Thursday, August 3, 2017

Game Wrap 8/2/2017: A's 6 Giants 1

As they have done several other times this season, the Giants followed up a resounding victory with.....a faceplant!  Matt Moore struggled when he had to pitch from the stretch and the offense managed just 3 hits in the first 7 innings against a rookie pitcher who came into the game with a 5+ ERA, and how many times have I written something like this?  Key Lines:

Denard Span CF- 1 for 4.  BA= .276.  After batting .374 in June, Span finished July with a .224 BA and has struggled in the field.  He took some heat after this game for a couple of missed catches, although in both cases, the balls had a lot of carry and bounced off the wall.  Those are tough catches, but I suppose a really good CF might have caught both.

Brandon Crawford SS- 1 for 1, 3 BB.  BA= .229.  Crawford drew a walk to lead of the 5'th followed by a double by Hunter Pence to put runners at 2'nd and 3'rd with no outs.  Conor Gillespie flied out weakly to CF.  Gorkys lined out to RF deep enough to score Crawford on a SF.  Miguel Gomez then hit a long drive to left-CF that had some carry but A's LF Chad Pinder tracked it down after taking a circuitous route to end the rally with just 1 run scored.

Matt Moore LHP- 5 IP, 6 H, 4 R, 3 BB, 4 K's.  ERA= 5.80.  Moore looked OK as long as he was in the windup but as soon as a runner got on base and he had to pitch from the stretch, everything fell apart.  On the other hand, the biggest difference between Moore's start and Sharks the night before was the level of run support.

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The 4 game Bay Bridge interleague home and home series concludes tonight with Ty Blach facing Kendall Graveman.

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After the game, the Giants designated Conor Gillespie for assignment and optioned Jae-Gyun Hwang back to Sacramento.  They called up Jarrett Parker and Ryder Jones.  Parker and Jones will presumably play LF and 3B everyday, at least for the time being. Expect to see less of Denard Span and more of Gorkys Hernandez in CF.

4 comments:

  1. Looks like the youth movement may start soon.
    http://m.giants.mlb.com/news/article/246111826/giants-to-play-younger-players-more-often/

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    1. WIth the worst record in MLB... There's no reason not to kick the tires on the youngsters.

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  2. From 2014 through 2016 the Giants defense was (over that three-year-span) 3rd in defensive runs saved (+75 DRS), And that includes Pagan stinking it up in CF in both 2014 and 2015 plus Morse in 2014. This year we're 29th in DRS at -35 DRS.

    Span is -19 DRS by himself. But others are not helping:
    Nunez is gone (-11 DRS spread across 3B, LF & SS) but he was a big problem. (Nunez also has -1 DRS for Red Sox already. lolz)
    Panik is at -6 DRS after being mildly positive the prior two years.
    Pence continues his slow decline and is at -5 DRS and is likely to finish worse.
    Hernandez is not lighting it up with his -7 DRS and is clearly just a 4th OFer.

    Crawford is just +3 DRS after being +19 & +20 in the two prior years.
    Posey is not having his best year at just +2 DRS, but at least he's not negative like in 2014.

    Only Belt, bless his mansion-selling heart, is performing better (DRS wise) this year than last with a +11 DRS.

    I can't help but see all these fielding issues and think that we'd have won more games with better fielding and that our pitchers would look a lot better. I don't get to watch a lot of games. But in the games I have watched, too many times this year outs that should have been made, weren't. Which meant more batters faced, which meant more pitches, which meant a more tired pitcher who made more mid-late game mistakes, and, ultimately, more runs scored.

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    1. Nice compilation. It wasn't helped when runs scored went down for SF and up for the league(s).
      OTOH, the NFL starts tonight with the Cowboys, like us, looking for a new ways to lose.

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