Let's see.....road game, coming off the first series sweep of the season against the hottest team in baseball. Yeah, the Giants were ready for a letdown game and they did a spectacular faceplant in game 1 of a 4 gamer in Philly. The hitting was bad and the pitching was worse. Key Lines:
None!
Well, I guess if you are looking for a silver lining, Reyes Moronta, coming off a couple of very rough appearances pitched a scoreless frame in the 7'th inning.
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The Padres were the only other NL West team playing today. The Giants lose 0.5 games on the rest of the division and trail the leading D'Backs by 4.5 games. The Rockies are 3.5 games behind and the Dodgers 8 with the Padres at 10.5 pending the outcome of their game against the Nationals.
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Derek Holland tries to get the Giants back on the winning track tomorrow, but faces a tough assignment in Aaron Nola.
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it seems like shark is still hurt. do they sign matt harvey or go back to tyler beede, if things don't turn around for him?
ReplyDeleteThere is a reason the Mets DFA'd Matt Harvey. I would stay far away from him until he proves he's straightened out his off-field issues.
DeleteMatt Harvey has failed to shown up to practice because he was drunk. He also hit on another player's wife while drunk. This year he's been out partying and boozing before starts (out till 4:00AM) and, after demoted, relieving. He hasn't shown up for games (was golfing) then claimed he had a headache which is why he couldn't be bothered to show up...
DeleteIs that what you want? Because I'd rather have Pablo pitching if it were down to signing Harvey to bolster the rotation.
Just to be clear, these are incidents that have been reported in the press or internet, so I'll add the qualifiers "reported" and "reportedly".
DeleteAccording to reports I read yesterday, the Giants rushed him back before he was ready, and that he was hitting 97 MPH yesterday, so he finally got his velocity back, and now he needs to work on command.
DeleteAccording to what I read, the Mets wanted to move Harvey to the minors in order for him to work out his pitching, and he refused the assignment (with Boras as his advisor), which forced the Mets to DFA him. Boras noted that while going to the minors with the Mets was not a good situation for Harvey, they are probably willing to go to the minors with another team, so it appears to be a power move by Boras to get Harvey out of the Mets hands, and get his client into a better situation for him. I'm sure he's talking with interested teams ("unofficially") and letting them know what Harvey would be willing to do for that team, and guiding who Harvey goes to. With Cueto as big question mark and Bumgarner out for another month, plus Holland not doing all that well, they would probably like to be on the Giants, as he's a free agent next season and he needs to showcase his talents if he's to get bidders fighting over him.
DeleteMaybe Shark is rounding into regular season form after starting the season on the DL. Bochy was encouraged that shark threw with more velocity then his previous starts so hopefully sharpening the command of his pitches comes next. They need Shark to come back strong.
ReplyDeleteLG
Yes, this appears to be what's happening with Samardzija. Reports had him hitting 97 MPH, so next step is command, as he's just walking too many.
DeleteCan't afford to keep walking this many when you give up HRs the way Shark does. He was a mid 4.5 ERA pitcher when he had the best K BB ratio in the league, he better get his command going
ReplyDeleteNews on the OF reinforcement per Rotowire:
ReplyDeletePence will back off his rehab assignment with Triple-A Sacramento after experiencing recurring thumb soreness, Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle reports. This is bad news, as the veteran had already logged seven games with the River Cats and appeared to be relatively close to returning. Pence now seems to be a ways away from a full return to action. A return timetable should become clearer once he's able to resume his rehab assignment.
Williamson (concussion) was transferred to the 10-day disabled list Monday, Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Williamson was taken off the 7-day disabled list after missing nearly two weeks due to concussion symptoms. He's set to visit a concussion specialist in the near future, although there is no set timetable for his return just yet.
Despite Kuiper's lauding Hernandez' OF skills, Gorkys almost made an over the CF fence catch but dropped the ball out of the pocket for a HR, then muffed a hit to play a single into extra bases. That said, Doc, you can join the fielding to your "The hitting was bad and the pitching was worse" because Crawford and Longoria contributed errors to one of your "it only counts as one loss" games.
There's not a single positive dWAR in the (active) OF with Jackson (-0.6) and Blanco (-0.3) stinking it up and McCutchen and Hernandez squeaking by with 0.0's.
To complete what was to be an improvement in 2018's D, Longoria,Hundley, Slater. Pence, Panik, and Sandoval contribute negative dWARs.
Being over .500 is a tribute to something!
One person's bad news is someone else's good news...
DeleteI wasn't expecting defense from Hundley or Pence, neither has shown it for years. I wasn't expecting it from Longoria either, per DRS, he had been negative in 3 of the prior 4 years, with an up blip in 2017. Panik was good before, but apparently the concussion concussed his defensive skills as he was bad last year and again this season. Slater is too inexperienced for us to know, and also SSS exponentially affected his defense stats this season. Sandoval, well, since he didn't come into spring a lot slimmer, I didn't expect defense from him either. Blanco hasn't been good defensively for years too, but with all the news about his speed, I had hoped his defense would return, but it didn't.
DeleteDefense improvement, I feel, was meant more as addition by subtraction, plus a team can never follow one tactic to its extreme, any move is complicated by other factors. The Giants were -48 DRS total for position players in 2017. Removing Span, Nunez, Hill, Ruggiano, Morse, and Gillaspie, well, they accounted for -51 DRS total, so the team was about average without them.
Also, Hernandez, to me, is just keeping a spot on the 25-man roster warm for somebody, I originally had Duggar slotted for his spot, but Williamson is now the guy for that spot: Gorkys was -4 DRS in 2017, and even worse, was -3 in CF, his main reason why he's on the roster, to play CF for us (that worked out to a -11 DRS seasonal rate). His almost-catch then drop yesterday represents exactly how I see him among Giants fans, people seem to like him (the catch), but defensively he's not that good in CF (the drop).
I get Gorkys has some bat, but I think the Giants would be much better off letting Duggar start in CF for a while, since both Pence and Williamson will be out indefinitely, while letting AJax and the other OF (at this point, Blanco and Gorkys is similar players to me, either could/should go) fight for LF starts, just because Duggar should be an upgrade defensively, hopefully by a lot, and pushing AJax to LF should improve his defense some.
I'm not a fan of Hernandez's defense, or McCutchen's. They both take poor routes at times, but McCutchen, with his hitting, has been a net positive while Hernandez has hit well enough that he, basically, has broken even as a player under waaWL%.
DeleteBut Jackson is terrible. He's not hitting and defense is the team's worst with -0.6 dWAR. And Blanco's defense hasn't been much better at -0.3 dWAR.
This is why I wanted to rebuild this year. I feel like this team, while winning right now, doesn't really have the horses the course they chose will put the team in purgatory -- not good enough win, not bad enough to get elite-prospects at the top of the draft.
I've got two positives!:
ReplyDelete1. Samardzija has had a major velocity drop so far this season. Coming in at 90-92 and peaking at 97. Yesterday he was his high-velocity self and peaked at 97.2. Now he just has to get his command back.
2. The Giants really put a lot of 'bad random luck and errors' into one game. Better to go full retard for one game than dribble it out game-after-game.