Giant Bats Face Littell Pitches

Always more refreshing to come on after a Giants win.  M quickly reviews Roupp's effort and the bullpen's finish to shut out the Reds. Then he moves on to the surprisingly potent offense of the Giants' next opponent, the Nationals.  Webb and the bullpen will have their hands full with this lineup.  But the Giants should be able to keep pace given the Nats pitching woes thus far.  Should be interesting to see what gives.  He gives out the Safe Bet of the Day™ before explaining that there may not be a pod over the weekend, depending on time.  (No rioting in the streets please).

Transcript

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Good morning. Welcome back into the pod. It is Friday morning, April 17th. Looks like another sunny day out here in the East Bay. Hopefully the same where you are. Always better to be recording the day after a Giants win and after a safe bed of the day win. Snapping a four-game skid for the Giants. Nice to salvage the series somehow. Felt good about our picks yesterday, kind of right about runs being at a premium. There were actually zero earned runs. Felt good about Roop and Pin holding Cincinnati to under four and a half. Unfortunately, the juice was really high on that. When I got up and looked at it, it was minus 140. And then just before game time, when I looked, it was actually under three and a half. So it got switched from four and a half to three and a half. So if you did put it in, you either got it at minus 140. And I apologize for the high number. I was kind of shocked. I didn't think it would be that high. Or if you waited and got it under three and a half at minus 110, then that was all the better. So anyway, that's like I said, I didn't have the number beforehand. I was just taking a wild guess that that would at least be playable. I was a little disappointed in the 140. Let's see what else happened. Both the starters did their jobs. Giants pitched a one-hitter, and that one hit was just that oh man, that bloop into left field by the nine-hitter. So that kind of was too bad. They could have had a no-hitter for Roop. That would have been something else. Let's see, the offense was still not very good for the Giants. They had six hits, two walks. They really only had the one rally. But luckily, the safe bet of the day did come in. And if you had the unders, like I was suggesting, those came in also. So that was good. Anyway, overall, a nice win for the Giants. They needed it, they needed to settle down. It's kind of funny. They scored three runs and won the game, and it felt a lot different than the night before where they scored three runs and lost the game. So they're gonna have to start scoring more than three runs. They're not gonna win too many games scoring three to nothing, winning three to nothing. Anyway, it's good to leave Cincinnati with the win, and they are heading today to DC to play the Nats. And you know, at first I was not too sure about the Nats, didn't know much about them. It's usually Atlanta, Philadelphia, over there in the NL East. Not really expected to do much, but man, they are surprisingly really good this year. Their record's nine and ten, which doesn't sound that good. Better than the Giants. Giants, which they wish they were nine and ten right now. Let's see, they just finished beating Pittsburgh last night, eight to seven in extra innings. But man, they score a ton of runs. They have an elite offense. If you look up and down their last, you just in April, they've had 14 games. They've scored less than five in only three of those games. They've got 13, 16, 5, 6, 5, 9, that kind of thing. They have a just a high-scoring offense, basically the opposite of the Giants. For example, they had three games against the Dodgers earlier this month. They scored six, five, and six against the Dodgers pitching and lost all three games because they gave up 13, 10, and 8. So they score a lot of runs, but they give up a lot of runs. So it should be a really interesting game tonight. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to seeing how this is going to pan out. Because if you look at their numbers, their offense, like I said, it's good. Almost in every category, they're they're in the top 10 in all of them. They're in the top five in many of them. They batting average, they're five, runs, they're fifth, slugging percentage, yeah, is their fourth. Home runs, they're eighth. Uh as opposed if you look at the Giants, our on-base percentage, we're 28th, 30th in runs, 30th in home runs, 25th in slugging. So we're bottom five in almost every category category. They're top five in every category in hitting. That doesn't look good. That makes me a little fearful about how this game is going. That's not a good combination. Now, if you look at their pitching on the other hand, now that is where they're in trouble. Their ERA is 29th, their whip is 29th, batting average against is 26th. But the problem is they might be in the bottom five there, but the Giants aren't in the top five. The Giants are in the low 20s. We're at 22 for ERA, 23 for whip. So we're not that much better in our pitching numbers. We're in the low 20s, they're in the high 20s, but in offense, they're in the top five. We're in the bottom five. So the difference in the pitching numbers is minimal. The difference in the offensive numbers is maximal, if that's a word. And that's not good. Just doesn't match up math-wise. CJ Abrams has just been on fire for them. He's in 367, six home runs, 717 slugging. It's just everyone on their team up and down the lineup has just been hitting. Now it's possible that they're overplaying and they're due for regression, and we can just kind of hope that's the case. They're coming off a road trip against Milwaukee and Pittsburgh. They went 5-2, which is pretty good. They beat they swept Milwaukee, who was a playoff team last year. This is going to be their first day back after that road trip. San Francisco is flying in after their win in Cincinnati yesterday. And the Giants are going to have Webb on the mound, and you know, usually that's a good thing. But you know, he's been giving up a lot more contact this year, and the Nats make a lot of contact. So I could see them putting a lot of balls in play, which is what Webb usually pitches for, but could be a little more scary with this offense. His ERA is at 5-2-5, and you guys just probably know that that's mostly due to that first outing against the Yankees where he gave up seven earned runs in five. He's had had two solid starts after that. And then the last one against the Orioles, where he did give up the four earned runs, wasn't his best outing, kind of struggled a little bit through it, but he's been much better after that Yankees game. Now, Zach Lattel, you might remember him, he pissed for the Giants in 2021, 2022. He was a reliever. He was a reliever for the first five, six years of his career. Then he got traded to Tampa Bay in 23, and they made a starter out of him for three years, and he did really well. His ERA was the high threes pretty much all three of those years. Then he got traded to Cincinnati for the playoffs last year, pitched in a couple games, and then was traded to the Nets. And so he has only had three games since he's been with the Nationals this year. Hasn't been bad actually. All three games, exactly five innings. He's given up three runs, one run, and three runs for a 4.20 ERA. So not terrible. Kind of about where he pitches, it's about what he is, probably about what we can expect today. So my prediction kind of for the game is that I think Littel might be capable enough to kind of keep the Giants' offense at bay, but I don't think he's gonna be able to shut them down fully. They've been doing a they've been coming around a little bit. And I think it could be tough for Webb to contain the this Nationals offense. And the Giants better come in hoping to score more because they've scored three in the last two games. And if they only score three tonight, they're gonna lose. So I'm hoping they're coming in planning to win this game. And so that is gonna take me to today's safe bet of the day. And when I looked at the numbers, I did not like hardly any of them. First of all, the money line was minus 148, which I don't know. That just seemed like a big number. I'm not even sure the Giants can win this game. I'm sure it's just because Webb is on the mound. And the way the Nats are playing right now, that just seemed like a big number. The over-under is eight juiced at minus 122 to the over. I looked at the strikeout numbers, the outs numbers, the earned runs numbers, etc., and I just didn't really like either of them. They or any of them really, they were either efficient or just the odds were terrible. And so I feel like I'm having a really tough time with this. It seems like an impossible pick. I don't really like any of the numbers, and I know no one's gonna want to hear what my final pick is, especially with Webb on the mound. So what I'm gonna go with as the safe bet of the day today is the over eight at minus 122. And here is why. One, because I don't know much about the Nats, and I want to just root for an exciting Friday night game tonight. Plus, I think the Giants bats are gonna be able to score off of Lattel and this bullpen. They actually used six guys out of their bullpen last night because of the extra inning, and the starter only went five and a third, so it had like four and two thirds from their bullpen last night. I also think the Nats might be able to score some off of the Giants pitchers and our bullpen. Even though I know Webb is on the mound and the bullpen has looked better, their offense is just so elite. I'm just worried that they're gonna score some runs. It's a warm, humid night, which should be good for the ball flying out. Like I said, the Nats have had 14 games in April, and only three times have they had a score under eight. The Giants have had 14 games in April. Two times it was exactly eight, six times over, six times under. So they're about half and half as far as over under eight, but the Nats are over that number a lot. So I'm gonna go with that just for those numbers, and because I want to watch a high-scoring Friday game, hopefully it'll be a good one. I know it's gonna sound crazy. It's hard to take the over with the Giants with Web on the mound. It's a little counterintuitive, I know, but that's what I'm gonna pick for today. Like I said, nothing's really jumping out at me. It's just a great pick. A couple other picks that I've liked in the past where I've said this is 100% one, I really like it, but nothing tonight really jumped out at me like that. So I'm gonna go with this over eight at minus 122. That's all I have for this game for tomorrow. Same game time, Hauser versus their ace, Cade Savali. So we will look at that tomorrow. Although I have to say, there is a chance there might not be a podcast tomorrow or Sunday. I'm gonna be gone for the weekend. I'm hoping to be able to get up tomorrow and do one for tomorrow's game and to have researched enough to make a pick for Sunday's game. There won't be a pod on Sunday for sure, but I'm hoping, like I said, to have a pick for it. Now, there's a good, not a good chance, but there is a chance I won't have time to do that. And if that is the case, Monday is an off day for the Giants, and Tuesday we have the Dodgers. That's why we have an off day. The Dodgers are coming to town, Giants are coming back home. So it will be all the way until Tuesday morning until the next podcast, if I don't get one in tomorrow. But I hope to do that tomorrow. Also, I realize that I haven't really been keeping everybody updated on the safe bed of the day record every day. And so I was thinking after this weekend, before that Dodger game on Tuesday, I will come on it. We'll we will have had 22 games at that point. I can kind of come on, give you our record, kind of thoughts, et cetera, et cetera, on that. Right now, after 19 games, we are 8, 10, and 1, trying to get back to even after that bad middle streak in the middle there. We started off hot, three out of four, and then recently we had the three-game winning streak. We just had that middle part where we are when the Giants were bad and we were bad, and we're trying to get back to even from that. But on Tuesday before the Dodger game, I hope to kind of have a little bit more of a report of that. I'm sorry for not kind of keeping it up a little more every day. Anyway, that is all I have for today. Hopefully, you guys will all have a wonderful weekend. If I don't have a podcast tomorrow, have a good weekend. Be nice for the Giants to win this series. I'm really looking forward to watching it. I'm kind of looking forward to seeing that Nats offense and seeing if the Giants can come through and match them. Anyway, that's all I have. Have a great day out there. As always, keep your hat on the swivel and stay safe and go giants.