Giants Cool Burns

M plays his recording of "another frustrating Giants loss".  He discusses why the lack of walks and HR's is really hurting the Giants scoring opportunities.  Quickly, he moves on to today's game and pitching matchup.  After admitting his man crush on a couple Giants pitchers he is led, surprisingly, to a Safe Bet of the Day™ that he actually likes.  

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Good morning and welcome back into the pod. It is Thursday morning, April 16th, very early Thursday morning, April 16th. And I might as well have a recording that says something about another disappointing loss for the Giants last night because I seem to be saying that a lot these days. Four in a row now. We had an interesting change in the lineup last night, with Bader and Oliva being put down onto the 10-day IL, and Drew Gilbert and Will Brennan brought up and starting. And at first, when I saw that, I thought, well, at least they can't do any worse. They didn't do any better. And although it was good to see Susek in for Bailey, also facing a righty, and he did do well. Now I should say that one problem with doing this pod so early in the AM is because I do not see changes in the lineup. I'm not privy to anything like that usually. So it was a little unknown. I wasn't expecting that. Not sure if that would have changed anything that I had on my predictions or not. A couple of statements about last night's game. First of all, so much for Malley doing well. Four in the first, he gave up. It was over already, I thought, until Susac drove in two and made it feel like we were back in it. But here's the point I want to make. I said yesterday how the Giants don't get any walks and home runs. We're last in the league, and it's hard to score runs that way. Well, in the second, Cincinnati comes up, gets a walk, a walk, and a three-run homer. So see how that works? They didn't get any hits and had, I mean, got just the one home run. No singles, no doubles, nothing, and had three runs after getting three in the first. And then to even make that more clear, in the seventh, when the Giants came up, they had four singles in the seventh, only scored one run. No walks, no home runs. If they get just something in there, an extra walk, a home run, an extra, it's hard to string a whole bunch of hits together. They strung together four, which is pretty impressive, and they only get one run out of it. So the fact that they're not getting walks and home runs is just killing this team. It's just impossible to score runs if you have to rely on a string of more than four singles to get more than one run. You're not going to win many games like that. Anyway, moving on to today's game. It is the early one, 9 40 this morning, and we have Landon Roop on the mound for the Giants. And I had a listener tell me the other day that they thought I had a man crush on Robbie Ray, the way they talk, the way I talk about him. But I can tell you I have as just as much of a man crush on Landon Roop. So uh you can expect the same kind of high praise for Roop that I put out there for Ray. Now, Ray has had three outings for the Giants. He has, like a lot of pitchers we see him come up against, two good ones and one bad one. He had very no runs in six innings, one run in six innings. So when he's good, he is very good. Now he's up against a guy named Chase Burns, who actually pitched for Tony Vitello at Tennessee in 2022 and 2023. He's only 23 years old. He was the number two overall pick in 2024. Obviously, expecting good things out of him. His numbers are fairly similar to Roop. 3-3-1 ERA. Roops is 3-2-4. He has 18 strikeouts, Roop has 18 strikeouts. So they both he let's see, Burns has pitched 16 and a third, Roop is 16 and 23rds. So they have very even numbers. Now he did pitch 13 games last year. He had a 4-5-7 ERA, but his underlying metrics suggested a lot better. He got really unlucky. 67 strikeouts and 43 innings, so he has a high strikeout rate. Like and kind of like I said about Roop, he's had three outings this season and two good ones and one bad one. He had no runs in five and a third, one run in six, and then he had the game where he gave up five runs in five and a third. So he's had two strong outings where he was mowing guys down, but he just didn't have it his last game. Now his fastball averages 98.6 second in all of baseball. His slider has a 56% whiff rate, which is pretty otherworldly. So he is the real deal. He's already predicted to be a top Cy Young candidate. And I think Roop and the Giants are going to have their hands full with him. And so my prediction for the game is that runs are going to be in very short supply, especially early on. We have two really good young pitchers, two offenses that even though Cincinnati scored eight last night, Malley gave them most of those runs. It was frustrating. He gave up the two three-run homers after the walks. He's given away runs. That's not going to happen with Roop on the mound. If both pitchers throw their game, it is going to be tough for either team to rally runs. I guess the only concern would be Great American Smallpark and the home runs. And it's kind of early. Well, obviously it is early, and the numbers haven't come out yet. But I presume that because of Chase Burns's good start for Cincinnati, that the number will be even or favorable to Roop and the Giants. So I'm going to take all of that information and get right to today's safe bed of the day. And I have to admit right off the bat that finally I have a safe bet of the day that I like. It's been a long time. I feel like I've been scrambling to pick them out because the Giants have been doing so poorly and it's hard to find one. It really narrows down our choices, that kind of thing, but I really like one today. And first of all, I like the unders today. I know I said I liked the unders yesterday, and I'm glad I came off it because obviously just a little extra research made me think that there were going to be runs in last night's game, and there were. So I'm glad I came off all the unders. But for today's game, I like the unders. I think first five under is going to be a good pick. But the one I think under for the game will probably be a good pick, especially if it's nine. Like I said, I haven't seen the numbers. But the one I'm going to go with for the pick of the day today is Cincinnati under four and a half runs. I'm going to assume it's going to be four and a half runs. That's what it's been the last two games. Now, I don't have a number on that, so I hope it's not too bad. But the way Cincinnati's been hitting, I think the numbers should be pretty good. So anyway, I'm going to assume the number will be at least playable. So with that, I'm going to make that today's safe bet of the day. Cincinnati under four and a half runs. I think Roop and our bullpen will be able to keep them down. I don't think they deserved anywhere close to the eight they got yesterday. It's a getaway game, a little bit more tired. So, and I also like the under because I wasn't that impressed with Gilbert or oh yeah, Will Brennan. And Bailey's going to be back in tomorrow instead of Susac because it's a morning game, day game after a night game. So there's probably no way they're going to play Susac. So I kind of like the unders on both the Giants and Cincinnati tomorrow, but I'm going to go with Cincinnati under four and a half runs. So yeah, I guess that's all my notes for this game. For tomorrow, it's back to 3:45 Pacific Time start because the Giants are on the road. They continue to DC to face the Nationals for a three-game weekend series. We have yeah, Logan Webb on the mound against the old veteran and the ex-giant Zach Lattel. So we will go into those numbers a little bit more. I'll have some time, obviously, tomorrow to go into those to do a little research and look into that. So we will recap today's game, look ahead at the Nationals, look at that pitching matchup, and hopefully be able to pick out another winner because I know today's is going to be a winner. It's another locked and loaded pick. So with that, everyone, I hope after the Giants game is over, it'll be early enough that you can enjoy a beautiful day out there. Stay safe, and as always, go Giants.