It was a day for VSC. Veteran Savvy Clutchness snapped the Giants skid and spared them from a sweep. The Guardians were pesky in all three games and had the look of a contender. The Giants looked like pretenders by comparison. They were 1-for-7 today with RISP, and the one was a big one, but that is still lame. Not just 1-for-7 (.143), but only seven chances in all. They had five hits and four walks, and Christian Koss reached on an error.
Logan Webb gets the first VSC star. He pitched a great game in LA last Friday which the Giants won. Then they lost the next two plus the first two back at home. So Webb knew he had to play stopper and he delivered the goods with seven strong innings. The Cleveland lineup rapped out seven hits (three by Steven Kwan), but a couple were dinkers. Two were doubles, both by Angel Martinez, and he scored the one run. But Webb whiffed nine and didn't issue a freebie so that was it for them. He left with the team trailing 1-0 and it looked like another Caining.
The second VSC star goes to The Maestro of Clutch, Mr. VSC himself, Wilmer Flores. After Casey Schmitt opened the bottom of 7th with a single, Jung Hoo Lee walked. Patrick Bailey bunted them over. Wilmer pinch-hit for Koss and he stroked a double down the line that scored both runners. That's 53 RBI for Flo, 10th-best in MLB. FNG Rafael Devers is 5th-best with 59 (Pete Alonso is #1 with 63).
Speaking of our FNG, Raffy had 13 PA in the series and was 3-for-11 (.272) with a double and an RBI. He added two walks and four strikeouts. Let's hope our $250 Million Dollar Man goes nuts against his former team this weekend.
A little over 40,000 fans were at the ballpark this afternoon and after the Giants took a 2-1 lead they saw a couple of dominant relievers (Randy Rodriguez and Camilo Doval) close the door and wrap up the win. Boy, did they need that one! This hitting and scoring drought is really hard to take. Webb actually has two wins in his last two starts (14 IP, 9 H, 3 R, 3 W, 13 K) and is now 7-5. There are 13 MLB pitchers with seven wins, five with eight (Robbie Ray among them), and two with nine (Carlos Rodon and Max Fried of the Yankees). Webb leads everyone with 12 Quality Starts, is second with 101-1/3 IP, and his 2.58 ERA is the third-lowest. Today was his 16th start and his 159th overall in his 7th season, fifth in a full-time starter role. He turns 29 in November and is signed through the 2028 season. I hope we all appreciate what a beast this guy is!
Hayden Birdsong goes tomorrow night against the Red Sox at 7:15 Pacific.
Go Giants!
--M.C.
7 comments:
That is 2 of 26 hits with RISP for the series (0.077).
And even with that they WON one of the games! Craziness.
The press keeps commenting about how the Giants have "struggled to sign (big name) free agents." It seems like one of those things that are repeated so often that it becomes, for some, a truism. Even Buster Posey said something to that effect. But mostly it seems like just the laziest possible throw-in to a baseball "analysis" that is anything but. Inevitably, the citations are Bryce Harper, Shohei Otani, Aaron Judge, and sometimes Giancarlo Stanton. Bryce Harper was never going to come here. He had said publicly that he hated Oracle Park and San Francisco. Otani was going to Los Angeles, all other teams were just for show. Judge and Boras played San Francisco like a fiddle to drive up his price for the Yankees. What is not mentioned is that, within the last couple of years, they did manage to sign Matt Chapman, Willy Adames, Carlos Correa (until the Giants backed out due to his physical), Blake Snell, and Justin Verlander. I like those acquisitions and I'll bet that Adames and Chapman age better than Harper and Judge. If someone wants to talk about whether Devers, or anyone else, helps the team or detracts because of the players traded, fine, but money and value have got to be the most boring things in baseball to discuss, because it means nothing to anyone but the people paying or receiving the salary. So I'm more than ready to move on from the "Giants can't sign free agents" crap.
The one run that Cleveland scored would not have scored if the Kwan out at second was not overturned. Kruk and Kuip wee so sure that Kwan stepped off the bag they said that Cleveland might regret this challenge as they will lose their challenge. Low and behold N.Y. overturned the call and later that inning after there would have been three outs, a runner thrown out at the plate , turned out to be the only run that Webb gave up. But when Cleveland had guys in scoring position, they just went for the hit. It worked until it didn't.
Sports-writers have to have SOMETHING to write about! They gotta make a livin', too.
For me it's all about improving the team. Devers should make the team better. Buster got the owners to open the wallets. That's good news. The trade deadline is July 31st. What's next?
Matt Martell at FanGraphs has the best take on the Devers trade:
The contract doesn’t matter to the Giants, even if Devers never plays the field again. They appear more than willing to pay him the more than $254 million he is owed over the eight-plus seasons left on his deal because for a big-market team in need of offense, no cost should be too high for one of the best hitters in the sport. Some discussion of the trade has cited San Francisco’s unsuccessful attempts to sign Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, and Juan Soto in consecutive offseasons to explain why the Giants were so desperate to acquire Devers — as if those failures compelled the team to overpay for a flawed player. I don’t think that’s the right framing here. The Giants agreed to take on the rest of Devers’ contract while also giving up giving up Jordan Hicks, Kyle Harrison, James Tibbs III, and Jose Bello for the same reason they offered Judge $360 million and Ohtani $700 million: They haven’t had a bona fide slugger since Bonds retired after the 2007 season. When Judge, Ohtani, and Soto signed elsewhere, the Giants still had the same hole in their lineup. Similarly, if the Giants decide to have Devers play first base next season, as a way to shore up their weak offensive output from that position and to free up the DH spot, I don’t think they would consider the contract any worse. He might provide negative defensive value there, but he’d more than make up for it with the bat — the same way he was making up for his negative fielding value at third base in previous seasons. And if freeing up the DH spot let’s the Giants get another strong hitter in the lineup, the contract will seem even more valuable. The point is, where Devers plays should have nothing to do with how we evaluate the contract. He’s there to mash.
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fangraphs-weekly-mailbag-june-21-2025/
He's a lot like Joc Pederson. Only better.
He was 0-for-5 last night. Damn, we need him to start raking!
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