Your 2014 Giants: 29th Rotational Turn

The Giants 29th Rotation PQS analysis.

ogc thoughts

29th Rotation Turn

After a great 28th turn with 5 DOM starts leading to 5 wins, the 29th turn returned to the unsteady performances of six of the past seven turns.  This is not what we need to win the division, though at the moment, barring two of the three remaining teams competing for a wild card getting white hot, it should be enough to get us to the wild card game, where, unless the other team is throwing a back of rotation guy out there, it's probably two good pitchers going up against each other, making the game a coin toss.  At least the Giants are in the lead for that right now, and going 3-2 is still good.

The Dodgers unfortunately kept up with us and their division lead stayed at 2 games this whole turn.  They won when we won, they lost when we lost.  But time and games are running out, and with LA throwing their top pitchers against us in the series coming up at home - with Ryu, Greinke, and Kershaw going up against Bumgarner, Hudson, Petit - it will not be easy.  As I noted in my post on our Ace, Bumgarner, he has a must win game against LA, because if he wins, we only need to win one of the remaining two, but if he loses, we need to win the other two, including winning against Kershaw, who has an amazing career record against us, he's a Giants killer for sure.

Bumgarner and Peavy had DOM starts in this turn, with the team winning both games.  Petit actually had a DIS start but it was a Coors' type of game, so the offense came back and won the game as the bullpen held off the Rockies.  Hudson and Vogie had MID games and the Giants lost both of those games.

Hudson continued his decline in PQS performance that he has had this season.  In his first 15 starts (that counted for my PQS analysis), 9 DOM and only 1 DIS start (60% DOM and 7% DIS).  The Giants went 9-6.  In the 11 starts since:  3 DOM and 2 DIS, or 33% DOM and 22% DIS, the Giants went 5-6.

Peavy continued to dominate:  6 DOM, 1 DIS in 8 starts or 75% DOM and 13% DIS, both great figures.  Unfortunately, the offense was not up to this and the team only went 4-4 in his starts so far, though 4-1 in his last five, so things are certainly picking up.

Thoughts on Pennant and Playoff Race

With a 3 game lead over the Brewers (whom the Cards passed up) in the Wild Card race, the Giants are comfortably in the lead there, with a 4 game lead over the Braves, but as we saw earlier this season with our big NL West lead, things can sure change in a hurry.  Plus, in any case, at 2 games back at this point in time, no reason to give up trying to win the division title with so many games (21 games, again, at this point in time) left and so many games left against the Dodgers (though Ryu, 4-1 with 2.76 ERA in SF; Greinke 1-0 with 2.19 ERA in SF; and Kershaw 7-2 with 0.76 ERA in SF - wow, how did we win two with that ERA?).  

At this point, the Giants just need to win every game and see how the division standings end up.  Jumping into the next rotation turn and into the present, we are done with non-NL West teams and play the remaining 19 games against NL West foes, including 6 against LA, but are now 3 games back.  

We lost a game in the standings because the D-backs flopped for the Dodgers, getting swept easily by LA in LA, they hardly scored much and had only one well pitched game.  Moreover, they went 4-15 against LA.  Hopefully they flop as big against us, with Petit, Vogie, and Peavy starting for us.   They are 5-8 against us at the moment, and to get close to matching the Dodgers, we would need to sweep the six games.  I think we need at least 4-2 to keep pace, in general, and that looks doable I think.

We also get 7 games against the Padres.  They are 6-10 against LA, 6-6 against us.  Again, we need to do well in the remaining games to catch up and to keep pace.  5-2 is the minimum, I think, as 4-3 would be a huge disappointment, even though SD is around a .500 team and thus 4-3 is probably the most likely result.

We are actually ahead of LA 7-6 right now, but once was 7-3.  Had we won just one of those games, we would have been tied for the division lead the past week instead of being 2 games back.  That just shows how important it is not to get swept by teams you are battling for a playoff spot, and especially for the division lead.  That's what happened in 2010, the Giants were actually head and shoulders above the Padres, but for some reason, lost a lot of games to the Padres.  They would not have been battling for the division league to the end had the Giants just been .500 against them that season, the Giants would have won the division running away had they played them .500 earlier in the season.

But it's going to be tough to take the division lead without beating LA, as they got four games against the woeful Cubs on their schedule, and the other games are against the woeful Padres (only 3) and Rockies (6 games with them), besides our six.

This is very much like 2010 where the team just had to focus on winning each and every game and then worry later where they end up in the standings.  Can't worry about future series, can't even worry about the current series, they need to pass through the gauntlet now and hope to get through it with the lead.

Young Players Perform, As Does Lineup, But Some Other Ones Faltering

In any case, this will be a great learning experience for the young players, both the rookies who were not around in 2012 and the young players who were not around for 2010.   The playoffs look likely (I include the wild card game as a playoff game, unlike the extra games that happened long ago, these wild card games is part of the playoff system, regularly played every season) for the Giants, but this push to the playoffs will still give them the heightened pressure that comes with a pennant chase.  

And the youngsters continue to contribute.  Panik is still hitting well after his hot streak previously.  In his last 14 starts, he's hitting .300/.344/.383/.727, which is pretty good for us in the #2 spot, and he's starting to reignite again (.834 OPS in his last 11 starts).   And Susac has been hitting the snot out of the ball in the past two weeks:  .368/.400/.737/1.137 with 1 HR and 4 doubles in 19 AB, 9 RBI in his last 8 games, 4 of which were starts.

Plus, Arias and Crawford are starting to hit as well in the last couple of weeks.  In fact, he's part of five guys over 1.000 OPS in the past two weeks:  Posey, Susac, Blanco, Pence, Arias.  Plus Panik, Sandoval, and Crawford are hitting OK too.

Pagan continues to struggle though.  And Ishikawa, after a nice start, has hit a dry patch already.   Duffy as well.  He probably would have been sent down by now had the rosters not been expanded on September 1st.  Morse has gotten cold again, but he's been out with an injury so perhaps that was contributing to his poor hitting already.

Pitching, Won't You Please Stand Up?

And hitting has been helping the team win, it is the pitching where the players have to stand up more.  Only five guys got ERA under 4 in the past two weeks.  And they are way under, with 0 or 1 ERA (Bumgarner's 1.71 ERA is the highest of the bunch, rest were 0.00 ERA, Peavy, Strickland, Cordier, Affeldt).   Strickland has been very good so far, 3 appearances, 3 IP, 3 K's, 0 walks, 0 runs, FYI.  One of the Giants FO has noted that he's a potential future closer so this is a great start so far.

And 8 guys with ERA at 4.50 or higher.  NEED - to - IMPROVE!

Winning the division title is going to be very rough.  The Giants need to go on an extended winning period to the end of the season, then see where LA ends up.  To do that, the pitching needs to pick things up.

Bumgarner and Peavy have been very steady, and so has Vogelsong for the most part, as well.  Hudson needs some sort of course correction, perhaps his age is showing and he needs to skip a start to freshen up.  Maybe Lincecum when he's ready can come in and take one of Hudson's starts.  Petit has been good for us as a spot starter, but we need more of the guy retiring 45 batters in a row and not what we saw in his last start, which hopefully was only due to him pitching in Coors.

The bullpen needs to pick things up as well.  Luckily the offense has covered up the problems in this unit over the past couple of weeks, but the Giants don't win generally unless the bullpen is humming along nicely.  Particularly Casilla, Romo, Lopez, Affeldt, of which only Affeldt has pitched well lately.   Hopefully the problems were glitches related to Coors, which did add to a number of pitchers' poor recent performances.