Sanchez, Ortmeier, Roberts: The Giants Win Two in a Row!

Sanchez was Sizzling

Great game by Sanchez, getting double digit strikeouts and only two walks. He's going to dominate (5 PQS for this game) when he does that. Too bad the offense couldn't get him the win, but you knew that this was going to be a big theme of this season.

He suddenly makes the decision of what to do when Noah Lowry comes back suddenly very interesting. What happens to Correia or Sanchez when Lowry returns? Presumably they were betting that Sanchez would be the odd man out previously as his spot in the rotation is where you would want to drop Lowry into once he returned.

Now, as well as Correia pitched last season, if Sanchez continues to strike out 8-10 batters a game, that would be hard to send down, if not impossible. But if Correia can pitch really well, he would be hard to send down too. I think I have a possible solution that helps all the young pitchers.

Six Man Rotation

I think the Giants should move to a swing-man six-man rotation. Have all six starters in the rotation, but when there is a day off in the week, you skip over either Correia or Sanchez, alternating. A bonus is that this limits the starts that Cain and Lincecum (plus Lowry too) throws in the season - it is the cumulative wear and tear that really affects a starter - while giving Correia and Sanchez relatively regular starts (they can be the long man out of the bullpen when they are skipped).

Assuming there is around 22 starts per 6 men when Lowry returns in May (or about 132 games) , each of the regular 3 starters will get around 30 starts in 2008, Lowry about 25 starts, Correia and Sanchez, I'm guessing, around 20 or so starts each.

And I don't think that this should be done every season, just this season so that both Correia and Sanchez gets to stay up and get relatively regular starts/work. For example, when they are skipped, allow them to pitch 2-4 innings in a game around when a regular start would be, there is always a starter only going 5-7 innings most of the time. And once in a while they pitch as long as they can go when a starter gets knocked out of the box early, like Lincecum in the rain-delayed game.

Ortmeier Experiment Begins

Even before Roberts knee was diagnosed as needing a lot of surgery, it looked to me like the Giants were going to try to give Ortmeier more chances in the outfield. This was signaled by their move to make him strictly a right-handed batter. The team needs RHH who can hit because of the of LHHs Lewis and Schierholtz in the OF.

They clearly have not been impressed with Rajai Davis, who has seen little play this season thus far except for pinch-running. I think they were preparing to let Ortmeier take over the right-handed portion of the platoon in LF with Roberts, mainly because he is one of the few power hitting players on the team, let alone among the prospects. He hit for 20+ home run power in his short stints in the majors last season.

With Roberts going down for at least a couple of months due to the surgery - so serious that he had to get a second opinion (yep, it's bad all right!) and won't know what his return time is until they dig in, check out, and clean out the knee - it looks like Lewis will be platooning with Ortmeier in LF, though I would hope that it would be more a shared situation where Ortmeier gets a few games against RHP as well. Sabean in his KNBR show today also noted that he should also see play at 1B still.

Moreover, with Rowand not healthy, the guys could be seeing more play as that plays out, including Clay Timpner, who was brought up to replace Roberts because Schierholtz injured his right shin recently. If Rowand does go on the DL, I think Schierholtz, if healthy, would be brought up to start in RF, with Winn moving to CF, and get his chance at regular ABs starting.

I assume that Davis will semi-platoon in RF in that he will get to face all the tough left-handers the Giants face. I assume the Giants will want Schierholtz to face some LHP and get reps against them so that he can hopefully develop into a regular starter instead of a platoon player, as some experts had him pegged for in prior years.

All in all, all the young OF prospects should be seeing extensive play over the next couple of months, including Schierholtz if Rowand is out. They might still bring him up anyway once he is healthy since it was only a shin injury that kept Schierholtz from being the prospects called up instead of Timpner. They might play Winn in LF in order to give Schierholtz starts in RF.

And this Roberts injury was one of scenarios I laid out before the season. Roberts can be counted on to be out for at least 2-4 weeks each year, he is just a fragile-type platoon player, which is exactly what we needed this season - not Randy Winn - because he will be giving up a lot of playing time to the prospect outfielders, whereas Winn is a horse who regularly puts in 150+ games. Hopefully one of the young outfielders will get hot and finally figure things out (or just be hot, like Larry Herndon and Danny Gladden were for one glorious rookie season), forcing the Giants to finally trade off either Winn or Roberts (you know who I prefer :^), though Winn is more likely now because, well, he's not seriously injured right now.

And the Giants win two in a row, humm baby, Go Giants!