Nothing Less Than A Disaster

Jun 10, 2022 | 2022 Season, Latest Post

by
Greek Giant

The title of this post comes courtesy of Duane Kuiper. It was his quote for describing the top of the third that saw the Giants make a 2-0 lead turn into a 3-2 deficit thanks mostly to horrible defense. There were three errors in the inning. Logan Webb was charged with two earned runs and one unearned but in reality he should have escaped the inning with no more than one run allowed, total.

When there weren’t errors committed there bad choices made, such as Yaz throwing to third on a single with a man on. The problem was he had no chance of getting the runner at third on the throw so the hitter advanced to second. The infield had to play in with runners on second and third.

Webb would hold the line from there and escape further damage. Kudos to the Ace for that.

Last year 47% of Logan Webb’s swing and misses came on sliders. This year that number is down to 27%.

None of that matter yesterday because Logan Webb should have been the winning pitcher. The Giants defense and the baseball gods had other ideas. Thanks to four Giant errors, some soft hits and general rotten luck, Logan Webb was tagged with his second loss as the Giants fell 4-2. Webb would throw 100 pitches on the day and go 5 2/3 innings allowing seven hits and striking out three. There in lies the issue with his outing: He is not getting the same amount of strikeouts he was recording last year. And…. the defense is terrible, not just allowing allowing runs and baserunners, but also making him, and other Giants starters like Alex Cobb, Carlos Rodon and Alex Wood throw way too many pitches, hence shortening their outings and creating a ripple effect that makes the bullpen have to work more. You see where I am going with this…

The Giants’ defensive implosion in the fourth was their first inning with three errors since the third inning of a 12-11 loss to the Reds on Aug. 25, 2010. They had not committed four errors in a game since July 24, 2020.

Here is Manager Gabe Kapler:

““I don’t think we played our best defense. It’s a really tough league when you’re not converting ground balls into outs. I think we’ve seen consistently a better brand of defense than we’ve played today. It still hasn’t been good enough, overall.”

The Bats Are Chilly

Here’s the thing with leaky defense: if you hit you can wallpaper over the ugliness with runs. Unfortunately for this ballgame, the Giant bats were very cold. They wasted a lead off triple by Austin Slater in the bottom of the first. Nobody drove him home. The Giants were blanked seven plus innings by a highly questionable Rockies pitching staff. The boys recorded a grand total of seven hits on the day against pitchers with the following ERAs when the game was over: 6.17, 4.96, and 5.50.

Not good enough.

The loss means the Giants lose the series against the Rockies. It also means our boys are 30-26 and now 6.5 games out of first place.

Austin Wynns’s Auspicious Debut

Austin Wynns made his first start as a Giant yesterday and threw out a runner trying to steal second thanks in part to a great tag by Thairos Estrada.  Then he doubled in a run. Nice work from the new catcher.

This is interesting and shows just how good Logan Webb has been at Willie Mays Field:

The Box

Tonights’ Game

The Giants host the Dodgers for the first time this season. It’s a big weekend series if for no other reason than the Giants need to find a bit of an edge and play better. There is no better opponent than their rivals down south for this purpose. Tonight’s game begins at 6:45 PM and will feature Walker Buehler vs Jakob Junis.