Series Thoughts: Giants / Series Preview: Diamondbacks

May 28, 2009 at 7:15 pm by Capitol Avenue Club under Arizona Diamondbacks, Atlanta Braves, San Francisco Giants, Series Preview, Series Thoughts

Here are my thoughts on the Giants series.  Our 50 million dollar pitching staff couldn’t deal with the monstrosity of the Giant’s potent offense, but it didn’t really matter because our bats decided they’d take the series off too.  What an embarrassing series.  We played like absolute crap.

Looking forward, we’ve got Haren vs. Lowe tonight.  I love the Braves and all, but Derek Lowe is such a drag to watch, just unentertaining, a junk pitcher, etc…  And  and Dan Haren is so much fun to watch.  It’s cool, though.  I can do other things while Lowe is pitching and the Diamondbacks are hitting because I have virtually no interest in watching the bottom half of each inning, other than to know the score.  Good thing they’ve got that scoreboard thing in the corner of the screen.  Saves me lots of time to catch up on things.  But really, Dan Haren is a joy to watch.  So incredibly entertaining.  He might be my favorite pitcher in the game right now (Maddux has retired).  I previously noted the 36 most entertaining pitchers (my opinion of course), and he was number 2, behind Ubaldo Jimenez, who kind of sucks.  Dan Haren is a guy you really get behind, though.  Except when he’s playing the Braves.  Maybe I should cheer for the Diamondbacks and if they win I’ll be prepared, if the Braves win it will be a pleasant surprise.  Ha.  Anyway, like I said.  If you get a chance.  Watch the game tonight.

After that it’s Jair Jurrjens vs. Jon Garland.  Jurrjens is due for a bad game, but it shouldn’t matter because the Diamondbacks have a pathetic offense and Jon Garland is sporting a super-cool 1.55 WHIP despite tossing back-to-back quality starts.  So he’s due for a bad game.  Worse than normal.  Which is usually pretty bad.  There was much talk about the Braves bringing him in this off-season.  I’m not saying he’d certainly be better than Kenshin Kawakami, but Jon Garland is just flat out boring and not good.  At least Kenshin brings more flavor to the game.

Following the “no excuse for not winning” game, we’ll send Javier “innings eater” Vazquez against Doug Davis.  I started out very high on Vazquez and he’s let me down thusfar like I should’ve expected.  Same old song and dance.  Great K/BB rates, crappy ERA.  Low strand %, high BABIP.  He does everything a pitcher can control and needs to do to be dominant very well (except that pesky HR% and HR/FB) but does everything we statheads throw into the luck tank that you also need to do to be dominant very poorly.  I’ve concluded that he’s worse from the stretch than the wind-up which contributes to the low strand %.  Anyway, he’s got the mighty task of taking on Doug Davis.  Who isn’t that good but isn’t very bad.  We’re in a hitter’s park and if Javy keeps it in the park and we don’t win this game I’m quitting on our offense.

The fourth match-up scares the hell out of me.  And yeah, that’s right, we play 4 game series’.  Because that’s the way the unbalanced schedule works.  Anyway, it’s presumably Medlen vs. Max Scherzer who shut us out in an embarrassing 12-0 loss.  How embarrassing?  Well, the WORST LOSS IN TURNER FIELD HISTORY.  Yeah, not even exaggerating.  The Braves haven’t “announced” a starter for that game, but I’m betting it will be Medlen.  Other possibilities include Morton, Parr, Glavine, and Tommy Hanson.  Let’s not discuss Tommy Hanson, please.  They’ll bring him up when they bring him up.  And until then there’s no sense in fretting about it.  If we win that game I’ll un-quit the Braves (assuming they do something so embarrassing in the previous 3 games that I’ll quit them before then).

Moral of the story is: Watch Haren tonight, our outfield sucks, and sometimes our 55 million dollar pitching staff can’t shut down horrible offenses in pitcher’s parks.  Who knows what’s in store for this series in a hitter’s park.  A lot of bad baseball, I imagine.