Game Wrap 4/14/2017: Giants 8 Rockies 2

The Giants offense came to life in support of another Quality Start by Johnny Cueto who notched his 3'rd Win of the season.  Key Lines:

Denard Span CF- 1 for 4, BB.  BA= .258.  Span gets the start agains the LHP and gets on base 2 out of 5 PA's.  That's a .400 OBP and he scored both times he reached.  He also looked fairly spry running down flyballs in CF.

Hunter Pence RF- 3 for 4.  BA= .340.  Pence was basically throwing his bat at outside pitches but successfully poked 3 of them on a line to RF for basehits driving in 2 runs and scoring 1 in the process.

Brandon Crawford SS- 2 for 4, HR(2).  BA= .325.  Crawford got the start against the LHP.  Historically, he has not L-R split.  He drove an oppo field dinger to lead off the 4'th inning to give the Giants a 4-0 lead.

Eduardo Nunez 3B-  1 for 3, BB. BA= .357.  Nunez drew a balk at 1B in the second inning(more on that later) and came home on Marrero's dinger.

Chris Marrero LF- 2 for 3, HR(1).  BA= .143.  Marrero's bat came to life in a big way in the second inning as he drove a no-doubter into the LF stands for the Giants first 2 runs in the game.  He also made a couple of nice running catches in LF.  The dinger was Marrero's first MLB HR after hitting 140 of them in over 4000 minor league AB's, so congrats to Chris Marrero!

Johnny Cueto RHP- 7 IP, 6 H, 2 R, 1 BB, 6 K's.  ERA= 3.79.  Cueto might have held the Rockies to 1 run had Joe Panik not lost the handle on the ball while tagging a runner coming into 2B in he 5'th inning.  Both runs were charged as Earned to Cueto though.

Tyler Anderson LHP(Rockies)- 4 IP, 5 H, 4 R, 1 BB, 1 K, GO/AO= 7/1, 2 Balks.  ERA= 8.59.  Anderson has a foot "shimmy" in his delivery, but I don't think that is what drew the balks.  The calls were hotly disputed by Bud Black and the Rockies broadcast team on TV.  The announcing crew made a big deal out of the "45 degrees" rule which is not a formal rule at all.  The Rule actually states that the pitcher cannot interrupt a delivery to throw to first after he has made a move to deliver the pitch to home plate.  My understanding of the "45 degree" rule is it is a convention that if 1B, Home Plate and the Mound form a 90 degree angle, the pitcher can throw to first if the foot does not come past 45 degrees.  On the replays, to my eye, Anderson clearly went way past 45 degrees then brought his foot back without touching the ground.  That is a balk!  IDK if Black was just trying to protect his pitcher or if he really believed it was not a balk but he spent the entire half inning break in a discussion with the 1B ump and did not appear satisfied with the outcome of he discussion.  He then started barking at the home plate ump in the middle of an AB the next half inning and got tossed.  Isn't baseball fun?!

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The Giants Win improved their record to 5-7 and allowed them to gain ground on every team in the division except the Dodgers who crushed the D'Backs and Zack Greinke 7-0 behind Clayton Kershaw.  The First Place D'Backs record is now 7-4.  The Rockies are 7-5, 0.5 games behind the D'Backs.  The Dodgers are 6-5, 1 game back in 3'rd place.  The Padres lost to the Braves 5-2 and are 2 games off the pace at 5-6 while the Giants trail by 2.5 games.

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Matt Moore takes the mound in an afternoon game today facing Tyler Chatwood, who usually pitches great against the Giants.