Expert Analysis: Kevin Correia, he’s pretty good until that one inning where he’s not.
Here’s the pitch count by inning for Correia in last nights 7-6 win over the Dodgers. See if you can find where the trouble started.
Inning PC# 1 12 2 11 3 10 4 14 5 36 6* 7
* Didn’t pitch the full inning, retired one batter, gave up a hit and was pulled.
The Giants hung a 7-0 lead on the Dodgers by the 4th and Correia almost gave it all back by the end of the 5th. Like Correia’s last start, he wasn’t given any favors by the infield defense. Castillo made maybe one of the worst throws I’ve ever seen a major league baseball player make. I’m talking ceremonial first pitch bad. Photographic evidence below.
Click to enlarge
The picture isn’t of the best quality but can you see the tiny white dot in front of the first base umpire? That’s the ball. Also, notice the Dodgers first base coach doing some weird evasive maneuver to escape Castillo’s errant throw. Here’s the scene. James Loney is leading off the bottom of the 5th and he hits a chopper into the hole between first and second. Castillo ranges left, somewhat lazily, into the gap and gets enough glove on the ball to knock it down. He then, with his back turned to the infield, picks up the ball, turns around, and fires a rolling groundball past the first base umpire. The ball clanks around in the foul territory in front of the first base dugout as Bengie Molina scrambles frantically over to pick it up.
And that was just the start of the inning.
Bengie Molina made a very odd play on a Juan Pierre bunt that resulted in a throwing error. Pierre drops a short bunt right in front of home plate. Molina picks up the ball and looks straight at the runner on 2nd — who is half way down the line by this time — and fakes a throw to third base. It was clear that Molina had no shot at the guy moving to third but he tried his best stare down anyways. Molina then turns to first, after the pump fake to third, and fires the ball past Jose Castillo and John Bowker, neither decided to cover first base. The ball flies down the RF line and Pierre ends up on 2nd base. The Giants made two errors on the night, all in the infield, and all in the 5th inning.
Correia lasted long enough to qualify and earn his first win since April 10th. Bochy used Tyler Walker in the 7th inning — after he was quoted in the papers as saying that he would use the dreaded matchups to decide 8th inning work — and let Taschner handle setup duties. Taschner looked good, striking out two hitters in his scoreless inning of work. I still think Taschner is one of our most tradable bullpen pieces and if the Giants can find a match, they’ll move him.
Funny quote from Tasch in the SFGiants.com recap on trade rumors:
“I’ve been a Giant for 10 seasons, since before the turn of the century,” said Taschner, who joined the organization as a second-round Draft choice in 1999. “What happens, happens. That’s the part of baseball you have no control over. All I can control is what I throw for strikes and how good my beard looks.”
Nice. Brian Wilson finished the game with a 14-pitch 9th inning, an incredible economical appearance for Wilson who sometimes pushes 30+ pitches to get a save.
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Trade Rumors Update: Light update this morning on the Molina-to-the-Marlins story that popped up earlier this week. The Marlins are believed to have narrowed their search for a catcher down to four targets: Bengie Molina, Gerald Laird, Ramon Hernandez, and Ryan Doumit. It’s believed that the Marlins would like to include Mike Jacobs in a trade for a catcher and the Giants reportedly had scouts at the Mets-Marlins game on Monday night.
I’m not big on Jacobs, his power is legit but he strikes out a good bit and has a bad defensive reputation at first. I’m not a believer in “must have JT Snow-like defense” at first base but Jacobs could be one of the worst fielders at that position — he had a -10 in ’07 by the Fielding Bible. In addition to his contact problems, he’s 27-years-old this year and could be theoretically peaking. Jacobs’ boost in power this year is largely due to an increase on his HR/F%. 19.3% of Jacobs flyballs have left the park this year. His ISO of .266 is a career high as well.
Pablo Sandoval’s success in AA could entice the Giants to conisder Molina trades but I don’t think it will happen for a couple of reasons. First, this team overvalues Molina to an extent. Especially in intangible areas like clubhouse leadership and other nebulous concepts. Molina, whether you want to believe it was a case of GM negotiation tactics or not, has landed on Sabes ‘Do-Not-Trade’ list along with Randy Winn. Statements from Sabean — ignoring the “His clock is winding down” blurb from this year — have tended to praise Molina heavily, he called him the team MVP of ’07. Second, as much as Bowker has struggled lately, I’d prefer to give him AB’s for the rest of this season than to transplant him to the bench to share time with Jacobs. Jacobs would be a poor platoon partner because he’s struggled to hit LHP in his career and the jury is still out on Bowker’s abilities to handle lefties at the plate. Jacobs would make a little sense for the Giants if the team could move Molina and Winn, creating an open spot for Bowker in the outfield, but I seriously doubt that both Molina and Winn will be traded this year.
The article also hints that the Marlins are looking for a lefty reliever and Taschner could be considered.
Nice post, enjoyed reading it.
Hopefully Correia is getting back to the way he was at the end of 2007, I would cut him a break on this big inning when there was two errors taking away two easy outs, but that’s me.
Ya, ixnay on the ike-May acob-Jay. I am not too impressed with him either. I would want – and don’t expect them to trade for Molina and Taschner – Chris Coghlan, Matt Dominguez, and Mike Stanton, with Dominguez being the most preferred because he’s a 3B – Coghlan is a 2B and we have Noonan plus numerous guys looking to play 2B now, and Stanton is an OF and way down in the minors, though with that power he’s showing in A-ball, I wouldn’t mind him either, we can figure things out should he make the majors.
Say, from what I know, the Fielding Bible don’t publish anything but the best and worse by position and league for 1 year and 3 years in the Bill James Handbook. Since you have his -10, does that mean he was one of the worse in the NL in 2007 or did they start publishing again – it is my understanding that 2009 was when they hope to publish again.
Yeah, he was in the bottom for 1B’s in ’07. He wasn’t the worst, that honor went to Dmitri Young who was an astounding -22 as a 1B. Nomar, Sexson, and Fielder were all worse than Jacobs and Hatteberg was tied with him at -10.
I really need to subscribe to James’ new site, I know it has updated +/- numbers.
Also, I just can’t see the Giants trading Molina. I would make that deal if the prospects were right (the mythical young position players), but I think he might also have some good value to the Giants as a platoon-mate with Pablo for next year.
No way the Giants should or would dump a full year of catching duty on Pablito next year, that is if he makes the ’09 starting roster.
If the Giants do miraculously move Molina, here’s a list of FA catchers for next year from Cots Contracts.
Rod Barajas TOR
Henry Blanco * CHC
Johnny Estrada MIL
Toby Hall * CWS
Adam Melhuse TEX
Mike Redmond * MIN
Ivan Rodriguez DET
David Ross * CIN
Javier Valentin CIN
Jason Varitek BOS
Vance Wilson DET
Gregg Zaun * TOR
The * denotes that the player has an option.
I don’t think Correia successfully executed a single breaking ball in the 5th. Correct me if I am wrong. He kept his cool enough to not completely melt down so I don’t think he completely lost focus. His fastball seemed the same as the first 4 innings. I think he just run out of gas. He has only thrown 63 innings this year so to me that points to not healed instead of , say, a conditioning problem.
As for supposed fixation on Jacobs perhaps the Fish need to realize we took Messenger because we were desperate to move He Who Starts Large Tire Fires ( ‘Mando). We are not desperate to move Molina.
The front office love affair with Winn is really beginning to severally annoy me. He is a good, solid, little player. But at this point they should consider any trade with a tasty ham sandwich as the center piece becuase we need that roster slot. The Giants are likely to need another pitcher soon. ( Correia can’t soak up innings, Zito is questionable, they may need to shut down ( or drastically reduce) the work load of either of the 3 young guns.) We have like the 4th worst record in the MLB with about 1/3 of a season left. Its play the kids and fringe guys. But you can’t do that if they are in the minors. I best stop before i go into rant mode.
What a wacky and amazing game that was. The Giants look like my nephew’s little league team sometimes, but as long as they beat the f’in’ Dodgers, all is forgiven.
And for no good reason at all, the first time I read the Taschner quote I thought it said ““I’ve been a Giant for 10 seasons, since before the time of slavery.”
Shut up, brain!
On a possible Molina trade, I am not one to subscribe to the “clubhouse chemistry” or other intangibles sort of nonsense, but if there is one position where it might have some merit, it is with a catcher. Does Molina have the trust and confidence of the pitchers? Does he know them well enough to make them feel comfortable with what he is calling so that they can relax and do their job? These seem to be elements of successful catching that can’t be quantified in stats – nor can I get a sense of it from watching games. If Molina does have these qualities, which would seem to be particularly valuable with a young staff, is he notably better than someone else? I think that, as soon as Kruk started referring to Bengie as “Big Money Molina” it was predictable that he would come down to earth, and he has. But he has value way beyond his numbers, and even considering defensive lapses, if he can help the young pitching staff develop.
I have also read your comments on Zito with a great deal of interest and I admire your analysis. We tend to think of injuries as a sudden blowout of some sort (Ow! I sprained my ankle!). The idea of adjusting a motion could be to prevent strain during the course of pitching (a precursor to an injury, if not an injury itself). This might be done consciously or subconsciously. I often listen to games on the radio rather than watch them on TV, but during Zito’s last start, I couldn’t help but notice what seems to me to be an extraordinary amount of time he spends shaking his left arm between pitches. Is this his normal practice? It looks like he is trying to keep his arm loose – and if he is trying to keep it loose several innings into a game, it suggests that it is too tight at this point, which is, again, either an injury or an injury in the making.
Hey Zo, Welcome to the blog! It’s good to have more of you RMC dudes running around here
This is why it’s hard to quantify ‘leadership’ or whatever you want to call it. Because you can’t see it’s effects. Is Molina really a good clubhouse guy? Or is that just a tag that Kruk and Kuip like to throw on him? If he is a good clubhouse guy, does it even matter? We’ve had some discussions on this type of thing here before but I don’t believe in it and I definitely don’t think the announcing booth has any idea of if it truly exists. It’s a nice story for viewers. “Rowand is a gamer, Molina is a calming influence” but that’s all I take it as. A story.
Game calling is an interesting subject because some guys are touted as being supreme game-callers. Keith Woolner of Baseball Prospectus did a study on this, with ex-Giant Mike Matheny a few years ago. Matheney has always been sold as a field general master game-caller.
Here’s the tasty bits from that study
“Looking at these results, though we would colloquially say that game-calling doesn’t exist, it’s more accurate to say that if there is a true game-calling ability, it lies below the threshold of detection.”
That’s similar to what I was saying above. Sure, chemistry might exist, so might game-calling, but it’s such a small quality that it doesn’t even register. Catchers have an impact on their pitchers, but it’s more tangible (being able to throw out baserunners) than intangible (comforting the pitcher, calling the right pitches, working well together, etc.)
You can read the study, here.
I think you are dead on with this statement. Injuries don’t always have to be a fiery explosion that has a player limping off the field, sometimes they cascade from other injuries into new injuries. For example, pitchers often lower their arm angles to reduce stress when they are having arm problems. John Smoltz did it when he became the Atlanta closer years ago and he tried it again this year when he attempted a come back. Mechanical changes can happen for these reasons. Zito has lowered his arm slot, supposedly, this year. I’m not saying he’s injured but he is making changes and that’s due to either injuries or ineffectiveness (such as trying to gain back velocity).
Thanks for writing, hope to see more of you in the comments.