Will the Giants find their bats against the Marlins?
Good news for the San Francisco Giants: The Miami Marlins are not the Detroit Tigers. Huzzah! They do not lead the division, nor do they have the best record in their league, nor are they operating with the wind at their back. The two squads are about as similar as Miami is to Michigan. In this polarized game of coastal elites, the mid-western Tigers are Baseball’s Blessed — and we saw some of that purpose-driven play in the past series. God was on their side, how else would you explain Wilmer Flores’ potential 1st inning 2-run homer getting blown back into the field of play? Riley Greene’s glove is a nest for angels.
An appropriate comp for this Marlins team would be the Washington Nationals, a team that the seriously slumping Giants took two of three from. The Marlins are further down in the dumps of the National League East than the Nats are. They’re younger than the Nats too, the youngest in the league, with a handful of intriguing and fledgling talents, but are not built to contend. As of Thursday, Miami’s playoff chances are 0.1%.
Desperate to wring reassurance from the rag that is the current Giants offense, this is it. After a rough series against an unforgiving team, San Francisco has been dealt a reprieve.
Pitching is the major hang-up for the Fish. Two months into the season, their collective 5.29 ERA is ranked 27th in the Majors. Their starters have significantly lagged behind their relievers, posting a 5.71 ERA, while heaping a lot of work on them as well. The rotation has logged the least amount of innings in the Majors. They don’t do anything particularly well. Contact is generally loud, with opposing batters hitting for average (.266) and finding success with balls put in play (.305). The Giants starters aren’t particularly sparkling in those categories either (.256, .320), but are better at preventing walks, getting strikeouts, keeping a batted-ball grounded rather than watching it leave the yard. Miami’s starters 4.62 FIP is nearly 1.5 points higher than San Francisco’s.
Like Washington, these numbers do not mean they do not have capable arms. It’s early enough in the year when “season” stats are still swayed by outlandishly poor outings. And the reality is that offensively the Giants don’t seem capable of punishing any pitcher no matter how much he’s recently struggled. San Francisco has made every starter, no matter how middling, look like Tarik Skubal — worse yet they missed the convenient excuse of facing Skubal to explain away their futility.
The last five starters they went up against (before the 3-run coup against Jackson Jobe on Wednesday!) all logged their best or second-best starts of the season according to Fangraphs’ game score measurement. Miami’s projected starters for Friday and Saturday (Cal Quantrill and Edward Cabrera) certainly don’t look statistically intimidating — but right now the San Francisco batting order is a rotating trompo of stacked marinated meats that opposing arms are salivating over and carving through.
Good news, though: Quantrill and Cabrera are right handed!
Bad news though: so was Jack Flaherty, so was Keider Montero, so was Jake Irvin…
Yeah, these days, genuine optimism feels forced. Blame god — a runs drought will do that to you. The perfection demanded of the pitching staff in order to float the offense is unfair and untenable. That truth became all too apparent after Randy Rodriguez’s one mislocated fastball with 2-outs and 2-strikes in the series finale in Detroit. Now that was a bummer, an absolute crank maker (I, for one, was certainly cranky the rest of the day) — but with a little space from that emotional ruin, it’s hard to ignore the fact that a considerably lopsided Giants team played three close games against one of the best teams in baseball.
But silver-lining thinking isn’t the thinking of winners, and the Giants want to be winners, and the Giants won’t be winners if they keep losing. There will be no bright side in Miami, just the cruel and cold and un-massageable Manicheanist worldview of win or lose.
Unfortunately, upon closer look, this supposed reprieve could be dicier than expected.
Cal Quantrill’s inflated ERA comes from 15 runs allowed across three early starts against Philadelphia, Seattle and LAD. He isn’t one for longevity but in four starts in May, Quantrill has posted a 3.06 ERA, giving up 6 runs in 17.2 innings, which include starts against the robust offenses of Dodgers and Cubs. He throws three different types of fastball more than 60% of the time, and the Giants haven’t done much against either the split, four-seam or cutter so far.
Edward Cabrera’s 4.73 ERA is a bit of a red herring as well. Since posting a 7.23 ERA in April, he’s been great in May with a 2.53 ERA in four starts, striking out 23 and walking just 5 in 21.1 innings pitched. He’s also coming off the best start of his season so far, fanning 10 over 5.2 scoreless frames against the Angels. He does like to build at-bats off his sinker and finish them with his slider, which are two pitches the Giants actually have somewhat decent numbers against.
The most worrisome starter on paper is Sunday’s projected. Ryan Weathers started the season on the IL with a muscle strain in his throwing arm, but since making his season debut, the 25 year old has been impressive. The 1.15 ERA has the sheen of small sample size, and certainly won’t last, but credit where credit is due. His three starts have come against quality lineups: the Padres and twice against the Cubs. In back-to-back outings against Chicago, Weathers put up nearly identical pitching lines, allowing just one solo homer in each 5 inning start. Most recently, he allowed just 3 hits and 0 earned runs while pitching into the 6th against San Diego.
There doesn’t appear to be much nuance to his approach. He attacks the zone with a standard three pitch mix of speed (49%), offspeed (29%), breaking ball (16%). Everything is hard, and everything is down. The 97 MPH fastball velocity is in the 93rd percentile across the league. The change-up is hard with more drop than average. The sweeper is hard and tighter than average. Anticipate this being a bit of a nightmare match-up for San Francisco.
Overall the Marlins are neck-and-neck with the Giants in terms of hitting mediocrity. But while the Giants have dropped in effectiveness in the past two weeks, with a .204 average (29th) and .609 OPS (29th), the Marlins have kicked it up their offensive production to slightly above average! Their .270 average since mid-May is sixth highest in the Majors. They put up 10 runs on Wednesday to salvage a win against the Padres — it took a week’s worth of games for San Francisco to match that same total. Still, the Marlins aren’t that solid against southpaws, and they’ll get a tough double-dose of them this weekend in Harrison and Ray.
Don’t expect much to change: This will be a pitching-centered series.
Series Overview
Miami Marlins
22 – 32, 5th in NL East
Streak: W1, 5-5 last 10 games, 13-15 Home
229 RS – 305 RA
San Francisco Giants
31 – 25, 3rd in NL West
Streak: L3, 4-6 last 10 games, 14 – 16 Away
242 RS – 203 RA
Schedule & Projected starters:
Friday, May 30th, 7:10 PM ET (4:10 PM PT)
Kyle Harrison, LHP Cal Quantrill, RHP
0 – 1 (5 G, 1 GS), 3.86 ERA 3 – 4 (10 GS), 6.09 ERA
Saturday, May 31st, 4:10 PM ET (1:10 PM PT)
Robbie Ray, LHP Edward Cabrera, RHP
7 – 0 (11 GS), 2.56 ERA 1 – 1 (8 GS), 4.73 ERA
Sunday, June 1st, 1:40 PM ET (10:40 AM PT)
Hayden Birdsong, RHP Ryan Weathers, LHP
2 – 1 (13 G. 2 GS), 2.48 ERA 1 – 0 (3 GS), 1.15 ERA