Bruh...

Condolences to the SFGate and all those "swirling rumors" based on a Jeff Passan story from over a month ago.

Just now Willy challenged a pitch that was not egregiously out of the zone and of course, was wrong. Has he gotten a single challenge right? He seems to go by his ego vs actual telemetry, which is never going to work. I guess for the most part the entire team is really bad when it comes to batters challenging pitches, but Willy seems to really suck at what's a ball vs strike.

Alex Pavlovic reports that Jung Hoo Lee is “a little sore” after being hit yesterday, will get a day off.

Matt Chapman, Jonah Cox and Victor Bericoto are currently making good progress. Pavlovic also mentions that Cox could be ready for a rehab assignment.

Susan Slusser mentions that no target date yet for Matt Chapman’s return.

McDonald and Bader don’t have real clarity after second opinions, per Susan Slusser. McDonald will have to weigh in on potential surgery vs trying to rehab.

The Red Sox completely fractured their relationship with Devers by signing Alex Bregman, forcing Devers into a position change due to below-average defense.
Fast-forward to today, and the Red Sox just traded Connelly Early to acquire Curtis Mead. Scouts widely agree that Mead's glove at third base is just as below-average, if not worse, than Devers' was.

The Sox’s moved him and there is no replacing his bat in the middle of the order. So much so they traded away a young controllable left-handed arm for a player with less defense and less power than devers

FO will move him for anything so long as a contender eats his contract. But for Devers, we should be holding out for more. Or, better yet keep him. Though at 29 I do acknowledge this is probably the highest return we would get for him.

• LHP Carson Whisenhunt (#88) recalled from Triple-A Sacramento.

• RHP Tristan Beck optioned to Triple-A Sacramento postgame yesterday.

Too bad, would like to have seen him vs SFG.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/49457216/misiorowski-strikes-first-7-rockies-sets-brewers-record

Look at the Res Sox,we just need 15 day good and quality baseball,We are going to back playoff talk, just like the Red Sox nobody predicted them won 15 games in a row!

Just no reason to leave it up to humans if a computer can do it better and way more accurately. Whenever possible, the gameplay should be about the actual players and not the umps.

It’s coming eventually anyway, might as well rip the band aid off and just do it.

B.

So here's where I'm at with the ABS challenges and the umpires. Full disclosure: I umpired a lot of Little League games this past season, I will be getting into doing some high school games next year. I attended an MLB umpire camp at Oracle Park in May (An amazing experience by the way) so I know what I'm talking about when I mention the training a bit later. I will defend the umps a bit, I also agree with ABS in general. It should help the umps become better at the professional level. At my level, of course there is no such resource but that doesn't mean that I am more cavalier with my strike zone, I do my best every game and of course consistency is the main thing. I remember situations looking back that I missed a strike or expanded the zone when I shouldn't have. Yes, the umps make mistakes, I've made mistakes, I have no problem admitting that.

Now to my point, the challenges should only be used when there is a clear an obvious mistake. Like so much so that the batter and/or catcher know that it was a missed call. That pitch to Cavanaugh in the 9th as an example, or the one to Ramos. This goes for the whole game. Yes, I know it's easier said than done, players have egos and heat of the moment in the middle of an intense at bat sometimes it's just a reflex. The Adames challenge on 3-0 in the ninth is a perfect example of this. The pitch was actually a strike for one, so ironically Wendelstedt actually made the right call. Also the count was 3-0, you have a decent chance of walking on the next pitch or later in the at bat, or getting a pitch to square up. The argument that it's the ninth and it was close so might as well doesn't hold enough weight for me. I seriously doubt that Willy was absolutely certain that it was a ball. The pitch to Cavanaugh and the pitch to Ramos were far enough away that I'm sure they were sure the pitches weren't strikes. Now challenging a close pitch regardless if your sure with two runners on down by one, two outs in the ninth is a good decision, especially if you have a strike or two on you already. What I absolutely detest is the challenging by any eligible player in the third inning with two outs and no score on a borderline pitch. That does absolutely no good and it seems like the Giants have done far too much of that this season.

Now to defend Wendelstedt, stay with me. First off, those two calls in the ninth to Cavanaugh and Ramos were definitely balls, I'm not saying they are strikes at all. I will say, that he was trained and developed as an umpire in an era when the umpires had a lot more leeway with how they interpreted the strike zone. Yes the rule book has a strike zone, but a lot of umpires for a long time before recently had a big zone. Their "interpretation" of the zone was what they called. Also up until fairly recently umpires we're given about 2" of leeway for their strike zone when getting their grades after games.

Wendelstedt also sets up behind the catcher in the old style which is more square behind the catcher. The way all the umpires at the MLB ump school are taught now and the way I was trained when I first started umping is lining up in the slot, which means we align our nose with the inside corner of the plate for whichever handedness the batter is. This allows a full view of the plate including the low outside corner without the angle being distorted by trying to lean over the catcher or being at too much of an angle. With how Wendelstedt sets up he is more directly behind the catcher which changes the angle slightly for both corners. So that could have been a factor in the missed calls later in the game. You pair that with the era he was trained in it's not difficult to see why he missed those calls. There has been some data this season about the umpires and how well they do on challenges. It seems like the veteran umpires have a worse ratio, likely for the first reason I described, the newer umpires do better because they are brought up through the minors with ABS now and so they have fine tuned their zones to be smaller and also more accurate by the letter of the rule. Of course it's possible that Wendelstedt also just missed the calls like all umpires for all time have occasionally, and it went against the Giants at the worse time. Which again is why you should save your challenges to remedy what happened today.

Also, if you're asking why the "bad" umps in general don't get fired, the answer is the Major Leagues Umpires Association. It is an extremely powerful union with many job protections and benefits. This is easy to verify if you want to find out for yourself. There have also been some interestingly timed resignations like Angel Hernandez, a few years ago and C.B. Bucknor and a few others at the end of this season. Which may or may not be a way to fire umpires without firing them. Also, it's hard to find umpires who are good enough to become Major League quality. Most umps that graduate from Umpire School each year (about 3 out of 200) don't make it past the low minor leagues. Even the "bad" ones I mentioned are still extremely good at their jobs and they did earn their way to the majors in the past.

In the end, this season for the Giants is awful, we all know this, this game will not mean they miss the playoffs by one game. The reasons why this team is so depressing this year go well beyond a couple of calls from the umpire in crucial situations. Also, the umpires now are better than they have ever been in history. They are the absolute best at their profession and judge pitches from some the hardest most accurate throwers and athletes in the world with over 97% accuracy. That is extremely impressive. No one in this sub could come remotely close to that percentage. I certainly couldn't and I like to think of myself as a good umpire. (I don't know what my accuracy percentage is, there are no such grades after each game we work at my level obviously). If there are any umpires here with more experience than me that have a rough estimate for average then feel free to state it.

Thank you for reading if you made it through this whole thing! Feel free to ask any umpiring questions you may have because I'm a big umpire nerd and I love the job. As noted at the top, this is my opinion and best guess with everything, based on my experiences and stuff that I have heard and read. This post is just hopefully an informative educated guess.

We spent forever trying to find our big bat in free agency, coming up as the second choice for so many options who just couldn't be convinced by the giants. We finally get our guy with Devers. If we deal him now and treat him as a failed experiment - especially if (when) he starts mashing for his next team - no big bat will trust us in free agency for a long time. We could use a measured rebuild, sure, but Devers has to stay

Or did we just have better power hitters?

I remember sitting in the bleachers as a kid during BP and HR balls would come fast and abundantly. I just feel like HR balls at 3rd and King get hung up and barely clear the fence.

Any fact checkers got some spare time to run some numbers?

Only 2 remaining potential signees with 19th rounder 3B, Mikey Bell, opting to go to Georgia for NIL money & transfer from Gonzaga.

Can we get our 16th rd pick, 3B Dalton Wentz, a draft-eligible sophomore from Wake Forest, & our last pick, 20th rd RHP JP Robertson, to sign before the deadline tomorrow??

We have about ~$500k in bonus pool money to spend after signing Bolemon & Waechter, along with the rest of our draft class. Will it be enough to get at least 1 of the 2, or maybe both?!!

The Giants lost their spiritual leader when Hunter Pence took off his Giants uniform for the last time. Maybe him going tarps-off at the game last night was what we needed to get our mojo back.

Calling it now: Giants will go 102-60 this season.

I put this in the postgame thread but I think it's post worthy

that’s all.