It was like a debutante ball for the Brandons out at AT&T Park today, or a Bar Mitzvah or Sweet 16 or whatever you want to call it. It was like these kids who the Giants have carefully raised were finally presented to the world, and what a smashing presentation it was! Key Lines:
Gregor Blanco- 0 for 3, 2 BB. BA= .277. Blanco continues to get on base at an impressive rate.
Brandon Crawford- 2 for 5, 2B. BA= .225. My first reaction was why would Bochy move Brandon Belt out of the 2 hole when he seems to have started to find success there. On second look, by putting Crawford in the 2 hole and dropping Belt to 6 Bochy was able to lengthen the lineup and did not have to resort to putting Aubrey Huff back in there. Crawford is hitting .265 over his last 10 games. Not exactly what you would call a hot streak, but a significant improvement over his season average and a great improvement over the slump he was in. If he can stick in the 2 hole, it would do wonders for the rest of the lineup.
Buster Posey- 2 for 4, BB. BA= .302. Buster is still hitting singles but at least he's hitting. 5 for 8 in his last 2 games.
Angel Pagan- 1 for 2, 3 BB. BA= .296. At least his teammates drove him in twice for his efforts in this on. Pagan is hitting .400 with a .467 OBP over his last 10 games, yet has just 3 Runs and 2 RBI's to show for it. Again, not saying it's his fault.
Brandon Belt- 2 for 3, 2 2B, BB. BA= .257. OBP= .369. Belt looked very confident today while continuing to get on base while hitting the ball with authority to all fields. I don't see how the FreeBelters can make a case that Belt would be better off had he been allowed to continue floundering at the beginning of the season or had he been sent down to Fresno. I'm tellin' ya. The Giants are handling Belt just right and he's gonna be fine.
Emmanuel Burriss- 0 for 2, BB, SF. Hey! Even Burriss got in on the offensive act.
Matt Cain- 6 IP, 8 H, 4 R, 1 BB, 6 K's. ERA= 2.67. Maybe a little BABIP'ing here?
Santiago Casilla- 1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 1 K, Save(9). ERA= 1.72. Closers need to have short memories and Casilla did not show any memory of his last outing in this one.
Carlos Beltran- DNP. Beltran missed his 4'th consecutive game with a sore knee.
With the Win, the Giants remained 6 games behind the NL West leading Dodgers in sole possession of 2'nd place. The D'Backs out hit the Rockies 9-7 to regain sole possession of 3'rd place 8.5 games behind while the Rockies fell to 4'th place 9.5 games behind. The Pathetic Padres fell to 11.5 back in last place after their 8-1 shellaking at the hands of the Dodgers.
The Giants open interleague play at home against their cross bay rivals the Oakland A's with Barry Zito taking the mound.
I'll leave you with this quote from Alex Pavlovic who hit the nail about as squarely on the head as it's possible to hit it:
"The Giants have been through the growing pains that come with having one of the youngest lineups in the big leagues. They've dealt with the errors, poor at-bats, and failures to make the right play. Through 38 games, the Giants have put up with the failures because they believe that their young players will grow into everyday success stories. They believe that Brandon Belt, 24, will grow into a middle-of-the-order threat- in time. That Brandon Crawford, 25, will shake off a rough start to his career and become a consistent presence. It's games like Thursday's 7-5 win over the St. Louis Cardinals that reinforce those beliefs."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Not only are they a young team, they are a new team meaning they haven't played together for long. I think as the season progresses the kids will play better and the team will come together as a whole.
ReplyDeleteThe big question is do we go after O Dog? If we are considering Mora and I don't know how we wouldn't go after Orlando.
I hope they don't go after either one. Arias should be back soon and Brett Pill has been working out at 3B and looking pretty good there in the process, according to Alex.
DeleteOrlando can not D-up anymore. Not quite Tejada, but you get the picture. G's don't want or need any more San Diego rejects.
DeleteBuster's over.300 again, but no dingers. Aberration or progress from Brandons?G's must go with power,as power wins games,not pitching per se.No substitute for one swing accounting for 3 or 4 runs.G's missed 2 chances to shrink L.A.'s lead to 4. Blanco's the real deal,great obp.Hurlers must keep runs down,as G's have trouble scoring 4 runs,today wasn't your typical G's output.Would you start freak in a must game? I wouldn't.G's could turn it around,but to do so, pitching and power numbers must improve. Ian.
ReplyDeleteIan, if you're waiting dingerz, I think it's going to be awhile.
Delete"not the pitching per se."
DeleteI'm going to respectfully disagree on this one. Pitching is, always has been and always will be at least 75% of the game. You can win without dingerz. You can't win without pitching.
Carlos Beltran had a pitch hit in the game.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the correction. Good for him.
DeleteNo problem, love your coverage on the giants. Also who do you think the Giants will draft?
DeleteLots of possibilities at #20 for the Giants. I think they are most likely to take a HS pitcher and for one name, I'll say Ty Hensley from Oklahoma.
DeleteI like Ty Hensley. Can't wait for the draft to come around.
DeleteGiants capitalize on another team's mistakes! Second win of the year when the opposition scores 4 or more! (Pagan's comeback HR game in Cincy was the other). Not very sure or very confident that Bochy's Crawford plan for the 2-hole will work or stay in effect longer than 2 games, but not a bad job done for the day.
ReplyDeleteBTW, Mr. Pato, I stayed the course and won the bet on Crawford, are you ready to concede? 2 games to go, Crawford has had six days off this season, 5 against lefties, and has started every game since the Gints got buzzsawed by Ted Lilly. May stats so far are 262/340/333, the errors have been terrible (8 officially), but Bochy and Sabean have stuck to their guns. Pretty amazed with the patience shown.
Melvin Mora is a hail mary, lets hope Dusty Baker is making a big push and its Scott Rolen related. The O-dog I have mixed feelings about. Burriss has not made the grade though, and asking rooks to step in all over the infield maybe too much. We might benefit from a bit of vet grit at this point.
Shank, good call on O-dog. The Mendoza line, no XBH infield is really killing the Giants offense + errors. O-dogST (short-term) only please.
DeleteThe Giants are handling Belt mostly right these days but not quite 'just right' - as humans tend to be unpredictable. In fact one can handle something slightly or mostly wrong and one can still come out ahead - like winning in spite of errors or some people raising their kids. That is howI feel, though there is really no way to show it conclusively one way or the other.
ReplyDeleteBut the focus should be on enjoying the team's win and Belt's good day, not whether we fans were right or wrong. It's like if you got good kids, just be happy.
Good point and well taken. Thanks for adding that.
DeleteYou are welcome.
DeleteGodd blogwork, dr. B. As a colleague and fellow giants fan, yourvsite is the best.
ReplyDeleteStill brewing about the loss of Wheeler though, still wish the organization would stay true to homegrown pitching rather than veteran bats. I agree that pitching is 75% of the game and you can never have enuf top arms.
As a rule, I am always not comfortable with trading prospects away.
DeleteI wasn't enthusiastic even when trading for Garko or F. Sanchez.
Often we didn't give away more than we received.
Once in a while, what we didn't give away came back to us and is actually quite valuable. I am thinking Vogey here. It could be some
luck here or we make our own luck, who knows?
With that said, I was never excited about trading Wheeler from the beginning. It's about my own consistency.
I hated losing Wheeler at the time and it's still tough to accept. I just think it's water under the bridge at this point. The Giants were in a rather unique position of being the defending champs, still in first place but needing a game changer to turn around a moribund offense. Beltran was the best hitter on the market and the Mets were not going to give him away. They couldn't just throw in the towel on the season at that point. The trade had to be made. Personally, I would have preferred that they traded Gary Brown assuming they had that choice, but every time I bring that up as an alternative to trading Wheeler, I don't get many agreeing with me.
DeleteI absolutely don't agree with those who say Wheeler isn't all that good or that that Sabean seldom makes mistakes when he trades away pitching. I'm tellin' ya, Wheels is the real deal if you are not OK with this deal now, it's only going to get worse in the future.