Sean Manaea came within one out of a Quality Start and pitched better than that, but it was all for naught as the Giants offense sputtered against Cal Quantrill RHP. Key Lines:
Blake Sabol C- 1 for 3, HR13), BB. BA= .244. Sabol's HR over the CF wall in the 5'th inning tied the score at 1. He had another deep FB die at the warning track as did LMWJ and Luis Matos. Sabol is 2 for 5 over his last 2 games. He may be playing himself into a MLB job for next season.
Sean Manaea LHP- 5.2 IP, 2 H, 3 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 5 K's, GO/AO= 10/1. ERA= 4.80. For those of you may who think the Giants pitching struggles are due to bad pitching coaching, here's a counterpoint. Sean Manaea was signed as a reclamation project all the way. He was awful last season. He added about 3 MPH to his FB after he started working with Giants coaches but that did not translate into improved results at the beginning of the season. He was banished to the bullpen. To his credit, pitching in an, ahem.....eclectic role, he turned his season around with a 3.89 ERA over his last 15 appearances and 3.51 over his last 7. At this point I think we should consider him successfully reclaimed. I would not even be shocked if he opted out of the last year of his contract and tested free agency again. You've got to think 1 year/$12 M is his absolute floor in free agency so he has very little to lose by putting himself on the market again.
As I said in the intro, Manaea pitched much better than his line looks. You can chalk this loss up to the questionable defensive positioning and a key error by LMWJ. Three times, the Giants had perfect GIDP groundballs to SS only to get just one out because Thairo Estrada 2B was positioned so far to the right he couldn't get to the bag in time to receive the feed from Brandon Crawford SS. One of those missed opportunities led directly to the Guardians run in the first inning. I am sure FZ and Kap can show you data which shows over a large sample that their positioning prevents more runs but one game is not a large sample and that's not how it worked in this one. Kruk and Kuip were openly frustrated. Then LMWJ's bobble with 2 outs in the 6'th inning loaded the bases. Manaea came out and Ryan Walker RHP gave up a 2-run single. Game over. With clean defense Manaea could have had 6 shutout innings and the Giants could have won 1-0.
The D'Backs lost so the Giants remain 1.5 games behind in the race for the third and final Wild Card playoff spot, but fall 0.5 games behind the Reds who are the closest to the D'Backs.
Kyle Harrison LHP tries for a series win this afternoon against Logan Allen LHP a rookie who the Giants have never faced and who has pitched well this season. Hmm......
They really, really need a banger to get the runners home.
ReplyDeleteAnd stop making so many errors - the Giants lead the league, first team to 100 errors for the season.
It's not always nice to lead the league...
this is where it gets kind of interesting this offseason, you have manaea, stripling, winn, beck, black, teng, and desclafani battling for three rotation spots in spring training. i do think manaea has done his best in the swingman role this year and if he can have a strong start in 2024, he could then be flipped. the question on desclafani is are they willing to eat the final year of his contract.
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