Brandon Crawford SS drove in 3 of the Giants 5 runs to back a Quality Start by Alex Wood LHP with the bullpen shutting it down over the final 3 innings. Game Notes:
Crawford's 2-run bomb in the 4'th inning gave the Giants a 3-1 lead they would not relinquish. He added a SF in the Giants 2 run rally in the 8'th inning that put the game away. Like many Giants hitters, Crawford was in a slump going 1 for his last 16 so his performance here was reassuring on several levels.
Donovan Solano 2B had 2 doubles in 5 AB's and scored 2 runs. He hit just .200 in May following an IL stint, but is hitting .286 in June so far.
Brandon Belt 1B had 2 hits and a walk. He's hitting just .208 over both his last 7 games and his last 15. Hopefully this game was a slump-breaker for him.
He did not figure in the scoring but Curt Casali C had 3 hits in the game. By all accounts and measures, Casali is having a great season behind the plate, but has struggled offensively hitting just .129 on April and .083 in May. He's played just 2 games in June since coming off the IL. Hopefully resting his sore wrist is enough for sustained improvement in the bat.
Alex Wood seemed to be back on track with a 6 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 1 BB, 7 K's line. Dominic Leone RHP, Tyler Rogers RHP and Jake McGee LHP shut it down over the final 3 frames with McGee getting the Save Op and converting it, although one of his outs was a long fly that went to the deepest corner of L-CF where Steven Duggar CF tracked it down.
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The Win kept the Giants in sole possession of first place in the NL West by a game over the Dodgers and 4 games over the Padres.
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Zach Littell RHP opens tonight's game presumably before Sammy Long LHP gets the bulk innings. The D'Back's SP is TBD.
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The Churn was quiet yesterday.
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Down on the Farm:
AAA:
Joey Bart C- 3 for 4, 2B. BA= .353.
Thairo Estrada SS/2B- 2 for 4, 3B. BA= .385.
FZ has done some very good things as GM of the Giants. His track record for finding undervalued talent at the MLB level is now long enough to be almost certainly due to more than good luck. His manager and coaching staff are getting tremendous results from a data-driven approach to both managing and coaching.
There may be other areas, though, that spell future trouble for FZ management regime. The long term health of an organization is generally tied to how well they draft and draft success is generally tied closely to performance of first round draft picks. The early returns on FZ's first two drafts is starting to look a bit alarming.
2019 first round pick, Hunter Bishop OF, put up an odd line of .229/.438/.429 in 146 PA's at two levels after the draft. He as assigned to high A Eugene this season after missing 2020 due to the COVID lockdown. He reportedly had symptomatic COVID at one point. He's spent most of the season on the IL and has played in just 3 games.
2020 first round pick, Patrick Bailey C, got off to a hot start this spring, but his bat went cold and he's now hitting .187/.296/.301.
It's too early to label Bishop and Bailey as draft busts, but prospect watchers should reasonably start to be concerned about them and by extension, concerned about FZ's scouting and drafting process.
I agree with both of your assessments regarding finding undervalued talent but failing to find similar success with the draft. The misses (probable) in the first round are obvious- hopefully they did better in the later rounds. Hard to understand why they are so successful finding the undervalued talent but struggle with the draft.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Bishop was an overreach as a number one pick.. Bailey on the other hand has value as a Kurt Casali type of player. Baily was a reach at number one pick as well. I would have preferred a pitching prospect but that said he is an outstanding defensive catcher and is great at handling pitchers and calling a game. He has some pop and will be eventually able to hit around .240-.260 in the majors.
ReplyDeleteAgree jury still out on Bailey and Bishop. Draft is a hit or miss process. Bailey - Kiley McDaniel included Bailey in the ESPN top 100 prospects with 3 other Giants saying Bailey is a top defensive catcher, may not hit for average but will hit homers and draw walks. Bailey was labeled a safe pick. Not too concerned about him yet. As for FZ scouting and draft process, hard to draw any conclusions since they couldn't scout these players due to covid cancelling games. Bishop-seems like they drafted him due to his high upside. Can't find anything about his injury but he's been out about a month so far, which hurts his development even more since the minors didn't have a season last year.
ReplyDeleteI disagree that he's done a good job finding undervalued talent. My reasoning is that the man leads one of the richest organizations yet he's been strictly only shopping for baseball talent at the Outlet Discount shops. He goes out signing huge amounts of guys to discount deals. He litters his organization with discount players instead of truly adding quality major league talent to the major league club. He's left of the veteran players on the MLB club to be surrounded by roster churn players instead of actually acquiring proven major league talent that could help greatly. Our best players in the organization are players who we had before he became GM. He got lucky with Gausman (who he's going to either lose or overpay in the off season) and Yaz the Younger is already really up there in age and he had a good rookie year in 2/3 of a season, a great 1/3 of a year last year and a bad 1/3 of a year this year. If we had Sabean, he would have identified what we needed on the major league roster and went out to go and acquire it. We have been a bad club under the current regime because they haven't been trying to win with the current crop of Giants vets they acquired. They've been trying to lose on purpose, but the veterans would keep the team within sniffing range of a playoff spot so our current GM would decide the past few years not to sell off veterans for talent but also he would not acquire the major league talent on the roster needed to get to the next level. Our current GM has done a horrible job. When you're GM of one of the richest team in sports and you actually have money to play with and trades to be made, it's stupid to only shop for discount players at the local outlet shopping mall
ReplyDeleteKnow when to hold them, know when to fold them.
DeleteNo one expected the Giants to compete this year, at least this far. They may fold, but FZ has NO bad contracts and can roll the dice for when the reinforcements come.
Plus he has beaucoup money to play with in July and some expendable prospect talent to offer, as long as he keeps his Wheelers and Reynolds. Don't give up the top of the heap, except maybe the Bishop Brothers, haha, don't give up too soon...
I agree the Giants can well afford to spend a lot more money on major league talent and FZ has not done that for reasons not clear. Mandate from ownership? Overconfidence in his ability to acquire talent for basically nothing? Yet, that does not negate his by now proven track record of finding undervalued talent. As some have said here, we still have time to see what FZ does at the trade deadline and what he does next offseason when he is working with a clean financial slate and a loaded free agent class.
DeleteIn the meantime, if the Giants keep playing at this pace, he may end up with the last laugh in October!
Bailey reminds me of another 1st round draft pick catcher on the Giants, and it's not Buster. He reminds me, to a T, of Jackson Williams. And that's no compliment. Hopefully Bart will be able to take over once Busters done, because Bailey isn't the answer. Bishops looking the same.
ReplyDeleteThey could've kept the old regime if their plan was to do nothing for 3 years. In regards to having a lot of money in a loaded free agent market, teams don't win by only spending big money on the free agent market. The teams that win usually add talent to an already skilled roster. The Giants are going to let all their veterans be free agents and they will be left with no skilled players left. No, tommy la Stella doesn't count. Doing nothing over the years and letting everyone's contracts expire will do nothing to fill the major league talent void. Even if they sign people, they will be added to a talentless roster. Obviously he likes to go discount shopping every year and I guess his big plan is to hopefully find some diamond in the rough types who he can pair with some big free agent signings. That really doesn't sound encouraging. Theirs some young talent acquired by the previous regime that could be pieces in years down the road but so far the current regime is wasting their first round picks at alarming rates, wasting high picks on players who they could low ball in salary so they could try to they could over pay someone and draft them a little later. The only thing I like about the current regime is that they are hesitant to give away prospects and want to acquire as much prospects as they can.
ReplyDeleteSpending money on elite talent and still not winning is what got Bobby Evans fired. At one point the Giants were over the CBT threshold and losing while the Dodgers were well below it and winning. You don't think ownership noticed that? You don't think ownwership likes the current situation a whole lot more? And after what happened in last night's game and where the Giants are in the standings this morning, whatthehell are we carping about anyway?
DeleteI argued against the bailey pick at the time because I hated it (mind you many here backed the pick...), But it's a little early to label him a bust.
ReplyDeleteI don't think anyone here labelled him a bust and yes, I thought the pick was OK, although I would have preferred a pitcher.
DeleteI do think there is cause for concern re. FZ's first two first round draft picks.
Don't know about the pitchers taken after Bailey. I looked and saw the Jays taking RHP Alex Manaoh with the pick right after the Giants taking Bishop. He's already pitching with the Jays.
DeleteYes it is too early to tell, but I was hoping to see more from the top picks. At the same time, if we look at the top ten from the last two years, the picks are not doing so bad, which is consistent with the same amount undervalued theme.
ReplyDeleteAnother data point is Wilson, a round 1 draft pick we traded for. He drew a lot of praise early on, yet he is still at highA