The Giants caught a break when Clayton Kershaw was scratched from the start for LA late in the day. The "good" Zito showed up to pitch for the Giants. The result was a wire-to-wire shutout win over the Hated Ones. Key Lines:
Angel Pagan- 2 for 4, 3B, SB(25). BA= .287. Pagan hit another shot that was headed for the RF corner that AGone made a leaping grab on at deep 1B. If Buster Posey was not on this team, I'd say Pagan might be the MVP of the team and in the discussion for league MVP. Dude has led the way!
Marco Scutaro- 0 for 3, SF. BA- .288. Scooter's SF to score Pagan after the triple in the 5'th gave the Giants their first score since the first inning and a 3-0 lead. That's when I started thinking they were likely to win this one. Nice piece of hitting by Scoots.
Buster Posey- 2 for 4, HR(20). BA= .327. Can we call him MVP? No offense to Matt Kemp, who I really like as a player, but I hope the Giants fans all chant that really loudly when he comes up at Dodger Stadium in October.
Hunter Pence- 1 for 4, 2B. BA= .259. Say what you will about Pence, and he has his faults, but the Giants of last year and earlier this year would likely have left 2 runners on base in the first inning with nothing to show for it. The double drove in his 25'th and 26'th runs since joining the team.
Barry Zito- 6.1 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 3 BB, 4 K's. ERA= 4.33. Hey, if you pitch a shutout, it doesn't matter who the other pitcher is, right? Maybe Zeets could have beaten Kershaw too?
Jose Mijares- 0.1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 1 K. ERA= 2.84. Mijares faced just one batter, but unlike Jeremy Affeldt last night, he absolutely abused Adrian Gonzalez. 1-2, grab some pine, Meat!
Guillermo Mota- 0.2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 1 K. ERA= 6.00. Forget the ERA. Mota is pitching himself onto the postseason roster, assuming of course the Giants make it that far.
Javy Lopez- 0.1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 1 K. ERA= 2.41. Lopez abused Ethier as badly as Mijares abused AGone. Gotta love those LOOGYs!
The win stretches the Giants lead in the NL West back to 5.5 games up on the Dodgers, tied for their biggest of the season. The 3'rd place D'Backs lost to the Pesky Padres 8-2 to fall 10.5 games off the pace. Giants have 22 games left while the Dodgers have 21.
The Giants now travel to Colorado where they start a 3 game series tomorrow evening against the Reeling Rockies with Ryan Vogelsong facing Alex White.
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I have to say that Sabean has been a great GM. Yes, he doesn't make the sexy moves, but he does know what he is doing. Who thought Pagan would turn out to be a good move? Another lefty in the pen? Yes, the Pence deal is still tbd. Quietly, Sabean has put together a great roster. He has put together ball players and doing so on the fly. Not big egos, not bad work ethic players, but blue collar players. I respect him for that. We all died hearing about how great Zach Wheeler has been this year. Giants still have Blackburn, Crick, Stratton, and fringy Heston. Our rotation is set for next season anyway. Things don't always turn out but, Giants do a good job of scouting pitchers. I rather loose Wheeler than our only hitting prospect in G. Brown. Up 5.5 is wonderful. Our future will be ok too with Sabean!
ReplyDeletethe pence deal only hurts if he doesnt contribute at all. but he has. just not at the level of what his salary says he should
Deletezito remains a puzzle and if the team makes it to the post, bochy is gonna be hard pressed on who is in the rotation as you dont need, nor should you use a 5 man and give up the extra pen arm. nor would i want vogie, timmy or zito used out of the pen...especially in the lds
pagan is torres without the burden of adhd. i think most knew he would be solid...dont think most thought he would be this intense.
re: wheeler...keeping him may have allowed the giants to draft another high position player rather than stratton...or maybe not...the thing about wheeler is that he will be ready next season, which wouldve given the giants more options...none of the guys you mentioned will be ready till 2014 at the earliest
this is for the most part, a fun team to watch...a ball fan cant ask for much more than that
was a good win.
lets hope vogey finds his mojo in roxville
Some of us here were pretty happy with the Pagan trade at the time.
DeleteLefties in the pen have become more valuable than people realize because of how many naturally RH players now learn to bat lefty at an early age. The average lineup has gradually tilted left compared to when I was a kid and first following the game. An even bigger proportion of middle-of-the-order power hitters bat LH. Good teams have to be able to neutralize those big LH bats late in a game. Not sure why that's so hard for the sabermetric folks to figure out.
I don't agree that Brown is the Giants only hitting prospect and I still would rather have given him up for Beltran, but that's water under the bridge. The Giants don't have an immediate need for SP's from the farm and they've done a good job of rebuilding their organizational pitching depth.
As for Pence, you can scoff at RBI's, and I tend to believe it's an overrated stat, but Pence has driven in 26 since coming here. I seriously doubt Nate could have given that kind of run production even if he stayed healthy.
During spring training...yes, I know spring training fans wanted blanco to play everyday because Pagan was slumping. So, no one could predict that Pagan would turn into this kind of player and I don't want to hear track record.
DeleteWhat other hitter do the Giants have down in the farm? I believe losing brown would make the team chase after Josh Hamilton and we would be in a situation with Rowand all over again. The trade with beltran didn't work out but, I rather give up a pitcher(because they grow on trees in the Giants farm system) than losing a hitter. Especially a hitter with plus defense.
I try to give Pence the benefit of doubt. When comes to the plate there seems to always be two men on or is it just how I feel? He has had 26 rbi's and I'm not complaining. I think he honestly should have at least 40! I scream look at his track record but, may be Pence and Scuturo should switch places in the order. Just a thought!
Well, go ahead and remember what you want to remember. As for Josh Hamilton, the Giants were never going to go after him and never will. Just....ain't....happening!
DeleteAs for other hitters in the Giants system, well, there's Joe Panik for one. They had Tommy Joseph at the time of the Beltran trade. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to have Brown as a Giants prospect, but I see him as Dan Gladden with better D, valuable, but hardly somebody you can't do without. On the other hand, I see Zack Wheeler as a future frontline starter.
I saw Wheels pitch for San Jose. It was the most dominating performance I've seen from any Giants pitching prospect and I saw both Cain and Lincecum when they were with San Jose.
Was that at Lake Elsinore in May or late April 2011?
DeleteI like the Dan Gladden with better D comp. We need one of those. Gints have never had a good leadoff hitter. I'm on Team Brown over Team Wheeler, but I see both sides of it.
DeleteBLSL: Lake Elsinore early 2011.
DeleteI think our memories are colored by the past. I know mine were. My memories was that Gladden was pretty good offensively, but when I went to check his stats, he was actually not that good offensively. Well, OK for a CF, but he was slightly below average relative to the league all through his career, OPS+ of 95. .270/.324/.382/.707 is not that great a batting line, even for those times.
DeleteI expect Brown to hit closer to .300 and be in the mid-.300 OBP, plus more ISO, pushing him closer to .800 OPS, which is above average for a hitter today, let alone CF. That plus gold-glove-ish defense, makes him very valuable, in my mind. If we didn't have Lincecum, Cain, Bumgarner, maybe I would have rather trade Brown over Wheeler, but Brown could be the final link to creating a great offense out of young players for the Giants, whereas Wheeler is a nice luxury given who we already have. And I still think that Wheeler will not pitch that well, that soon, in the majors. Not like Cain and Bumgarner, not like Lincecum. I still think that 2014 is when he's most likely to make an impact in the majors, and 2015 before he starts to fulfill the hype that has surrounded him and his talent.
I think a better comp to me is Brett Butler, though with a lot less walks and thus OBP, but equally more SLG to even things out. He was a lifetime .290/.377/.376/.753 hitter.
I remember Dan Gladden and his stats very well. I stick with my comp on Brown. The problem with Gladden was he had to move to LF fairly early which cratered his value. If Brown can give great D in CF, the Dan Gladden offense is worth about 3.5 WAR +/-. That's still a pretty good return for a #24 draft pick, but I'd trade Wheeler's future for that in a second. Remember Wheels was a #5 overall pick or something like that while Brownie was a #24.
DeleteAgain, all this is conjecture. I'm not at all sure Sandy Alderson would have accepted just Gary Brown for Beltran. Brown isn't really a Sandy Alderson type player.
Cool DrB, but I was not really referring to Gladden's production relative to position, I was talking more directly to how poor his batting line was for his career, again .270/.324/.382/.707 is not that hot to me. I think Brown can hit much better than that, maybe at an elite level if he can put it all together. And that's on top of whatever he provides defensively, which I assume would be a plus anywhere he plays in the OF.
DeleteAhhhhhh...that game earned a good cold beer or three.
ReplyDeletePence, at least, represents a danger to the opposing pitcher and is keeping Posey from being pitched around.
Zito can only be used as a starter, so again don't see him making the playoff roster, unless it is Atlanta.
Alex Pavlovic has some interesting takes on the Dodgers' body language last night, oh, and TJ Simers is thrashing AGone. No surprise there! Looks like maybe some of that ugly Boston mojo came west with The Trade.
ReplyDeleteOh, and Grant over at MCC actually wrote that we are living in a Golden Age for the Giants!
DeleteAnd I wrote numerous times on MCC many years back (2007-2009) that we were headed into a Golden Age for the Giants and was talking about the Giants being the Team of the 2010's Decade.
DeleteAnd if it is a Golden Age for the Giants, then he should THANK Sabean for this, something I said that people should do just before the 2010 World Series and was tarred and feathered and had my link removed from MCC in response to my comment that they should thank Sabean for getting us there again, or they didn't deserve to enjoy the World Series. Grant was very rude to me and I never got a proper apology for that.
I don't know what the problem people have about Pence. Or rather I understand but I've been saying this here and on my blog so people here should know.
ReplyDeletePence is hitting .313/.368/.625/.993 with RISP. That is EXACTLY what we want Pence to do. Where he is failing is hitting with the bases empty or a man on first. Not ideal, but a tradeoff I would take anyday. He is DOING HIS JOB: Driving in runs. Cut him a break.
I agree. We've had nothing but howling about the Giants and RISP for a couple of years from people who claim to be sabermetrically oriented and should know better. Now that they finally got a guy who hits better with RISP, they think he should be hitting all the time. Pretty much impossible to make some people happy.
DeleteI think it'll come around. But it may not matter if it doesn't right away. Pence is reminding me of Juan Uribe in 2010. Swing away, strike out early in the game, don't want to fact him late in the game when a big hit changes the game.
Delete