When the Giants Come to Town, It's Bye-Bye Baby

06.12.2008
6/12/08: Five and Two

Giants 10, Rockies 7: A seven-game road trip to two hellholes. The Giants won five and played one more to a tie except for a play at the plate. This weekend's series against Oakland will be a big test: home, where they haven't played well this year, and against a team that has had their number in recent years. Fair or not, the Giants' rebuilding phase is and will be compared to Oakland's, and in most minds Billy Beane has run circles around Brian Sabean thanks in large part to the ballsy move of trading Dan Haren, a pitcher in his prime with a reasonable contract, for a passel of prospects, many of whom have already contributed to the big-league club this year (including this weekend's starting pitchers Dana Eveland and Greg Smith). What looked like a fire sale has turned into a very competitive second-place team.

The Giants have also exceeded expectations -- what looked like an historic debacle has turned into a badly flawed but oddly compelling team. Not quite the same as Oakland's instant turnaround, but it has given Sabean a smidge of grudging respect among the chronic Sabes-haters. The recent two drafts, as noted here recently, have also bolstered his standing.

As for today's game, it easily could have turned into a Coors disaster, with Giants pitchers knuckling under what seemed like a pre-humidor onslaught. But the bullpen tightened it up, Clint Hurdle left reliever Manny Corpas in to give up two insurance runs to the Giants when it was obvious Corpas was fading fast, and Brian Wilson put down the Rockies in order in the 9th. Wilson is on a serious roll: batters are recently 1-for-27 against him, according to the radio guys.

PLODAG: I'm going with Yabu. A day after I jinxed him, he came in with the bases loaded to strike out Spilborghs, the go-ahead run. Hat tip to The Big Sweaty and Wilson, too.

The Upside: Billy Sadler, who relieved Sanchez after Sanchez barely made it through five. Sadler quieted the Rockies bats for two innings, with a little help from Yabu. This was the kind of place and game that could have eaten up a young guy with shaky control, and Sadler acquitted himself fairly well. A good building block: Coors is to pitchers what New York is to song-and-dance wannabes. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.



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[June 12, 2008 7:22 PM]  |  link  |  reply
FelipeForever said

Sadler did indeed impress. I'd started to write him off, but he appears to be ready for the show.
Given this, Correia's Sunday return poses an interesting problem. Who will be optioned out/sent down? Misch would seem to make the most sense, but maybe they're thinking of using him in the pen for good now, and maybe in the bigs. Does the Vincredible Chulk still have options? He's been terrible lately.

[June 12, 2008 10:41 PM]  |  link  |  reply
ELM replied to FelipeForever

If Chulk has options, I'll bet he's the one. If not, either Misch or Sadler.

[June 13, 2008 1:05 AM]  |  link  |  reply
PM said

Letting Misch pitch for the Grizzlies and get his confidence back would not hurt; send him down.

[June 13, 2008 12:58 PM]  |  link  |  reply
obsessivegiantscompulsive said

The radio announcers make it seem like Misch is headed for the bullpen, but Misch is one of the backups should, god forbid, one of the starters go down, so I would think it would make more sense to send him down to AAA to start when Correia returns.

And it wasn't like Misch had horrible peripherals when he pitched, it could be just that he was a victim of hyper-BABIP this season.

It could also be like Correia, he needs to make that final leap to be able to start versus relieve, as both struggled as starters, then Correia got put in the bullpen where he did well (and Misch has done very well as a reliever in the bigs) before getting to the point where he could start successfully.

I wouldn't send Chulk down, as much as he suffers in comparison with Accardo, he's actually been a very good reliever for us since we got him, and deserves the benefit of the doubt here.

Much like how Walker had his bad patch recently, the radio announcers said that he "lost" his splitter for a while, but just got it back the other day and was dominating again.

I was starting to write off Sadler too, so yeah, this was a great performance. He just needs to continue to do so.

But, man, we could have a totally awesome strikeout domination bullpen in a year or two, Wilson, Sadler, Hinshaw, and we have Romo coming up, and who knows who else, I noticed that Griffin is now relieving and striking out a lot (I guess he's recovered from his TJS), Sosa could end up there given how full the rotation is now, as well as Bumgarner and Alderson.

To go with our awesome rotation, too...