The Giants final game of the season against the D'Backs ended pretty much the same way their first one, with a Blown Save. This time it was Sam Dyson giving up 3 in the 9'th while conjuring up memories of Mark Melancon's season debut. The BS ruined another strong start for Jeff Samardzija. Key Lines:
Denard Span CF- 3 for 4, 2B, 3B. BA= .270. Span is making a case that he can hit enough to play LF next year. He's hitting .313 on the month with a .547 SLG%.
Pablo Sandoval 1B- 2 for 4, 2 2B. BA= .215. And Pablo is making his case to start next season on the 25 man roster, whether we like it nor not. He's hitting .283 since his 0 for 40 slump with 4 doubles and 3 HR's out of his 13 hits in that span.
Mac Williamson LF- 0 for 1, BB. BA= .235. Anyone know why Gorkys Hernandez pinch hit for Mac in the 6'th inning? Was it an injury or did Bochy just decide he couldn't stand the site of Mac batting one more time? Maybe his doghouse just needed a little warming up?
Jeff Samardzija RHP- 6 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 BB, 4 K's. ERA= 4.42. That's pretty much the story of Shark's season. He's been on the receiving end of a double whammy of dingers and poor run support.
Sam Dyson RHP- 0.1 IP, 3 H, 3 R, 2 BB, 0 K. ERA= 5.87. Uh-oh! Dyson has pitched well for the Giants but between him and Melancon, the Giants closer situation next year is anything but secure.
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With the Loss, the Giants maintained a 0.5 game lead in the race for the #1 overall draft pick over the Detroit Tigers who have lost 9 in a row. The Phillies and ChiSox won so the Giants lead them by 2 and 3.5 games. The Giants could still mathematically end up with the 4'th pick in the draft due to tiebreakers if the Giants swept the Padres and the ChiSox lost all 4 of their remaining games.
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Giants get the day off tomorrow before starting the final homestand of the season agains the Padres with Chris Stratton, Matt Cain and Johnny Cueto the scheduled starters.
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Matt Cain announced that Saturday's start will be his final appearance as a Giant and the final appearance of his career. He's retiring to become just the 4'th player ever to play more than 10 seasons and play his entire career with the Giants. What a terrific career!
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Mac got hit in the hand during a foul-ball swing when he was at bat earlier in the game. Maybe it just swelled up too much. Or was effecting his swing. (I wasn't watching the game, I was too busy buying a house, but I got that from Schulmann's twitter feed.)
ReplyDeleteStealing another tweet: Jeff Samardzija ends the year with a 6.41 K/BB ratio, the best by a starter in #SFGiants history. Marichal (6.17 in 1966) was previous high.
And speaking of Matt Cain and a history of being snake bit by the lack of run support and blown saves, three more tweets (Cain): Matt Cain has a 104-118 career record. San Francisco's bullpen has blown 39 games in which he departed in line for a victory. Matt Cain has 112 non-win quality starts in his career. He is 0-38 with a 2.39 ERA and a 1.086 WHIP in those starts. Matt Cain has 112 starts of at least seven innings with no more than two earned runs allowed.
Won: 57
Did not win: 55
ERA: 1.27
Seriously, Cain has got to be one of the most unlucky pitchers in Giants' history.
Thanks for those stats. Everybody seems to agree that while Matt Cain had a terrific career, he won't make the HOF. Lets's say he gets back half of the wins he "should" have been credited with. Would he be at least on the bubble for the HOF? I tend to think so. Maybe we haven't moved on from wins as much as we like to congratulate ourselves for(speaking of global fandom and sportswriters).
DeleteJust eyeballing those numbers it looks like Cain should be finishing his career with around 150 Wins and 95 losses.
DeleteWow, that tells us a lot about Cain's career. Lets hope he tags the Padres with a career ending no hitter.
DeleteRichard In Winnipeg
Cain was a great Giant, it will nice to give him a good send off into retirement on Saturday at home. Williamson was drilled on the wrist in his 2nd at bat.
ReplyDeleteCoach B
Williamson got hit on the hand while batting earlier - but since he swung/was about to swing, it was called a strike and he had to continue the at-bat (he eventually walked). I had to leave the broadcast shortly after that, so I'm not sure what else happened, but I would have been surprised if he had been allowed to bat afterwards.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info on Mac, everybody. Sadly, every time Mac seems to be gaining some traction, he seems to get hurt. It's already putting his future with the Giants in jeopardy.
DeleteI may be going off the rails on this one, but in the case of Samardzija, can one correlate low BB rate with home runs? Batters know he is generally around the plate so it allows them to zero in on a ball in or near the zone.
ReplyDeleteI believe that is very possible.
DeleteA few years ago, I argued that the Giants pitching philosophy, which I presumed was reflected in Mike Krukow's broadcast commentary, was to not give in to hitters in hitter's counts even with runners on base, which had the effect of suppressing HR's but increasing walks.
DeleteI put that out on Fangraphs. Dave Cameron stated that he asked Rags this whether the Giants pitchers were willing to trade walks for HR's and that Rags denied it, but the transcript was behind a paywall so I never saw how Cameron's question or Rags' response was worded.