Consider the bullpen of the Giants my latest fascination. Why? Because the Giants’ bullpen has been great this season, right? I wrote about it yesterday, here. (That post has since been updated at the end.) Except, I think it’s possible that it’s been a bit more than just great. It’s been spectacular. In fact, it almost seems like the ‘pen is… Read more →
Maybe it’s the lowered expectations talking, but I was not terribly angry to watch that one slip away. For one thing, Lincecum was good and put his rough stretch another game behind him. For another, I’ve become apathetic to the failures of the Giant offense. Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, Giant hitters gotta fish for a first pitch slider…. Read more →
Fact #1: Jonathan Sanchez can be an incredibly frustrating pitcher to watch at times. Fact #2: Jonathan Sanchez is an above-average starting pitcher in the National League. These two facts are not irreconcilable. In last night’s game, Sanchez only lasted 4.2 innings against the Indians. In what can be best described as a typical Jonathan Sanchez start, Sanchez issued six… Read more →
Oh, Bruce Bochy. How you push my buttons. Look, I think I’ve entered a point in my life where I’ll relax and accept most managerial moves during a game. Unless a manager is pinch-hitting for his best hitter in the early stages of the game, or he’s making Tim Lincecum play CF, generally these moves are easy to digest. The… Read more →
Alternate title: please stop letting Javier Lopez face right-handed batters. I feel like I’ve been beating the ‘don’t let Lopez pitch to RHBs’ drum for awhile now, but once again, Bruce Bochy left Javier Lopez in to face too many righties. The result was this… J Lopez relieved S Romo. L Berkman grounded out to third. A Craig doubled to… Read more →
I am going to piggyback on Chris’ – and Crazy Crabbers’ – earlier post on Bochy’s confounding bullpen usage. (For now, I’ll leave his perplexingly slow hook during Tim Lincecum’s Monday start alone.) Instead of making Chris’ graph more complex, I’ll make it even simpler. I’m going to focus on four pitchers: Sergio Romo, Dan Runzler, Jeremy Affeldt and Javier… Read more →
If you care at all about fastball velocity, the horizontal and vertical movement of a slider, or anything else of a similar nature, you really should be reading more of Mike Fast at Baseball Prospectus – Could there be a better name for a man in their particular field, other than, perhaps, Home Run Baker? His most recent piece about… Read more →
By now you’ve probably heard that Brian Wilson has a mild oblique strain. Please, step back from the ledge. Additionally, his status for Opening Day is in doubt. Henry Schulman broke the original report of Wilson’s injury on twitter, and expanded on it at his blog. Bochy tried to be reassuring, saying, “Nothing is torn or anything,” but even he had to… Read more →
Good morning blog readers. It’s Saturday! The sun has finally come out, the weather is getting nicer, and baseball is just around the corner. Let’s celebrate with some links! * Is Jeff Suppan getting close to locking up the last pitcher’s spot on the roster? Coming off his worst start of the spring, Suppan “rebounded” and threw 4 innings against the Dodgers… Read more →
If this game had a subtitle, it would be: “Matt Cain is flipping awesome”. In his 3rd career postseason start, Matt Cain had yet another very effective game. The 26-year-old right-hander pitched 7.2 sterling innings to earn his 2nd win of the 2010 postseason. By sabermetric principles, it wasn’t a dominating start — Cain only had 2 strikeouts to 2… Read more →