Good News: The Giants starting pitcher did not give up 5 runs in the first inning. Bad News: The bullpen gave up 5 runs in the 7'th inning( with a lot of help from the defense) to put this one away. Key Lines:
Alen Hanson LF- 1 for 4, 3B. BA= .275. Hanson's triple into the L-CF gap drove him in from 1B for the Giants first run.
Joe Panik 2B- 1 for 4, 2B. BA= .233. Panik failed to bring Hanson home from 3B with no outs in the 5'th inning and made a error which led to the Pirates 5-run 7'th, but drove in 2 with a double in garbage time in the 9th.
Steven Duggar CF- 2 for 4, 2B. BA= .259. Duggar picked up Panik when he drove in Hanson from 3B with a sharp single up the middle in the 5'th inning. He later doubled to drive in the Giants final run in the 9'th. Duggar has been steady since his callup and looks like he is building a nice foundation for the future. Kruk and Kuip had positive things to day about both him and Slater on the broadcast last night saying how well they project when they fully settle in and are comfortable with the league. Kruk really values a player picking up a teammate so loved Duggar's single in the 5'th to pick up Joe Panik who came back later with a 2-run double of his own. Duggar has 0.3 fWAR in 23 games and 93 PA. While you can't project fWAR from such a small sample, you can put it in perspective, 1.8 fWAR/600 PA.
Andrew Suarez LHP- 5 IP, 7 H, 3 R, 0 BB, 4 K's, GO/AO= 5-1. ERA= 4.64. A mixed bag for Suarez here. Again his peripherals look good and he performed well except for the first 3 batters in the second inning who went single, HR, HR.
Mark Melancon RHP- 0.2 IP, 2 H, 4 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 0 K. ERA= 3.22. It's tough to pitch when your defense commits errors on the first 2 batters of the inning. Melancon almost got out of it with just 1 run allowed but Polanco's bloop down the LF line was pure BABIP bad luck. Melancon was lifted for Derek Law who promptly gave up a 3-run bomb to David Freeze which was he backbreaker.
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The Loss dropped the Giants 7 games behind the idle D'Backs who are tied with the Dodgers for the NL West division lead. The Rockies lost to the Dodgers 8-5 to fall 3.5 games behind in 3'rd place. The Giants do not get any help in the Wild Card race as their deficit is 7 games there too.
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Derek Holland gets the ball tonight facing righty Clay Holmes.
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Garbage Time, LOL, is this what we will end up calling the remainder of this season dwindling down?
ReplyDeleteYeah, well, sort of....
DeleteGiants are getting close to dropping out completely which means they need to be shifting their focus to evaluations for the offseason and next year. Short of an immediate 7 game win streak or something like that, they will need to trade Cutch if they can as I don't see him being part of next year's team.
Deletei think the next call up should be the submariner tyler rogers. i think he is long overdue to get his first cup of coffee.
DeleteFor those who have not abandoned ship, the song they sang on the Titantic while sinking is reported to be “Nearer, My God, to Thee”
DeleteHouston must be feeling the pressure from the A's - could they trade for Bumgarner and/or Belt? They've got MLB top prospects #7 RHP Forest Whitley and #8 OF Michael Tucker as well as #41 OF Yordan Alvarez. Or maybe Pittsburgh sweeps and leaves town with McCutchen and Bumgarner - Pirates have MLB top prospects #14 RHP Mitch Keller #54 3B KeBryan Hayes and #85 (just behind Heliot Ramos) OF Travis Swaggerty. The Yankees must see the A's stacking up closers in the bullpen so could come for Bumgarner/Belt offering from MLB top prospects #27 LHP Justus Sheffield #46 OF Estevan Florial #77 RHP Jonathan Losaiga and #79 RHP Albert Abreu. Boston has only got one top 100 prospect - #99 3B Michael Chavis -- maybe he'd be worth Belt and give the Sox a left-handed power bat at 1B? I think Bumgarner has to be cashed in - by the time the Giants are a playoff team again he'll have signed as a free agent for very big money, plus be close to breaking down a la Cueto, Samardjiza, Zito, Cain - why not let him go for some future stars now? One of these teams could see him as the Verlander of 2018 - the difference maker - and send us their prospects!
DeleteBelt is actually the best Giant on the field -- when he is on the field.
DeleteTo trade Belt (and Bumgarner) would mean SF is giving up contending until 2020-21 or later.
I don't think the FO would do that even if the Giants are dead in the water the next 2 years because of sooo many bad contracts.
Duggar: One thing I don't like about WAR is I don't think it really captures defense as well as it should. Duggar is now +5% in catch percentage added. Taking 5% away from hitters is huge. In fact Duggar is now so good in CF you he's only allowed ONE hit on a catchable that wasn't a 5-star catch and it was a 4-star (50-50) shot!!!
ReplyDeleteIt's like hitting the ball into a black-hole. Like that triple he took away the other day when he hit 30.3 FPS! And he's already 27th in MLB for "Outs above Average" and he's hardly played!!!! And he's tied for 8th!!! in catch percentage! And 7th for 'catch percentage added!'
This kid is already showing himself to be an elite defensive CFer. He should have been up and starting from the beginning. Let him learn, let him take his lumps.
Slater: Not the defensive whiz that Duggar is. But he's not chopped liver either and is currently in the average-above-average range defensively. And as we saw with his 100 MPH throw, he's got the arm to gun you down from anywhere.
Williamson: Also, not a defensive whiz like Duggar. But he is above average. And he toils, post concussion, in Sacramento. Though at least, at the current time, he's not hitting (.143 in last 10 and not much better in his last 20) as he probably still has some post-concussion issues so it's at least reasonable he's not playing. But he should have been up at the beginning of the season instead of Blanco.
Dugger is a showing signs of being a ++ CF that's for sure. fWAR is supposed to take all the defensive stats you cite into consideration. He did appear to need a tad more salt at the beginning of the season.
DeleteAgree Mac should have been the starting LF out of the gate after the spring he had but the Giants were not in a position to count on him when they were putting together the team in the offseason so he was sent down in a numbers game.
Baseball-Reference factors in fielding: in B-R Duggar's bWAR (or rWAR) for 23 Gs, 93 PAs is 0.7 (oWAR 0.4, dWAR 0.4). Pretty gaudy numbers there, dare we extend them to a full season? (Not if I don't want the wrath of this site!)
DeletebWAR is computed differently from Fangraph's fWAR and Baseball Prospectus WARP and has different results, because they each weight different aspects of the game differently.
Unless he faceplants (and he could easily offensively -- he seems to flail at down-and-in breaking balls but he does hit some of them, too), even with his limited games and ABs, he'll be 4th among Giants position players (Belt, Posey, Crawford)in bWAR by the end of the season.
I didn't really mean for my comments about Steven Duggar to degenerate into a WAR debate. What I was trying to say in a clumsy way was that what he is doing now, while modest, is 1. Contributing value to the team and 2. Sustainable, with a capability for improvement as he gets more comfortable in the league.
DeleteSuarez probably wouldn't have shut down Freese, Diaz, and Bell in the 6th quite as effectively as Moronta did (20 pitches!), but if he had gotten through it without an ER, it would have been a QS.
ReplyDeleteRight, and if wishes were horses ...
The top of the 7th last night, particularly the first two hitters, provided a not to pretty look into the Giants future. First a ground ball to Panik that he was unable to get around so he would have a relatively easy throw to first. Panik looks like he has aged about 10 years since winning that Gold Glove. Then, a slow roller towards third that Longoria gets to before throwing a scud to Austin Slater at first. The players the Giants were counting on (very much in error in the minds of many) coming into the season are aging before our eyes. The fact that the team is on the hook on Longoria through 2022 is only slightly painful today, but it's about to get worse.
ReplyDeleteUnpopular as the view is, I fully expect the Giants to gamely battle through the end of the year and finish with around 72 to 75 wins.
While they look terrible right now, I'm sticking with the 81 wins I predicted at the outset. All season they just keep hovering around .500. But yeah, this team is starting to look very resigned to their fate.
DeleteLongoria's D is bummer because the guy has such soft hands. You can see the echoes of the gold glove talent when you watch him. But I don't think he can move nearly as well anymore. It's going to be a problem. Maybe the Giants get another year from him, maybe 2 if we're wildly optimistic. But the last 2 years of that contract are going to be...brutal.