This was one of the Giants more languid games of the season as the Dodgers outhomered them 4-1 and cruised to an easy win. Key Lines:
Wilmer Flores DH- 2 for 4, 2B, HR(3). BA= .320. Flores' versatile bat would be a huge asset on a more competitive team. Right now, he's a guy putting up numbers.
Jeff Samardzija RHP- 4 IP, 7 H, 6 R, 5 ER, 2 BB, 3 K's. ERA= 9.88. Solo HR's won't beat you....unless you give up a lot of them. Right now, Shark is the pitching version of a punching back, an in-game batting practice pitcher. As Brady Klopfer of MCC pointed out, you know you are not very good when it's reported the other team is challenging the HBP and people think it's perfectly reasonable.
Sam Selman LHP- 2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 3 K's. ERA= 1.80. He hasn't pitched much but Sam Selman has quietly been one of the more effective Giants pitchers out of the bullpen. 5 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 BB, 9 K's. Not only did he inherit a bases-loaded jam and got out of if allowing just 1 of those runners to score, but he came back out and pitched a second 1,2,3 inning. This was his first time going more than 1 inning. The opposing batter, Kike Hernandez, even argued that he had not been hit. Maybe he was just being honest or maybe he really thought he could do better by continuing the AB.
"Legacy" or "Core" Players- 0 for 10. I'll include Posey, Belt, Longoria, Crawford, Pence and Sandoval in this group. Posey opted out, so he's neither contributing nor hurting. The rest of this bunch is dragging the Giants down...bigly. That group is a combined 26 for 152(.171) with just 6 XBH's for an IsoP of .072. Just brutal, and even more brutal they are all playing regularly. These are not the Glory Days!
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The Loss dropped the Giants record to 6-9 as they reached the 1/4 mark of the truncated season. That ties them for 10'th place in the NL with the top 8 teams making the playoffs.
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Johnny Cueto RHP tries to get the Giants back on the winning track today facing Clayton Kershaw LHP.
Add Hunter Pence, in his 8th year as a Giant and part of the last 3 playoff years and 2 WS Rings: 1 for 29 (.034) with 1 XBH in 10 of 15 games making the legacy group 27 for 181 (.149) with 7 XBH's lowering the IsoP slightly.
ReplyDeleteFor comparison. Madison Bumgarner's career IsoP is .126
Oops, scratch comment including Pence -- misread your post!
ReplyDeleteFans don't want to hear it, but this isn't a good team and tanking is probably better then making the playoffs with such a bad roster. It's a short season so it's a lot less games to have to watch us suck. Let's go top 5 pick
ReplyDeleteCouldn't pick a better year to tank! Next year may need to be a tank year as well but after that there are a ton of guys set to become free agents and the Giants will need to open their wallets. Lindor, Story, Arenado (opt out), Baez, Jose Ramirez, Marte, Blackmon, Freeman, Castellanos, Soler, Bryant, Seager, Correa, Schwarber, and Rosario could all be options. The pitchers aren't as intriguing but one or two year deals for Grienke, Lynn, Scherzer, Kershaw, Bundy, or Verlander could work out.
DeleteBottom line is I will be just fine with this year tanking and next year as well if the 2022 lineup looks something like this:
Luciano - 2B
Yaz - LF
Lindor/Story/Baez - SS (30-35 million annual)
Arenado/J. Ramirez/Bryant - 3B (30-35 million annual)
Bart - 1B
Bishop - CF
Ramos - RF
Bailey - C
Kershaw - SP (30 million annual)
Scherzer - SP (30 million annual)
Corry - SP
Hjelle - SP
Beede - SP
Harrison - SP
Webb - SP
That's 4 very high priced FA acquisitions which might be a lot to ask but they would be the ONLY 4 large contracts on the books at that point! My faith in ownership and the current management team is going to be highly influenced by the 2022 offseason and how they decide to spend their money.
Harrison most certainly will not be up at the big leagues by 2022- he'd start 2021 in Rookie ball! His earliest ETA would be 2024.
DeletePound me for this unpopular opinion. The performances of Belt, Longo and Crawford should not come as a big surprise. All of them have some decent baseball left in them, but the decline in performance was absolutely predictable. Teams, even good teams, can carry a player that fills out the lineup but rarely makes big contributions, but no team can carry the number of lineup fillers the Giants have and expect to succeed. The horse is out of the barn, it's too late to do anything but live with it.
ReplyDeleteNow, having said that, it did not have to be this way. The opportunities were there to make roster adjustments in 2016-2018 to become less reliant on declining players. The trade for Longoria, who is a perfectly okay player, but not one that can be counted on for big contributions over time, was a poorly considered Hail Mary by the former administration.
My point is, as painful as this is, and it may get worse, the Giants are finally on the right track. If Giants fans can hang in there, there are very good days on the horizon.
My only disagreement with you here is I believe the Giants have the resources to jettison these toast players and still spend on the FA market for upgrades, but they won't. That's probably not so much on FZ as on ownership, but it's still the Giants organization. I understand this might not be the year you want to do that because of the shutdown and the Giants decision to not spend is looking like a rose right now, but they did not know that back when the offseason decisions were being made.
DeleteThis year even being an ex-Giant isn't great:
ReplyDeleteJoe Panik found some success after being DFA'd last year but hasn't found wings with the Blue Jays in 2020.
Bryan Reynolds had a sensational 2019 with the Bucs but has struggled in 2020 although a 6-15 streak could be signalling a turnaround.
Steven Vogt hasn't gotten a foothold in AZ and MadBum hasn't helped — yet. Giants will get to see him in 3 consecutive weekend series starting 2 weeks from today if he can stay out of rodeos in his new digs.
Sam Dyson arrived in Minnesota but hasn't been heard from — a Free Agent now.
Andrew McCutchen is on Krukow's Interstate, I-Something, well under .150 after blowing out an ACL last year.
OTOH, Kevin Pillar is bettering his good 2019 Giants' season, Pomeranz can't be hit, Melancon is 2 for 2 in saves and can't be hit either, Derek Holland has a job in Pittsburgh and doing OK, as is Josh Osich in Boston where he has his control under control.
Giants load the bases against KERSHAW in the top of the first with 2 outs and Kepler has PENCE, .033, with a couple good hitters, this year, behind him.
ReplyDeleteAND he almost gets it out of the infield.
Anon above, not me!, has it right: WTF the next 2 years and then with young studs and free agents AND a NEW manager, get it on!
Just 45 more games this year with Farhan's mistake manager.
I hope I live to see it!
Your fans and I love when you talk about the farm system and prospects. They revised the top 30 prospects for the giants on MLB/sfgiants and I think we all would love a good analysis on each pick. Gives us your opbinon and you can compare to your list. o find it hard to believe that Chris Shaw can't at least be the 30th on the list considering his power potential and draft pedigree and he's still prospect aged. They put Jordan humphrys on the list over him, a 24 year old reliever who throws 90-93 and has only pitched 11 innings above A ball. Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Sean Hjelle still getting under projected, should be higher than 10th. He continues to do better than people think and was hitting 96 mph his spring as a 6'11 starter with command and strike out ability.
ReplyDeleteI'd love to write more about the farm system and prospects, but what has really changed since the draft? Until we see some of them in game action, it's going to be very difficult to write anything new about them.
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