If you just look at the box score, you might reasonably conclude that Matt Cain didn't pitch very well tonight. You would be wrong about that. Matt Cain pitched very well tonight. The home plate umpire had a very bad game. His strike zone was wildly inconsistent, but mostly it squeezed Matt Cain, forcing Cainer to throw pitches down the middle of the strike zone to some very good Marlins batters. The Marlins lineup can take care of itself, thank you. It doesn't need help from the umpire. Marlins starter Ricky Nolasco might have had to work with the same strike zone but the Giants batters never really forced him into situations where he had to make great pitches, so you really couldn't tell, so give the Marlins hitters credit for putting Cain into situations where the ump became the game. Key lines:
Torres and Ross reached base 3 times and Posey had 2 hits. The Giants just weren't able to sustain any rallies.
Matt Cain- 6 IP, 6 H, 4 R, 3 BB, 5 K's. Yup, it's not a great line, but you had to see the strikes the ump called balls to really appreciate that Cainer actually pitched good.
Nate made another tremendous throw from RF to snuff out another Marlins rally. The throw in a flyball to fairly deep RF forced the runner from 3'rd to retreat from trying to score on the SF. The trailing runner was caught by surprise and hung out to dry between 2'nd and 3'rd for a DP.
With the loss, the Giants lose a half game to both the Rockies and D'Backs who split a day-night double-header leaving Colorado 3 games off the pace and the D'Backs 3.5 games back. The Dodgers topped the 'Stros 5-4 to gain back a game to 6.5 games behind while the Padres lost to St Louis 3-2 to remain in last place 8.5 games behind.
The Rockies got bad news when Jorge De La Rosa exited the first game of their DH with a torn UCL which will require TJ surgery and put him on the DL for the remainder of the season.
Madison Bumgarner takes the mound tomorrow night against Chris Volstad.
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The newspaper quoted Cody Ross as saying that because Nolasco didn't walk anyone, they decided to be aggressive, which played right into his hand apparently as he countered that.
ReplyDeleteThat seems odds to me that they would be more aggressive with someone who don't walk anyone. That, to me, means he's a strike-thrower for the most part, why not work pitches instead, both to build pitch count, but also to get a better pitch to hit. Did you understand this strategy DrB?
The theory is the first or sedcond pitch will be the best you see as they will be strikes, give Nolasco count leverage and the remaining pitches will be worse. What I saw was not aggressiveness, but almost an assumption the 1st or 2nd pitch needed to be swung at, without trying to recognize whether it was a FB or breaking pitch, whether it was likely to break out of the strike zone. Biggest offended, F Sanchez on his first AB.
ReplyDeleteI don't have pitch tendencies for Nolasco, but it sounds like the assumption was he was going to be throwing fastballs for first and/or second pitch strikes and then use breaking pitches out of the zone after he got ahead of the hitters. Nolasco crossed them up by throwing breaking balls early in the count both for called strikes and the Giants helped him out a bunch by swinging at them even when they broke out of the zone.
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