The New Giants

The Giants

The Giants played very exciting baseball in beating the DBacks 3 out of 4 in the series over the weekend.  They have joined the baseball fraternity of home run hitters with many players we never had heard of six months ago.  The Giant pre game commentators Saturday night said the lineup that night was the best they had seen with Belt hitting 7th, Crawford 8th and no Posey.  Then Sunday the Giants scored 1 run in their only loss with Posey batting third and Belt fourth.

Are the Giants still in the pennant race?  Almost all responses I receive say no and tell me not to get excited.  If 89 wins will get the Giants into the playoffs,  they can lose only 11 more games in the 12 series they play. They need to sweep at least one series and not lose more than one game in the other ones. Not impossible but with the Giants pitching very improbable.

Krukow commented Sunday that 100 pitch rule has caught up with the teams.   Mike being a starting pitcher from the last century thinks the pitch count is stupid. The relief staffs have been over worked throughout baseball and the high scoring games indicate that most pitching staff now have three or four minor leaguers.

Dickerson has returned from the IL but he is not the same player.  I don't know if it is his injury or if he was just red hot when he first joined the team.

The outfield of Yastrzemski, Pillar and Slater has been great not only at the plate but in the field with some great catches.  Jaylin Davis the outfielder they got on trade day in his first 14 games in Sacramento is hitting. 404 which includes 8 homers and 5 doubles.  He would have normally been brought up but how can you bench the regulars.

Another player they got on trade day Mauricio Dubon is playing ss hitting .302 with 2 homers.  The Giants called up the River Cats ss Ablata Avelino to open the spot for Dubon.  The Giants are looking  to see if they have the replacement for Crawford.  Replacing his bat is not difficult but even though Brandon isn't the fielder he once was,  he still makes outstanding plays and will be tough to replace.

The jury is still out on second baseman Scooter Gennett.  He was on IL most of the season so his hitting is below par but he has shown flashes of being a pretty good hitter.  He has had a hard time laying off a 2 strike pitch in the dirt. As advertised his fielding is only adequate but he has made three big blunders on the base paths.

The 49ers

It sounds strange but anyone who watch the Denver game knows that even though the 49ers won they got slaughtered.  At the beginning of training the question was who is going to be the backup qb but now the question has to be who is going to start. Garoppolo was terrible and he will have to prove something in the last two pre season games.

A few observations . . . A holding penalty on Denver called back a 50 yard gain that prevented the Broncos from scoring a TD in the first half.  A big play in the game. . .  The Broncos lost their 2nd string qb who was playing pretty well so that the ex Stanford Cardinal Hogan the 3rd stringer played most of the second half which help the Niners. . .  When Denver scored to cut the lead to 9 in the 4th quarter, the Broncos went for 2 points with a simple buck in the middle instead of kicking the extra point to make it an 8 point game.  They wanted no part of overtime. . . Coleman the 49ers starting back had a nice run on his first carry and amazingly wasn't hurt. . .  Thought the Niners defense played well.