In a season so far characterized by bullpen meltdowns, the Giants suffered their worst late-inning come-from-ahead loss since 1929(wow! Is that right? It seems like I have spent most of my life as a Giants fan suffering through tragic late-inning losses, but OK, it was very bad!) blowing a 7-2 lead in the 9'th inning with the by then inevitable loss coming in the 10'th. Key Lines:
Mike Yastrzemski CF/LF- 1 for 6, HR(5). BA= .303. This was YtY's 5'th HR of the season and 26'th out of 504 career PA's. That projects to 31 HR/600 PA. The power is what has surprised me the most about his MLB performance. By far, his story is the best part of the Giants last two seasons.
Evan Longoria 3B- 2 for 5, HR(2). BA= .231. Longo is one of the core/legacy players who have struggled, batting just .192 over his last 7 games.
Wilmer Flores 1B- 4 for 5. BA= .292. Love the bat, but the fielding has been, well, not good, even at 1B where a bad decision contributed to the meltdown in the 9'th inning. As told by Alex P of NBCBA, with 1 out, a run in and a runner on 1B, Robbie Grossman hit a grounder fielded by Flores who took two steps toward the bag. Then for some reason, instead of taking one more step and getting the 2'nd out with a 4-run lead, Flores stopped, turned and threw to 2B where Brandon Crawford came off the bag too soon leaving runners at first and second with just one out. Trevor Gott hit the next batter to load them up for Stephen Piscotty and the rest is history.
Hunter Pence RF- 1 for 4, HR(2), BB. BA= .119. No core/legacy player has had more futility at the plate but this was his second 3-run HR in his last 3 games.
Johnny Cueto 7 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 2 BB, 5 K's. ERA= 4.62. Hey, a couple more starts like this and Cueto might have some trade value at the 8/31 deadline. While it would not be a disaster to keep him around for the last year of his contract, I am sure the FZ would jump at an opportunity to get that salary commitment off the books.
Trevor Gott RHP- 0.1 IP, 2 H, 5 R, 1 BB, 0 K. ERA= 8/53. Gott struggled with his control/command and perhaps let Flores mental mistake distract him on subsequent AB's. What followed was a full on meltdown of epic proportions.
Gabe Kapler Manager- It was inevitable that at some point Kapler's game decisions, especially how he uses pitchers, was going to be compared unfavorably to Bruce Bochy, who was The Master. Unfortunately for Kap, he has made at least one egregious error, forgetting a rule about mound visits, and multiple other ones ripe for second guessing. Now the long knives are out. Alex P is generally not harsh on manager decisions, but I am basically repeating the arguments he laid out in his post for NBCBA. It is true that Closers are sometimes used with big leads, usually because they need the work. It is also true that Gott should be able to execute in that situation and he did not. On the other hand, Gott last pitched on 8/11 and this was the first of 10 consecutive games for the Giants so there was no compelling lack of workload driving this decision. On top of that, Kap's own comments in the postgame were downright baffling. Basically he did not have confidence in either Jarlin Garcia or Trevor Rogers to finish the game and they wanted to use just one pitcher.
I mean, what? If you don't think any of your setup guys can finish out a 5-run lead, what on Earth are they even doing on the team?! I mean FZ, who is in charge of the roster, just might have a problem with that explanation. And what if the Closer you bring in doesn't bring his game and turns it into a Save situation, who do you bring in then? You've already put your eggs in his basket.
In a vacuum, this might be a forgivable mistake, but added on to what's happened already, I'm not sure Kapler is going to live this one down anytime soon. For one thing, he better get Gott out there again soon, and Gott better perform better or this decision may get the blame for ruining a budding Closer.
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The Loss drops the Giants record to 8-13 which is the second worst in the NL behind the Pirates.
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Kevin Gausman RHP tries to build on his last stellar start today facing Sean Manaea LHP and get the Giants back into the Win column. Great starts don't mean much if the bullpen keeps melting down and we knew that was going to be the weakest link going into the season. That's on FZ.
I wasn't against hiring Kapler and he is still worse then I imagined. I'm for tanking so I don't mind him driving the tank,but I wonder if his hiring hurts FZ's job security. Way to early to make predictions like that, but if Kapler continues to be a train wreck for 2 years it's a big stain on FZ. I think he put himself in the situation by making such a high risk // low reward hiring. Most of the fanbase/media was against the hiring, Kapler hasn't shown anything to be worth hiring against all the backlash the hiring got. (Sorry for somewhat rambling, a lot of text to type on a phone)
ReplyDeleteKapler seems to have a fixation for Sandoval — the DH with NO XBH's for the season — NONE whether DHing, PHing, or playing 1st.
ReplyDeleteHe, Crawford, Belt, Pence, and Longoria ALL had negative —bWAR's going into last night's game.
Slater, probably the 3rd best Giant on offense, entered the game in the 10th inning as a pinch runner.
I’m certainly not disagreeing with the overall sentiment, but I believe I read something about Slater being injured. Perhaps he can pinch-run bit is unable to swing a bat? Still, Kapler has been, in my estimation, underwhelming.
DeleteIf Gabe Kapler continues to show beyond a shadow of a doubt that he has no business whatsoever managing a major league baseball team, at what point does Farhan get some criticism since Gabe is his guy? These two guys are a package deal and if one of them is getting exposed every night for his incompetence then the guy who hired him against EVERYONE'S better wishes should be held responsible.
ReplyDeleteIt was a few weeks ago but one thing Farhan said in one of his KNBR interviews that stuck out was that he would rather win unconventionally than lose conventionally. There is something worse than both of those outcomes and it is when you lose unconventionally.
Kapler and Farhan are so committed to their formula that common baseball sense has been completely thrown out the window. How many times have all of us seen a closer (even a great closer) blow it when they are asked to pitch in non save situations? How many runs have been given up on defense because of guys like Flores, Solano, Dick, Ruf, and Dubon playing out of position? How many catchers interference because they are asking the catcher to play too close?
If there were a year to try new things it would be this year but when NONE of the things you try actually work there might be a problem. The plan should be to uncover new and exciting ways this team can win baseball games and instead we are seeing them straight up lose games because of their unconventional approach.
One thing Kapler has going for him — no one is booing at the Park!
ReplyDeleteBoth Farhan and Kap are dead to me!!
ReplyDeleteRichard in Winnipeg
Proposition: Kapler was a good choice.
ReplyDelete1. The Giants were destined to be very bad: money was not going to be "wasted" on 2020 (not even $5M more for Pillar than he was "worth"). Nor spent for a short term manager.
2. This was destined to be a Conor Joe McCarthy year, so sign fan favs Pence and Sandoval cheap to mollify fans.
3. It would be ultimate wishfulness to think the legacy players who were bad in 2019 would be better in 2020 — 2019's 77 wins were an overachievement. But They Are Giants and Posey-Belt-Crawford have fans.
4. There was a commitment to analytics (CEO Larry Baer made clear last fall that Zaidi was hired to transform the Giants into a cutting-edge, forward-thinking organization in all aspects of their baseball operations), bring in a guy who could be blamed when it didn't transition well.
5. A guy who had failed and wanted a rebound chance would be hireable, controllable, and terminable.
6. Ron Wotus or Hensley Meulens would be harder to fire.
7. OTOH, maybe no one else wanted the job. Think Joe Maddon (7-13 with the 2020 Angels) went to LA(A).
The other Doc (Lefty) blames it all on Zaidi:
http://togetherweregiants.com/out-of-left-field/the-verdict-is-in-the-emperor-has-no-clothes/