Houser Vs Painter--I'm Overwhelmed

M is back with a full pod today after being effectively persona non grata for the last 3.  That alone should change the Giants fortunes.  Out with the Mets, in with the Phillies.  Giants facing another tough youngster on the mound today, while Adrian Houser tries to repeat his first Giants performance.  Both teams struggling with the bats.  Finally, pitching versus hitting leads to today's Safe Bet of the Day™. (M struggles to come up with the best title with so many directions possible. He finally gives up in exasperation.)

Transcript

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Good morning everyone and welcome back into the pod. It is Monday, April 6th. Hope you had a nice Easter yesterday. Looks like we have another nice day out there today, although it's a little cooler than it has been. We've had some very unseasonably warm weather lately. So we are back to a little bit closer to San Francisco weather, which might be good for the Giants. You can't play Giants baseball in LA weather, right? So that'll help. It'll be a little cooler at tonight's game than it has been at some of the past. As I've said before, I have not seen or listened to the past three games. I barely had time to even look at the box score for various reasons. It was a busy weekend this weekend. I did notice though that the Giants lost all three. They only scored five total runs. So really the only conclusion I can reach is that if the if I'm not watching the games, the Giants aren't scoring and the Giants aren't winning. So I can see that the whole season lies on my shoulders. It's going to be incumbent on me to watch as many of these games as I can. I did watch all three of the games they've won, after all. And you know, I can't really think of any other cause there can be. So I'm gonna have to make sure and watch as much of tonight's game as I can. Although, like I said, tonight's game is gonna be somewhat at the same time as the Michigan Yukon game, and I have Yukon going up against my niece, Catherine, who has Michigan, so I'm gonna have to watch that one too. So hopefully by the time I switch to the Giants game, we'll be in good shape. Anyway, yesterday's game. Another frustrating loss. I'm guessing from what I the little bit I did hear, Webb pitched a gym. The bullpen gave it up. That is a familiar song. Ask Justin Verlander. He heard that song about seven or eight times last year. Boy, the bullpen giving it up. That's kind of why I've had the tendency to go with first fives for our starting, I mean the the starting pitching matchups for our safe bet of the days, because I've been so unsure about the bullpen, and and sure enough, they let us down again. Although our starters aren't winning either, and or if they do well, we don't have any offense. So it's tough either way. Luckily, though, we are out with the Mets. Good riddance to the New York teams. They have done us dirty. We got one out of seven from the New York teams. That is not good. In with Philly. Now, I haven't paid too much attention to the Phillies. I had just a little time this morning to listen to a podcast, and I wanted just to basically see if they had anything to say about the upcoming series with the Giants, and they did not, mostly because they were too busy pulling their hair out about the Phillies bat struggles. Like we've been pulling our hair out about the Giants bats struggling. They seem to be in the same boat with their bats. All the guy could talk about was how they only scored, they got one hit with 15 runners in scoring position in the last game, something like three runs in the last 22 innings. And they only put up runs against the bad pitchers in Colorado and that kind of thing. So he he was just going on and on about their bats being cold, which sounds very familiar to podcasts about the Giants season so far. So, anyway, on the mound today for the Phillies is this scary 22-year-old rookie. He has been a top five prospect since he came up. He was a first-round pick pick in 2021. Painter, Andrew Painter is his name, I'm sorry. But then very young, he had elbow problems and had Tommy John surgery in 2023 and missed all of 2024 when he was just like a teenager. So last year for 2025, he was in AAA all year, only had 22 starts, and it wasn't good. It had a 5-4-0 ERA, so that's not very good. But all the talk about him since the beginning of his career has been high praise. And even though he might not have looked good last year, so far, they're really speaking highly of him. Supposedly, he was impressive in spring training, and in his first start this year, he did very well. He went 5.1, only gave up one run, had eight strikeouts. Already, if they said if you look at the list of possible rookies of the year, I guess he is starting to get onto those lists. Another one of those unknowns for us, kind of a wild card, like when McLean came in. We didn't really know what he was gonna do. Anyway, on his last outing, Painter was throwing as high as 98 and as low as 79 on his changeup. So I guess he had people rocking and rolling, had him in the rocking chair, it sounds like he's a tall, lanky, long strider guy, the guy that looks like he's right on the plate when he gets done with his when throwing the ball. So it sounds like this year, maybe all the hype is for real. They use in the words like his commands and his poise for his age and all of that kind of thing. So a lot of high, high praise for this new kid. And he is going up against Adrian Hauser for the Giants, who actually it's so funny. If you look at his first outing, it's almost exactly like Painter's first album. Or first album. That'd be a good one to listen to. Anyway, both pitchers for their first outing were very sharp. Both went 5.1 innings, both gave up only one earned run, both gave up one walk. Hauser had he gave up six hits, Painter only gave up four. Hauser had four strikeouts, painter had eight. So Painter did a touch better on the hits, a touch better on the case, but they both only gave up one earned run over five and a third. So that is, you know, that's a good job for Hauser. That was his our first time seeing him. We weren't sure how he was gonna look, and I thought he looked pretty impressive. Now, when I start thinking about tonight's game, I I kind of feel a bad way. Painter, he kind of reminds me of McLean, those newcomers that the Giants have had trouble with this year. Hauser, I'm still unsure about. We've only seen him the one time, and over his career, he has not been as good as that one outing. The Giants' bullpen has been atrocious. Our best guys are the ones giving up games. Our offense is pretty smelly right now. If you look at the offensive numbers, it's funny. The Phillies' offensive numbers are bad that are bad too. They're in the bottom half in hits, RBIs, runs, everything, except for home runs. They've got 11 home runs already, so they uh it must be slugging pretty well, but every other number is in the bottom half of the league, and the Giants, they're at the very bottom, if not the bottom, in some of them. So the offenses have been bad, the pitchers have been pretty decent. So where it leaves me is with kind of with that dilemma that I'm having this year as a Giants fan and trying to make picks in the Giants' favor. Because if the Giants aren't playing well and I don't feel comfortable with any of the Giants' bets, it just leaves with leaves me with very few choices. And that's kind of why I've been leaning toward picks that have been in the first five, because that leaves us with just the starting pitch up, pitching matchup, and leaves us out of the bullpen matchups. And as we've seen, our bullpen has not been good. And another reason it's been tough to do the over-unders for the whole game is because our bullpen can come in and give up late runs, and what should have been the under turns out to be the over and that kind of thing. So this is one of those games where I don't like the Giants' chances that much. I don't like the Giants' chances in the first five that much because I think it could be an even matchup with Painter and Hauser. So that doesn't leave me with much, but the one I do feel kind of comfortable with and would be comfortable making is the under four and a half in the first five innings. And that is minus 118. I thought it would be a lot higher than that. Both offenses are bad right now. Both pitchers pitched very well their first time out. If they do any even close to what they did, if Hauser can do his part to keep this Philadelphia offense down, Painter shouldn't have much trouble keeping this Giants offense down. Giants haven't scored in the first five in any of the last three games at least. I checked that for the ones that I haven't gotten to watch or see. They didn't score in the first five. The Phillies haven't been scoring much at all either. So you put that together with the struggling offenses and decent pitchers or good pitchers, and that leads me to today's safe bet of the day, which, like I said, is going to be first five under four and a half at minus 118. You know, if I was a Phillies fan, there's some. I mean, I would take the Phillies first five money line, I would take Giants under three and a half runs. They've only scored two times out of their 10 games if they've gotten more than three and a half runs. With Painter on the mound, I would lean toward that. Painter last time out had eight strikeouts. His over-under for today is only four and a half. Giants seem to strike out a lot, so I would lean toward that also. But we're not going to take those. We're going to go with the Giants, or not the Giants, we're just going to go with the first five under four and a half at minus 118. Okay, so that is all I have for today. That's my notes for today. For tomorrow, it is Robbie Ray, my man on the mound. We've seen two good starts from him for the Giants, and he is facing Christopher Sanchez, who has had two good starts for the Phillies. So we have a real good pitching matchup tomorrow. Sanchez is at a 0.79 ERA after his first two games. So we got, and then, you know, you know how much I like Ray, and he's had a good couple first starts. So it'll be interesting to look into that matchup. So tune in tomorrow. We will discuss today's game, see how that goes, and tomorrow's matchup between Ray and Sanchez. With that, as always, keep your head on a swivel, keep your eyes open, keep your eyes up, stay safe out there and go dying.