The first Giants vs. Dodgers series of the season and it comes with even more meaning as the Dodgers are currently leading the NL West over the second place Giants.

 The Giants are coming off a nine game home stand where they managed to go .500 but really didn't play well and sandwiched between series wins against the Padres and Brewers was a brutal sweep at the hands of the Marlins where they dropped three one run games.

With a six game trip against the Dodgers and Diamondbacks staying at .500 will be a big accomplishment.

Again the data going into the projection model is based on ZiPS projections and also the current seasons statistics but it is still weighted toward the projections but slightly less than it had been previously. It will stay pretty heavily projected toward projections until maybe Memorial Day when we have nearly two full months of data to go with.

So here are the probable pitching match-ups courtesy of MLB.com:

Barry Zito vs. Ted Lilly
Ryan Vogelsong vs. Clayton Kershaw
Tim Lincecum vs. Chad Billinglsey ()


Odds:

	Dodgers	Giants	Total Runs
Game 1	63%	37%	7.6
Game 2	62%	38%	6.3
Game 3	49%	51%	6.7
Sweep	19%	7%
2 out 3	43%	31%
1 out 3	31%	43%
0 out 3	7%	19%
Win Series	62%	38%
Lose Series	38%	62%

Predicting over under: I didn't have the time to post a preview for last week but the model said that I should take over, under, over, so with that I went 2-0 with a push on Saturday. With the 2-0 record that pushes my overall record to 12 and 10 pushes my record to .545 which is nearly at the break even point for gambling. So maybe I have a future at doing this.

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The Giants finished April with a record of 12 and 10, winning 5 of the 7 series that they played. They are currently on pace for about 88 wins, which is about what was expected out of them but given all of this it felt that they played a little bit better than their record currently shows.

Maybe it is just that I got so used to a team that scratched and clawed for every run but this team scored 90 runs in the month, averaging over 4 runs a game for a whole month, which all last season they only did one time (during August). With a team built around pitching I would have expected a better record given the run support but I guess part of that was hidden by the opening series sweep.

Again the data going into the projection model is based on ZiPS projections and also the current seasons statistics but it is still weighted toward the projections but slightly less than it had been previously. It will stay pretty heavily projected toward projections until maybe Memorial Day when we have nearly two full months of data to go with.

So here are the probable pitching match-ups courtesy of MLB.com:

Matt Cain vs. Ricky Nolasco
Barry Zito vs. Carlos Zambrano
Ryan Vogelsong vs. Anibal Sanchez

Odds:

	Giants	Marlins	Total Runs
Game 1	64%	36%	6.4
Game 2	60%	40%	6.9
Game 3	53%	47%	5.9
Sweep	16%	9%
2 out 3	41%	34%
1 out 3	34%	41%
0 out 3	9%	16%
Win Series	57%	43%
Lose Series	43%	57%

The Giants are favored in every game against the Marlins who are coming in really struggling. The Giants should hopefully be able to take advantage and start the month out right with another series win. The Zito vs. Zambrano match up should be interesting because who doesn't like a double "Z" match up, also of note since I started doing this I don't remember Zito being so heavily favored to win, so good for him.

Predicting over under: I got my first ever series win in betting the over/under last week taking the under all three games and being correct in all but Friday's game which just got to the over by one run. This brings my season record to .500 with my goal being .550 by the end of the year. Another winning series would certainly help me get there. Tonight's line is 6 and I am taking the under so hopefully Cain has his good stuff. After I published this I noticed I made an error in tonight's odd's, the Giants are now favored even more and the project runs is now pushing me to the over, so hope for a ton of Giants offense.

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With the first month of the minor league season in the books I think that now is a good time to take a look at how things are going down on the farm.

First up the Giants position prospects (all stats are through the April 28th):

Rank	Name	PA	H	2B	3B	HR	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG
1	Gary Brown	99	18	2	1	0	8	13	0.222	0.330	0.272
2	Joe Panik	92	19	6	0	0	11	7	0.235	0.326	0.309
3	Andrew Susac	70	14	3	0	1	7	24	0.230	0.329	0.328
4	Franscico Peguero	86	17	2	3	1	5	12	0.215	0.256	0.354
6	Tommy Joesph	71	15	4	0	1	3	12	0.227	0.268	0.333
8	Hector Sanchez	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
10	Jarrett Parker	79	13	3	2	4	12	33	0.203	0.342	0.500
11	Ehire Adrianza	88	17	0	1	0	13	14	0.233	0.345	0.260
14	Adam Duvall	96	20	4	1	3	4	25	0.227	0.281	0.398
18	Shawn Payne	56	17	4	1	1	8	10	0.370	0.482	0.565
19	Chuckie Jones	71	6	3	0	1	3	37	0.090	0.141	0.179

That's a pretty ugly list. It looks like there are quite a bit of early struggles (good thing they aren't playing for the big league team because they would be finding a spot on the bench to keep warm) but there is time for all of these guys to recover.

The big stand outs offensively are Jarrett Parker (who is repeating the level in San Jose right now) and Shawn Payne in Augusta. Payne is a bit old for his level but he has some very interesting tools, with his great athleticism. The thing that makes me really like him is his walk rate 14.3% against a very respectable strike out rate 17.9%, it will be interesting to see how the Giants treat him as the season moves along.

The Giants top 2 prospects, Gary Brown and Joe Panik are off to a slow starts, but the nice thing to see is that even with batting averages in the low 200's they have both found ways to get on base at around league average rates. Neither is hitting for much power but I think that will come as they get used to the level and make adjustments.

One guy who is off to a real hot start that isn't on the list that might be someone to look out for is Roger Kieschnick. Kieschnick was regarded as a prospect a few years back but injuries and struggles in AA took a bit of his sheen off. Well now he is raking in Fresno (all PCL need to be taken with a grain of salt) and the power that he is always shown is there in a big way with an early season slugging percentage north of .600. He still doesn't walk too much and can put up big strike out numbers as well, but if he is healthy he could provide some pop as a left fielder.

Now the pitching prospects (all stats are through the April 28th):

Rank	Name	IP	ERA	FIP	GB%	K%	BB%	HR/9	BB/9	K/9
5	Eric Surkamp	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
7	Kyle Crick	12	3.09	5.17	61%	20%	22%	0	9.26	8.49
9	Heath Hembree	8	2.25	4.33	48%	16%	6%	1.13	2.25	5.63
12	Adalberto Mejia	8	13	6.44	37%	4%	15%	1.08	7.56	2.16
13	Clayton Blackburn	18	2.95	2.49	56%	24%	6%	0	2.45	9.82
15	Michael Kickham	18	2.55	4.11	44%	20%	15%	0.51	5.6	7.64
16	Seth Rosin	7	1.23	2.25	6%	41%	6%	1.23	2.45	15.95
17	Joshua Osich	7	0	1.55	33%	27%	4%	0	1.35	9.45
20	Jacob Dunnington	12	6.57	2.55	48%	18%	9%	0	3.65	7.3

The pitchers have gotten off to a much better start than the batters. Maybe it is a case that early in the season the pitching just being ahead of the hitting and with the warmer summer weather things will balance out a bit. Anyway something to keep an eye on.

The big thing that is nice to see is that a good portion of the pitchers have k rates above 20%, with Seth Rosin leading the way with an obscene 41% rate in his 7 inning pitched. The guy that is really impressing me right now is Clayton Blackburn who excelling in Augusta, he signed out of high school so he is still young but he seems to have good command (so/bb of 4) and a nice sinking fastball that has gotten a good amount of ground balls (56%), I am excited to see how he progresses.

The one early concern is Adalberto Mejia who made the jump from the DSL straight to low A Augusta. That was a pretty aggressive promotion for a guy who had yet to pitch in the US and is the 10th youngest guy in the league. So far he has struggled pretty bad, but he has improved over his last few games he has 2.3 innings pitched with 3 strikeouts and just one walk. Hopefully that is a sign is making some adjustments.

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