Now the Giants get to play 3 with them after sweeping the Marlins with a brilliant three game sweep with our top pitchers at the top of their game, retaking first place by half a game over the 'Dres, who didn't play yesterday and were percentage points behind the Giants at that time because they had played two games more than the Giants. And the Marlins were hot coming in, with Hanley Ramirez hotter than anything, but cooled off by the Giants.
Game 1: Mike Pelfrey vs. Sanchez
Pelfrey has been the best starter in the Mets rotation, but he got a big whipping in his last start. Meanwhile Sanchez has been battling a cold in his last two sub-par starts, which has started whispers by the Giants fanbase of regression. No, he just needs to get healthy.
And that's the key, who we and they get. If Sanchez is healthy, we get a great game; if not, it's another struggle. If Pelfrey is Dr. Pelfrey he was before, they get a great game; if he's the Mr. Pelfrey in his last start, the Giants offense will continue doing well.
Too hard to tell, call it a toss-up. Call it whoever wants it more.
Game 2: Johan Santana vs. Wellemeyer
Despite Santana's spanking in his last start - I don't even need to see his history, must be the worse start in his career - and Wellemeyer's nice start before he had his turn skipped (which worked out nicely in Miami), I don't harbor any illusions that we have a strong chance to win this game. Prior to that start, he had 4 DOM starts out of 5 and the other one was not a DIS start.
Hopefully our revving offense can do something against Santana, but that disaster start for Johan was in the Phillies bandbox, not the Mets pitchers park - 94 park factor in its first season in 2009, according to Bill James Handbook. However, Citi Field greatly favors homerun hitting right-handers (110 park factor) and Rowand has been hot, Hot, HOT! It is also like AT&T in that there are a preponderance of triples too, so look for both in this series. However, it suppresses singles and doubles greatly, which helps lean it towards a pitchers park.
Oddly, though, it suppresses walks (94) and elevates strikeouts (109), bad for our offense, but worse for their offense because they face both Sanchez and Lincecum this series.
Game 3: Oliver Perez vs. Lincecum
It is becoming more and more: Lincecum equals "Win day".
Giants Thoughts
What a series in Miami! Not only did they shut them down, including hotter than hot, Hanley Ramirez (well, for the most part, by shutting down everyone else), but the Giants offense came alive in a pitcher's park, led by the resurgent Aaron Rowand, who had an off first game back, striking out twice against D-Rox, but then went 6-14 against the Marlins with two key homers and 7 RBI, as he kept on driving in another hot hitter, Nate Schierholtz, who did not let a pitch to the head stop him long, he was 5 for 8 in the series, scored 4 runs plus hit his first homer of the season, missing the middle game as a precaution due to the HBP to the head. In the minors, Nate usually needed an adjustment period where he figured out how to hit for average, then switched modes and started slamming homers in a huge streak. Has he cracked the MLB nut? Is he ready to streak?
Perhaps. Nate has been great this season. Batting .381/.458/.587/1.045. Only 1 HR but 8 doubles, tied with Pablo for the team lead, plus a triple, for 206 ISO. The key is that he only has 8 strikeouts in 63 AB, which is right about the 15% strikeout rate (85% contact rate) that you want to do when you are a hitter, and which he didn't do last season, striking out a lot more than he had before.
A bigger key is that he's now taking walks, he got 7 so far, and his 7 BB:8 K ratio is close to the 1.0 ratio that only the best hitters can do, which results often with a .300+ BA. So not only do the best hitters get a high BA, but with all those walks, they have a high OBP too. Nate has been reducing his strikeouts as he developed plus increasing his walks too. However, while it is at a new high for his career, a large part of that was due to him batting 8th, which leads to plenty of IBB, which his hot hitting also encourages. Still, looking only at unintentional walks, he is taking more of them than ever. And taking more pitches too, just over 4 per PA now, when his range before was more like 3.1 to 3.4.
To top it off, the first start after getting hit in the head, Schierholtz goes 3 for 3 with his first homer of the season and a walk (intentional, but still).
Mark DeRosa had a nice game yesterday too, stung a drive for a double to drive in a run and another single for another run, key because eventually the Marlins scored 3 runs. Hopefully this is a sign that whatever problems he had been having is over, as he was hitting soft before.
Matt Downs came in and drove in a run after Edgar Renteria went down aggravating his groin injury: why Bochy (and the training staff) decided to play Renteria in rain like that, I don't know. Luckily, Downs has been making the most out of his opportunities to play, so the offense has not taken a drop, as Renteria has been hitting .316/.369/.395/.764.
And I haven't even mentioned Huff or Molina's good hitting performances so far this season.
Or the great pitching from our starters, with Cain's 5.2 innings of no-hit ball yesterday. The starting pitchers seem to be in an internal competition of "can you top this?" and "I want the Cy Young this season".
All this has made up for the fact that Juan Uribe, the darling of fans, has been in an extended slump since he took over from Renteria at SS, and Panda Sandoval has been in a mini-slump for a while. Speaking of which, Renteria appears to have further injured his groin and could be out three weeks.
Uribe will hold the SS job for a while, but I can see DeRosa possibly getting a start or two there to give Uribe a break and recharge himself. Plus, if Renteria goes DL, then probably Ryan Rohlinger, who is our utility MI guy in AAA now (don't Frandsen wish he could have been here with Downs and now probably Rohlinger getting looks?), would get the call up and possibly see some starts at SS also. Meanwhile, the Downs fanclub will be happy that he's probably going to be the starter at 2B until Franchez returns - he's scheduled to start rehab in San Jose this coming Tuesday - though I suspect that against some RHP DeRosa would play 2B while Bowker get some starts in LF. If Downs weren't hitting so well, we would have probably been seeing more Bowker in LF and DeRosa at 2B in the lineup since Downs got called up.
Now we face the Mets and because we are using our #5 starter, Wellemeyer, the series can go either way. Had we skipped him again - and I'm not saying that is the right thing to do, Timmy's arm is that important, but still - it would have been Santana vs. Lincecum, then Perez vs. Zito. That series I think we could have won, I would put Lincecum up against Santana anytime. But this series, it is a coin flip that basically depends on which pitchers show up in game 1, good/bad Sanchez/Pelfrey.
Great road trip, already guaranteed no worse than .500 with the sweep and just need one win for a winning road trip. Great job!
Go Giants!!!
That was a very encouraging series and I hope that they can carry over the hitting into this Mets series.
ReplyDeleteI am still not 100 percent ready to stop worrying about DeRosa, even with the hard hit ball he still hasn't shown anything to his traditional power side.
He still has only two ball that went to left field and both were grounder that got by the SS. When he starts to pull the ball with power I will feel much better.
This is a good first step for him though.
Thanks for the comment Scott. I agree that we should not stop worrying about DeRosa, I was only hoping that this was a sign of him snapping out of his prior funk.
ReplyDeleteThe radio account of the double was that the ball was stung, and though it was to the other way, from my recall, he's more of a gap to gap hitter, so hitting with power, whether pull or to the other way is good, I think. The video supports the radio's account, I think. Got to start somewhere.
KNBR reports that Renteria is on the DL, Rohlinger called up, plus, surprise, Velez sent down to Fresno, Denny Bautista, who was great during spring training and continued to dominate in AAA, is up.
ReplyDeleteBautista was a hot prospect many years back when younger, getting a number of opportunities to establish himself as a starter in 2004 to 2006, but he was unable to get it all together.
He has been a reliever the past couple of seasons since, and he wasn't really so bad with the Pirates last season, but they decided that he didn't have it and so the Giants were able to sign him.
Reliever stats, as always, is subject to small sampling so I'm not saying his 2009 stats was conclusive, but at least it was not that bad. According to Fangraphs, FIP of 3.61 in 2009, tERA of 4.07, while StatCorner (new site I like), FIP of 3.71 in 2009, tER of 3.54 (odd how their stats don't agree, the methodology should be the same; must be related to how they adjust to make it park and league neutral).
I'm pretty excite by this move to Bautista. He was so good that he was rated #59 prospect by Baseball America before the 2004 season (baseball-reference.com: http://www.baseball-reference.com/minors/player.cgi?id=bautis001den) He was a big strikeout guy as a starter and now as a reliever, he should be even better.
He just hasn't been able to translate his minor's dominance to the majors. His spring and AAA performance this season gives me hope that he might finally have figured it out (remember, just 27 for this season).
Also, side note, cousin of Pedro Martinez. Pedro has praised Felipe Alou publicly (but so did Vlad and it was reported that Vlad didn't want to join the Giants because of Alou) so I wonder if Alou kept his eye on Bautista because he knew of him on a personal level.
Bochy noted in pre-show that Bautista was the closer in Fresno and provides more coverage since Wellemeyer is back in the rotation.
ReplyDeleteHe said that Velez was sent to AAA to get him more playing time.
Ooops, forgot to mention Denny's nice stats in Fresno: 12.1 IP, 8 hits, only 3 walks and, wow, 15 K's.
ReplyDelete