On the flip-side, easy to lose fact of the most important aspect of last night's game... LMJ was back, looked great, and felt good after. If its a given that the pitchers all come back healthy, the rest they've been allowed to get (with a huge lead) will be extremely valuable come playoff time.
There is a whole lot of this. Giles sucked last night but fans, me included, are overly emotional during high pressure situations like the 9th inning. The bottomline is that there are only maybe 5 guys who you would feel the minimum of butterflies about in the 9th. Giles isn't one of them but he's also very productive about accomplishing what he's supposed to do. There isn't anyone better available and the only guy on your roster who may be better is in a more important role.
Agreed. He only went 5, but was cruising. If we can get him and Keuchel healthy and rested going into the playoffs, that's an w He's incredibly fun to watch -- elite stuff with a great idea of how to pitch (and apparently is fully bought in to analytics). That's amazingly rare for a pitcher so young -- he's still just 23.
It tells me something - but probably not what you think. If you put Sipp in 19 save opportunities, you think he'd close 17 of them? At the end of the day, Giles has come into 30 games of the Astros this season, and caused us to lose 2 of them. He also blew a save in a game we won. Has it looked pretty? No. But he's pretty much gotten the job done and his peripherals are surprisingly pretty good. As others said, only a handful of relievers in MLB have had that kind of success. Not even Devo - who's been more dominant but also has actually "failed" at his job at a higher rate as well.
So what youre telling me is, is that Giles is the Andy Pettite of closers? Always has men on base, stresses fans out, puts his defense in a tough spot, gets movement in the bullpen and then finds a way to get out of the situation. Yeah, I dont know about you but I dont feel comfortable with this, especially in bigger more important games later in the year. And yes blah blah blah, Andy had the results and blah blah blah.
So prior to yesterday, our 4 best starters combined to make one start in the last 19 games. We went 10-9, and lost one game on our division lead. We got that one game back yesterday. Kind of makes it hard to feel anybody in this division can realistically catch us considering we play .500 with our second string rotation, and they play .500 when mostly healthy.
I mostly agree, but 19 games is a small sample and Seattle has had injuries to their starters as well and they are just beginning to get those guys back. Felix H. just this series. Not saying they will, but if any team makes a run at us, it will be them.
How about having a lack of confidence (and being concerned every time Hinch puts the ball in his hands) in Giles has NOTHING to do with him being compared to (or being someone else). How about it has everything to do with who and what Giles is, and as Cometswin has pointed out the uneasiness comes with his "command and control" and that you have "no idea what you're going to get each time out". Listen we can go back and forth on this all day long. The bottom line is if the 'Stros want to win a WS they'll need Giles to get his $hit together. Still pulling for him but the uneasiness I feel when he's given the ball (no matter what the situation is) isn't going away no matter what any of you say. I believe it was Maya Angelou who said "when someone shows you who they are believe them". Giles is a guy who has electric stuff when he's on, but the problem is he's had a hard time with getting consistency with his command and control. Nobody is expecting him to be lights out every damn time he takes the mound, but if he doesn't find more consistency he's not going to be the closer and it will make it harder to win a WS (that is unless they're able to bring in another elite arm in the pen). Still pulling for him.
Have you actually watched Giles in the more important games he's pitched this year? (e.g. The save situations, or most importantly the one run save situations). And, it still remains to be seen as who else you'd want closing full time right now. Harris? Gregerson? At no point this year has Giles looked as bad at closing games as both of those two looked last year. Even Devo has given up runs in similar situations, and he still is the Astros best weapon out of the pen. As far as feeling "comfortable"... as I said earlier, it's going to take a bunch of high leverage saves for some to get over the bad start from LAST year.... and with the way this season is going, that's not going to happen till the playoffs. Would also feel far less optimistic in this situation if Giles was routinely lights out in the non-pressure situations, and falling apart in all the close games. He's actually been the opposite this year... which still needs improving, but not as bad of an issue as some would like to think.
Over his career generally, and specifically in the last two seasons, Giles has had his biggest problems in medium-leverage situations. Opponent OPS vs Giles: over his career (2014-2017): High leverage .595 Medium leverage .701 Low leverage .534 in current season: High leverage .646 Medium leverage .813 Low leverage .467 So, as it's been mentioned here, he's tending to come through successfully with the save in tight games, but in those situations that fall somewhere between game-critical and low-stress, he's been getting hit up.
What are these definitions of leverage? In the end, he should largely be judged this year by his primary job. Closing (which for me implies save situations). He also has room to improve in the overall mentality of the game... which does come as guys get older. He's been awful in games he didn't think he'd be pitching in, or just simply games he knew he could afford to make a mistake in.
I'm looking at baseball-reference site, where the leverage categories are calculated base on things like number of RISP, number of outs, game score, and how all of this affects the likelihood of winning a game. They give a lengthy description of how leverage scores are calculated at http://www.baseball-reference.com/about/wpa.shtml; I'll readily confess that some of the math is beyond me. But I think the main idea to take away from looking at Giles' performance under various levels of stress in games goes, as you say, to his mentality - it seems like he focuses well under pressure (which is why he succeeds more often than not in getting the save) but that he can lack focus and perhaps get too fancy (in terms of pitching around hitters and trying to get them to chase outside the zone) in non-critical situations, leading to walks and pitch count trouble.
Giles control was all over the place yesterday, he walked 3 people. It typically takes him a month to walk that many. I don't really think yesterday was a good barometer of anything other than a pitcher who really didn't have it. He got lucky it wasn't much worse. Fact is he has been brought in to end a game 26 times, and he has succeeded 24. Until that number starts to hurt us, it isn't gonna change.
