The Giants overcame a very subpar start by Jonathan Sanchez, came from behind twice and defeated the Nationals going away, 10-5. In the process, Buster Posey continued to unfold his greatness to Giants fans starved for home developed position players. Not since Will Clark has a Giants player come up from the farm system and dominated from day one like Buster(of course, I'm not counting last year's non-callup where he was on the team, but basically didn't play). Key lines:
Aaron Rowand- 2 for 4, HR(8). BA= .238. Gotta give credit to Rowand after saying some pretty harsh things about him. He stepped up and played well for the injured Andres Torres. Thankfully, it sounds like Torres injury is not as bad as feared.
Aubrey Huff- 1 for 3, 2 BB. BA= .295. Can this guy find any more ways to help the Giants win. He scores all 3 times he gets on base tonight.
Buster Posey!- 4 for 5, 2B, HR(7). BA= .351. Can Buster get any more awesome? I mean, just look as his line in the boxscore! How great is that, anway? Buster is hitting .514 with 6 HR's in his last 10 games.
Jonathan Sanchez- 3.2 IP, 5 H, 5 R, 2 BB, 6 K's ERA= 3.47. Sanchez made some spectacular pitches in this game, but was frightfully inconsistent. It didn't help that the ball seemed to be carrying extraordinarily well on a non-muggy night in the Nation's Capital. He actually threw several fastballs to several batters where they didn't even start their swings until after the ball hit the catcher's mitt! He seemed to be hanging his breaking ball a lot though and the Nats' hitters made him pay.
Joe Martinez- 1.2 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 2 BB, 0 K's. Credit Joey with being a gamer in this one. He cleaned up Sanchez' mess with a nifty pickoff of opposing Pitcher Craig Stammen at 2B after Stammen had driven Durty out of the game with a run scoring double. Then Joe pitched his way out of a self created, bases loaded jam in the 5'th inning. Plus he got one out in the 6'th before giving away to Santiago Casilla. Ray, Romo and Affeldt finished up after the Giants took the lead with a 4 run 7'th inning.
With the W, the Giants move up one more game in the standings, still in 4'th place, but just 4 games behind division leading Padres who lost to Colorado and Jason Hammel 4-2. With the win, Colorado moved to 1 game behind the leaders. The Dodgers lost to the Cubs to remain 2 games off the pace while Arizona picked up a game in last place to 16.5 games behind with a 5-4 win over the Marlins.
Madison Bumgarner tries to end the official first half of the season on a positive note as he takes on Giants nemesis Livan Hernandez in a game that starts at 10:00 AM on the west coast. Hernandez has had his ups and downs since leaving the Giants, but he's always been tough on his former team, so MadBum has his work cut out for him.
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I think you can take many views of Posey and the situation. I would argue that Posey is the first since maybe Jack Clark (and the term I would use, per your note, is that since he was brought up to start, which he wasn't last September), because while Will the Thrill started with that homer, he, to me, fizzled out (all relative of course) with 12 homers over 400 AB before the injury took him out.
ReplyDeleteHowever, while he didn't necessarily dominate (and by that i assume you mean his HR power), Pablo Sandoval basically came out the chutes hitting, his OPS, even when he wasn't homering, was still in the high 800 OPS area. And his struggles, by the way, is to me a poor reflection on the job that Bam Bam Meulens is doing, one would think a good batting coach would have helped a good hitter like Pablo out of this huge tailspin. Anyway, it can be argued that Pablo has dominated since Day One, if you look at his overall numbers besides the homers - his homering, which started last June, just pushed him even higher - because I feel that any hitter who can hit regularly beyond .850 OPS is a very good hitter, and certainly a better hitter than any since Will and Matty joined.
Hopefully we can win today and gain another game on SD. 3-4 games back at the ASB is not too bad, in any case.
Oh, FYI, Baggarly has a nice post up where Sabean basically leaks that the Giants are interested in signing Huff for future seasons (he pooh-poohed idea of selling vets, then pointed out Huff and rhetorically said that it wouldn't make sense to trade someone who you are interested in for future seasons).
ReplyDeleteAnd I have to give a shout-out to Ishikawa for sticking with it and now taking advantage of his playing time. Now that Burrell is cooling off, the Giants can play Huff in LF more, allowing Ishikawa to play 1B and Schierholtz to play RF.
I though about Pablo, and he was certainly a breath of fresh air on this team when he came up and he certainly did hit the snot out of the ball from the get-go. My only reason for skipping over him and going back to Will Clark is with Pablo, I think a lot of us were uneasy all along with his complete lack of plate discipline and that it would finally catch up with him. With Posey and Clark, you have more of a feeling that this is just going to keep getting better and better, that a new era has truly dawned. I'll probably feel different about it another day, but that's how I'm feeling about it now.
ReplyDeleteAs for Meulens, I really think importance of hitting coaches is overrated. IMO, they rarely, if ever make a significant difference in a player's on-field performance.
BTW, have you read the story of Andres Torres working with a private hitting coach? Maybe the Giants should just hire that guy!!
Yes, I found out about it in Fangraphs comments in the one where the writer facetiously suggested that Andres Torres should be starting on the All-Star team.
ReplyDeleteHe basically is teaching Ted Williams' Science of Hitting methodology. Only swing at balls you can do something with, swing with force, uppercut swing for power, etc. You can see that in Torres' stats over the past two seasons.
I still find it amazing that the guy revamped Torres swing in a few in person sessions, but mostly via e-mail, from what I understand, and then Andres did the hard work to make it natural for him over about a year, if I remember the timeline right.
And talk about kismet, Torres basically found the guy by googling for articles about Albert Pujols' swing, and the guy had posted a site analyzing Pujols' swing.
I agree, hire the guy to work with all our minor leaguers. I think he should start with Conor Gillaspie!
About Pablo, good point about his struggle and how he's different from the other two. I can see that point of view. I guess I still believe in the Panda.
ReplyDeleteI think that hitting coaches can make a difference, because when Ted Williams took over the Washington Senators as manager, even though he had pretty much the same lineup as the poor one from the season before, all the hitters took a jump in offensive productivity that first season he took over. So I'm serious, get this other guy to come in and be our farm system hitting coach.
Then bring in Tim Lincecum's dad and have him handle the pitchers.
Though I've been impressed with what Steve Kline has been doing in Augusta, first Runzler last season, now Wheeler is praising him a lot in the interviews at the Futures Games.