Projecting the Series: Giants vs. Marlins

The Giants finished April with a record of 12 and 10, winning 5 of the 7 series that they played. They are currently on pace for about 88 wins, which is about what was expected out of them but given all of this it felt that they played a little bit better than their record currently shows.

Maybe it is just that I got so used to a team that scratched and clawed for every run but this team scored 90 runs in the month, averaging over 4 runs a game for a whole month, which all last season they only did one time (during August). With a team built around pitching I would have expected a better record given the run support but I guess part of that was hidden by the opening series sweep.

Again the data going into the projection model is based on ZiPS projections and also the current seasons statistics but it is still weighted toward the projections but slightly less than it had been previously. It will stay pretty heavily projected toward projections until maybe Memorial Day when we have nearly two full months of data to go with.

So here are the probable pitching match-ups courtesy of MLB.com:

Matt Cain vs. Ricky Nolasco
Barry Zito vs. Carlos Zambrano
Ryan Vogelsong vs. Anibal Sanchez

Odds:

	Giants	Marlins	Total Runs
Game 1	64%	36%	6.4
Game 2	60%	40%	6.9
Game 3	53%	47%	5.9
Sweep	16%	9%
2 out 3	41%	34%
1 out 3	34%	41%
0 out 3	9%	16%
Win Series	57%	43%
Lose Series	43%	57%

The Giants are favored in every game against the Marlins who are coming in really struggling. The Giants should hopefully be able to take advantage and start the month out right with another series win. The Zito vs. Zambrano match up should be interesting because who doesn't like a double "Z" match up, also of note since I started doing this I don't remember Zito being so heavily favored to win, so good for him.

Predicting over under: I got my first ever series win in betting the over/under last week taking the under all three games and being correct in all but Friday's game which just got to the over by one run. This brings my season record to .500 with my goal being .550 by the end of the year. Another winning series would certainly help me get there. Tonight's line is 6 and I am taking the under so hopefully Cain has his good stuff. After I published this I noticed I made an error in tonight's odd's, the Giants are now favored even more and the project runs is now pushing me to the over, so hope for a ton of Giants offense.

Season record 10-10

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Projecting the Series: Giants vs. Marlins

The Giants lost a series to the Pirates who were coming off a ten game losing streak.

The Giants are no longer in first place.

The Giants can't seem to score runs at all.

The Giants big mid-season acquisition has come down with a case of the DeRosa's.

It seems like all that good luck and all the breaks that the Giants were getting early in the season are now going the other way. The team looks bad. Luckily, they are doing this in early August and not late September and they have some time to get things back on track.

Unfortunately for the team, they are starting a long, ten game road trip that has the potential to derail the season if they keep up the pace they are going. If there is one silver lining, it's that they have their rotation set up nicely to try to get a winning streak going with Cain, Lincecum, and Vogelsong taking on the Marlins.

The odds for each game:

	Marlins	Giants
Game 1	56%	44%
Game 2	47%	53%
Game 3	54%	46%
Sweep	14.05%	10.87%
2 out 3	39.16%	35.92%
1 out 3	35.92%	39.16%
0 out 3	10.87%	14.05%
Win Series	53%	47%
Lose Series	47%	53%

Again, what is killing the team is the offense in my projections. In each game, the pitching is superior, but the lack of offense plus the disadvantage of being on the road gives most of that back. It should be a close series, which I am hoping favors the Giants.

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Matt Cain’s Brilliance:

Matt Cain was throwing well again last night in the steamy heat of Florida. He pitched into the 8th inning and had a no-hit bid going into through 5 and 2/3 innings and finished with a line of 7 innings, 4 hits, 2 Runs (1 given up after he left the game), 3 walks and 6 strike outs. Good enough to further bring down his ERA to 2.79 and for a game score of 64.

The other thing that was nice to see is the offense score some runs for him, this is the third time this season that the offense has put up 5 or more runs in support for him. This is a pretty big departure from his career run support which up to last season was an abysmal 3.69 runs per game.

The Giants were finally able to get a series sweep after winning the first 2 games of the last three series and then falling in the finale. This sweep felt nice and hopefully the team can continue the roll on to New York. This game never really felt in doubt and a lot of that has to do with how well Cain was throwing the ball.

Other lines of interest:

Nate Schierholtz: 3 for 3, BB, HR AVG=.381 OBP=.458 Schierholtz continues to produce and had a no doubter homerun that was crushed to right field.

Mark DeRosa: 2 for 4, 2B this is certainly a good sign especially after I had just written about how his wrist appeared to still be bugging him. He crushed a double to right center and lined a single to center, I would still like to see more hits coming to the pull field before I am feeling better but I will settle for some baby steps.

Aaron Rowand: 2 for 4, 3B, 2RBI Rowand has been playing great to start this season and continued that with a multi-hit game and a big triple and some good defense in centerfield. This could be another one of his every third year breakouts and if it is it probably couldn’t have come at a better time.

Giants and Marlins Series Preview:

The Giants head east for a six game road trip, the first stop is Miami and the Florida Marlins. The Marlins are 13-12 tied for third in the National League East. They boast a solid pitching stuff and a young lineup that has some pop through out the order. The team is lead by there solid 3-5 hitters of Hanley Ramirez, Jorge Cantu, and Dan Uggla. Keeping these bats quite and having patience against the Marlins pitching will be the key to winning this series.

The Giants are coming off an impressive home stand where they won all three series against 3 of the top teams in the National League and had a chance to sweep all three. The wins against solid opponents look nice on the resume and hopefully give the team some confidence heading into this road trip.

The Giants are skipping Wellemeyer’s turn in the rotation which will give them the top three guys going in this series. Hopefully that leads to a fourth consecutive series win.