Reds, Nationals and Charles Dickens

Welcome to the 10th Czar’s blog of 2016.

With apologies to Dickens it truly is the best of times and the worst of times. It is the best of times with 2/3rd of the season behind us and the G-Men being in first place in the NL West 3.5 games in front of the Dodgers. It is the worst of times limping home 1 and 7 from a post-All Star road trip against the Padres (swept in San Diego), the Red Sox (swept in Fenway) and the Yankees (lost 2 out of 3), and looking generally horrible.

What happened? It wasn’t so much an epic meltdown as a succession of lethargic games punctuated by moments of total and abject bullpen failure. When Casilla fell off the mound and balked home the winning run in the 10th inning after having come back against the Padres it was probably the most “not good at all” moment in recent Giants history (not on the scale of Dusty taking the ball out of Russ Ortiz’s hand in inning 7 of you know what game, but up there).

I’m glad though that Jim Rome enjoyed the “desperate, spastic throw” towards the plate.  At least someone had fun.

It’s still about the injury list as the Trade Deadline (August 1st) approaches

The Giants are down to 6 players on the DL right now, including three starting position players. The real losses continue to be Pence and Panik (both on minor league rehab assignments and coming along slowly) and Duffy (about to start rehab). On the pitching side only Gearrin is still on the DL and he is expected to start bullpen work this week.

By way of contrast, the Dodgers are up to 14 on the DL, with Kershaw going into surgery and maybe out for the season. That might partially explain the reason the G-Men continue to lead the division. However no one, and I include the Dodgers players here (not the Dodgers fans though, until they dump the wave and the beach balls it will always be juvenile delinquent time in Chavez Ravine), wants to limp into the play-offs on someone else’s injury list.

Bobby Evans is for sure working the wire as the trade deadline approaches and I have to believe that conversations were being held in NY over the arms available out of the Yankees bullpen, especially concerning Chapman (is the domestic violence charge reducing his value?) and Andrew Miller, both really hard throwers.

Does anyone remember George Plimpton’s Sidd Fitch, he of the 168 mph fastball for the Mets?  Well, Chapman (with a 105 mph fastball) is the closest I’ve ever seen to the legendary Fitch.  In fact, anyone that watched the game today should have spotted Brian Sabean in the stands directly behind home plate.  He could have been looking for Fitch.

Short of getting Chapman, Miller or another reliever to heal a seriously leaky bullpen, the G-Men have correctly noted that there is no position player out there better than the three guys on the way back from the DL, especially Pence and Panik. 

This week will be dominated by trade stories I’m sure, and the Giants will be in the thick of it, but don’t expect a deal for a position player, unless it’s giving up Parker or Williamson for pitching. They are both (especially Mac, who looks like he stepped out of GQ) making the most of their time with the big club and increasing their trade value by the day.  Mac is a serious bopper and if we can keep him I see left field in his future.

Can the G-Men put it back together?

Yes they can.

We who worship at the church of Bruce Bochy and Dave Righetti have faith. JoBu is taking the fear from our bats as we speak. Of course, the Reds pitching might help.

The G-Men still have a stellar defense, led by Crawford with the best defensive stats in baseball (at least until his 3 error game against the Yankees which followed a puff piece in the NYT that clearly put a jinx on him).

We also still have MadBum and Cueto, with Samardjiza right behind. We will see Peavy and Cain over the next two days. The starters have been the strength so far this season and if they get it together in August we have a great shot at staying in front of the division.

The bullpen has clearly been the problem (well, an inability to hit with men in scoring position also has something to do with it) because you can’t blow as many leads as they have blown and expect to survive through the playoffs. Still, we have Romo and Lopez in the bullpen looking historically good. Osich, Law and Strickland are looking average at best but maybe coming home will help them. Casilla has been a disaster. He needs a long break or a demotion to the 7th inning.

The Upcoming Games

This will be a vitally important homestand.

The Reds (30th in MLB - out of 30 teams - in pitching) come in for three games starting tomorrow night (I’ll be there Tuesday). The Reds, who are last in the NL Central (21.5 games back of the Cubs) are sellers at the trade deadline but are not to be trifled with.  They play well at AT&T and they have Jay Bruce and Joey Votto.  That said, if there ever was a team coming into town to try and get healthy against, it’s the Reds.

Then the Nationals (1st in pitching in MLB) come in for four games.  This is a playoff gut check series. Dusty Baker’s Nationals have almost the same record as the G-Men (58 and 41), and lead the NL East by 4.5 games over the Marlins. Scherzer, Strasburg and Roark are three of the top pitchers in the NL and Daniel Murphy and Bryce Harper are nails. This will be October baseball and we all just hope that Panik at least (if not Pence) will be back for the series. We will need every break we can get against a very hot, and very good, nationals team. Friday night is Cueto and I’m not going to miss that game!

It should be fun. We play both ends of the MLB pitching stat list in back to back series.

May the force, and seven innings from the starters, be with you always.

That’s it!

Ciao, and GO GIANTS!

The Czar

River Cats versus Rockies and Snakes

Welcome to the 9th Czar’s blog of 2016.

We are now at the 82 game mark, half way through the season. The G-Men are 51 and 31, 20 games over .500 and on track for a 100 win season. These next six games lead up to the All-Star break. After the break we start an 8 game road trip leading off with the Padres and ending up visiting the Red Sox and the Yankees in the AL East. Bum may or may not hit if he pitches one of those AL games but you have to believe that the national press will be all over it because of what happened in Arizona on Thursday.

Regardless, if the playoffs started today it would be the Cubs against the winner of the wild card game (either the Dodgers or the Mets) and the Giants against the Nationals, with the Cubs having home field advantage throughout the playoffs and the Nationals at AT&T. Anyone for a Giants/Cubs NLCS (Bochy versus Maddon)? It’s a distinct possibility based on what we have seen so far.

The injury list, the story of the season so far

The Giants have 10 players on the injury list or the DL right now, including five starters (if you count Tomlinson, the 4th infielder, as a starter). The real losses are Pence (August return), Duffy (Achilles strain, still out), Panik (7 day concussion DL) and Span (day to day). On the pitching side Cain and Romo are out but are due back soon (both are on minor league rehab assignments). Adrianza has been out all season, and Pena (one of the River Cats brought up when Duffy went down) is out for a week with a left ankle strain.

Injuries are not, however, limited to the G-Men. The Dodgers have 12 players on the injury list, including 8 pitchers, the most notable being Kershaw but also including four other pitchers that have started games this season (Ryu, Anderson, Wood and McCarthy). Starters on the injury list include Puig, Pederson, Hernandez and Eithier.  While I find it difficult to be sympathetic for the boys in blue, this injury list has to hurt.

The fact that the Dodgers are playing as well as they have (keeping pace but 6 games back) is very scary.  We don’t see the Dodger’s until mid-August in LA and then at AT&T for the closing series of the regular season.  Both teams should be healthy by that time so we can certainly expect to see good baseball. The Dodgers will not go quietly into the night.

However, as Tom Hanks so memorably pointed out, there is no crying in baseball so every team has to suck it up and perform regardless of injuries.

How are the Giants coping with so many players going down?

The answer to this question lies in Sacramento.  The River Cats have arrived in town and are doing a hell of a job. Gillespie (looking every inch a starter, unlike the last time he was up), Grant Green and Pena have covered third for Duffy and second for Panik and all have played well and hit well.  The G-Men did pick up Ruben Tejeda, an historically good hitter and decent fielder who went bad and got released by the Cardinals after being released by the Mets. Tejada hasn’t had a hit yet as a Giant and I expect he will be the first to go down (or away) when one of the regulars comes back up.

In the outfield, Pagan is back with a vengeance and Williamson and Parker (both always an adventure in the outfield) clearly have the power to make a dent in what we are missing with Pence out. Parker’s dinger last night to the opposite field was a thing of beauty, as was the Williamson HR against the Pirates a week or so ago.

Regardless, while we watch re-runs of General Hospital there is baseball to be played.

The Giants are winning – why?

Let’s start with the basics. That would be the fact that the Giants are playing evenly in all aspects of the game; 6th in pitching in MLB, 8th in hitting and 10th in fielding. You can’t get much more balanced then that.

However, I can’t say it too many times.  It’s really the pitching.  Bumgarner (2.20 ERA, 9 W’s) and Cueto (2.57 ERA, 12 W’s) are both having Cy Young type years. Samardzija has been good and bad and we are all holding our breath for tonight’s start in Arizona.  The three top starters have 29 wins between them (think about that stat for a moment – evened out over an entire season that could translate to three 20 game winners, shades of the 1962 G-Men).  The rumor mill says that Bochy is considering moving Suarez’s start on Sunday of next week to give Bum another start before the All-Star game (Bum won’t be eligible to pitch in the AS game if that happens, but who cares as long as we get another W). Every W is cherished.

The bull-pen continues to perform well and is giving the team time to come back in the late innings, which recently seems to be a Giants specialty. I don’t know where the Giants stand in come from behind victories but it has to be close to the top of the MLB list.

The hitting, fielding and the Coaching staff

Fielding also wins games, as anyone who saw the Crawford/Belt DP last night understands. Crawford and Belt both deserve the All-Star honors they are going to get. Between them they have turned first base and the up the middle defense into a ballet of web gems plays.  Span has been no slouch in Center field either, and Buster behind the plate is simply the best catcher in the game, period, and is a deadly hitter.  We are watching a hall of fame career unfold before our eyes.

It’s kind of a mystery why the Giants are hitting so well (.265 team BA) when it seems like they don’t hit a lot of HR’s, or a lot of doubles.  My take is that the hits are timely because of good coaching, good intelligence on opposing pitchers and good baserunning.  However without Belt, Posey and Crawford (team leaders in BA, RBI’s and HR’s) the team would be in a world of hurt.

Finally, team management and the coaches are mixing and matching without any sense of panic whatsoever.  Whenever they need another piece they find it – most recently from Sacramento. Pretty awesome in all aspects of the game.

The Upcoming Games

The upcoming games are all division contests. The Rockies always play the G-men hard, and they are relatively healthy. You can watch the Snakes tonight (as this goes out the Giants are up 3-0) but remember the April series where the Snakes swept a four game series at AT&T.  The Diamondbacks like AT&T. That series, hopefully, will be payback.

May the force, and seven innings from the starters, be with you always.

That’s it!

Ciao, and GO GIANTS!

The Czar