Tag Archives: Madison Bumgarner

The Friday Five: Hello Big Apple

Johnny Cueto and Buster Posey of the San Francisco Giants

AP Photo

Guess what? The San Francisco Giants are tied for first place again. The Dodgers just lost 4 straight to the Marlins (thanks secret agent Bonds), and both teams now have identical 12-11 records. After being swept by Arizona to open a 10-game homestand, the Giants responded by going 5-1 the rest of the way to bring their record back above .500.

Let’s dive right in to this week’s Friday Five.

1) The Giants start a 3-game series in New York against the reigning NL champion Mets this weekend. The Mets are 13-7, have won 6 straight games, and 9 of their last 10. The last 3 teams they played were the Phillies, Braves, and Reds, so the Mets did their job beating up on the bottom of the NL. Somehow, Neil Walker leads the Mets with 9 home runs but Yoenis Cespedes and Michael Conforto are the hitters to be most worried about this weekend. Continue reading

Leave a comment

by | April 29, 2016 · 11:37 AM

Episode 102: “The Bristol Curse”

jessica-mendoza-espn

Download episode 102 here or stream it below!

In our 102nd podcast, Eric and Chad break down the second week of the 2016 season that saw the Giants go 2-4 while our livers broke down even more. Our G-men dropped 2 of 3 in each city of Denver and LA, but not all is lost as we look at the positives of Samardzija’s and Cueto’s starts. Posey snapped his 18 AB hitless streak, Romo and Adrianza went on the DL, Duffy’s slump, Derek Law made his dad very happy, we share our concerns about Peavy and Lopez, how Samardzija met his wife, and Vin Scully’s dulcet tones as he recounts how MadBum and his wife saved a rabbit from a rattlesnake’s belly. Don’t forget to follow us @TortureCast on Twitter, like us on Facebook, and check out our articles, including Eric’s “Friday Five” at TortureCast.com!

Leave a comment

Filed under Episodes, Uncategorized

Episode 101: First Week of 2016

623143

Download the episode here, or stream it below:

The Giants started the season 5-2, taking 2 of 3 in Milwaukee and 3 of 4 from LA. All 5 wins were from the comeback variety. The Giants also hit 14 homeruns and for the first time since 2003, hit homeruns in their first 7 games. Chad and Eric discuss the details of the week in episode 101 of the TortureCast!

Leave a comment

Filed under Episodes, Uncategorized

The Friday Five: April 1, 2016

920x1240

Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle

As the 2016 San Francisco Giants season is about to get under way it’s time roll out what I hope is a regular feature here on TortureCast. Welcome to “The Friday Five”. Each week I’ll take a look at a few different things going on with the Giants. It’s a chance to look ahead to the weekend as well as catch up on anything that you might have missed during the previous few days.

  1. The long, cold void of winter is over. Monday morning at 11 am the Giants open their regular season in Milwaukee. Madison Bumgarner (career: 85-58, 3.04 ERA) gets the ball for his 3rd straight Opening Day start. In the previous two openers Bumgarner has allowed 1 earned run in 11 innings of work. The Brewers send RHP Wily Peralta (35-37, 4.04 ERA) to the hill for his 1st career Opening Day start. The current Giants roster is batting .361 against Peralta so we may see lots of scoring in tiny MIller Park to start 2016.
  2. In case you missed it, earlier this week Andrew Susac was optioned to Sacramento. With that move Trevor Brown won the backup catcher role to start the season. I’m sure we’ll see plenty of Susac as the season moves along, if he can stay healthy. I poked around the Giants 25-man roster this past Monday.
  3. In ex-Giants news, the former lovable panda known as Pablo Sandoval has lost his job as the starting 3rd baseman in Boston. The 29-year old will begin the second season of a 5-year/$95 million contract on the bench. Feels like the Giants dodged a bullet when Pablo decided to leave town.
  4. Tweet of the week, make sure you check out this Brandon Crawford piece:

     

  5. To finish off “The Friday Five” every week I’ll link to various Giants and baseball related stories that caught my eye during the previous 7 days. Here’s a few to get us going.
  • We’re recording our 100th episode of TortureCast this weekend. Submit your questions to be answered on the show. See if you can stump us with trivia, share a favorite moment from the show, or just drop a line about the 2016 team.
  • In the SB Nation season preview, Grant Brisbee looked at what teams would look like without trades or free agents. It’s fun to see which teams some of today’s stars originally signed with.
  • The Giants were picked to lose the Wild Card game in that SB Nation preview.
  • Over on ESPN, two of their “experts” pick the Giants to win it all. To be fair, most have them in the playoffs and 5 of 31 analysts have the Giants winning the NL.
  • Sticking with the prediction theme, Sports Illustrated’s panel loves the Cubs and no one picks the Giants to win it all.
  • Finally for the predictions, Fox Sports checks in with theirs. Once again the Giants don’t get much love.
  • Make sure to head over to r/SFGiants. It’s fun place to interact with Giants fans from all over the world.

It’s great to be back for another season of talking about Giants baseball. You can follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and make sure to subscribe to our podcast on Stitcher and iTunes.

Don’t forget, our season preview is coming in our 100th episode this weekend. Thanks for all of the downloads, listens, and shares. It’s going to be another interesting Giants season.

-Eric

@2outhits

Leave a comment

Filed under Articles, Uncategorized

Are you Concerned About the Pitching?

bumgarner-giants-2016-spring-usatsi

Let’s take a quick glimpse into the Giants spring training stats as of today. Ok, we all know that some players just “tinker” in the spring and settle down once the regular season starts, and this IS a small sample size, but it’s worth noting that the Giants have some new players that may be giving Giants fans a little indigestion.

 1. Jeff Samardzija

8.31 ERA in 13 IP, .382 BAA, 1.92 WHIP, 3 HR, 21 H

Maybe he took a little of the American League with him in his luggage. Hey, and I spelled his name correctly!

2. Jake Peavy

8.53 ERA in 12.2 IP, .450 BAA, 2.37 WHIP, 4 HR, 27 H

He always starts slow?

3. Madison Bumgarner

10.57 ERA in 7.2 IP, .371 BAA, 1.70 WHIP, 13 H 

Ok, we’re not really concerned, right? (about his sore foot, obliques, maybe his shaven beard that supplied him strength?)

4. Johnny Cueto

16.62 ERA in 4.1 IP, .409 BAA, 2.54 WHIP, 9 H

So, he used the word “testiculos” yesterday. So, there’s that.

5. Matt Cain

10.12 ERA in 2.2 IP, .538 BAA, 3.75 WHIP, 7 H

I want this guy to do well this year….so badly. Really. He’s such a nice guy.

=========================

Honestly, he and Samardzija give me the most concern. Jeff is a horse like Matt used to be, but Cain is just an injury factory at this point, and his career is definitely on the downward trend.

I listed all five of these pitchers, despite their low inning totals, because, well, THEY’RE THE STARTING FIVE! Combined they are:

9.82 ERA in 40.1 IP, 13 HR, 77 H

I’m pretty sure I could’ve pitched to 3 batters without significantly raising these numbers much. Thirteen! homeruns in 40.1 innings? 77 hits?! Egad, it’s batting practice, or they are helping some minor leaguers out.

Now, this could be just a bad week for starters in the regular season, and certainly they won’t have this line during the year, but does it give you cause for concern?

 

1 Comment

Filed under Articles

Episode 99.2: Puppy Monkey Baby

6qlh1xxq

Download the episode here, or stream it below!

I hope you are singing “Puppy Monkey Baby” in your head right now.

Now that the Super Bowl has happened, Eric and Chad take you through the maelstrom of Giant happenings over the past month. And spring training is almost here.

We talk about our grades for the Giants’ offseason, Juan Uribe is too expensive, the Giants have the highest payroll in 2021, Belt is heading towards arbitration, where Timmy may go, Vegas World Series odds, and Chad will be covering the Giants vs 49ers shootout at Pebble Beach and Media Day at AT&T Park with the internet’s own Veronica Belmont!

And, baseball is almost here!

Leave a comment

Filed under Episodes, Uncategorized

Episode 98: That’s All She Wrote

That’ll do season, that’ll do.

Download the episode here, or stream it below:

[audio http://torturecast.podomatic.com/enclosure/2015-10-05T23_22_27-07_00.mp3]

Since 2011 we’ve brought (almost) weekly podcasts to chronicle the San Francisco Giants’ season with cheer, torture, profanity and hope. We’ve been fortunate enough to cover two World Series championships, but this year was not meant to be. The Giants finished 84-78; in second place in the NL West. To be honest, given the injuries, this was not a horrible record, but surely far short of where the Giants and their fans wanted to be.

Willie, Chad and Ben get together to wrap up the season in Episode 98 of the TortureCast. We offer up what went wrong and right for the Giants, and what their offseason priorities should be. Chad also has correctly predicted the last two season win totals at 88 in 2014 and 84 this year. Vegas had them at 84.5 wins for the over/under. No money changed hands.

We offer our postseason winner predictions and who we want to win. All three of us settled on Cubs (want) and Cards (should). Besides, the Giants and Cards have alternated the NL pennant the last 5 years. Why should that change? It would only give credence to the even year magic that they will surely experience next year as they pass around their fourth commissioner’s trophy.

Chad

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Turn out the lights, the party’s over

IMG_4316

The long, strange trip known as the 2015 baseball season is coming to a close for the San Francisco Giants. After a brutal 8-0 loss to the rival Dodgers yesterday the Giants are officially eliminated from making the playoffs this season. But hey, it’s an odd year, what did we expect?

Personally, I thought the odd year BS would end with this team but alas, it was not meant to be. I’m not ready to look ahead to 2016 and what will surely be another title, so today let’s look back at 2015 and wonder what if.

So where did it go wrong? It seems easy to say injuries. I don’t want to pin it all on that but let’s just get it out of the way now. By my count 16 different Giants spent time on the DL this season. I have no idea how many games they all missed, I’m sure someone did the math. There’s fewer pitchers than you’d think. Here’s the list of players that missed games due to injury in 2015.

Pitchers

Tim Lincecum

Matt Cain

Jake Peavy

Mike Leake

Jeremy Affeldt

Position Players

Hunter Pence

Joe Panik

Brandon Belt

Andrew Susac

Nori Aoki

Gregor Blanco

Angel Pagan

Hector Sanchez

Ehire Adrianza

Juan Perez

Casey McGehee (remember him?)

That’s a long list with a lot of key guys on it. There are FOUR players finishing the season on the DL with concussion related symptoms and there have been a lot of tweaked sides and backs. It’s been ugly, it took away the guts of the team, it just plain sucked. If I missed someone, comment below. With this season it’s entirely possible for that to happen.

The Giants have 82 wins right now and will finish with a winning record. They were a good but not great team when it’s all said and done over a long season. Even with the high turnover the Giants offense leads the NL in hits, batting average, and is tied for the lead in OBP. They’ve scored the 4th most runs in the National League. So offense wasn’t really the hang up this season. Sure, there could be more long balls. We all like dingers. But the Giants offense held its own this season.

There were three things that really hurt 2015. The Giants didn’t play well in 1-run games, the starting pitching was inconsistent, and a lack of depth was exposed. I’m not trying to call this season a failure. Sure I’m glad the team is over .500 but the goal always was, and forever will be, winning championships.

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Chad said it all the other night with that tweet. Had the Giants won just a few more 1-run games they’d be playing the Dodgers for first place right now.

Part of the reason for those close losses all season? The starting pitching. Do you know who has the 3rd most starts for the Giants this season? Ryan Vogelsong. Didn’t see that one coming did you? Chris Heston had the no-hitter early and was a lot of fun but then he lost control of where pitches went and had to take a break. What if the Jake Peavy that has been on fire since returning from the DL had been there all season? Who knows. What the Giants had was a dominant Madison Bumgarner and a revolving door of starters. He can carry a team through a month, not a whole season.

I’ll admit it. I like watching Kelby Tomlinson fly and Jarrett Parker trot around the bases. Marlon Byrd has been average and Alejandro De Aza arrived just a month too late. In fact, all the good depth arrived just a little too late. Nobody on the bench turned in to “that guy” for late game situations. The best bench player was Matt Duffy who took the third base job and never let go. Between the starting pitching and depth it’s no wonder the Giants lost so many 1-run games down the stretch.

That’s ok. It’s time to breathe, take an October off and watch some other teams battle it out. Let the odd year BS be your chance to catch up with loved ones plus your blood pressure and liver will thank you. It’s kinda nice to have that luxury.

We recorded Episode 97 the other night if you missed it. The TortureCast crew is at the game tonight. Follow along on Twitter. Also make sure to like us on Facebook, check out our podcasts on iTunes or Stitcher and subscribe to our Youtube channel.

-Eric

@2outhits

Leave a comment

Filed under Articles

Episode 95: Somehow the Giants are Still in it

Putting orange things in your ears apparently is a good thing. The Giants’ ain’t having not going to the playoffs, maybe, in 2015.

Download the episode here, or stream it below!

Despite a 2-5 road trip, the Giants actually GAINED a half a game on the Dodgers, who have lost 5 in a row, and now the Giants only sit 1 1/2 games back. Let’s just not think of the wild card at this point.

Chad and Eric are joined by Ryan Leong from Associated Press Radio, who covered all 4 games in Pittsburgh, plus the Steelers exhibition game. We talk about the series, pinch-hitting MadBum, the Giants’ league-leading batting average, and their chances on catching the Dodgers. Really, it doesn’t look to bad…at least now.

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Episode #90: Duffman

I wonder how many beers Duffy can actually chug after a game while holding Skeeter?

Download Episode 90 here, or stream it below!

[audio http://torturecast.podomatic.com/enclosure/2015-06-29T23_50_35-07_00.mp3]

The Giants went 4-2 for the week, which is something amazing considering they were under.500 at home. Despite a 12-13 June (ok, they can still be .500 with a win tonight), the Giants are only 1/2 game back of the Dodgers. Chad and Ben discuss the month of June, the All Star game voting, Duffy and more!

Leave a comment

Filed under Episodes