As a fan, you naturally want your team to crush the opposition game after game. Dominate the opposition! Run away with the division! That's not how these Giants roll though. They play Torture Baseball. White knuckle wins game after game. For sheer excitement and feeding my addiction to the game, it's like injecting pure heroin directly into the veins. It just doesn't get any better. Every game is a gripping contest with the outcome in doubt to the last AB and sometimes beyond. I long ago let go of fretting about whether this kind of play is sustainable or not. Heck, the Giants have been sustaining it for well over a full year now! Yesterday's game was no exception as the Giants and A's locked up in a see-saw battle that finally saw an extra-inning, walk-off rally put together by the two guys who were probably least likely to pull it off. Key Lines:
Andres Torres- 0 for 5, HBP. BA= .265. This line doesn't look like much but for the 4'th game in a row, Torres scored a run in the first inning. This time, he took one for the team and came around on Freddy Sanchez' double.
Buster Posey- 1 for 5. BB. BA= .281. Not a great game for Posey. Gotta be a bit concerned about the foul backs he's taking off the grill. This time he nearly had his jaw dislocated. Can't help but remember the way Mike Matheny's career ended.
Freddy Sanchez- 2 for 4, 2B. BA= .281.
Nate Schierholtz- 1 for 2, HR(4). BA= .263. Nate tied the game with a pinch hit 2 run dinger down the RF line. Nate is really starting to show off his power potential lately. He pulled this one down the line. I'm not sure why we don't see more of this kind of HR at AT&T. It seems like balls pulled down the line almost always get pushed foul by the wind. Not sure why this one stayed fair, but it sure came at an opportune time. I've seen replays of the HR and still am not sure if it was a splash hit or not. I never saw where it landed.
Darren Ford- 1 for 1, SB(5). Ford looked like a desperation pinch-hitter for Romo who had pitched 2 full innings. Instead he did a nice job of going the other way with the ball for a single to start the winning rally. Once he got on base, you knew the Giants were in business. Dude has game changing speed, I tell you. Game changing speed! Not only did he steal 2B to put himself in scoring position, but it is likely no other Giants could have scored from 2B on the game winning hit. You get the feeling that Darren Ford and his speed are slowly growing on Bruce Bochy.
Emmanuel Burriss- 1 for 2. Burriss not only poked the game winning hit to RF, but also played LF and 2B in the game. According to the writeups in sfgate.com and Extra Baggs, Ford and Burriss have become close friends. Watching the Giants championship run made a big impression on both of them and they spent the offseason talking to each other about how they could contribute more in the future. They worked together in the early season in Fresno and are now teammates on the Giants again. They made eye contact as Burriss came to the plate and nodded to each other. From Ford's perspective it was "you're going to do it, buddy." From Burriss' perspective, it was "if I get a hit, you're going to score." Both players delivered. Even though the ball got fairly deep to RF, Ryan Sweeney has a great arm and threw a seed to the plate. Ford beat the throw by a hair and probably no other Giant could have beaten it. How great is that story anyway? Burriss is another young player who Bochy is starting to notice. His willingness to do whatever the team asks him to do and be as versatile as possible is helping his cause, a lot. Part of that determination was instilled through watching the team win it all last year.
Jonathan Sanchez- 6 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 2 BB, 5 K's. ERA= 3.47. Pretty typical Sanchez start. I was just thinking. If he pitches his 5-6 IP and only gives up 1 or zero runs in the process, he and the Giants are going to win a large percentage of those games. You don't want all your starters lasting just 5 or 6 innings but if it's just one and he's as stingy with runs as Sanchez, it could be a whole lot worse.
Jeremy Affledt- 0.1 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 0 BB, 0 K. ERA= 5.94. It's a bit mystifying why Bochy, who has apparently lost faith in Romo would continue to place faith in Affledt in close games. He should not be entering any game in which the Giants are tied or have the lead until he proves he's figured out whatever is wrong.
Sergio Romo- 2 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 3 K's. ERA= 1.42. I don't buy that this proves Bochy has faith in him. I mean the game goes into extra innings and you've already burned up your closer. You have to put someone out there. The only ones left other than Romo were Lopez and Mota. BTW, when was the last time we saw Mota in a game?
With the W, the Giants stretched their lead in the NL West to 3.5 games on the Reeling Rockies who were swept by the BrewCrew over the weekend. The Dangerous D'Backs swept the Twins in Arizona and kept pace with the Giants to move into 3'rd place 4 games back. The Desperate Dodgers lost 2 out of 3 to the ChiSox including an 8-3 embarrassment yesterday to fall 7 games off the pace. The Pathetic Padres were annihilated by the Seattle Mariners in a 3 game sweep to fall 8.5 games behind. Right now, the Dangerous D'Backs are looking like the biggest threat in the division, but there is still a long, long way to go.
The Giants get a needed day off before taking on the Florida Marlins in AT&T Park with Matt Cain taking the mound in game one against Ricky Nolasco. Thank God they aren't facing Josh Johnson this series!
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I think another thing worth mentioning about Buriss' versatility was his throw he made trying to nail Mark Ellis at home from Godzilla's sac fly. Even though he didn't get him, it was a pretty darn good throw.
ReplyDeleteI read about that throw. Burriss has had a tough road over the last couple of seasons, but gotta hand it to him for persevering. He's greatly improved himself at the plate and has made himself versatile, willing to take on a super-sub role to gain a toehold in the majors.
ReplyDeletebochy predicting that panda will be back in two weeks
ReplyDeletegotta believe that the org will not wish to return either ford or burriss to the minors
so lets hope that rowand has been successful in interesting someone in the hunt in taking him, and at least part of his salary
still not clear why romo should be in bochy's dog house
was listening to the bum's post game tonite...one of the geniuses said the following, "good news about the giants...they are 13-5 at home...out of those 13 wins, 7 or 8 are walkoffs....that means they are very, very lucky...which means they will come back to earth....im a big believer in run differential...and the giants run differential is only plus 3 runs"
i swear to fucking christ...the idiots on the bum's flagship are just as stupid as their beachball bouncing, wave making fans
cant wait till they cant make payroll and those idiots on the radio are on the unemployment line
Yeah, some other factors that intellectually challenged Dodger homer failed to mention: Panda has been out for a lot of those wins. Even when Posey has been hitting, he hasn't been hitting for power. Huffy has been in a funk all season. Belt is still out there if needed. Tejada has been in a funk. Plus if they have to, the Giants have already proven they can win tight games with lockdown pitching pretty much indefinitely. Keep dreaming Dodgers fans. Right now, the team I'm looking at with a wary eye is the D'Backs.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you expect from LA radio? They aren't going to talk about their ship sinking. They are going to try to minimize what the Giants are doing. Anybody who's spent any time watching the Giants this year knows that this ain't luck. While they're flapping their gums, looking over their right shoulder, the Padres will be passing them on the left.
ReplyDeleteWhy does Affeldt, for Christsakes, lead the Giants pitchers in appearances? Why did Bochy pitch him on Sunday? The entire bullpen was available, including 3 sub 2.00 ERAs. Affeldt hasn't been right since '09. Garbage-time pitcher in this pen, at least til the ERA drops below 4. I'm not one for riding Bochy too much since the whole World Series thing...but this baffles me.
Oh, Doc, I was reading on the B-Ref blog about some proposals to speed up games. One that I really liked was a rule requiring relief pitchers to pitch until one of two things happen: They give up a baserunner or the end of the inning is reached. I really dislike this age of lefty AND righty specialists. (Speaking of Romo above...who is treated like a righty-only guy sometimes by Bochy, for no particular reason) This mentality sometimes leads to an inning where you see 3 or even 4 pitchers, and there is not much of threat going on.
ReplyDeleteI don't really see a downside to this propasal. What's your take?
I don't know. That seems like kind of an artificial rule to me. Not one that flows out of the game. Here's a few I think might be a bit more natural:
ReplyDelete1. Pitchers can't leave the mound between pitches unless the ball is put in play.
2. Hard clock on how soon the pitch has to be delivered after the pitchers gets it back.
3. Batter cannot leave the batter's box between pitches. Allow batters 1 timeout per AB.
Actually, the LA announcers are just spouting what any good sabermetrician would note, that most teams that have an over abundance of 1-run wins will regress at some point because, as the theory goes, most teams end up around .500 in 1-run games.
ReplyDeleteFrankly, I've never seen anyone actually PROVE this. I would imagine that because if you go and look over team's W/L, everything results in .500 because, well, that is how it is suppose to work out, one team wins, other team loses, .500.
They are probably noting more the likelihood that no team can keep up a 1-run differential from one season to the next, that there is some regression eventually to .500.
I think the error there is that it is like getting 8 heads in a row while flipping a coin, the likelihood of heads on the next flip is still 50/50, there is not necessarily a regression other than for the games going forward. So they are likely to continue to stay 8 games over .500 in 1-run games.
However, where I think they speak well is in terms of run differential, that does normally regress to pythagorean, and the Giants currently has a pythagorean of 23-23, which is wildly different from their 27-19 record, suggesting that they will regress to .500 at some point.
While that is true, what they forget is that this tends to even out over time as well, and the Giants were 2 games under last year, so as a regression to the mean from last season, they should be around 2 games over Pythagorean to balance out.
Also, what most of them don't know either is that there are managers who end up above pythagorean over time. I did an analysis once where I compiled all the manager's +/- versus Pythagorean and there are some managers who are positive as a manager to a significant degree, the correlation, while not the textbook 95%, I found some managers that was 50-70% that the null hypothesis is false, which is still pretty strong. FYI, Bochy was one of the ones positive.
So, yeah, the Giants can't keep it going as they are based on what they have done this season, but once they get Sandoval back into the lineup, together with a heating up Torres, Sanchez, Huff, Posey, Schierholtz, and that will boost that Pythagorean differential greatly.
I agree with DrB about speeding up the game. If you go with something artificial like that with relievers, you may as well just make it 3 balls and 2 strikes instead of 4 balls and 3 strikes, that would speed things up too.
ReplyDeleteI like DrB's suggestions, I've seen some of those before. Also, enforcing existing rules so that walking rain delays and pitchers who take too long are docked in some way.
the tribe has 8 walkoff wins this season...no one is calling them lucky
ReplyDeleteand why do games need to be speeded up
baseball draws fine
the avg game runs about 2 hrs...they stretch during close games
honestly...has anyone noticed the time of giants games this season?
forget speeding up games...just add stuff to make the games more fun
how about importing korean and south american baseball cheerleaders?
Haven't seen the Cheerleaders from South American and Korea yet, Bacci!
ReplyDeleteYep Doc & Obsessive, your suggestions were also brought up on the blog (with a ton of other ones). I dunno, I've just seen Bochy go 4 pitchers (three changes) in an inning this year. Takes a while to play through when we get to that.
I'm not for necessarily a faster paced game. I just don't want to see pitching changes to gain the lefty-righty, righty-lefty (and back again) advantage when the nothing has happened in the inning.
And Bacci, you're right, I'm not really keeping track of time with Giants games. 4 hours on Sunday was just fine...
Or, sorry, I meant the lefty-lefty or righty-righty pitching advantages...you know what I mean.
ReplyDeleteKelly, actually, something very important had happened under the scenario you mentioned: the Giants were one out closer to being out of the inning and therefore that much closer to winning the game.
ReplyDeleteThat is what the sabers call leverage, one out early on isn't that important, but it becomes huge if the tying or winning run is on base, up to bat, or on the on-deck circle.
Great comments everybody! Keep 'em coming.
ReplyDeleteObsessive, thanks for pointing that out. And, while I'm no sabermetritian, I can see the value of that. Bochy (and all other managers) make these kinds of switches for one pretty obvious reason: they win ballgames. It's just, at some points it gets a little ridiculous. However, as Doc pointed out, preventing a reliever from leaving a game is, I think he said, inorganic. That's true.
ReplyDeleteBut, we kind of do it with batters, right. Once announced, you gotta hit. Without that rule, you can see how crazy-tedious things could get.
Kelly,
ReplyDeleteIt is limited somewhat by roster limitations. There are only 7 relievers that can be used in any one game and they are usually not all available on the same night. If you use 3 or 4 relievers in one inning, you sure aren't going to be able to do it in a later inning or you will run out of pitchers.