Yoshinobu Yamamoto (11-8, 2.72) vs. Justin Verlander (3-10, 4.09).
The Giants, left for dead after picking up the clubhouse cancer that is Rafael Devers (and subsequently trading away decent players at the deadline), have strangely surged back into third place in the NL West, and sit only 1.5 games back of the Mets for the last-wild card spot (the Reds share the Giants' 74-72 record). Devers, who now has played in almost the same number of 2025 games with both Boston and San Francisco, has a much lower WAR with SF (1.7 vs. 2.2 with Boston), but is still a formidable hitter with a .824 OPS / 136 OPS+ (vs. a .905 OPS / 149 OPS+, the latter of which was a career high).
We have seven games against San Francisco this season, starting with this one, and you just know Oyster Pubes would love nothing more than seeing the rival Dodgers roll over and play dead, like they did in most of July and August. Giants homer Grant Brisbee just posted a piece that basically called the Dodgers a disappointment, whose mortality this season has been exposed by aging veterans and insufficient young guns from the farm system.
Speaking of the Dodgers' young guns, Yoshinobu Yamamoto may come into this game salty. He was denied a no-hitter in his last start, cruelly losing the last out to a potentially-catchable fly ball to center that was met with little defensive effort on the part of Andy Pages. The center-field angles in Birdshit Park are equally precarious, so I'm hoping Pages has had some time to shag some balls out there this morning.
Oh, man. This is gonna be bad.
1 comments:
finally a real rivalry game
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