The Giants came out of their post-clinch doldrums and dominated the D'Backs behind Matt Cain and a diversified offense. Key Lines:
Marco Scutaro- 2 for 4, 2B, Sac. BA= .305. Scooter just keeps bangin' out 2 hits a game. He's up to 183 now. With 7 games to go, he has an outside shot at 200 on the season. He was actually trying for another hit on the Sac as he tried to push the bunt past Miley but didn't quite get it. He did advance both runners on the play who both came around to score.
Pablo Sandoval- 2 for 4, BB. BA= .288. Pablo is hitting .382 over his last 10 games. Great time for Sandoval to heat up.
Buster Posey- 1 for 5. BA= .331. Buster lost ground in his quest for the batting title, but drove in his 100'th RBI. The last SF Giants catcher to drive in 100? That would be Dick Dietz with 107.
Brandon Belt- 3 for 4, 3B. BA= .275. Belt is 6 for 11 over his last 4 games which included just 1 AB in Sunday's game vs SD.
Matt Cain- 2 for 2, Sac. BA= .181. Cainer has always been able to handle the bat, but this is his best hitting season in his career so far. His single up the middle led to him scoring the first run of the ballgame.
Matt Cain- 7 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 6 K's. ERA= 2.77. Not that he's ever pitched badly, but Cain went through a prolonged phase where he just wasn't quite as sharp as usual after the perfecto. He seems to be back on track his last 2 starts. He is critical to the Giants postseason chances, but what other guy would you trust more with THAT assignment?
The Giants remain 10 games ahead of the Dodgers in the NL West and have already clinched the NL West Chammpionship. The Dodgers topped the Padres 8-2 to gain back a game in the Wild Card race. The BrewCrew beat Cincy 8-1 while the Cards lost to the 'Stros 2-0. Milwaukee and the Dodgers are tied at a 3.5 game deficit to the Cards for the second WC spot.
Barry Zito takes the mound this afternoon facing lefty Patrick Corbin.
Someone did a study that was published Wall Street Journal using objective criteria to judge "homerism" on the part of baseball TV announcers. The methodology was to watch one complete broadcast and record the number of times announcers used words to overtly identify with the home team they were covering. These biased words included using "us" or "we" to describe the home team and "them" or "they" for the opposing team. The also counted instances of overt cheering for the home team or use of obscure nicknames. Not surprisingly, the White Sox broadcast team was the most homerific, but far with Hawk Harrelson being the main offender. If you've ever listened to the White Sox feed, you know Harrelson is bad to the point of being insufferable. Kruk and Kuip made just one mis-step in their broadcast and it came in the postgame comments. I think there were 5 perfect scores including Vin Scully of the Dodgers.
The limits of this study include a single game sample size and limited criteria for homerism. There are other more subtle ways of being a homer than the overt criteria used in this study, but the results match up pretty well with my own, more subjective, experiences. Krukow, in particular, has been called a hopeless homer by some Giants fans but if you watch other broadcasts around the league, you know that Kruk and Kuip are two of the best and are both solid baseball reporters maintaining a Giants tradition of having some of the best announcers in baseball for radio and TV.
El Lefty Malo has a great post up analyzing the outcomes of Giants drafts since 2000. Please be sure and check it out. You can find it linked over on the left. Basic Summary: The Giants have been fairly average in drafting future MLB'ers, but Sabes is an absolute genius at knowing who to trade and who to keep.
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Cain being Cain last night got me thinking about the Cy Young, so I spent five minutes on fangraphs (and yahoo!) comparing he and Dickey. Overall, Dickey has a slight edge in most rate and counting stats, but the edge is slight enough to be inconsequential in any single stat. The difference is that Dickey has or had been a presumptive Cy favorite, and he has the a clear advantage in Wins and CGs/SHOs (and xFIP and WAR but I think Cain's history with that stat will have statheads conflicted and non-statheads will of course simply ignore them).
ReplyDeleteOf course, Cain has the perfect game and pitching for a contender on his side. I think the award is still up for grabs, and will be an interesting debate - since I've left out several other good candidates in Gio, Kershaw, Cueto and maybe some others.
My mind is definitely drifting to awards, since the Giants are clinched, and the game to game drama of the playoffs hasn't yet taken over.
Not that I am a homer, but our guy should get it. Cainer anchors a division winning pitching staff. These other guys, they mean nothing to me emotinally. To me, they are just them. Matty is one of our guys! We will be so proud.
DeleteThere, my fair and objective opinion.
Ah, that's more like it!
ReplyDeleteActually, Posey did OK, McCutchen had an oh-fer, so Posey was behind 336 vs. 334 before the games, and now it's 333 vs. 331, and I assume there was some narrowing between the two (heck, I'll do the math: before, he was behind by .00361 and after the game he was behind .00255, so the rounding hid the fact that Posey actually gained a full point on McCutchen yesterday).
Ah, Dick Deitz, I actually remember rooting for him.
Cain has been on track, overall, for the past 4 starts, which includes 3 DOM starts (most starters have 1-2 DOM starts in 4 starts, plus a DIS start often, which Cain didn't and doesn't).
Cards would need to have epic meltdown to not make the playoffs, but then again, the Braves had one last season.
Krukow is a homer, but I prefer that over announcers who don't know the Giants announcing the games for a national audience. And as noted, he's not really that bad, I rather enjoy his overall optimism for the Giants, yet still willing to point out the challenges that sometimes faces our team. I never cared for Brenly's bluntness, there is an edge for announcers and I think Krukow travels that edge well.
I would also add my support for Lefty's post, it is quantitative proof of what I've been saying for a long time, that Sabean generally knows who to trade and who not to trade, unlike, for good example, the team across the Bay, who knows how good they could have been this season had they kept Ethier and Car-Gon.
Hawk Harrelson will absolutely make your ears bleed. The absolute worst of the worst. White Sox fans seem to like him. Something in the water on the South Side.
ReplyDeleteVin is the essence of professional. He has such a respect and appreciation for all players. If you just listened to him cold, it would take a while to figure out that he is the Dodgers announcer.
Krukow used to be even more of a homer. (Every scrub player the Giants called up was going to have an amazing MLB career. It's one thing to be positive. It's another to be unrealistic.) He's dialed it down a notch in recent years.
Homerism is good, in many cases.
DeleteThere is nothing objective nor rational in picking one team to root for. Something as simple as 'I was born in that city' is quite irrational.
Except for bookies and gamblers, you don't need to be objective. There is not objective about hoping your team will win, nor wrong in thinking your team will win (50% of us will be wrong any given day) - nothing wrong for the fans nor the players. Players got to believe they can win, in fact. So do the managers and general managers.
The quality of fanhood is to be measured by the degree of his/her faith in the team, not his/her knowledge.
Knowledge can never to achieved.
For example, a team's performance in a any season (TP).
TP = (sum of individual's performance, which might include such things as luck, expected annual variation) x (synergy factor)
Individual performances (IP), in turn, is
IP = (injury factor) x (the best stat analysis you can find).
Now, the rule about significant figures is that you carry the least significant figure of all the numbers involved.
If your stat is .295 (batting average) which implies a significant figure of 3, but there is 1 in 10 chance the player might get injuried (injury factor = 0.1, health factor is therefore 0.9 in the above equation), there is no point in carrying your BA to 3 significant figures, much less going to more refined analysis that will yield even more significant figures.
That's a very interesting concept re. significant figures. I'm in the midst of a rather intense discussion re. significant figures in patient satisfaction scores in my profession and industry so that is a topic of particular interest to me. I'd like to see some expansion of those concepts.
DeleteAs for bias and homerism, I always have to laugh when someone accuses me of homer bias as if that is the worst thing they can possibly say about me. Really? I mean, just take a look at my screen name and you think I'm going to try to argue that I'm not a homer or unbiased? Trust me, there are two kinds of people in the world: Those admit they are biased and those who don't.
Now, that's not to say I think what Hawk Harrelson does is OK. It's not so much that he's a homer but that the man is simply painful to listen to. Personally, I'll take Kruk and Kuip's more subtle form of homerism.
I think the Giants are over their clinch hangover and looking for blood in the playoffs: 6-0, Scutaro 2-run homer!
ReplyDeletePlayers appear to be speaking after the game, at least Cain just now, Bochy spoke before that. OK, just Cain, just regular rah-rah stuff thanking the fans. Giants win game and series, looking in playoff shape once again.
DeletePosey should have the BA lead now, he went 2 for 4, while McCutchen had another oh-fer as the Pirates sink to .500, that should help the MVP voters between Posey and McCutchen. Posey .333, McCutchen .332, but only .300/.396/.488/.885 post-ASG, which is good, but not as good as Posey's hot second half when things counted extra.