McDonald Up From Farm

What a crazy Giants win yesterday!  M spends a little time recapping that roller coaster ride before moving on to tonight's game in LA.  The pitching matchup changed from yesterday's projections so a quick look at the new pitcher for the Dodgers leads to a change in game prediction.  Finally, after reevaluating the numbers, M finds a Safe Bet of the Day™ that he particularly likes, which is a rarity this season.  It's based on the idea that Trevor McDonald is severely under rated. The song of the day is another from one of Aidan's playlists titled "Poets on the Pavement" by Re:um.  Enjoy!

Transcript

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Good morning, and welcome back to the state at AM and the AM, your San Francisco Giants pre-game podcast, bringing you previews, projections, and predictions before every Giants game. Good morning and welcome back into the pod. It is Monday morning, May 11th, coming to you the day after Mother's Day. Hopefully you had a wonderful Mother's Day, got to spend time with your mom, told her how great she was, took her out to dinner, all of that kind of stuff. Looks like a beautiful day out there today here in the Bay Area. A little bit cloudy, but should be sunny later, and I'm sure LA will be nice and warm and sunny by the time that game starts. And we're coming to you today after a great Giants win yesterday. What a win! What a roller coaster ride that game was. Up and down, they came back three different times, ended up getting the win late in the game, could have lost that numerous times. A big psychological win, I'm sure, coming in so to go to LA after that. Bats seemed to be coming around. Overall, just a great win for the Giants. Now the safe bet of the day didn't come in. What a brutal beat. Felt like we were on the right side of that. Mally pitched so well, only gave up three hits, and it turned into three runs. Two solo home runs and a hit after a walk. So very disappointing. Chandler, who was supposed to give up walks, did not give up any. Typical for the Giants. He only all he also only gave up three hits. His just turned into only two runs. So we lose that, but both pitchers started very well. Felt like we were we should have had a push, kind of like we were on the right side. I can't believe Mally only gave up three hits, and that turned into three runs. But overall, a dramatic game, a great game. Don't really mind the safe better day losing for a game like that. We win the game, we win the series. I actually had the over on it also, so that kind of helped that. Anyway, just a wild, exciting game. Great psychological win for the Giants. It's gotta help them going forward. After the game was over, I went to do my research for today's game and looked, and it showed his Yoshinobu Yamamoto being on the mound today. And so I did my research, had all my numbers down, went to bed last night. I already knew what my safe bit of the day was gonna be because when I looked at the early lines, it had the first five under as five. And I thought with Yamamoto and McDonald on the mounds, there was no way they were gonna get five runs. So I already had a big circle on that, went to bed thinking I knew exactly what I was gonna do today. And then I get home from work this morning and see that it is Roki Sasaki on the mound and not Yamamoto. So as far as Sasaki goes, he is not doing so well this year. He's at a 5.97 ERA. None of his numbers are as good as Yamamoto's. He's been giving up 5-7 hits. In his last five games, he's been giving up 5-7 hits in every one. Only a couple of walks, only 5K's. He's a 24-year-old right from Japan whose game just hasn't translated as well for him as some of the other Japanese pitchers that have come over. Last year he was in 10 games, had a 4.46 ERA, which isn't terrible, but it's still naughty lead. It's not like the other Giants pitchers that we'll probably see during this series. So really, this is maybe the guy that we can get, and I'm sure that's why the over-under first five was five instead of three and a half or four or four and a half, if it would have been Yamamoto on the mound. Now, as far as McDonald goes, he does not have too much to go on either. He's a 25-year-old. He only pitched in three games last at the end of last year, but he did really well, had a 1.80 ERA over 15 innings, looked great. In his one game this year, when he was called up against San Diego, he looked great also, gave up only one earned run on two hits and no walks over seven innings with eight strikeouts. And that was against a very strong San Diego lineup. So you wonder if whether he can do the same against this LA lineup, which is in the top ten in pretty much every batting category, every offensive category. But I think San Diego might have been that high up there, also. So there's just not much to go on with McDonald. But I'll tell you what, I think he's underrated and I really like him. And yesterday when it was Yamamoto, when I thought it was Yamamoto on the mound, I had all my ideas. I thought it's gonna be a low-scoring game. Giants on the road, the extra inning game last night, they could be just mentally tired. McDonald's looked good. The Dodgers haven't been scoring a lot of runs lately. So I was really thinking it was gonna be a low-scoring game. I like the under, like I said, and all that. But now with Sasaki on the mound, I've had to change my ideas. So let's lead leave that as the lead in to today's safe out of the day. And like I said, I've changed my mind because yesterday I was over the under five, the unders in general, I like McDonald a lot. And so anyway, what I've come down with now, after dropping the unders, and I looked at the pitching numbers and they were minus 148 for the strikeout or plus 131. The pitching numbers in the outs were just again either bad odds or too high of juice. So I had to drop those out. Let's see, I kind of like Giants over three and a half runs because I think they should score off of Sasaki. And I kind of like Dodgers under five and a half runs because I think McDonald is underrated. And then also, it's so funny, the no runs in the first is actually the under, it's actually favored the yes runs in the first is like minus 120, and no runs in the first is like minus 105, which that is so unusual. It's almost always the other way around. So they must really be thinking that Sasaki could give up runs early or that McDonald can give up runs early. But here's what I like, and here's what led me to today's safe bet of the day. I think McDonald is severely underrated. He's young, he's a rookie, there's not much numbers on him. I think he's not getting none of the numbers are in his favor. Also, it's LA. Obviously, the Dodgers, they're in the top 10 in all hitting categories. They got a good offense, they've been good all year, so they figure they're gonna be able to score off the new kid. Also, it's in LA, so you know it's the Dodgers in LA. We got an unknown rookie. There's no way the Dodgers aren't gonna just take him to town, right? They're gonna shell him. That's what they think. But I completely disagree because I love the way he's looked so far. I think he's got just as good a chance of shutting down the Dodgers as he did the Padres. So what the number I've realized, if you look at the Giants' first five money line, it's plus 149. They must really be giving the Dodgers a little too much credit here. Also, the Giants' first five run line is plus 100, so all they have to do is be tied, and that still comes in as a win. So I absolutely love that one today. Giants first five run line. Like I said, I think McDonald is underrated, and the Giants can get to Sasaki. This is the game where we can get the Dodgers, if anything, with the pitching matchup, especially the first five pitching matchup. So I love that one so much. I'm probably gonna double down on that one today. That's how much I like it. I don't say that often, and I'm worried it's some kind of trap of some kind. Maybe they know something that I don't know. But I like McDonald up against Sasaki, and I like the fact the run line is plus 100. It just seems too good to be true, which is probably the problem here. I'm probably getting baited into this trap, but I like it today. I'm gonna go with that one, Giants First Five Run line plus 100 as the official safe bed of the day. And that's gonna take me to the song of the day, and today it's gonna be another one from Aiden off of his playlist, I think from just last year. And it's a song called Poets on the Pavement by a group. I guess it's called Re-Um. It's spelled R-E-U-M. So I guess it's re-um. Kind of an interesting name. Called Poets on the Pavement. Another good danceable tune. Hopefully it'll get your feet moving. Hopefully you'll like it. Add it to the list, keep that list going. And that is all I have today. Make sure you tune back in tomorrow. I see it is Yamamoto on the mound tomorrow. They must have must have flip-flopped. And he is facing Adrian Hauser, which is not a matchup I particularly like. Certainly not as much as I like today's matchup. So tune in tomorrow. Hopefully, I will have time to look that over. Try to dig out a safe bet of the day from that game, which may be a little bit tougher. Also, there's a chance there might not be a pod tomorrow or a couple times this week because at work this morning I found out that I have two colleagues who are off for the next two weeks, and I may have to pull some double duty. I'm not quite sure. It's still kind of up in the air. But if sometime this week there is just no pod out, that is because I had to stay at work and didn't get done in time to get this out in the a.m. But hopefully that won't be the case. We'll see. It's gonna be day by day this week. But just a heads up. Anyway, that is all I have with that. Make sure and stay safe out there as usual and go, Giants.