There is an old sports saying, "you can't win them all" especially true in baseball. The Giants had to battle a different kind of inclement weather, a gale-force wind blowing from left to right, plus a very good baseball team. This time the law of averages caught up with them and they came up just short....as in about 3 feet short. Key Lines:
Jung Hoo Lee CF- 2 for 4, 2B. BA= .333. Lee made a nice recovery from last night's 0 for 5. In addition to a good game at the plate, he threw out Bryce Harper at 2B who was strangely attempting to advance on a caught flyball. Harper is an immensely talented player but he sometimes tries to do too much.
Matt Chapman 3B- 2 for 3, 2B, BB, SB(2). BA= .203. Giants need Chapman to get going. Hopefully this is the start. BTW, I was reading a post on Blue Sky that per statcast, Chapman has the second highest foot speed on the team.
Casey Schmitt 1B- 1 for 4. BA= .211. Chapman and Wilmer Flores, of all players, pulled off a double steal in the 4'th inning to set up Casey's 2-run single to tie the game at 2. Dave Flemming and Javy Lopez had fun with Wilmer's back-end steal of 2B. Schmitt alo came up about 3 feet short in his bid for a 3-run HR to CF that would have given the Giants a 7-6 lead in the 8'th inning.
Justin Verlander RHP- 5.2 IP, 8 H, 4 R, 3 BB, 1 K. ERA= 6.75. Verlander ran into trouble in the second inning for the third game in a row but limited the damage to 2 runs. I am sure Verlander gets a pretty big voice in whether he stays in a game or not. He tried to stretch it out to 6 innings and didn't make it out of the inning. In retrospect I think both Verlander and Bob Melvin might think it would be better to bring Randy Rodriguez in to start the 6'th inning or at least have Verlander on a shorter leash in the inning.
Hayden Birdsong RHP- 1 IP, 2 H, 2 R, 1 BB, 0 K. ERA= 1.80. Birdsong faced the top of the Phillies order in the 7'th inning. Bryson Stott led off with a triple. He got Trea Turner on a groundout with the runner staying put at 3B but then gave up a 2-run blast to.....Bryce Harper to give the Phillies a 6-3 lead that stood up by 3 feet.
The Loss evened the 4-game series at 1-1 and dropped the Giants record to 12-5. Their record on this road trip is 3-2. As Taylor Swift sings it, you gotta Shake It Off!
Robbie Ray LHP tries to get the Giants back on the winning side of the W-L ledger tomorrow evening facing Aaron Nola RHP who is off to a slow start to the season which means he is due to positively regress any start now.
I think it’s time to start to be concerned about Verlander. Love him going out and battling, but I would say he needs to show something in the next one or two starts.
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Not saying you are wrong but 1 or 2 more starts we're still in April. I am pretty sure Verlander has more than a 1 month leash.
DeleteI'd give Verlander until June
DeleteI thought he showed a lot of improvement over his other starts. His big problem was deciding to take the mound again in the sixth. If they can get five solid innings out of him the rest of the way, the Giants should be okay. Thankfully, it's only mid-April.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the notion that Verlander should be pitching fewer innings. When he came out to pitch the 6th, it felt like he should have been taken out. It seems that when they signed him that the game plan was to get 100-120 innings. He was not overwhelmingas he had only one K. Verlander was also saved in that inning where Harper was thrown out at 2nd. Patrick Baailey had just thrown out Trea Turner who was trying to steal 2nd. My hope kis Verlander gets going, but Melvin should let the pen take over in the 6th.
ReplyDeleteI get that Melvin was trying to save the bullpen. The issue to me is lack of command and subsequent racking up pitch count. They are not going to put the future HOFer into the pen but they may need to look at Verlander games similar to the way they had bullpen games but not as extreme.
ReplyDeleteKrukow addressed the Verlander question during his show today. In previous years, Kapler was prone to the quick hook whenever a starter got into trouble and it infuriated the veterans such as Wood or Stripling. Krukow said that the starters like to be challenged and to show confidence in the rotation, will tend to leave starters in longer. Verlander was not getting hit hard so Melvin left him in. It just did not work out. Krukow feels the young pitchers will benefit from not having to always look over the shoulder for the quick hook so this is by design.
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