Madison Bumgarner gave up a 2-run HR to Paul Goldschmidt in the first inning and that was the difference in the ballgame as the Giants offense could muster just 2 hits against Zack Greinke and Fernando Rodney. Key Lines:
Madison Bumgarner LHP- 7 IP, 7 H, 2 R, 1 BB, 6 K's. ERA= 3.48. A much better performance than his last game, but still a loss without a whiff of run support. At least we know Bummy is OK and the poor start in Chicago was an isolated event.
Zack Greinke RHP(D'Backs)- 8 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 8 K's. ERA= 2.87. Greinke is a very good pitcher having a very good season so it's not surprising he would shut down a moribund Giants offense. Giants have their work cut out trying to figure out how to improve this lineup for next season.
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Chris Stratton will hope he has better weather than he did for his last start which lasted 1 batter(he struck that batter out). He will face Taijuan Walker in the series finale tomorrow afternoon.
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The Giants extended their lead in the race for the #1 overall draft pick to 2 games over the Phillies and 4 over the White Sox and remain 5 games up on the Tigers who have the 4'th worst record in baseball.
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Has Joe Panik regained his elite hitting?
ReplyDeleteHas his spotty early fielding strengthened?
Certainly a near singular bright spot on the team, not to slight Posey -- more is expected of the team leader.
Panik's game is highly BABIP dependent so he will probably have both hot and cold streaks throughout his career. It looks like the cumulative total for the full season will be right about what you would project for him.
DeleteAgreed that the front office has their work cut out. They already have $150 mil committed for 2018, assuming Cueto doesn't opt out. Sounds like improving the outfield defense is #1, but they have Span and Pence coming back because they will be tough to find trading partners for.
ReplyDeleteLG
They might be able to unload Span and put Pence in LF for 1 season until his contract is up. That is probably the best case scenario. Then there is the challenge of who to put in CF and RF.
DeleteThing is, I'm not sure Span is very tradeable. While he's pretty average with the bat (OPS+ 98), his defense is shockingly bad. Baseball Reference has his dWAR at -2.5. That's, wow, a ton.
DeleteI'm not super familiar with Statcast “Catch Probability," but Span ranked 299th out of 300 Players. (#300 is notoriously horrific defender Matt Kemp.).
I'm pretty sure he's being measured against other CFs, but the metrics are so terrible, I wonder how well he'd be able to even play a corner. And if any team might tolerate his D for the return of his low-power, average bat at a corner.
Apologies, I got Span's dWAR wrong. It's -0.5. Big difference. Again sorry for the mistake.
DeleteMy thought is that Span is actually a better hitter than Pence right now and his contract is about half the price. Borderline tradeable, but the Cubs reportedly had some interest at the trade deadline.
DeleteMojo, you might be slamming Span a little too hard there. He is certainly not a great defensive CF by any stretch, but I'm not sure he's as bad as you are painting him to be. By UZR/150 which normalizes for games played, compared to CF's with at least 500 innings at the position, he ranks #26 out of 30, ahead of Mike Trout, Joe Peterson, Jake Marisneck and Adam Jones(who is truly a terrible CF, BTW), and only slightly worse than Keon Broxton, Mikie Mahtook, Rajai Davis, Andrew McCutchen, Dexter Fowler and Jacoby Ellsbury.
DeleteI agree, Doc. I hear what you're saying. My initial post was based largely on my error, the -2.5 dWAR I thought applied to Span.
Delete(Funny you mention Jones, just watched him drop a lazy fly to center. Popped right out of his glove. Bad.)
Anyway, I don't believe Span has a ton of value, but, you're right, he's not unmovable. The Giants would need to be creative and flexible on getting him out the door, IMO.
To LG's observation on the Giants already committed payroll in '18, I'd agree that Giants will likely be very restricted in FA market. Assuming Cueto does not opt out, and the Giants exercise their options on Moore & Bum, (and not on Cain) then the payroll will be around $200 million. ($197 is luxury tax threshold next year, I believe).
Giants my not offer arb to a few guys to save $, Dyson maybe? It's hard to see how they'd cut a lot of payroll.
I'm thinking Sam Dyson might have the most trade value of anyone on the team not named Bumgarner.
DeleteThe Giants will have earned the pick. Shame there isn't a consensus monster out there waiting for us (Price, Harper, etc.)
ReplyDeleteInteresting piece of info about the Padres which I was unaware of; They have kept THREE Rule 5 players on their roster this year. Not one of them belongs on a major league roster:
Miguel Diaz, RHP, who has an ERA of 6.21
Luis Torrens, C, BA .169, OPS .458 (!)
Allen Codoba, INF, BA .209, OPS .588
How insanely difficult it would be to carry one non-productive player on the 25-man? How could an MLB team carry three? Has anyone ever heard of anything like that?
While probably the Padres hope one of these guys could possibly develop into a major leaguer, it feels more like a tank philosophy to improve draft position.
That the Giants are 9 games behind the Padres really says a lot about how bad the Giants are.
That is interesting. Nice work there, Mojo!
Delete