The Giants got a nice start from Jeff Samardzija and the offense chipped away at the A's for the 3-1 Win in Game 1 of the Bay Bride Series. Key Lines:
Buster Posey C- 3 for 4. Buster was hitting the ball up the middle and to RF which is his happy zone.
Hunter Pence RF- 1 for 4, 2B. Pence's double went screaming to the LF wall almost before he could get out of the batter's box. He might not have made it to 2B if Rajai Davis's throw been a breaking ball, as Kruk and Kuip put it.
Matt Duffy 3B- 2 for 4, 2B. Duffy should have been credited with a 3 for 4 as he was safe on an error on a ball he scorched off the glove of Marcus Semien. I guess Semien made so many errors last year, the official scorers just assume he made an error if he is involved in the play.
Jeff Samardzija RHP- 5 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 5 K's. This is the real story of the night. Shark gave up a leadoff triple to Billy Burns, but then settled down to retire the next 15 batters in dominant fashion. He pitched in a bandbox last year. Tonight, Chris Coghlan crushed a ball to CF that was easily caught by Span at the warning track. He had a bad defense behind him last year. Tonight, Angel Pagan made a long run and a sliding catch of a blooper in shallow LF that not just any LF would have gotten. Shark even tweeted after the game that he loved the "football weather." As Kruk said, he's going to get that all season in San Francisco. I'm tellin' ya, Shark is going to LOVE playing for the Giants! I think he already does!
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Game 2 of the Bay Bridge Series is tomorrow night with Jake Peavy facing Kendall Graveman.
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Dunning has looked great this spring. Any thoughts on what the Giants might do?
ReplyDeleteEven with 8 pitchers in the bullpen, Dunning would still have to bump either Gearrin or Kontos to make the team. Gearrin isn't going anywhere. Kontos has had some rough outings, but are you going to bump him for Dunning? I'll say Dunning goes to Sacramento to start the season and they'll go from there.
DeleteShark looked good, Posey had him mixing and there was good movement. Span looks healthy, he can go get balls, that's pretty important. Pence looks primed for a monster year, dude is so strong. I like our chances this year.
ReplyDeleteI think that moving to left field was the best thing that could happen to Pagan. As a CF, his increasingly limited range (even when healthy) relative to the position was a liability. Now he's got a, relative to position, a good range.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I was not optimistic about how the move of Pagan to LF was going to go, but so far it's looking great. I'd still love to have a bopper who could field a little, like maybe Mac Williamson, out there, but I'm sure his time will come.
DeleteHere's what I took out of this game (PS - SO glad to be finally watching games at The Bell again!):
ReplyDelete1. Angel Pagan - His legs were pumping like clockwork last night. I think there's a chance he becomes one of the best defensive LFers in the NL this year, even considering a merely average arm. And, when healthy, he has always been a spark plug for SF in the lineup. I think he's easily the most underrated starter on the team right now.
2. WOW. Cory Gearrin's ball has some extremely serious movement on it. (It's nice to have the proper angles from the ML cameras again, isn't it?) Once he got over the jitters after 2 pitches, he was throwing everything in the strike zone, but there was no way for the batter to know which direction it was going to break.
What does Gearrin top out at? 90-91?? If he's got a FB to complement that stuff - seriously, watch out!
3. Derrick Law, also after breaking from adrenaline after the first batter, looked the part of uber-relief prospect that I was dreaming on from 2 years back. Tremendous movement on the inner half & down in the zone, plus a 94mph FB that got swings and misses. If Law can stay healthy and finish his development path, that's going to be a helluva youth generated bullpen in another year down the line:
Osich, Strickland, Gearrin, Heston, Law, Black. Add Okert, if he can step up this year, that's a very talented bullpen straight from the farm.
And Samardzija....wow, I'm looking forward to watching more of that!
I don't remember what Gearrin's arm angle was last year, but it looks lower to me this year. Kind of similar to Sergio Romo. His slider has taken on some Romoesque movement too!
DeleteFangraphs has his sinker ranging between 91 & 93 and sitting right around 92 for 2015. His slider is 82-85 sitting around 83.
DeleteGood stuff. I've got to start looking into more of these fangraph tools..
DeleteThe beautiful thing about our projected lineup is that there are no 'holes' in it. Everyone brings a respectable bat. And the starting rotation has the top three all being solid 'innings' guys, so the bullpen shouldn't be overworked.
ReplyDeleteWe've got a very, very solid team. It's a long season, and many things can go wrong, but I feel really good about where we are to start the year.