SAN FRANCISCO —er and the New York Mets took a step toward getting one back as the clubs prepared for a three-game series that begins Friday night with one still clinging to a sliver of playoff hope.The Giants (67-68) began Thursday — an off day for both teams — seven games back in the National League West and 7 1/2 behind Milwaukee for the second NL wild-card spot Matt Carpenter Jersey , then fell another half-game back of the Brewers (75-60) after Milwaukee beat the Cincinnati Reds in an afternoon affair.Meanwhile, the Giants learned they’d also lost center fielder Steven Duggar, their hottest hitter of late, for the rest of the season with a torn labrum in his left shoulder.Article continues below ...“The timing is awful,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said of Duggar, who provided difference-making hits in wins over Texas on Sunday and Arizona on Monday. “He was really in a good place.”The three games against the Mets, the fourth-place team in the NL East, provide a short break from a heavyweight-laden September schedule in which the Giants will go up against teams ahead of them in the standings — Colorado, Milwaukee, Atlanta and Colorado again — for 12 straight games starting Monday.The Mets have done a good job playing spoiler while encountering a rough patch of their own schedule. They split four games against the Giants last week in New York as part of an 8-7 run against Philadelphia (3-2), San Francisco (2-2), Washington (2-1) and the Chicago Cubs (1-2).In the meantime, the Mets have been trying to get their own house in order, sending former All-Star third baseman David Wright to the minors in his bid to play this season despite recent neck, back and shoulder surgeries.Wright, who went 1-for-9 in two games for Triple-A Las Vegas this week, has rejoined the parent club in San Francisco, but solely to continue rehab for the time being.“We just haven’t seen that level of consistency of playing on a quantity or quality at this point,” Mets interim general manager John Ricco said this week http://www.stlouiscardinalsteamshop.com/authentic-marcell-ozuna-jersey , indicating that reinstating Wright to the major-league roster — even as they expand Saturday — was no sure thing.“Quite frankly as this point,” Ricco continued, “he hasn’t been able to make some of the benchmarks that were laid out for him (as he began his rehab stint).”Wright hasn’t played in a major-league game since May 2016.Zack Wheeler (9-6, 3.46 ERA), dealt from the Giants to the Mets for Carlos Beltran in 2011, will make his third career start in San Francisco since the trade. He’s 1-1 with a 4.22 ERA in the first two.The former No. 6 overall pick of the 2009 draft by the Giants has lived up to the early projections since the All-Star break, a stretch during which he has the second-best ERA in the NL (1.17) in seven starts.He’s 2-1 with a 3.45 ERA in five lifetime starts against the Giants.Rookie left-hander Andrew Suarez (5-9, 4.42), coming off seven shutout innings in a 5-3 win over Texas last Saturday, is scheduled to open the series for the Giants. He has never faced the Mets. So that’s one left-handed reliever that likely won’t be making the Opening Day roster"Who’s going to be in the Atlanta Braves bullpen come Opening Day 2019? I have no idea! But, I now have a better idea of who’s not going to be on it...At first glance, this might seem like a bit of an odd choice. The Braves stuck with Sam Freeman through all of 2018, a year in which circumstances led to him posting a goose-egged 0.0 RA9-WAR and a team-worst -1.21 WPA. Of course, that was all mostly context, as Freeman’s 0.3 fWAR, 91 FIP-, and 94 xFIP- on the year placed him pretty much in “generic relief human” territory. Even after he spent about three weeks on the shelf with shoulder inflammation, the Braves brought him back and continued to use him through the end of the year. He was, however Lou Brock Jersey , left off the roster for the NL Division Series, as part of a clean relief sweep where Jesse Biddle, Dan Winkler, and Shane Carle, each of whom pitched fairly well for the team, also failed to secure a spot for the playoffs.Still, it appears as though the Braves are aspiring for something more than “this guy is a reliever,” or at least contorting their roster into something different. Or, this might just be a case of too many lefties for too few slots, as Jesse Biddle, Max Fried, and Jonny Venters would have joined Freeman in potentially stuffing the bullpen with southpaws, to say nothing of A.J. Minter’s eventual return. In any case, it’ll be interesting to see what happens with Sam Freeman going forward. The Braves are his fourth major league team, and he’s now appeared in parts of seven seasons as a major league reliever. though 2018 was the first time in the 31-year-old’s career in which he didn’t spend a substantial chunk of time toiling in the minors. The Braves outrighted Freeman, and as he’s been outrighted already twice before (once with the Rangers in 2015, once with the Brewers in 2016), he has the option of becoming a free agent in lieu of accepting his assignment to Triple-A — no word on that just yet.For his career, Freeman has 0.7 fWAR Ken Boyer Jersey , 2.2 RA9-WAR, and 1.41 WPA in 226 and 2鈦? major league frames on the back of an 89 ERA-, 98 FIP-, and 104 xFIP-. His 2017 season with the Braves was a revelation, as he didn’t make the Opening Day roster but still threw 60 innings of 58 ERA-/78 FIP- ball en route to 0.6 fWAR and a spot on the 2018 division-winning team. If Freeman does find a new club in the coming days, there may be the hope it’ll use him better than the Braves did: over the last two years, Freeman posted a 3.22 FIP / 3.42 xFIP against lefties but a 3.69 FIP / 4.27 xFIP against righties, yet faced 84 more righty batters than lefty batters in this span. (As a Brave, Freeman held the platoon advantage over just 41 percent of the batters he faced.)Earlier this year, the Braves avoided arbitration with Freeman, signing a one-year, $1.575 million deal with the team. Freeman had been doing okay in Spring Training, albeit walking too many: he issued four free passes to go with eight strikeouts in eight frames. Across his 33 batters faced, those amount to a 24 percent strikeout rate and a 12 percent walk rate, both of which are pretty much in line with his expectations and tiny bit little better than his career rates.