The Committee needed a rest day and got it as Matt Cain went 8 strong innings after the offense staked him to an early 3-0 lead then added on in the middle innings. Key Lines:
Angel Pagan- 2 for 5, SB(27). BA= .291. The second hit on an IF chopper and the SB were a bit questionable and may have been due to some help by the umps, but hey, we'll take it, right? Pagan is closing in on his 3'rd consecutive 30 SB season. He's hitting .366 over his last 10 games. Here's 3 slash lines from Pagan's career:
2010 .290/.340/.425.
2012 .291/.339/.442(in progress)
Career .282/.333/.424
Pablo Sandoval- 3 for 5, HR(9). BA= .283. I think Pablo is back. 6 for 12 so far in the current series. I was looking at him on TV. Again, Pablo is never going to be thin, but I think he's actually in pretty good Pablo shape.
Gregor Blanco- 3 for 4, SB(23). BA= .245. Blanco is hitting .367 over his last 10 games and is stating a case for a 2013 roster spot.
Brandon Belt- 1 for 3, 2B, BB. BA= .268. Belt is hitting just .200 over his last 10 game including this one. He got a nice swing on a down and in pitch and stroked it to the RF fence for a 2 run double. Watching Belt's struggles and development has been one of the more fascinating and controversial story lines from the 2012 season. I'm guessing this evolving story will continue into 2013.
Matt Cain- 8 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 4 BB, 8 K's. ERA= 2.86. Vintage Matt Cain. Interestingly leadoff batter Dexter Fowler drew 3 of the 4 walks yet did not score. Cainer threw 116 pitches in this one. I have to say, I think I nearly had a stroke when he came out to hit in the 7'th after he had already thrown 104 pitches. I mean, what was the point of extending him in this one? I understand Bochy wanting to keep the pedal to the metal until this thing is clinched, but it's also not too early to be thinking about the extra innings the post-season is going to put on these arms. The only justification I can think of is Bochy knew The Committee was gassed and did not want to even take a small chance on having to use them in case a George Kontos or Dan Otero made it close at the end. In the end, Cain had a non-stressful 8'th inning so hopefully won't have any extra fatigue. Also, hopefully, the Giants get a chance in the near future to give their starters some 3 or 4 inning starts to rest and tune up for the post-season.
Jose Mijares- 1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 2 K's. ERA= 2.72. Mijares is the least used guy in The Committee, so he got the call to mop up in the 9'th. Bochy has used him almost exclusively as a LOOGY, but he really showed me something in facing the RH hitting Chris Nelson who has been pretty hot lately. Mijares got strike 2 on a Noah Lowryesque changeup that disappeared on Nelson then came back with strike 3 on a perfect deuce that caught the outside corner and dipped under his bat. This guy has weapons to get RH batters out! Something tells me Mijares is going to be a huge factor in at least 1 postseason game.
The Dodgers split their doubleheader with the Nats in Washington so the Giants extend their lead in the NL West to 9 full games. At the same time, they chopped a full 2 games off their Magic Number which is now down to 5.
Barry Zito pitches today facing Jorge De La Rosa who is making his first start since going down for TJ surgery early last season. Go Giants!!
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Agreed on Cain coming out for the 7th. To be honest, even though the outcome was far from certain, I would not have had him pitch the 6th.
ReplyDeleteI'm hoping once the West is clinched, Bochy will dial everything back and get everyone a little rest. Not worth charging hard for home field advantage in the 1st round.
Have to assume Bochy knows what he's doing, and that he has a plan to be sure our pitching is well-rested come October.
Wait! What? You assume Bochy knows what he's doing? What is the world coming too?
DeleteBTW, I dare you to post that somewhere on MCC. LOL!
That's not going to happen, Doc!
DeleteFun seeing Bochy in the (too small!) 49er hat before the game.
LOL! They took the biggest one they could find and put it through a hat stretcher and it's still grossly too small. THAT is amazing!! Good to see Boch having fun though. You can tell the whole team is having fun out there and it starts at the top. Can you imagine Bobby Valentine or Terry Collins putting on a Niner's hat like that? Too all the Bochy haters: You don't know how good you have it!
DeleteCan't wait for the postseason this year has been a joy to watch.
ReplyDeleteI think Cain will be fine with the 114 pitches thrown. He's always been able to handle the workload. Also, I think him pitching the 8th was also good for the rotation in general. They haven't been sharp for most of this month, so the combination of Lincecum's strong outing Tuesday and watching Cainer get through the 8th last night could be a shot in the arm for the rest of them. These guys are the leaders of the staff, and when they're on everyone else seems to follow.
ReplyDeleteyeah, I think Pablo is back too.
ReplyDeleteI assume you meant Blanco is making a case for a 2013 starting spot, as I would think a roster spot is a gimme.
I think Belt's up and down story controversy has pretty much ended. Previously, it looked like he didn't know what he was doing up there sometimes. And it turns out that we were right, as he admitted that in an interview recently. But now he says that he knows what he needs to do to be successful. Given that, I mean, no hitter is hot a long long time (except maybe Bonds and Posey), so Belt will now have normal ups and downs, but will get out of those funks better and faster now, if he really discovered this key to hitting. He seems to be a relatively cautious guy, so I don't think he would openly admit this failing and discovery unless he truly believes it.
Cainer! I think there were two parts of the equation for keeping Cain in there. One is the gassed committee, as you astutely noted. The other part was that he got stronger as the game progressed, as he often does (as the good ones often do) and was still pitching well into the 7th. His pitching line did not look great early on with 3 walks already on the board, but he just got better, deeper into the game.
With a 6 run lead, you don't want the lesser relievers to come in and make it a save situation. Big difference giving the lesser relievers 3 outs instead of 6 outs to get. I think Cain was on a short leash for the 8th in terms of pitch count, and that Bochy would have took him out before 120 pitches. But he pitched great as expected by Bochy.
But I see your point about saving Cain's arm for the playoffs. I guess it comes down to this: is that one inning going to make that great a difference in the playoffs? At 116 pitches, I don't think so. Above 120, yeah.
I also wonder if the extra rest time between the end of the season and the start of the NLDS helps with the equation of resting our pitchers. I remember Posey noting that even the little rest he got in 2010 was enough to get him ready for the playoffs. Plus, we don't want to rest them too much, because we want them sharp and ready for the playoffs. So I view it as a double-edged sword.
Personally, I have enough confidence in Kontos to have him get us 3 outs in the 8th, then Bochy could still go with Mijares in the 9th.
Yeah, I really like Mijares too and this game showed the potential for him to do more for us than LOOGY work. Do you think the Giants could let go Affeldt if Mijares look like a good enough replacement for 2013? KC just looks more and more stupid as Mijares continues to pitch well for us.
That is what Belt said around 9/12/2012:
Delete"That's a big part of the game for me, being confident and being comfortable in the box," Belt said. "I've been like this for a while. I've been staying on top of it to make sure I can maintain it. Go out there and have good at-bats every time, and I think that keeps the confidence level up."
It was a solo home run, but the area where Belt may have improved the most is with runners in scoring position. He's hitting .250 in 108 at-bats with runners in scoring position this season, but over his last 28 at-bats with RISP, he is hitting .429.
"I'm not changing my approach any more," Belt said of his RISP at-bats. "Earlier in the year I would change my approach a lot more, maybe put a little more pressure on myself just to get those runs in. Now I'm just treating it like any other at-bat, because I feel comfortable that I can put the ball in play and score the run. It's working out for me."
Ultimately, taking the pressure off himself by focusing on what he needs to do for the team has made a big impact on his success at the plate.
"For every young guy, and for every player in general, you want to come up and help contribute as much as you can," Belt said. "When you do, you feel like you're more and more a part of the team. When you look at it from that angle, what you can do to help the team, you end up playing a lot better personally."
I think in saying he likes to come up and help contribute as much as possible, he was hoping for regular playing time.
I also think he's saying there was too much pressure to change his approach, especially in RISP situations.
Finally, he's saying, I think, for Belt in particular, confidence is a big part of his game. I think it doesn't come easily for him. Unfortunately, for him, Bochy perhaps likes young players to look and act confident - and that might be where he was successful with other young prospects, and so, the claim is not at all that he had zero success, but some, perhaps better, or not better, than average, success with young players, though not all young players. This being the non-technial aspect of the game, that is, the able to handle people as humans, particularly a player's psyche, even while remove from the closeness of day to day interaction from being with the team, fans are more able to see, observe and relate to it. I think you chould have showed a little confidence in him by letting him play in the first visit to that hitters paradise in Colorado very early on in the season.
The way I read Belt's statements is that he put that pressure on himself, not the manager. And since he batted 6th or 7th most of the time, there is not the pressure to be a middle lineup run producer. My reading of his statements are that he put the pressure on himself.
DeleteAnd I think that has been the crux of his failings in 2011 and 2012, that he put pressure on himself, not the Giants coaching staff. The only pressure that I've read in the press that the coaches has put on him is that when he was doing something wrong, the coaches wanted him to change his mechanics. And he fought that advice until he studied his old video and basically discovered that the coaches were right, which he never really admitted, that I've seen.
About your comment about confidence, even Belt admitted that he had no idea how to successfully hit earlier in the season, and if he knew that, perhaps Bochy also noticed that as well. And if you look at his usage, what more did the Giants have to do to give him confidence? They made him the starting 1B, pushing Huff, clearly better as 1B than LF, to starting LF (and perhaps that set off his anxiety problems). He was kept the starter most of the time, they only pulled him out when they thought that he had some things to work on as a hitter, which, again, he admitted mid-season that he had a lot of work to do.
Putting a guy who has no idea how to be successful as a hitter in to play is not going to help his confidence, people know when they are faking it versus when they have a good idea of what they are doing. They won't shake that lack of confidence until they figure out the way to be successful.
For all the Panda grief - how many players hit that ball out?
ReplyDeletePanda brings the wild, hair-up-your-ass, hitting that drives pitchers nuts. Chatwood makes a waste pitch down (3" off the ground) and in (would maybe have hit Pablo's shoe) and the Panda golfs it out. 3 run lead, done.
What is a pitcher to do? Throw it over his head, bounce it two feet in front of the plate? I have seen Pablo hit those pitches too! And all pitchers HATE it. That's the point - pitchers are all about control. The Panda is not. The Panda is their kryptonite.
I happen to be a Pablo fan just like I was a Kevin Mitchell fan. They hunt pitchers, they swing wildly away, they miss and then they connect, BOOM! It ain't pretty, but it can be effective.
Here's to having a wild swinging, pitcher messing, overweight Panda in the playoffs!
That's why I like our offense for the playoffs. That's a recent thought for me, that I've been nnodling with, wonder what you all think.
DeleteMy research on pitching shows that in quality starts, pitchers and teams have a huge advantage when the other team doesn't have a pitcher throwing a quality start (and there are a lot of those matchups). Of course, we have our great pitching, but what if the other team has a great start as well?
Our hitters could be the tipping point. Offense normally does not matter in the playoffs, based on THT and BP research. Speed is the only offensive quality that appears to pay off in the playoffs.
But what if the team has batters like Sandoval and Pence (and Sanchez) who are willing and able to hit pitches out of the zone for hits? What if that same team also has hitters like Scutaro and Posey who seemingly are incapable of missing a strike pitch and not hitting it well somewhere at least once every game. And Belt and Crawford appear to be getting there as well.
This thought has excited me for a while, because while hitters can be shut down by pitchers, if the team has a couple of hitters who can hit lousy pitches for well struck hits, that has to be frustrating for the opposing pitcher, getting a little into their heads. Then, to get a little more into their heads, what if the team also has a couple of hitters who are capable of avoiding strikeouts and eventually making good contact on a strike, getting their hits and getting into long pitch counts (like Posey's that impressed people the other day), and getting a little more into the pitcher's head.
Plus, if we also had another couple of hitters that make good contact as well, that pitcher has few places in the lineup where he can relax. There will be less strikeouts, there will be more walks, and with less holes in the lineup, more pressure on the pitcher to make perfect pitches up and down the lineup. The pitcher might be able to do that the first time through, but by the second or third time, it has to wear on him. And as we see in baseball, once the dam is breached, all hell breaks loose on the basepaths, as the baseball conga line commences.
I heartily agree with both the above comments. I think you need free swingers in a lineup as well as selective hitters. If everybody approaches it the same way, the opponents get a bead on it fairly quick.
DeleteI mean, if every hitter always took a strike every AB, pitchers would quickly figure out they have nothing to worry about by throwing a batting practice fastball down the middle for a quick first strike. That's a huge advantage for the pitcher.
It's not my style so I won't say it turned out we were right that we go with the most recent numbers put up like veteran players like Panda and Lincecum in hoping that they have put their eariler struggles behind.
DeleteI much rather say, that's another good game from Panda. It looks like we have hitters start to warm up a bit as we approach the finish line. Still, let's take it one game at a time. Keep it up, don't let down, boys.
I was first in line doling out Panda grief.
ReplyDeleteSo I was wrong...but, Lord, that guy SO baited me. He looked so bad a week ago.
Very happy to see the guy with his swing back. Great game today.