It had been so long since we had a good old fashioned Barry Zito torching, I had almost forgotten what it felt like. The Angels did not waste much time reminding me as they came out of the gate hitting one frozen rope after another and basically didn't stop the whole game. The difference this game and this season is I actually thought the Giants offense still had a chance to make it a game as late as the top of the 8'th inning and kept watching, off and on, of course. A line drive or hard ground ball a few inches higher or a bit to the left or right and hey, this would have been a game! Key Lines:
Melky Cabrera- 3 for 5, 2B. BA= .369. Melky reached 100 basehits in fewer AB's than any Giant in history, another Willie Mays record broken.
Joaquin Arias-3 for 4, 2B. BA= .255. Arias has 5 hits in his last 2 games and is hitting .333 over his last 10.
Barry Zito- 3.1 IP, 9 H, 8 R, 3 BB, 1 K. ERA= 4.35. No silver lining to this one. Just a good old fashioned Barry Zito butt kicking. His games have been slowly deteriorating for awhile now. Hate to say it, but we could be in for more of these.
George Kontos- 2.2 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 0 BB, 4 K's. ERA= 1.59. Kontos allowed all 3 of the runners he inherited from Zito score, not that Zito wouldn't have allowed them to score himself, but still. After that, Kontos settled down and at one point struck out 4 batters in a row with a nasty slider.
Clay Hensley- 1.2 IP, 3 H, 3 R, 2 BB, 1 K. ERA= 3.67. Hensley has now allowed runs in 5 consecutive games. I would say he is fit only for mop up duty right now. Well, I guess this WAS mop up duty! Might as well get it all out in one game, huh?
Mike Trout(Angels)- 4 for 4, 2 2B, BB. BA= .337. Mike Trout is for real, folks. Let's just say I'm very glad he doesn't play in the National League, let alone the NL West, unless it was for the Giants of course. Then I'd be happy to have him.
Albert Pujols(Angels) 2 for 3, HR(11), 2 BB. BA= .258. Great hitter, for sure, but I wanted to throw up while the Angels TV broadcasters were raving about his D on balls he basically didn't have to move his glove for. Yeah, they were hit hard, but they were also right at him.
Mark Trumbo(Angels)- 3 for 5, 3B. BA= .326. I took Trumbo forever to work his way through the Angels farm system, but man, what a beast he has turned into!
The A's shut out the Dodgers 3-0 behind Brandon McCarthy so the Giants remain 4.5 games behind the NL West leaders despite losing this one. The Giants lead the Mets by 1 game for the top Wild Card playoff spot.
Ryan Vogelsong goes up against another opposing ace taking on Jered Weaver in the series finale tonight.
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Typical up and down Zito pitching. Just as I told people not to be so down on Zito coming into the season, I also said curb your enthusiasm when he was doing really well. Though after his complete game shutout, I did hope that maybe he had turned a somewhat newer leaf. But as these last few starts showed, he's penduluming back to his talent mean. I think he'll end up somewhere in the low to mid 4 ERA, as he has done most often in his Giants career.
ReplyDeleteKontos had a little bad luck with the triple, though obviously a big mistake pitch there, as Pagan was close to catching the ball but misjudged where the fence was and bumped into the fence when trying to leap to catch the catchable flyball. It might have been a rare inside the park homer had the batter not showboat a little early on, thinking it was out. Pagan blamed the landscaping for that mistake.
And to think that Trout was drafted, if I recall right, in the back of the first round. Many teams could have had him first, but he's not even the WAR leader right now for his first round, Strasburg and Ackley both have 4.8 WAR to his 4.0 WAR. And Mike Leake was probably ahead of him for a while, with 2.7 WAR. Aaron Crow already has 2.3 WAR (and 90 games!) for the Royals, and Drew Storen has 2.0 WAR relieving for the Nats. Also Rex Brothers has 1.0 WAR relieving for the Rockies.
Yeah, there was some pre-draft talk of the Giants possibly being in on Trout as a sleeper pick. What year was that? The Zach Wheeler pick or Buster Posey? Giants did OK but man, Trout looks like he's gonna have a helluva career! Might have to watch his weight a bit as he gets older. That's about the only thing I can see to detract from his brilliant future.
DeleteThat was 2009 - the year of Wheeler. Not a bad pick by the Giants, but Trout is just c-r-a-z-y.
DeleteI wonder if McCarthy will be traded to the Dodgers now.
ReplyDelete"I've got to tip my hat," he said. "It's hard to do that, but I went back and watched tape, and a lot
ReplyDeleteof the pitches were right where I wanted them, including the one to Pujols. This is one I look at and say these guys are big leaguers."
"He's just making too many mistakes," Bochy said. "He didn't have his good location tonight, but he was aggressive in the zone. That's what he wanted to do, but he was wild."
two opposing views
a pitcher who has pretended to be a zen master having difficulty going back to study a tape of his pitching errors?
forget wild...the guy was aiming the ball. and unless you are pinpoint, any major leaguer can hit an 84 mph fb...zito never really had the curve
this team will not make it with only 3 effective pitchers in the rotation...they have problem