Don’t Fool Yourself, Zito Still Sucks
The dream of seeing Zito’s re-worked mechanics producing more velocity died early for me last night. Instead of 83-84mph he was going 84-85mph. Sorry, that still ain’t gonna cut it. And his curve ball was average. Reed Johnson leading off the game and striking out swinging on a ball above his eyeballs, kinda told you what their game plan was going to be against Zito. Over-anxious hitters combined with some luck and a fantastic defensive play by Crawford allowed us all to exhale safely after Zito pitched 7 serviceable innings. Ironically, he did go 7, something Dirrrty Sanchez has managed to do only once in his last 7 starts. And hey, securing your 2nd win in nearly a year had to feel good, too.
I don’t hate Zito, I believe he is putting in maximum effort expected for a guy who’s making 126 million. I just don’t believe he will ever be able to be consistently serviceable as a #5 with his current velocity. He simply doesn’t have the command necessary to do it without a ton of luck, which he had going for him yesterday. Unusual, since paragraph 3, line 7 of *Zito’s Law* clearly states that “at no time will Zito ever benefit from any luck during a start.”
I am imagining that there will be another fallout from Zito’s return, and we may have seen a prelude to it yesterday. The aura that Voggy carried during so many of his starts while Zito was on the shelf seemed to evaporate yesterday. One bad start does not a regression make, but it could be a warning to heed: Zito is back and all the good mojo and vibes you once had can be taken away in an instant by the return of “Zito’s Law”………
The best thing we can hope for is that Sanchez has a re-birth coming off the DL similar to the one he had when he went to the bullpen in 2009 and he can be counted on to take over for Zito before he does too much damage to that impressive team ERA/WHIP……
A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
Hopefully the Yankees were watching….
Yeah sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. With Zito the Giants must take what they can get when they can get it.
The one thing you can count on with Zitter pitching. At some point (probably soon), the team will score 3 in their half of an inning and Zitter will promptly give up 4 in the other teams half. He has done this so often the Books probably won’t even put up an odds line on it.
Perhaps all Sanchez needs is a good Shrink. Anyway he’ll be back. Count on it.
My fear is that Zito has a couple more decent starts and the team then moves JSanchez for a bat…
I hope GH is right in first post…the Zito conundrum is that in order to ever be able to move the guy, he has to show he is still capable of occasionally getting mlb hitters out and keeping the ball in the yard.
Sanchez had a decent stretch of games where he didn’t allow more than 2 runs, and has 4 real Ws…Sf wins yesterday for the second time in a year that zito has pitched in. And guarantee, SF gets Sanchez 6 runs, it’s a W, because the other team won’t get enough hits off him to score that many.
The Cubs really do suck. Soriano is worse in the OF than burrell. Carlos Pena is a punk…I hate guys who hold up the game like he did vs. Vogs yesterday by stepping out and asking for time, Kruk I think said he spends more time out of the batters box than in it. One pitch needs to be a brushback every time this guy comes to the plate.
Gamer also had a pretty nice grab vs. fukudome to open the game, to go with 3 hits and a walk and the run scored on the nice slide. I warned Hall fans (fan?) about the guys’s D at 2b; meanwhile burriss gets XBH numero uno, for the year. Font moves at least one of those guys out, my guess.
The thing is, GH, what’s the shelf-life for Drrrty? I know Zito isn’t the answer, and Sanchez has electric stuff, but he can’t quite control it. The end result of his starts are a lot of walks, fits of wildness, a couple HBPs, and 5+ innings pitched. He keeps the team in games, yet is always on the edge of disaster. Bochy again looked like he wanted to punch him in the face the other day when he pulled him after 4.2 innings. A lot of his starts have gone like that. One more out, and he’s in line for the win. One more hit off him, and he’s down by 3. is 13-9 his high water mark? I don’t know, but his act is getting tiresome.
He’s thrown 155 walks since the start of last season. If he didn’t hit the DL, he was on pace this year for 125 BBs. Cut doen on the walks, and he’d be able to go longer, and win more. As it is, you get these crazy games like Washington. 5 innings, 2 hits, 6 BBs, 7 Ks, 2 HBP, 103 pitches, and the win. His last 5 starts have been torture. He’s made it to the 6th once. Yeah, he’s a number 4. But, Christ, throw in a few mental lapses out there this season, and you have the ptototypical million dollar arm, 10 cent head guy . . .
The point being, this w3as supposed to be the year Drrrty showed his stuff. He’s regressing fairly badly so far this season. His walks and WHIP are back into shittytown.
Perhaps he’s good only in the playoffs.
I was listening to the beginning of the game on the radio driving home from work. Miller calls Zito’s first pitch an 83 MPH fast ball, second pitch he says it was an 80 mph fast ball, then he stops and says or an 80 mph change up. Miller couldn’t even tell what Barry’s fast ball was!! Ride the Barry wave while it lasts (1 or 2 games) but the hitters will adjust and they will hit him eventually
zito did have the better line, but that’s because vogs started pitching like zito, nibbling and being afraid of hitters. Not a good sign…he blew a 3-0 lead right away, and then tried to piss away an 8 run lead. I realize neither the ump nor Hall helped him out much, but he acted like he was pitching scared, and Miller was all over him.
Vogelsong didn’t have the great control he has shown in his excellent starts. I think the radio side guys had it right (I followed half the game on the road) when they said he couldn’t keep his two-seamer on the corners. He did get scared — of that pitch. Nothing but an off day. Hell, the wind may have had something to do with it..
ABZ is still the aspiration. For now, if he can offer some decent starts, rake it in. The AS break will limit the number of times he gets the ball, while Sanchez gets healthy. I’m not a superstitious person, but I have to admit that I too see gloom when I think of Zito. The Dark Cloud of on-field failure is never far away when he’s listed as a probable starter. I’ll place my bets on Sanchez over Zito any day, so long as Sanchez’s arm problem doesn’t get diagnosed differently.
Some of Vogie’s problems came from a very inconsistent strike zone. He hit spots that were called strikes in the 3rd and 4th that weren’t called in the 5th. The 3rd walk in the 5th was bad but the first 2 weren’t.
Zito actually was sort of life-like out there. He actually had a sense of the pace of the game. There were only a few times where it was, oh shit, Here comes the 17 pitches per batter string, and the game goes into molasses mode.
But, yeah. 2 more starts for Bubbles, and then we’ll see where Drrty is . . . Drrty’s arm problem is a figment of Bochy’s mind. He hopefully bounces back from this like he did in 2009 with is demotion.
BLEEP to arm problems!
“Zito’s Triumphant Return” gushed the SF Gate headline writer. Wonder if he realizes that particular sentiment might be just a tiddle early. I mean, we are talking the Zitsmeister. Should it come to pass that Barry turns in four more consecutive performances at the same level of outcome, there are three or four posters on this blog who might, just might, gently dip their big toe into the water with a word like triumphant. However, as for today, the day after, if any Flapper had the stone cold nutz to use that word in any sense beyond ironic, or at least in quotes, he would slowly die the death of a thousand cuts.
In the article Schulman gave some props to Crawford, both for his resounding double and for his incredible stab, grab and throw with a runner on third. I’d been thinking along similar lines before reading the article. Brandon started out hitting pretty well. Pitchers built a bit of a book on him and he slipped off. But he’s battling back now, learning what it means to be a ML hitter. Kid came up from High A ball, so has had no experience with all those would be ML retreads you would face in AAA. In an earlier posting, because of his excellent skills at SS, i opined that him hitting .250 would make me and most Giants fans into some pretty happy campers. Now i’ve joined the ‘give him some time’ camp and would be amenable to an average this season in the .230-.235 range. By his third season it would not surprise me to see him having developed into a guy consistently hitting in the .265-.275 range. Plenty good for a slick SS.
Crawford was in A on rehab.,he spent nearly two years in AA. Again, way too much is being made of one game. He has a lot work to do to become an acceptable big league hitter.
Agree that Crawford has a developmental curve ahead. Was hardly contending that he is there yet. Essential point is that he is a very good defensive SS and that if he can hit a lick he’s a keeper. Second point is that yesterday’s performance at the plate, even against the likes of Doug Davis, is that he hasn’t let his slide get him down and continues to chip away at becoming an acceptable ML hitter. The true test comes when he faces some of the mound toughies. If he can bat .200 against the likes of Kershaw, Lee and Halliday, we can agree that he is on his way up.
It’s reporting by ADD, Stix. You are as good or bad as your last 15 minutes . . .
The locals were all abuzz when the A’s swept the Giants about how the teams were suddenly heading in different directions. Oh, the hittng woes. What will they do? How can they go on?
Now, it’s Zito’s turn in the light. The thing is, as we all know, it can turn on a dime . . .
One poor start doesn’t necessarily portend anything.I’ve been as skeptical as anyone about Vogelsong continuing his magical ride but yesterday’s outing is being overanalyzed…
Zito’s high was 86, BTW. But it’s just as it was in his first year here-the worst news is a good start from The Zitmeister, it just prolongs our agony…how you know you’re in Hell: a 102 pitch duel between Pena and Zito..
Flav’s title of this thread pretty much says it all. And the jury’s still out on Vogelsong but it’s not like he was shellacked yesterday
Ted: Fully agree. Anyone recall Cain’s recent blowout? How bout Bumgarner’s lil half inning? Or maybe recollect Timmy’s stats from early June? If Vogelsong has two more consecutive less than stellar outings there might be cause for concern. Otherwise, enjoy.
Tough crowd here.
The reason there’s more concern about Vogelsong is because he hasn’t been successful EVER before this. But as I said and Ted reiterated, one poor start is not enough to be burying him.
On yesterday’s thread, a couple of things I wanted to mention:
BF asked about the Halicki no-hitter….it was the second game of a doubleheader against the Mets. The Mets sort of shot their wad on offense in the first game, Kingman hit two homeruns, one of them a grandslam. The second game was a typical second game of a doubleheader, played mostly in the twilight, which favors the pitcher of course. Also, there was a questionable scoring decision. Rusty Staub was safe on a play that would have normally been scored a hit, but was ruled an error, to keep the no-hitter going. I can’t remember exactly what the play was. Some hard hit ball that got past one of the infielders.
—–
Also, Dennis said something about the chances of a coin coming up heads an 8th straight time. Yes, it’s always a 50% chance that any toss will be heads, but the PROBABILITY of an 8th heads in a row is LESS than 50%. The math of probability is full of complex formulas.
Of course, based on the Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead theory, it’s 100% heads all the time
I don’t mean to sound like I’m downplaying Halicki’s no-hitter. A no-hitter is always a very impressive, historic, and memorable accomplishment in baseball.
bullshit. His April last season was aberrationally excellent, his May was ok. Then he went totally to hell.
July and August 2009 were unusually good for Zito, too.
Those are the two golden eras I had in mind when I noted Zito’s periods of effectiveness. Take em or leave em. I set the standard. If you don’t like it, that’s fine. Also, it looks like Zito had one bad game in May 2010. The first three games were very low-scoring one-run games; a later ND game wasn’t horrible (although he gave up 2 HRs). So on balance May was ok.
Where’d my post go?
Golden eras? Funny. Silver-plated moments, sure.
His 41-58 record in SF pretty much speaks for itself.
OK< I'll post it down here . . .
Twin, when you pull posts, I think it screws up the entire thread. The posts are going backwards . . .
Well, I don’t feel too good today and I’m obviously pretty fucked in the head, I thought a 4.50 ERA was pretty shitty.
Dennis, there was talk on CSNBA of Mota getting a spot start on Saturday.
CF Torres
2B Burriss
3B Sandoval
1B Huff
LF Ross
RF Nate
SS Tejada
C Stewart
P Lincecum
This just came from Henry and Baggs who just spoke with Bochy. Decision will be made tomorrow. There’s a slim chance someone could get called up, but I doubt it. Bochy said it will NOT be bullpen game. If I read the numbers right, Zito has never pitched on 3 days rest. My money’s on Vogelsong for Sat. night…
“There’s a slim chance someone could get called up, but I doubt it. ”
You mean THEY doubt it, DD.
Whatever. Doubt this if you will…Baggs reports talks w/ the Bums to bring back Uribe.
I said Sanchez for Reyes, not for Juan again…
And before you go ballistic, I know it would only take a fraction of a Jonathan Sanchez to bring back Juan.
What? I dunno. You go first. “Your honor, your honor.”
Torres is now a major concern, he had the one game breakout, then zilch.
There’s no other remotely acceptable #1
I think you’d be fucked in the head if you though a 4.50 ERA was good. Looks to me that you’re right on there, twinnie! (Hope you feel better!)
era for a month doesn’t tell the whole story. in fact era overall is pretty useless. sorry to add to your discomfort, but you’re the one who picked the dispute.
4.47 as a Giant pretty much tells a story as well. Not sure what yer point is, skippy. Only pitch bubbles in May?
I removed my posts about Zito.I’m not going to argue about what’s considered “good”.
Here’s the last golden year of Zito: 3-11 4.96
Golden eras? Funny. Silver-plated moments, sure.
His 41-58 record in SF pretty much speaks for itself.
Twin, when you pull posts, I think it screws up the entire thread. Mine went backwards . . .
I just did my own. Sorry.
Test . . .
Where’s tonight’s goddamn lineup? You guys better stop slacking off. Looks like either Vogelsong or Zito on short rest for Saturday. Take your pick…
CF Torres
2B Burriss
3B Sandoval
1B Huff
LF Ross
RF Nate
SS Tejada
C Stewart
P Lincecum
Somethings outta whack here
Just hit reply to the last post to get it to post at the bottom
test
Fleming just said that Lincecum has pretty much stopped running out grounders these days. He made it sound like it is pretty blatant. Have you guys noticed that?
I’d take uribe back in a second. He’s magic in a giants uniform. He might not want to come back.
Tough thread to follow tonight. So I’ll just go with this, top of the 9th, we need 2, go get em GIANTS.
Dammit Cody, you’re making us clowns look bad.
SHITE – Get em tomorrow Giants.
Rats! Oh well, at least they tied it in the 9th. That double play was painful!
That was a sorry looking 0-2 pitch.
Tough loss but nothing to trip over. I’m not worried about Torres any more than I’m worried about Huff or Ross.. Bringing back Uribe would actually be a huge thing on many different levels. All the Dodgers want to do is dump salary and they know they are going nowhere. He’s having the shit year that I predicted he would. Bring him back to ATT and the let the magic happen again……….
fuck