Home Runs by Wilmer Flores and Michael Conforto led the Giants lineup in support of another Quality Start by Logan Webb. Key Lines:
Heliot Ramos CF- 3 for 5. BA= .320. Ramos current MLB residency is out to 113 PA's. He's showing no signs of hitting a wall, making smart decisions, making hard contact and using all fields. He's apparently gotten Bruce Bochy's attention. Kuip mentioned on the broadcast that when he talked to Boch it didn't take long for Boch to say, "...so Ramos is hot?" Kuip's reply was the game finally slowed down for him.
Matt Chapman 3B- 1 for 4, 2 BB. BA= .240. He's fallen a bit behind on the 25 HR pace but when you look at his Fangraphs stat line there are no glaring holes. He's accumulated a 1.7 fWAR in just over 1/3 of the season with positive contributions at the plate, on defense and running the bases. Meanwhile the guy I thought the Giants should keep and allocated Chapman's money elsewhere? He's at -0.4 fWAR with the A's. I think I always said Chapman would be an upgrade but I thought it would only be a small upgrade. Shows how much I know.
Michael Conforto LF- 1 for 4, HR(8), BB. BA= .268. Conforto looked rusty at the plate in his first two games back from the IL but is 2 for 6 with a HR and BB in his last two games. Except for the IL stint he's having a solid, if unspectacular, season. He did hit .324 in 11 games in May before going on the IL.
Wilmer Flores 1B- 2 for 5, 2 HR(4). BA= .224. Wilmer didn't just hit a HR, he hit two! Both solo shots that gave Logan Webb an early 2-run lead to work with. Wilmer's bat has been quiet most of the season but he now has 3 of his 4 HR's in his last two games and his 5 for 11 with 3 BB's over his last 3. Giants need him hitting until LMWJ gets back from the IL.
Logan Webb RHP- 7 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 0 BB, 6 K's. ERA- 2.92. Webb ran into some bad BABIP luck in the 5'th inning as 4 groundball hits plated 2 runs for the Rangers. He allowed just one hit in his other 6 innings of work. It was Webb's third game in a row going 7 innings. Two of those were Quality Starts. He now has 10 QS and 8 games in which he as gone at least 7 innings. All but one of the 7-inning starts have been QS. He leads MLB in IP and is 9'th in fWAR among pitchers.
The Win left the Giants 8.5 games behind the Dodgers in the NL West and tied with the Cubs, Reds and Cardinals for the 3'rd Wild Card Playoff spot.
Spencer Howard RHP makes the start today apparently without an Opener facing Andrew Heaney LHP
Victories are the salve of success, but the ugly stat of this 2-game win streak to a 4-way tie for the 3rd Wild Card (by games behind), is the total individual runners LOB: 27 yesterday and 36 (!) on Wednesday. Soler alone has 13 for the two games. Yesterday, 4 players left 18 while getting 4 RBIs.
ReplyDeleteThe Giants have 3 of the "top" 16 players in all MLB (LOB) with Soler @ #4 and Chapman & Estrada tied for #16.
It probably would be time to move Soler out of the everyday lineup, except there is no replacement! With another OFer, Conforto could replace him at DH but without Matos, who is the replacement? Meckler or Sabol or Fitzgerald? Surely not McKenna! How 'bout Bishop?
I am not sure where you get those numbers. I don't dispute them but think they are somewhat misleading. In yesterday's game, the Giants had a total of 16 baserunners and scored 5 runs. In the boxscore Team LOB is 11 which is the difference between runners on base and runs. In Wednesday's game, they had 25 runners reach base and 9 scored for a Team LOB of 16.
DeleteOn the other had, in the two games they combined to go 4 for 23 with RISP(BA= .174). If you believe in the Laws of BABIP, BA with RISP should approximate BA in every other situation so they are underperforming with RISP by a BA difference of about .080. I haven't looked up the league average with RISP but my gut feeling is most or all teams tend to underperform in those situations.
HR's remain the single most efficient way to produce runs.
Per B-R, the Giants overall BA with RISP on the season is .240 which is only slightly below their overall team BA. They rank #21 in MLB in BA with RISP. Giants overall Team BA is .248 which ranks #9 in MLB. That gap should close over the course of a full season, although it does not always.
DeleteAnd again, HR's remain the single biggest factor in run production.
Delete...if you don't want to get LOB, hit a HR!
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