Thursday, May 24, 2018

Game Wrap 5/23/2018: Astros 4 Giants 1

The Astros and Justin Verlander dominated the Giants and Jeff Samardzija in a game that was not nearly as close as the score looks.  Key Lines:

Gorkys Hernandez CF- 2 for 4, 3B.  BA= .287.  Gorkys may be having something of a breakout season offensively.  He's slashed .326/.360/.587 over his last 15 games.  He's mostly platooned with Gregor Blanco in LF but played CF against a dominant RHP in this game and did just fine.

Jeff Samardzija RHP- 4.2 IP, 4 H, 4 R, 5 BB, 2 K's.  ERA= 6.23.  This was the third game in a row the Giants SP failed to complete 5 innings and Shark is the current rotation member who seems most likely to get deep into games.

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With the Loss, the Giants remained 2 games behind the NL West leading Rockies, who lost to the Dodgers, and in 3'rd place in the NL West.  The D'Backs also lost and remain 0.5 games behind the Rocks in 2'nd place.  Here come the Dodgers who are now just 3.5 games out of first place.  The Pesky Padres topped the Nationals 3-1 and are just 5.5 games off the pace, but in last place.

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The Giants get another day off in the middle of the road trip before starting a weekend series in Chicago with a day game Friday against the Cub.  Derek Holland will try to play Stopper against Kyle Hendricks in the series opener.

6 comments:

  1. Gorkys made a nice play in CF, also. Isn't he a better option this year than A-Jax in just about every way?
    Bryce Harper has always done it his way and he's going into free agency in a unique manner.
    Never an exemplary RFer, he's putting on a RF show this year that makes McCutchen look almost adequate albeit both had atrocious muffs yesterday contributing to losses.
    Harper's -0.9 dWAR this year comes with a meager .232 BA contrasted with a league leading 15 HRs.
    He is a prize possession but worth a half billion dollars?
    Maybe to the Giants brain trust -- they apparently only give lip service toward improving the defense.

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  2. The game could have been a lot closer without Shark's 5 walks, McCutchen's swing-and-miss at a can-of-corn pop fly, and a team 0-5 with RISP.
    McCutchen, Longoria, Sandoval, and Hundley left a collective 9 runners on base going 0-15 in the process. Add Tomlinson's O-fer to 0-18 and no walks.
    Not that they could have beaten Verlander -- they need Bumgarner and Cueto at the top of their games to match up with the Astros AND a major league outfield would help.
    Hopefully all this will be resolved for the rematch in August @ AT&T, although that follows a 4-game AZ series which is more important.
    From MLBTR:
    White Sox catcher Welington Castillo has been slapped with an 80-game suspension following a failed PED test, per Dominican journalist Americo Celado. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic tweets the same, and it seems that an announcement from the league could come tomorrow.
    Castillo, 31, signed a two-year, $15MM contract with the White Sox in the offseason and will forfeit nearly half of his $7.25MM salary on the 2018 season as a result of the 80-game ban.
    Hope the drug was worth $3,500,000 (+/-)!

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  3. Hernandez: I'm not convinced. With a .383 BABIP, I think his production has a huge luck component. I think that whan that BABIP regresses toward his career norms (.309), he's going to be a .250 hitter. Add in his defense is weak (and way over-rated by Giants fans & press). I just don't think much of him. He's no Gregor Blanco, best 4th OFer in the game (back in the day).

    With that said, he's a better option in CF than Jackson and Blanco as he's hitting better and playing better defense than them (especially Jackson who is well on his way to being worse (-DRS) than Span or Pagan when we wanted them replaced).

    Samardzija... The man has no command right now.

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    Replies
    1. Since May 31 of last season, Gorkys has hit .292 with a .399 SLG% over a total of 301 AB's.

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  4. HA HA. This just in: (Jeff Passan, Yahoo Sports) Study: MLB's balls are not juiced but aerodynamically different

    "The specific aerodynamic culprit remains elusive – and, the study showed, it behooved everyone from power hitters to not-so-powerful hitters. Generally speaking, as a ball travels through the air, it is slowed by air molecules bouncing off it. Without drag, Nathan said, a 400-foot home run might travel 700 feet. As the group tested batches of balls from four time periods – pre-All-Star Game 2015, post-All-Star Game 2015, 2016 and 2017 – “what we saw was a progressive decrease in the drag properties,” Nathan said."

    Now that they've figured out the physics, they're trying to figure out the engineering changes. But it's not the core and probably not the seams and they're clear they're not sure what it is and it's going to take more testing and work.

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  5. Mac is coming back up (Osich optioned) and Bochy said he'll be the regular LFer!!!

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