Your 2014 Giants: NLDS Round: Nationals

My thoughts on playing the Nationals.

ogc thoughts

Wow, this is like facing the Giants pitching in 2010, only probably worse:  each of the scheduled starters (Strasberg, Zimmerman, Fister) have over 70% DOM and under 10% DIS, the very definition of an elite starter's performance in a season.  On top of that, both Roark and Gonzalez are also above 70% DOM, and while Roark is under 10% DIS as well, Gonzalez is at 18% DIS.  However, two of them appear to be related to whatever health issue he had in May/June, as he has two bad DIS starts before being DLed, and if you remove those from his record, he's roughly there, at 12% DIS.

Of course, of our starters this season, we did not have a great season overall for PQS.  Bumgarner was the only starter here all season with DOM% over 60%.   Peavy was over 60% in his time with us. but not overall.  So we technically don't have anyone over 70%.

The silver lining is that Bumgarner did not wear his new mantle of Ace starter well in the early beginning, and Peavy took some time to adjust.  He had 20 DOM and only 2 DIS in his last 27 starts.   That is 74% DOM and 7% DIS for Bumgarner.  For Peavy, he had 6 of his last 8, or 75% DOM with no DIS.

Plus, assuming Petit starts game 4 (wondering why the delay, or is Bochy thinking of having Vogie start?), he's been excellent as a starter when he's the regular starter and not an emergency fill-in.  4 DOM of 6 since taking over for Lincecum.  

Only Hudson is a weak link, under 50% DOM for the season, and much lower in the second half, where he was faltering a lot compared to his early season dominance.  I'm hoping that the extra rest will help him revert back to early season goodness.  Plus, he did do great in his last start, he appears to have fixed his mechanics.  Hopefully he can rise to the occasion, because should we lose Game 1, we can't lose Game 2, Game 1 can be so pivotal most of the time (2012 being the exception).

Our hitters seem to be in the right place, except for maybe Pence, but he runs hot and cold, but he usually rises to the occasion when RISP.  It was good to see most of the lineup hitting on Wednesday in Pittsburgh.

Overall, this will be a tough series to win with the pitchers we are facing.  Peavy really needs to come through and win Game 1, otherwise we might be facing a 2012 scenario again.   Their pitchers have some experience in playoff pitching, so this will not be new to them for the most part.  Strasburg has not pitched in the playoffs, but he's been a great pitcher forever, so probably not a concern for him.  Matty will probably be choosing between Roark and Gonzalez, so that would be interesting, as Roark has no playoff experience and is a rookie, while Gio is a vet with some playoff experience.  Roark has pitched better overall, though, so if Matty chooses Gio, he's going with the vet over the performance.

Then again, we will have Bumgarner in game 3 and if we have Petit in game 4, that gives me hope of a game 5 should we need to go that far.

In addition, as well was Washington has played this season, they are only 23-23 against winning teams (though they were 5-2 against us).   But we were 27-31, so there is that as well.

But I think that with Belt getting hot, as he appears to be doing, that will give us a good chance to make this a good series and come up on top, along with other guys in the lineup doing what they have been doing, including Crawford.  But this series is probably as tough as they have come, in terms of winning it.

Go Giants!