Jeff Samardzija pitched another dominant start, but the Giants offense went back to sleep against Tyler Chatwood. Key Lines:
Jeff Samardzija- 6 IP, 7 H, 2 R, 1 BB, 11 K's. ERA= 3.81. Shark was on fire again. In his last start, he used a knuckle curve he developed midseason as his out pitch. In this game it was a re-tooled splitter which Krukow explained was more of a true split-finger FB held farther out in the fingers than the previous version which was more of a forkball. Again from Krukow, the progression was forkball to circle change, which didn't work out at all, to the current splitter. So Shark, working with the Giants pitching coaches, completely retooled his repertoire including the addition of those 2 new pitches on the fly as the season progressed. Good stuff!
Steven Okert- 1.1 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 1 K. ERA= 3.21. Okert seems to be climbing Bruce Bochy's depth chart. After Samardzija allowed a run on a leadoff double and single in the 7'th, Okert came in and retired the next 3 batters easily. He did allow singles to 2 of 3 LH batters he faced in the 8'th.
Will Smith- 1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 2 K's. ERA= 3.35. Smith continues to pitch well, although this was in more of a hold the line action than protecting a lead. The Giants still had a chance to win though. Gotta think Smith and Okert will be the lefties in the pen next year.
Tyler Chatwood(Rockies)- 8 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 2 BB, 9 K's, GO/AO= 8/2. ERA= 3.87. Chatwood was also dominant. In addition to the 9 K's, he erased leadoff walks in the 7'th and 8'th with GIDP's. Chatwood finishes the season with a 1.69 road split ERA with 8 Wins against just 1 loss. His home ERA in Coors Field was over 6. Hometown boy from Redlands East Valley HS. I think he was originally drafted by the Angels.
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With the Loss, the Giants dropped 1.5 games behind the winning Mets for the first Wild Card playoff spot. The Cardinals lost, so the Giants remain 1 game ahead of the Cardinals for the second WC berth.
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Johnny Cueto gets back on the mound for the series finale tonight facing Jon Gray who has 26 K's in his last 2 starts.
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The Giants offense is so infuriating sometimes. STL Cardinals and the Giants seem to be standing in front of the playoff door and going you go in first, no you first. Talk about backing into the playoffs. Someone put some air in those bats because they are flat. Everyone is commenting, myself included, about Belt, Span and Posey. But what about Panik? What the heck is the matter with Joe Panik? I would have never thought he would be hitting around .240. Maybe it might be time to look at Tomlinson starting at 2B, at least for the remainder of the season.
ReplyDeleteI live in St. Louis and every morning I hear the same thing about the Cards. As for offense, I sorted FanGraphs 'offense' by hitter (100 PA min):
Delete1 Brandon Belt (2nd in WAR) <-- I really wish people would just back-off Belt. The guy is good no matter how you cut it.
2 Hunter Pence (4th in WAR)
3 Buster Posey (3rd in WAR)
4 Brandon Crawford (1st in WAR)
5 Kelby Tomlinson (11th in WAR) <-- He doesn't have much power, but he really knows how to place the ball to keep the BA up.
6 Jarrett Parker (14th in WAR)
7 Eduardo Nunez (9th in WAR)
8 Angel Pagan (6th in WAR)
9 Mac Williamson (12th in WAR)
10 Denard Span (8th in WAR)
11 Conor Gillaspie (10th in WAR)
12 Joe Panik (5th in WAR) <--- I think that's your answer. Crawford and Panik make one of the best twosomes in baseball.
13 Matt Duffy (7th in WAR)
14 Trevor Brown (13th in WAR)
15 Gregor Blanco (15th in WAR)
This seems to be sorted by how the Giants players stack up against each other? That doesn't seem to tell us much about how well they stack up against other players in the league/at their position...
DeleteThat said, I think Panik will become solidly average again next year, and potentially come back to being one of the best offensive 2B in the league two or three years again down the road. With his defense, that'll be plenty for the Giants to work with. However, they need to get major production from LF, RF, 1B and 3B in that case - in order to be a dominant team. With their starting staff, they have MORE than enough potential to do again what they did in the 1st half, but prolonged.
What they're going to need to do in bring in a new offensive leader. They need players who don't "think" so much, as I think Doc or someone else said recently. That's critical, and could really help not allowing the whole team to fall into a month-long group slump!!!!
I don't think I ever said they need players who don't think as much.
DeleteI was addressing the original post and had two points that I thought were salient:
Delete1. People need to stop ragging on Belt. He's not 'the reason' the Giants are in trouble. If anything he's been one of the strongest performers on the team. There are other players who are just not, relative to the team's needs, performing well.
2. Panik may be struggling mightily at the plate, but his defense is superb. That's probably why he's in and Tomlinson isn't despite being 60ish points behind him on OBP.
Those two GIDP just sucked any wind out of the Giants sails. After Posey hit into the double play in the 7th, he looked tired and resigned. I am not saying that he isn't playing hard, he just looks tired. Perhaps he has caught too many innings this year.
ReplyDeleteThe lack of power is just soooooo evident. They have to have three hits to score a run and it works sometimes, but falls flat quite often. When was the last time a team made the postseason when their leading home run hitter had 16? I think the Giants need to move on from Pagan. Not because he hasn't had a solid season, but because that is really the only open spot in the line up next year and we need to fill it with more power. If Williamson and/or Parker can't do that, then we need to look to free agency.
I don't really see the problem as power. The Giants are, on the road, more-or-less mid-pack every year. At home, they don't have good HR numbers, but neither do our opponents.
DeleteWhat I see as the biggest problem is the collapse of the bullpen. For a very long time the Giants had a solid, if not elite, bullpen when came to save rates.
2010 - #1 @ 78.08%
2011 - #2 @ 78.79%
2012 - #3 @ 80.30%
2013 - #5 @ 75.93%
2014 - #11 @ 71.88%
2015 - #9 @ 73.11%
2016 - #25 @ 58.33% (42 of 72)
If they'd converted at their average over the past few years (say 75%) it'd be 54 saves. That's 12 games that, in the past, we'd have won. Twelve games. Twelve games is the difference between being in the fight for a wildcard playoff berth and cruising into the playoffs with a 95-63 record and home-field advantage for the first round of the divisional.
There's a lot of talk (and there will be a lot more) about What happened to the Giants?
DeleteHitting and pitching both declined: scored less, gave up more after the All Star Game than before.
The hitting became more bad than the pitching.
The hitting slump was far worse than the pitching, and many of the lost saves were because the Giants had to struggle just to get 1 run ahead. Relievers mostly had no margin for mistakes.
pre ASG --- post ASG
Record: 57-33 .633 --- 26-42 .382
Runs scored per game: 4.7 -- 3.9
BA .263 --- .247
HR per game: .83 --- .78
Runs allowed per game: 3.9 --- 4.1
ERA: 3.62 --- 3.92
HR allowed per game: 1 --- 1.1