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This could be a really tough game. Long east coast trip with no days off and right back at it against one of the best mulleted pitchers in the league. Our team is resilient. Some how they’ve got to find a way. In a way though they did take yesterday off, right?
A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
Yep…going to be a tough game and tough homestand (probably toughest to date). And then we go on the road to Colorado for three, where the Rox have been extremely tough. All without a day off, going back to the series in Oakland (16 days without a day off).
Was a tough loss and the Giants streak of nine series wins ended, but a 6-3 road trip is a good trip in anyone’s book.
Nice read from Baggs on The Athletic that talked about yesterday’s game, and yes, once Disco was out, they basically told Long it was his game, with the goal of having a fresh bullpen for the Brewer series (as opposed to burning the bullpen and chasing a victory yesterday).
This team has been Resilient. Let’s hope they can continue to bring it.
And it was sweltering in Atl yday. So they are probably mentally and physically fried. I smell Burnes with a double digit strikeout kind of night.
#metoo
Let’s hope that Senor Shimmy has his A-game going on. Would be nice to get back in the W column, especially against the Brewers.
bums begin a series against the Braves tonight. Go Braves!
And does anyone really care what the friars are doing, unless they are playing the bums? They are 15.5 back of us and 1.5 back of Cincy for the 2nd WC spot.
Last time I looked the Brewers are coming from the east coast as well playing in Minnesota, no team should have an advantage,well except Burnes over cha cha shaker🕺
I still have confidence in Cueto usually giving us a decent chance to win…
Me too, Loo.
Us long hairs think alike…
As Andujar said, “youneverknow.” Watching Yanks-A’s yesterday, with all the boppers game was decided on 2 run HR in 8th by A’s Tony Kemp.
Brewers btw are 43-23 on road, best in all baseball. time to put a dent in that.
this is gonna be the quickest DFA in history
Pretty respectable career:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/q/quintjo01.shtml
hmmnn in order for Giants to get him he had to be passed over by everyone else.
still, their success rate with reclamation projects is nothing to ignore. The AAA season goes into September too, so they could get longer look at him for future consideration.
“And does anyone really care what the friars are doing”
Only in the sense that they could still end up being the 2nd Wild Card, and a possible playoff opponent, either in the crazy one-game Wild Card thing, or in a series.
I would be way more concerned playing Cincy in an one game WC game that the friars. So, no I don’t care what the friars are doing (it was my question)….
Daniel’s Cardinals aren’t that far out of WC race either at 3 and half back of Reds.
After Dogs leave town here they have 4 in STL.
Cousin Flavor’s had a well deserved mini-vacation.
Last pitched on Wednesday in NY…
Put a fork in the Friars their done.It’s the Reds who blew right by them and will be in the W/C game…
Cards have crucial next 2 weeks–home and home 3 game series with Reds bookended around 3 with Brewers and 4 with LA. Other than awful 10-17 June they’ve been over .500 every other month and only 2 games in L column behind Reds right now.
Hey, a lot can happed on who gets in, but the Reds is the team I would least like to play in a one game WC game.
Gotta say, the Brewers scare me, a split would be ok but getting 3 off of them would be huge.
Brewer’s pitching staff, as we saw earlier back in Milwaukee, is tough as nails up and down that rotation and Pen. Hader wasn’t available then, he is now. Going into the late innings down a run or two is not a good situation against those arms. A split would be OK, 3 of 4 would be the best result possible, I should think. With KB possibly out or at least below optimal, this is going to be a challenging series, even at home…
From Baggerly, The Athletic
Take all of it under consideration — the East Coast travel, the heat and humidity, the relative strength of opponents, and the otherwise ominous fact that their last pitch Sunday was thrown by sidearm-slinging outfielder Austin Slater — and you’d imagine the Giants would be thrilled with the results of their most recent road trip.
They took two of three in Oakland. They swept the Mets. Even after losing two of three in Atlanta and getting skunked 9-0 in Sunday’s series finale, their 6-3 record on the trip would be viewed as a crowning achievement in most seasons.
But there’s a menacing thought that accompanies every loss. That is what it feels like to be a team on a 104-win pace chased by a team on a 102-win pace. It can warp your perceptions. It can alter conventional wisdom. It can make you dwell on a series loss and lose sight of the fact that you just enjoyed a streak of nine consecutive series wins. It can allow anxiety to flourish — especially when the outside world persists in the belief that you’ll be caught.
As Satchel Paige once said, “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.”
The Giants are doing their darndest not to look back at the Dodgers, and the best example of their discipline might have come prior to Sunday’s loss. Manager Gabe Kapler sketched out his rotation for the next homestand against the NL Central-leading Milwaukee Brewers and the Dodgers, and it involved keeping his pitchers on turn.
That would mean neither first-half ace Kevin Gausman nor second-half ace Logan Webb appearing in the final series between the Giants and Dodgers this season. That also would mean a potential appearance against L.A. from Anthony DeSclafani, who stumbled in the fourth inning Sunday in his return from an ankle injury and hasn’t matched up well against the Dodgers all season. DeSclafani is 0-3 with a 9.43 ERA in five starts against the Dodgers. He’s 11-3 with a 2.28 ERA in 20 starts against everyone else.
Yes, Kapler said, the games against the Dodgers will be important. But the Brewers will start their two aces, Corbin Burnes and Brandon Woodruff, on Monday and Tuesday at Oracle Park. Those games will be important, too.
The Giants could reconsider and at least try to use the expanded roster to get through a bullpen game Thursday against the Brewers, allowing them to bump back Webb, who is 7-0 with a 1.48 ERA in his last 13 starts, into Friday’s series opener against the Dodgers.
For now, they are rolling out their pitchers on turn.
“My personal philosophy on this is you try to win the game in front of you,” Kapler said.
It’s hard to argue with how that philosophy has played out for the Giants this season. Nobody in the industry knew what to expect in terms of fatigue and load management following last season’s pandemic-shortened, 60-game schedule. The Giants prepared for it by hoarding depth and resisting the urge to deviate from a plan that stresses conservation.
The Giants have remained committed to resting Buster Posey one out of three games, which will cost him any shot at a batting title. They’ve been fastidious about removing players for the slightest twinge or discomfort. They didn’t seek to hustle Kris Bryant back into the lineup over the weekend after he felt side discomfort on a checked swing in his first at-bat Friday and left the game as a precaution.
“We don’t want Kris Bryant for one game or two games,” Kapler said. “We want Kris for the rest of the season. And this won’t come as any surprise, but we played the end of this series with a pretty short bench, which changes the way we approach games. We are very aggressive with our bench. But we are bringing guys up to health, including Kris and Buster.”
The Giants have won several games this season in which they trailed early, continued to use their best relievers and committed themselves to chasing down a win. Sunday’s game wasn’t among them. DeSclafani competed well in three innings before the first five batters reached in the fourth; Jorge Soler crushed a leadoff home run, Austin Riley clipped a regrettably thrown slider for a two-run shot and the Giants asked Sammy Long to take the team the rest of the way.
Long made it to the eighth on 90 pitches before Slater was asked to cover the final out. Slinging 70 mph changeups, Slater walked former Giant Ehire Adrianza and got Freddie Freeman to pop up. Slater became the third position player to appear on the mound for the Giants this season, joining Darin Ruf and Mike Tauchman. He’s the only one who can brag about a 0.00 ERA.
“We did have a plan … and we knew that we may need to cover some innings with Sam Long, and Sam is going to have a hard time understanding how valuable that work was for us today,” Kapler said. “But we do go into the next series with the fresh bullpen now. We would trade a taxed bullpen for a win but the silver lining … is that we’re going to go into the Milwaukee series with a ‘pen that’s fully stocked and ready to go.”
DeSclafani acknowledged that he continues to pitch through ankle discomfort and covering first base was a challenge, but he felt good about his execution in the first three innings and hoped to capture that feeling in his next start.
He absolutely knows the opponent he’s lined up to face.
“We’re so close, we’re neck and neck with the Dodgers, that every game is super important,” DeSclafani said. “Any time I get a chance to pitch, I’m trying to build momentum and get on a roll again. Hopefully, I can do that against the Dodgers. If not, there’s a lot of the season left. The rest of the month is extremely important and every game is going to matter.”
Even the series against the Dodgers will require some attention to self-preservation. The Giants will go straight from their homestand finale against L.A. to a day game in Denver that opens a three-game series at Coors Field, which is no place to walk in with a limp. Then they’ll finally get a break in the schedule and a final chance to take a breath.
The Giants will operate with an expanded roster Wednesday, but teams are only allowed to add two additional players to the 26-man active group — not nearly the flexibility of up to the full 40-man roster that they were permitted to call up in the past. So expect another month of transactions and churn, especially since the Triple-A season has been extended through September. From a roster maintenance standpoint, this September will be an extension of how teams operate all season.
Perhaps Scott Kazmir will return and provide a left-handed depth piece who could be used as an opener or bulk-innings reliever. There’s clearly a benefit to having Steven Duggar back on the roster, if only for late-inning defense. A third catcher is a typical September luxury that probably won’t be possible this time.
There are greater roster needs. The Giants designated pitcher Tyler Chatwood to activate DeSclafani and they had to option infielder Thairo Estrada in order to activate Brandon Belt from the bereavement list, leaving them with Slater or Wilmer Flores as the only healthy options to back up shortstop Brandon Crawford. They’d probably like to bring back Estrada at some point. They’ll have to make space to add back Evan Longoria from the IL as early as Tuesday. A few days after that, they expect to reinstate Donovan Solano from the COVID-related IL, too.
If the Giants paced themselves for a sprint to the finish, then we’re about to find out what their second gear looks like. And we’re about to find out how clinical they will remain in their playing time decisions.
“I feel like we have a healthy starting rotation and that’s pretty important right now,” Kapler said. “I don’t think there’s many clubs that can say they have a healthy five-man rotation and we do.”
The Dodgers haven’t had a healthy five-man rotation for weeks. They’ve scheduled bullpen games on almost every homestand or road trip. It hasn’t slowed them down.
Maybe that’s why every Giants loss might feel like a time to panic. But within their clubhouse, there’s no profit in that mindset. Preserving your mental health is important, too.
“I think it’s completely different for us,” outfielder Mike Yastrzemski said. “They’re playing who they’re playing and whatever is going to happen is going to happen. … We want to win every single game that we can. That’s the mindset from day one and it’s still the mindset now.”
good column, love Baggs. dunno why they bother with Brisbee but there are bloggers there that love the guy.
He’s right about Dogs too, they do pen games all the time with Opie still gone–they used 7 guys yesterday and Rox jumped all over the first one for 3 and never looked back.
Thanks for posting, IK…
Some numbers I saw in an article today:
“The Giants are 27–14 since the All-Star break, while the Dodgers are 26–14. San Francisco had won nine consecutive series before losing two of three in Atlanta over the weekend. Los Angeles had won eight straight series before inexplicably losing two of three to the Rockies at home that same weekend. The previous series the Dodgers had lost was to the Giants, of course.
San Francisco’s 2.96 ERA in August ranks as the second-best in the NL, with Los Angeles’s 2.23 ERA coming out on top.
Dodgers ace Walker Buehler’s 1.32 ERA in the second half is the best among NL starters. The second-best? San Francisco’s Logan Webb (1.69), of course.”
From Sports Illustrated Power Rankings.
USA Today Rankings:
1. San Francisco Giants: Top prospect Joey Bart could be the X-factor for Giants down the stretch – and into the postseason.
2. Los Angeles Dodgers: Tough stretch ahead with series vs. Braves, Giants, Cardinals and Padres.
The Bart comment struck me as a little odd…
Especially since Baggs said a third catcher is not likely in that article.
Bart, barring injury on the 26 man, will have no or almost no role down the stretch.
I’ll have some of whatever US News is smoking, or phoning in…
I hate subscription websites, but I like the writers on the Athletic, they are usually very good. These Giants are really fun to watch. I have a sports bar in my neighborhood, I go there every Friday night, the 3 bartenders are all Giants fans, so it is a good fit for me. Usually 2-3 Guinness while watching the game. Oh and great food too. If you are ever in Sacramento stop into the Pitch and Fiddle. Oh did I mention it is an Irish bar…😂😂😂
Ha, thanks for tip. Buddy of mine lives in the “pocket” neighborhood off Florin and Hwy 5, just to the west, along the river. He’s a retired atty doing occasional work for State AG.
He was down here a week ago and we went to dinner and had beer (I had only wee glass) sitting outside table at Fibbar McGee’s sunnyvale.
84-46 says they know what they’re doing whether we agree or not…
mm hard to believe Bart will even see SF, let alone be a difference maker. Longoria and Solano will need roster spots, maybe Thairo too, plus pitching depth.
Notice in Baggs column he does mention value of CF defense for GD…I think he gets real shot to make club next year along with some others currently in Sac. How many of current OFs exceeded expectations this season other than he and Wade Jr.?
Wood and Cueto on the IL. Uh oh. We are breaking down at the totally wrong time.
Brebbia (gulp) and Vosler called up.
Both tested positive for COVID.
I heard it was just wood. Cueto just not.feelimg good
Cueto and Wood to IL…fuck!
great. Both of them fucking got it?
BR reported it.
KNBR guys were saying this afternoon that Kap said he’s sick but didn’t test + and that he hoped he’d start tomorrow. Fucking KNBR, flagship station, they have no insight into what’s really going on
The rest may help those two in the long run.
Guys gonna have to step up in the mean time.
At least KB’s back in the lineup…
Save Webb for the Dodgers Friday, and quarantine from the team till then..
Brebbia Why?? Rather have Doval atleast he has a pulse..
I’m with Loo. Barring a covid outbreak, which i think is unlikely with the number of guys they have who are vaxxed, the rest will be a blessing in disguise. Although I am pretty sick of all of Cueto’s injuries. Longo-like
I wonder if Cueto and Wood are vaccinated?
If not, and they got Covid, I call them idiots.
Brebbia ? There’s nobody better than him in Sac?
He and Chatwood must have been roommates in the Sacrificial Lambs suite at the Journeyman Hotel in West Sac.
Probably from now until end of season, Farhan is going to be pulling up or signing arms with no options that he’ll use for a game or two or until they show how much they stink, at which time he’ll DFA them…
local scribes still saying Cueto hasn’t tested +
I can’t keep up:
Baggerly is on a roll, Best record in baseball, worst hitting pitchers in the league
Logan Webb remembered feeling intimidated when he first arrived in the major leagues in 2019. He couldn’t believe how talented the Giants’ pitchers were. He wasn’t sure how he could compete with them.
Not at pitching. At hitting.
Webb was directed to take batting practice the day before his debut start at Arizona. The rest of his group included Madison Bumgarner, Jeff Samardzija and Shaun Anderson.
“Shaun hit one halfway up the center-field deck, Bum was hitting them in the second deck, Shark was doing the same thing,” Webb said. “And I was like, ‘Holy crap, dude. That’s what these guys do here?’”
The Giants are a better team in almost every respect in 2021. Almost. For all the platoon advantages they’ve found, for all the depth they’ve leveraged and for all the mental bandwidth they spend mining value in every detail, and for an 84-46 record that is the best in baseball, there is one area in which they’ve been the worst in franchise history.
You’ve seen their pitchers try to hit, haven’t you?
Giants pitchers have 15 hits in 201 at-bats. Their .075 average and .095 slugging percentage would rank as the lowest in team history. Their pitchers are also the second-least productive hitting group in the National League, one squeaker better than the Miami Marlins. Anthony DeSclafani is 1-for-40. Alex Wood is 0-for-36. Webb is 3-for-30, but at least he has a double and a triple mixed in there, and narrowly missed hitting a grand slam during the last homestand.
Kevin Gausman is their batting champ among pitchers. He has eight of their 15 hits.
“Gaus is straight-up opposite-field base hit every time,” Webb said as Gausman stood within earshot. “He compares his bat control to Ichiro Suzuki. Yes, that is a recent comparison. I did say that.”
What is Webb’s approach?
“My easy answer is I’m trying to hit the ball 450 feet,” he said, and then paused. “I usually don’t.”
Is that the soundest approach?
“No, not at all,” Webb said. “But I gotta give it at least one shot, right? Then I try to go base hit. Then I end up striking out. But I guess I’d say my real approach is 1) don’t look stupid, 2) make contact and 3) try to pull the ball, but I’m always late so I never actually do that.”
Yes, Giants pitchers are comically bad at the plate. But it’s not as if the team derives zero value from the pitcher’s spot. Their 25 sacrifice bunts rank fifth in the league, and because the Giants tend to have more runners on base than in prior years, getting down a bunt might be an even handier skill than making solid contact. Giants pitchers also have drawn 14 walks, thanks in part to two free passes earned by sharp-eyed lefty reliever José Álvarez; only Arizona Diamondbacks pitchers have drawn more.
“There’s 100 years of data on that pitcher’s spot,” hitting coach Donnie Ecker said. “Seeing pitches has a compound effect whether it’s from the two spot or the four spot or the nine spot.”
This is where Wood has something to say about his season-long 0-fer.
“I do have five walks!” he said. “I just try to be a pest and drive the pitch count as high as I can. I used to be able to hit a little bit. But obviously … well, you’ve seen how I’ve swung it this year.”
Wood had a couple of extra-base hits in 2015 and hit .250 in 2016 with the Dodgers. He might have been feeling too good at the plate at the time because he injured his pitching arm while taking an especially robust swing in a game against Mike Leake.
“I was on a four-game hit streak and he threw me a nice sinker down and away, so I cut it loose and hyperextended my elbow,” Wood said. “I had surgery because of it. So hitting is not my favorite after that.”
With the exception of Bumgarner and a few others, hitting isn’t any pitcher’s favorite activity. Their combined .109 average would be the lowest ever in a major-league season. Some pitchers still take pride in competing at the plate, but teams don’t devote as much practice time to it as they used to. And there’s a sense that none of these skills will matter much a year from now, if the universal DH becomes a part of the next collective bargaining agreement. Giants pitchers might be the worst they’ve ever been at the plate, but major-league pitchers’ overall futility is turning the universal DH into a self-fulfilling prophecy
“Mostly I just think that every pitcher is really freaking good now,” Wood said. “Imagine going to play the hardest golf course in the world and you’re a 12 handicap. You’re probably not going to like your score. And they’re not messing around. They’re going straight to their good stuff and making it as hard as they can because they want to take a free out.”
Wood would take a nubber or a flare — anything to get him off the schneid. He passed Steve Stone for the second-most at-bats without a hit by a Giant in a season; with 11 more hitless at-bats, he’d match the franchise record held by Ron Herbel, a right-hander who finished 0-for-47 in 1964.
At least Wood isn’t the Dodgers’ Max Scherzer, who is 0-for-45 and hasn’t drawn a walk, either.
Then there’s the final member of the Giants’ less-than-fearsome five, Johnny Cueto, who approaches the task with equal parts disdain and delight.
“The best is when he hits a groundball and he runs to first, but he doesn’t run, and then he sort of peels off,” Gausman said. “I would love to see the percentage of plate appearances he has where he actually touches first base.”
“You’re going to get pure entertainment from Johnny,” Wood said. “And obviously, he’s a tornado on the basepaths.”
Cueto is 2-for-27 this season, but he did surprise everyone when he walked and stole second base against the Pirates on July 23 — the first theft of his career. That’s pretty much the only way Cueto can get into scoring position on his own merit. He has one career extra-base hit in 543 at-bats, and that was a double against Chris Young when the current Texas Rangers GM was pitching for the Mets in 2012.
Cueto’s .103 career slugging percentage is lower than Bartolo Colon’s (.107).
That’s why it was such a surprise to see Cueto in the on-deck circle during last week’s series in New York. He probably would have been called back if Chadwick Tromp hadn’t made the third out against the Mets. But now Cueto knows the feeling of being a pinch hitter.
“I got a lot of energy from that,” Cueto said. “When I was on deck, I felt like an actual position player. I was more motivated.”
Cueto has no illusions, though. He’ll take Gausman if the team needs contact and Webb if they’re looking to pop one.
“They’re pretty good,” Cueto said. “Me? Malo.”
There is one aspect that has made Webb more confident in his hitting ability this season. Now when he takes BP, he’s the bopper in the group — although Gausman did manage to sneak one over the fence a couple of weeks ago.
“Where were we?” Gausman said. “I don’t remember. But I definitely ran around the bases.”
It hasn’t paid off yet, but there’s still one incentive to taking BP.
“In the World Series this year, at least in our park, we’re going to be hitting,” Gausman said.
goddamn Kev, cut and paste the good parts, this is a lot to scroll through
Ha thanks. Whole thing was hilarious. Ichiro, lulz.
Cueto still ok, that BR report was bullshit
This is not a good start.
Wow. Grandpa is a joke
Is Slater warming up yet?
Probably has shoulder tightness…
Rag arm he couldn’t throw out his grandma..
Why does it feel like it’s 10-0?
What is all this “side tightness” stuff?
Constantly. Is this another word for “oblique strain”?
I don’t remember that years ago in the 70’s through ’90s there were so many “obliques” or “side tightness” injuries.
Is that being caused now by weight training, and these guys are wound up too tight?..
In the NHL, all they tell you now is upper body injury or lower body injury.
You could have bloody nose or a severed head – same prognosis…
The number of IF hits SF has given up over the last few games is ridiculous.
Posey to Bryant for the CS — that was a purely beautiful play.
Nice double play. Great throw from Posey.
Braves picking up where they left off last year vs. Dodgers in the NLCS.
For obvious reasons, Krukow should cool it with this “letting out some shaft” line that he’s fallen in love with.
Just doesn’t sound right on a baseball broadcast…
Agree more appropriate in a porn movie..
There are children watching!
the “ten note ostinato” of the Theme from Shaft, abused badly in a terrible Schlitz Malt Liquor commercial, was the subject of several of the most entertaining copyright cases ever reported.
That was a nice strike em out throw em out!
What wasn’t good for the Brewers was why was the guy going anyway? he was already in scoring position.,
When I went to a lot of hockey games living in the North End of Boston way back when, I’d always laugh when a player would take a puck to the nose or a high stick to the forehead, go into the locker room for stitches, and come out for his next shift. Baseball players woulda been put on the DL/IL. Any San Jose Sharks players around for the Giants’ stretch drive?
Per the thread they are taking today off as well
what krukow meant to say there, about the batter’s odd, leaning-back stance, “he looks like Miki Dora on the nose at Malibu in 1965!”
The goose eggs are piling up for the Giants.
Belt can’t get those feet going
Fuck
Dickless in San Francisco..
FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!
Jesus. Dickerson is a piece of shit
Craw comes through as usual, Yaz and Dickless, eh, no.
The plan against that reliever seemed to be swing away. No matter what. Even Crawford’s hit was lucky, swinging at some sort of slider high at his hands.
the reliever faced three hitters and threw a total of four pitches in the inning
Fail fail fail. We need to cut our dick off.
The Good, the Leone, and the Ugly
Leone best pitch was at Garcia’s head..
Wilmer smoked that ball! 3rd basemen is checking to see if his cup is cracked..
Woulda been safe if he touched first???
Seriously?
Yes, after the fielder went back and touched bag while Yaz is miles away.
Brewers start one of better SPs and end with Hader—Giants go with opener and end with Brebbia.
That sucked. A lot of hard hit balls caught. GRR
1.5
4 bombs for Dogs and save for Treinen. they throw Buehler tonight.
Yeah, we got to take these next 2. I fear the teams we just beat up on are gonna return the favor.