Monday, May 6, 2013

Game Wrap 5/5/2013: Giants 4 Dodgers 3

Hunter Pence drove in all 4 runs and the Giants held off a late Dodgers rally for another 1 run victory and a sweep of the 3 game series.  Key Lines:

Andres Torres- 3 for 4.  BA= .271.  Oddly, Torres, hitting at the top of the order, did not score or drive in a run.  He did not help his own cause when he got picked off 1B.

Marco Scutaro- 2 for 4.  BA= .261.  Scutaro is 9 for his last 18 with 4 BB's over 5 games.

Hunter Pence- 2 for 4, 2 2B.  BA= .280.  Pence has a 5 game hit streak in which he is 8 for 21 with 2 BB.  I  just looked at his MLB Stat Page.  He has very long fingers!

Matt Cain- 7.1 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 3 BB, 4 K's.  ERA= 5.57.  Not the cleanest line in history, but Cainer took a shutout into the 8'th inning.  He left with a runner on first and 1 out, but Kontos and Affeldt could not get the last out of the inning and 3 runs had scored before Machi came in to get the last out.

Sergio Romo- 1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 0 K, Save(12).  ERA= 1.72.  Romo brought his own kind of drama.  Even though it was a clean 9'th inning, your heart kind of stopped with each of those flyball outs before you saw the OF settling in under it.

The Win gave the Giants a chance to gain some serious ground in the NL West as everyone else but the last place Padres lost.  The Giants lead the Rockies by 1 game, the D'Backs by 3, the Dodgers by 5.5 and the Padres by 6.

The Phillies now come to town for a 3 game set with Madison Bumgarner facing Cliff Lee in game 1.

8 comments:

  1. I'll be the first one to admit, I have been bashing the Scutaro signing but am going to start to eat my words and say that he has been looking a lot like the player he was last year lately. Nice start by Cain, in the early IP there were a lot of balls straight down the middle which a mediocre Dodger lineup couldn't do anything about it. Giants should be able to take 2 or even sweep a pathetic Phillies

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    1. Hamels and Lee are still formidable pitchers and Kendrick has improved a lot, so the Phils can still be dangerous.

      Lee is an interesting conundrum. He's a guy who tries to jump ahead of the hitters then force them to expand their zone, so the first couple of pitches are often the best they will see. On the other hand, if you can find a way to run up his pitch counts, it does tend to start wearing on him. He can be frustrated an make mistakes later in the game.

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    2. Like with Kershaw, I think the key to beating Lee is not giving up at 2 strikes. Keep fouling them off if necessary, if for no other reason than to extend the AB and force him to throw more pitches.

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    3. Crow tastes better with a good marinara sauce!

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  2. ot

    our formerly fav scribe and soon to be atty, broshuis, has written an excellent paper on how to remove all forms of cheating from the mlb

    http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2194553

    he should be the next commish

    on topic

    donnie baseball is gone come season's end

    dodgers lost by one run

    donnie baseball took a run off the board when he decided to try and bunt gordon over to 2nd, instead of letting him steal, then bunting him over...and yes, i know ryu was up...but gordon couldve run on the first pitch...q could not throw him out

    glad cain looked a bit better and was able to battle through the 8th as the pen was gassed

    if were out of position in the 8th...neither of those balls was hit hard enough to really have done anything, yet 3 runs scored

    i cant believe it is raining in la in may...bring on the zombie apocalypse

    bacci

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    1. Garrett Broshuis seems like a very intelligent and thoughtful young man. Hope some of his ideas come to fruition as some point.

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  3. Lee vs Bumgarner? Man, I'm hoping for a repeat of the Lee vs Cain match up last year. This is gonna be a fun game.

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  4. Just sweep, baby.

    I'm not going to predict the Giants will win the WS, BUT this team is really competitive. In '10 and even '12, if they went down by 3 or 4 runs in the first five innings (Zito, Durty or Timmy game) the game was pretty much over - the offense wasn't bringing them back. Now man, no more black holes in the lineup. 1-8 this lineup is balanced, deep and tough outs who don't stop competing until the final out.

    So while we can all quibble, Panda's weight, Scoots not hitting, Belt's up n down, LF w/little power - the sum of the parts is one damn good lineup. A lineup that is able to come back, win slug fests, bail out the pitching, and can get it started from anywhere in the lineup. I think that will be the real story this year.

    Oh, and the pitching will come around, just let the WS funk get out of their arms. Meanwhile we have an offense, folks!

    I predict one of the Phillies games will be a Giants blow-out.

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