Jazz Chisholm 2B led off the game with a monster HR over Triples Alley and Jesus Aguilar 1B hit a 2-run HR in the 9'th inning. It was all Giants in between, more than enough for their fourth win in 5 games. Game Notes:
Alex Wood LHP gave up the leadoff blast to Chisholm but was close to perfect for 7 inning after that allowing just a walk and striking out 7 all on swinging strikes. He also recorded 9 GO's to 0 AO's. That is dominance in two dimensions! Wood has been this good for long stretches in the past. His challenge is to stay healthy.
Mike Yastrzemski RF got the Giants on the board and the lead with a 2-run opposite-field HR which gave Mike Krukow a chance to give a nice video tutorial on the science of backspin.
Mauricio Dubon PH/2B hustled his way to a leadoff double in the 7'th inning which set up a 3-run rally. A strong throw from Adam Duvall LF was in time to get Dubon at 2B, but the ump ruled Chisholm's glove did not touch Dubon on the tag attempt. Replays were inconclusive. I did not see a perturbation of Dubon's uniform so I tend to believe the ump that he missed the tag by a millimeter or less.
Kap's usage of his bullpen was questionable to say the least. Not sure why he thought he had to use his already overused frontline setup man and Closer with a 4-run lead. He definitely did not get that from reading his copy of the Bochy Bible. I get his point about the goal of winning games rather than accumulating Saves and I also get that he's seen more than his share of 9'th inning meltdowns, but he had Camilo Doval RHP warming up when it looked like Wood's spot in the lineup might come up in the 6'th. If he trusted Doval with a 2-1 lead in the 7'th, why not with a 4-run lead in the 8'th or 9'th?
Jake McGee LHP would have had a 1, 2, 3 9'th were it not for an error by Wilmer Flores 3B and he ended up striking out the side, but he also was not exactly a shutdown Closer giving up Aguilar's long fly after the error.
Brandon Belt 1B and Brandon Crawford SS both returned to action after minor injuries and did not look to be limited physically.
Right on cue, Giants fans were wearing bunny ears to the ballpark. Wonder if they are for sale down in the dugout store yet?
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The Padres beat the Dodgers again and guess who is just one game out of first place in the NL West? The Giants lead the third place Padres by 2 games. If the season ended now, both Wild Card teams would come from the NL West and by a healthy margin.
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Kevin Gausman RHP tries to keep the good times rolling tonight in a 6:05 start facing Pablo Lopez RHP and his changeup.
I'm glad they won the game and I'm no expert at handling a bullpen, but understand his explanation too about seeing enough 9th inning meltdowns. Garcia and Wisler have struggled, while Peralta and Alvarez have been inconsistent. I understand his hesitation to bring those pitchers in the late innings. Doval has a great arm but I'd like to see him get used but not over used in setup situations. He hasn't pitched above A ball.until being called up this week! The big negative of not resting Rogers and McGee in tonights game is they may not be available to pitch in game 3, since both pitched in games #1 and #2.
ReplyDeleteWisler has been everything you could ask for in his last 6 appearances, but other than Baragar just about every reliever has been a bit faulty at one or more times.
DeleteAnother questionable substitution was pulling LaStella and leaving Flores in after both had batted in the 8th. LaStella is not La STELLAR, but Flores is no flower with the glove. Ruf is 4th on the team in RBIs in limited ABs but he's pretty ROUGH on defense, the HR was a couple inches above his glove in what was not a Duggar leap.
I apply the WWBD test: What Would Bochy Do? No way he uses his #1 setup guy and Closer with a 4-run lead unless they just needed extra work, which was not the case with Rogers or McGee.
DeleteGiants are tied with the streaking A's for 2nd best record in ALL baseball, Top 3 team records are in CA, 5 of top 8 on the West Coast.
ReplyDeleteTake that, East the Beast, haha!
There is a ton of anticipation that the Giants will make an ALL-OUT effort to sign one of the spectacular Class of 2022 Free Agent shortstops next off-season – that it is imperative that they fill Craw's shoes.
But should they?
Roger Munter has been covering the top prospects at each position in his There R Giants blog (excellent reading), finishing with his "summit" at SS – "the deepest, bestest, eye-poppingest position in the organization!"
SF has an amazing array of talent at what was (and maybe still is *see below) the most important defensive position in baseball.
According to Roger, SF has invested more than $20M in 8 shortstop prospects topped by the incomparable Marco Luciano down through Ryan Reckly who won't really be in the group until January. Read Roger's piece from yesterday, and you might ask
"Do the Giants really need to spent $300 MILLION or more for their SS of the Future?"
Could it be better spent on an Ace or 2 from Free Agency?
Here is MLB's Top SP FAs next year: Noah Syndergaard, Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, Zack Greinke, Lance Lynn, Marcus Stroman, Kevin Gausman, Corey Kluber, Eduardo Rodriguez, Dylan Bundy, James Paxton, Robbie Ray, Johnny Cueto (club option), Trevor Bauer (opt-out).
For 2023 and 2024 see "www.mlb.com/news/baseball-s-next-free-agent-classes" – could include Jacob deGrom (opt-out)and many many more.
It almost worked for 2016 adding FA's Cueto and Samardzija, and the Moore trade. Had they gotten a Closer it would have. Maybe. More that 30 regular season blown saves, and we will never forget the 9th inning of the final NLDS game.
No matter what happens this year, the next off season will be exciting with just $25.5M in guaranteed contracts for 2022, and $5.5M for 2023.
* SS chances per game has decreased from more than 5 per game to less than 4 and dropping rapidly, see Travis Sawchik at www.thescore.com/mlb/news/2152818/the-reds-are-conducting-an-experiment-that-may-change-the-game-defensively: which suggests that hitting is more important than fielding at SS
FZ is going to have to fill a lot of holes next offseason, but will have an almost completely open payroll to work with. Since it seems that is the place he has been working toward for the past 3 seasons, it will be interesting to see what he does with it.
DeleteThere is still a long season ahead but from what the pitching looks like now, if FZ can put this kind of staff together with a bunch of 1 year contracts, I don't see him risking large multiyear money on pitching.
The Giants have allowed fewer runs than any other team in MLB, save for the Mets who have played only 75% as many games. Seeing that SSS evidence of success, I too am skeptical about spending huge sums on pitching, given the likelihood of injury there; but I may be overreacting, given that I chafed during the off-season at the Giants’ not signing Paxton and Rosenthal, both of whom promptly went blooey as soon as they did sign.
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