Friday, August 7, 2015

Game Wrap 8/6/2015: Cubs 5 Giants 4

The Giants fell behind early and a comeback fell a run short.  Key Lines:

Hunter Pence- 2 for 3, 2B, BB, SB(2).  BA= .292.  Pence was the table-setter for Belt and Crawford's HR's.

Brandon Belt- 1 for 4, HR(14).  BA= .272.  Belt now has 12 HR's on the road and just 2 at home.

Brandon Crawford- 1 for 4, HR(19).  BA= .263.  Crawford's breakout season continues.  Crawford has hit 4 HR's in his last 7 games, 7 in his last 15 and 10 in his last 30.  He's become quite the all-or-nothing slugger as his BA is just .214 over his last 7.  He has 12 HR's on the road and 7 at home.

Chris Heston- 4 IP, 5 H, 5 R, 2 BB, 1 K.  ERA= 3.48.  The Cubs hitters teed off on Hesto Presto, putting up 5 runs in the first 2 innings capped by Kyle Scharber's 3 run dinger.   BTW, Schwarber seems to be quite the hitter.  We'll see if MLB pitchers can get a book on him.  Anyway, Heston's next start in SF will be key to see if he can get himself back on track.

Bullpen- 4 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 2 BB, 5 K's.  The Bullpen made a valiant effort to keep this one in reach.  The 5 early runs proved to be too much.  Romo struck out the side in the 8'th and has not allowed and run since July 11.  In that span he has 15 K's against just 1 BB in 10.2 IP.

The Loss dropped the Giants to 3 games behind the Dodgers in the NL West and put the Cubs up on the Giants by a half game in the race for the final Wild Card playoff spot.

The Giants got more bad news before the game when it was revealed that Mike Leake had a hammy strain suffered in a some routing conditioning drills.  He will miss today's start which will be taken by Ryan Vogelsong facing Jon Lester.  It seems like a minor strain, but it is uncertain if Leake will miss any additional starts.

1 comment:

  1. Romo: For me, it's not so much that Romo struck out the side. It's that he struck out two lefties with good pitches, especially the last lefty who he forced to chase a tailing fastball out of the strike zone to protect the plate against what looked like a sure strike. Until recently he'd been getting hammered by lefties and the BA against him pushing over .470 BA for a while.

    Affeldt OTOH... His troubles continue. If the Giants make the playoffs, I don't see how Bochy, barring a major turn-around by Affeldt, can put him on the 25-man roster.

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