Post-Game Recap: Giants Lose Game, Respect

Ugh, really? That game was far from great.

I still like mustaches……

yuppers

Signed,

Drying my hair before bed and hating life

we were young and naive back then. Just wait until this 2-4 home stand wraps up and we go 4-7 on the road trip.

That was before the team showed itself capable of a little bit more, if only they could hit the ball out of the infield.

That game was a pretty clear indication of how right we were – you can’t look at the team on the field last night and think ‘championship’. I’d be happy to be wrong…

Nate tomorrow.

Thats too optimistic for me

I think we all will but uh… is there any real reason to expect it?

We might get swept. How about that? :O

Why the Fred hate? It took a great throw to get him out and that douche nailed it.

that was just taking his secondary lead, and making a read on a ball in the dirt. Martin made a fantastic play to get him out.

That’s too much to ask from Bochy and the Giants.

is a small douche who acts tough with his rental moustache, fuck him.

SHIT

Start with “Grace Cathedral Park”, segue into “Mistress” and end with their 10-minute cover of “Silly Love Songs.”

yeah im so glad Billy beane refuses to trade with the giants

So other than preventing runs better than any other team in baseball, the staff isn’t good for nothin’. Got it.

(I agree with you in a lot of ways. When I say “going to waste”, I’m also thinking about the unsustainable WTF seasons from Miller and Medders.)

The reason this is a special season is that Cain is outperforming what we’d expect him to do, and that Zito is pitching like a decent major league pitcher, and that Sanchez might be putting it all together, and that Lincecum is Lincecum. By your logic, there is no such thing as a special season for pitchers because either they’ll be expected to put up the same performance for several years (in which case it’s not really special because you’ll see it a bunch of times) or they won’t be expected to (in which case we get what we have this year).

Cain actually just had two great games overall – he just suffered bad luck with the two homers in each game, which costed him. Otherwise, he pitched great, how often does he keep his walk total to 2 walks in 2 games? While striking out 12? Just some bad luck he’s experiencing from the baseball gods.

Zito would have to regress a lot to post a 4.5 FIP: he’s at 4.25 and he ends seasons with a great half regularly, which he’s doing again. Fangraphs adjusted projections have him at 4.18 FIP at the end of the season. If he’s his usual goodness in the second half, he should be able to get it down below 4.0 FIP.

Lincecum is Lincecum.

That gives us three great starters for the rest of the season; few teams can match that up top.

Sanchez has one so-so start and he’s dumped to the wayside? He actually pitched a good game yesterday over what he could control: 5.0 IP, 5 hits, 3 walks, 6 strikeouts, 0 HR. That’s a good start. Bad luck dictated that everything was bunched together and they scored 4 runs. Still, his ERA since his no-hitter is only 4.40, which many teams would love to have in the middle of their rotation; he’s only our 4th starter.

Martinez et al at 5th starter is actually no worse than most other teams, including playoff contending teams. Having a semi-OK pitcher at 5th is actually hard to do for most teams. Most teams rotate somebody in that spot and hope for the best.

So no, the pitching staff is not overrated. It is fantastic. But sometimes the baseball gods giveth, sometimes they take away. They’ve been taking away lately, but they probably gave when we went 6-1 on that homestand. And there’s still two more games.

And the way people say that we are wasting a special season: it’s not wasted, it’s been beautiful. Sure, the offense is lacking: the team is rebuilding. It’s like complaining about the house when the builder hasn’t put up the walls yet, or installed the plumbing. Of course the offense is lacking, the rebuilding isn’t done yet.

Don’t forget the defense has been pretty good too. How good? The Giants ERA is actually not that much better than the rest of the NL, it’s been bunched up at the top. But when you examine all the teams’ runs allowed averages, the Giants leap ahead of the competition. Our defense has been a huge part of the Giants leap to competitiveness and contention this season.

Why the woe over Cain not being a top 10 pitcher? He’s pitching great. He’s always been at the brink of being special like Lincecum. His problem has always been that he would just have those games where he is just bad, those disaster starts. Those starts is what costs pitcher’s their nice shiny ERAs. If a pitcher can just avoid those meltdowns, they can have decent ERAs overall even if they are not extra dominating otherwise.

What Cain has done to leap up this season is avoid those disaster starts while also increasing the number of his dominating starts, which he has done by reducing his walks. Walks had always costed him before, but now he’s eliminating that area of weakness in his game.

A good pitching staff is above average. A great one is up top the league in ERA. The Giants have been up top and has been great. It is not overrated, it is one of the best around.

And one of the best around helps the Giants stay competitive almost every game. It just does not help them win every game.

What people are missing is that pitchers are more consistently good than hitters are, game to game. They can keep their team close enough to win games. Even the best offenses go through dry spells, and even the best offenses cannot overcome when pitchers have a disaster start.

I’ve been trying to figure out the dichotomy of why people focus so much on offense but not as much on pitching. For example, hate to bring this up, but Giants fans almost always focus on Dusty taking the ball from Ortiz as where we lost the series. In my post-analysis, I think where we lost the series was games 2 and 3. In game 2, we came back from a 7 run deficit to take a 10-7 lead. We would have had a 2-0 lead in the series, winning that game. Instead, the bullpen gave up 4 more runs and we lost 11-10. In game 3, we lose 10-4, falling to 1-2 in the series. If either game were well-pitched, we would have won in 5 games.

Or think about the 60’s Giants. We had one of the best offenses ever. In a decade dominated by pitching, so dominating that baseball made two rules to make up for that: lowering the mound and adding the DH in the AL. Did the Giants win many pennants then? Who did? The pitching-led Bums.

Good pitchers are regularly good, particularly the best pitchers, like Lincecum, and like how Cain has been this season. My studies of PQS shows how consistently good a great pitcher is, they have well-pitched games 70-80% of the time, the best up to 90% of their starts. Even the best hitters don’t have much of any effect on any one game (and a series) most of the time. It really takes a team there but the starting pitcher is the lone gunman who can take over any game.

That’s why there is often an unexpected World Series hero, who have a great hitting series and thus win the MVP award. Gene Tenace, Bucky Dent, many others who hit so well that they get the MVP award, not the superstar hitter who got the fame and money. Bonds was considered a choker in playoff games until the 2002 playoffs because he hit so badly in all the other ones.

Pitchers can take over any game they start, but hitters, even when they get 3-4 hits in a game, achieves nothing if the rest of the lineup don’t do anything. Pitching is the key, pitching is our strength, pitching is going to lead us to the promise land over the 2010-2012 time frame (health permitting) supported by the offense. In business strategy lingo, pitching and defense are the core competencies for a baseball team, offense is the hygiene.

He’ll slide right into the lineup in 2011.

Signs point to no, if he stays another year it will probably be through arbitration

last sunday bobby evans hinted strongly that the giants were going to resign bengie

guilty

3 runs might as well be 10.

I went to the game anyway, because I like being at the park. I wish I hadn’t.

This might be the most frustrating thing about watching this team. Havn’t they only come back ONCE all year when they’ve been down by 3 runs or more????

When I watch other teams come back when they are down big it is very confusing to me.

these giants do not come from behind

I gave up after Sanchez walked his second batter.

Thats the spirit

Wash out your mouth with soap. Do it now!

/runs from room crying

BANNED

The Giants will probably have $50-70M available to sign players in the 2012-2014 timeframe, as only Zito and Rowand are signed out to then, plus maybe one or two others. Plus, by then, neither of their contracts will be as onerous as it is now, and thus tradeable.

As long as both are healthy, I don’t see how the Giants don’t sign both Cain and Lincecum to 3-4 year contracts before they go free agents. Both love pitching for the Giants and I think they would be willing to sign such a length of contract as they would still be only in their early 30’s when those contracts end, and can get good long contracts at that point on the free agent market.

How many HR’s would Matt Cain give up in the new Yankee Stadium?

Are there any noteworthy moments in the book?

“RAY DURHAM IS ONE OF THE ALL-TIME WORST BAY AREA CONTRACTS EVER omg”

I have him on my fantasy team!

I HATE Tulowitski. Why do they have to keep telling us he is from the Bay Area?

Screw him.

1

1 and 2 would both cause me to rage, so it’s probably one of those.

God forbid 3 would ever happen.

number of groundball hits: 10

Is there some secret that Sanchez can play short that I dont know about?

Johan Santana won the pitching triple crown in 2006, not just his league, but for all of MLB iirc.

I’d still like to think he has a good shot at it.

You are sooo missing your flight tomorrow.

Strangely, what this underscores to me is how good we would be if we had an average offense. It’s almost hopeful in a way.

Did you swear out loud after Sanchez’s first pitch double play or did you hold it in?

any boorish fan behavior to report?

And you didn’t even get a bobblehead as consolation. Poor guy.