For the second night in a row, the Giants took a 1-0 lead into the 9'th inning. This time, they got an insurance HR from Brandon Belt and a shutdown Save from Sergio Romo for the Win. Key Lines:
Eduardo Nunez- 2 for 5, HR(4). BA= .290. On Monday night, Nunez created a run with his speed. In this game he did it the old fashioned way with a solo HR to LF. The ball initially appeared to bounce off the top of the LF wall back into the field of play for a triple, but a replay clearly showed is hitting a camera mount behind the wall, so maybe it wasn't the old fashioned way? Nunez is hitting .276 since coming to the Giants vs .296 with Minnesota, but he has a higher OPS, .777 vs .764 with the Giants. Very nice combination of average, power and speed. Giants control his contract for 1 more season. He might be an extension candidate this offseason.
Brandon Belt- 2 for 4, HR(16). BA= .271. Belt homered in the top of the 9'th to give whoever the Giants Closer was going to be a 2 run cushion to work with. Belt seems to be back on track offensively with a .283/421/.478 slash line over his last 15 games.
Brandon Crawford- 1 for 1. BA= .268. Crawford had to come out after dislocating his left 5'th finger on a slide into 3B. Joe Panik missed just 1 game with the same injury a couple of years ago.
Johnny Cueto- 5.1 IP, 8 H, 0 R, 2 BB, 6 K's. ERA= 2.79. Cueto was magical again until he pulled up with a groin strain after delivering a pitch in the 6'th inning. Hopefully he won't miss too much time, but it did not look good. Giants can obviously ill afford to lose Cueto for either the ROS or the postseason.
Steven Okert- 1.2 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 3 K's. ERA= 3.86. Okert shook off his last disaster appearance, with a scintillating 1.2 innings of work. There was a mixup after Cueto's injury and George Kontos initially ran out to the mound. Bochy sent him back while frantically tapping his left arm and Okert appeared out of the bullpen. His first batter was Yasiel Puig PH for the left-handed hitting Joc Pederson. Okert struck him out. He stayed in for the 7'th inning and ended up with 3 K's. Very nice work by Okert who seems to be auditioning for a job for next year.
Will Smith- 1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 2 K's. ERA= 3.65. Smith is on fire with a 0.79 ERA over his last 15 appearances with 17 K's in 11.1 IP. The curveball was amazing. My choice for the 9'th inning was to send Smith back out there, but Bochy went with Romo.
Sergio Romo- 1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 2 K's, Save(1). ERA= 3.16. Bochy made his choice. He did hedge his bet by having Javier Lopez and Derek Law warming up in the bullpen. Romo took ownership of the inning, though, Striking out Puig then making it look easy against 2 LH batters with a very nice sinking shuto that was much improved on anytime I can remember in the past. My guess is Romo at least earned the call for the next Save opportunity that arises.
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The Win cut the Dodgers lead over the Giants in the NL West to 4 games. The Mets lost while the Cardinals won to create a 3-way tie for the 2 Wild Card playoff spots.
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Matt Moore goes for a series win tonight against Kenta Maeda.
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Sorry, when referring to Romo - What's a 'shuto'??
ReplyDeleteAmazing pickup game for the Giants here. Incredibly, they just never seem to be out of it after an infinite number of heartbreakers & gut wrenchers.
If you can't get runs home by moving the line, hit a couple of home runs!
DeletePersonally, I don't worship power because if it doesn't show up you're dead. The ground attack has worked so well for SF we got used to it and where it went, who knows?
I'm willing to bet that the Giants, who are 29th of 30 teams in HR's post ASG and has but half the total number that several teams have, won't out-homer their way to the even-year crown.
Our 2 dinger game is a common occurrence in one inning for many of the potential opponents.
What is the tie-breaker scenario for those wild card spots, do we know? Would they play-in for who gets to play the 1 game playoff?
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of permutations: http://m.mlb.com/news/article/59527184/playoff-tiebreaker-rules/
DeleteWould like to see Tomlinson get a chance at SS. Nunez has almost got people to forget about Duffman. We need Craw back tho.
ReplyDelete