Hey team! Back atcha. Buster Posey had his swing-for-the-fences trade blow up in his face as he had to watch Kyle Harrison LHP strike out 12 Giants batters while Rafael Devers 1B went 0 for 5 with 4 K's and the bullpen failed to keep the game close in the late innings. Key Lines:
Luis Arraez 2B- 2 for 5, 2B, 3B, R. BA= .323. Luis Two Hits keeps pumping them out. Hopefully there is a team out there who thinks an elite contact hitter who can play 2B is just what they need to get them into the postseason and/or beyond.
Willy Adames SS- 2 for 3, HR(9), BB, R, RBI. BA= .245. Adames is batting .321/.355/.786 over his last 7 games. His solo HR got the Giants their first run in the 6'th inning.
Bryce Eldridge PH/DH- 1 for 1, R, RBI. BA= .254. Eldridge came up as a PH in the 8'th inning with 2 outs and a runner at 2B. He smoked a single past the first baseman that left his bat at 107 MPH. Eldridge did not start due to the lefty SP but he is raking it and should be in their most, if not all, games.
Daniel Susac C- 3 for 4. BA= .323. Susac kept the line moving in the 8'th inning helping the Giants score their third run of the game making it a one-run game.
Trevor McDonald RHP- 5 IP, 5 H, 3 R, 3 BB, 4 K's, 7/1 GO/AO. ERA= 4.50. McDonald walked the first two batters he faced in the game and paid the price in the form of a 2-out, 3-run HR off the bat of Jake Bauers. Beyond that, he pitched pretty well.
The Giants first two batters in the lineup, Casey Schmitt LF and Rafael Devers 1B went a combined 0 for 10 with 6 K's. Brutal. Speaking of Devers, I saw him in person on Sunday in Coors Field. I know he had a good month of May but the man looks like a huge tub of goo. It's really debatable whether he is in better shape than Joc Pederson was.
Logan Webb RHP tries to get the Giants back into the Win column tomorrow evening facing TBD.
Happy for Kyle Harrison going to a team like the Brewers good at pitching development. He wasn't improving with the Giants. If Buster regime can improve player development that would help them a lot.I wanted Giants to sign a good closer, looked at closers contracts who signed this past off-season and they were expensive , the most reasonable i came across was Ryan Heisley orioles 2 yes $28 mil
ReplyDeleteI feel like your average pitching coach should have been able to fix whatever was wrong with Kyle Harrison and quickly. It's looking like a major coaching failure and and player evaluation failure all at once.
DeleteWhile we are talking about Posey, we should not forget to give him credit for the farm system. Each trade is a risk and I like that Posey is not afraid to take such risks. But about Dever I am not sure they have done their homework.
DeleteThe Red Sox should feel worse trading Harrison to the Brewers for a mlb middle infielder whose struggled based on stats. I wonder why the red Sox and Giants didn't make the necessary adjustments to Kyle. When asked Adames replied Brewers fixed him
DeleteDoc if what you say is correct it doesn't speak well of previous pitching coaches JP Martinez and Gavin Alston and explains why they were not retained. They didn't help Hayden Birdsong fix his problems either.which surprised me. Maybe Giants should try and hire away one of the Brewers pitching coaches.
Deletei now know i need to reset my feelings about the Giants and sports in general when i felt a weird deep sinking feeling as i read your opening lines about Harrison and Devers. how could what looked like a smart trade go so wrong?!? as a lefty who had aspirations of pitching glory (until i was 13), this one hurts. a lot. all that said, love your reports - though i may be focusing a bit more on the minor league dispatches! -es
ReplyDeleteThis Giants team is on a worse pace than the 85 team and I'd hate to be Greg Johnson right now, If I were him, I would try to find a way to get Larry Baer and Buster Posey to step down gracefully. That's how toxic things are is a new CEO may be needed.
ReplyDeleteBuster has enough pride that I think there is a non-zero chance he steps down at the end of the season if the current trajectory continues.
DeleteOwnership has stop with the half measures when it comes to building a roster, I knew the rubberband was gonna snap one day. There needs to more of an emphasis on developing young talent the next few years while we're stuck with the albatross contracts. With the Giants possibly on track to finish as the worst team in baseball, I pray it will humble the ownership group a bit.
DeleteBuster has done a good job restocking the lower levels
Delete....but he blew up his bullpen to do it.
DeleteI didn't follow Devers before the Giants traded for him, so I don't know what he looked like in previous seasons. This spring I was immediately ALARMED when I saw him come into camp looking like he spent the winter in an all you can eat buffet, and he hasn't lost any weight since. It seems to me that when you trade for a guy with a big contract through 2033, that you consider his likelihood of future elite performance. As one who has exercised my entire life, I can tell you it is both a lifestyle and personal commitment, and the Giants should have been looking at this guy's habits and commitment to his fitness, because it projects into the future of his value as player. It looks like they didn't do that, and here we are.
ReplyDeleteI don't disagree with any of that.
DeleteI agree with your sentiment that coaching and player development has to be a major area of focus going forward. When players seem to underperform from their usual averages, it asks the question of whether they are motivated, coached well, or unwell in some way. I can see that the infield defense seems better, and perhaps credit is due to Ron Washington. But the pitching has been spotty and the batting has certainly been streaky but generally not what we'd expect from the team on paper. Does that reflect more about the players or the coaches? Or maybe both?
ReplyDeleteWhen the Giants traded Wheeler, they said they had plenty of pitching in the pipeline to replace him. (They didn't)
ReplyDeleteWhen the Giants traded Harrison, a player they had a TON of reason not to (young, cost-controlled, local Lefty starter) I believed that he really must have been cooked...though the numbers didn't really show that.
Plenty of trades haven't worked out (Reynolds/McCutchen or Duvall/Leake come to mind), and these types of trades are the cost of doing business. But to badly miss on a player like Harrison is inexcusable. Especially because a huge component of the Devers trade was taking on the cost of his contract. That the Red Sox dumped Harrison and Tibbs so quickly shows they'd have taken ANYONE with the vaguest potential...
I supported the Devers trade. But have to wonder, as I watch him waddle to home, only to swing through upper center/center 95 mph fastballs...do these guys have any idea what they're doing?
Pre-season Record -- Season
ReplyDelete1 Atlanta 21 7 1
2 LAD 20 9 2
3 Giants 19 9 29
4 St Louis 17 9 11
5 Texas 18 12 17
6 Yankees 19 12 5
7 Pittsburgh 17 13 8
8 Cleveland 16 14 6
9 Washington 14 11 16
10 Angels 17 15 30
If you guys here lamenting Harrison being moved, way until Tibbs comes up for the Dodgers. The Sox punted him on after they got him in the Devers trade. He's absolutely RAKING in AAA for Los Angeles. We're talking a combination Reynolds/Duvall level headache here. Later this season? Perhaps.
ReplyDeleteHaving Tibbs become a star for the Dodgers would definitely be a disaster of epic proportions and would probably cost Buster his job, for now I take solace in the Dodgers long history of difficulty graduating position player prospects.
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