Carlos Rodon LHP gave up 5 runs in 4 innings of work and a late Giants rally fell short.
Rodon gave up a 3-spot in the first inning then two more in the 4'th inning after a prolonged delay to start the third inning due to malfunctioning stadium lights. A big down night for Rodon.
Lamonte Wade Jr 1B/LF- 3 for 5. BA= .186. Wade Jr came into the game 1 for his last 19. Per Fangraphs, he's arbitration eligible and out of options. Another big decision for FZ this offseason.
Joc Pederson LF hist hs second HR in his last 7 game, a 2-run shot in the 4'th inning to get the Giants their first 2 runs. He's hitting .348 over his last 7 games and .333 over his last 15. He might be worth trying to keep around for next season.
Thairo Estrada 2B- 2 for 2, 2 BB. BA= .260. Estrada has probably been the Giants most consistent player this season.
J. D. Davis PH/1B- 2 for 2. BA= .247. Davis had been slumping and has a .118 BA over his last 7 games. Per Fangraphs, he is arbitration eligible next season and has options.
Jarlin Garcia LHP- 3 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 0 K, GO/AO= 6/2. ERA= 2.84. Garcia has been terrific in long relief situations but terrible in high leverage late-inning situations. His FB/Breaking Ball/Change repertoire is more of a SP mix. Maybe he could be stretched out to be a #5 SP? ....or just leave him in a long-relief role?
Joey Bart C left the game early on a concussion protocol after taking a foul tip off the mask. Not good!
Evan Longoria 3B is going to try to play through the hammy and is DTD. Also not good.
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The Giants are now 8.5 games behind the Padres in the Wild Card race. Logan Webb RHP goes against Blake Snell LHP tonight.
Andrew Knapp, come on down!!!
ReplyDeletej.d. davis would be a serviceable stopgap at first next season with belt likely finished
ReplyDeleteAndrew Baggarly started in The Athletic today with, "Turn out the lights, the party’s over," then capped it with the Giants have "reached the point where 'there’s a lot of season left' is more a lamentation than an expression of hope."
ReplyDeleteMany think "2022 proves that 2021 was a fluke" but they have missed the point: baseball seasons change because player performance changes year-to-year, for better or for worse, a lot or a little.
Many individual Giants had their best or near best career seasons 2021 but nearly everyone fell off a LOT in 2022. One game worse here, 2-3 games there, a major loss with Posey's retirement, and it adds up through 20+ returnees to be 25 or 30 games worse in total.
It was somewhat the reverse of the overall improvement of 2021 over 2020.
Why did the Giants let this happen? How do you improve a very good team: Gausman, Cueto, Solano, and Dickerson left, replaced, roughly, by Rodón, Cobb, Estrada, and Pederson. McGee failed and was replaced by Doval. Duggar was replaced by Slater. None of those is a major change. Not 107 wins to 77.
The one huge difference was Posey was replaced by Bart. WAR doesn't tell the story: Posey was 3.5 (bWAR) and Bart is 1.5 (adjusting to year's end). But Posey held things together to an extent that's impossible to measure. Look back to 2020: how much better than 29-31 would the Giants have been with Posey? Enough to be a playoff team for sure!
Another difference is the Giants, in 2020 and 2022, really didn’t improve themselves with a DH. Did the rest of the NL do measurably better than the Giants with a DH? Who knows? This year SF has DH’d 17 players, from LaStella (39 games) to 5 players with 1 each. LaStella hasn’t been inspiring.
FZ’s fingerprints are all over the successful 2021 team, built around the pre-Zaidi core of Posey, Crawford, and Belt, who were the very best of the 2021 Giants (possibly Ruf deserves to be in that top 3, an FZ addition). If Zaidi is to be blamed for mostly standing pat in 2022 on the 107-win team, it must be remembered that most of the 2021 team had his fingerprints on it, and this was a tumultuous off-season. In retrospect, he should have done more than sign 5 of the 6 SP’s for 2022, Pederson, and work around the edges. They really needed a leader. That didn’t happen,