The Giants returned to Angels' Stadium for the first time since the 2002 World Series and won the opening game of their interleague series with the Halos behind a stubborn performance by Matt Cain and a scintillating performance by the bullpen. Key Lines:
Ryan Theriot- 3 for 5. BA= .275. Theriot has 6 hits in his last 2 games after a mini-slump that lasted about a week.
Melky Cabrera- 3 for 5. BA= .364. Melky leads all of MLB with 98 hits. He's done that in 64 games.
Brandon Belt- 2 for 2, 2 BB. BA= .261. Belt extends his hit streak to 7 games in which he is hitting .454 with an OBP of .586.
Brandon Crawford- 1 for 4, 3B. BA= .232. Crawford is getting very good AB's. He had a great one yesterday against Felix Hernandez in which he saw about 12 pitches, worked the count to 3-2 and drove a single up the middle. Tonight he drove a triple into the corner to drive in 2.
Joaquin Arias- 2 for 4. BA= .242.
Matt Cain- 5 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 4 BB, 4 K's. ERA= 2.34. Cainer had to battle tonight but was able to limit the damage in innings that could have been disastrous. The offense gave him enough for the W to run his record to 9-2.
Bullpen- 4 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 3 K's. 4 perfect innings from the bullpen, and man, I am not missing BWeezy's torture one bit. Casilla is the man!
Jerome Williams(Angels)- 3.1 IP, 7 H, 4 R, 3 BB, 1 K. ERA= 4.46. I thought Jerome looked a bit glassy eyed on TV. He was taken to a local hospital with shortness of breath after coming out of the game and reportedly is being observed overnight.
Dodgers were idle so the Giants gain a game to 4.5 off the pace of the NL West leaders. They lead the Mets by 2 games for the final Wild Card playoff spot.
Barry Zito takes the mound tomorrow night against CJ Wilson.
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jwill didnt look well all night, sweating profusely. game in an al stadium, you dont usually lift a pitcher after only giving up 4...possible flu and he didnt tell anyone before game cuz he really wanted this one?
ReplyDeletekinda strange that after 10 years, giants and halos roles have changed...now they are the vet team with the star
but they still have that frickin monkey
totally diggin the of unity bump
trout is a heck of a player
Oh yeah on Trout. I saw him in a Cal League playoff game in 2010 and he almost singlehandedly destroyed the little G's. G's ended up winning a slugfest, but man, Trout was impressive!
DeleteCasilla is the man. I'm starting to really enjoy his pitching, he has really matured this year.
ReplyDeleteWilliams is a head case. Last week he gets in a twitter war of words and now melts down against his old team. Sell.
ReplyDeleteSome guy used the N-word towards him, so I was OK with that.
DeleteBut yeah, he's still a bit of a head case, but then again, we are just spoiled by our pitchers (Lincecum, Cain, Bumgarner, Vogelsong), there are a lot of head cases all around. It was just too much pressure on him to show the Giants what they gave up on him, and on top of that, it appears that he was sick with something.
People forget, but Williams had a much higher and better ERA than either Cain or Lincecum in their first full season (though technically Jerome only had 21 starts in his first season) and at age 21. Cainer was 21 but had a 4.15 ERA (Williams had 4.24 ERA in his second season). Lincecum had a 4.00 (24 starts) at age 23. Too bad he ate his way out of the majors.
Then again, had he continued to pitch well, our teams would not have been as bad in the 2005-2008 timeframe, and we might not have gotten Lincecum, Bumgarner, Posey, we probably would have just missed by a pick or three. So all's well that ends well for us Giants fans, in this case.
if what happened to jwil is not physical and in line with what happened to huff, then the anon is a filthy, worthless human being..makes sense that the maven would defend those statements
Deletethe real headcase was facing the giants later in the game...try as hard as he might, i still saw that deer in the headlights thing from the hawk
Belt says he's enjoying the game again: http://www.csnbayarea.com/baseball-san-francisco-giants/giants-talk/Belt-Im-enjoying-baseball-again?blockID=727176&feedID=10850
ReplyDeleteI would hope so, .455 BA, .571 OBP, 3 HR, 5 XBH in the 7 game hit streak, if you can't enjoy that, there's just something wrong.
Ha, Bochy noted that Belt was feeling comfortable playing every day, then added: “But I’ll add to that. It took some adjustments on his part. I don’t think it would’ve helped him earlier to play more until he made some adjustments.”
But as Baggarly noted, "Belt is clearing his hips better and turning on pitches. Those are among the adjustments coaches wanted him to make this spring, and it’s been an ongoing process. Having the opportunity to work on it against major league pitching, rather than during batting practice or in the minors, has allowed Belt to get comfortable."
I still think that he could have gotten more comfortable in the minors first. Took him almost 2.5 months to get to this point in the majors. And it was not like he was totally dominant in the minors either, there were plenty of pitchers who had his number down there, that's why he had such a high strikeout rate down there. Figure out those guys first, then come up and figure out the rest of the majors.
Anyway, he's hot now.
More importantly, he's not striking out much at all, for these 7 games he has been the total package that we all have been waiting and salivating for since his AA-ball romp through the AL, only 3 K's in 22 AB, which is good (roughly 85% contact rate which all good hitters reach or beat), plus vs. 6 walks (excellent 2:1 BB/K ratio, only top hitters can keep above 1:1 over a season), he's just in the zone right now.
Hopefully he can keep this up for a while, but even with his struggles, with this one hot burst, his OPS just went over .800 for the first time this season, which is above average, and that's mostly due to his ability to keep on getting walks all season, keeping his OBP high enough that the Giants could keep him in the lineup without sacrificing a lot of offense.
And he showed his change even before this hitting streak, in the 6 games before the streak, he finally didn't strike out around around a third of the time, he shifted subtly to 4 K's in 16 AB, 75% contact rate, as he apparently slowly got used to his adjustments, started to make more contact, and this hot streak is his payback for all that hard work.
Bochy is quoted.
DeleteIt would be interesting to hear from Belt
Did Baggs not try to talk to Belt? Did Belt not want to comment?
Of course we will never know how things would turn out for Belt if he had been sent to the minors or thrown to the wolves playing every day in the majors, and he is still a work in progress after all, but I've said all along I think they were handling him just right. His current success would tend to argue in favor of that.
DeleteI see in the article Belt was quoted about having fun now, though nothing specific about the journey that got him here - did he finally take the coaches suggestions and if so, why the reluctance earlier? Did he, instead, find his own way, by looking at old videos, for example?
Delete