The Giants brought their hitting shoes and the pitching was just good enough as they evened their season record against the Bronx Bombers in Yankee Stadium. Key Lines:
Lamonte Wade Jr 1B- 1 for 3, 2 BB, SB(1). BA= .167. OBP= .444. Not forgetting Brandon Belt just yet but LMWJ is at least reaching base from the leadoff spot in the lineup.
Joc Pederson DH- 2 for 4, HR(1), BB. BA= .286. There you go! Perfect roles for Joc= lefty side of a DH platoon and Yankee Stadium is tailor made for him with the short porch in RF.
Mike Yastrzemski CF/LF- 2 for 5, 2 2B. BA= .286. A couple of veterans all but left for dead by the end of spring training showed signs of life today. YtY played a critical role with 2 doubles while manning CF.
David Villar 3B- 2 for 5. BA= .333. Villar got the start today and responded with 2 hits. His development into an everyday player is a big key to the season, IMO.
Brandon Crawford SS- 3 for 5, 2B, HR(1), SB(2). BA= .375. Turn back the clock! Crawford came up huge in this one. Giants need to remember to give him days off and keep him healthy.
Blake Sabol LF- 1 for 2, 2 HBP. BA= .250. The hit was a highly questionable bunt with 2 outs, an open base and Roberto Perez C coming up, but hey! Sabol has an MLB batting average! He also got plunked twice which tied some sort of record with 2 other players.
Roberto Perez C- 0 for 4. BA= .167. The Giants catching situation keeps getting weirder. Joey Bart was supposed to start but was a late scratch with back tightness. Word is he's getting an MRI. Hmm....that sounds like a bit more than back tightness, whatever that is. Is Joey Bart headed to the IL? Will Blake Sabol get his first MLB start at catcher tomorrow? I mean, FZ says he has to contribute behind the plate to stick with the team so they have to find out if he can sometime, right? Are we going to see Gary Sanchez in a Giants uniform sooner than later?
Alex Cobb RHP- 3.2 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 6 K's GO/AO= 4/1. ERA= 2.45. Cobb was his own worst enemy as he airmailed a potential GIDP after a comebacker in the first inning to score a run for the Yanks and run his pitch count up. Other than that, it was a fine performance pointing to good things to come.
Jake Junis RHP- 2.1 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 0 BB, 2 K's. ERA= 3.86. If Junis can do this all season, he'll be a big asset.
Camilo Doval RHP- 1 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 2 BB, 1 K, Save(1). ERA= 9.00. Talk about torture! Doval was a mess with severe sail on his fastball and no clue about the pitch clock. He's an extreme GB pitcher and got the GIDP to end the game just when it looked like it was going to be yet another opening series bullpen meltdown.
As the Roster Churns:
Gary Sanchez C was signed to a minor league contract with a May 1 opt out if he is not added to the MLB roster by then. I'm thinking he's going to get added a lot sooner than that.
Remember Bryce Johnson OF getting reassigned to minor league camp and Brett Wisely making the roster after being told he was being optioned and his family cancelling their plane tickets to New York? Well, today Johnson had is contract selected to the 40-man roster and was added to the active roster with Wisely getting the option. Apparently these roster shenanigans happened because the Giants were chasing a trade which would have had a player on the 40-man roster going the other way and they were hoping to avoid putting Luke Jackson RHP on the 60-day IL. Oh BTW, Jackson was put on the 60-day IL to make room for Bryce Johnson.
Ross Stripling RHP goes for the series win tomorrow facing rookie Jhony Brito RHP making his first MLB appearance. He put up solid numbers in AA and AAA last season so this could be trouble as the Giants tend to struggle against pitchers they've never faced before and Stripling was less than sensational in spring training.
Your blog reminds me of KNBR a little. Giants lose and you get 30+ comments but when they win not a peep! These are the games the Giants will win this year and it might be as simple as who is on the mound for the other team. Good teams tend to have at least 2 elite starters and we are going to lose most of those games. After that we probably have better 4’s and 5’s than any other team being that we have a rotation filled with 3’s, we should win most of those games. The games that will decide whether we get in the playoffs will be against other teams number 3 pitchers and winning games against teams like us that don’t have top heavy rotations. Over 162 games it is a pretty safe formula but obviously will have major flaws if we actually get in the playoffs where all the other teams will have at least 2 stud SP’s.
ReplyDeleteYou're probably right.
DeleteWith the Giants weak against good pitching (and sometimes not so good pitching), it will be uphill. There are, perhaps, 6 teams in each league with 2 Aces.
In the Giants path to the WS are the Braves, Phillies, Mets, Padres (counting Musgrove), Dodgers (counting Kershaw), and Brewers with 2 Aces.
NL teams with one Ace would be Miami, Arizona, and, yes, the Giants (Webb).
It's not insurmountable, but SF's hitting will have to resemble 2021, not the other years since at least 2016, and where will that come from?
RHP Stripling gets the nod over Manaea and Wood for 2 big reasons (Judge and Stanton) plus 5 more RHB in Yankee lineup, but why not DeScafani? Roster Resource says he's a bullpen pitcher.
ReplyDeleteHow smart are the Yankees spending $$$$ for RHB's when most SP are RH? Little sour grapes there...
I do think that, while it's nice that the Giants won, and with minimal use of the long ball (great job Giant O), it's kinda crappy that Cobb only pitched into the fourth. As one who's not a fan of him, I'm curious as to why he couldn't go further. We need actual quality starts. While Junis tossing a few innings out of the bullpen is nice, it's not dependable in the slightest. If Cobb can't go deeper, then he needs to be replaced in the rotation.
ReplyDeleteIt's very early in the season. Cobb threw a ton of pitches in the first couple of innings and was up to 76. I'm guessing he had a hard pregame limit of 80 pitches and they did not want to take a chance on the next batter going over that.
DeleteIt was a very Giants style win. goofy mistakes. Failures to get big hits at big times. But it all turned around with a couple of infield hits both scoring runs. And good pitching, up-and-down. Doval looked terrible but did not get upset at the end voila he got the job done.
ReplyDeleteI think Sanchez will be up really soon. Yes, he's not what he used to be (2x All Star) but even a diminished Sanchez has, over the past two years been better over the past two years. And, in the end, it's about winning and moving from players who just won't get you to where you need to be.
ReplyDelete