The Giants closed out the Cactus League with a ragged win over the Mariners in Scottsdale. Maybe it wasn't as ragged as it seemed to me because there was a bad connection on the streaming feed. First the audio was unintelligible then went to being a full pitch ahead of the video which kept cutting out to reconnect. If finally shut down completely sometime around the 6'th inning. Key Lines:
Lamonte Wade Jr 1B- 2 for 2, 2B. BA= .278. After a slow start to the spring, LMWJ finishes strong and maybe he's the guy at 1B after all?
Roberto Perez C- 2 for 3. BA= .261. It seems significant that Perez caught Webb in his final tuneup for Opening Day. The Giants appear set on starting the season with 3 catchers on the roster, although Blake Sabol OF/C will function more as an OF while filling in for injuries to Mitch Haniger OF and Austin Slater OF. At this point the depth chart appears to be 1. Perez. 2. Joey Bart C. 3. Blake Sabol OF/C. This makes me sad because I admit I am a fanboy for Joey Bart and really want to see him succeed with the Giants, but my rational side tells me that Perez is the smart play if the goal is to win this season, and I think it has to be. Perez is perceived to be a glove-only C and there's nothing wrong with that, but he did hit 24 HR's in 2019 before suffering a long string of injuries. Based on that and his spring performance he looks capable of being at least an average offensive catcher which paired with elite catcher defense is a really, really good thing. Longer term the word among the beats is that the Giants are really high on Patrick Bailey C. One more wrinkle in all this is FZ stated flatly on his broadcast appearance that Sabol has to be able to make a significant contribution behind the plate to stay on the roster all season. Unless his bat craters in the regular season, I can't imaging the Giants giving him back to the Pirates without a fight so the tea leaves are pointing away from Joey Bart both long and short term despite him having a decent spring himself. Sad but that's baseball.
Blake Sabol LF- 1 for 2. BA= .349. Sabol's hit was a squeeze bunt that he beat out and wow! He sure seems to do a lot of things well! He later came around to score on LMWJ's double. In LF he made a couple of non-routine catches although it looked like he got slow starts on both of them. What in interesting player and story!
Logan Webb RHP- 5 IP, 8 H, 1 R, 3 BB, 6 K's. ERA= 4.50. Webb threw some great looking pitches but generally was inconsistent and not sharp with lots of traffic on the bases. No worries as I am sure he just wanted to get stretched out and not get hurt in his final spring tuneup.
Sean Hjelle RHP- 2 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 4 K's. ERA= 1.23. Hjelle inherited 2 runners with no outs in the 6'th inning and allowed 1 to score when the first batter he faced got a hit. He settled down after that and got 6 outs while facing 7 more batters striking out 4 of them. Strong spring for Hjelle and I am pumped to see how he emerges this season. Is he a sleeper ROY candidate?
Taylor Rogers LHP pitched a scoreless inning and also has an ERA of 1.23 on the spring.
Non-roster pitcher Spencer Bivens RHP allowed 3 runs in mop-up time in the 9'th inning.
Afternoon game tomorrow in Oakland for the Bay Bridge series with Alex Wood LHP getting the start.
Will Brown be ready later this season or next year? (I think it was mentioned recently that he is the closest to play in SF, other than Johnson, among our prospects). With Haniger and Conforto likely here for only one year, it would be nice for Sabol to step in to replace them in the outfield in 2024, unless his D there is even worse than his D at C. And if one of Haniger or Conforto is here for a second year, it is likely due to missing this a significant part of this season to injury and in which case, Sabol is, once more, useful in the outfield, unless his D there is, again, bad.
ReplyDeleteEspecially if Bailey is what they think he is. Then, Sabol can be versatile in LF, RF, 1B, DH, perhaps CF, and maybe even 3B or 2B.
Be strong up the middle (C, SS, 2B and CF). A third base man normally hits better than a SS. Normally. If you play a 3B at SS, you can squeeze more offense, one would expect. But you have to make sure you don't compromise the D...too much. And the same goes for all positions, in the conventional hierarchical order of D (i.e CF is harder to play than LF, SS is harder than 2B, etc). So, here is hoping that Schmitt can hit and field at 3B, Luciano can bash and pick them at SS, Bailey can get the job done offfensively and defesively, etc., and we don't resort to making up for inadequate offense by playing an outfielder at SS or C.
I also hope that we don't expect that Perez's elite D at C can be combined with a below-average D to form an average D. Treating averages like that is like thinking 'going 3 days drinking twice the daily required water and then going 3 days without water' would average you out to have drunk daily-required water for those 6 days. Here, what we have is more a case of the weakest link causing failure. That 3 days of going out water would severely damage your health.
Schmitt won the MiLB GG at 3B last year. He's been favorably compared to Arenado and many people say he's got the range and skills to play SS in the majors.
DeleteThat would be really nice should Schmitt prove himself to be an exception.
DeleteNormally, one doesn't expect that.
Maybe Luciano and Schmitt can switch positions?
DeleteDrinking too much water is also not healthy. So, the analogy is not a perfect one (Too much elite D at C is not a problem).
ReplyDeleteBart and Hjelle. Each of their biggest sons is merely not being FZs boys. Both were drafted by the previous regime. Hence, I wouldn't be too shocked if each was packaged and sent off some time this season. Ditto Villar. I'm a bit shocked that Webb was given the chances that he was. However, his 2021 post season made him a little less able to be gotten rid of. If he scuffles, I wouldn't be shocked if he had a short rope. This year's team is probably not going to compete. Sad to say.
ReplyDeleteI don't agree with this take. I have not seen any evidence of FZ wanting to get rid of players acquired by the previous regime. In fact, it seems to me he and Kap have made every effort to give them a fair shot.
DeleteA couple of weeks ago I reviewed about a half of the Sabean/Evans trades. We traded away five prospects that had one-or-more All Star appearances and at least one Gold Glove. And that was, like I said, just looking at about one-half of their trades.
DeleteI have yet to see those kinds of mistakes by Zaidi with the GIants though he did make a pretty bad one with the Dodgers (giving up Yordan Alverez for Josh Fields).
Personally, and I believe Doc believes otherwise, but I didn't want the trade for a short term Beltran.
DeleteTo be fair though, we should not just look at the cost side (how many o f those former Giants went on to have All-Star appearances), but the benefit side as well (how many of those trades helped to secure the forever-flying flags - in Sabean's case, thrice, and zero for FZ...so far, but hopefully not much longer).
I am not going to take the time to go into all the details but yes, I disagree. The Beltran trade was one Sabes had to make and he actually raked during his short time with the Giants. If I recall correctly Beltran arrived at a critical moment in the pennant race and promptly suffered minor injury that kept him out a few games. By the time he made it back and started raking, it was too late. You win some, you lose some. As for Zack Wheeler, I don't think the Giants really missed out on much. After a couple decent seasons for the Mets in 2013 and 2014, he completely missed the 2015 and 2016 seasons and was ineffective in limited action in 2017. The Mets then got two impact seasons from him in 2018 and 2019 before he left in free agency.
Delete....and I can't believe there are still folks out there grinding about the Beltran trade. That and, darn! Now I'm drawing a blank on the name but the dude who's put up almost exactly 1 fWAR per season for 10 years who some people out there seem to think would have helped the Giants win countless World Series championships.
DeleteIt's not about griping still.
DeleteIt's more about demonstrating that I agree, in part, with MosesZD, with an example (a personal one, as I acknowledged, and I could have, or might have used Wheeler as an example) before saying I disagree, or I do not completely agree with him, since we have to weigh both the cost side, and the reward side of the ledger.
Perhaps it's my style is too oblique. In referencing the forever flying flags, I was thinking just like you that you win some, and you lose some, and in the end, we ended up with a few flags.
OK, sorry for missing your last point that Sabes trades got 3 flags. Yep, you win some and you lose some.
DeleteIt's ok for the Giants to trade young prospects for short term help if they have a good chance to win the division or gain a playoff birth. You never know when the opportunity will arise again. Never understood the Bryan Reynolds/Kyle Crick for Andrew McCutcheon trade. They lost 98 games the season before. Evans made some good and bad trades. He had some bad breaks regarding signings. I remember Cueto being injured during the year he could have opted out of his contact so the Giants were forced to keep him. Maybe Evans got some unfair blame but that comes with the job. Maybe he gave in to pressure from the fans to win every year.
DeleteI wasn't a big fan of the Cutch trade at the time and it definitely looks a lot worse now. I defense of Bobby, Reynolds was coming off a high A season where he hit .312 but with a low walk rate and little power. Almost nobody was predicting he would turn into the MLB player he became.
DeleteJust a ridiculous meme that FZ is looking to rid the team of talent because they aren't 'his guys'. The Athletic comments are littered with it. Like him or not, no way in the world that FZ - or ANY GM - would commit career suicide by doing something so transparently stupid.
ReplyDeleteJust look at the track record so far. What "old regime players" has FZ gotten rid of that were not obviously based on baseball decisions? He gave Brandon Crawford at 2 year extension at age 34 for crying out loud! He gave Brandon Belt a QO that he knew Belt was likely to accept. Logan Webb, Camilo Doval, David Villar, Tyler Rogers, Sean Hjelle and Bryce Johnson were all drafted or signed as IFA's by the "old regime". If he was simply trying to clean house from the "old regime" he could easily have gotten good talent in return for trading the "big 3" of Luciano, Matos and Pomares. They are all still in the organization. Yeah, it's a ridiculous take.
DeleteWhat's wrong with Conforto having a great year ? Conforto doesn't have to leave. FZ can write a new, long term contract anytime this year.
ReplyDeleteNothing with that. In fact, it would have benefitted a team. In that case, consequently, he is likely on the open market for any team to sign him, and he would have various options. Maybe we outbid everyone else, at market/above market/way above market price. Maybe he wants to go to a certain city and would take a discount, or even without it.
DeleteIn any case, it would be nice, or it would hurt, to have the additional option (or maybe the only option, depending on how other prospects will do this coming season) of having a proven Sabol there to play outfield in his place.
If Conforto has a great season and then leaves for a mega contract somewhere else, FZ, the Giants and we get a year of surplus value. No downside to that. If he has a poor season or gets hurt, he still has a chance to make it up next season and if he doesn't, the Giants are only on the hook for 1 more season. To me it's a reasonable low risk/high-reward deal.
DeleteAgain, nothing (wrong) with that. In that case, the team would have benefited.
DeleteThe point I am trying to make is that in either case, It seems if Sabol can hit, we let him concentrate on playing outfield because there could be a need or an opportunity this season or next year. If he can play decent outfield D, and can hit enough for an outfielder, why must he also make a significant contribution behind the plate?
Agree that if Sabol hits, they will find a way to keep him.
DeleteBaseball Reference keeps the ST stats (https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/SFG/2023.shtml) including the average level of competition the player faced in Spring Training. The rating is a composite on a 1-to-10 sclae where 10 is MLB pitching, 8 is AAA, 7 is AA, 5 is A+ and so on all the way down to 1 where the pitcher is not a pitcher, but a fielder. And pitchers have something similar in their 1-to-10 difficulty rankings.
ReplyDeleteRamos was at 6.9, Yaz at 7.5, Davis was 7.2, Hjelle was 7.7, Adon 6.3, Doval 7.1, Webb 7.3... And that's pretty much how it was for all Giants players as well as their opponents.
For me I have a lot of subjectivity in how I look at the stats. The fact that Ramos is not hitting in Spring training does seem to be a problem, since it's been years since he's hit well. OTOH, Adon doing well in ST is interesting, but his minor-league performances are not particularly reassuring and 6.2 innings of work doesn't convince me he's put his control issues to rest.
Conversely, I'm not worried (beyond my usual worries) about Webb who has put in two very solid seasons for the Giants and may just be working on improving his secondary pitches. Also, when someone who has been rocketing up the organization because he's been playing exceptionally well, like Schmitt, does do good I tend to be feel more reassured that the player might make that next step. So while I don't think Schmitt will hit .381 in the majors, I see that he is hitting well under Spring Training job-audition pressure which, subjectively, is an encouraging sign since in reality I'm well awar that he's really going up against pitchers who were, mostly,l AA/AAA guys last year.
I have a similar view. Spring training performance is not at all predictive but also not useless. I try to interpret spring training performance in context which I think gives some useful insight into the general direction the player is headed.
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