Results tagged ‘ Brandon Crawford ’
Scutaro leaves game after HBP, x-rays negative but…
…what about what George Kontos did by throwing at the Pirates three times, twice hitting a player in Pedro Alvarez and Andrew McCutchen. While the Pirates didn’t retaliate against the Giants in the top of the 9th, Andrew McCutchen had a pretty aggressive slide into Brandon Crawford on a double play in the bottom of the 8th.
All this because somebody may have thought Marco Scutaro may have been hurt really bad, with flashbacks of Ryan Vogelsong. In case you missed the Scutaro HBP:
This seemed bad. That frustration and pain was scary for all of us to watch.
Now Kontos’ plunking seems even dumber, because now the Pirates are going to retaliate against someone since McCutchen will be hit, and I’ll give you one guess as to whom they will target. What if that intentional plunking of Buster Posey gets him on the DL? That’s the danger of all this immaturity and it is simply not worth it. Hopefully this doesn’t happen and the Pirates are the better people in all this… but after seeing McCutchen fly into 2nd, I’m not so sure we’ll see the Pirates ignoring the opportunity to get even.
NL All Star Game Vote Counts Released — Posey and Panda lead the way for SF
Yesterday the counts for the American League were released, and so today the home National League’s vote count is out to the people where you can view here. Some facts and reactions:
NL @allstargame voting leaders:1B: Votto2B: Phillips3B: SandovalSS: TulowitzkiC: PoseyOF: J. Upton OF: Harper OF: Braun
— MLB (@MLB) June 4, 2013
Surprises for me are Pablo Sandoval at third, Bryce Harper gets the celebrity vote, as you could argue Carlos Gomez, Carlos Gonzalez, and Shin-Soo Choo are among those more deserving with the stats, but I’ll let that slide.
Posey leads all NL with 1,275,956 votes, J. Upton is second w/ 1,184,249. Upton leads all OFs. Would be 1st fan selection for 2-time AllStar — David O’Brien (@ajcbraves) June 4, 2013
Buster Posey is the story of the day with the amount of votes he’s getting, but he’s not blowing away the competition.
Beltran 4th among OF but trails third by 100,000 votes. Heavy Giants participation apparent. — Joe Strauss (@JoeStrauss) June 4, 2013
It’s true, when Angel Pagan is 8th and Gregor Blanco is 11th, and neither is having an All Star caliber season, that is a fair statement. Giants fans are at it again.
Three #SFGiants in second place in All-Star voting: @bcraw35 (behind Tulowitzki), @bbelt9 (behind Votto) and Scutaro (behind Phillips)
— Alex Pavlovic (@AlexPavlovic) June 4, 2013
Brandon Crawford is about 350,000 votes behind Troy Tulowitzki, Brandon Belt is about 500,000 behind Joey Votto, and Marco Scutaro is 200,000 behind Brandon Phillips. I really feel like Matt Carpenter needs to be getting more of a look, as he’s quietly put up a pretty valuable year.
Giants fans vote a lot. Belt 2nd, Scutaro 2nd, Sandoval 1st, Crawford 2nd, Posey 1st; Pence 6th, Pagan 8th, Blanco 11th in OF
— Eric Stephen (@truebluela) June 4, 2013
The challenge for other clubs is can they get their fanbase to vote their one guy (for the Brewers two guys) in to out do what the Giants fans are doing for all their outfielders.
This will be a real test for Giant fans — to see how many unworthy players they can vote into the starting lineup
— Ray Ratto (@RattoCSN) June 4, 2013
Right now, I’d say Posey is the only ASG starter I could argue that the Giants have. Yadier Molina winning that over Buster would not be a problem by me, he’s really good as well. We saw what Giants fans did last year, voting in Melky Cabrera in addition to Panda and Posey, and Matt Cain took the bump for the NL. There were many unhappy within the NL, although the NL would end up winning, with the Giants players providing plenty of production, in a shutout victory over the American League, giving the Giants of all teams home field advantage in the 2012 World Series.
The 2013 All-Star Game will be played at Citi Field, home of the New York Mets, on Tuesday, July 16.
DeceivinGIFCap: Giants play game against Rockies on a Friday and wore orange
Tim Lincecum took the mound for the Giants on an Orange Friday at the yard, as the tied for first place in the NL West Rockies and Giants squared off for a good old fashioned nine inning baseball game. If you missed the game, let me mislead tell you about some of the things that happened.
Here’s some evidence of the good pitches that Lincecum threw
Tyler Chatwood was SO unsuccessful on this butcher boy attempt and the runner at first would get doubled off for a double play. Nice try, Colorado!
Todd Helton tried to take second against Gregor Blanco, but he was just being silly!
Yerrrrrrrr out, Toddy!
Nolan Arenado was showing off tonight playing defense. Quite good, this young fella!
But Brandon Crawford is always there to help out with a double play.
Yea! Go Giants!
Validating your vote for every #SFGiants player with numbers
Every fan has their own strategy for voting for choosing whom they would like to don the All Star patches in New York in July. The strategies I know of are:
- Voting for the statistically best on both leagues (usually that’s pretty subjective though)
- Voting for the best in the league of the team you support, voting for the worst on the other league
- Voting for the players you want to see play
- Voting for only your team in one league, and then a variety of choices for the other league (e.g., just the Astros, nobody, etc.)
Of course, every team wants you to vote for their players, so now for Giants fans that want to justify their all-Giants ballot, how will you do that from a statistical point of view? All stats are within the context of their position within the National League:
- Buster Posey: tied for the NL lead in fWAR (1.8), leads in OBP, wOBA, wRC+. Possibly the easiest vote for the ballot within the Champs’ roster.
- Brandon Belt: According to Fangraphs fielding value, is the very best. Also, number of baby giraffe hats to other headgear of NL 1B very much in favor of Belt.
- Marco Scutaro: Leads in highest BABIP, lowest K%, AVG, Contact% (making contact with the pitch — 95.3), lowest rate of swinging strikes (1.4%)
- Brandon Crawford: Tied for having the highest positional value on Fangraphs. Most handsome.
- Pablo Sandoval: T-most HR (8), leads in RBI (see if you can sneak this one past somebody), AVG, WPA all despite seeing the lowest ratio of pitches in the strike zone.
- Gregor Blanco: Because he makes great catches in the outfield to save the game, that’s why you vote him in. You may also use the fact that he’s been much better than replacement level overall this year
- Angel Pagan: Makes the highest rate of contact on balls outside of the strike zone. Also could have the best hair of all NL center fielders.
- Hunter Pence: T-most SB (8), has seven dingers, and his defense hasn’t been all that bad.
I’m just glad I did this with the Giants and not some really awful team. Pitchers get selected by people that wear the uniform, except for that Final Vote stage. Even if you’re not voting for the Giants, and voting for the best in the NL, they still have some pretty good options to choose from. Maybe I’ll do a blog post on that someday.
GIFCap: Reminding you what a #SFGiants win looks like
If it seems like it’s been a while since the Giants won, and it’s true: Sunday was the last time. Today is Thursday, and the last two days in Toronto have been nightmares thanks to the defense and the pitching of the squad. Here are some GIFs that might make up a victory in the regular season.
Everything seemed to be going swimmingly when Matt Cain started out by striking out Dexter Fowler.
But then Matt Cain started allowing dingerz and not catching breaks at the plate.
BUT THEN Brandon Crawford begins being the star of the show by hitting a bases clearing double with 2 outs in the 4th.
And then goes all Golden on the Rockies
Barehanded, ya’ll
The Giants would score some more runs, yada yada details, and then you bring in Sergio Romo to strike out Dexter Fowler just like the game started for the Rockies at bat.
Here’s a jump where Angel Pagan is unhappy with Hunter Pence.
Here’s some lovin between Marco Scutaro and Crawford
And those are some of the things that make for a Giants win. That feels good after two days of destruction and nearly happened again tonight after being down 6-0 at the end of 3. Eight straight runs to win a Thursday evening game? Yes, thank you! But less allowing runs to the other team, please.
GIFCap: #SFGiants dance and blast their way to a sweep of the Padres
Barry Zito delivered seven shutout innings to bring his home shutout streak to twenty-one consecutive innings to begin the regular season. The game began with a couple disputable plays thanks to instant replay, and these calls would go against the Giants. First, Marco Scutaro‘s tag on Chase Headley that was not ruled correctly, though a very difficult call.
And Angel Pagan‘s hit by a pitch on his toe that Bob Davidson ruled was just a ball.
Lucky for the Giants, the bottom of the order began to rally, with Andres Torres and Brandon Crawford getting on base, and then Angel Pagan delivered a double to RCF on a 3-0 pitch. The broadcast pointed out that he cheked the dugout after the 2-0 pitch to maybe see if he had the green light. If so, maybe Angel Pagan was acknowledging that trust.
Pablo Sandoval capped the three-run rally with a bad ball seeing-eye single up the middle on a pitch a little less than a foot off the ground.
Buster Posey would get his first homer of the season, a two-run shot that put the Giants up 5-0.
If you’re wondering how pitchers can keep their ERA down, a good defense behind you can really do the trick.
Joaquin Arias got pretty good contact on a ball later in the game, and Kyle Blanks made a great catch but crashed into the wall and this would ultimately take him out of the game.
We just hope he’s OK.
We also hope that there will be more dance lessons outside, because why not.
Today’s jump wasn’t all that awe-inspiring, but we’ll take the sweep.
Arizona comes in to begin a three-game series with the Giants tomorrow night.
Pulse Check: Sixteen games in for the #SFGiants
There being 162 games in the season, 16 games in seems like a fine place to check in with 10% of the regular season finding its box checked by the Giants. The Giants are 9-7 after getting swept by Milwaukee, but I can’t say that these last three games speak to what we’ve seen out of this team so far. They’ll be in second or third in the NL West depending on how Arizona does tonight against the Yankees tonight, and I’d be lying to you if I said I wasn’t concerned if they had the record of the Marlins (3-12), but the record you have today shouldn’t be a predictor of where you finish.
Baseball Reference won’t have all sixteen games until tomorrow, but this is what the Giants season has looked like so far:
More of the “W” than the “L,” and have swept the division leading Colorado Rockies (what year is this?). Sure, the Giants are suffering their longest losing streak since the end of July last year, but I think they just needed to get out of Miller Park. There may be some obvious stars and goats from this first ten percent of the season, but there are also some legitimate questions for each player we look forward to see being played out.
Some of the Heroes
Brandon Crawford is always known for his defense, but have you noticed his productive start at the dish? How about a very handsome .352/.435/.593 line, tied for first in fWAR with Justin Upton at 1.3, so his value isn’t only coming with the glove. Crawford’s fWAR last season? 1.7.
Barry Zito didn’t have a very productive third start in Milwaukee, but then again, anyone who pitched there wished their day went a little bit better. Being a contributor with his pitch hand and his bat, Zito was a welcome surprise, continuing his postseason success with two straight starts with his defense helping him to two victories.
Sergio Romo had been called on to work in a eight of twelve game stretch, which is plenty of games for any reliever and wouldn’t bode well if that’s the rate at which he was being used when worrying bout fatigue. A 41.4% strikeout rate with no walks is pretty incredible work so far, and to have the guy that comes into the 9th inning not walk anybody saves all of us a few years of our lives.
Some of the Goats
Brandon Belt is the obvious choice for the guy that’s having the slowest start. His .214 BABIP has kept his hit count low, despite the line drives we’ve seen him hit. His nine hits in fifty-nine plate appearances don’t look stomach pleasing, and Nick Noonan is actually catching up to him in hits since the rookie already has seven himself. The ropes Belt’s hitting right now aren’t finding the ground, maybe it’s me being an apologist for him, but I gotta believe he’s close.
Tim Lincecum‘s struggles continue, and while Hector Sanchez did cost Lincecum strikes in his first start with his framing abilities, Timmy has not been helping his batterymate out with his lack of control. It’s amazing that a) he has gone at least five innings in each start, and b) the team has won each of the three games he’s started. His walk count in his three starts have gone from 7 to 4 to 1, so that is encouraging.
George Kontos is my choice from the reliever corps, though it’s not like it’s a runaway. His 15.2% left on base rate is pre-tttty low, and that will go up as the season goes, and his Opening Day homer to Clayton Kershaw still burns in my brain. He is not a question mark for me, just not a hot start.
Some of the Questions
How real is this personal catcher situation? Last year, we experienced the Hector Sanchez-Tim Lincecum experiment with Buster Posey at 1B. With Guillermo Quiroz getting a hit today, now the question is if he is being auditioned to take Sanchez’s spot. Also of note, since Posey got a day off today in a day game after a night game, might that set him up for catching #55 on Saturday? While Hector has given the team a better walk rate recently, his bat is not the answer.
Speaking of Posey, what the heck’s going on with the 2012 MVP? One more hit than Belt, and a slash line that you’d expect more out of 2011 Brandon Crawford than 2013 Posey. Articles on him suggest it’s just a slow start, that he’s feeling fine. If he’s feeling fine, I’m not worried about him catching back on. Same goes for Matt Cain.
When does Heath Hembree get the call-up? I believe it was Pavs that said when the Giants call him up, the Giants want it to be for good. When it comes to that, you’ll see MLB teams calling their prospects up in June so that they may hold on to their players for an extra year.
What the Chad Gaudin? I know, right? He’s been surprisingly better than decent, but has been used in more low leverage situations than in a situation you might see Santiago Casilla or Kontos showing up in. It will be interesting to see how aggressive the Giants are with Gaudin as the year goes on, especially when Gaudin regresses.
What to look forward to
How about five straight series with NL West opponents? Padres, D-Backs, @ Padres, @ D-Backs, Dodgers that will carry us into May, all of these sets lasting three games a piece. Arizona gets to have six straight series with NL West opponents, so that should be fun for them.
The Giants, students of the comeback for some of their victories, are indeed lucky to be where they are, but the record is probably around what you might have expected out of them. You cannot win the division in April, but so far, they are not losing it.
Looking forward to more of those.
GIFPost: Pitching and Defense from Game 3 of Giants-Dodgers
The game ended 5-3, but the Giants had plenty of moments where their pitchers and their defense came through for them. Tim Lincecum had a stretch where he looked stellar, and then other moments where nobody knew where his fastball was going. After Jose Mijares loaded the bases off of a weak hit, a line drive, and a curveball for a HBP on Mark Ellis, George Kontos came in to save the day on what was deemed the biggest hit in win probability added for the Dodgers on this Matt Kemp double play:
Could Pablo Sandoval thrown home or to second and got the second out? Debatable. He did do the smart thing by getting two sure outs: one at third, and one at first as the Dodgers would score what would be their last run of the night.
Javier Lopez came in next to face Adrian Gonzalez and thought Buster Posey had received this well enough to get that 2-2 call. Ump didn’t though.
So he decided to throw his 3-2 pitch and strut off.
“Dah! Dah! Dah! Dah! Dah! Dah! Dah! Dah!”
Matt Kemp went 0-for-the-series and Chad Gaudin was more than happy to be a contributor to the cause, and also had pretty good control in Wednesday’s outing.
Next we turn to the defensive baseball porn. You could get lost in this play. Carl Crawford chops the baseball to maybe-brother-maybe-relative Brandon Crawford and the rest is just Golden
I mean, look at that handsome defense
Even from that angle I get lost in his beautiful eyes
And one more angle for good measure
Solid.
Sergio Romo got to face two Team Mexico teammates in Adrian Gonzalez and Luis Cruz. The first two guys made their outs, and it was time to make the new Dodger shortstop silly.
Good game, Luis Cruz, but not even close.
The Giants have an off-day today, then engage with the St. Louis Cardinals on Friday at 1:35PM PST at home in front of what I’m guessing will be three straight sell-out crowds.
GIFPost: Tim Lincecum’s Final Tune-Up
Tim Lincecum had his last start of Spring Training, and went 81 pitches across 4.2 innings, and how many earned runs or hits he gave up isn’t exactly what you should care about, but the velocity, and location of his pitches should be what you’re looking at a little closer. With that, I GIF’d a bunch of Lincecum’s pitches last night in case you missed his start.
Fastball
Broken bat for a hit? No big deal. If Buster Posey is setting up at a spot and Lincecum hit it, that’s all I care about in Spring Training.
That 92 was the top velocity Lincecum would hit on his fastball.
4th inning and still able to hit spots was a good sign, although I thought he was missing his spots more often as the game went on.
GIF’d that fastball since it had a little run to it. So he’s still got that weapon, wondering if he’s just figuring out how to use it again.
Curveball
Gotta have your breaking pitches, and if you’re going to leave them up like that, might as well make it early in the count. Ryan Vogelsong would approve.
This was happening a fair amount: breaking balls in the dirt. Buster made an effort for some of them, but didn’t go all out on the rest, just letting Spring Training do its thing. That’s going to be something Lincecum has to work on, is consistently having his breaking pitches start a little higher so his catchers aren’t tired by the 2nd inning.
Breaking Ball — Slider or Splitter
The key for Lincecum is to have this pitch start at a little above the knees so the hitter thinks it’s going to be a strike and then ho-ho-ho, son, look what just fell out of the zone.
That one was a beautiful pitch. I’ll have more of those, please.
Coco Crisp thought that was going to be a fastball.
So we see that Tim Lincecum is still there, but it’s a matter of him finding himself. Giants will need that Tim Lincecum this year because Barry Zito probably is not going to be white unicorning it in the regular season. Overall, the broadcast booth was pleased with the outing, and I gotta say I was, too. Fastball was a decent velocity, he hit his spots most of the ti–
Shut up, Yoenis Cespedes.
But yes, good final start of Spring Training.
Other GIFs
Brandon Crawford plays pretty good defense
Angel Pagan is still playing World Baseball Classic defense
Not even sure how he got on the ground, but whatever. Really hoping that defense gets cleaned up for the regular season. I didn’t enjoy him doing dumb things in the OF during the WBC with Puerto Rico.
NLDS Preview: #Reds (96-66) vs. #SFGiants (94-68)
The sun and the sky may tell you it’s just another day, but we’re in the playoffs now, baby. What’s beautiful about the postseason is you don’t have to have the best team on paper, nor have had to be the best team in the regular season to win the three sets of series. Familiar face Dusty Baker and his pretty powerful pitchers and position players will come marching in to AT&T for Game 1 on Saturday. All we know about the Giants rotation is that Cain and Bumgarner are going with the other three starters available in the pen in case one of the Game 1 and/or 2 starters have a bad outing. We could potentially see some pretty interesting managing in these Games 1 and 2 from Bochy if he decides to use his starters for more than a side session’s worth of pitches. Over the course of the season, the Reds took 4 of 7 from the Giants, and they’ll try to continue having that little bit of the edge as they work to get through the 2010 Champs for their own chance at a trophy.
Game 1: Saturday, October 6th, 6:30PM PST, TBS — RHP Johnny Cueto vs. RHP Matt Cain
One sentence summary: Cueto’s one of the year’s best, but his last two starts on that came on 5 days rest saw only 8.1 IP, 18 H, 10 ER, 8 K’s combined, while Matt Cain was just fine in his last start where he got 4 days of rest, thank you very much — this Game 1 should be a good one.
Game 2: Sunday, October 7th, 6:30PM PST, TBS — RHP Bronson Arroyo vs. LHP Madison Bumgarner
One sentence summary: In the last four Arroyo starts the story is not Arroyo’s pitching, but the average of one run of run support provided by his team, and for Bumgarner the last two opponents he has shut out were the Dodgers, and the Reds when he CG SHO’d them, but that was in late June.
Game 3: Tuesday, October 9th, 2:30PM PST, TBS — I’m guessing RHP Tim Lincecum vs. RHP Mat Latos
One sentence summary: Latos in his last 3 starts (20 IP, 13 H, 14 K’s, 2 BB, 2 ER) has been pretty sharp, and that could be a problem as he goes for revenge against old division rival… who could be any one of Lincecum/Zito/Vogelsong.
Game 4 (if necessary): Wednesday, October 10th, Time TBD, TBS — I’m guessing LHP Barry Zito vs. RHP Homer Bailey
One sentence summary: If the name “Homer Bailey” sounds familiar, it should, because he just threw a no-hitter against Pittsburgh and hasn’t seen an earned run cross in one of his starts since they played LA.
Game 5 (if necessary): Thursday, October 11th, Time TBD, TBS — RHP Matt Cain vs. RHP Johnny Cueto
The Playoff Bats Are Loaded
The Reds and Giants both clinched their division on September 22nd, so their pitchers and bats have had plenty of time to rest and turn it down a notch, so I beefed up my small sample size from the normal “past seven games” to “past fourteen games” to give an idea of the work that’s been put in since around the time the clinch happened.
You may have heard Joey Votto had arthroscopic surgery on his left knee to repair a torn meniscus on July 17th, and while he did return on September 5th, he has not homered since June 24th. But don’t be fooled by his lack of four-baggers as he’s still proving productive (.410 wOBA L14, .436 wOBA overall) in the Reds lineup, and finished 1st overall in the NL in OBP. Had he stayed healthy, I imagine he would’ve been in the MVP discussion. Xavier Paul has also proved useful of late for the Reds (.386 wOBA L14, .364 wOBA overall), but he’s typically an extra OF so you might not see him regularly tending the grass out in AT&T and GABP. Drew Stubbs (.128, .278), Ryan Hanigan (.168, .304), and ROY candidate Todd Frazier (.174, .352) have all been underperforming of late. The Reds have seven guys with double digit homer counts and they are: Jay Bruce (34), Ryan Ludwick (26), Todd Frazier (19), Brandon Phillips (18), Zack Cozart (15), Drew Stubbs (14), and Joey Votto (14). Drew Stubbs (30) and Brandon Phillips (15) are the only guys the Reds have with double digit SB.
You’ve come to know the Giants pretty well after 162 games with them, so you know where the power and the speed can come from. Of late, the most productive guy over the past two weeks has been by wOBA…. Hector Sanchez (.448) in 25 PA. I know. He probably gets a start behind the plate for Game 3 or Game 4 with Posey at 1B. Other Giants of over .400 wOBA in the last 14 are Marco Scuatro (.439, .328 wOBA overall), Buster Posey (.425, .404), Pablo Sandoval (.413, .336), and Brandon Belt (.403, .342). Nobody’s been as cold as the coldest Reds players have been for the Giants, but guys that could get a start that have been underproductive are Gregor Blanco (.239, .309), Brandon Crawford (.254, .279), and Hunter Pence (.257, .322). While the Reds are beefy with power, the Giants are not defined by the long ball. Buster Posey (24), Hunter Pence (24), and Pablo Sandoval (12) are the only guys on the active roster with double digit dingers. The Giants can run a little bit, as evidenced by four guys having double digit steals like Angel Pagan (29), Gregor Blanco (26), Ryan Theriot (13), and Brandon Belt (12).
Series Prediction
I expect this to be a series that will really test the Giants confidence in their own abilities as this set of games with shift back and forth, ultimately with the Giants coming out on top.
Game 1: Giants win (Cain bests Cueto in pitcher’s duel that gets the nation’s attention)
Game 2: Giants win (Arroyo sees little run support still, MadBum rolls)
Game 3: Reds win (Lincecum hangs too many, gets overpowered by Reds)
Game 4: Reds win (Zito and Vogelsong can’t hold down Reds in high scoring affair)
Game 5: Giants win (Giants solve Cueto while Cain keeps the Reds in the park)
