News Giants Team Notes

Effectively wild

MLB: Atlanta Braves at San Francisco Giants

Robert Edwards-Imagn Images

In a game of competing mistakes, the Giants lost...which means they won...

In Friday’s opener between the Atlanta Braves and San Francisco Giants, there was an air of wildness emanating from the mound. Baseballs were skidding across opposite batter’s boxes, digging craters in front of home plate, skipping past catchers to the back stop.

Some of this is by design of course. With count leverage, he doesn’t need to be refined. This game is about hitting a rock with a stick. A crude offering has been known to elicit a crude hack, so why not push those boundaries? Sometimes a pitcher needs to bury a curveball and aims to bounce it off the plate. The gamble is that a ball in the dirt becomes more of a liability, a little less predictable. There are expectations of performance to mitigate these risks: when the pitcher intentionally spikes his throw, it needs to be close enough to the catcher for him to lean over it and smother it; when there’s a ball in the dirt, the catcher doesn’t become a catcher at all, but a blocker.

It was a failure of these expectations that sunk the Braves and floated the Giants on Friday night. One sin committed by a pitcher in the 1st, and once by a catcher in the 10th. Worse yet, both errors happened with two outs, with a runner on third base, and, in a contest decided by one-run, both mattered.

The #SFGiants' MLB-leading SEVENTH walk-off victory of the season ‍

SFGiants (@sfgiants.com) 2025-06-07T05:30:00.344Z

Braves reliever Pierce Johnson is all junk all the time. He threw 15 pitches in the 9th and 10th innings and 14 of them were curveballs. He got an unproductive out from Heliot Ramos to lead off the 10th, and Jung Hoo Lee rolled a weak grounder to second to advance Tyler Fitzgerald to third. But his command was a bit sporadic. A lot of his offerings were up in the zone, popping out of his hand rather than snapping out of it. Still, the top of the line-up bats couldn’t square it up, and Wilmer Flores fell into a quick 1-2 hole. Count leverage, with pitches to play with and a base to play with, there is no expectation to be too fine, or to overthink what to throw next. Johnson isn’t a reliever in that moment, he’s an undertaker: bury the curve, bury the batter.

You’ll note that in one sense, Johnson does the job. What he throws in the general vicinity of the plate is a curveball down and out of the zone. The initial concept of that 1-2 pitch was for it to come in at that shoe-top height, but just a scooch more to the right. It’s a bad pitch, an easy take — but was it “wild?”

Scorekeepers are fettered to their book. They live on the surface of the action. Interpretative work doesn’t come into play, nor should it. What happened is Johnson hooked a hook into the dirt, and the baseball understandably scooted past catcher Sean Murphy, allowing the winning run to score.

Now that the book is closed on that play, the more critical digging can begin. I think any catcher who’s put the work into becoming a professional backstop will say Murphy went after that offering all wrong. Clearly the pitch missed the location, but with a runner on third, Murphy shouldn’t have tried to pick that hop with his glove. On a pitch away from the intended target, with no room to error, Murphy needs to corral, to block, to keep the ball in front of him. Again, he is no longer a catcher but a blocker. The root cause of this misplay is he’s a 30-year old catcher in the 10th inning of play. It’s also the one-knee down receiving position that’s all-the-rage now. The posture helps with framing pitches by bringing pitches down in the zone up into it, but the drawback is that it grounds the catcher in a less athletic position. It looks like the lateral break of the pitch surprised Murphy. The baseball kept tailing away from him after he committed to gloving it, and by the time it hit the ground, he was knotted up in a clumsy posture with his glove arm stretched across his chest pulling his upper body forward and away from his lower half. His legs hardly moved, he didn’t get completely to his knees, he fell forward going after the ball, and that was the game.



Murphy’s mistake in the 10th foreshadowed byAtlanta starter Spencer Schwellenbach’s mistake in the 1st.

The whoopsie: an overthrown splitter, trying to do too much to get him out of a frustrating first frame. But reality and the official scorebook were aligned here. When the broadcast locates an offering on the infield grass, that’s a cut-and-dry wild pitch.



Even the robots had trouble locating where the baseball ended up. It actually kicked off the dirt closer to the plate, but if a pitch is spiked in front of home plate, there’s really not much Murphy can do. The further away from the catcher the pitch is, the more unpredictable the hop will become. He actually does what he should’ve done in the 10th (an example of the difference in leg-strength, energy level for a catcher in the 1st frame and in extras). He gets on to his feet and wears the ball off his chest, but it’s the Hail-Mary gamble of a goalkeeper on a penalty kick. You have to be big and then guess big. Murphy goes one way, and the baseball goes the other. I mean, if Wilmer Flores is going to be able to score on a wild pitch, it’s got to be real wild.

The wild pitch punctuated a 3-run 1st for the Giants. San Francisco hadn’t scored in the first frame of a game since last Friday, and hadn’t put a crooked number in the 1st since April 19th (3-2 win v Angels). Three consecutive singles by Heliot Ramos, Jung Hoo Lee and Wilmer Flores got things started, and Dom Smith lifted his first of two sacrifice flies to drive in Lee.

And with two outs, the Braves started to pass out gifts. Schwellenbach got what should’ve been a trouble-ending ground ball off the bat of Willy Adames, but third baseman Austin Riley booted it. Schwellenbach then walked Mike Yastrzemski on four-straight pitches before drilling that splitter into the ground.

Two errors, a walk and a wild pitch — a rally partially funded by handouts. It wouldn’t be the last. That frame set the tone for the rest of the game, with both teams seemingly competing in generosity. While the two run-scoring wild pitches take the cake, San Francisco pitching did their darnedest to keep the Braves in this game.

Hayden Birdsong, who struck out 4 through the first three frames, went haywire in the 4th. The strike zone became a mirage, a distant and impossible to attain oasis.

Birdsong hit Matt Olson with a curveball to lead off the inning, then needed just 9 pitches to walk Marcell Ozuna and Ozzie Albies. Alex Verdugo almost immediately cashed in on the rally-for-free, missing a game-changing grand slam by a foot or so. Birdsong ultimately got Verdugo to strike out, but Murphy brought in Atlanta’s first run on a sac fly and Michael Harris III brought in their second on a 2-out, 2-strike single — their first knock of the game.

Birdsong came out for the 5th but an infield single and another walk to Olson ended his night at 90+ pitches. He needed just 46 pitches to get through the first three innings, but required about 50 to record the next four outs. He walked 5 and hit a batter over 4.1 IP, but with Tristen Beck coming on in relief, had his book closed with the lead in-tact, allowing 2 runs on 2 hits while striking out 5.

With Birdsong derailed, the game’s momentum seemed to slide towards Atlanta. The Giants added a run in the 5th on another sac fly by Smith, but the bullpen struggled to come up with stress-free frames. San Francisco pitching surrendered a three-run lead by walking seven batters and hitting two of them over the 10 innings.

Beck had to be pulled in the 6th after giving up a two-out single, throwing a wild pitch, then walking number-9 hitter Nick Allen to bring up Ronald Acuña Jr. A back-up slider from Ryan Walker got Acuña swinging to end the 6th, but in the 7th, he hung another slider (pretty much the same location as the Acuña one) to lefty Matt Olson who did not miss it.

With the game tied, when you’d hope the Giants would lock-in and focus, inhibition won out. They approached both sides of the ball with arms stretched-out, an open hand.

That exposed style of play was the most evident on the bases. Ramos and Lee both reached first to lead-off the 7th against veteran Craig Kimbrel, and without a ball being put in play, both were erased on the base paths.

I don’t mind the caught-stealing by Ramos — it was a close play, and on an elevated fastball, it wasn’t a great pitch to go on. I get the desire to be aggressive and make something happen. Scoring position with nobody out and a contact hitter like Lee at the plate is a good start to a run-producing recipe — but I do think the aggressiveness against a struggling team like Atlanta was a bit near-sighted. Kimbrel clearly hadn’t settled in — it was his first appearance of the 2025 season — and he ultimatey walked Lee on four-pitches. Waiting to see how the at-bat developed would’ve given Ramos enough information to see that Kimbrel would’ve just given second to him for free rather than jumping to the conclusion that he had to take it.

Caught stealing — fine. Risk is part of the fun. The straight pick-off of Lee though was not as forgivable, especially when acting as the winning run with the big thumpers in the line-up at the plate.

Okay, well, live and learn. It won’t happen ag…

If the Giants lost this game, the base running SNAFUs would’ve be the story. Losing the winning run on the basepaths three times in the final three frames is a no-no, especially when some of the team’s hottest hitters were at the plate. Still, in his postgame interview, Fitzgerald didn’t seem too contrite about the pick-off to end the bottom of the 9th. Sounds like this kind of aggressiveness in these lean times is part of the game plan for the Giants.

Outs for free. Then in the 10th, Erik Miller started to hand out bases for free. With two outs, they elected to intentionally walk Murphy to get the lefty match-up with Michael Harris who Miller promptly hit to load the bases and put the go-ahead runner at third. Spencer Bivens took over and nearly walked in the Manfred Man for theBraves fifth run, but Luke Williams couldn’t resist a 3-2 sinker inside, nor could he out-run a Matt Chapman cannon.

A night defined by freebies, and ultimately, it was the scuffling Braves who walked off the diamond looking up to the sky, cursing their dulled killer-instincts that defined their sustained success for so many years. They lost a 6-run lead in the 9th on Thursday, a wild-pitch cost them in this one. They’re now 9 - 17 in one-run games, the Giants are 14 - 12. It was San Francisco’s seventh walk-off win of the year, which leads the Majors; and their twelfth game in a row decided by two-runs or fewer.

Source: https://www.mccoveychronicles.com/2...es-walk-off-tyler-fitzgerald-effectively-wild
 
6/8 Gamethread: Giants vs. Braves

View from the front of Landen Roupp throwing a pitch.

Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images

Landen Roupp vs. Spencer Strider.

The San Francisco Giants have won four games in a row, each by exactly one run. Today, they’ll try to make it five, and they’ll try to sweep the Atlanta Braves in the process.

On the mound for the Giants is righty Landen Roupp, who makes his 13th start. Roupp is 3-4 on the year, with a 3.18 ERA, a 3.47 FIP, and 61 strikeouts to 22 walks in 62.1 innings. He pitched 6.1 shutout innings against the San Diego Padres his last time out, and has allowed just one earned run in his last four starts.

For the Braves, it’s righty Spencer Strider, who is making his fifth start. The 2023 All-Star has fallen on tough times this year, as he’s 0-4 with a 5.68 ERA, a 6.38 FIP, and 19 strikeouts to eight walks in 19 innings.

Enjoy the game! Go Giants!


Game #66


Who: San Francisco Giants (37-28) vs. Atlanta Braves (27-36)

Where: Oracle Park, San Francisco, California

When: 1:05 p.m. PT

Regional broadcast: NBC Sports Bay Area, KNTV

National broadcast: MLB Network, out of market only

Radio: KNBR 680 AM/104.5 FM, KSFN 1510 AM

Source: https://www.mccoveychronicles.com/2...ves-how-to-watch-landen-roupp-spencer-strider
 
Yaz haz a day

MLB: Atlanta Braves at San Francisco Giants

D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images

It’s been awhile since Mike Yastrzemski has got to do the double finger-gun shake celebration thing...

Way back when in early May, Mike Yastrzemski’s batting average sat at .284, his OPS as high as .878, after a 2-hit, 2 RBI game against Colorado.

Yaz’s solid month at the plate was one of the reasons for the San Francisco Giants hot start. His performance forced Bob Melvin’s hand in terms of roster decisions, inserting himself at the top of the line-up to replace a lost LaMonte Wade Jr. Opportunities for Luis Matos to get reps in right dried up because the veteran was so solid on both sides of the baseball.

But even Yaz wasn’t immune to the miasma that settled over the Giants clubhouse last month. In fact, it may have affected him the most. He hit just .215 in May with an OPS of .574. From the start of the Athletics series on May 16th to first pitch Sunday, Yaz was 7-for-60 at the plate with just one extra base-hit, sinking his season average down to .230 and his OPS under .700. He hadn’t knocked in a run since that game against Colorado on May 4th.

Things got so bad that Buster Posey’s recent roster shake-up, while not as drastic as the Wade DFA, served as a bit of a wake-up call for Yaz. One of the moves brought up not a youthful franchise prospect but a beleaguered 29 year-old left-handed outfielder much like Yaz once was.

Daniel Johnson’s presence helped give the 34 year-old some time off to rest his weary bones (he got just three PA in the San Diego series), and it also sent off some alarm bells. I don’t think Yaz has ever taken his position on the roster for granted, but I imagine it still helps to be reminded of one’s impermanence from time to time. Seeing a fresh face roll in and immediately start filling in your spot in the batting order, and playing your position — that would get anybody’s attention.

With some recent days off and some heat on his rear, Yaz came up with game-tying plate appearances twice for the Giants in their 4-3 win over the Braves.

Down 1-0 in the 2nd against Spencer Strider, Yaz got enough barrel to a tough 2-strike fastball to lift it to center deep enough to score Matt Chapman from third.

Down 3-1 in the 4th, Yaz once again came up with runners on second and third, this time without the safety net of a productive out to fall back into. Ronald Acuña Jr. took a hit away from Dom Smith with Chapman and Wilmer Flores on first and second, and Casey Schmitt could only advance them 90 feet on a weakly rolled grounder to third. A knock was needed to even the score, and Yaz delivered, digging a 2-1 slider out from below the zone, striking it hard enough for the baseball to land directly on the right field foul line before tucking itself into the corner.

Yaz would then score on Ozzie Albies’ booted grounder, giving the Giants the lead in the finale for good. Landen Roupp collected his fourth win, riding out a couple of rough frames against the top of Atlanta’s line-up to go six strong innings. San Francisco has now played in seven straight one-run games and won five of them.

Three RBIs, the winning run scored, and a double — the drought ended in a flood… Well, a heavy downpour at least. Yaz needed it. The Giants needed it. The Braves didn’t need it, but we needed it. Maybe Adames needed it too — hopefully the old man’s performance amped him up during his planned R&R before Tuesday’s game in Colorado.

Source: https://www.mccoveychronicles.com/2...ap-mike-yastrzemski-atlanta-braves-mlb-scores
 
Is it over for Wilmer Flores?

Atlanta Braves vs San Francisco Giants

Photo by Suzanna Mitchell/San Francisco Giants/Getty Images

It appears that RBIs do not guarantee a spot on the All-Star team.

This post by MLB.com’s Mike Petriello has bothered me the past few days:

I was trying to figure out Wilmer Flores's season because there's some All-Star talk and yet nothing under the hood seems better -- most seems worse? and then I saw: RISP OPS: 1.080 empty OPS: .653 so that explains the RBIs and big moments. But also just cannot last long.

Mike Petriello (@mikepetriello.bsky.social) 2025-06-08T02:09:47.756Z

It’s important to remember that Mike Petriello is a Dodgers fan first and foremost. The post coincided with the Giants moving to within one game of the Dodgers in the NL West when the Dodgers were supposed to be 10 games up on the division by now. So, this felt like a drive by shooting at a rival while at the same time being emblematic of the very worst that baseball analytics writing offers to the general public: mainly, that it’s no fun.

The average person probably encounters analytics-driven baseball writing in this way:

FAN: Wow, I LOVE this player! That game was fun!

ANALYTICS WRITER: Actually, that guy you love is bad and your definition of fun is wrong!

I’m as guilty of doing this as anyone who writes about baseball online, of course, so I’m well aware that I’m in Hypocrite Mode, but the above post feels more petty than substantial. Might a Dodger fan actually care about the rivalry?

Now, Wilmer Flores is hardly the frontrunner to represent the San Francisco Giants at Truist Park in Atlanta, but three days after All-Star voting opens is an interesting moment to undermine a campaign before one really gets going. And the argument is that he’s not worthy of a spot because a split stat is not sustainable. It’s a weird/funny statement to make: Shut it down, folks! This thing that grabbed your attention is actually a mirage! That number reflects an unrepeatable result!

But, for the moment, let’s compare Wilmer Flores to other players who have been great with runners in scoring position this season:



14 out of the 15 dudes here are mashers. Wilmer Flores is the exception by far. Lots of fans want to believe that a savvy veteran can stay ahead of the performance abyss if they work hard enough, and maybe that’s true. But it’s a safe bet to simply say, “Old guy with bad batted ball data. Therefore, everything you’re seeing is unsustainable and anything that’s not sustainable is dumb luck.” Wilmer Flores is a party favor. His entire career irrelevant to the analysis. At least, that’s usually what’s going on when something like this gets posted for mass consumption. And, in this case, it ignores the pageantry of the game itself.

When I got started on this post, I thought Flores would be listed on the All-Star ballot under designated hitter, in which case Petriello’s comment would make even less sense because — obviously — nobody is going to threaten Shohei Ohtani for NL DH. But then I looked at the thing and there’s Wilmer listed at first base??? What???

Okay, well, now I can see a bit of an issue here. There’s no chance Mets fans and most baseball fans would leave Pete Alonso off their ballot, but then there’s LA’s Freddie Freeman. Surely, he’d make it onto the roster as a reserve because he’s doing well, has a track record of being an All-Star, and the game itself will be played in Atlanta in front of his old fans.

Here’s what MLB.com says about the reserve roster rules:

All of the pitchers and position player reserves are chosen through a combination of Player Ballot selections and choices made by the Commissioner’s Office.

There are 32 roster spots for each league (20 position players and 12 pitchers). The player ballots account for 17 players in both the AL and NL — eight pitchers (five starters and three relievers), as well as one backup for each position, including DH. The Commissioner’s Office is responsible for selecting six additional players in each league (four pitchers and two position players). At this stage, MLB must ensure that every club is represented by at least one All-Star selection.

We can assume that no Giants position player will receive enough votes to make it on the roster, which means Wilmer Flores currently has a 0% chance of being an All-Star for the first time in his career. If the league office intervenes to make sure a Giant needs to be on the team and Logan Webb is unavailable for some reason, then I presume their choice on the position player side would be Matt Chapman, which keeps Flores’s odds at 0%.

But! If Alex Pavlovic’s comments in the May 19th edition of the Giants Talk podcast are accurate, then players across the league have a lot of love for Wilmer. Enough to surpass Freeman (.351 average, 1.009 OPS) or Bryce Harper (.814 OPS but now dealing with a wrist injury) or Atlanta’s Matt Olson (.817 OPS) or fellow DH Kyle Schwarber (20 HR, .927 OPS)? VERY unlikely; however, in this one scenario, I’d say he has a non-zero chance to make the All-Star team as a reserve or injury replacement... so long as the RBIs keep coming.

Admittedly, RBI total is a pretty flimsy All-Star case, but I’m stupid enough to make it despite Petriello the expert’s research and conclusion — I’m a regular RFK Jr. over here! Sure, this will only be read by Giants fans, but that might be good for the rivalry? Here goes...

For a while there, Wilmer Flores ran neck and neck with Aaron Judge for the league lead in RBI, but both have been overtaken by Pete Alonso (61) and Rafael Devers (57). They’re still in the top 10 league-wide and Flores is 4th in the National League.

What if Wilmer Flores is still in the top 10 for RBI on say, July 1st? Would he still have a case?

Here are all the National League players who were in the top 10 for RBI as of July 1st who did not make the NL roster that season.

2024: Willy Adames, Christian Walker, Jake Cronenworth

2023: Francisco Lindor, Christian Walker

2022: Francisco Lindor, Rowdy Tellez

2021: Adam Duvall, Jesus Aguilar

2019: Eduardo Escobar, Marcell Ozuna, Eric Hosmer, Bryce Harper

2018: Anthony Rizzo, Jose A. Martinez

2017: Mark Reynolds (though he was one of the finalists for the final roster spot vote, which ultimately went to Justin Turner), Travis Shaw, Adam Duvall

2016: Jake Lamb (though he was one fo the final roster spot vote finalists — lost to Brandon Belt), Matt Kemp

2015: Starling Marte

That’s an interesting mix of players to be sure with an overriding theme that popular players can create logjams at certain positions (tough breaks for Lindor and Walker). Basically, 2-3 players a year are ignored despite high RBI totals. Wilmer Flores is the exact type of player (corner guy/DH) who gets ignored for reserve roles because that’s a spot where it’s very easy to find great players who missed the cut via fan vote.

He’s been a great story for the Giants this season. The “never made an All-Star team” angle could spark some momentum, but he’ll need to hit better than the .641 OPS he’s sporting here in June (28 PA). If he can get hot, then we nutty Giants fans can feel more justified in circulating this factoid in hopes that players around the league see it: since 2015, just 13 right-handed hitters have had 4,000+ plate appearances in the National League.



Wilmer Flores is the only player yet to be named an All-Star. That alone doesn’t make him worthy, but maybe those RBIs and his reputation might? We’ll have our answer in about a month and the discussion leading up to that announcement should be part of the fun of the season — even if we all know it’s a longshot.

Source: https://www.mccoveychronicles.com/2...025-nl-all-star-analysis-san-francisco-giants
 
Back
Top