Phillies Opposition Roadblock: San Francisco Giants
The Team: San Francisco Giants
Next up, the Phillies welcome in an underachieving San Franciso Giants team. A team normally picked to be competing for the wildcard, if not the NL West, the Giants find themselves eleven games under .500 at 22-33 and 11.5 games behind the Colorado Rockies.
They are coming off a three-game sweep at the hands of the Washington Nationals. And in case you were living under a rock on Memorial Day, there was some sort of altercation between Giant reliever, Hunter Strickland, and Bryce Harper. It may be the most exciting thing that has happened in San Francisco’s season.
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The Giants rank 29th in baseball with 183 runs scored. The Phillies rank 27th in baseball with 205 runs scored. I guess I really do not have to emphasize what that could mean for the excitement level of these games.
They rank dead last in home runs with 42, which could actually be a breath of fresh air for a Phillies staff that seems to allow homers at each blink of an eye. San Fran carries the league’s worst OPS into this series at .635 as well.
It would appear that the offense is the perfect cure to the Phillies’ recent woes.
And they are not without many important pieces. Hunter Pence is on the 10-day disabled list with a hamstring injury but has been out since mid-May. He could be close to a return, so keep an eye out for him this weekend.
On the pitching side of things, the Giants find themselves in the middle of the league in most categories (15th in ERA, strikeouts, 24th in batting average against, and ninth in runs allowed). As a reminder, they are without their ace, Madison Bumgarner, due to a shoulder injury in a dirt biking accident.
Defensively, they are one of the more sound teams in the sport. They have one more error than the Phillies, making them tied for seventh. Their .986 fielding percentage is tied for fifth with the Washington Nationals.