Big Time Timmy Jim showed up tonight and pitched one of the best if not the best games he's pitched all season. The Giants offense backed that up with a persistent attack for a relatively easy win.
Angel Pagan- 1 for 5, 3B(14). BA= .290. Pagan extended his SF Giants record for triples and contributed to 2 of the Giants 6 runs in the process.
Marco Scutaro- 3 for 5. BA= .300. Stay hot, Scooter! Scoots is hitting .450 over his last 10 games and .405 for the month of September after hitting .314 in August.
Pablo Sandoval- 2 for 4, 2B. BA= .278. Pablo looks like he's staying back on the ball better. 3 hits and 4 times on base in his last 2 games.
Hector Sanchez- 2 for 4, 2B. BA= .267. Steady as she goes. Another of the small pleasures of watching this season, win or lose. Watching The Hector establish himself in the big leagues and grow as a player. Love his short, quick stroke to the ball. Yet another contradiction to the meme that Sabes and Boch won't give chances to young players who aren't sure thing prospects.
Xavier Nady- 2 for 3. BA= .183. Nady looked terrible at the plate Monday night, but was a big difference maker tonight. Hopefully he can stay healthy enough to at least form a LF platoon with Blanco for the playoffs. He looked like he was only running about 70% last night though.
Nady was involved in a strange play in the bottom of the 6'th. Nady had singled to drive in Hunter Pence and also advanced Hector Sanchez to 2B. Brandon Crawford hit a high chopper over the pitcher's head that the 2B had no chance on. As Nady was running down to 2B, LeMahieu stuck his right elbow out and brushed him. The 2B ump called Nady out on interference and brought Hector back to 2B even though Nady had clearly swerved to try to avoid LeMahieu. Kruk and Kuip were outraged and Carl Steward seems to think it was a terrible call, but on the postgame show, Greg Papa, Bill Laskey and Vida Blue sounded like they thought it was a slam dunk call and it didn't matter that Nady tried to evade LeMahieu. I'm not enough of a rule guy to know, but it seems logical to me that if the runner was trying to avoid contact and the 2B stuck out his elbow trying to make contact, it should have been a non-call. No telling what might have happened had everybody been called safe. It would have brought up Timmy with no outs and the bases loaded. Huff had a bat in his hands in the dugout, so I'm thinking he would have pinch-hit for Timmy in that situation. As it was, Timmy bunted the runners over to 2'nd and 3'rd with the second out, then Pagan struck out looking to end the inning.
Gregor Blanco- 1 for 1, 2B. BA= .239. I loved Blanco's hit which harked back to Ralph Garr and Matty Alou. He basically ran up in the batters box and poked a hard bunt over the 3B head down the LF line into no man's land. The great part of this is that Blanco can hit the ball hard enough that if opposing LF move up and over to cover the short LF line, Blanco will just hit it over their heads to the gap.
6.1 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 2 BB, 6 K's. ERA= 4.91. Not quite vintage Timmy, but a very encouraging start. He has a 3.02 ERA over his last 10 starts. Wouldn't it be something if, after all his struggles this year, Timmy came up huge again the the post-season?
Committee- 2.2 IP, 3 H, 3 R, 1 BB, 3 K's. I think The Committee needs a day off.
With the Win, the Giants extended their lead in the NL West to a season high 8.5 games as the Dodgers got rained out in Washington.
Matt Cain takes the mound tonight facing Tyler Chatwood.
14 games to go, Magic Number is 7. The Dodgers play a make-up double-header today in Washington, so the Magic Number could fall all the way to 4 if the Giants win and the Nats sweep.
Go Giants!!!
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Hector had to wait till the end of spring training to find out if he made the team when they traded Stewart and sent Whiteside to Fresno.
ReplyDeleteTalent evaluation is hard. So hard, you have to let the prospects play for real to see if they can make it. At that point, there is no much separation between the fans and the professionals.
In contract to Hector, speaking of not sure thing prospects, you have to admire Sabean, for plucking Panda (not a well known name then to the casual fans, though you might make a sure he was a sure thing prospect to those who followed the team...or maybe not) and Romo out of AA and playing them right away.
The reality, like all realities, could be somewhere in between.
I think it should be noted that both Panda and Romo were totally dominating AA, so putting them in the majors made sense. Hector did not, so that was harder to see why they did that, though they appear to called that right. But it is an art, not a science.
DeleteThe science part is where the numbers showed they were dominating.
DeleteThe art part is probably why we hadn't heard anything about promoting Bochy Jr. when he was healthy and there was a need for more bullpen arms.
With established players like Lincecum and Panda (and with younger players too, hopefully) you feel comfortable with their more recent numbers going into the post season, if and when they get there.
ReplyDeleteHopefully they have put their earlier struggles behind.
The playoffs are now strongly in the Giants hands. They only have to go .500 in the rest of the games to win the division without any help from anyone.
ReplyDeleteI too sense that Timmy is figuring it out just in time for the playoffs.
Very good point about Hector!!! Yeah, a lot of fans just glom onto one prospect or another and blame Sabean et al when that prospect flames out. Prospecting is an art, not a science. If a player shows some potential, Sabean owes it to the club to give him a chance, but if he fails to make the leap, it's not Sabean's fault.
Hector's stroke is probably what has enabled him to keep his contact rate at a good high rate all through the minors and now in the majors. I thought he might have been pushed too quickly to the majors, but it has worked out well, I think, to the Giants credit.
I think Hector also showed he has the toughness, confidence and mental makeup to make the leap. Who knew if the bat would carry? I sure didn't see it coming in spring training. But I also didn't see either Whiteside or CStew (though I dug his arm) as viable alternatives given their Mendoza Line offense in 2011. This was especially true as it was unknown how much Posey could play and at what level in 2012.
DeleteIn hindsight both Posey and Hector have been golden. Their play has maintained the Giants offense and defense at the position all year. They have handled the pitching staff in different ways but effectively. Hector's emergence also allowed the Giants to trade ToJoe for Pence. Is there a better catching tandem in MLB? And we get to watch them handle the best in the majors for years to come.
I got mocked for calling Hector on the 25 to start the season. I think his swing is very very sweet, just think it will work, gut reaction. So I sponsor his B/R page. Boo yah.
DeleteYou called it, Shank.
DeleteCStew was the reason why I wanted to give Hector more time in AAA. I thought that Hector will eventually hit in the majors, but why rush the guy when CStew was, to me, a perfect backup at catcher for 2012.
DeleteFirst, CStew hit LHP really well, over .800 OPS in 2011, but good generally in his career. Thus he could "platoon" with Posey at catcher, taking starts when the opposing pitcher is a LHP, which conveniently pushes Posey to 1B so that Belt would skip LHP starts (not all but most). At minimum, while not a replacement for Posey's bat, he could be still a contributor in the lineup, not a blackhole like Whiteside. He also did not strike out that much either, PLUS knew how to take walks as well. He profiled as a good hitter and the general rule on catchers is that their hitting comes last, that is why you see many catchers figure it out in their 30's. CStew was only 29. On top of that, he was one of the best catchers in the majors in 2011, arguably the best if prorated by games, based on DRS stats on catchers.
But as much as I was unhappy to see him traded, I really liked picking up Kontos. He was very good in the minors in terms of K/BB and he did well with the Yankees in a short call-up in 2010. And, of course, he has performed very well for us in 2012. So I accepted the promotion of Hector, since it netted us Kontos.
But wow, Hector has done a lot better than I expected. He has hit really well in scoring situations, he was among the team's leader in RBI in the early months, despite only playing a third of the time, at best. Not the best batting line, but still, a good bat off the bench for us, left or right, plus good enough defense behind the plate to be an excellent backup for Posey. And who knows, maybe he pushed Posey to another position in a couple of years.
So, yeah, Shankbone, you definitely called it.
Forgot to also point out that Hanchez is only 22 YO, soon to be 23, so this is a great start to his career, and hopefully he can continue to grow and take over for Posey when he's ready to move to a safer position for our cleanup hitter.
DeleteWhat a strange game last night. There were several things that you don't see every game like the catchers interference and Angel Hernandez fining Pagan on the spot for throwing his bat. The play with Nady was BS because the second baseman initiated contact with Nady without making an effort towards the ball. If that was legal then you would see second basemen routinely tackling baserunners instead of fielding their positions.
ReplyDeleteI thought of something while watching the game last night. Do Posey and Timmy really have a problem with each other? It isn't entirely out of the question to think that maybe Posey being a hard working southern boy doesn't appreciate the apartment trashing long haired stoner pitcher who comes into the season out of shape and underperforms. This is just one more reason I think Timmy will be gone after next year. It is a fair question though I guess, if you could only keep one of them would you keep, Posey or Timmy?
I think it started with Buster getting beat up trying to block Timmy's scuds in the dirt and Bochy wanting to protect him, and after awhile, Timmy got comfortable with Hector back there. It's also possible that Timmy likes the way Hector calls pitches too, ala Zito but more likely what I said in the first sentence.
DeleteBuster does not seem like the type who would give a hoot about personal style differences and I'm pretty sure the only thing Timmy cares about is pitching.
Speaking of which, but until the Pagan calls, it seemed like to me, that calls by the umpires were consistently going against the Giants for a long while, anybody else noticed that or was I being paranoid that the umpires were being tough on the Giants because of Melky "being" the reason we were in contention? It just seemed like there were a lot of games where the announcers would say that the Giants pitcher was not getting certain strike calls that the other team was getting, hence once Posey speaking up to an umpire over such a call when he was struck out.
Delete