Houser Hopes to Build on Giants Wins

2 in a row for the Giants.  The usual recap of last night's victory (an all around excellent performance) is followed by today's pitching matchup analysis.  M gives his take, and Aidan sends in some interesting numbers concerning pitchers coming off a blowout loss.  All of this leads to today's Safe Bet of the Day™ where we try to keep matching the Giants wins.

Transcript

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Come through the slide. Good morning and welcome back to safe with AM and the AM, your San Francisco Giants pre-game podcast, bringing you previews, projections, and predictions before every Giants game. Good morning everyone. Welcome back into the pod. It is Wednesday morning, April 1st, April Fool's Day. I was thinking at first I was gonna come on and do a whole little shtick about how this is unsafe with PM and the PM, where we follow the Dodgers every morning, but I didn't have time to work up a whole thing, so I'm just gonna skip that and get right into Welcome in and another Giants win. Uh-oh, something happened to my sound. Hold on one second. Let's see if I can fix this. Okay, let's see if that helps. Okay, so where was I? Welcome back in. Another Giants win yesterday, two in a row. An interesting game yesterday because started out with that same crazy lineup with uh Adama's leading off and Arias at the cleanup spot. And what kind of smelled like desperation the first time is starting to look like genius now. I was pretty suspicious when I saw that, especially when he came back with the same lineup. So we'll see if Vitello does it again today for the third game. And, you know, like I said, it was started off a little bit worried about that same lineup, but then very lead, very first hitter, second pitch of the game, Adamus hits the home run. And later in the same first inning, Zhang Hu Lee gets the two out, two RBI double off the wall, and we're already up 3-0 in the first. So that makes that lineup look all of a sudden really good. But then in the third, Webb gives up the gives up the two walks. They both score. It starts to get close. Webb did not look good at all. He looked terrible for the first three, maybe, yeah, three innings, I think. No control. He seemed to miss in the same place repeatedly, had to get out of a couple jams, and then still gave up the runs. And it didn't look good until you know it was four to three at that point. And I wasn't feeling too good about the game. But then he got through the bottom of the lineup in the fourth. And in the fifth, we're coming into the fifth. It's four to three. And I see he's got the two, three, four hitters coming up. And I was like, oh no, this is not looking good. And then he promptly struck out Tatisse, struck out Machado, and struck out Merrill. Two, three, and four KKK. Unbelievable, which brought in the safe bet of the day winner, and then the game just got better from there on out. We thought it would be a good game. I mentioned yesterday I thought it would be a good game for Devers and Lee as left-handers. Devers had two hits, scored a run. Lee had the two doubles. I mentioned how Chapman had such a good history against Marquez. He hit two hits, hit a home run. Altogether, the Giants had 16 hits. Unbelievable. Their defense looked pretty good. Arrias had another great play at second. The top of the order pitched in along with the bottom of the order. Everybody was getting hit. I guess everybody was pitching in at that point. They went six for 12 with runners in scoring position. So just the fact that they had 12 opportunities is good. And to score on half of those, very well done. That doesn't happen all the time. I'm sure San Diego must be very disappointed. They left a lot of opportunities out there. Seemed like they had a lot of base runners early in the game, especially. And hopefully, now going into today's game, we've got them on their back foot. They seem like they're a little tense, a little nervous, pressing. And so hopefully we can take advantage of that. The bullpen had a good game again, so that was good. Altogether, it was just a good game overall. Fun to watch as a Giants fan. And so let's just move on to the game we're most interested in. And that is the next one this afternoon. It is the finale against San Diego. Giants looking for a sweep. We have Adrian Hauser on the mound, and he is facing Nick Pavetta. So Hauser is a lot like Tyler Malley. It will be our first look at him in a Giants uniform. He is 33 years old, been around a little while. Started out his career in Milwaukee, had seven seasons there. The first three, three and a half were pretty good. The last three, three and a half were not. Just more average. And then he spent 2024 with the Mets. Last year, he was 11 games with the White Sox before being traded to Tampa Bay and pitched 10 games for them. Now, last year, his first 11 games with the White Sox, 2.10 ERA. Seven quality starts, at least that I remember counting up, might have been more. And then he got traded to Tampa Bay, and the 11, the 10 games he pitched with Tampa Bay, his ERA ballooned all the way up to 4.79. So not quite sure what happened there. What with the trade? Maybe it was the new location, new team, something. He more than doubled his ERA in the second half of the season. But he started out last year good. His first two games, he pitched a shutout against Seattle and against the Mets, two good teams. So hopefully he'll be fresh to start out this year. He did pitch twice against the Giants last year, shut them out both times, once with the White Sox, once with Tampa Bay. Seven innings in June with the White Sox, four hits and one walk. And then in August, when he was with Tampa Bay, went five innings, only gave up four hits and no walks with six strikeouts. So he looked good against San Francisco. Anyway, his numbers in spring training were just average. He's pretty much what you would call a serviceable number five pitcher. And I thought before this game that that is not who we want going up against Pavetta, not who you want going up against another team's ace, who's struggling offense, is just kind of waiting to break out. He might be the pitcher for them to do it against. It just wasn't going to be a good matchup. But then that was before I looked into a lot of Povetta's numbers, and now I think maybe he can hold his own. And here's why. As far as Povetta goes, he's also 33 years old. He's been around for a long time. He started out 2017 through 2019. He pitched three years with the Phillies. And this, these were his ERAs. First year in 2017, he pitched 26 games a full season with 6.02 ERA. 2018, 33 games, full season again, 4.77. Much better than 6.02, but still not all that great. Nothing to write home about. Then in 2019, 30 games again, again, full season, 5.38. Terrible. Then he was out for 2020, was injured. He came back. He was traded to Boston for four years in 2021. 31 games, 4.53. 2022, 33 games, full season again, 4.56. 38 games in 2023. So you can see he's pitching full seasons here. He's not like he's half seasons, 4.04. So it did quite a bit better. He was almost got under four, as close as he's ever been to getting under four. And then in 2024, 4.14. So, and then last year he got traded. He had a year last year with San Diego. Before he got traded to San Diego, he never had better than a four ERE, and most of it is 4.5 to 5.5. So not really good. He's just average, serviceable pitcher. Now, last year he got traded to San Diego, had a full year, 31 games, and had much, his by far his best season of his career, 2.87. Now, I'm not sure what to make of that. Just because he had one good year, good year, if you look at his numbers, they are not the numbers of an ace. Now, I'll confess I don't follow Philadelphia or Boston too closely at all. They're on the East Coast. But I mean, I'd heard the name. I didn't know anything about him. But I assumed, since he started as the opening day starter for San Diego, that he was their ace. And I guess with Musgrove out and a 2.87 last year, maybe he earned it. But his career numbers are very unimpressive. And he missed a spring training start with arm fatigue. And so after looking at all that research, I was just not as as scared of him as I was before, especially after that first game where he pitched only three innings, went, gave up six runs on seven hits and three walks. So after doing that, I was thinking, well, he's just like Hauser. He's just a serviceable pitcher, innings eater type of thing. And the Giants should be able to get on him, especially after that last outing. But I got a little message from Aiden. He did some research on pitchers that have gotten blown out. This is over the last couple of years. Some pitchers that have gotten blown out, and then how they did their next game. And for the most part, they did pretty well their next game. They mostly regressed back to their means. And most of them even had a quality start after having a blow-up outing like Pavetta did on his first outing. And actually, one of the people, one of the pitchers in that stat list was Logan Webb from his first outing, where he got shelled by the Yanks. And then he came back yesterday and had a decent outing, gave up the three runs, but he only gave up three hits and one walk, maybe two walks. So much better outing. He just had, oh no, I think he had three or four walks. It was two of them that scored. That's what it was. But overall, his outing was much better than the first one. So taking Aiden's research into account, he should probably regress back to his average outing. He won't give up six runs in three innings like he did against Detroit. But even taking that into account, his average outing is not all that great. And in fact, it's pretty close to Hauser's. And so my game prediction is that the pitching is going to be pretty evenly matched for the first part of the game. I think Hauser and Pavetta, both 33 years old, both fairly new with their teams, fairly career-wise historically, fairly similar numbers. If Povetta comes back and regresses back to his mean, he will have a similar number to Hauser. Hauser started off last year really good. So my prediction it's going to be very even through five, one to one, two to two, something like that through five. Now, we did hit yesterday's. That takes us to three, one, and one. Good start. We've had two in a row, three, one and one on the season. So let's try to keep that rolling. And like I said, I think it's going to be close early. An even matchup. I think San Diego's offense is struggling, and the Giants is pretty confident. And giving the pitching matchup, I think that that's going to make for an even matchup through five. So some of the numbers that I've got this morning. Now, I'm going to confess I don't feel real confident about any of them. The Giants money line is plus 132. So obviously the books are expecting San Diego to win today. The over-under is eight, and it's minus 104 to the over, minus 116 to the under. So they're leaning a little toward the under, but I think the game is going to be right around eight. So I don't know what I would pick on the over-under. I kind of like Hauser over 15.5 outs. Last year, he was over that 16 times, and that's a plus 110. And all three of his first games that start the season, he was over that. He went six innings plus in his first three starts last year. So if he comes out fresh to start the season, he should be able to get over the 15 and a half outs. They also have him over three and a half strikeouts, which he was over 14 times last year. So the majority of the games, but that's minus 135, a little juicy. So if we go back to what we've done the last couple games and look at the first five, first five because still unsure about the bullpins. They're supposed to have a better bullpen than us. They've been fairly even so far. They still haven't used Miller much, and he's supposed to be their closer. So if it is close, they might pull him today, which again makes me want to leave the. Excuse me, I had a little technical difficulty. I'll see if I can fix that up in editing. Um hope I didn't mess up the beginning right there. Anyway, where was I? I was talking about okay, what I did in the last two, what we've done in the last two games has gone with the first five because of the pitching matchup and taking out the bullpins. And so looking at the first five, first five money line, Giants first five money line is plus 130. So they are expecting Pabetta to outpitch Hauser in the first five. But the one I like the best is the first five run line for the Giants, meaning we get half a run is minus 112. And so if I'm thinking it's gonna be an evenly matched first five innings, hopefully the Giants can either keep it tight or be ahead after five for that one to hit. So I'm gonna make the official play today, Giants first five run line at minus 112. Now, I might suggest putting a half unit on it. I'm not as confident as I have been about the last couple. I really like the last couple quite a bit more. But we'll still go with it, Giants, because we're gonna go with our idea that the first five is gonna be even. So let's see. I think that's all I have on my notes for today's game. Hopefully, yep, that is. Okay, so tune in tomorrow, everybody, where we will hopefully be celebrating a giant sweep of the Padres and getting to 500. That would be amazing. And we will analyze tomorrow's game. We have Robbie Ray against David Peterson up against the Mets. It's back home in San Francisco. The Mets coming into town. Like I said, Robbie Ray getting his second start, David Peterson getting his second start. So we will analyze that pitching matchup tomorrow. Enjoy today's game, today's win. Stay safe and go Giants.