Game Wrap 08-29-2010: Giants 9 D'Backs 7

This was a game that seemed well in hand going to the 7'th inning. Matt Cain was cruising, the Giants had given him some run support.....and then the bullpen tried to give it all away. Fortunately, the offense came back to pick up the bullpen and Brian Wilson did his superman thing in the 8'th and 9'th innings to stave off a crushing sweep by the D'Backs in SF. Key lines:

Andres Torres- 2 for 4, 2B(42), BB. BA= .287. Torres was, once again, a sparkplug for the Giants offense. He also set a AT&T park record for doubles in one season with more than a month still to go.

Freddy Sanchez= 3 for 5, 2B. BA= .287. Freddy is hitting .500, 20 for 40 over his last 10 games. Maybe the trade for Fontenot lit a fire under him?

Pablo Sandoval- 2 for 4. BA= .276. Pablo continued his hot hitting. The double off the very top of the wall just to the right of the .421 ft. sign was just crushed. He also had a hard hit ball that was caught earlier in the game.

Eli Whiteside- 2 for 4. BA= .240. Eli and Matt Cain played "Little Ball" to perfection at the bottom of the order.

Matt Cain- 2 for 3. BA= .113. Cainer beat out a perfect sac bunt with Whiteside advancing from 2'nd to 3'rd on the play. Later, he faked a bunt, pulled the bat back and hacked a single up the middle.

Matt Cain- 6.1 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 1 BB, 7 K's. ERA= 3.11. Nice start for Cain who had a W blown by the bullpen. He needs to work on throwing fewer pitches early in games. Pitch counts, as much as anything, are what is keeping him from a HOF career.

Brian Wilson- 1.2 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 1 K, Save(36). ERA= 1.88. This was the 13'th time this season that Wilson has pitched more than 1 inning. What a horse! What an anchor to the bullpen!

With the W, the Giants gained a game on the NL West leading San Diego Padres who lost again to the Phillies 5-0. The Giants now trail by 5 games. Philadelphia maintained their 1.5 game lead in the Wild Card race with the W over the Pads. The Cardinals lost again to the Nats 4-2 to drop 3 games off the Wild card pace and 5 games behind the Cincinnati Reds in the NL Central. Watch out for the Rockies who beat the Dodgers again 10-5 to move to 8 games behind the Padres, but just 3 games behind the Giants and 4.5 games out in the Wild Card race. The Dodgers would, once again, appear to be fading out of it and seem to be trying to trade Manny to the White Sox before Sept 1.

The Giants now begin a 3 game set at home against the surging Rockies before heading south to face the Dodgers in LA. Jonathan Sanchez gets the call for the first game followed by MadBum and Timmy.