Ah, nothing like winning a series to cleanse the palate! And in a nice, come from behind despite our starter having a disaster start, mode.
Still, WEAK people, WEAK: the announcers said that the crowd was booing Lincecum. That is the weakest thing I've ever heard. Whoever did that should be ashamed and forced to wear a Benitez jersey to a Giants game, Lincecum is our 2 Cy Young winner, first to ever do it in his first two full seasons, and he did not deserve that! May a D-gers fan barf on anyone who did that!
Now the Giants get the chance to pay back to the D-backs the drubbing they got in Arizona at their hands. The D-backs are on a 4 game losing streak plus don't play well on the road (9-15 on the road), and the Giants like home cooking.
Game 1: Edwin Jackson vs. Cain
Jackson was suppose to come in the trade and be one of the top starters with Haren and Webb. Unfortunately for the D-backs, but good for the NL West, Webb is still rehabbing and they probably wished Jackson was rehabbing. He has a 6.28 ERA and 7.94 ERA on the road. Meanwhile, Cain has been masterful whether at home or on the road. Should be a Giants win.
Game 2: Billy Buckner vs. Sanchez
Buckner (not related to Bill Buckner it appears) was their next try at filling the 5th starter spot after Kris Benson (predictably) failed at even doing that. Don't take a lot to hold a 5th starting spot. Still, Buckner is even underperforming Benson, with a 9.00 ERA in two starts. He hasn't walked much but he has been battered around, 17 hits in 9 IP. He has pitched well, albeit in a couple of relief roles against the Giants in SF, but has been battered normally. But he has a 4.16 ERA on the road for his career, so it could just be that he can't handle Arizona's hitter's park.
The Giants pitchers have not done as well in May as April, including Sanchez, but Jon-no-hitter Sanchez seems to have his mojo when he's pitching at home. Should be a Giants win.
Game 3: Ian Kennedy vs. Wellemeyer
Ian Kennedy has been the D-backs best pitcher this season, hands down, with a 3.41 ERA overall. And he wasn't even the marquee player in the trade that netted him, Edwin Jackson was. Amazingly, though, he has been better at home (2.57 ERA) than on the road (4.08 ERA), and in any case his BABIP is unsustainably low in both cases unless he's one of those non-DIPS pitchers like Zito and, thus far, Cain, with a .205 BABIP at home and .278 on the road. Unlikely since he's not a lefty nor a knuckleballer, though not impossible. Should be a lot of regression eventually and the 20-27 D-backs would be left without even their one good starter. Still, that does not mean that he regresses in this game, there is still a lot of season to go.
Wellemeyer is bee a Jeckyll and Hyde: 3.03 ERA at home, horrible ERA on the road. He pitched into the 7th in his last start and was reasonable good in that start. Which gives me hope that he'll be OK in this start too. I would call this matchup pretty even, with a lean towards Wellemeyer for home team advantage.
Giants Thoughts
The Giants look like they should win this series, perhaps could even sweep under the right circumstances. That would be a good start to regaining the ground lost in the games played against the NL West thus far this season. And winning series is always good.
The offense, which was frozen on the road, thawed a little against the Nats, who threw some good pitchers against us and has a pretty good bullpen. Players are unslumping, though our main man, Pandoval, appears to be still searching for his mojo back.
Luckily, Torres has been continuing his hot streak atop our lineup, plus Sanchez appears to have figured out MLB pitching again, and had a great day yesterday. The announcers kept on saying that yesterday was the first day that he appeared to be patient at the plate - marked by his first two walks of the season - which allowed him to watch for his pitches and he got two hits too, making it a four times on the basepath day for him out of four AB's. Baggarly remarked on that in his blog.
It was another nice coming from behind victory yesterday. The Giants last year had none late in the game but the team this year has a couple of them, if I got that right. In any case, it is good that the offense can pick up the pitching sometimes.
Go Giants!
Oh, also Cain has a 2.29 career ERA against the D-Backs in SF.
ReplyDeleteWould seem to be even more of a cakewalk except that Jackson has actually had a couple of good starts, the last one was bad only because of some bad luck with the long-ball, else he was dominating otherwise.
So Jackson might actually be figuring out things. He clearly was lost to May 2nd start, but then with the May 7th start, he started striking out a lot of batters. Then the last two games were masterful except for the 2 homers.
So the first game won't be as easy as it would appear from my initial analysis. Though I would still lean towards Cain and the Giants.
And a series win still looks very possible, but now not as likely though. I mean, they have lost four in a row, 3 straight to D-Rox, their pitching staff has been struggling for the most part, they are pitching on the road, flying in from Colorado last night, though probably not late last night, so they probably got enough sleep but still travel is rough. And Cain has been the steadiest starter on the staff, in terms of avoiding big ups and downs, he's been our steady guy in the rotation, dependable. He has had only one start with over 3 ER given up. He just hasn't gotten the run support, only 4 starts with 4 or more runs (Giants 3-1 in those games), other 5 were 2 runs scored or less losses.
Big news from Baggarly regarding Posey: http://blogs.mercurynews.com/extrabaggs/2010/05/28/giants-gm-brian-sabean-scouted-fresno-last-week-says-buster-posey-could-be-called-up-to-play-first-base/
ReplyDeleteFrom an interview on KNBR, Baggarly reported: "Sabean personally scouted the Triple-A club last week, he said top prospect Buster Posey has really improved and the decision to promote him is day-to-day at this point.
Sabean said there is a realistic chance, with Edgar Renteria and Mark DeRosa out for the time being, that Posey could be recalled to play first base and Aubrey Huff could move to left field. But he stressed that Posey wouldn’t be promoted unless he’d be in the Giants lineup at least five days a week."
That to me basically mean that the Giants would have to determine that Molina needs a lot more rest in order to do that, as Posey would need to catch at least 2-3 games a week to do that, as I doubt that they want to make Posey a full-time 1B right now.
Molina, despite all the days off and Whiteside being Sanchez's personal catcher, has been slumping since May 12th's 2 hit game, more than two weeks ago. He at least got hits in four straight games from 14-17th, but has been worse than a pitcher since then. Perhaps the pressure of hitting 4th again got to him and made him try to do more than he can?
I think the Giants is probably willing to give Molina another week to start hitting again, but if he's still slumping by then, they might pull the trigger on Posey then.
Super 2 in full effect. The Giants won't bring him up before mid-June to avoid paying millions extra like they did with Lincecum. They are only a few weeks away (mid-June cut-off) to avoid this so I figure within a week of that, they'll swing a deal to open up a roster spot and bring him up. See my blog where I spent way too much time breaking down Buster Posey's future.
ReplyDeleteSabean has said over and over again that Posey's super two status would not affect the Giants decision.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, there is no cut off for super two. The 17% of rookies with the most official time on the official roster would get that designation. So there is no way to determine that ahead of time, you can only make guesses from prior seasons plus his time in Sept affects the timing too. There is no cutoff, only guesses.
I think Busters future depends on how Molina does soon, as he has been in a bad slump. basically, like last season, Posey is the incentive to Molina to start hitting. If he do not hit, Posey will come up and be taking time away at C and 1B, with Huff taking time in LF.
Looks like we are all wrong!
ReplyDeleteBaggarly blogged that a good source told him that Posey was coming up on Sat. If so, probably Joaquin going down. Exciting if true, makes some sense since he publicly said that Posey was improved.
Ishikawa becomes even more irrelevant.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that does appear to be so, especially if the Giants think that Huff can continue to hit well for us and play OK defense, they might decide to sign him and trade Ishikawa away. Seattle is looking for 1B since they sniffed Garko and DFAed him too, that would be nice since Ishikawa is from that area.
ReplyDeleteStill, from a payroll standpoint, it would make more sense to keep Ishikawa going forward, they won't need Huff offense as much at 1B, plus Huff's also reaching that age where things could degrade quickly, he's no young'un either. And given their plans to start Posey at 1B, you would want a left-handed hitter there who could platoon with him basically and they have always loved the D at that position. Plus, Ishikawa could deliver almost average WAR there if he can maintain a mid-to-high 700 OPS while delivering 2 WAR defense at 1B.
It will be interesting what they decide to do.
Still, irrelevant or not, this is better than what others have suggested for Ishikawa before, which is to just DFA him for nothing. At minimum, he should be tradeable for some cash, and he might be able to net a prospect of some sort as well depending on the team. We could swap suspect prospects, like how we traded Solomon Torres to Seattle for Shawn Estes and got some good value in return.
ReplyDelete