It was another big day for the Giants. Rafael Devers, back in the DH spot, hit two homers and a double, driving in four. He's healthy, apparently. That's good. They need him to hit! Matt Chapman and Heliot Ramos both got big hits today. Even Luis Matos had an RBI single. The Giants scored three runs in three consecutive innings (5th, 6th, 7th) to back Justin Verlander. JV notched his first "W" of the season with five innings of one-hit ball. He walked four but that didn't hurt him. Maybe the baseball gods will flip the script and he'll get nothing but "W's" the rest of the way.
The next two weeks are weird. They are off tomorrow, then they go home to SF to play the Mets (Fri-Sat-Sun) and the Pirates (Mon-Tue-Wed). Thursday is an off-day before they go to New York City to play the Mets (Fri-Sat-Sun) and to Pittsburgh to play the Pirates (Mon-Tue-Wed).
Logan Webb gets the call Friday at 7:15 Pacific.
Go Giants!
--M.C.
4 comments:
Bryce Eldridge is healthy, too. He's back at AAA and hit a homer in his first game.
The Giants don't play on a Thursday until August 21. They need to do well against NY and Pittsburgh. After that comes the Nats. Pittsburgh and Washington are teams that are bad (not Rockies-bad, of course, but bad) but have an annoying tendency to embarras the Giants. We need to keep up the hit parade.
An odd thing in today's win, was that every giant struck out at least once. Yaz finally struck out on a pitch he took that was quite a bit outside and called a strike. Late in the game it became a pitchers strike zone for both teams. I guess the umps had to be somewhere. Rogers got a called strike 3 to Osuna that was quite a bit off the plate. Also strange was the 2 strike bunt from Devers who had already hit 2 homers and a double. Very glad to see Verlander break the jinx. Took the back part of the rotation to get some wins, as the co-aces had back to back losses earlier on the road trip. Hoping that the HBP of Chapman is relatively healed by Friday's game. In a very strange AB for the Angels, with the Angels down 6 to 3, with 2 on and 2 out, Rengifo took 6 straight pitches, and not one of them was a strike. Yet he was called out on the 3-2 pitch. The 3-2 pitch had to be at least 4 to 6 inches outside. The other balls that were called strikes were also outside maybe 2 to 4 inches. It was one of the worst umpire take away an at bat on any hitter I have seen this year. It reminded me of the shortened season when the giants needed the last game to make the playoffs, and the calls against the giants hitters that game were brutal. All game. This year I had not seen a game called that bad. Yes there are occasionally a bad call here and there, but it seems the umps have tightened it up a little bit this year. The acting manager did get kicked out after that AB. I was thinking that after the first 2 balls that were called strikes, if Dave Roberts were the manager, he would have been out there in the umps face, before that final call. Instead of 2 outs bases loaded and their closer already in the game having to throw more pitches, the Mets got out of the inning and went on to win 6 to 3.
It's a week until the deadline. Are the Giants going to pursue another front-line arm now that their rotation has an opening?
There are intriguing starters out there: Dylan Cease, Sandy Alcantara, Mitch Keller, blah-blah-blah, that would all cost "a lot" in trade chips. Or, do they promote some of those trade chips and count on a young arm (McDonald, Black, Winn, Whisenhunt, Ragsdale, Seymour, even Birdsong) down the stretch.
Roupp seems to have made the grade. Is there another youngster in the bunch they can plug the gap with?
Also, a platoon partner for Yaz, a RH-hitting OF. That, or Matos starts to hit.
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