Ryan Vogelsong is pitching tonight, which still makes me a little nervous despite his most successful start coming against the now first-place Dodgers. He’s faced them twice, and once against the lowly Diamondbacks, his pitching contributing to one of Arizona’s few wins on the season. He has increased his IP by one in each successive outing (4.0 @ LA, 5.0 vs. AZ, 6.0 vs. LA), and you won’t see me complaining about Vogey giving the team seven strong. He did see a huge drop in strikes looking — 24, 21, to 9 in the last game, but a rise in his swinging strikes from 4, 4, to 8. We’ll see if the Rockies are aggressive against Vogelsong like the Dodgers appeared to be in their last meeting. The lineups:
Tonight’s #SFGiants lineup: Pagan cf Pence rf Posey c Morse lf Sandoval 3b Belt 1b Hicks 2b Crawford ss Vogelsong p
— San Francisco Giants (@SFGiants) April 21, 2014
Already there is outrage about Brandon Belt‘s positioning in the lineup, even in terms of 5 and 6 with the question of should he be in front of Pablo Sandoval? Their splits, even from 2013-2014 suggest that Belt is the better option than Sandoval. If Sandoval continues to slump, that will work itself out and the Brandons will be broken up. Having Hunter Pence and Buster Posey that high in the lineup? No problem by me, and I don’t mind Michael Morse in the 4 spot. For the third-place Rockies:
#Rockies vs. #Giants. Looks like OF Michael Cuddyer is on DL. Charlie Culberson up. Carlos Gonzalez is in. pic.twitter.com/GSNOJc2GDK — Thomas Harding (@harding_at_mlb) April 21, 2014
Since their series against the Giants, the Rockies have won series against the Padres and the Phillies, so they are back on the winning side of things and have worked their way up to .500. Only a sweep of the Giants would put them in second place in the NL West. Jorge De La Rosa made it past the fifth inning for the first time in 2014 in his last outing against the Padres, going six innings, allowing eight baserunners and striking out four. He has allowed nine extra base hits to RHH in sixty-nine plate appearances (~13%), with four of those being big flies. This will be his second start at home. De La Rosa has a bunch of pitches he can throw at you, and for the details, check it out here. You’ll see he uses “only” five of his pitches against LHH while adding the sinker and curveball at times to RHH in an attempt to get them off-balance and keep them guessing.
My guess is that this turns into one heck of a bullpen game, which on paper favors the Giants whose bullpen has a 1.79 ERA in 19 G with a .223 BAA while the Rockies have a 3.73 ERA in 20 with a .251 BAA. As I believe it will come down to about five innings of bullpen work from each side, I’ll give the edge to the Giants in game one, even though I’m not that high on Vogelsong.