The Cardinals scored 3 runs in the 6'th inning against a tiring Matt Cain to break open a close game, and went on to win going away. Key Lines:
Angel Pagan- 2 for 4, HR(7). BA= .283. Pagan led off the game with a dinger. I have considered leadoff HR's to start a game to be a jinx ever since Gary Thomasson hit that one off Don Sutton back in 197whatever.
Melky Cabrera- 2 for 4. BA= .354. Melky's Hit Parade rolls on!
Buster Posey- 2 for 4, HR(17). BA= .329. Stay hot, Buster!
Brandon Belt- 2 for 3. BA= .244. If Buster needs to move to 1B, OK, but if it's a choice between Belt and Pill, I'll take Belt right now.
Matt Cain- 5.2 IP, 8 H, 5 R, 2 BB, 7 K's. ERA= 3.01. Cain threw 114 pitches and was clearly gassed in the 6'th inning. One of our commenters made a great point yesterday about the Giants using just 5 starters in all but 1 game so far this season. Giants starters tend to go deep into games. Gotta take it's toll after awhile. What if you had a 6'th starter who would replace a different starter on a rotating basis? This starter would pitch every 6'th game. The other 5 starters would pitch every 5'th game but skip every 5'th turn.
Shane Loux- 2 IP, 4 H, 3 R, 2 BB, 0 K's. ERA= 5.66. Gotta think Loux is headed out when Mijares joins the team tomorrow.
The D'Backs lost again, this time to the Pirates 4-0, to remain 4 games behind the NL West leading Giants. Amazingly enough, the Dodgers are trailing the Rockies 2-0 after 7 innings of their game. Should the Dodgers come back to win, they would gain sole possession of first place by 0.5 games. If they go on to lose, they remain 0.5 games behind the Giants.
Barry Zito takes on the Cardinals and Lance Lynn tomorrow evening.
PS: Rockies blanked the Dodgers 2-0. As Vin Scully would say, "go figure!"
Oh, and Hanley Ramirez is hitting .217 as a Dodger, .175 in his last 10 games.
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belt or pill...what does it matter...is belt hitting with men on? belt's wife follows ann coulter on twitter...makes her a wingnut...wingnuts marry wingnuts..i knew there was a reason i didnt like that kid
ReplyDeletethink the perfect game took a little out of cain?
loux says he really likes being in the pen, and his numbers in fresno are pretty good...strange how he just implodes when he comes up
giants really need to show more vs winning teams...
i hate carlos...bet his wife follows ann coulter too
i knew there was something I don't like about Twitter. That is WAY TMI.
DeleteYee Gods. Ann Coulter.
DeleteOK, so if this is true, who do we have to sacrifice to get Belt hitting?
Ann coulter? WTF?
DeleteWhy couldn't they follow someone sane, like Michael Moore instead? What is this country coming too?
When did this site become political and full of personal attacks against the players? And, what does that have to do with whether Belt or any other hitter (or pitcher) is good or will be good?
DeleteAs for Belt hitting with men on base, he is hitting .246/.368/.426 in such situations this year. To put that in perspective, Pagan is hitting .282/.350/.397 with men on base, while Pence is hitting .272/.344/.437 with men on base. What about Hector Sanchez and Brett Pill? Hector has a .324/.329/.456 line and Pill has a .208/.283/.438 line.
Thus, when you look at Belt's numbers with men on base, it doesn't look awful compared to some of the guys in front of him or some of the guys who generally occupy his same spot in the line-up. So, in conclusion, Belt should still be given opportunities on this team, as should Hector, but Pill should occupy a bench role (if at all).
Perhaps Republican Giants fans should be outed as well.
DeleteT.K.,
DeleteThese things come up from time to time. So what? It's a given that we take everything Bacci says with a wink, smile & a grain of salt.
BTW, for me it is not a conservative or liberal thing. I'm liberal, but I respect many conservative stances and beliefs.
The issue is people like Ann Coulter, a petty little hate machine if there ever was one. She fuels the fire of a superior, dismissive, highly divisive "us vs. them" mentality. Therein lies the problem.
Oh, and Belt can't hit.
(Hitting with men on with marginal success is somewhat cherry-picked, and comparison to others is a little spurious. Pagan is not an RBI guy, Pence just got here, Pill was never expected to stick on the roster (and hasn't) let alone start, and Hector Sanchez is a switch-hitting rookie catcher, a position which does not demand the offensive production of a corner infielder. (Buster Posey being an insanely fantastic exception))
Kelly,
DeletePence's line was his numbers for the entire year, not just his time with the Giants. And, I posted numbers in direct response to Bacci's question "is Belt hitting with men on?" The answer was that, yes, he is hitting with men on, at least at a similar rate to guys who have hit above him or at the same spot in the line-up as him.
If you look at Belt's numbers in other situations, there is pause for concern. His RISP numbers are not pretty and his strikeout rate without men on base is around 31%, which is pretty high. I'm just trying to be reasonable in analyzing his performance and not fall into the extremes that are out there these days about Belt.
Kelly, it's not about being a cult-personality fan or not a cult-personality fan. That's not the thing. It's the divisive 'this player's wife listens to that cult-persaonality' and 'others don't' camps among fans.
DeleteWhen one enters the baseball world, it's time to leave that behind.
By the way, I take anything a cult-personality says with a grain of salt, especially those on TV.
As for Belt, if he hits, he hits and if not, he doesn't. No one really knows. One of those mysteries in life that we will only know when we look back. As a fan, I hope he hits, as well as all other hitters on the team.
Agreed. All kidding and angst aside, I really do hope Belt hits. I like him and I want him to do well.
DeleteBrace yourself,I have something positive to say about the Giants, not Pence. They have problems when they play good teams, but they ARE in 1st place.What will they do when Panda returns,"sick pence" contributes and they get Vogelsong effective pitching? Only way to keep L.A. out of 1st is for Rocks to get hot. Ian.
ReplyDeleteThat would be a crazy way to use a 6th starter. A random 10-day break in the middle of the season?
ReplyDeleteBetter: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 6, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 6, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Skipped starts are a time honored way of getting struggling pitchers back on track. I'm sure there are multiple ways you could accomplish the same thing which is to give pitchers a rejuvination on the fly during the season.
DeleteI have been suggesting a 6-man rotation to give arms a rest in August the past few seasons, and even with likely candidates available to take a spot, Bochy and the Giants did not chose to go that route. There is no one really obvious this season, though I suppose Penny would volunteer, but I'm leery of him relieving right now, let alone start, and Surkamp has been out all season.
DeletePetit could be an option, but we are running out of 40 man spots before we need to DFA players.
I forgot where I suggested this, but there is an off day in a couple of weeks, just before a Cain start if I counted the rotation right, and I was thinking that if we were to insert a 6th starter in his prior start, but continue the rotation as usual, that would give him two extra days off before starts, one per those two starts, to give his body/arm a little extra rest for August. That could be a bullpen start with Penny going until he can't, then Hensley since he's been a starter before. We could also just simply skip Cain's start just before that day off, with this bullpen start, to give him even more days off. I would think that how he does in his next start will dictate whether any of this happens.
Hey, Dr. B, if my memory serves me, I think the Giants opened a season at Dodger Stadium one year and Thomasson actually hit the first pitch of the season for a homerun off of Sutton. Of course that was back in the early or mid 70's and the rest of the season pretty much went downhill from that point.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I was in college. I turned on the game on my car radio during my lunch break, heard the HR and then had to go to class. When I was done for the day, I found out the Giants had lost 8-1. That was one of their worse teams from what I remember.
DeleteThat whole span of years was pretty bleak. I was a kid just starting to follow baseball and it's a wonder I didn't lose heart from all the losing or jump ship and become an A's fan. The good individual performances of Bobby Bonds and Chris Speier kept me interested early on and then the emergence of The Count really got me following the team. It also helped that back in those days the Giants offered free tickets to SF public school students who maintained a certain GPA which goes to show that if teams reach out to kids they might hook some for life.
DeleteI started following the Giants that period too, starting with their last good season, 1971. Else I might have been an A's fan (ugh!) too, as I was in the East Bay then.
DeleteFor me, Bobby, Dave Kingman, and then the Count sealed the deal. Herndon helped too.
The teams were actually not that bad in those days. I think we saw bleaker days in the seasons leading up to us getting Will Clark in the draft. It was just that the team was in the MLB Limbo zone, neither really bad nor really good, and as my draft study showed, when you are in limbo, that is the worse place to be because you aren't good enough to compete, but are so far back in the first round that you have low odds of finding a good player via the draft.
Once you are in the limbo zone, teams that want to have any hope of returning to the playoffs need to totally sell off any and all talent, build up a pool of prospects while getting great overall Top 5 picks where you hopefully will draft the next player to lead your next playoff contending teams (like we did with Buster, Braves did with Chipper, Yankees did with Jeter). That's what I call my Phoenix Theory of Rebuilding for MLB baseball, you need to tear it down, a la Connie Mack and Charles O. Finley, before you can hope to rebuild again. Loria of the Marlins best embodies that philosophy today (and just as respected as Finley, as in NOT!). Dombrowski also gets that too, I think, and I think Loria learned that from him when he was with the Expos and Marlins, before moving on to the Tigers and burning it down before rebuilding again, around Verlander.
3-1 Giants in the 3rd. All runs so far via the dinger. Fortunately G's had 2 on when Buster (who else) went yard. Pence, 4 for 28,.143. They went to owners and got $10,400,000 for him. Why didn't they do that to keep Beltran? DEAR(read,expensive)HUNTER,no long ball power,Beltran has.Talk about $ down the toilet. Ian.p.s.Let's hope I'm off base but he still won't be hitting his weight (or pulling it) come September.
ReplyDeleteThe reason he G's did not make a serious push at Beltan was because Beltan was pretty clear that he wanted to wait deep not the FA season before signing. The G's had variables they had to account for, and were unwilling/unable to wait. They instead went ahead with other options (Pagan, Melky) that were available to them a the time.
DeleteIf the G's had waited on Beltrans time-table, he would ave had them over a barrel and they would not ave been able to negotiate properly.
I think they did the right thing.
I agree with calsnowskier that the Giants did the right thing. If Beltran was willing to sign for $13M for 2 seasons early on, the Giants most likely would have signed him, but Sabean don't like waiting because, as calsnowskier aptly noted, that puts him behind the 8-ball in terms of negotiations. Carlos decided that he didn't like the Giants that much, and went with the best paying deal with a decent team and OK park. He chose offense over defense, basically, as the Cards have the better offense and park for offense.
DeleteAlso, Ian is just reacting to the here and now, instead of looking at the player's history of experience. I'll bet he was complaining just like this about the Beltran trade just a year ago, once he went on the DL, or maybe even before that when he wasn't hitting that well for the Giants once coming over: .244/.261/.356/.616 with 0 HR in 45 AB and only 2 RBI before going on the DL. Pence might not be hitting, but he at least has 5 RBI in 30 AB so far, and 3 doubles. He's a hot and cold hitter whose usually more hot than cold, and I'm willing to accept cold right now because Posey and Cabrera to a lesser degree is carrying the team offensively. Hopefully Pence (or Panda) will be ready to carry the team once Posey cools off.
calsnowskier,If G's offered beltran what they gave Pence, Beltran would still be a Giant. He can beat you with bat AND his arm. However, getting Melky was a great deal, Pence, not so much. Ian.
ReplyDeleteSo if the giants offered him ToJo?
DeleteSeriously, if you think Tron would have accepted a 2/24 to play at AT&T early in the FA season, I don't know what to tell you...
calsnowskier, Tell me you're going to bed. Hey Buddy, it's 8:33 and we're having a good time already.Ian.
ReplyDeletePence did take Beltran to the wall tonight. Looked like it had the distance if Beltran didn't reach up above the wall to grab it.
ReplyDeleteAs hot as Posey has been, Pence is cold. Doc was talking about him flying open early on his swing. I see what he's talking about, but I think it's just his swing.
BTW, to hear Beltran tell it, he never received any offer from the Giants. And I've never heard anyone from the Giants state that they made an offer to him.
But yeah, if the Giants had simply matched St. Louis' offer, Beltran would have left just based on the better numbers he'd produce in St. Louis.
But there was something more going on. The Giants didn't like Beltran. (Neither do I. At least his cool demeanor.) Beltran is notorious for insisting on not playing hurt. He will not do it. I'm guessing the Giants asked him to play hurt for the sake of the playoff push and he flatly refused. Bad feelings ensued and all of that. The shame of it is Wheeler.
According to the reports last season, the Giants basically forced Beltran to come off the DL before he felt ready, and his being hot soon after the call-up showed that they were right to do that and Beltran was wrong.
DeleteBeltran is a money grubbing, me oriented player. I think that describes a lot of Boras' clients. Unfortunately, many of them are very good players too and if you have the chance to pick one up in the middle of a playoff race, you go for it sometimes. So I'm still OK with losing Wheeler, that's the price sometimes, and I preferred to keep Brown anyway. Joseph wasn't good enough last season to be bundled with Wheeler (his defense was still suspect), Houston would have wanted Brown in the deal, plus at that point, the Giants really only had Tommy, as Hector wasn't quite as a known quality as he was at this trade deadline, and I think Susac wasn't even signed yet, so the Giants didn't have the apparent depth at C as they did this season.
If he really wanted to come back to the Giants, he would have asked Boras to negotiate with the Giants early, the way Sabean likes to work, and give the Giants a number to work against. Instead he listened to Boras and waited until later to negotiate. That's why the Giants never even made an offer, that's how Boras works, one team offers, then he shops that offer to other teams to see if anyone will beat them. The Giants don't like playing that game, they got burnt with Greg Maddux there, they made the offer, they brought it to the Cubs who beat it and Maddux was gone as he got the team and money he wanted. Since then the Giants try to avoid those types of situations, from what it seems.
I agree, Pence just swings like that, from what I've heard, not that DrB is wrong with what he sees either, that could be the part where he's off mechanically. He thinks he close to getting back to what he was hitting before, so I'm willing to be patient, and in any case, I think he's a great addition not just for now, but long-term at the price we paid in prospects this season (last year would have been too much to give up for him).
The Beltran discussions just won't die eh? Flags fly forever. The price was stiff, and now it has no chance for being a win for Los Gigantes. I would still do it. Flags fly forever. Don Carlos - sweet player - had some issues. The 2 that stick with me are Beltran not budging from his seat after a walkoff and those icepacks tied to both his knees. That # that STL got for him was the result of a not-heated bidding war between Cleveland and STL. No other MLB team bid for his services. That tells me all I need to know. Playing the STL got him for WHAT game gets tired and old, and ignores the reality the Gints didn't get involved, and that would definitely NOT have been the final butchers bill.
DeleteI agree completely with you on the early negotiation part. The Giants had to move on, getting stuck at the alter with a thin OF would have been a terrible move. Good for Beltran to stay healthy, I've always liked him but I would also agree with the assessment he is a me first player to the extreme. And I think Brown was the right guy to keep, even with Wheeler coming on strong this year and Brown struggling. Part of that is organizational strength of the Gints (pitching) but part is faith in Downtown Gary Brown.
Pence is going to be just fine. We want him struggling now so he can get hot down the stretch. I think this is an excellent long term move as well as insurance if Melky can't be signed.
OGC - you usually are very objective and back up your replies with sound statistical data. But that last post was pure sour grapes and conjecture. Sabean, if he was a ruthless GM and did not care for the fans would have stood pat last year. And the long term health of the club would have been for the better. But he did not, why?
DeletePD
AA Rockies take 1st 2 games from Dodgers while allowing just 1 run in those 2 games. I must admit I never saw this coming. G's 1 1/2 ahead of Dodgers. I've been down on Pence but on a human level I know he must be feeling bad when he feels he's still not contributing.Hopefully he'll do a Pujols and get some 3 and 4 hit games. Pleasantly surprised by Zito's no BB outing. And what can you say about Buster? Ian.
ReplyDelete