The Giants followed a familiar formula for losing: Fall behind early then tease the fans with some late rallies that ultimately fall short. Key Lines:
Pablo Sandoval PH- 1 for 1, 2B. BA= .400. Pabs has been one of the few bright spots on offense. He was in the middle of the Giants 2-run rally in the 7'th. He doubled Kevin Pillar home then scored on Steven Duggar's double.
Buster Posey C- 2 for 4. BA= .227. I didn't see Buster's first hit but the second was a liner that banged off the RF wall. Encouraging sign that maybe the power is starting to come back.
Dereck Rodriguez RHP- 5.1 IP, 7 H, 4 R, 0 BB, 5 K's. ERA= 5.23. DRod gave up a 2 dingers and a 4-spot in the first inning, then settled down and pitched pretty well for the next 4.1 innings. Problem is the Giants just don't have enough offense to dig out of an early hole like that.
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The Giants remain in last place in the NL West 4 games behind the leading Dodgers and 3 games behind the second place Padres.
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The Giants try to get back into the Win column tomorrow afternoon with Jeff Samardzija facing Ryne Stanek.
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The season is a week old and the Giants are already 4 games out! I feel sorry for Bochy to have to coach this dumpster fire in his last season. These players that Farhan has found in the garbage are trash. He hasn’t made any significant trades and the end result is a team on track to lose 100 games.
ReplyDeleteSo the question I have is was this all part of the plan? Farhan has his eye on the first pick in the draft which means he doesn’t plan on competing until 2021-2022? If this isn’t the plan then I think it’s obvious that whatever the plan was has failed.
Why is whats happening to this team so discouraging? We are being forced to watch our beloved manager and our favorite players wither on the vine. They have been given zero support from Farhan and in a month they will be begging to get traded. At that point we will all want them gone as well and instead of remembering the 3 WS’s and all the great runs they had we will remember them for this year and the beach ball sized goose egg they are laying.
I don't think the plan is/was to tank it until 2022. Farhan failed to achieve is own stated goals for the offseason.
DeleteAgain, judging a GM is multifaceted. Offseason trades and FA signings are one facet. Scouting/Drafting is another. Player Development yet another. Then there is midseason trades buying or selling. I would say success in finding hidden talent through "dumpster dives" is another separate skill.
We have the draft, July 2 international FA signings and midseason trading coming up. At this point, it seems likely the Giants will have to be midseason sellers which means any tradable players who will be free agents after the season must go. The next big judgment on Farhan's GM skills will come then we can assess the talent level after those milestones. Right now, he's sitting on a big goose egg for his first offseason.
"These players that Farhan has found in the garbage are trash."
DeleteYes, this statement makes sense. When you're forced to sort through other teams' castoffs to find players who actually are better than what we already have, they're likely to be garbage. That's why they're in the garbage.
"They have been given zero support from Farhan and in a month they will be begging to get traded."
I was also rooting for AJ Pollock. I was NOT really rooting for Bryce Harper. But we need to remember: These guys want to win, and they're getting paid VERY well by their respective organizations to play for teams that might actually go somewhere in the next 4 years. AJ Pollock got a 5 year contract and was/is a huge risk to be another massive sunk cost. However, he's 200% better than what we have and that's a bummer.
You wanted trades though? Who are you guys sending out? Who are other teams coveting that the Giants can send over? Will Smith and Watson? Who's pitching for the team then?? There's NO talent in the minors, folks. Dyson? Literally no one even tried to sign him away from the Giants.
Sellers at the deadline? Selling who? Crawford, Posey - these guys have inflated contracts that don't measure up to their production, and Posey may not be able to play catcher by the half-way point. Belt has hit a couple dingers now, but no one anywhere in baseball was looking to trade for him over the off season - he's the most inconsistent player in baseball, unless you're looking for someone consistently on the DL.
It's still early to tell what kind of team the Giants will be. They could have won that game with a clutch hit or two, 2-13 with RISP. Moving on from the off season, just want to sit back and enjoy the ride of the Giants baseball season. My friend who is a Pirate fan was not happy when they traded Glasnow and Austin Meadows for Chris Archer, he says the Pirates got fleeced by Tampa. Glasnow was throwing high 90's gas! If Farhan decides to trade Madbum at the deadline, I hope he can get a similar trade package for him
ReplyDeleteI guess that's the point I've been trying to make about the offseason. We've been seeing 2-13 with RISP for how long now? The fix for that problem is to acquire a couple of corner OF bats. Who do we get? Gerardo Parra and Kevin Pillar. That is not going to get it done.
DeleteI can think of two players currently in the organization who have shown the potential to hit 30 dingers in a season: Mac Williamson and Anthony Garcia. Barring the acquisition of a clear upgrade, one of those two guys should be stationed out in LF every day and hitting 7'th in the batting order.
DeleteZaidi said that Mac needed to "break down the door" in spring training and he didn't do that. There are just so many things wrong with that statement:
1. As a reputed statistics genius, I expect Zaidi to have a least a cursory knowledge of sample size issues and of general lack of correlation between spring training and regular season performance.
2. If someone else, say Anthony Garcia, had "broken down the door", fine, put him out there instead of Mac, but nobody else did that. So Mac had to "break down the door", but yet Farhan was willing to just hand the roster spots to 2 guys who have never done anything.
I'm not saying Mac "deserved" anything or "won" anything. All I'm saying is Farhan failed to acquire a better option and still dumped Mac. That's just petty and stupid, IMO.
I don't get it folks.
DeleteMac Williamson has had 4 seasons in the Major Leagues, encompassing 120 games and 339ABs. Why hasn't he had more ABs - because his career BA is .222 with a .681 OPS. WOW, GOSH wish he was up here manning our outfield. His .386 career SLG% over 4 years of ML baseball clearly screams 30 home run potential.
Anthony Garcia, huh? The same guy who's been in Triple-A since 2015? The same Garcia who hit 25 home runs last year in the PCL at the AGE OF 26...His first season hitting more than 20 home runs in the minor leagues in his entire career? THAT Anthony Garcia?? 30 home run potential in the majors, huh?
I am not a troll and I do not mean to troll, but
WHAT ARE YOU GUYS EVEN TALKING ABOUT?
It sounds to me like people are frustrated at where the organization is at, and are looking for a scape goat to point the finger at....and the old GM is already gone, and was a really nice guy that we'd all have really liked to like. So what to feel about the team we all love...right? I get that, I feel that too guys.
What everyone should be saying is: This Giants team was left with an absolute wasteland of talent, a wasteland sitting inside of a vacuumed bell-jar, at the Major League level clearly and throughout the minor leagues as well. As per my comment above: There are no trades to be made, because there are only 3 or 4 young pieces of any value whatsoever (see: Heliot Ramos, Joey Bart and....umm, that's it?) and you can't trade them because those are your future core players. Chris Shaw, Tyler Beede, Hinojosa, Aramas Garcia, Miguel Gomez, Jordan Johnson, Ray Black, Heath Quinn, Jalen Miller.....
....Not a SINGLE one of those MiL players has an ounce of trade value on the REAL (Not imaginary in fan's heads) trade market.
So, what are you guys even talking about? We should feel fortunate that any person anywhere chose to come in here to San Francisco where the organization has been run into the ground with stale, placid moves over the last 6 years, and put their own career on the line trying to revive this burning pile of trash.
Here’s a different version. ST stats aren’t the point; what is, is an appraisal by expert eyes as to whether Mac’s likely contribution, as a player well known and post-concussion, would be great enough to overcome his ground-ball tendencies and only OK fielding. That’s the muster he didn’t pass, and that he now will have to pass again in AAA. Farhan instead found more versatile players, rookies, with very good AAA run contributions and OBPs, and gave them one MLB series so as to take a look at them in action. When they did not pan out, Reed got “dumped,” as Mac did, and Joe got benched. FZ did not have a good hitting option, you’re right, so he provided an excellent defensive option, a course of action that is the opposite of “petty and stupid,” IMO, and that alters the Giants’ OF radically from the 2018 iteration of McC, Jackson, Hernandez, et al.
DeleteOf course ST numbers mean little, but so do numbers from the first two series of the year—talk about SSS!—and yet this blog keeps registering dark, embittered jeremiads. The failure, so far, of the offensive “Core” isn’t FZ’s fault, nor is it easy to remedy by means he has. He has improved the ‘pen, the rotation, the bench, and the farm system; the feeble batting by the “Core” will require more time and patience to improve itself or be improved.
campanari appealing to authority again, because Zaidi’s expert opinion has proved to be so right on. Look, I totally get that Mac did not have a great spring and is no sre thing to hit 30 dingers. The problem is he is the one and only guy in the organization who has shown the potential. If you don’t dig Mac, that’s fine, but if he’s so bad, it should not be hard or expensive to find abetted option. Joe and Reed were non-starters before they were signed, and now we seem to be stuck with Pillar and Parra.
DeleteAnd to Rainball. OK, so you don’t dig Mac or Garcia. The Mariners picked up Domingo Santana for close to nothing. Zaidi didn’t bother to even kick a tire.
DeleteI also do not agree that the “core” is a hopeless mess. It is not strong enough to make up for black holes in the OF, but with upgrades there, it can be competitive.
DeleteYep we should have gone and gotten Domingo Santana. So should have 30 other teams, if he keep slashing .297/.409/.676. That I agree with, and if at the end of the season he's still hitting anything like that, it was an oversight.
DeleteI like Mac, but it made me wonder that he still needs to work on his swing when another team didn't pick him up on waivers. Zaidi is new and only had the Spring to evaluate. Mac had to impress the new regime and didnt do it. I didnt hear Bochy put in a good word for him either. The Santana trade to the Mariners took place on December 22nd. Zaidi has said that he spent the 1st 2 months on the job figuring out the orgs needs. Hard to blame Zaidi for not making a trade in his 2nd month on the job. Zaidi has said that he looked into trades for outfielders with multiple years of control, but didn't have the trade assets. I give him the benefit of the doubt for now. My only issue is that hopefully he's being honest with the fan base about trying to compete this year instead of this being the beginning of a rebuild.
DeleteI don’t agree there were 29 other teams that had a need for a Domingo Santana.
DeleteIt is not that Farhan failed to achieve MY offseason goals for him. He failed to achieve HIS OWN offseason goals for himself.
DeleteParra and Pillar each left 6 runners on base, a significant contribution to the loss.
ReplyDeleteBelt, Crawford, Longoria, and Duggar went 3-18 stranding 10. That didn't help.
Posey with 2 hits and Panik in the 8 hole was 1-3 with a walk.
Giants didn't get much from Farhan's acquisitions while Mac sat out Sacramento's 2nd game.
Does Zaidi decide who plays there also?
BTW, Chase Johnson got scorched in Sac but a Zaidi dumpster dive, Carlos Navas, pitched almost as well as Beede, stranding 2 of Johnson's runners in relief, then gave up an HR later. He may give up too many of them.
It's early, 2-6 is ugly, but it's a long year.
Short of Superman in LF, the Giants will succeed or fail with the core 5, who all will be back next year, and the big bucks 4 sans Panik in 2021.
Superman went 0-4 with a walk and 2 Ks in Minnesota yesterday, but the Phillies won 10-4 anyway.
I believe Zaidi will have more of a say in minor league rosters and lineups than the previous administration.
DeleteIt is still early. Two and six is plenty ugly, but if the Giants were to turn around and win a couple series they would be right back at .500. Having said that, there is a real possibility that the season goes fully off the rails by early May.
ReplyDeleteAs for Zaidi, as much as I wish he could have picked up an outfield bat (Adam Jones would sure look good hitting 3rd, 4th, or 5th in the Giants order), I am glad he didn't make a Longoria-type move that gave the Giants some offensive production in the short run, but created more contract/payroll issues down the road. The Giants roster was, and still is, an absolute mess, a wasteland. I think it makes a lot of sense to wait until at least August to cast aspersions.
In the meantime, I will be following Doc's minor league recaps looking for signs of hope.
He would not have had to make a “Longoria” move to upgrade the corner OF spots.
DeleteWould the Giants be better off if they had kept Gorkys? He hit 15 bombs last year and D was acceptable. I don't understand the Joe and Reed signings - and given starting jobs on Opening Day. Not only do I not think they had blowout STs to"knock the door down" I don't think their minor league numbers were all that stellar. Those two signings and the flutty of activity before OD smacks of desperation and Z wanting to put his imprint on the roster. Re: Mac, unless he can not come back form the concussion, he has proven he can hit the long ball (team needs power in a big way) and his power potential is greater than Reed or Joe so I would pick Mac - who hit three MLB bombs in 5 games last year, something Reed or Joe may never do. Chris Shaw is another big dude who in a SSS last season hit two monster HR's. I would start him over Joe or Reed. Can anyone explain why Gorkys was cut and Pillar signed? Yes better D from Pillar but Gorkys has a more potent bat, doesn't he?
ReplyDeletePillar and Gorkys are similar players but I think Pillar is better by a modest margin. Gorkys’ offense really fell off the table in the second half last year.
DeleteParra career against RHP .288/.332/.430
DeletePillar career against LHP .312/.433/.744
Who wouldn't take that batter!
For power in LF:
Mac against LHP
Shaw against RHP
Could it be worse than what they've tried?
It appears Z. has a low opinion - maybe not even supported by facts - of players drafted by Evans/Sabean. Shaw and Mac may not hit for average but they are built to hit the long ball - besides I think they both have an arm whereas Joe is completely unsuited for OF play and in the first 8 games he failed to play the LF as a competent LF. Why did Z. not know that? I am not even talking about Joe's limp bat. Why was he playing LF? Did Z. not know that he was an incompetent fielder? (lack of Due Diligence) or did he know and put him io LF anyway bc the bat was MLB ready. Meanwhile Mac and Shaw are in the minors and Mac has not even had an AB yet and Joe is still on the 25. I am perplexed to put it politley.
DeletePollyanna here but haven't the Giants played all good teams so far or do the opponents look good because they're playing the Giants?
ReplyDeleteAll games have been more-or-less close, at least 2 were self-destructs.
They could be 4-3 rather than 2-5 with a little luck.
Joe and Reed were gambles that never had a chance but they're gone (almost), Ryne Stanek is good but RHed, the Giant with their highest OBP (Qualifiers) is batting 8th (?), Shark continues his bounce-back, hey, what (else) can go wrong?
Belt remains the closest the Giants have to power but he's not getting walks (8-1 K-W) -- he should so not be batting 2 but Bochy is Baker with lineups.
Put this one in the W column!