The Giants offense mounted a sustained attack aided in no small part by old fashioned hustle. Barry Zito was dealing from the first batter. The Giants cruised to an easy win over the hottest team in the NL and got off to a great start to their 6 game road trip back east. Key Lines:
Gregor Blanco- 1 for 3, 2 BB, SB(16). BA= .253. Blanco got the game off to a great start by drawing a walk and coming around to score on Buster Posey's first double. He would reach base 2 more times and score once more.
Melky Cabrera- 2 for 5, 2B. BA= .353. Melky's hit parade continues. He may have felt he had something to prove to the Braves and the fans in ATL. His double was a single that he stretched, possibly foolishly, into a double when Bourn routined a liner that he fielded in short right-center. Melky was safe by a hair so it all worked out for good.
Buster Posey- 3 for 5, 2 2B. BA= .302. Buster was on fire as he scalded the ball his first 3 AB's, the 3'd one a double to the left-centerfield wall with the bases loaded that drove in 3 runs. Buster is 8 for 15 since the All Star break. Buster may have had some extra motivation playing in his home state in front of friends and relatives.
Angel Pagan- 2 for 5. BA= .287. Pagan started the 6 run rally in the 4'th by beating out a grounder to first when Jurrjens missed the bag on the cover play. You never know when hustling down the line will pay off. It paid off big time in this game!
Hector Sanchez- 1 for 2. BA= .281. Hector hurt his left knee while diving back to the bag on a pickoff play. The leg has been gimpy for awhile now, though, so it might not have been a single injury event. Hopefully he's just banged up and needs a nice 2 week DL stint and nothing more. The Giants really can't afford to let him go day-to-day as that would leave them with no backup catcher, so a DL stint is a virtual certainty. Eli Whiteside will probably be the callup. As much of a gamer as Whitey is, and as much as some have complained about Hector's hitting and D, I don't think you can overstate what Hector has done for this team. His bat is much better than Whiteside's and combined with Buster's ability to play 1B has given the Giants tremendous flexibility that they will almost certainly lose. In addition, I believe the Giants best offensive lineup right now is Buster at 1B and Hector behind the plate. They lose that for awhile now.
Brandon Crawford- 2 for 4, BB. BA= .237. Crawford hit the ball with authority. He needed something good to happen for him at the plate. Maybe this can be a new starting point for him.
Barry Zito- 7 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 4 K's. ERA= 3.75. Zito was dealing. You could see if from the way he went after the first batter, Bourn. Zito really has been the guy who has saved the season from disaster with Timmy's struggles. The Braves LH batters, in particular, had no chance against him.
The Dodgers blew another game in the late innings, losing to the Phillies 3-2 to fall 3 games behind the NL West leading Giants. The D'Backs got blanked by Cincy 4-0 to fall 7 games behind.
Ryan Vogelsong faces Mike Minor in tomorrow's contest in Atlanta.
KC DFA'd Jonathan Sanchez today. The Giants have a history of giving their castoffs second chances. Let's see if he ends up coming back on minor league deal.
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Braves are .500 at home. Phillies 10 games below .500 at home. Sure be nice if the Giants could even their away games to .500...?
ReplyDeleteBuster is on a streak...Maybe he can karma Crawford into one. I have always thought this team since 2010 was streaky as heck. Here we go...
Zito, where have you been all these years??? Domination!!!
Hector, put some icy/heat on it and get back to work. I'm not to sure this isn't a better team with Sanchez catching. He might be a lot better with some regular PAs.
Keep it rolling Vogelsong...
Sanchez merely made It out of spring trainIng.
DeleteEither Bochy played close the chest or talent evaluation is not that easy, not just for amateurs.
I doubt either: the question was whether the Giants would surrender more defensively with the raw Sanchez than they would gain offensively. That wasn't easy to answer, and I've seen the suggestion that the team may have made the wrong choice vis-a-vis Sanchez and Stewart.
DeleteIf the team is offensively better right now with Sanchez replacing Belt, that can only be because Belt is slumping right now. But I take the point that Sanchez might be better with more ABs, a point the Beltists make about Belt but ignore when comparing BB and HS.
Fun Watching the Dodgers go down tonight. Hunter Pence with the game winner in the 8th: Bases-loaded, 2-out grounder up the middle off of Kenley Jansen. Phillies catcher Ruiz got gunned down by Kemp at 3rd on that play, he was tagged out JUST a split second after Mayberry scored the go-ahead run. What was Ruiz doing going for 3rd with 2 outs...on Kemp???? Kemp had two assists in the game. He'd already nailed Howard with a perfect throw at the plate earlier in the game. Kemp can play.
ReplyDeleteNice to see the Dodgers struggling. 6-19 in the past 25. Giants should keep in mind that they are getting help.
Love to get Jonathan back on a reclamation project. But, I'd be a little surprised if he wanted to come back. I think things got pretty icy between Giants and Sanchez towards the end.
Wow, and then to add insult to injury to the Royals, Verdugo makes his major league debut, starting tonight, and gets totally roughed up by the MARINERS: 1.2 innings, 6 ER.
DeleteSanchez may need to kick around awhile before he realizes his best chance to come back is working with the Giants pitching coaches in the minors for awhile. Yeah, Sabes TOTALLY won the Melky trade, even if Melky ends up leaving and all the Giants end up with is draft picks.
DeleteThe Pagan trade hasn't been as lopsided so far, but I think we can chalk that one up as a winner too.
DeleteGot to watch the whole game last night after ten days away from all the technology we take for granted. Zito was just dealing. Schulman quote on twitter cracked me up: Whoever taught/refined Zito's cutter oughta win a Nobel Prize. Another Schulman: Hector said doc told him it wasn't serious. But he was in a lot of pain when it happened.
ReplyDeleteSanchez has been a very good player for us, especially when you consider his age. Resting Posey is still important. Some interwebz Gints fans are angry that it takes time away from Belt or get riled up at Bochy's quotes on the matter. He hasn't put up a very good obp, but its still going to be much better than Stewart or Whiteside. I didn't see anything last night that indicated a DL stint, besides a precautionary MRI.
So I saw a MLBTR article that crosses up this FA comp thing again, basically the summary is you only get one draft pick instead of the two. This is the opposite of what they said before, as well as summaries on BA and PG. It may turn out OGC's careful reading of the language on MLB.com was indeed correct. Here's the summary: http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2012/07/the-new-draft-pick-compensation-system.html
Based on everything we've seen, I have to say I'm in the sign Melky for 5/75MM line. Aaron Rowand's deal would be a coup at this point. The Melky trade has been a complete steal, and the Pagan trade isn't far behind. The Mets are apparently shopping Ram Ram by the way, which might add to the Raggs legend of pitcher whispering.
I'd be psyched to get Dirty Sanchez back in the fold in AAA as insurance this year. I said at the start of the Melky trade that Melky realized he was going to fail out of MLB and did something about it, Dirty still hasn't considered the possibility. Maybe now he'll finally give it some thought.
1 compensation pick is pretty P poor compensation for losing a FA who is worth a $13 M offer. I really wish someone in authority would clear this up for good. We probably won't know until it actually goes down.
DeleteI was disappointed that Stewart was traded. In addition to having a great arm behind the plate, leading to a league leaders defensive runs saved despite playing so little, he is actually a pretty good hitter against LHP, which would be a almost perfect situation: platoon Posey and Stewart, with Posey mostly playing and Stewart stealing the occasional LHP starter, pushing Huff/Belt off 1B.
DeleteBut I'm now happy about the move. Kontos is a pretty good return for Stewart and Sanchez has been very decent behind the plate for us, and more importantly, he has been able to get hits when it counts - runners on base - leading to him being among the leaders on the team each month in RBI the first two months - he started dragging in June. And him being a SH means that Posey definitely gets more rest, whether playing 1B or sitting.
I'm actually happy about the DL too. He had been dragging for a while. The rest during the ASB helped him, but this gives him two weeks of rest. Meanwhile, Whitey gets some more MLB service days to add to his resume and pension, though I worry that when they send him back down, some team might just claim him out of spite, though I suppose Jackson Williams might be OK defensively up here, and who knows, maybe they give Tommy Josephs a kick in the tires if need be.
I would not mind getting Dirty back, but I don't think that he's mature enough to handle that yet. He will need to lead the journeyman's life before returning. But to DrB's comment about picking up Zito's option - which looks like a good thing to do down the line, given our farm system's dearth - maybe he'll be ready to come back by 2013 and be backup starter insurance, though I doubt it.
And Whiteside up, Sanchez DL'd. DrB with the soothsayin'...
ReplyDeleteSanchez probably isn't very interested in the Giants, because unlike a lot of developing teams, the Giants are not likely to give him a long look if he continues to struggle, as they are in a pennant race.
ReplyDeletePerhaps, but the Giants have a strong record of rehabilitating players, especially pitchers, on the skids and giving them a chance to win a job at the MLB level. It seems like a lot of players, once they've played for the Giants, really want to come back. The organization seems to have a way of generating loyalty. I think the fans are a big part of that too. Giants have the best fans in all of baseball!
DeleteSanchez might be hard to rehabilitate, though, because the velocity decline he suffered in his last year as a Giant has continued in Kansas City--he's now a high-80's guy who can't control his stuff and has a low strikeout rate.
DeletePerhaps it could be a mechanical tweak he needs from Dick Tidrow, much like how Dick went down and helped Bumgarner.
Delete