Author Archives: Daniel Zarchy

About Daniel Zarchy

I enjoy baseball.

Postgames Wrap: Terrible Third Inning Sinks Giants, Terrible Third Inning Sinks Giants

Today was a pretty lousy day for baseball.

That’s not a particularly bold or controversial statement. The Giants had two, TWO, games against the St. Louis Cardinals, with their two best pitchers taking their turns. The Cardinals sit atop the NL Central and have the best record in the majors at 37-18. They’re real darn good. But still, a win or AT LEAST a competitive loss would’ve been a little better than the whuppin’ that happened today.

It’s a well known fact by now that the Giants are getting by on their offense, almost exclusively. They lead the NL in OPS+ with 112 (.732 OPS), but rank last in the NL in ERA+ with 83 (4.11 ERA). This ain’t your slightly older brother’s Giants. But really, how bad has it been? Pretty ugly:

G GS WAR ▴
Ryan Vogelsong 9 9 -1.7
Tim Lincecum 11 11 -0.8
Matt Cain 11 11 -0.4
Barry Zito* 11 11 -0.3
Madison Bumgarner* 11 11 1.1
Team Total 229 54 0.2
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 6/1/2013.

Bumgarner is the only Giants starter with positive WAR and that’s before today’s game. Pitching WAR has its problems, and Fangraphs ranks the pitchers a little differently, but the outlook is pretty sad.

But that just makes today’s futility at the plate all the more frustrating. I understand that today’s scores aren’t actually totally accurate. If I squint and stand up too quickly I can believe that the Giants would’ve beaten the Cardinals been slightly less humiliated if they had run out their varsity lineup: Buster Posey sat for the second game, while Angel Pagan and Pablo Sandoval remain sidelined with injuries.

Guillermo Quiroz, Joaquin Arias and Nick Noonan are, well, not very good:

G PA WAR ▾
Guillermo Quiroz 18 36 0.0
Joaquin Arias 37 46 -0.1
Nick Noonan* 32 55 -0.3
Team Total 771 2064 9.9
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 6/1/2013.

So that’s my positive takeaway from this game. If this had been game 7 of a hypothetical playoffs and the Giants had the chance to play with an ideal lineup, they maybe they would’ve stood a chance against Wainwright. Maybe.

But unfortunately that’s just not the way the world works, and the Giants don’t have a reasonable Plan B if one of their starters goes down. I don’t know if you’re scared yet, but I sure am.

And yes, the pitchers. The pitchers the pitchers the pitchers. I don’t know if this is just naive or if I don’t want to admit what the xFIP dragons have been saying all along, but I don’t think Matt Cain is broken. I don’t know anything about sign-stealing, if it’s really a thing or if it’s just a convenient excuse for getting spanked, but I’m sure going to cling to that as long as it’s a viable explanation. And the 9 strikeouts and 5 perfect innings have to be a good sign, right? Right? Matt Cain Panic Level: 1.9/10.

And Madison Bumgarner? Let’s focus on the six strikeouts in six innings, rather than the five runs over that stretch. It’s one thing to accept that your team has gone from pitching-heavy to hitting-heavy, and when your rotation is Cain-Bumgarner-PrayForRain. Now, we’re just praying for rain every day. It can’t stay this bad.

But hey, no errors.

Postgame Wrap: Lincecum Bad, Giants Worse

These days, it’s almost more confusing when Tim Lincecum succeeds than when he screws up. If there’s one thing we’ve learned by watching Barry Zito’s ascent to mediocrity these past couple of years it’s that when Zito’s breaking pitches are working, even a lineup of the best and brightest can’t catch up to an 84 mph. If Zito can establish the ridiculous curveball and surprisingly deceptive cutter, even his modest “fast”ball can work be incredibly effective as Zito pitches “backwards,” leading with breaking balls and following up with heat.

The problem with Lincecum seems to be that he’s still trying to pitch forward, starting with heat in the zone and finishing with sliders and changeups in the dirt. This means that he has to lead off at-bats by throwing fastballs over the plate. When he was doing that in 2008 and winning Cy Youngs, he was averaging 94 mph. Tonight, averaging 90 mph, those pitches are way too hittable.

But velocity isn’t the whole story, because we’ve seen him equally terrible when throwing hard. It’s just that a slower fastball with terrible location is much easier to hit than a faster fastball with terrible location.

For example, Michael Cuddyer’s double in the first inning:

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Postgame Wrap: Bryce Harper Will Eat Your Children

There are very few things in the world more pleasant than sitting at beautiful AT&T Park on a gorgeous summer day, shivering in the shade while your favorite baseball team tries to close out a sweep of the visiting team. Spectacular pitching, handsome defense, shiny plate discipline: this game had it all. Today was, all in all, a really good day in the grand scheme of things.

I’m trying to get all of that out of the way so I can start to complain a lot, because that game was really annoying. For a game in which so many things went right, today was a game of surprises. The Giants have had poor pitching and great offense, so today they pitched beautifully and couldn’t get it done at the plate. The Nationals lead the league in errors. Here’s some great defense. Bryce Harper looked awful yesterday and now apparently has a wall phobia. How ’bout a home run and some stellar defense?

Alas, we can’t win every game. Be we can complain after every game.

It’s a little too soon to crown Madison Bumgarner the Ace of the staff, especially with Cain getting back into Cain-like form, but he’s making a pretty good case for 1A status. Bumgarner was absolutely dealing tonight, striking out the side in the first (all swinging), and then scattering just four hits and two walks across seven strong innings, and had 17 first-pitch strikes.

Unfortunately, one of those hits was a blast from Bryce Harper, wunderkind and super-hyped prospect who unfortunately deserves every bit of the hype he’s receiving. He’s an amazing athlete and while none of us want our players to run into a wall at full speed, I think we all want to have a player on our team who would run into a wall at full speed if that’s what it took to win. Plus he’s 20! I don’t know if that particular point has been mentioned by the national media, but what he’s doing right now isn’t just really good from a 20-year-old player, but from any player. He also made a nice catch in the 8th inning to rob Hunter Pence of an RBI hit, and later doubled to right field while losing his helmet in a manner reminiscent of his first major league hit, a time when people everywhere were introduced to Harper’s, uh, unconventional haircut. Anyway, I’m moving Harper over from my “overhyped” column to my “appropriately hyped” column. Now please go away and leave us in peace.

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