Chad Billingsley and Matt Cain hooked up in yet another classic pitcher's duel, something that has become somewhat of a daily occurrence for the Giants this season. The Giants cashed in a pinch hit double by Travis Ishikawa to break the 0-0 tie in the bottom of the 7'th inning. They added an insurance run in the bottom of the 8'th inning which they ultimately needed to stave off the Dodgers after Andre Ethier took Brian Wilson deep with 2 outs in the top of the 9'th inning. Key lines:
Mike Fontenot- 1 for 4. BA= .284. Fontenot hit the ball hard 3 times before blooping one over second base to drive in the Giants first run of the game in the 7'th. As Vin Scully would say, "go figure!"
Aubrey Huff- 1 for 3, 2B, BB. BA= .292. Huff hit a slicing double to LF off reliever George Sherrill to lead off the 8'th after Fontenot had gotten thrown out trying to steal 2B to end the 8'th inning. He took 3B on a wild pitch by Kenley Jansen and then hustled home ahead of the throw from the second baseman on Pablo Sandoval's ground ball to score the insurance run that proved to be the difference in the game. Hey, at least Pablo put the ball in play!
Buster Posey- 2 for 3, BB. Another good game for Buster. Have I ever mentioned that I love the way he catches Brian Wilson? The Ethier HR notwithstanding, I thought Buster gave Wilson great targets on the outside corner and loved the call for the high heat to strike out Theriot for the second out.
Travis Ishikawa- 1 for 1, 2B. Travis pinch hit for Cain in the 7'th and delivered leading to a very nice W for Cainer. Bochy pinch ran Burriss for Travis and Burriss easily took 3B on the passed ball then came home on Fontenot's bloop hit over 2B.
Matt Cain- 7 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 5 K's. ERA= 3.08. As Howard Cosell used to say, a "scintillating" performance by the Cainer. The Giants managed to get him the W in the process.
Sergio Romo- 1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 0 K. ERA= 2.37. No K's, but Romo was dominant eliciting 2 weak flyballs and a weak grounder.
Brian Wilson- 1 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 0 BB, 2 K's, Save(43). ERA= 1.90. Wilson decided to make things interesting by throwing a fat one to Andre Ethier that caught the jet stream in left-center field. He temporarily lost his composure against the next batter Gibbons sailing his pitches high and away. He settled down in time to get to a 3-2 count, a count Brian is very comfortable with and I am learning to be comfortable with him in a 3-2 count. No contest! Blew Gibbons away with 98 MPH cheese on the outside corner thanks to a very nice target provided by Buster Posey.
The Padres lost to the Rockies 9-6, so the Giants move up to 0.5 games behind for the NL West Division lead. With the W, Colorado moves up to 2.5 games off the pace and 2 games behind the Giants. In the Wild Card race, Atlanta lost again to the Nats 4-2 so the Giants are now just 0.5 games behind the Braves. With the Braves having to face a red hot Phillies team 6 games out of their last 12, I really think the NL Wild Card team is going to come out of the West.
Jonathan Sanchez takes the mound tomorrow evening against Ted Lilly, who pitched very well against the Giants in LA only to have his bullpen blow the game for him. Well, he did help lose it by giving up solo HR's to Buster Posey and Edgar Renteria.
Bruce Bochy once again confounded the haters by leaving Aaron Rowand on the bench for this game. Jose Guillen also sat with a cervical disk problem so the Giants fielded a defensive oriented OF of Eugenio Velez in LF, Cody Ross in CF and Nate Schierholtz in RF. Hey, they scored more runs than a more offensive oriented lineup the night before. If you aren't going to score runs anyway, might as well try to keep the other team from scoring! I'll predict an OF of Burrell, Rowand and Ross tomorrow night against Lilly.
San Jose Giants start the Cal League Championship series against the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes tomorrow night in San Jose. It's looking like I will try to make the Sunday evening game at the Epicenter.
Go Giants! Beat LA!!
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off topic from your post. But I was thinking earlier today about your prospect lists and how I was wanting to look back at the 2008 and had no way to...
ReplyDeleteIf you kept them, would you mind maybe below the Blog Archive, post links to past lists? Sort of like how BA archives its top prospects for each year?
I don't have them myself, but the past Top 50's can be found over on sfgiants.com Message Board. Click on the Prospects/Minor Leagues folder. You can either scroll down the list of topics(there are a lot fewer threads in that folder than in the General folder), or I believe you could find it by searching for Dr B's Giants Top 50 Prospects (year). Thanks for asking.
ReplyDeleteDoc, just wanted to take the opportunity to say thanks for all the recaps you do each day. For those of us further east, and unable to stay up for the games, any and all insight is much appreciated!
ReplyDeleteAh, a How-ward Co-sell reference, I miss his omnipresence.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I felt like Fontenot was going to deliver, only I wasn't expecting a bloop, he stung the ball good before. Exactly, "go figure".
That's two wins against Dodgers for Cainer in a row, after an entire career of no wins. I like this streak much better. :^)
Yeah, I noticed Wilson's ampped up pitches right after that too, but he recovered quickly, which is why he's so good as a closer, pretty much unflappable.
Good point about Braves and Phillies, resulting in another NL West wild card, as the Braves have been teetering and tottering, and the Phils look ready to push them down.
Which I feel bad about enjoying because I have a new friend I've been meeting at a regular conference, and we are both big baseball fans, and he's a Braves fan, and I gave him great encouragement about how good the Braves are, what with their pitching staff and Heyward.
Still, Giants all the way!!! :^)
The talk has been about how weak the NL West is, but the wild card has come out of the West in 3 of the last 4 and bucking for 4 of last 5 if happens this season.
OGC,
ReplyDeleteI did a quick analysis of NL Champs and WC a few months ago and found that the three NL divisions are actually very even over the years, yet the NLW ALWAYS gets the rep as the ugly step-child.
Thanks ESPN...