The Giants again squandered an early lead and a strong starting pitching performance. Key Lines:
Wilmer Flores 1B- 3 for 4. BA= .339. Flores seems to have settled into a productive role of platoon 1B against LHP starters.
David Villar 2B- 1 for 4, 2B. BA= .191. Villar drove one into the R-CF gap in the 3'rd inning to drive in 2 runs to put the Giants up 3-0. He also seems be more comfortable at 2B making some nifty plays here.
Joey Bart C- 2 for 4, 2B. BA= .400. Bart seems to be slowly but surely tightening his grip on the starting C role. He has possibly sacrificed some power for contact. His first XBH was a laser beam over the head of the LF.
Heliot Ramos RF- 1 for 2, 2B. Ramos followed Bart's double with an almost identical drive over the LF's head to drive in the Giants first run.
Logan Webb RHP- 6.2 IP, 8 H, 4 R, 0 BB, 6 K's, GO/AO= 9/2. ERA= 4.94, FIP= 4.21, xFIP= 2.92. Another game, another bad luck outing by Webb who is having a very similar season as Alex Cobb had last year, at least so far. Webb's stuff looked the best of the season so far in the early going but the Marlins chipped away with groundball hits. Still it looked like Webb would get through 7 innings with a 3-2 lead after a GIDP got a runner to 3B but with 2-outs. Then Jorge Soler, who was 0 for 10 with 7 K's against Webb for his careeer. Webb hung a curve and Soler, who has tremendous power put it over the CF wall for the game-winning 2-run HR. That was the ballgame.
Alex Wood LHP tries to get the Giants ship righted tomorrow facing Edward Cabrera RHP.
Mitch Haniger OF is scheduled to begin a rehab assignment tomorrow with the AAA Sacramento River Cats.
Soooo, if the season ended today the Giants would be in the draft lottery for the #1 pick, or at least a very high pick. Yeah, we all know it's early in the season, but not too early to dream, especially when the reality is pretty depressing. If the ping pong balls fall according to the odds the Giants would pick 5th, and maybe the two-way player thing really is a thing for the Giants, and they end up with the player ranked 5th in one poll- RHP/OF Braden Montgomery of Stanford, right in our backyard.
ReplyDeleteMaybe they will be bad enough to be true sellers at the trade deadline. Who knows what a Darin Ruf trade might bring back this year?
DeleteFor me, Yes ! It would be good to be true sellers this year @ the deadline.
DeleteGrant Brisbee has an informative article on The Athletic ("The Giants’ lack of homegrown talent might have finally caught up with the roster") about the Zaidi's ability to use trades to make up for the lack of draft success may have run its course, and, until (if?) his draftees make it to MLB, success as defined by the fans is pretty unlikely.
DeleteCole Waites (drafted Round 18) and Grant McCray (Round 3) may be all we get from FZ's first draft (if that!) although a few others (Wyatt, Fitzgerald, McDonald, Aldrete, ?) are hanging around with various degrees of success/failure.
2020 is more optimistic with 3 in Doc's Top 10 (Harrison, Schmitt, and Bailey), another at #18 (Dabovich), another at #33 (Swiney), and an Honorable Mention (Murphy). That Draft could be reminiscent of the successful drafts leading to the Championship years.
It's early on 2021, but at least 8 are mentioned in Doc's list, led by Brown @ #9 and 4 others in the Top 30.
22 of Doc's Top 23 are "original" Giants (Will Wilson is not but was "bought" by FZ). Nearly all of Doc's Top 50 were acquired by Zaidi (with notable exceptions: Luciano, Matos, and, perhaps, Ramos could be included, if he amounts to anything - he's still young).
Although it is really early in this season, it is increasingly difficult to remain optimistic about 2023, and Grant explains why in his article including why it should have been expected. There may be time for Stripling and the lefty Rogers to turn things around after an abysmal start, Haniger to appear, Conforto to stay healthy, and Manaea to improve a little, but so far, the acquisitions for 2023 haven't led the charge we hoped for.
*Note: LaStella is probably Zaidi's biggest mistake so far ($18.75M), but there's certainly time for Conforto ($34M) and Taylor Rogers ($33M) to beat that.
Grant says that, overall, trades are a net sum zero - you win some, you lose some, but FZ has been unusually successful - until this year - with adding short term players that filled in well, waiting for the system to produce.
Delete2023's crop through 15 games, or 16 today, will mark 10% of the schedule, and it is looking like the lackluster performance (or none) of the additions is what should be expected to make up for the successes.
The system has to produce, or regression to a sub-.500 team is predictable.
And the cavalry won't arrive this year, nor,probably, next year, but there is suggestion that things might improve as good drafts mature.
A Darin Ruf trade? That would be hysterical.
DeleteGlummier and glummier...
ReplyDeleteYou know, an emerging problem (at least IMHO) is that (Mr. Kapler and, by extension, Mr. Zaidi) are not focusing on the problem. The a number of recent games have exposed the root cause of the Giants disappointing record: Poor bullpen performance. Either they do not have the talent on hand or that talent is not being managed properly. If it is the former, then Zaidi should be called to account - the Giants have a number of relief pitchers in AA or higher (Keaton Wynn, Cole Waites, Chris Wright) who could scarcely do worse than some of the bullpen arms currently with the big club. But the Giants are much more patient with them then they are with the everyday players. Just ask Joey Bart or Heliot Ramos. If it is the latter, then Kapler is the problem. No area is more dependent on deployment than the bull pen. Perhaps his predecessor, master of BP management, makes Kapler pale by comparison. But the fact is that at this point, Kapler's BP management must be considered a potential problem.
ReplyDeleteAnd, when asked (prior to yesterday's game) about the Giants trouble, what did Kapler say? Well, the problem is all the LHP we are facing and thank goodness we have Slater and Haniger coming back soon. Really? After what we saw Bart and Ramos do to a very tough LHP in Jesus Luzardo, does anyone believe that the Giant's problems will go away once they get Austin Slater back? My guess is that Ramos will be sent down as soon as Slater or Haniger are ready. And perhaps Bart will go back to the bench, in favor of Sabol, the next time the Giants draw a RHP.
I am still up in the air about Mr. Zaidi's performance. But is becoming more and more apparent why both the Dodgers and the Phillies let Mr. Kapler go - and why they have both managed to do quite well since then.
Relief pitchers are, generally speaking, pretty erratic season-to-season. We kind of got spoiled because our bullpen has been above-average to top-notch and pretty consistent thanks to the 'Core Four' for a fairly long time. Last year was the first time, in recent years, where the Giants were below average as a bullpen. And it's only gotten worse this year.
DeleteWe have three relievers (all very small sample) with decent ERAs. Tyler Rodgers (thanks to the BABIP Gods making up for 2020) is doing great, his brother (Taylor), the closer, is terrible. Doval and Alexander are the only other relievers with a sub-4.00 ERA as Junis just took a loss (thanks 3 run HR) after Wood pulled his hamstring and had to be lifted.
As for Kapler's management, there's nothing wrong with it. He's certainly no Mike Matheney. In fact I'd say it's up there with Bochy only he doesn't get to LOOGY, play one-batter match-ups and, more important, he doesn't have a stable core of reliable relievers. It's not hard to look good when your bullpen is constantly Top-10 and sometimes Top-5.
Let's just look at the closer as a proxy for the instability of the bullpen. Who have his closers been?
2020 - Trevor Gott who had a so-so 2019 but went 100% sideways in 2020 was DFA'd in the season!
2021 - Jake McGee who blew a lot of saves in his 'good year' and was traded away with a 7.17 ERA in 2022!
2022 - Jake McGee was fired and Doval was elevated to closer after going up-and-down to Sacramento for the first part of the year.
2023 - Taylor Rodgers was signed to be the closer and Doval was demoted (despite being better). Rodgers' has been terrible.
And so we have these chronic bullpen issues. Mostly because of 'The Churn' and Zaidi's obsession with 'outsmarting everyone else.' So the Giants keep missing on what I consider 'obvious moves' like resigning Jarlin Garica (who, during his time as a Giant, had the 5th lowest ERA of all LH relievers). Well, we didn't, and now he's a Pirate.
It’s hard to identify exactly what has been going so wrong offense seems fine. The at bats look good generally. Starters have also looked pretty decent. My first take would be the bullpen. Crawford also is not looking good either at bats have looked bad defense hasn’t been as sharp.
ReplyDelete- Fan
I'm ok with FZ as the Pres/GM if they give their top /young prospects a chance to play at the MLB level. They have several of their top prospects playing in AA and AAA ball so that opportunity might come shortly. Patrick Bailey had 5 hits today and is hitting over 400 BA, small sample size.
ReplyDeleteBullpen - needs more hard throwers beside Doval who can come in and strike batters out. Taylor Rogers needs to step up, I thought he would be the 8th inning setup. Not a 2nd guess, but I wished Kap took Webb out instead of letting him pitch to Solar, not giving him the chance to lose the game after pitching well lnto the 7th inning . I know Webb had success against Solar though.
ReplyDelete