The 2011 Backes

Published by on September 23, 2011 | 4 Responses

Well, the clock is ticking, isn’t it?

The Giants are down by 4 games and two teams in the wildcard and are six out with six to play in the division. They are a couple losses away from having wasted another year of excellent pitching.

If they had just scraped together 4 more wins over the season, they would at least be in charge of their own destiny.

The question that I can’t help but think of in such a situation is this: who are the four worst pitchers to beat the Giants this year? I call it the Backe awards. Why? I believe this will explain it:

 Here are the ground rules.

  1.  The Giants have to lose. You’d be surprised how many games where you remember the Giants getting dominated by some slop throwing doof, and it turns out they actually pulled through on a strong pitching performance and string of late-inning singles.
  2.  The bad pitcher has to do well. No fair allowing a bunch of runs, and then winning because Jonathan Sanchez walked eleventy billion people in the second inning.

There are a lot of ways to define a bad pitcher. That’s part of the “fun” of this exercise. Feel free to provide your own nominees in the comments.

4. Randy Wells – I thought about putting Mike Pelfrey for this spot, but Pelfrey’s season could be better described as disappointing as opposed to terrible. But Randy Wells!  He’s completely terrible! How does a 5:09 ERA and a K:HR rate comparable to a good pitcher’s K:BB rate sound to you? He has the highest game score against the Giants this season.  9 IP 7 K 1 BB 2 H.  http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SFN/SFN201108290.shtml

3. Clayton Mortensen – Clayton Mortensen’s AAA numbers look suspiciously like Randy Wells’s MLB numbers. At first glance, Mortensen did not pitch terribly well – 6 IP  4 K 2 BB 2 HR. But he was pitching at Coors, on a spot starting assignment, and Jim Tracy got greedy. The Giants roughed him up in the 6th inning. He had allowed only a single run on a wild pitch before that. http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/mortecl01.shtml

2. Dana Eveland – Eveland threw 168 ok innings with bad peripherals in 2008. Since then, he hasn’t shown much of an inclination to keep his ERA under 6. The fact that his 2011 ERA is under 3 is probably entirely attributable to the fact that he’s made four starts, all against either the Pirates or the Giants. He shut out the Giants for 7 innings.  http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SFN/SFN201109100.shtml

1. Graham Godfrey - Graham Godfrey has made 4 major league starts. He failed to get out of the 4th inning in two of them. His minor league career is best described as “nondescript”. He beat Tim Lincecum, though. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if he doesn’t get another win at the major league level.  He scattered six hits over seven innings, only giving a up a home run to Cody Ross.  http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/OAK/OAK201106170.shtml 

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Braves mama
Braves mama

I somehow found myself in the land of the Giants from way over here in Braves country. First I would like to commend the Giants on a good season prior to the bad luck of injuries. You are a very worthy foe. I have to admit that after nursing my wounds after the Braves lost in the NLDS last year, I rooted for the Giants this year. I beg to differ about Godfrey. He pitched a worthy game against Lincecum. HR from Cody Ross is all. His Red Sox start was in a hurricane. Look at the stats on pitchers during the deluge and you will find similar numbers. Yes the White Sox start stunk. Debut. Give you that one. I was wondering if you looked at his River Cats stats? Enough said. ERA leader. Did you look at his mid relief RAngers work? He held the most powerful offense in the ALCS to a minimum. I would love to hear your response.

matt2
matt2

I really do think it needs to be mentioned how this year was essentially a free year for the Giants. Am I upset that they blew it? Yes, of course I am, but this was a year that they could have thrown in the towel numerous times due to injuries, age problems, etc but they never did. There were managerial mistakes but for god sakes we're the defending champs and our star goes down, our 4th and 5th pitcher go down, our second baseman who is a catalyst for the offense goes down, etc. I wish i could rewind to the all star break, and do a re-do where we don't lose a shit load of games, but after a world series win and year full of injuries I'd say being in the wild card race briefly is a slight accomplishment. We're not Red Sox fans here, let's not be greedy

Patrick
Patrick

You forgot possibly the worst of the worst. His name is Henry Sosa. How in the world anyone can lose to that man I will never know.

Damon
Damon

"wasted another year of excellent pitching" makes it sound like theyve been living in futility for years rather than being the defending WS champs. The other 2 of the last 3 years they have narrowly missed the playoffs. Seattle is a team I would say routinely wastes excellent pitching.