The Giants played a close, see-saw game with the Cubs in Chicago and held on to win. Key Lines:
Gorkys Hernandez CF- 3 for 5, 2 2B. BA= .311. Gorkys has just gone unconscious! Sure, what he is doing now is unsustainable, but he's actually been quite good for a full year now. Yes, his BABIP will regress, but if you look back at last season and his minor league career, he is capable of sustaining BABIP's in the mid-.300's. At least for the time being, he seems to have wrested the full-time CF and leadoff spots from Austin Jackson and Gregor Blanco. Jackson has not appeared since 5/22 in Houston. I have not heard he was hurt. Stay hot, Gorkys!
Andrew McCutchen RF- 2 for 4, 2B, BB. BA= .239. Cutch has been slumping pretty badly over the past 15 games with a BA of .226. Hopefully this game is a breakout from that.
Evan Longoria 3B- 2 for 5. BA= .250. First 3 batters in the lineup reached base 8 of 15 PA's.
Brandon Belt 1B- 1 for 3, BB. BA= .269. No XBH's today, but Belt drives in 2 of the 5 runs from the cleanup spot in the order.
Brandon Crawford SS- 2 for 3, 2B, HR(6). BA= .312. Crawford is hitting .455 over his last 7 games, .469 over his last 15 and .381 over his last 30. He also made a scintillating play on a cross-body throw from so far deep in the hole he was out in shallow LF. Crawford's best tool has always been his arm. That's essentially the same throw I saw him make in Adelanto way back in 2009. I was sitting with Tacklebox. We just looked at each other and said, "yeah, that was a big league throw!" Crawford's fWAR is up to 1.5 on the season approximately 1/3 of the way in.
Christ Stratton RHP- 5 IP, 4 H, 3 R, 3 BB, 6 K's. ERA= 4.97. Not quite a QS, but he hung in there long enough to get credit for the W.
Hunter Strickland RHP- 1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 0 K, Save(10). ERA= 2.38. I have Strick on my fantasy team. He's been OK.
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The Rockies, D'Backs and Dodgers all lost so the Giants are now 2 games behind the first place Rockies who lead the D'Backs by 0.5 games. The 4'th place Dodgers are 3.5 games behind and the Padres are 5.5 games back, but still in last place after beating the Dodgers 7-5.
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Ty Blach tries for a series win in the ESPN Sunday Night Game facing Giants nemesis Tyler Chatwood who has had trouble controlling the strike zone this season.
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Stratton: I thought his start was better than his line. He had two 3rd strike foul-tips that if Hunley had handled them would kept two runners off the base path and added two K's to his totals. I'm not crapping on Hunley as that's a difficult thing to do. But it is what it is and it cost him two baserunners and, ultimately, a run.
ReplyDeleteNL West: What a difference a year makes. Only two games back with a losing record. Last year, at this point, the:
Rockies were 32-18
Diamondbacks were 31-19
Dodgers were 29-20
And the Giants were 12-games back at 20-30.
Are the Padres the best last place team in the majors? Best record and closest to 1st place.
DeleteDodgers have been hit arguably harder than the Giants -- even in starting pitchers (3 of top 5 are out. only 2 SPs have stayed in the rotation all year.
The widely proclaimed Best Team in Baseball isn't very good and Roberts is beginning to look quite ordinary. He inherited a blockbuster team, rode it to the series, and lost.
Jackson for all his warts would be their 3rd or 4th OFer -- he's about to become the Giants' very tenuous 6th OFer.
Matt Kemp is the best the Dodgers have? How long will that last?
You can't factor in anything regarding LA's SP problems, I feel, as they built their rotation with pitchers who are injury prone,which they mitigated their risks in prior seasons by having so many that the next one tags in when one goes down. It's not working this season because they wanted to be below the penalty threshold, and traded off McCarthy to the Braves, and probably would have signed more injury-prone pitchers to stand on the sidelines, waiting.
DeleteI'm shocked by Kemp. If all it took to return him to good player status was getting into the shape he got into this season, that means he's been slacking for years, a FA case study that Charlie O. Finley would have loved to trot out as Exhibit 1A for fighting for free agency for every player, every year, a rule he suggested at the start of the free agent era.
River Cats game was on TV in Sacramento last night. Wonderful to see the big man pitch into the 4th inning masterfully, then Malancon the 5th, and lo and behold Beede pitched 4 innings agains a good hitting Isotope team gutting out the 8th when he loaded the bases and went 3-0. He was pumped!
ReplyDeleteAlmost had a combined no-hitter!
DeleteNot only will Denard Span be joining his 4th team within 4 years, he's doing it in an interesting way: Washington to San Francisco to Tampa Bay to Seattle. The heartland has certainly been fly-over country for him!
ReplyDeleteIf they are willing to eat Pences salary they should be willing to eat Jackson instead. I might even move Blanco to make room for Slater. Pence and Slater make a pretty good OF bench.
ReplyDeleteBilly Baseball
I'd try to trade Jackson for a flyer, barring that I'd out-right him. Next on the block would be Blanco. Then Pence after I gave a month, or so, to see if he can recapture anything.
DeleteDid not notice Cutch's struggles, but did notice that Longoria has been struggling lately, as well. That would explain the lull in the offense we've been having even though the Brandons have been so hot.
ReplyDeleteI was regretful that the Giants did not get Chatwood this off-season, as most of the analysis seemed to show that he was an underrated pitcher who should bloom away from his former team. However, I knew he was not in the budget, and we had higher priorities. But if he's struggling, suddenly I don't feel so bad.