Landen Roupp got off to a rough start allowing three runs in the first inning but the lineup jumped to his defense and picked him up big time with a 6-run second inning and the Giants never looked back. Key Lines:
Mike Yastrzemski RF- 2 for 5, 2B, HR(3), 2 R, 3 RBI. BA= .311. YtY's 2-Run HR in the 7'th inning extended the Giants lead to 8-4. He doubled in Fitz in the 9'th and scored on Chapman's single to account for the final two runs of the game. He's had some good stretches in his career but I think this is his hottest start yet. Stay healthy and stay hot!
Willy Adames SS- 2 for 5, HR(1), R, RBI. BA= .203. Adames singled in his first AB but got picked off 1B by Taijuan Walker who is a career leader in pickoffs. Adames made up for it but capping off the second inning rally with a HR to R-CF which is hopefully a breakthrough for him as the Giants need his bat to heat up if they want to keep the winning going.
Heliot Ramos LF- 2 for 5, 2B, R. BA= .221. Ramos has been scuffling while swinging at too many pitches above the strike zone. He started the 6-run rally with a double to RF.
Tyler Fitzgerald 2B- 3 for 4, 2B, 3B, HR(1), 3 R, 3 RBI. BA= .286. Breakout game from another hitter who has been scuffling. The 3-run HR in the 2'nd inning was the big blow of the game. The double and triple later in the game set up additional scores.
Landen Roupp RHP- 5 IP, 6 H, 4 R, 3 BB, 8 K's. ERA= 4.80. Roupp had poor command of but his curveball in the first inning and was on the ropes. He managed to get out of the inning then settled down to pitch 5 innings after the lineup's big rally in the second. It appeared to me he leaned on his curveball a lot after the first inning and what a curveball it is!
Bullpen- 4 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 2 BB, 5 K's. Randy Rodriguez RHP, Erik Miller LHP, Tyler Rogers RHP and Camilo Doval RHP each pitched a scoreless inning. Doval looked particularly sharp in a non-save situation in the 9'th against the top of the Phillies order striking out Bryce Harper to end the game.
The Giants played an impressive game to take the first game of a 4 game series on the road against one of the best teams in the league. They improved their record to 12-4.
Justin Verlander RHP tries to keep the winning ways going tomorrow evening facing Jesus Luzardo LHP.
yty HR v lefty reliever, after Adames & Fitz do it vs. righty starter, after JHL's 2 v lefty Rodon yesterday. For the season Giants RHBs have 11 HRs v RHPs & 3 v LHPs, and LHBs have 4 v RHPs & 3 v LHPs. Two/thirds are samehand-on-samehand (in Adames' case it's norm -- 117 of 150 career HRs & 28 of 32 last year v RHPs)
ReplyDeleteGiants have a tough matchup with Jesus Luzardo on the mound for the Phillies who has had three strong starts including 7 shutout innings against the Dodgers. But hey, after the Phillies opened with a three run 1st inning, I was doubtful that the Giants would come back. This team is fun to watch.
ReplyDeleteGood to see signs of life from the "big" players like Chapman, Ramos and Adams to join all the lesser or role players who have been taking turns carrying the offense..Hopefully they can all get on the same page this series.....
ReplyDeleteROUPP definitely has the stuff (oohh that Curvball!!!!) and the moxie/fight...just has to learn to limit the mistakes against MLB studs (maybe just a little less relaince on the curve when he gets all his pitches going?)...But still a learning experience for him and he is doing fine..
SteveVA
Fitz was a single short of the cycle. I hear that Bonds gave him some hitting advice. Seems that it paid off.
ReplyDeleteTook a chance on starting Roupp on my fantasy team so I was lucky it paid off with a win and 8ks. Heard that too about Bonds and Fitz. Hope Fitz starts hitting more dingers. Heard something on a recent great Knbr interview with Bill Laskey and Dave Rigetti that was shocking to me. Rags said the coaches weren't allowed to talk to their pitchers about mechanics. Wow. They were more concerned about spin rates. Great interview speaking about how the vibes are more positive under Buster at the minor league level also
ReplyDeleteI'm no pitching coach by any stretch but it seems logical that mechanics are what produce spin rates. The more we hear about the FZ/Kapler regime, the more strange it becomes. It sounds like there was a huge disconnect between the numbers crunchers and the people who produce the numbers. I think I have mentioned many times my utter consternation at how a regime that is obsessed with analytics would seemingly have zero concept of sample size and how players got churned in and out long before there was adequate sample size to draw any conclusions.
DeleteFarhan has a BS in Economics from MIT and a PhD in Economics from UC Berkeley so I don't think he has "zero concept" of sample size. It might well be that they were getting other information out of the numbers than what we might think they were getting.
DeleteYou are appealing to the authority of FZ's degrees while I look at his track record. I stand by my comments that FZ does not appear to understand the importance of sample size in baseball statistics. I suspect what he was doing was a different type of sample size: Churn a large enough sample of fringe players you increase your chances of "catching lightning in a bottle" and a few of those will sustain their success long enough to qualify as "keeper". The problem is that in the process of churning through a bunch of "failures" they add up to enough bad PA's or innings to largely negate the successes.
DeleteIt's a whole crazy area opened up here. It seems fair to say FZ and his regime were cold and calculating. And that doesn't appeal to most people. But, somewhere in there is some interesting stuff. 107 wins is an incredibly interesting aberration. I've gotta believe some of what Kap and FZ were doing had something to do with that.
DeleteFormula for sustained success. Hardly. Something to build a foundation on? Nope. But, interesting stuff nonetheless.
I've always said FZ did some good things during his tenure but in the end, it was all just too chaotic and too oblivious to human nature. And in a sport where the very foundation of analytics is based on what sample size is necessary to establish a steady state, he mostly ignored it for reasons that are quite opaque, at least to me.
DeleteZaidi has a reputation for finding diamonds in the rough and the Dodgers got Muncy, Turner, Hernandez, and Taylor under his watch. Also, with the Giants, they got YtY, Ruf, Dickerson, and Thairo so its not just the degrees.
ReplyDeleteSomewhere along the line, Zaidi started churning in some players that did not seem to make sense. While I was asking myself why would he do that, Krukow would come on later in his morning show and say things like "this guy has high exit velocities against lefthanders". Another thing that Zaidi liked was two guys making up a platoon is cheaper and as productive as one guy hitting from both sides (thus Wade/Flores). There third thing was if a guy can handle SS or 2B, he should be able to handle lesser defensive positions such as OF, 3B, or 1B.
As you mention, Zaidi ignored things like sample size but he also seemed to give less weight to things like prior injury history (Murphy), eye test, or traditional stats. Maybe it was a case of putting too much faith in your own headlines or getting too caught up in trying to find an edge using a tertiary stat that may or may not be meaningful. What it probably boils down to is that he was seeing the world from a different lens and only he knows his thought process.