I have to confess, between a meeting at work that ran late and being preoccupied by the political news of the day I didn't watch any of this game. For a pitcher who relies heavily on a curveball, Andrew Suarez pitched about as well as I would expect in Coors Field. Actually he pitched better than I expected except to Trevor Story who has quietly become the Rockies cleanup hitter and who hit his 3'rd, 4'th and 5'th dingers of the series, all solo shots, which was the difference in the ballgame. Key Lines:
Joe Panik 2B- 2 for 5, 2B. BA= .247. Joe Panik needs a strong finish to the season. He was 4 for 9 in the last 2 games of this series.
Evan Longoria 3B- 2 for 4, 2B. BA= .244. Longoria has been remarkably consistent, which is not really a good thing: 3 for 11 in this series, .240 over his last 7 games, .232 over his last 15 and .233 over his last 30.
Aramis Garcia C- 1 for 3, HR(2). BA= .500. Looks like Garcia will be Andrew Suarez' catcher? He hits his 2'nd dinger in 3 games, 8 AB. His minor league record suggests the power is real but the BA will come down to earth, or lower.
Andrew Suarez LHP- 6 IP, 6 H, 5 R, 2 BB, 5 K's. ERA= 4.33. Take Trevor Story out of the equation and the line is 6 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 2 BB, 5 K. Between Madison Bumgarner and Andrew Suarez, Story hit 5 HR's agains the Giants 2 LH starters for the series. Yep, he's slashing .340/.402/.723 against LHP's and .280/.333/.499, which is still pretty good, against RHP's.
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The Loss put the Giants in 12'th place in the draft choice derby. They are 10 games off the pace in the NL West and 10.5 games behind in the Wild Card race to officially, at least in my book, eliminate them from playoff contention.
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The Giants get a travel day on the way to Milwaukee where Chris Stratton will open the weekend series against Gio Gonzalez. Gio Gonzalez?
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Last year the Padres owned us. This year the Rockies.
ReplyDeleteGarcia: "the power is real but the BA will come down to earth, or lower." Got a laugh out of that little qualifier at the end...
Panik: It'd be nice to see him finish strong. But I don't have my hopes up.
Oh, just read, (and saw the close-up clip of Giants reactions) the moonshot that Story hit was 505 feet, a new MLB record. And both Suarez and Garcia had these facial expressions of 'holy ****!'
ReplyDeleteYeah, I don't know if Story knew what was coming or if they were just fat pitches, but he got both cheeks and them some into all 3 dingers. He swung so hard at the first one he fell down in the batters box! On the 505'er, he obviously had every ounce of his body into the swing and timed it perfectly. Wow!
DeleteWent back and looked at the videos of Story's dingers: The first one that he fell down on was a curveball that was almost a foot inside, but flatter than a pancake. Not sure how Story got the barrel on it, but maybe that's why he fell down? The second one looked like a hanging curveball. I couldn't tell on the 3'rd one.
DeleteThis fits the narrative that Coors Field is particularly hard on LHP's who rely heavily on curveballs because of the elevation which inhibits downward break.
Garcia must be waking on air - two HR's in 8 AB's, 1st HR before GF and Fam. His confidence must be sky high. Does he make the 2019 Team as back-up and Hundley let go?
ReplyDeleteI'm eager to see more AB's for AG but nice to see a Rook. off to a hot start what with the struggles of Ryder Jones and C. Arroyo last year.
And doesn't Garcia flirt with other positions - like 1B or LF?
Garcia struggled pretty badly these past couple years, although he has the pedigree to suddenly breakout.
DeleteI would bet they bring back Hundley and have Garcia "compete" the same way they Duggar did with Blanco.
To appreciate the state of the Giants offense, you need only to know that Brandon Crawford is at the top (or near the top) in nearly every quantitative statistical category and is near the top among all "qualifiering" categories.
ReplyDeleteHad McCutchen not been traded, he and Craw were the offense although Posey deserves a lot of credit for fighting through a lot of agony.
For the 5 "even" years of the decade, Giants have 3 WS wins, 1 collapse, and 1 object failure.
Much of the decline has to do with natural aging plus some aging-by-trade to "win one more" -- hopefully the Giants reset to rebuilding with good draft picks, good development, and good dumpster diving and not trying to roll the dice one more time.
Well, Crawford, Cutch and Posey(up to now) were the only positions starters who did not lose significant playing time to injury, so that explains the leadership in quantitative stats.
DeleteThe Giants really have not choice to to "roll the dice" one more time. They have a veteran core locked in to long term contracts. They have prospects coming along who can fill in the gaps but no "franchise/cornerstone" prospects. The only player they could trade that might bring back a "franchise/cornerstone" prospect or two is Madison Bumgarner.
DeleteSo yeah, the Giants are going to try to build a team to win next year, count on it.
Next year they won't feel compelled to stay under the salary ceiling - let's just pick up FAs Patrick Corbin, DJ LeMahieu, Bryce Harper and Jeurys Familia and see what happens...
ReplyDelete