Tim Lincecum didn't have it today, the offense was dominated by Red Sox lefty Jon Lester which added up to a loss that was never really in doubt. Key lines:
Edgar Renteria- 2 for 4. BA= .345. Rent was the only Giants batter to reach base twice. The Giants had no XBH's in the game.
Tim Lincecum- 3 IP, 5 H, 4 R, 3 BB, 4 K's. ERA= 3.13. Short day for Timmy.
Bullpen- 6 IP, 6 H, 1 R, 1 BB, 11 K's. The bullpen was a bright spot, but it was too little too late. Runzler had 5 K's in 2 IP. Let's hope he's got his domination mojo going again.
The Padres kept on winning, 4-2 over the Florida Marlins to drop the Giants 4.5 games behind. With the Dodgers leading the Yanks they could vault over the Giants into 2'nd place 4 games back. Colorado lost to the Angels 10-3 to drop 6 games off the pace while Arizona lost to the Rays 2-1 to fall 15.5 games back. The Padres are threatening to blow the NL West race wide open.
The Dodgers come to town this week with Zito, Cain and Sanchez trying to stop the bleeding for the Giants. Facing NL West rival is an opportunity for great gains, but also a risk of getting buried.
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with pedroia going down, think the sox are wishing they didnt dfa kfran, who is hitting 352 with the halos? i love it when i am proven right about a player's potential
ReplyDeleteso when are the giants gonna release nate so he can have some success as a pro?
oh...and i agree with schulman...the giants look like a team that is "treading water"
Frandsen's sample size is still microscopic with the Angels, but I agree, he can be a Freddy Sanchez/Mark Loretta type 2B in the majors. The achilles injury came at a critical time in his Giants career and the Giants are not the most patient team with young players, although it's demonstrably false to say that they hate young players and refuse to give them opportunuities.
ReplyDeleteFrandsen got a lot of opportunities with the Giants but never could do anything with them after the injury. Perhaps he was still struggling with recovery, who knows?
ReplyDeleteBut I wouldn't say that the Giants lacked patience with him, if he did more in the minors, then they would have given him more rope, but when you hit .140/.204/.180/.384 like he did last year in 52 PA, you are not going to earn a lot of rope.
And with the guys we have on the 40 man, I wouldn't have dropped any of them in order to keep him. Basically, had the Giants committed to Frandsen in the offseason, there was no reason to resign Juan Uribe, and where would we be without him? People don't think of these consequences (and there always are consequences) when putting their opinion out.
I'm glad for him as I'm still rooting for him but he frankly admitted in recent interviews that the pressure of being the hometown boy seeking to be a starter for his boyhood team got to him. So had he stayed around, it could have held him back even longer.
He has done very well, and though limited ABs so far, nearly 100 PA means he's been getting to play a lot, about a third of the time. Still not walking a lot, but not striking out even more is good too.
.368 BABIP suggests, however, that he's going to fall back to his career mean as the season/career progresses. People can keep that up in limited AB, but as he gets more AB, it will fall, only very fast players or great hitters can keep their BABIP high but even the best can't keep it THAT high (Ichiro has .358 BABIP in his career, Tony Gwynn is .341, Ted Williams .328, Willie Mays .299).
So boast while you can, but I think time will prove DrB correct. I like Frandsen, but we couldn't wait any longer for him to figure things out with us, the Giants moved on with Sanchez and still has Burriss, younger, faster, better defensively at 2B. But I'm glad he's doing well, and I wish him the best (except when he's playing against the Giants).
Very easy to say a team is treading water when they lose three series in a row.
ReplyDeleteAnd just before that they were 14-6 and so is 17-12 since then. And is 40-34 for the season, so basically they were treading water (23-22) for most of the season, then has been winning since then overall, if you are looking at the bigger picture, instead of just the tail or the tusk.
So when people were complaining about the team when they were 23-22, then this 17-12 stretch therefore proves them wrong, right, under the logic that a lot of Giants fans seem to be using?
I don't know why people get so down when losing, it is like they have never gone through a season before. There are ups and downs to every season. The W/L says 40-34, which is pretty good still. But who knows what will happen, that's the beauty, each season is it's own, fresh to discover each petal and thorn. Still, we have a good team and we should have a winning season.
I'll probably start worrying if we get back to .500 again, but not so much because the season still has a lot to be played and I've seen teams struggle into June and July then bust out in August and coast into the playoffs. As long as we are close to the Padres, we can still pull it off, as we have a great rotation and more times than not, they will out-pitch the other team, they are 128-108 since the 2009 season began.
I don't understand how people are so upset when the Giants pitch well and lose but then don't get so upset when we score a lot and lose. Like in the World Series of 2002. People focus more on the Ortiz handoff to Baker as the turning point, and perhaps it was in terms of when the tide turned, but I was more upset over Game 2, which was a more critical game, when Ortiz gave up a bazillion runs, taking away all hopes of winning the game, then the offense comes roaring back and takes the lead, before the pitching gives it all back again, losing 11-10. How do you lose when you score 10 runs? That was more upsetting to me.
If we had won that game, the series would have been over 4-1 in five games, keeping everything the same. And if we had swept them at home instead of splitting, I wouldn't bet against us sweeping them in 4. Funny how one game could prove so critical to changing the results.
you know obsessive, your idea of giving a player plenty of chances is a bit different than mine
ReplyDeletein all of 2009 kfran had 53 at bats in the bigs...thats plenty of chances after the injury?
Bacci,
ReplyDeleteBefore the achilles injury, I absolutely thought Frandsen should have gotten a chance to start that year. It's not clear that the Giants would have given him that chance, but the injury pretty much took it off the table. Once the injury occured, the Giants had to find other options. Fast forward to this year and I don't see how or why you would play Frandsen over either Sanchez or Uribe which put him no better than #3 on the depth chart. I'm not even sure you would take him over Matt Downs, so he might have even been #4.
When Frandsen was hitting his way up the chain in the minors, I projected him to be a Mark Loretta or Mark Grudzialanek type second baseman, which is to say good but not great. I still think he can achieve that and hope he succeeds either with the Angels or another team. I wouldn't dump Sanchez, Uribe or even Matt Downs to get him back though.