The Giants scratched out 2 runs on a bases loaded groundout and a bases loaded HBP to support the gritty pitching of Ryan Vogelsong and the bullpen. Key Lines:
Madison Bumgarner- 1 for 1. BA= .259. With Hunter Pence unavailable to play, Bruce Bochy turned to Madison Bumgarner to pinch hit for Ryan Vogelsong with 2 outs in the 7'th inning. All Bummy did was dump a single into LF to start a 2 out rally that ended with a HBP to Belt that drove in the second run of the game for the Giants. As Bummy rounded first base on the hit, there were grins a mile wide in the Giants dugout and Matt Cain gave himself the longest hardest facial rubdown in history! I'm tellin' ya, dude is going to be playing LF on days when he's not pitching pretty soon!
Ryan Vogelsong- 6 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 5 K's. ERA= 3.93. Vogey struggled through a long first inning, but then settled down and pretty much shut down the Cardinals for the next 5 innings.
Josh Osich- 1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 1 K. ERA= 0.77. Osich is making the next pitching roster move very tough. I don't see how you can sent this guy back down the way he is pitching.
Sergio Romo- 1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 3 K's. ERA= 3.38. Romo struck out the side and made it look easy. He seems to have kicked it into another gear in the last 2 weeks.
Santiago Casilla- 1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 2 K's, Save(29). ERA= 3.70. Javier Lopez was supposed to make it easy for Casilla by getting the lefty hitting Carpenter leading off the 9'th, but instead, Carpenter drew a walk and Casilla had to come in the game with a runner already on base. He made it look easy too getting Piscotty and Peralta on strikes and then a weak flyout by the lefty hitting Brandon Moss.
The Win left the Giants 2.5 games behind the NL West leading Dodgers pending the outcome of their game with the Oakland A's which is currently tied 4-4 in the 9'th inning. They also trail the Cubs in the race for the final Wild Card playoff spot by 3.5 games pending the outcome of the Cubs rain-delayed game against the Detroit Tigers which they trail 9-6 in the 8'th inning.
Hunter Pence has an oblique strain and will likely go in the DL when Aoki gets back, tomorrow? It was also announced that Mike Leake will miss another turn in the rotation with the hammy pull.
Matt Cain tries to the series win tomorrow facing Jaime Garcia.
Addendum: The Dodgers lost to the A's 5-4 in 10 innings while the Cubs lost to Detroit 10-8. The Giants are now trail the Dodgers by 2 games in the NL West and the Cubs by 3 games in he Wild Card race.
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With Osich and Strickland the Giants are starting to have a pen like the Royals did last year that allows them to shorten the game. And Vogey just keeps battling. So hard to imagine him in an Astro's, or any other team than the Giants, uniform.
ReplyDeleteWith Pence on the DL, do the Giants fire back up the Utley talks? Put him at 1B and move Belt to LF? With an OF of Maxwell, Perez, Lollis and even Pagan, that is an OF pretty much guaranteed no depth or offense past Aoki and Blanco.
Billy Baseball
Last night was one of those nights that really made me want baseball to go forward with automated strike calling. You'd still need an ump for the tricky situations, but Belt got two called strike-three outs. One was marginal and I'm not going to whine about it, but the other was so egregious as to be criminal as the ball was 6-inches outside and one of the worst called strikes I've seen in quite some time. (And Kudo's to Belt for not turning into an idiot and getting ejected, especially that one pitch that was 6" outside the strike zone.)
ReplyDeleteAlso, while I get umpires have their 'strike zones,' I would like them uniformly applied to both teams. I was kind of troubled that the Cardinals got quite a few bad (horribly bad) calls in their favor while the Giants did not get the same calls. In the end, the final accounting went +5 for horrible, no-excuse calls for the Cards (never mind marginals) while the Giants didn't get four marginal pitches that were clearly better for a nine-strike swing against the Giants.
But none of that phased Romo. Three up, three struck out as he's managed to get his three-variants slider repertoire working at a ++ level again.
Anyway, nice to see the Giants win even with Umpire incompetency (if not bias) stacked the deck against them last night.
I agree completely. I hope the league office makes Hunter Wendlestadt take a look at his calls on video. Yup, it's not just that he had his own strike zone. He was just incredibly inconsistent and many of the wrong calls were egregious as you say. The most glaring was the strike 3 on Belt, but there were others just as bad. They were bad on both sides, but I agree, the overall balance heavily favored the Cardinals.
DeleteI'm on record as advocating for automated balls and strikes calling. It could be done right now and should be done.
I really think the momentum for this is gaining. I used to think it MIGHT happen by 2030 or so, Now, especially after that San Rafael minor-league game a couple weeks ago, that MLB will start to play with it within the next 2-3 years. It will obviously start in the minors or ST to work out the kinks, but I can it see it in MLB regular season by 2020 or so.
DeleteIt is coming.
I completely support going to an automated system of calling balls and strikes, and have wanted that for many years. To me, the thing that makes basketball unwatchable is how much control the referees have over the outcome of the game, and this is the closest baseball comes to having the same problem.
DeleteLooks like Utley goes to the Dodgers, double whammy for us IMO.
ReplyDeleteBilly Baseball