By Murphy Powell
Well, it pretty much can’t beat the Royals-A’s game. That was one of the greats. And, I’ll admit, I was waiting until after that game to do this, so the effort here will be less-than-stellar, I’m sure.
But Pirates-Giants should be a really good one. Madison Bumgarner is a really good pitcher, and Edinson Volquez was a pretty good pitcher in 2008, so that’s something.
If you haven’t kept up with the Pirates and their last four or five days, you may be wondering why Volquez—seemingly the team’s No. 3 starter who I just said wasn’t very good—is pitching the most important game of the year for Pittsburgh. The answer is because the Pirates pitched Gerrit Cole and Francisco Liriano in the last couple of games in the regular season in an effort to catch St. Louis and make it into the actual playoffs without having to deal with this Wild Card Game.
It was a worthwhile pursuit that just didn’t pan out for them this time around. Since they had a playoff spot locked up, a case could be made for chasing the Cardinals for that division crown. A case could also be made for accepting your fate as a wild-card-having team and saving Cole or Liriano for this one game. But the Pirates did the first thing, which, again, wasn’t a terrible idea, and now Volquez is pitching.
Of course, he could shut the Giants down. Volquez has posted a really good 3.04 ERA, but his fielding-independent numbers aren’t as friendly (4.15 FIP). The ERA suggests he’s been a really good pitcher this year, which has been aided by a really low BABIP, but his FIP says otherwise. FIP is based on what Volquez—and any other pitcher—can control: strikeouts, walks, home runs and hit by pitches. Put simply, Volquez doesn’t strike many batters out and walks kind of a lot of them. Volquez does have good stuff that’s hard to hit, which could be a reason for the low BABIP.
And again, Volquez could just go shut out San Francisco. He did so against Atlanta his last time out and against the Brewers the time before that and against the Mets a few months ago. So it’s not that Volquez can’t be a good pitcher, he just kind of hasn’t been over the course of the season.
Bumgarner, though, he’s good. His ERA (2.98) and FIP (3.05) tell basically the same story: he’s been better than good, which is what I sort of just told you, too.
And I don’t mean to gloss over Bumgarner here, but there’s not a ton more to say about him. He strikes a lot of people out, doesn’t walk many, and is just generally good.
When we get to the bullpens, it’s tough to say who has the real advantage. The Pirates have Mark Melancon and Tony Watson, who have both been quite good in 70+ innings this year. The Giants don’t have a reliever who’s been as good as Melancon or Watson. But if we were to take the five or six best relievers in tomorrow’s game, the Pirates would have one and two, and the Giants would have three through six. Those guys include Jeremy Affeldt, Yusmeiro Petit—an MLB record-holder (!)—Santiago Casilla, and George Kontos.
That could mean that things will be interesting in the middle innings when the Pirates have to go to the pen and Bruce Bochy is considering pinch-hitting for Bumgarner.
And don’t be surprised to see Bumgarner hit more than he should. On a per at-bat basis, he’s been the sixth-best Giants hitter this year and has parked four home runs. While Bochy will probably bat him one too many times, don’t be fooled into thinking Bumgarner is an actual good hitter. He’s still a pitcher. A good-hitting pitcher, to be sure, but he’s still a pitcher. Those 78 plate appearances this year have been good ones, but that doesn’t make him a good hitter. I can’t stress that enough. If we were to choose between Bumgarner and Michael Morse or Angel Pagan, the smart money would be on the person who hits for a living.
I don’t mean to rail against Bumgarner or his hitting, but boy have I heard a lot about his hitting lately. Ok, let’s move to the position players.
These two teams have differing styles, to some degree. The Pirates hit for more power and steal more bases and they run a little better. But the Giants make up for that by also being really good at offense, even though they trail the Pirates—by small margins—in basically every stat. Where the Giants make up for this is on defense.
And the defense isn’t that great; it’s average. But average is better than what the Pirates play. Buster Posey has been a good defensive catcher, Pablo Sandoval and Brandon Crawford make a pretty strong left side of the infield, and Gregor Blanco covers pretty good ground in the outfield. As lovable as he is, Hunter Pence doesn’t play great defense, but he doesn’t have to since he hits well enough.
The Pirates do not play very good team defense. Jordy Mercer is in the top 10 defensively at shortstop, and Russell Martin is really good behind the plate, but that’s it. Of course, the other players don’t have to be very good defensively, because they hit really, really well, and the Pirates hit really, really well throughout the lineup. To wit:
So the Pirates are pretty good. The Giants are good, too. It might not be Royals-A’s, but we didn’t really think Royals-A’s would be that good either, did we?
Murphy Powell is a creator of Scouts Alley. You can follow him on Twitter if you really want to.
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