The midseason version of Jeff Samardzija showed up for this one and dug the Giants into a 4-0 hole they were not able to climb out of. It was like the Giants lost the first 2 innings 4-0 and won the last 7 by 2-1. Unfortunately, it was all one game. Key Lines:
Jeff Samardzija- 2 IP, 6 H, 4 R, 1 BB, 1 K. As I said in the series preview, to have a chance, the Giants have to get great starting pitching, and this one was definitely not great. It's not completely clear to me if Samardzija didn't want to throw his secondary stuff as a strategy the first time through the Cubs batting order, or if he knew his secondary stuff was not good last night. In any event, He threw, what, 9 pitches to Dexter Fowler, a guy who had a 13 pitch leadoff AB against him earlier in the year? I did not see one offspeed pitch the entire AB. By the time the count got to 3-2, Fowler was sitting dead red. When Samardzija tried to climb the ladder, Fowler climbed right with him and clobbered it off the ivy in R-CF. In fairness to Samardzija, there were a couple of bloopers by Jason Heyward and the opposing pitcher that contributed to the ugliness, but that first AB by Fowler pretty much set the tone.
I agree with John Smoltz' analysis. While it is understandable that you don't want to show the opposing team your secondary stuff too soon, your first responsibility in a postseason game is to not let the other team get an early lead. Plus, it's not like Samardzija has just one offspeed pitch now. He could have broken out either the spike curve or the split early and save the other one for later.
Ty Blach- 1.1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 2 K. The kid looked great again, and why did Bochy pull him in the middle of an inning with the bases empty? OK, there were a couple of RH batters coming up, but Blach hasn't had much trouble with RH batters either.
*********************************************************************************
The Loss put the Giants behind in the 5 game series 2 games to 0. They now get a travel day to regroup and will try to stave off a sweep on Monday, Oct 10 with Madison Bumgarner facing Jake Arrieta.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment