Thursday, April 18, 2013

Game Wrap 4/18/2013: Brewers 7 Giants 2

The Brewers pounded Matt Cain to build a 7-0 lead after 3 innings.  Even though Cain and the bullpen held the BrewCrew scoreless the rest of the way, the offense was too little, too late.  Key Lines:

Gregor Blanco- 2 for 4, SB(2).  BA= .250  With Scutaro sitting, Blanco hit in the 2 hole and did well.

Brandon Crawford- 3 for 4, 2B, HR(3).  BA= .352.  Crawford moved up to #5 in the order and hit like a number 5 hitter.

Matt Cain- 6 IP, 7 H, 7 R, 0 BB, 4 K's.  ERA= 7.15.  As Cain has cut down on his BB's, he seems to be more hittable.  Cain has always been able to suppress HR's and all of a sudden he's giving them up in bunches.  My impression is that as he has used his breaking pitches more, he is also hanging more of them and those are the pitches that are getting clobbered.

The Loss drops the Giants season record to 9-7, 2.5 games behind the Rockies in third place in the NL West.  The Rockies topped the Mets 11-3 to go to 11-4 and a 2 game lead over second place Arizona.  The D'Backs beat the Yankees 6-2.  The Dodgers were idle and fell to 4 games behind the Rockies. The Padres were also idle.  They are 6 games back in last place but coming off a sweep of the Dodgers(had to mention that).

The Giants now return to AT&T Park to face the Pesky Padres with Madison Bumgarner facing Edinson Volquez in the opener of the series.

3 comments:

  1. Brew Crew punched us in the mouth! The Rockies have been beating inferior competition, good for them. Hope we have the same type of play against the Friars as last year.

    Very happy to see Crawford thriving in the early going. I'm getting the impression Bochy is leaning on the starters a tad as he figures out the pen. Cain said something interesting about the pitchers not wanting to show up Raggs or Gardner. Talk about old school. Chain of command, baby!

    We have usually been able to hit Volquez but he hangs in against us. Be nice to knock him around.

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  2. the impressive thing about craw is, he is hitting where ever they put him...this is uncommon for a 2 year player

    seems to me that the craw everyone once thought would go in the first round, has now appeared on the scene...he is turning into richie 2.0, with better defensive skills and more speed

    lots of guys running around screaming the sky is falling, re the issues with the rotation

    if issues due to arm fatigue...not much can be done...the depth in sp wont be there till next season

    if mechanics, then nothing to worry about...these guys will right the ship

    the thing that worried me was cain's comments about pitchers not giving tips to each other, so as not to step on rags or gardners toes...this is strange, as i thought the guys were big into critiquing each other's performances

    anyway, time for some home cooking

    bacci

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    1. Here's Cainer's problem. As he has increasingly incorporated an improved breaking ball into his repertoire, it has enabled him to increase his K rate. It has also helped decrease his his walk rate because he can put hitters away before he gets to a 3 ball count on them. But.....he also hangs a certain percentage of them and those get hit for dingers. This is something I have been preaching about Cain for a long time and it seems to fall on deaf ears: Most HR's are not hit off good fastballs, but off bad breaking balls.

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