Last Night's Game

If the Giants were not matching up well against the Phils then there might be concern. But though they lost, the Giants still forced the Phils other number one guy to throw a shutout.

From the Phils perspective, I have to believe that my guy needs to throw a shut-out against the Giants to have a chance to win. When you factor in the Zito exception, this is a pretty accurate assessment of Giants pitchers dominating Phillies hitters.

That is a lot of weight for Phils pitchers. Most of the entire careers of Lincecum, Cain, Bumgarner and Sanchez have been pitched under those difficult circumstances. Not the Phils, though. The Phillies score about 25 percent more runs than the Giants. This year the Phils are at 4.4 vs the Giants 3.5 runs per game. And that is not insignificant.  While this may seem like a big disadvantage during the season, and it is, the post-season really comes down to pitching under a lot of pressure when you know your hitters are in for a rough time. For Giants pitchers, this is an everyday thing, game-in, game-out, season-in, season-out. Last year, the Braves, Phils, and Rangers' pitchers were not up to the task. Though the scoring was close, the Giants were never really challenged except for the third inning of game 5 against the Phils.

The Phils position players have the big reputations, but they have built those reputations against the "Not-Giants". Except for Victorino, they have been pretty much helpless at worst, and sporadic at best against the Giants.

Its easy to fall into the trap of putting too much emphasis on the standings when evaluating a team's relative strength. We forget that by its very nature, baseball really is specific batters against specific pitchers, (yet one more reason for accurate strike-zone calls) and the Giants continue to match up well against Philadelphia.

I was reminded of that basic element of baseball, when reading Joe Posnanski's piece contrasting the careers of Matt Stairs and Randy Moss on the occasion of their mutual retirements.

Stairs owned David Cone and Roy Halladay , but couldn't hit Rick Helling. Matt Stairs, at age 40, came off the bench for these same Phils in Game 4 of the NLCS against the Dodgers' Jonathan Broxton in the 8th inning with a man on, score at 5-5. He promptly launched one into the cheap seats. Its not that Stairs was great or even having a great year. He was at exactly league average in OPS+ for the season. He just happened to hit a ball he picked up well out of Broxton's release point. It was no more complicated than that.

Drysdale owned Mays. McCovey owned Drysdale. Individual matchups. As a fan, I tend to overlook them, because I simply do not follow the game from that standpoint anymore. But matchups, and I do not mean the brain-dead absolutist approach to L vs R, are as integral to the game as the strikezone. Stats are certainly one element of evaluating matchups. But just as important if not more so, is observation and determining how well a hitter is picking up the pitcher's pitches and how deep in the zone he can let a pitch go before committing.

That takes a lot of eyeballing over a lot of years and some guys never do acquire that skill. Bochy has been pretty adept at this. Dusty Baker, Joe Girardi, Kirk Gibson and others seem to be very good at this. As a matter of speculation, I believe this to be a big element in the D-Backs success. Gibson's ability to determine  favorable matchups based upon his years of experience measuring up pitchers. I have no empirical evidence to support that, but it is certainly a plausible explanation, at least in part, for the D-Backs current run.

As Giants fans, one can only hope that I am dead wrong and that the D-backs are smoke, mirrors, and paper-clips.