The Giants followed a familiar formula of tight, tenacious pitching and just enough hitting to win the series from the Mets and head into the All-Star Break with a 3 game lead in the NL West. Key Lines:
Mike Fontenot- 3 for 5. BA= .227. There were a couple of balls that got through the right side for base hits that I thought Emmanel Burriss might have gotten too, but the 3 hits were nice.
Pablo Sandoval- 1 for 5, 2B. BA= .303. Pablo got named to the NL All-Star team as the designated sub which means he can enter the game more than once. He also extended his hit streak to 21 games.
Nate Schierholtz- 4 for 4, 2B. BA= .293. Nate is red hot! Here's what I really liked about Nate's game today, besides the obvious 4 hits: With his recent HR's, it might have been tempting to start swinging for McCovey Cove on every pitch which is a good way to go into a slump. Instead, Nate stayed within himself and went up the middle twice and to the opposite field twice. Real nice hitting by Nate. He keeps this up and he's going to blossom into a Star!
Matt Cain- 6 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 3 BB, 4 K's. ERA= 3.06. What made it tough for Cainer is that 4 of the 5 hits he allowed were for extra bases. Add in the walks and it made for a very stressful start. He gutted it out for 118 pitches over the 6 innings and somehow managed to not allow a run while picking up his 8'th Win of the season.
Sergio Romo- 0.1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 1 K. ERA= 2.15. I would have let Romo bat top of the 9'th or else made a double switch when he came in. Wilson really needs more than 1 night off, IMO and Romo has had as good stuff as I've seen him have against the few batters he's faced the last few games.
Brian Wilson- 1 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 0 BB, 3 K's, Save(26). ERA= 3.14. Wilson struck out the side and got the Save, but gave up a couple of ringing doubles in between. He still doesn't look right to me.
With the Win, the Giants moved 3 games ahead of the D'Backs who lost to the Cards 4-2. The Reeling Rockies also lost, to the Nats 2-0 to drop 8.5 games off the pace. The Dodgers kept pace in 4'th place, 11 games behind the Giants with a 4-1 win over the Pathetic Padres who got swept in Chavez Ravine and are now 12 games behind in last place.
MLB takes a 3 day break for the All-Star festivities.
Rockies, Dodgers and Padres need to start thinking about selling at the trade deadline as they are farther out of the Wild Card race than they are in the NL West. I believe the Giants will almost certainly be buyers. Brian Sabean has always bought at the deadline even when the Giants chances appeared to be slim to none. All the talk is about Beltran, but Sabean rarely makes the trade everybody is expecting. I think Beltran may be a smoke screen. I do believe the Giants are in a position to take on significant short term salary for the stretch drive so a rental trade would be feasable as long as it doesn't require a top tier prospect. That should not be necessary if they take on salary though. I even think they might be in a position to offer a player like Beltran arbitration next year with several veteran salaries coming off the books and several prospects ready to make the jump to the majors.
Addendum: Bobby Valentine is one of the more annoying people do listen to I've heard on a long time. He went on and on about how bad Nate's leadoff footwork is. I have no idea if he knows what he is talking about, but BFD!
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Nate actually went 4 for 4! Hitting .800 is good, but 1.000 is better!
ReplyDeleteDoesn't Beltran have it written in his contract that he can not be offer arb?
ReplyDeletebeltran cant be offered arb. its in his contract. less leverage for the mets and more incentive to take him for something.
ReplyDeleteDidn't know that about Beltran. I was getting greedy and wanting the draft picks. Beltran may have shot himself in the foot with that contract. It might make him more likely to get a multi-year deal, but he could also get a lot more $$/season at this stage of his career if he was offered arbitration and accepted.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the correction on Nate. Fixed!
Great game for Nate. Nice point about him staying within his himself and not trying too hard and getting overconfident. The changes he made to his stance are definitely paying off. If he continues to get the chance to be an everyday player and prove that his current offensive tear is not a fluke, I think Nate has the ability to hit around 15 home runs per year along with a .300 average.
ReplyDeleteAnd maybe if we're really optimistic, perhaps he can put up Andre Ethier-esque numbers..
.300 with 15 HR is what I would envision. Combined with his defensive skills, that's not a bad package.
ReplyDeleteNate's season numbers are 15 doubles and 7 dingers in 222 AB's. That includes at least one pretty bad slump and inconistent playing time. Projected to 600 AB's you get about 40 doubles and 18-20 HR's. That would be stupendous!
ReplyDeleteIf anybody is a member on John Sickels' site, you might ask him to to a look back at his development.
ReplyDeleteDrb, lets hope you're right about the Giants being able to take on short term salary. The Beltran trade talk becomes moot if ownership doesn't authorize additional payroll. I saw an article where Larry Baer was uncommittal about the question. I heard that Beltran is owed $9 mil for the rest of 2011..
ReplyDeleteI suppose you could interpret Sabean's comments 2 ways: 1. He was signalling that the Giants DO have the resources and willingness to take on salary, or 2. He as trying to put pressure on the owners to OK taking on salary.
ReplyDeleteShould be an interesting trade deadline with the Giants at the center of a lot of rumors. However it turns out, I don't expect Sabes to stand pat. He ALWAYS makes at least 1 deadline deal of some kind.
Beltran might be nice, but I'm still looking at the middle infield and catcher for end-of-year rentals/upgrades. That is where injuries have left the Giant's depth thinnest and offense most anemic.
ReplyDeletedoc,
ReplyDeletevalentine wants to be an mlb manager again in the worst way...and is using the broadcasts to show the baseball world that he has more knowledge than anyone else
he couldve mentioned his opinion about nate's lead off stance once...but he kept saying it to show everyone that he found a flaw in a guy who has worked himself into being a 5 tool player
espn messed up...they had a good team with miller and little joe, because both are content with their current choices of professions, and know that part of what makes broadcasting a game is that you dont need to chatter away incessantly
he did praise crawford alot...so that was nice
craw is gonna save this team some money and headaches...seems to me the left side of the if is set for the next 8-10 years...huge
Yeah, I'm real excited about Nate too. He would have these hot spells before followed by cool freezing spells, which are often accompanied by some sort of injury, like the one Ishikawa suffered diving for a ball earlier this season and reportedly he's out for the season now.
ReplyDeleteIf he can protect his body more and stay healthy, I think 20-ish homers is certainly doable with high .200 BA, and at his peak, 30-ish homers.
This season appears to be the year he puts it all together in the majors, that was his pattern in the minors, he first figures out how to hit for a good average in the league, then he figures out how to do that with HR power. His push upward in HR power recently hopefully is the signal that he's finally figured that out in the major league level.
Oddly enough, the rule of thumb I've heard about prospects is that it takes them 1000 PAs to fully develop as a hitter and be ready for the minors, but Nate just reached 1000 PA for his major league career, could that be also true for the major league level, at least for some?
The Rockies probably should, but I think that they are going to keep on trying.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious who the Dodgers would trade away, Blake maybe, Carroll, Barajas, Miles, all the old guys. Actually, other than Blake, and maybe Carroll, I think the rest are probably not of interest to any team, just DFA them and play the young guys.
Had any of their older pitchers been doing well, I would trade them too, but they have been horrible, they are stuck with them and their contracts...
The Padres were stupid to try to win this season, they should have just went with their young guys and get the best draft pick they can for the 2012 draft. Good for us, though...
Yeah, Sabean usually tries to do something mid-season trade-wise, so I would expect something to happen. I am hoping that, given the talk, they won't pull the trigger unless it is a nice MI pickup, either SS or 2B, like the JJ Hardy rumors with Orioles.
My interpretation is that Sabean is talking about willingness to take on money. He and management are usually speaking as one, I don't think that he would say that publicly to put pressure on Neukom, else he could have done that a lot with Magowan, I would think. Magowan had no problem saying publicly that he had nothing to do with AJ trade.