Giants hope to clean up Schlittler

Aidan's back!  He gives a recap of Wednesday's disappointing loss, discusses some of Webb's post game metrics, and then goes into today's matchup between Robbie Ray and an up and coming new hard thrower for the Yanks named Cam Schlittler.  (Don't forget to pronounce the first "L".)  Mark follows that up with a few additions about the last game and few for today's.  That leads to the Safe Bet of the Day™ (which, as someone pointed out, is undefeated on the season.)

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Come to throw the spy. Good morning and welcome back to State with AM and the AM, your San Francisco Giants pregame podcast, bringing you previews, projections, and predictions before every Giants game. And this morning we have Aiden to start things off.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Whoa, good morning. Welcome back to the podcast and welcome back to a brand new season. Boy, is it fun to be back here in the studio. My name is Aiden. That's Aiden Gleason, if you're nasty. And uh it's baseball season, baby. Boy. Not the way we were hoping to start. Obviously, I think we were all watching that first game on Wednesday. So sorry that I wasn't able to record for that one. As my dad said, could be a little bit rough for just timeline for me this year. But luckily, dad is holding down the fort, bringing you all the analysis that you could possibly need. I'll just be here to help him out a little bit. You know, maybe once a week, maybe twice a week. We'll see how it goes. Yeah. Let's get into this first game. Unfortunately, we got to talk about it. If you didn't watch it, the Giants got absolutely ambushed in the second inning. And you always want to say that, you know, the other team got lucky and they were just kind of blooping things here and there. And our pitcher, you know, he's doing great. The ump wasn't giving him calls, whatever. And it wasn't really the case. Logan Webb did kind of get lit up right out of the gates. After getting four straight outs looking solid, Stanton came in and broke up the no-hitter with a single that was 91 miles an hour off the bat, you know, 620 expected batting average off of that one. So, okay, we'll give him that. Then Webb pegs Jazz Chisholm, followed up by single 102 off the bat from Caballero, and then a single 96 off the bat from McMahon. Another single with that was uh only 88 from Austin Wells, but it was 980 expected batting average highest at the game. So that thing was just you know pounced on by Austin Wells, and then Trent Grisham clears the bases with a 105.7 miles an hour off the bat, rocket of a triple into the gap. Would have been a homer in four stadiums. Pretty much got lucky that it wasn't a homer, and they put up five on us in the second inning, and really the Giants never never really got back into that lead as we only got three hits all game. It was pretty ugly. We gave up ten hits total, seven runs. I guess I should have let off with the score, seven-nothing. So, you know, at least we didn't score and get Brazil. There's that saving grace. Although the score would have been nice because we took the over as the safe bet of the day. And after we gave up those first five runs, I remember I was getting off of work right around then, and I was thinking to myself, well, you know, that sucks. We gave up five runs, but at least the over is gonna smash now. There's no way that with as good as that offense just looked, we're only an inning and a half into the game. The Giants will score a couple themselves. No way we don't surpass seven. And what do you know? A couple innings later, Yankees score two more. Okay, whatever. Game's out of hand. All we gotta do is let's just tour one more run, get the over, you know, start out the podcast on a win, even if we can't start off the team with the win, right? And then nobody scored the rest of the game. What the heck? I don't know. Seemed a little baloney to me. So we ended up with a push on day one. You know what? Fresh slate. We're gonna go win today's game. We're gonna go win the safe bet of the day. Well, we'll pretend that first Wednesday game didn't happen. It wasn't even on opening day, basically preseason game, right? Anyway, hopefully it was a preseason game because we pretty much got outplayed in every phase of the game. The pitching wasn't our best, although the bullpen came in and did alright. They kind of got rocked, but didn't give up any runs, so we'll take that as a as a minor win. The offense looked terrible. Like I said, we only had three hits. I will get into that more in just a moment here. And then defensively, I wasn't too impressed. Bader had a nice play, a little sliding catch on kind of a pop-up between center and second base. But the within that second inning, a lot of the throws were just going around hitting the Yankees, not the mitts of the Giants, which would have been ideal. And not quite as pleased with our stellar defense that I was expecting to have. So that's okay. Like I said, first game of the year, gotta work out the kinks somehow. I did want to talk about Webb in particular because he didn't exactly have it for his first game. I was looking at his pitch location chart, and like typically you'll see a lot of low stuff for Webb, especially the changeup, is always just down below the zone. And then he's usually able to get his sweeper, like not only down below the zone, but also with a lot of glove side run, where it ends up, you know, kind of as a back foot slider, back foot sweeper to that lefty hitter. And he wasn't doing that at all. His pitch location chart was absolutely splattered with stuff at the top of the zone, which is fine. I know he's probably doing that because he's got himself into some pickles and he's trying to get strikeouts, he's trying to go for that, you know, swing under it fastball type thing, but that's not really his game. He doesn't really have the stuff for that. Obviously, last year he upped his strikeout numbers a lot, but it's still not where he's most comfortable. If he's truly pitching well and he's getting all those strikeouts, it's because he's getting swing and miss stuff over the changeup. And so that was kind of disappointing just to see him not really look like himself. He wasn't locating. Granted, his lack of locating was really just because of his lack of stuff, right? A lot of times we see his sweeper getting tons of uh glove side run. I don't know if he had a game last year where he didn't go over 20 inches at least like two or three times. And in last night's game, or two nights ago, whatever, he didn't even top out, or he topped out at 17 inches. He didn't get to 20, he didn't even get to 18, and he had a few hangers. Like the first run of the game was off of a Jose Caballero like line drive in the second, and that was a a sweeper with one inch of run. So just a complete hanger at the top of the zone. Caballero smashed it at 102.4 off the bat, rightfully so. I mean, it was a pitch that let Webb can't make that mistake in that spot. So yeah, Webb just didn't exactly have it, and that's okay, it's gonna happen now and then. On the other side, Freed is really good, so it's okay. We only got three hits, we didn't look that good on offense. He pitched absolutely lights out, but I was really hoping that I was gonna go to baseball savant and see, you know, a cutter with you know 15 inches of total run and a four-seamer with 20 plus inches of vertical break, and everything had 2,500 RPMs on it, and it was just like, okay, we couldn't do anything against this guy, right? But really was not the case. I know location is a ton of it. Freed was placing pitches, but just on the back end numbers, his cutter had I think it was about 10 inches of total induced break, which is not that impressive for a cutter. He was only throwing at 2200 RPMs, wasn't exactly blowing it by people. Uh, his four-seamer was only 94 miles an hour, and even the four-seamer only had 16 inches of break with 2100 RPMs, which I know that those numbers don't exactly mean a ton to everybody, but just know that an elite fastball will have 20 inches of vertical break on it. 16 inches is it's serviceable, but it doesn't exactly explain why the Giants only had three hits.

unknown 8:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

Anyway, moving on. Freed pitched well. I'm not gonna take anything away from him just because of his back in stats. What matters is that he gave up no runs and pitched into the seventh inning and only gave up three hits, and the Giants looked terrible. So yeah, Freed looked good. A couple of bright spots, kind of saving graces from the game. If we look at just the hard hits, we only got out hard hit 10 to 9. So we did put out nine pretty hard hit balls. They didn't necessarily fall. If we look at our hardest hit balls, Raphael Devers had the second hardest hit of the game, 107 off the bat. You'd expect that to fall. 620 expected batting average, no line out. Matt Chapman, 106.7 off the bat, 620 expected batting average, line out. Jung Hu Lee in the first inning uh with runners on, runner on third in particular, 103 off the bat, ground out, was our next hardest hit ball. Patrick Bailey, 100.9 off the bat, fly out. Willie Adamas, 100.8 off the bat, line out. So I could keep going down the list. Casey Schmidt, 100 off the bat bat, force out. Raphael Devers, 98.2 off the bat, ground out. I'm just going from the top down. I'm not even singling out the ones that were outs. Just all of our hard hit balls, granted there weren't that many, were just right to fielders. So hopefully that's not repeatable. That'll regress back to the mean. And hopefully some of those will turn into hits. But the truth is their launching, our our launch angles weren't exceptional. And just hitting the ball hard is is a start, but it's not gonna get you hits, and that definitely should. The second bright spot was that last year the Yankees' offense literally led the majors in runs. I mean, the broadcast said it a million times, so hopefully you already knew that. But they led the majors in runs scored, they didn't have a ton of turnover. It's a team that kind of is expected to come in here and have a really potent offense, and it showed. And so the fact that they scored seven runs, they looked good, they had runners on the whole time is acceptable because they are like one of the best offenses, if not the best offense in the majors. And then the last saving graze, kind of comedic one. How about Judge getting a golden sombrero in his first four times up to the plate? It was so funny. Every time it's like, who is this guy? Get this guy off the field, send him back down to AAA. This guy can't hit for crap. This guy's probably never won MVP like three years in a row or whatever he's done. First four bats come up there and strikes out. Two looking, two swinging, looks terrible. Oh, for five. He's got to work his batting average back up. I don't know if that's a good thing because we looked good against Judge, or you could say it's a bad thing because damn, we we gave up seven runs and Judge didn't even do anything. So now we're gonna come back next game and probably give up more because Judge is gonna be out trying to get his revenge. But, you know, we'll take it as a good thing for now. We need some price spots. Anyway, let's move on from that dismal performance and look at today's game. We got Robbie Ray going up against Cam Schittler. Now, Schittler is a young guy, he's only pitched in 14 games last year, but he looked pretty good. He went four and three, his ERA was 296, and he had a 122 whip. So he's a pretty strong youngster out there. That means the second guy in the rotation on a rotation that's got a really strong top three guys. And so this is a guy the Yankees believe in, obviously. His numbers don't look too different than Ray's last year. Obviously, Ray pitched in 32 games, so his counting stats are a lot higher. But when you look at the average stats, Ray has a 365 ERA and a 121 whip. So not that far off from Schittler's 122 whip. So that'll be an interesting mashup. They're both super similar, not just in those stats, but also in the way that they pitch, because they both are power pitchers in the top 20% of the MLB in their stat cast rated fastballs. And Cam Schittler is averaging 98 miles an hour on his. So he's got one of the hardest throwing starters in the league. And then they're both kind of wild, they're both bottom 20% in walk rate. Cam Schittler is up at over 10% uh of a walk rate, which is definitely, you know, a wild pitcher. Probably something he's been working on in the offseason, but that doesn't necessarily translate to success come season time. So it'll be interesting to see if he's able to manage all that power that he's got. A couple other things about Cam Schittler is that he's got a 42-degree arm angle, which gives that fastball of his, which is already going 98 miles an hour, six inches of arm side run, which definitely scares me from just a stuffed perspective. And we'll be interested to see how the Giants do against a fastball pitcher like this, because if you remember the podcast from last year, the Giants' ability versus fastball pitchers was not very good. We were doing way better against breaking ball pitchers, and so that doesn't exactly bode well against Cam Shitler, but a lot can change in a in a year. I don't think that the Giants' ability to hit fastball pitching versus breaking ball pitching is a sticky stat. I don't think it's something that's going to carry over from last year considerably. A couple other things about Schittler is that he's got a few cutters and curveballs, those are his two next best pitches. I wasn't super impressed watching his cutters, but his curveball was pretty impressive. Just the way that it played off of his off of his fastball. You don't see that a lot from a guy that that throws with a 42-degree arm angle. Those best curveball pitchers, you think of Kershaw, who comes straight over the top. Wait, am I trolling? I don't know. Anyway, I'm trying to think about where Kershaw's arm slot was, but it doesn't matter. The point is that it plays off well from his from his fastball. And then he's got a sinker that he throws pretty much only as his put away pitch. I don't know why he does it, because his batting average against him for that pitch was 357, but he does it nonetheless. So anyway, look for that. If if you're at down 1-2, you're down 0-2, be ready to look for a sinker and and and pounce on it, or at least just fight it off and get to the next pitch. But hopefully the Giants are able to do something with it because it really is not his strongest pitch. Overall, I'm feeling really good about both pitchers. I I like the power pitching thing. I don't mind a guy that is that's wild as long as he's able to use the wildness. And boy, Robbie Ray is able to be effectively wild. And so I think what it'll come down to is which team is able to make the other guys' walks hurt worse. I don't expect a ton of base runners, I don't expect a ton of walks overall, but I do think each pitcher will have an inning where they probably walk two guys and they're gonna have to work out of that jam. And I'm pretty scared about the Yankees' offense and the way that they're going to be able to make Ray pay in one inning. Oh, let's see. I was gonna talk about how I like our offense on paper. Going into the season, I was super excited about the lineup that we've got. Every name has upside. I think that there's a lot of guys that have a really strong floor. I mean, Arias, at worst from a Rayax, you're gonna get 280, probably, you know, slash line of like 280, 340, 435, which is a a baseline that I will definitely take any day. And I kind of feel that same way about a lot of the guys up and down the lineup. However, we got to work out the kinks. Day one didn't look as sharp. A lot of guys up there, there's no energy or something. I it's it's kind of hard to explain. And so I think there's a chance that Schittler's gonna come out there and and be looking pretty good, maybe get a little wild around the fourth inning. And if Adamus comes up and gets that big hit, it could light up the team for a whole month, you know? And he could just get rolling here, game two. But I don't feel that great about that exact thing happening. I'm worried that you know, we're going to not get that hit. That's gonna be our one chance for the game, and we're gonna end up not scoring a lot, and it's gonna be a little bit of a slow start to the season. Not hoping for it, but that is unfortunately my prediction. Speaking of unfortunate predictions, let's go through how I see this whole game going. I think there's a chance that somebody comes up and does get a solo shot for the Giants at some point, and we might get a 1-0 lead or at least put a run-up on the board and hopefully get the first run of the season, you know. Not trying to, you know, go a couple games without getting a run. So hopefully we get started early in this one. And like I said earlier, a couple of walks here and there, but maybe not able to bring them around. Meanwhile, I think Ray looks kind of similar, shutting them down most of the game. A lot of three up, three downs, a lot of strikeouts. But I'm pretty worried about his blow-up inning where he walks a couple, gives up a couple hits, and we're suddenly down three or four to one going into the fifth inning or so. And so that's not necessarily the greatest start. And then I'm kind of worried about the bullpen too. I don't have a great gauge of how our bullpen's gonna be. It's another one that's such a non-sticky stat. You can have the best bullpen one year and come out the next year and just not have it. It's hard to say what really goes into having a consistently good bullpen. Not a lot of teams do. The Brewers come to mind and they just have good pitching up and down the lineup every year. And it's hard to explain. They got some magic going on over there. Most teams can't do that. And so, against a really potent Yankees offense, or at least an offense that we expect to be potent, I don't expect our bullpen to be able to keep them to zero runs like they did in game one. And so my prediction is a final score of about five to two, with about seven to four on hits. Like I said, not the prediction I'm hoping for, but I'm trying not to be a homer, trying to be honest with you guys. So I'm gonna say it's about five to two, seven to four on hits, which does bring me to my pick for my personal safe bet of the day. Though I gave you a lot to work with, Dad, so definitely let us know what the final pick's gonna be. But here's where I've got it. With only seven to four on hits, I had written that down at about 11 to 12 hits in this game, and then I was going on to DraftKings, hashtag not a sponsor, and they had the hits line at a total of 14 and a half, so I'm smashing the under on that one. It's at minus 105. You know, like I said, I think both pitchers just limit the damage to walks, maybe some homers, and the teams aren't necessarily spraying hits all over the place. Plus, if there is a part of the Giants that I feel like will get it together quickly, it's the defense. I between Bader and center and Jung Hoo and right, Chapman at third, and Bailey behind the plate, I think those guys are gonna steal a couple hits here and there, you know, on a weekly basis. There's gonna be maybe on a maybe on a game basis, there's gonna be hits that are out there that those guys are gonna take away. I mean, like I said, Bader already had a pretty good one in day one. Anyway, that's all I got for you guys. Thank you so much. I know this was a bit of a long recording, but that's okay. I gotta make up for what I missed on Wednesday, right? So I'm going to turn it over to you, Dad. And as we always say, go guys.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

Good morning and welcome back into the pod. It is Friday morning, March 27th. And first of all, thank you, Aiden, for giving your insights. It's good to have your voice back. Sure, the listeners will be glad to have your insights, especially the way you go into the Saber metrics and talk about numbers in a way that I don't. And since Aiden did a fine job of recapping last night's game and the numbers and a little bit and did a good job of talking about tonight, today's game, I'm gonna make mine pretty quick. I do have uh some additions about both. As far as last night's yesterday, Wednesday's game. I'm sorry, I'm not used to having that day off. As far as Wednesday's game, obviously the Giants didn't look good. They they looked a lot like the Giants of old with low runs, low scoring game, no runs, low scoring game. They only got the three hits. A couple of those weren't that good. Devers was kind of a cheapie that landed out in the center field because of the sun. Arias is kind of snuck by the second baseman, got a runner on with an air, a couple of walks, but that's not nearly enough base runners. Not enough opportunities. A little worried also that we gave up seven runs and Judge went 0 for 5 with four strikeouts. Can't imagine that's gonna happen. Also, the Yankees didn't hit any home runs, and that's kind of what they're known for. They don't usually stack up hits the way they did against Webb. So that is a little worrisome. The Giants going 0 for 5 with runners in scoring position. That is not good. I thought our bats were gonna be ready. It turned out the Yankees were uh just not enough opportunities. The hard hit balls was somewhat encouraging, I guess, but all of those, like Aiden said, seemed to be hit right at someone. Our infield play was really sloppy. Adamas made a couple of bad throws. That one where he could have got the guy out at second in the second inning, could have made a huge difference in the game. Missed that throw badly. Anyway, it just seemed like nothing really went that well for the Giants. It was a bad game. Also, even though the safe bet of the day was over seven and we got the push, and it seemed like it should have gone over easily because they got the seven runs so early. That game, when I look back, that game could have easily been the under. If it wasn't for the five-run second with Adamus' bad throw and the Yankees stacking up those hits, all the other innings looked pretty bleak for both teams. And that game could have easily been in the under, gone the under. So at the same time that it seemed like it should have gone over easily. When I looked back, I could see how that game could have been the under. So anyway, it was a wild game. Not good for the Giants, not good for Webb. He did not look sharp. Anyway, Aiden went through all that, so I don't need to recap all of that. One thing I did want to say is Giants fans might want to be a little prepared for a rough start this year because I looked at the first four series of the year, and it is the Yankees, the Padres, the Mets, and the Phillies. All four of whom, you know, are going to be, if not in the playoffs, in the playoff hunt for sure at the end of the season. So that just be prepared for that at the beginning of the year. It could be a little rough before we start getting into some other teams. For today's game, first of all, let's get away from those opening day theatrics, that Netflix spectacle stuff that was going on. All the all that Yankee, that's Yankee stuff, those spectacles. Although I gotta admit, Jameis Winston was kind of a highlight. I wasn't sure what he was gonna do. Even though by the end he was overdone, I don't know why they had him in the stands with the two wrestlers and all the stuff at the end. But at the beginning, he was pretty funny where they showed him getting the head off of Max Fried and Stealing Home and that kind of thing. So he was alright, even though the whole thing was a little bit overdone for me. I didn't think it was. I don't know. It'll be good to get back to regular baseball and a regular program presentation today. Now, speaking of today's game, first thing I would like to say is Aiden, you better be careful when you say the pitcher's name we're pitching against because you kept forgetting to say the L in his name. His name is actually Cam Schlittler. So you know he might not be happy you kept calling him Schittler for the entire time you were talking. His real name is Cam Schlittler with an L in there. Don't forget to say that L. And like Aiden said, he is good. I didn't realize how good he was. He's only 25 years old. He came up halfway through last year, like Aiden said. He had great numbers, started out 5.06 ERA and got that down to 2.96 by the end of the year. Looked good in the playoffs, had a really high K rate, like Aiden said, and he did struggle a little bit with walks, but on its good outings, he had that down too. Pitched a 0.93 ERA in spring. His velocity was up. He was getting pitches up into 98, 99 miles an hour. He is a young hard thrower. The Yanks are have high hopes for him, and he does look good so far. Boy, after looking at him, I'm kind of a believer. He got me scared about today's game. And then on the other side, we have Robbie Ray going. You guys saw him last year. If you remember right, at the end of last year, he had a handful of games where he just didn't do as well. He looked tired toward the end of the year. He ended up at 3.65 as an ERA, but he was right around three before that. Had it down to 285 at one point. And like I said, to the end of the year, it just looked like he kind of got tired and he wasn't getting any help. But I listened to a couple interviews with him and what his spring training games he's looked really good. And in his interviews, he sounds just so positive, like he's healthy and he's trying a couple new things that seem to have been working out for him. And so I have high hopes for him also today. And like I said, I'm gonna make my end pretty quick. So I'm gonna get right off to the safe bed of the day. And basically, what I had before I listened to Aiden was I had I was gonna go with the under eight because I think both pitchers are gonna do well, or I was gonna go with under four and a half in the first five innings because I wasn't sure. I'm still not sure how the bullpins are for either team. It's so ye so early in the year. So Aiden's play of under 14 and a half hits is obviously correlated with low-scoring game. So it's kind of the same as having under eight and under first five, under four and a half in the first five. So we will make our official pick. I'll go along with Aiden with the under 14 and a half hits at minus 105. I think that's really good, especially for the first five. I just hope the bullpins can hold down the hit rate. I like I said, I'm not sure how they are going to do. So with that, I guess we'll go with that. I'm just gonna make mine quick. Like I said, tomorrow, be sure and tune in. Tune in tomorrow. It is, let's see, for Saturday game, it's Tyler Malley, first start for the Giants, up against Will Warren for the Yanks. And I don't know too much about either, so that'll give me this afternoon and tomorrow morning to kind of look into those two guys. That is a 1.35 start time. So tune in tomorrow for a recap of today's game. Hopefully that will be a different outcome. And tomorrow we will have a little bit on the pitching matchup and a discussion of the hitting at that point. Somebody told me the other day, or yesterday, or even this morning, I can't remember. The Giants, we're only one game out, so we're not that bad. We're looking good. So, with that, I'll leave you with that thought. Tune in tomorrow. Have a great day, be safe out there, and go giants.