These west coast games can be brutal on OUR sleep. I almost always record the games and then try and watch either late at night or very early. The first game (Monday night), I was working late and went to bed at midnight and ended up getting up at 3 am and the work day didn't allow me to watch the game until last night (while the Tuesday night game was being recorded. The irony is that when I got up at 3 am the game was just finishing up...
Anyway, getting you a quick lunch time update...the Monday late night game was a fairly wild one. It was mostly a pitchers dual, but mostly because of weak hitting. It was 2-2 after the 3rd and that held all the way to the 12th inning where we pushed a run across on a double by Frazier (who didn't slide and almost was out) and then Tauchman moved him to 3rd and Urshela came through with a sac fly.
Unfortunately, Chapman was not able to secure the one run save and we ended up winning it in the 14th as Urshela came through again with a single to knock in our run with 2 outs. An interesting move happened where Holder got the 1st two outs in the 14th and Calhoun ( a lefty was up) and because the Angels lost their DH earlier their pitcher was up afterward. Boone elected to intentionally walk Calhoun to pitch to the pitchers spot as the Angels had no other position players to pinch hit. I am not sure I would have done that, just because with a 1 run lead you could allow a SB and a fluke hit and the game is tied and then you don't have the pitcher leading off the next inning. It is an interesting call but Calhoun doesn't even have amazing lefty righty stats as his OPS against righties last year was .670 and he is a mediocre hitter. Anyway, it worked, but I have to give you my opinion and sometimes bad moves work and good moves don't (and this move wasn't crazy)
In Tuesday's game, German pitched really well again only allowing 1 run that was caused by his own error in 6.2 innings. He left with us cruising to a 7-1 lead until Green came in and was horrible once again (His ERA is now 16.43 in 7.2 innings). He allowed 4 runs to score without getting an out in the 8th inning and Cessa came in and was able to get us to 9th with a 2 run lead. Britton closed this time and had his sinker working great and he got 3 straight groundouts to make it a more relaxing 9th inning. Even though has has not been great for us, if he continues to get his feel back, I would not be shocked if he regained the closer job.
Urshela has really played well for us. His defense has been excellent and he has supplied reasonably good offense. He is providing well above replacement level performance with great defense and a .740 OPS.
Torres - We could use Gleyber to step up for us. He went through a short hot streak, but his OPS is only .708...
Congratulations to Ford who got his 1st Major league HR and has his OPS up to .776 showing a good eye and mediocre stick. WE need guys like this to have one of their career stretches.
Another congratulations to Thairo Estrada who got his 1st major league hits as well and has sacrificed perfectly, walked and got 2 hits in 4 AB's.
Meanwhile Wade looks to still be over-matched at the plate with an sub .500 OPS
LeMahieu has been struggling at the plate as well as his OPS has plummeted to a .713 OPS having a 2-28 run. I would not be leading him off and never liked him there to begin with. Of course, the guy who was supposed to be on his final year for us and be our occasional leadoff guy batted 3rd for us and has been on a hot streak with an OPS now at .851. Of course, I am talking about our LF who is playing CF and now batting 3rd...Gardner.
Go figure...then again we have won the first 2 games on the west coast trip starting these 5 juggernaut names: Tauchman, Ford, Estrada, Wade and Romine.
Lets win at least one of these last 2 against the Angels.
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I think you're giving Boone too much slack: with 2 outs and nobody on, I think it's a terrible move to walk a batter to pitch to the pitcher, and it's not really arguable. In the national league, they always talk about the importance of getting the #8 hitter out when there are two outs so that the other team doesn't "clear the pitcher." You NEVER see the #8 hitter walked with two outs! There's very little downside in pitching to the regular hitter; as long as he doesn't homer, you're probably OK anyway.
ReplyDeleteYou're right.
ReplyDeleteGWRBI, after the over analysis of every single possible outcome on every pitch thrown in a game (and that is THE starting point of every single stat), was wayyyyy to young to retire......It would, to the casual fan, mean a lot more than OPS, simply because they can easily understand the value of someone being clutch - as opposed to all of the other wonderful acronyms we now have in baseball to explain the value of a player. RBI's mean as much if not more than most stats - and if you drive in a lot of runs you're gonna play a long time. That's why the 3-4-5 hitters were the most revered in a line up for only about 125 years in baseball. Most of the RBI leaders over the decades were the best hitters in baseball - and it's funny how in the 70's, 80's and 90's - my youth - driving in 100 or more runs was the litmus test of a great hitter. That's exactly why George Brett types of the time were more feared than the Rod Carew's of the time. Carew, one of the best hitters of all time, probably had about 7 GWRBI's in his career (ok, he might have had a few more....) compared to Brett (who probably had about 600 (ok, he probably had a few less....). If you expected a big hit out of one of them - for a game winning RBI - it's Brett by a landslide. And the reason that I chose in particular those two incredible HOF's, is the DH in the American League. And the reason for American League as the barometer? Carew was a leadoff hitter primarily. And in the AL, the leadoff spot only really matters in the first inning......so the pitchers spot never comes up as a way to make a GWRBI more slanted toward Brett. Good call on the GWRBI. May it make a comeback.....and man, does anybody really understand how great Brett was? As a Yankee fan, we had Nettles manning 3rd during that time. But I secretly wished Brett was on our team. One of the best players I ever saw on a baseball field. He'd still be a nightmare to play against if he played today.