The Giants offense built an early lead. A gaunt looking Tim Lincecum worked out of a 6'th inning jam with the help of the bullpen and a nice throw and block play by Pagan and Sanchez. Bruce Bochy's bullpen wizardry took it from there. Key Lines:
Angel Pagan- 3 for 5. BA= .287. Pagan stays hot in the leadoff role. He's hitting .346 in August after hitting just .210 in July. The CS wasn't so good though.
Marco Scutaro- 2 for 5. BA= .283. I've always liked Scoots from his stat lines and hoped the Giants could acquire him one day. He's even better watching him live. What a great acquisition by Sabes! Hitting .350 over his last 10 games and .313 in August.
Buster Posey- 1 for 3, BB. BA= .327. Buster drove in the first 2 runs with a first inning single.
Brandon Crawford- 1 for 3, BB. BA= .246. With the Giants facing a string of LHP's and Joaquin Arias wearing them out, this was Crawford's first start since 8/17. He's hitting .370 over his last 10 games and keeps inching up the SS WAR rankings.
Tim Lincecum- 5.2 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 1 BB, 4 K's. ERA= 5.30. Tim looked good for 5 innings. Well, his pitching looked good. He does not look good. I commented on him looking rail thin after he withered in Pittsburgh. He might be even thinner now. Is gaunt too strong a word? Come on, Tim! Let's have some balance here. It's OK to get a few In-N-Outs here and there. His velocity seemed OK. I saw a couple of 93's on the TV gun, but he looked gassed in the 6'th and ended up throwing just 87 pitches.
Santiago Casilla- 2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 0 K. ERA= 3.20. Very encouraging appearance by Casilla who made quick work of the Dodgers in the 7'th and 8'th innings. No K's, but his pitches had good location and movement. He needed just 19 pitches to breeze through those 2 innings putting the Giants in great position in the 9'th.
Sergio Romo- 0.1 IP, 1 H, 0 BB, 1 K. ERA= 2.13. Romo is being used in the 9'th inning, but he's not the closer. He's still a ROOGY in Bochy's eyes and rightly so with all the lights out LOOGYs in the Giants bullpen. No way was Romo facing Ethier in the 9'th with a runner on base. Vin Scully commented that Romo looks like he's lost a lot of weight during the season and is looking "bony" around the shoulders.
Javy Lopez- 0.2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 0 K's, Save(3). ERA= 2.63. Lopez came in and got Ethier to GIDP and earned his second 1 batter Save in as many days. Bochy used Mijares to K Ethier and escape the jam in the 6'th. Bochy has used his LOOGY's to make Ethier look helpless for 3 huge outs in the last 2 games. What a luxury!
Joe Blanton(Dodgers)- 5.2 IP, 10 H, 4 R, 2 BB, 6 K's. ERA= 5.02. Gotta mention this. My Dodgers fan friend is not much of a Blanton fan. Neither, apparently, is Don Mattingly. I don't know if Blanton got yanked for giving up a single to Lincecum with 2 outs in the 5'th or because the top of the order that had abused him earlier in the game was coming up, but when Donnie Baseball came out to get him, Blanton looked absolutely stunned. The TV showed his face up close and you could see he couldn't believe it. The look on his face was priceless. Love going to games, but you miss that stuff when you are up in the stands at a MLB game.
The win stretched the Giants lead over the Dodgers in the NL West to 1.5 games. The Marlins edged the D'Backs 6-5 in 10 innings as the snakes fall to 6 games back of the leaders.
Matt Cain goes for the sweeeeep today facing Chris Capuano who has hung tough all year. D'Backs play a DH in Miami today. Go Giants! Beat LA!!
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Really liking how Bochy is managing since Melky departed.
ReplyDeleteYank pitchers when they START to hit a bad inning. Doesn't matter who or when, Voggie, Zito, Timmy, just don't give in to the hitter or the bad inning. Let the bullpen get the key out. LHP Mijares against Ethier for Timmy in the 6th was perfection.
Play the hot hand and matchups. I know we have all bitched about Bochy's lineups - but damn you have to give it to him Arias/Scoots/Crawford have produced in turn both on O and D.
Bullpen by committee. No one likes this. But Bochy has a proven track record of adding value through how he and Rags/Gardner mix and match the bullpen. I love it when Bochy is willing to put a closer in the 5th/6th/7th/8th to get one out and keep the game close.
This is Giants baseball and man it is hanging on every pitch and every game right now.