Note to fans: Saturday’s Giants-Cubs game will be Milestone Day. Jason Schmidt goes for his 100th big-league win and Cubbie Greg Maddux shoots for No. 300. The first 50,000 fans through the turnstiles will each receive a granite 500-pound milestone.
Eschewing the conventional tact of loading up for a stretch run, the Giants are playing the hand they dealt themselves.
“We know we’ve got holes,” general manager Brian Sabean seemed to be saying as trading-deadline blocks went unbusted, “but they’re our holes and we’ve grown to love ’em.”
A key piece of that approach is Schmidt winning every game he pitches. After Schmidt, the level-of-expectations bar for Giants’ pitchers is fairly low. When Merkin Valdez made his big-league debut Sunday in relief of Schmidt and gave up a double and got a line-drive out, he got a standing ovation when he was removed.
Thus, there is wisdom in the plan of Schmidt winning every game he pitches. The Giants can’t abandon their plan now, since they have no other. They’ll run Schmidt out there Saturday to duel his former mentor, Maddux.
Maddux and Schmidt were teammates for two years in Atlanta, ’95 and ’96, Schmidt’s first two seasons in the big leagues. Both pitchers are known as students of the game, as thinking pitchers. Or, if you prefer, pitching thinkers. Maddux has to be smart, since you don’t mow down big-leaguers with 82 m.p.h. gas. Schmidt has a 97-m.p.h. heater, but it’s the bonus brainwork that makes him the best pitcher in the world, as we speak.
Schmidt is seven years younger than Maddux. In order to get to 300 wins by age 38, Schmidt would have to win about 29 games per year.
Which is the rock-bottom minimum contribution the Giants are counting on from him.
