The Dodgers offense overwhelmed Madison Bumgarner and the Giants in game 1 of their showdown in LA. Key Lines:
Denard Span- 2 for 4, HR(8), BB. BA= .274. Span continues his hot second half hitting. He's currently sitting with an fWAR of 1.2 which translates to a dollar value of $9.4 M. His contract is $31 M over 3 years, so he's essentially a break-even on the Giants investment so far.
Angel Pagan- 2 for 5. BA= .300. Pagan extends his hit streak to 19 games.
Madison Bumgarner- 5 IP, 9 H, 5 R, 1 BB, 7 K's. ERA= 2.44. Was Bummy having an off night or is the Dodgers offense just too good? You hate to waste a good pitching performance, but with the way Bumgarner's season has gone, it might be more frustrating to waste the run support.
Will Smith- 1.1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 2 K's. ERA= 4.66. Smith was the only reliever on the night to hold the Dodgers scoreless. Hopefully this is the start of him getting back to form.
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The Loss dropped the Giants 2 games behind the Dodgers in the NL West. The Giants are 1.5 games up on the Cardinals for the first Wild Card spot.
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Johnny Cueto tries to even the series tonight facing Rich Hill who make his Dodgers debut late due to a blister on his finger at the time of the trade.
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I'm no fan of the Dodgers, but Roberts is doing a remarkable job with band aids and baling twine. Hopefully the Preacher and Craw light it up soon. That was painful to watch.
ReplyDeleteRichard in Winnipeg
the fat lady has sung.
ReplyDeletei agree that roberts has done a great job. seagar is my pick for rook of the year. only got to see him one time in the cal league, but i knew then that he was something special
giants just dont have a pen this year. its frustrating, but it happens. but that fact has hurt both maddy and cueto in the stretch, as both threw too many innings during the first half as a result of bochy not being confident enough to hand the ball to his pen in the 7th, 8th or even the 9th.
what frustrates me the most is to watch belt, who still hasnt learned to rid himself of his "tell". no matter how many times he tries to excuse it as just being "awkward", his terrible body language broadcasts to opposing pitchers that he is dead meat at the plate. and god, im so sick of the stat heads who love to to note his overall ops. he just isnt consistent enough to make those numbers mean anything. and im sorry, but bochy's dogged insistence on keeping him in the 3 hole has hurt the team.
maybe something flips the switch in september...but im just not seeing what that could be
bacci
Belt needs some Pine Time. here's my lineup for tonight: Span, Pagan, Buster (1B), Craw, Nunez, Pence, Panik, and Trevor (C). and Pence has looked lost. Can't hit or layoff a curveball. We need Mac back. BC in Nevada
DeleteFrom your pen to Bochy's ears!
DeleteBochy's keeping Belt third might hurt the team if the pressure of being there weighed on Belt so as to make him underperform; but since the 3 hole, according to the sabermetric stats in The Book, is less important than 1, 2, or 4, and perhaps 5, I doubt that it hurts the team otherwise. Belt's walk-driven high OBP suggests that he be higher in the lineup than sixth.
DeleteBut bacci has an excellent point, I think, about factoring in consistency into player evaluation. I've plumped, on other Giants sites and maybe here to, for a volatility index for baseball players, as there is for stocks on the stock market. Perhaps hot-and-cold players have equal value on a team as consistent ones, but I doubt it and have no idea which might be worth more under which circumstances when constructing a team. Still, just as there's a recognizable differential between high-contact batters vs Three True Outcome power hackers, factored in when a GM puts a team together and drafts new players, there should be methods of weighing the reliability quotients that are the longer-run equivalents of high-contact and boom/bust performers. One might even find out if high-contact batters are also less streaky, and high-whiff power hitters more streaky, so that different kinds of baseball reliability are correlated.
The Belt of the first half was actually pretty awesome. I also consider the 3-hole to still be primarily an OBP spot along with the obvious 1 and 2. I really don't think Belt is the biggest problem this team has.
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