The Giants took their "A" lineup into Talking Stick and crushed the D'Backs. Key Lines:
Joe Panik 2B- 3 for 4, HR(2). BA= .300. Hope Bochy continues to resist the temptation to put whoever is playing CF and might get a few more SB's in the leadoff role and just goes with Joe.
Brandon Belt 1B- 3 for 4, 2 2B. BA= .400. Belt needs to be one of the first 3 batters due to his great OBP.
Andrew McCutchen RF- 1 for 3, HR(1), BB. BA= .314. Cutch has had a fine spring, but this was his first dinger.
Buster Posey C- 3 for 4, 2B. BA= .545. Buster Posey does not fit the profile of .400 hitter, but dang! He is some sort of locked in and has been for over a year now.
Evan Longoria 3B- 2 for 4, SB(1). BA= .364. Longoria won't hit .364 in season or steal many bases.
Brandon Crawford SS- 2 for 4. BA= .341. Expecting big things from Crawford this year.
Pablo Sandoval DH- 2 for 4. BA= .326. I would actually be OK with the NL adopting the DH rule.
Dereck Rodriguez RHP- 3 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 2 K's, GO/AO= 5/0. DRod has had a rough spring, but resurfaces to keep Shark from facing a division rival and looky here!
Josh Osich LHP- 1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 2 K's. ERA= 0.00. Can Osich run the table and take his zero ERA through the preseason?
Sam Dyson RHP- 1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 2 K's. ERA= 12.86. It wasn't a clean inning, but impressed that Dyson got back up after his 0.1 IP debacle the day before to pitch a scoreless inning.
Jeff Samardzija RHP- Shark took 80 pitches to get through 3.1 IP, against the Cubs minor leaguers. No bueno! He has one more chance to get on the right track before the season opens.
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Fantasy Focus: Around the League
Jose Berrios RHP, Twins- 5 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 3 BB, 5 K's. ERA= 1.60. Berrios had a strong second half in 2017. Poised for a breakout in 2018.
Brandon McCarthy RHP, Braves- 6 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 4 K's. ERA= 1.42. McCarthy has almost always pitched well when he is healthy. It's the health part that keeps getting in the way.
Francisco Liriano LHP, Tigers- 5 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 5 BB, 4 K's. ERA= 1.80. Liriano is not likely to help much in the WHIP category.
Yu Darvish RHP, Cubs- 6 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 0 BB, 7 K's. ERA= 2.76. Will last year's WS debacle make Darvish an undervalued player in this year's fantasy drafts?
Aaron Altherr OF, Phillies- 1 for 5, HR(3). BA= .239. I might be tempted draft Altherr if I was sure he would get playing time. I guess if he is as good as I think he can be, he'll carve out his own playing time.
Paul DeJong SS/IF, Cardinals- 1 for 2, HR(4). BA= .289. DeJong is my backup plan at SS if I miss out on Didi.
Lance McCullers, Jr RHP, Astros- 5.1 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 2 BB, 6 K's. ERA= 0.50. McCullers kind of broke out last year. There might be more in the tank.
Yonder Alonso 1B- 2 for 3, HR(6). BA= .378. Fantasy baseball owners must think Alonso's breakout last year was a fluke. He is currently the 36'th 1B and 142'd player overall in Yahoo drafts. His spring performance suggests he may be a major bargain.
Mike Zunino C- 4 for 4, 3 HR(5). BA= .389. Zunino is enter his age 27 season. He hit .250 with 25 dingers last year. He is the undisputed #1 catcher for the Mariners this season. He is the 8'th ranked catcher on Yahoo right now.
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No to DH! :)
ReplyDeleteOsich has grabbed a bullpen spot, but it's also temporary because it's Will Smith's spot, who is supposed to be back in May. He's probably optioned to AAA when Smith returns, though probably first called back when they want to give a reliever some rest for 10 days, right? What do you think?
Yeah, Shark is very worrying, hope that he is really just working on pitches, and not just messed up overall.
If Dyson can be shut down reliever, and Melancon returned to his norms, we will have a monster bullpen with Watson, Strickland, Gearrin. And even more so if Will Smith returns to his norms, though if Osich is pitching like this still, that'll be an even better bullpen.
I think the only thing Dyson is shutting down is any realistic hope he'll be a solid reliever. His 4.03 ERA and 4.08 FIP coupled 4.3 BB/9, just 6.4 K/p and his 1.49 WHIP (those are just Giants stats) did not give me a bunch of warm and fuzzies last year. It gave me a yearning for just about anybody else...
DeleteThat's why I so upset when they traded Crick. At least it looked like Crick had finally figured out some control and might, finally, be at least a solid reliever with that 70 fastball of his. Whereas Dyson did little, if anything, to inspire any confidence.
I get your disappointment about Dyson's peripherals, as well as the gut punch when Crick was traded, I felt that too, but got over it as I learned more about McCutchen. You have to give some to get some.
DeleteThere might be a different conversation happening with Giants fans if the season had ended a couple of games sooner and he had a 2.95 ERA/3.69 FIP/1.25 WHIP instead. His peripherals are not the best, but his full SF performance was still good by batting line: .245/.339/.361/.700
So while he walked a lot, he kept the hits down for the most part, so his OBP allowed isn't that bad, just not good either. But .700 OPS in hit prevention is pretty good, in my eyes.
And, over a 35 game stretch there, he was shut down reliever, and the season ended with two lemons. I don't believe that you can luck into a 35 game good stretch like that, but you definitely can bad luck into getting blasted like he was at the end. For relievers, while I understand the adherence to his overall stats, I think from looking under the hood, while his peripherals were not the best, he was at least effective for the most part as a reliever for us, except for a few games where he got blown up (and there were a number of those). And with him striving to redup this former mechanics, I'm hopeful he can at least do what he did last season for us, and hopefully take it another step upward as well.
I'm also not too worried about Dyson because Strickland has been so good with his new slider, this could have him take another step up to being that closer that we was being sold as early in his career with the Giants. Plus, we picked up Watson, who was so good setting up Melancon before in his career. And Osich has been a Back to the Future with his pitching, why didn't anyone figure that out in the past couple of seasons?
I have zero faith in either Dyson, Watson or Melancon against the Dodgers opening weekend.
DeleteI'm in the wait and see mode myself with those 3, Melancon because of health, Dyson working on mechanics to get his power sinker, and Watson was hit hard with Bucs as a closer. He did pitch well with the Dodgers.
DeleteI think you never know with most relievers anyway, year to year, which makes the run of consistent pitching that Casilla, Romo. Affeldt, and Lopez had even more amazing.
LG
Would be a nice development if Osich pitches well until Will Smith comes back. I'm cautiously optimistic.
ReplyDeleteRegarding fantasy, 2 rookies look really interesting to me, Ronald Acuna of the Braves, and this kid for the Phils named Scott Kingery. He's being compared to Craig Biggio and Dustin Pedroia, wow! I'm trying to stash both.
LG
looks like shark may start the year on the dl, which could open a roster spot for fernandez or okert
ReplyDeleteYeah. MRI today. No news yet on it.
DeleteUpdate. Baggerly just tweeted (via Cove Chatter's retweet) that Samardzija will start the season on the DL.
DeleteDL for, allegedly, a short time, and for a muscle strain. If the diagnosis is as it’s being reported, this is a very minor matter, and the more so because the schedule allows for a number of days off.
Delete