635). That's pretty damn exciting after so many months of below .500 baseball.
I think they are resilient enough to lose Dyson and Melancon. They have to get consistency from the young starters, and they have to hit the ball again, but I think they have enough talent and depth to weather the changes.
We'll see!
In the interim, we are on shaky ground with Dickerson's health, and if Longoria comes back, will he be hitting like he was before his foot acted up, or will he go back to hitting as he was prior to his hitting revelation. Of interest, Pablo is still platooning at third, despite his rejuvenation from the right side. It is interesting the giants started playing bad in 2016, after a few minor moves. Great players make teams better, but it is unlikely that perhaps the best player in the game, on the Angels, is unlikely to bring the Angels to the playoffs. One can say that the giants success in 2010, 2012, and 2014, came on the backs of some very good pitching, and some good hitting, with no real superstars on offense. Posey was good back then, and if were still that good, the giants would be in much better shape. I keep hoping that he still has the old Posey in him. A baseball team winning and losing is like having a very fine equilibrium and sometimes the smallest shift can change the entire equilibrium. Here is hoping, that Bochy can get these guys back into a winning streak without delay.
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