I do think much of their general philosophy is built to outperform expectations over 162, but they happened to luck into the pitching staff which gave them hope this year. They are the opposite of the stars and scrubs of the Fielder/Braun/Weeks generation, they just have a bunch of decent players that they can move around and play matchups. When everyone sucks that does not work. 2019 they outperformed their regular season expectations in the playoffs I would say. Last year they just let everyone in the damn playoffs.
My favorite out of town broadcast. Will miss hearing his voice when watching late night baseball. RIP.
Meant to chime in on this sooner. As great as the atmosphere was that our fans created, this was dumb as shit. Not only was this moment when Rodon hit Altuve the first sign of trouble for Rodon, but Altuve ended up scoring. The Astros didn’t need any help scoring runs so cheering a moment when we gave the Astros a free base runner just made our fan base look really stupid. Anyways, good series Astros. As was the case most of the year you kicked our asses and until we can compete with you we’re not winning a WS since the AL goes through Houston. Side note: at the game there was a guy sitting in front of me who was a dead ringer for Joe Sheehan. What made it entertaining was that this motherfucker was just housing food the entire game (hotdogs, a burger, a pasta dish, etc.), which is funny to me because every time Sheehan throws a temper tantrum on Twitter I picture him like Rob Reiner in South Park...fat, sweating profusely, stuffing his face full of food and not being able to speak clearly and having to take a lot of short breaths.
burnes/woodruff/peralta with hader/healthy williams is really, really nasty. houser didn’t have his best outings but he’s a weapon out of the pen too. that offense looked pretty hapless tho. obv need to get yelich healthy but their window is now with those pitchers they’ve got. if they’re aggressive this winter they’ll be a problem
it all comes down to yelich. if he isnt right, that contract really kills their window. they don't have a path with him playing like this on that deal
JBJ's career wRC+ by year (starting with 2015)... 123 118 89 90 89 119 35 The 35 was this year, and even if they should have been prepared for the chance he'd be below average offensively instead of good like he was last year, this year was excessive in that regard.
I agree with these scouts. Yankees should definitely not try to sign any of the good SS this year to keep room for the prospects 2 years from now. Stay away from Correa and Seager, especially.
If you told me coming into the year that Huira and JBJ were basically going to hit like pitchers, Yelich would hit 9 home runs, and Wong would miss about a month I would have guessed about 75 games at best.
I expected a better series. White Sox have been my worry all year but I guess in hindsight from a matchups perspective (and your division being kinda soft) maybe we should’ve seen it coming? Also variance. Either way, hopefully you’re back next year. Looked like an awesome environment.
Punting on the position for 2 years in hopes that Volpe ends up being the guy would be beyond idiotic. They have to sign a SS.
Rumors going around locally since late last night that McCullers is done for the rest of the postseason
that would be some Boston voo doo magic if true. He looked fine. But maybe that's why he was pulled after 4 in game 4?
Was that expected? Kind of shocked at that one, although I have no clue if he's good or bad at his job. No way they should have thought that team should win more than 90 games.
It's incredibly shocking and very un-cardinals like move. Makes me think it may be for non baseball reasons. Like he pulled a Gruden or something.
Yeah my first thought was the players don’t like him, but it’s certainly possible he did/said something. It doesn’t seem like a firing based on performance
The players seem to like him quite a bit. No grumblings like there was for Matheny. He started out as an equipment manager in low A and worked his way up the cards coaching system. Really shocking they'd fire him so quickly. I had my complaints. Thought he was underwhelming at times, but this is really surprising.
This is complete guess work and amateur Twitter quote translating from the Mozeliak presser, but these quotes sound to me like the front office wanted some changes to the coaching staff and possibly some other front office influence that Shildt wasn't on board with.
Still upset at the complete lack of respect for the game. Honestly surprised baseball didn’t collapse on itself after he did that
Dave and co. have earned my trust over the past two seasons. Certainly a risk, but nothing matters unless the Dodgers can scratch runs across anyway.
Roberts has annoyed me over the years (mostly for fantasy reasons), but I appreciate him having the guts to do something unconventional if he thinks it will give him an edge.
The old "a coach/manager cannot be expected to work through the last year of a contract" it looks like. Which for any sport other than college football or basketball is stupid.
I appreciate the willingness to do stuff that might get you criticized by the people who hate that stuff. I just think it's a tough situation to put Knebel in, and I'm not sure how much of an advantage you're gaining for doing so when everyone knows Urias is coming in.
but if Knebel (and maybe someone else can go 2 innings), I think that throws off the Giants enough. Knebel has opened multiple times this year. Certainly putting him in a tough spot give the spotlight tho
If it works perfectly and they can wait for Urias until the 3rd (ensuring you get a pinch hitter before his spot in the order comes up), that's great. I just think it brings more randomness into play in a scenario where your SP option is really good and you're trying to avoid the random bad outcomes. Even if Knebel gets through 1 clean and Urias comes in for the 2nd, I'm still not sure you're gaining much unless you get that pinch hitter for the 9 spot out of the way before he enters.
they went 1-5 with righties in game 2. I assume they won't do that with Knebel starting. the Giants platoon pretty hard, this will give Kapler some decisions to make.
I get that, but even if they do, Urias has even (and, if anything, slightly reverse) platoon splits this year. And he went 5 IP with 3 H, 1 R and 1 BB allowed with 5 K on 72 pitches in that same game 2 against that line-up. And he's on full rest. I get the premise, and I get that platoon splits work both ways. I just think it's unnecessary unless you're gaining some other edge in terms of the batting order in the process because Urias isn't some average #2 or 3 starter. He's one of the best pitchers in the NL.
Do people think Roberts and Kapler are setting these decisions themselves? I would assume the front office is giving their input pretty heavily.
I really enjoyed his sticky stuff rant when that all kicked off. Outside of that rant, that I watched in entirety a few times, can’t say I know much more. Just seems like an old guy who will tell you to go fuck yourself before he wastes a second trying to persuade someone.
Environment was great even yesterday despite it being a 1 on game with a lot of no shows (that is until everything went kablooey on us.) Some individual matchups weren’t in our favor (our offense vs McCullers, Lynn vs the Astros offense) and we some bad luck with pitchers health, but given our shit results vs the Astros in the regular season plus how we played the last 3 months this beat down wasn’t that shocking. Our offense has shown some alarming deficiencies all year, most notably that they put the ball on the ground way too much and thus are reliant on the BABIP gods to bail them out. Worked out on Sunday but that’s it. Other than that they couldn’t wait to GIDP and end any scoring threat and this was a problem all season long. So, we’ll see what happens in the off-season. It’s tough to predict now given the uncertainty surrounding the labor situation but I’m guessing they’ll more or less rearrange the furniture than make any really splashy moves.