The Giants opened their showdown series with NL West rivals, the Arizona Diamondbacks, on a hot evening in the desert, and balls were jumping off bats right and left, a recipe for disaster with the Giants if there ever was one. Except for one terrible pitch by Matt Cain, it was the Giants bats that did most of the damage, though, and the bullpen hung on for another nail-biting win. Key Lines:
Pablo Sandoval- 1 for 4, BB. BA= .310. Pablo gave the team a shot in the arm with his enthusiasm, hitting and most of all, some sensational fielding at 3B.
Aubrey Huff- 1 for 3, 2 BB. BA= .235. Nobody is happier to see Pablo back in the lineup than Huff. Hopefully having someone else to help carry the load will allow him to relax and just let the game come to him. He's been trying to carry the team himself and he's just not that kind of a hitter.
Cody Ross- 2 for 4, 2 2B, BB. BA= .268. Ross has been the Giants most consistent hitter, of the guys who are still not on the DL. Again, having Pablo in the lineup allows him to move down a notch and play within himself.
Burriss and Crawford had 2 hits each. The D is there for both of these kids if they can just keep getting hits. Again, Pablo allows the Giants to take a defense first posture with the middle infielders.
Matt Cain- 6.2 IP, 8 H, 5 R, 2 BB, 4 K's. ERA= 3.61. Cainer was giving up hard hit balls at an alarming rate. He managed to keep them all in the park except for a horrible pitch to Miguel Montero that got crushed. Unfortunately, it was with 2 runners on base and the game that was looking like a cakewalk for the Giants suddenly turned tense. I don't know where the idea to try to sneak one by on the inside to Montero came from. Whitey set up inside. I think they were trying to come in over his hands, but Cainer didn't elevate the ball enough and it bled back over the middle of the plate, belt high. Blam!!! What a blast! Ironically, Cainer was still given credit for the W. I guess with all the times he's gotten Cained, he deserves one like this once in awhile.
Javier Lopez- 1 IP, 0 H, 0 H, 0 BB, 0 K. ERA= 2.81. Romo walked the leadoff batter in the 8'th which brought up the Dangerous, Dangerous Miguel Montero. Lopez came in and got Montero, then the RH batting Nady and the lefty Parra. A great plece of pitching even with no K's.
Brian Wilson- 1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 2 BB, 1 K, Save(19). ERA= 2.61. Anybody else get the feeling that Wilson creates drama just to keep himself from getting bored? I mean, with 2 outs, he walks 2 batters and then WP's them to 2'nd and 3'rd. He then K's Stephen Drew on a very questionable called strike by a rookie home plate umpire. Game over! Kuiper didn't even try to hide his disgust with the nail biting act despite the exhortations of Kruk. Really interesting to listen to them call the 9'th inning on the TV broadcast.
The Giants had lost 0.5 games to the D'Backs on their off day as the D'Backs beat the Braves. With the Win tonight, the Giants extend their lead in the NL West to 1.5 games. The Colorado Rockies beat the Pathetic Padres 6-3 to remain 6 games behind in 3'rd place. The Desperate Dodgers lost to Cincinnati 3-2 to drop 8 games off the pace while the Padres slid to 9 games back.
Madison Bumgarner will try to secure a series win tomorrow evening against lefty Joe Saunders, who tends to run hot and cold.
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Aubrey walking more is a pretty good sign. A ton of walks accompanied his incredible production first half of 2010. I think you've got it. The guy just has to relax a bit and stop pressing.
ReplyDeleteHell of a catch by Andres.
Kruk is a no-holds barred company-man-homer. Never any negative, ever. Kuip is too much of a curmudgeon. Kuiper plays positive for the broadcasts, but his natural bent shows up at times like the Wilson drama-fests.
I keep saying Crawford can't hit. Hope the guy just proves me wrong. The man can field.
kelly keeps saying that crawford cant hit...yet he got 2 tonite...his speed making sure that he was safe at first on the if hit
ReplyDeletepeople have been spoiled by the roids era...ss arent supposed to be big hitters...avg is nice, but its the glove...its always the glove...and i think its a mistake putting miggs in tomorrow
tomahawk chop boy is a one trick pony...the league is gonna t up on any guy throwing mid 80s with a change...dont care what his motion is...kid is what he is...a specialty pen guy...that is how he was used in the minors
nice to have pablo back...giants needed his energy
nice to see burriss being relaxed at second...giants having a more pressing need for a catcher, he and hall are gonna have to work together to make up for the loss of freddie, who is definitely done for the season
wonder if they will keep the roof open for all three games
and snakes in second by only half a game? wouldnt know it by the gate...26k....lots of giant fans
Great win !!! hopefully Pablo can give some energy to the team and allow Huff to be back on rails.
ReplyDeleteNo word about joe Paterson ? I notice you didn't talk about him when he pitched in San Fran back in april. Our former Minor leaguer prove he belongs to the bigs. Even if he's not with the Giants, I'm happy to see him succeed at this level.
GIP
Bacci, agreed. SS needs to be glove first. But, how much do you give up with the bat? Gotta be better than LeMaster.
ReplyDeleteCrawford, as noted by the good Doctor way back while rating the Giants farm, has very encouraging on-base numbers. Lotta walks. Seems to have a decent eye. Can he do Burrell-like .250 avg, .350 obp? I dunno. But that would be enough, wouldn't you say, given his D?
Don't know yet of Crawford will hit enough, but I sure liked the way he and Burriss were covering the middle last night. More of THAT please!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think the Giants should have protected Paterson from Rule 5 rather than keeping Hinshaw on the 40 man along with several others who are no longer on it. He's become the Snakes version of Javier Lopez at a fraction of the cost.
ReplyDeleteLuckily for us and Crawford, for the time being he gets on the job experience hitting mlb pitching. Whether he can hit or not doesn't seem to matter a whole lot right now because he is getting the AB's. He has shown he has some gap power and some plate discipline, but is still young... I think a .250 avg with plus D is fine for a 7 hitter.
ReplyDeleteBurriss has shown some really nice range the last few games at 2B. He seems to be a streaky defender because at times he really has some mental lapses. If he can hold it together, he and Crawford make a very athletic and rangy middle infield.
Whiteside has another poor throw down to 2B tonight. He had plenty of time, so the SB wasn't on Cainer. We keep winning, so I think it will get brushed under the rug a bit, but we are going to need something a bit more competent than Whiteside behind the dish if we are going to push in the playoffs.
More importantly for Huff is that he has been avoiding the strikeouts, as well as taking walks. He has been in this groove for a while now, but the BABIP gods had been punishing him until recently. Hopefully it can continue, then things will even out. I especially think that with Sandoval around to take the pressure off him, which nobody had been able to do until recently when Cody Ross got hot, Huff will break out, much like he broke out last season when Burrell and then Posey provided equally good bats.
ReplyDeleteThe fact is that until Crawford proves otherwise, his history is that of someone who strikeouts out too much and won't deliver much in terms of OBP or hitting. His beginning is very encouraging, but very unlike what he showed when he was in the minors. Maybe he was playing down to the competition, that does happen, but most players with his poor minor league hitting record don't usually hit well in the majors.
Hopefully his good hitting here is a result of the extra instruction he got while rehabbing this spring. But until he continues to hit well over the rest of the season, it is fair for anyone to doubt whether he's the real deal or not.
Maybe he got 2 hits yesterday, but he was 0-for-13 previously.
Right now, it all appears real to me. His strikeouts have not risen greatly over time. His walks have still been happening regularly. He continues to get hits, until being shut out in the Reds series, he had not gone through more than 2 games without getting a hit, which I think is pretty good. He has not accumulated enough PA yet for these ratios to be significantly set, but as long as the trend stays around where it is now, he's going to be fine, as his BABIP is very low, and as long as he's average, .300, his batting line will look better over time as the BABIP gods go in his favor (currently at .245 in majors; has some speed so should not be that low).
If he can deliver over .600 OPS (average NL SS .262/.316/.371/.687), I think with his great defense that provides good value to the team, certainly better than what Tejada was delivering even just before he left the lineup when Sandoval returned. If he can deliver the average NL SS, then he is perfect in the #7 batting spot, that is basically what the NL #7 hitter hits.
FYI, the BB-Ref Total Zone is actually NEGATIVE for Crawford right now, that system thinks that he is not that good defensively. I have to be skeptical about how good this system is now, at least for small samples. Will be interesting if this holds all season. Meanwhile, UZR has him at 16.6 UZR/150, which is more in line with what we think and see.
Burriss has been expected to be a plus defensive fielder at 2B for a long while now, so I have to think that any defensive lapses has been entirely mental errors. Hopefully it was due to his youth, though at 26 YO now, he don't have much more time to get it straight, that is, if he wants to be a starter.
the system doesnt think that craw is that good defensively??? eff the system
ReplyDeleteas for burriss, i think his defensive lapses had more to do with the super sub experiment....that was going on in the majors, but not in fresno (until about a week before his call up)
he is comfortable at second...and i think he has been told, that is where he is for the duration
as for craw's 0fer...he was squaring up...had good swings...but was mostly hitting it to where they was
i like the kid...and he saves the team a ton of dough