We said that Barry Enright appeared to be due for a major regression. Well, we didn't have to wait very long to see it tonight as the Giants jumped on him for 3 runs in the first inning, 3 dingers and 6 runs in 6 IP. Meanwhile, Tim Lincecum was dominating for 6 innings not allowing his first hit until there was 1 out in the 5'th inning, striking out 11 and walking none. The D'Backs finally got to him for 3 runs in the 7'th. Maybe he was fatiguing, or maybe he wasn't concentrating as intensely with a 6 run lead? The bullpen was, once again, stellar in holding off the D'Backs the rest of the way. Key lines:
Andres Torres- 1 for 5, 2B. BA= .275. Torres set the tone by smacking the first pitch of the game for a 2 bagger. He hit the ball hard at least 3 other times to show signs of coming out of his slump. Man, is that needed, or what?
Freddy Sanchez- 1 for 4, HR(4). BA= .285. Solo blast to RF. Not a common occurrence for Freddy.
Aubrey Huff- 1 for 4, HR(23). BA= .287. All 3 of the Giants first 3 batters of the game were first pitch swinging as they had obviously picked up a pattern on Enright. Huff turned his swing into a 2 run homer.
Buster Posey- 2 for 4. BA= .328. Posey's first hit, in the first inning, was an absolute bomb that hit just under the yellow line on the high CF wall 410 ft from home plate. The second was a hard single between 3B and SS ahead of Burrell's 2 run dinger in the 6'th.
Pat Burrell- 1 for 3, HR(16). BA= .248. Pat the Bat strikes again, and where would this team be without him?
Jose Guillen- 2 for 4, 2B. BA= .262. Guillen barely missed a HR in the first when his hard hit ball down the LF line clanged off the short fence just below the yellow line and caromed right to the LF holding Guillen to a very loud single, but driving in Buster Posey from 2B.
Tim Lincecum- 6.2 IP, 5 H, 3 R, 0 BB, 11 K's. ERA= 3.69. Things fell apart a bit in the 7'th, but prior to that, Timmy was as dominant as I've ever seen him.
Javier Lopez- 1.1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 0 K's. ERA- 2.30. The perfect bullpen guy against a LH stacked team like the D'Backs, and where would the Giants be without this guy?
The Giants were not able to gain ground on the Padres who, once again, beat the Choking Dogs by a score of 2-1. The Giants remain 1 game behind the NL West leaders. Colorado kept on winning with a 4-3 decision over the Cincinnati Reds to remain 4.5 games behind the Padres and 3.5 games behind the Giants. The Wild Card race took a shake up as the Phillies topped the Marlins 8-7 to jump over the Atlanta Braves, who lost to the Pirates and James McDonald 5-0, by 0.5 games. The Braves now have a 1 game lead over the Giants for the Wild Card.
Barry Zito tries to right his ship and keep the Giants winning ways going tomorrow night against Daniel Hudson and the Arizona D'Backs. It's pretty hard to anticipate a victory in this one. It looks like we can't count on the Choking Dogs to help the Giants even a little bit against the Padres, so the deficit going into the 4 games in San Diego could be 2 games.
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What a game! What a start!
ReplyDeleteNow they just have to do it again against Hudson, who is also due a regression. And Zito has to step it up, which I think is coming, just not sure when, he was striking out a lot of guys in his last start, which is a good sign.
Hopefully Billingsly can take care of the Padres tonight, he's usually pretty good, but they are doing a good job of choking, aren't they?
Hudson likely isn't going to maintain a sub 2 ERA forever, but his 48 K's against 9 BB's in 49 IP, would indicate he is throwing great stuff with excellent command vs Enright who has something like 48 K's in 78 IP, or something like that. Hudson misses bats while Enright tends to pitch more to contact. If I understand advanced pitching stats, Enright would be the more likely to regress.
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