Marco Scutaro- 2 for 4, SF. BA= .300. Scutaro was back in his old 2-hole and responded with a typical Scutaro game.
Brandon Belt- 4 for 5,. BA= .279. Belt peppered the right side of the infield with sharp grounders that got past infielders for a 4-hit game. Tonight he had the toe of his back foot right up against the inside line of the batter's box. Shows how much I know about hitting, huh?
Hunter Pence- 1 for 5, HR(16). BA= .278. If I understood the TV graphics right, Pence's HR was the longest in MLB this year. It hit up against the brick wall behind the arcade behind the LF bleachers, a truly mammoth shot!
Pablo Sandoval- 3 for 4, 2B, HR(10). BA= .272. Pablo is making great defensive plays and hitting the ball with more authority. Let's hope his newfound healthy diet cooked by his bro Luis is a permanent change in lifestyle.
Hector Sanchez- 2 for 4. BA= .250. The Hector is now hitting .333 over his last 10 games, 7 for 21.
Yusmeiro Petit- 6 IP, 6 H, 2 R, 3 BB, 6 K's. ERA= 3.18. Solid performance by Petit who pitched his way out of trouble a couple of times. This is his second very solid appearance this season for the Giants. He deserves another start to see if he can keep it going. I was a bit disappointed he got sent out after his terrific relief appearance vs Cincy on July 23, but I understand the Giants needed the arms and could not afford to rest him after a 5 inning stint. I just have this feeling that Petit has been quietly honing his game down in Fresno for the past 2 years and might be finally ready to pitch in the major leagues. I think we might have another Vogelsong story in the making here, but like Vogey in 2011, he's going to have to prove it every single game for awhile.
Madison Bumgarner goes for the series win tomorrow facing Jhoulys Chacin who is probably the Rockies best pitcher this year.
It was a fun game to watch.
ReplyDeleteNice to see the ball falling in the Giants favour,,,particularly a couple of Belt's hits would have been snagged by the fielders earlier in the season.
Petit, may well be that next feel good story for the Giants. Working with Gardy and Rags wont hurt.
Alright Timmy, just do it.
Richard in Winnipeg
I think Pablo is ready to kick it into another gear: did you see that HR blast? It was an opposite field homer, that was a key sign Baseball Forecaster noted for HR hitters, that is the sign I look for when Buster is in the zone, his opposite field blasts.
ReplyDeleteStill, not like Pablo hasn't been hitting well, last 14 games, .400/.483/.580/1.063, 7 walks, only 5 K's in 50 AB, 90% contact rate. He appears to be over the problems he had hitting after his heel injury on July 31st. Hopefully, as DrB noted, he continues to make progress with his bro handling his cooking, though I can't imagine that he won't, kind of hard to avoid your brother in your own house (I assume he's a live-in cook and buddy most of the other time).
Yeah, all the media outlets are reporting that Pence's HR was, at 476 feet, the longest hit this season. It was also noted that he has 3 of the top 24 longest this season, as well.
Belt, since his "rest" and conversion: 25 games, 23 starts, .367/.436/.667/1.102, 5 HR in 90 AB (16 AB/HR = 40+ HR seasonal pace), 9 BB, 16 K's. He's actually still not at what is considered a good contact rate (right now 82% but 85% is the target).
Unfortunately, the Giants are under .500 during both Sandoval's and Belt's period of great hitting, showing how poorly other players are doing. Last two weeks, while Hanchez, Sandoval, Belt, Torres, Posey, Pill have hit well, and Pence OK, Arias, Blanco, Scutaro, Kieshnick, and Crawford has not (though Blanco has nice .348 OBP and Scutaro .364 OBP, and Roger K .368 OBP). Oh, they have actually hit OK recently, certainly better than for the season.
It has been their pitching that stunk: 5.09 ERA in the last 14 days. And most of that was bad starting, Kickham, Zito, Gaudin, Lincecum, and Bumgarner and Cain were ordinary, low 4's, only Vogelsong (how many people wrote him off?) had a good ERA, 2.41. We are back to early season again, with bad pitching all around.
Roger K continues to implement whatever drastic change the Giants recommended to him. After roughly striking out half the time, literally, since August 15th, he only has 3 K's in 30 AB, a great 90% contact rate, plus 8 walks, which is great no matter how you want to slice it. Apparently teams caught on that he was just swinging wildly, so now he's letting most of the balls go, while making contact on a more regular basis. However, he has not hit for much authority or power (1 XBH out of 6), .200/.368/.267/.635. He's probably going to share LF with Peguero and Pill for a while.
DeleteWhich brings up a big conundrum: the OF. Once Pagan returns, the Giants are planning on playing him full-time. And Bochy says that he's not taking Pence out (makes sense, they don't want to anger him heading into free agency). Meanwhile, they are also thinking of bringing up another OF, presumably Perez but Tanaka has hit pretty well the last month too. But with Pagan in CF and Pence in RF, you can't give Roger K, Peguero, Pill, Perez/Tanaka much starting time in LF, plus what do you do with Blanco then?
Blanco appears to be gassed (he also mentioned that he's resting this off-season instead of playing in the Winter League has he had for so many years, to get into better conditioning), so maybe that's part of the answer, just rest him on the bench. Plus, if the Giants do sign Pence and decide to get a regular starting LF for 2014, the Giants are really only auditioning for 4th OF who can hit off the bench. And maybe that's why all the guys, one guy will get the start, but the real auditioning won't happen until the guys come off the bench and show what they can do.
I was thinking the same thing with Petit, and I would throw Gaudin into that mix too. We have some good options to turn to should Lincecum end up somewhere else and with Zito all but gone, plus Moscoso has also been good. But with every bad start, I think that he's one step closer to re-signing with the Giants on a one-year contract, most probably for QO.
Yep, mano-a-mano today with Bumgarner and Chacin, our aces battling it out for the series win. Funny how our ace has transitioned from Lincecum in 2011, to Cain in 2012, and now to Bumgarner in 2013. Hopefully is last for a long while.
I do recall mention this once before here that we should not rule out that at his age, Vogelsong can surprise again, though he will be another year older. He has done it before.
DeleteAfter a bit of a regression early this year (perhaps due to the shoulder injury), it's looking like Hector Sanchez has fully arrived as a big leaguer. Looked solid behind the plate, and now by all measures is hitting above league average. It's getting harder to find rational negatives stemming from his "early" promotion. As an aside, I wonder if Hector's most entrenched critics have much experience with actually witnessing player development, and thereby conceptualize players as somewhat static entities?
ReplyDeletePeter
I have noticed that a lot of self-styled sabermetrictians seem to have a blind spot about is the normal career trajectory. They do tend to look at players, no matter how young or inexperienced as static entities.
DeleteHaving wasted a tad bit of time defending him, the line I heard most is "he's not good at the game of baseball"... The more refined attacks center on his framing problems and of course the lack of walks. The lack of walks might be tied to being mercilessly attacked by big league pitching. A young switch hitting catcher who can roll with fast promotions and hang in against MLB heat is an asset not a liability. Of course a lot of this is tied to Posey bouncing Belt to the bench though...
DeleteHe did show up to ST out of shape though. Young guy mistake. I hope the Giants can find some way to get through to these portly Venezualeans, they have talent, but the professionalism is lagging.
DrB,
DeleteSeeing players as static could be the reason some Belt fans saw no value in sitting him on occasion, or no benefit from the coaches trying to tweak his mechanics. Perhaps it's a testament to how few position players the Giants have developed in the recent past that a whole generation of Giants fans have never seen a young player developed at the major league level.
Peter
Shankbone,
DeleteYeah, we know Hector is a work in progress in all aspects of the game, but the hyperbole on framing reached irrational levels. With Mike Fast moving into proprietary work, it's nice to see new-school guys like Jeff Sullivan bringing a little reality to how much information we can derive on framing from pitch fx data.
Peter
That's a good point about players not being static.
DeleteIn addition, players are humans...the psychological aspect is often ignored, but shouldn't be.
That is to say, you have to look at more things than just numbers and some Belt critics were wrong to just look at his numbers, such as when he went 0-for-I don't remember, 10?
Peter - well we know another short blogger hopped on the framing big time. When the desperation to find front office incompetency has reached the pitchfork and torch for a backup catcher...
DeleteSullivan is a fun writer, his schtick gets a bit cute at times, but it's a better schtick than the sbnation crew. I like Eno Sarris the best on f/g though.
Petit - It's not rare that when people are focusing on this or that player, another guy steps forward and does the job.
ReplyDeleteLots of great comments here. You guys sure outdid yourselves today! Best baseball discussion on the internet!!!
ReplyDelete