This game started out much like the last two in Toronto with the Giants falling behind 6-0 after 3 innings, but this time Matt Cain was able to stop the bleeding and the Giants offense mounted a spirited comeback to take the first of a 4 game set against the Rockies in Colorado. Key Lines:
Angel Pagan- 2 for 5. BA= .268. Pagan has been scuffling, but is 5 for 10 over his last 2 games.
Marco Scutaro- 2 for 5. BA= .318. Scooter stays hot.
Hunter Pence- 2 for 4. BA= .294. Pence is letting the game come to him and is hitting .342 over his last 10 games.
Brandon Belt- 1 for 3, BB. BA= .248. Belt is hitting .333/.428 over his last 10 games. In that span, he has 5 BB's against just 4 K's. Is it too much to believe he has finally turned a corner?
Gregor Blanco- 1 for 3, 2B, SF. BA= .280.
Brandon Crawford- 2 for 4, 2B. BA= .277. Crawford is hitting .351 over his last 10 games. The 6, 7, 8 and 9 hitters went a combined 5 for 12, BB, SF with 4 Runs and 6 RBI's. Hunter Pence was like the leadoff batter for the bottom half of the lineup.
Matt Cain- 6.1 IP, 8 H, 6 R, 2 BB, 6 K's. ERA= 5.43. Not a good looking line, but Cainer was able to stop the bleeding, retired 13 of the last 15 batters he faced and ate up some vital innings ultimately giving his team a chance to win. Lots of location mistakes and hanging breaking balls in the 2'nd an 3'rd innings, though.
Jeremy Affeldt- 2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 1 K. ERA= 2.61. Affeldt is picking right up where he left off last year. Tremendous 2 innings of relief to choke off any attempt at a late comeback by the Rockies.
Sergio Romo- 0.2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 2 K's, Save(13). ERA= 3.00. I wanted to see how Romo's slider would react in the land where sinkers don't sink and sliders don't slide. Well, Romo didn't throw any sliders!....unless you count the "backup" slider he struck out Rosario with. I would like someone to explain the physics of a "backup" slider to me sometime. He struck out Todd Helton to end the game on a fading changeup that would make Noah Lowry proud. Romo is a pitcher who now has a full arsenal of weapons to attack both RH and LH batters with and is no longer dependent on the slider.
With the Win, the Giants gained 0.5 games on the idle D'Backs for a 1 game lead in the NL West. The Rockies slip to 3 games off the pace in 3'rd place. The Padres lost to the Nationals to fall 5.5 games off the pace, and the idle Dodgers dropped 0.5 games to 6 behind in last place.
Madison Bumgarner goes against Jorge De La Rosa who has pitched 13 consecutive scoreless innings in which he has allowed 5 hits over his last 2 starts.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Yes. Belt had a lot of up and down sequences last season, I think he needs to do it over a longer stretch than ten games, he did that often last season, he needs to do it for a couple of months to convince me.
ReplyDeleteGo Giants!
I went back and looked up Belt's game log. I wish I could plot a graph of his daily BA from the start of the season. Since going 0 for his first 3 games, it's had a steady upward trend. There was a dip at the beginning of May when he went something like 1 for 16 and it dipped to .212, but that's still a far cry from the double digits he had through mid-April. Not saying I'm confident, but much more hopeful than I was a couple of weeks ago.
DeleteI stay resolutely hopeful that this is all a process for Belt to work through, I believe he will work it out at some point, but given his ups and downs, he'll have to do some to convince me he's turned the corner.
DeleteHave you tried Fangraphs? I seem to recall that one of their graphs showed BA over a certain game span, it is not daily but nice for seeing his peaks and valleys. Baseball-REference.com's game log for players show the daily BA in a column, if that works for you, not a graph though (though you can certainly pull it into a spreadsheet and create a graph).
Belt did the same thing last year. After a looong slump, he had another long stretch when he was really good. He did not catchfire for 2 weeks hitting .500, but he was over .300 for a long time to finish the season around .275.
DeleteI think (hope) this year will not be any different. Tonight will be a big test though, against good LHP.
Ha! If you search Brandon Belt on Fangraphs then click on Graphs, bingo!!
DeleteI suppose one sign of encouragement is his early HR totals. He's only two HR from equalling last year's total, and on pace to hit 20 for 2013. I think we'd all be happy wits GG defense and 20+ HRs from our 1B. Let's just hope the average keeps ticking up and the power sticks.
ReplyDeleteLucky
We fans are not as good or as close physically as the coaches in observing the technical aspects of the game, and we shouldn't pretend to be, but there are some things we can wonder about, like if a pitcher has pitched too many innings or if a player needs a certain way of being handled emotionally. And you can only wonder, because nothing is really certain if life...
DeleteI think the less we fans focus on Belt, the less he feels he's under the microscope, the better he will perform.
That's my guess.
Certain players undoubtedly do better under the microscope than others but that is part of being a MBL player. Gotta find a way to block the scrutiny out.
DeleteA "Back-up slider" has nothing to do with the physics of the pitch, just the location. It's just a pitch (usually a slider, somethings a cutter or two-seamer, something with good horizontal movement) that starts off inside, forcing the batter to "back-up" and breaking back onto, ideally, the inside corner. It's the other side of the "backdoor" slider coin.
ReplyDeleteWell that's what Kruk called the pitch that struck out Rosario, but that ain't what Romo threw. What he threw was a pitch that started over the middle of the plate and tailed to the inside corner. They showed his release and it sure looked like a slider grip and it had the rotation of a slider, but it did not have slider movement at all, in fact, just the opposite.
DeleteI think what you are describing is a back-DOOR slider and a back-UP slider is something else. I suspect back-UP sliders are mistake pitches that are not thrown purposely, but could be wrong. Whatever Romo threw last night definitely had tailing action though.