The Giants somehow managed to have the winning run a the plate with 1 out in the 9'th inning before a series of terrible called strikes by home plate umpire Lance Barksdale snuffed out the rally. Key Lines:
Michael Reed RF- 0 for 3, 3 K's. BA= .000. The Giants starting corner OF's, Reed and Conner Joe combined for 5 K's in 6 PA's and are hitting a combined .000 on the season. Reed did have an Assist at home plate and Joe had one at 2B.
Evan Longoria 3B- 1 for 3, HR(1), BB. BA= .429. Longo's long dinger to lead off the 9'th inning brought in Padres Closer Kirby Yates who then loaded the bases before getting bailed out by Lance Barksdale.
Steven Duggar CF- 1 for 3, 2B, BB. BA= .143. Duggar's double came of lefty SP but was then nullified by a baserunning mistake when he tried to take 3B on a groundball hit in front of him.
Derek Holland LHP- 4 IP, 4 H, 3 R, 2 BB, 5 K's. ERA= 6.75. Holland didn't seem to have great command and location mistakes hurt him, particularly on a double off the CF wall by Fernando Tatis Jr and a dinger by Ian Kinsler.
Mark Melancon RHP- 1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 1 K. ERA= 0.00. Melancon's pitches seemed to have more life than at any time in spring training and he struck out the first batter rather smartly, but he gave up ropes to the next 2 batters but got out of it when the last line drive round Brandon Crawford's glove and he doubled up the runner at first.
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Dereck Rodriguez tries for the Giants first win of the season today, but the Giants lineup faces another lefty, 6'5" rookie Nick Margevicius. I can only imagine how that is going to go.
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If the Umpires Union wants to see part of their jobs taken over by cameras and computers, they should fully support the way Lance Barksdale called balls and strikes in this game because he ended up dictating the outcome of the game which is the very reason why the game would be better off with electronic "assistance" for the home plate umps.
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AJ Pollock, a right-handed hitting OF with power and speed who signed with the Dodgers for 1/5 of what the Giants offered Bryce Harper went 4 for 6 with a walk and fell a triple shy of the cycle in the Dodgers extra-inning loss to the D'Backs. Oh, and Domingo Santana another RH hitting OF who did not cost the Mariners any top prospects to acquire from the Brewers hit his 3'rd HR of the season and reached base 4 times in 5 PA's. Just sayin'
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Be sure and check out Dr Lefty's post about Opening Day and Farhan Zaidi's rough start as GM on Together We're Giants linked to the left. Her thoughts are exactly mine, except she states them much better than I ever could.
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Often when managers make mistakes the players can bail him out.
ReplyDeleteThere was no helping Bochy's lineup last night.
It seems like the Angels might have some interest in Mac Williamson after learning that Justin Upton will miss 8-12 weeks with a bad turf toe injury.
ReplyDeleteThe Angels already have J. Parker and Stratton - there should be a limit to how many talented "cast-offs" any single team can sign.
DeleteIt might not be fair to criticize Zaidi for not protecting Connor Joe from the Rule 5 draft -- perhaps he was #41 and less needed then #'s 30-40. It is the Dodgers and they might just have better players than the Giants.
ReplyDeleteShould he be starting?
No.
Should Mac be starting?
Yes
An who was the Giants most consistent, productive, and ready to play everyday last year?
McCutchen and it still took Bochy 2/3's of the season to realize he could leadoff and get on base 40% of the time. He would be a great LFer AND leadoff batter this year, two things the Giants don't have BUT DID HAVE!
I may scratch my head about Joe starting in LF or Reed leading off BUT I don't think Zaidi wasn't hired to fix 2019. As the doc's (B & Lefty) think, he may be in over his head. OTOH, he didn't have the option of doing anything with the 7 most paid AND most overpaid AND mostly unproductive players on the roster.
BTW, Posey's, Belt's, and Crawford's extensions which along with some questionable high priced signings are crippling the team now (more than Joe and Reed) were not required to win the 3 championships and they haven't helped much since the last one.
Per Larry Baer's and Farhan Zaidi's own statements, fielding a competitive team in 2019 was at least part of what Zaidi was hired to do.
DeletePosey/Belt/Crawford extensions are not crippling the Giants. They still have more than enough resources to acquire additional players and can more than afford to eat a contract or two if it comes to that.
What is crippling the Giants right now is the failure to acquire at least 1 and preferable 2 RH hitting corner OF's with power during the offseason, and yes, they were available at prices the Giants could easily afford, both in dollars and prospects.
With utter, unflinching, and all due respect, Doc, I did say the 3 extensions "along with some questionable high priced signings" are crippling the team now.
DeleteI certainly did not mean just the 3 poster players to whom the Giants owe their early decade success (along with many others, including the Panda and a whole lot of pitchers).
Rhetorically speaking, if you could choose how to spend $124,880,000, would you pick Posey, Longoria, Cueto, Samardzija, Belt, Crawford, and Melancon right now?
If you could cancel those 7 contracts today and not owe the money, would you take that option?
So, let's review the entirety of those 7 contracts, which is the only valid way to analyze them:
DeletePosey has already more than paid off his extension in WAR value. Anything they get from here out is gravy. They knew the final years would probably be rough, but almost any GM/Team would have done the same thing.
I would not have traded for Longo, but I don't think his contract is a lost cause. The adjustment of moving across country, new league and new home ballpark was a lot to expect last year. I expect him to have a better season this year than last.
Johnny Cueto still has 2 years on his contract after he returns from TJ. Decent bet that he will have plus value by the end of his contract.
Samardzija outlearned the value of his contract for the first two years and appears to be healthy this year. Again, a decent bet to have surplus value by the end of his contract.
Belt needs to stay healthy but his contract is very reasonable for what he gives when he plays.
I am worried about Crawford's bat, but he still gives positive value with his D at SS.
Melancon is the only one I strongly believe is going to end up a bad contract. I think it is likely a sunk cost at this point.
And once again, none of those contracts individually or collectively are "crippling" this team and are not excuse for Zaidi to have whiffed on upgrading the OF.
I agree these contracts are not crippling the team, but might be hard to move if Zaidi wanted to, either due to full or partial no trade clauses, injury concerns. It doesn't look like Brewers had multiple trade offers for Santana judging from what they got from the Mariners, so nice job by the Mariners and Dipoto scouting the player. I hope that Zaidi and the front office will be good at talent evaluaton in the future. The one key thing that Zaidi created not giving any multi year contracts is he'll have the flexibility to tinker with the roster throughout the season. Joe and Reed are easily replaceable if they don't work out. I can think of Madbum, Panik, Holland, Pomaranz, W Smith off the top of my head with contracts that expire in 2019 which make them tradable without a big financial cost.
DeleteHow many more games do you think the Giants would win in 2019 with Williamson, Pollock, and Duggar as the starting OF?
ReplyDeleteIf it's not 10, would it do more than worsen the draft pick?
A jump to relevance would require an immaculate resurrection of the 30+ yo C-IF.
Is it a surprise that after 2 games the 2 guys leading the team in hits are the 2 veteran RH batters seeing a lot of LH pitching. Pollock and Williamson could only help that!
Having 2 RH hitters with power manning the corner OF positions would not only upgrade those positions but balance the lineup enough so Belt, Panik and Crawford would not have to be platooned, so yeah, it might add 10 or more wins. What about and OF Domingo Santana, Duggar and Pollock?
DeleteIt would also enable Parra to play the role he is meant to play, which is 4'th OF.
Deletefrom watching the past two games and the eye test and not minor league advanced statistics....Farhan's boys...Michael Reed is not a MLB hitter..Connor Joe may or may not be, but he sure as heck is no OF..YOu basically are sabottoging any chance of winning with these two in your line-up. It's arguable whenther these were the best options left as of Monday (I believe MAC shoukd have gotten a hot but..) but the crime was that afteer 5 months on the jb this is what Farhan came up with...It really is hard to watch..
ReplyDeleteBut it's nt just thhem. even guys lke Craw and Posey (until that hit) look lost at the plate and you really dont expect a hit from anybody. I did like Duggar's double and the walk he worked in the 9th though..Hard to come up with many positives..
SteveVA
Slater proved he has MLB range and arm in OF and he can hit ... good news is that he was not DFA'd like Parker and MAC ... I hope to God MAC clears waivers or else I will have to engage in some kind of boycott of this team I am just so disgusted with the composition of this team ... Melancon is a nice guy but what is he doing on the team? we all know that if it were not for his unfortunately generous contract he would be elsewhere
DeleteSlater's lowest GB/FB in his career, both in the minors and majors, is 1.5. He desperately needs to pay a visit to Doug Latta.
DeleteI can't forget that 450 foot bomb Slater hit off the scoreboard in Milwaukee in 2017. No amount of tutoring will give Joe an OF arm - I think Slater can be taught to hit for more loft. In his three good years with the Giants pence hit for just under 24 HR's on average with over 600 AB's in each of those three years. It is not as though Pence was hitting 35 Bombs a year. Could Slater or Mac or Parker hit about .280 with 23 Jacks given 600 + AB's? We may never know since two of them have been DFA'd, yet I do not think it is beyond reason to expect Slater to do that with or without some plate adjustments. And two days into the 2019 season we all know that Joe does not have a MLB OF arm, even in Left, and the verdict is that Reed is over-matched at the plate.
Deletecorrection - I don't think it unreasonable for Slater to hit 23 Jacks a year as a full time outfielder.
DeleteShould catcher framing be disallowed as defensive flopping was in basketball?
ReplyDeleteBoth are cheating efforts by a player to fool an umpire (referee).
Since the umpire is calling something he (apparently) can't see, when it is blatant, the offended team should be allowed to appeal to a base umpire much like is allowed to appeal a check swing.
Either Austin Hedges is very good at it -- he moved one "ball" at least 6 inches! -- or Lance Barksdale is extraordinarily susceptible to being fooled.
Barksdale is the poster child for robotic umpires: he started the game with a tight strike zone squeezing Lucchesi to great frustration (for Lucchesi) and ended it with everything's a strike, Lets GO Home!
Whatever an umpire's personal zone is, he MUST keep it like that from 1st pitch to final pitch.
The only way I can see to combat catcher framing is to go to electronic ball/strike calling.
DeleteThat framing has such an effect argues strongly for the Robo-solution.
DeleteI second the motion on electronic balls/strike -- major league sports can be ruined by bad officiating. E.g. the NFL is quickly responding to the negative impact of a non-pass-interference call. MLB is dragging its feet while umpires continue to negatively affect the game with inconsistent judgement. The technology exists - why not use it?
ReplyDeleteIf they employ this the way I believe they should, it would be pretty invisible to fans. Just a little earpiece in the umps ear. Beeps when it’s a strike. Fans would not even know, except, you know, the calls would be accurate.
DeleteOr how about a full volume 'Steeee-rike One' broadcasts over the stadium sound system...
Delete