The good Barry Zito showed up today and held the Pathetic Padres scoreless through 7 with Chad Gaudin finishing them off over the last 2 innings. Key Lines:
Angel Pagan- 1 for 4, 2B. BA= .301. Pagan led off the game with something like a 9 pitch AB. Later he drove in the first Giants runs with 2 run double and then scored on Sandoval's single. That first AB set the tone though as Posey led off the 2'nd inning with a 12 pitch AB and the Giants hitters were the Pesky ones today.
Pablo Sandoval- 2 for 4. BA= .290. Pablo was swinging at everything but made enough contact to get 2 base hits out of it. Nose to toes, baby!
Buster Posey- 1 for 4, HR(1). BA= .232. Gotta start from somewhere. Hopefully this HR helps Buster get it going.
Andres Torres- 2 for 3, 2B. BA= .281. So far, the Torres/Blanco platoon is working out fine. I think Torres hits the ball with a bit more authority, though.
Brandon Crawford- 1 for 3. BA= .317. Crawford has already run up an amazing 1.2 fWAR over the first 3 weeks. That's what great hitting on top of great defense at a premium position will do for you.
Barry Zito- 7 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 4 K's. ERA= 3.42. Good to see Zito shake off a bad start and get after 'em.
Chad Gaudin- 1 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 2 K's. ERA= 0.73. Jack of all trades reliever looking like another tremendous under-the-radar offseason pickup by the Giants brass.
With the Win, the Giants move up to 1.5 games behind the first place Rockies in the NL West. The Rocks lost to the D'Backs 5-4. The D'Backs remained 1.5 games behind the Giants in 3'rd place. The Dodgers topped the Orioles to gain a game to 5 behind the Rockies and 3.5 behind the Giants. The Pathetic Padres remained mired in last place 8 games behind the leaders.
Ryan Vogelsong takes the mound against Wade Miley in the first of a 3 game set with the D'Backs tomorrow evening.
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Big series with the D'Backs even though still early in the season. Would love us to start to open up some space between us and them as all indications are they may be our chief rivals unless the Bums pull it together. Rockies will fold.
ReplyDeleteIf Vogey can keep improving, the Good Zito keeps showing up and Timmy starts to turn it around we can begin to really set ourselves apart from the rest of the pack.
both pence and craw are due for a day as they have started all 19 of the giants games.
ReplyDeleteya, craw hasnt sat one time....aint that amazin?
two more months of this and the kid is gonna find himself in the as game...without bochy's help
with solid pitching and d, att is the great equalizer
have no real insight into the game, as i didnt see it
did see 42 and i really wanted to like it, but couldnt as the screenwriter and director chose to focus on cheese rather than facts...and when it got to factual events, chose to either leave out imporant parts or embelish
for example...leo durocher did not need to be egged on by rickey to take the players to task for their petition to dump robinson. durocher was old school and wanted one thing...to win. didnt care what it took (which is why he happily ordered pitchers to bean opposing players) leo was also a womanzer and a degenerate gambler and while the movie tries to connect the stifling of the petition to durocher's suspension, it is more likely that it was chandler trying to head off what could have become a lifetime ban...as leo hung with gamblers and allowed those same guys access to the club.
i have no doubt that chandler was a racist, but he knew that had robinson not broken the color line, congress would have started hearings to challenge mlb's antitrust exemption and would have forced a change...and that wouldve been bad for biz
im sorry...a story this good didnt need scenes of cheese and embellishments to make it better...
bacci
I haven't seen 42 yet. My mom went to see it and loved it. I'm from the school that tends to believe the real story is always better and more interesting than an embellished one, but hey, different strokes, right?
DeleteI don't plan to see 42, on the grounds that I don't believe that the factual story can be told without damaging the mythic story that I would expect the film to aim at, as baseball biopix do, and as reviews indicate this does. If, for example, Branch Rickey is presented as the dubious, self-interested character he probably was--see the long discussion of BR and Robinson in Mitchell Nathanson's A People's History of Baseball--the myth loses its chief Caucasian hero, and Robinson's heroism becomes partly in service to an opportunist's pocketbook. That real story would be more interesting, because more ethically and emotionally complex, than the mythic story, but it would alienate much of the audience that 42 aims at, and divert attention from the tale of triumph that baseball fans are likely to crave.
ReplyDeleteI think there is room for seeing a movie that you know is not necessarily true to all the facts as long as you maintain a healthy skepticism about the accuracy of the details.
DeleteOne recent example: Zero Dark 30. I enjoyed the movie and feel like I learned something from it even though I am quite sure it didn't happen exactly as it was portrayed.
Absolutely, DrB; I agree. I meant here that the planned impact of this movie depends on substituting a facile apotheosis for a more complex, more ironic truth; and I find myself balking at being asked to cheer for fictional Rickey, for instance, if fictional Rickey is a coverup for the reality of Rickey. I believe that hero-worship is nearly as treacherous as the other adolescent extreme, cynicism, and this movie seems geared to stimulate both, one after the other.
ReplyDeleteOK, well, to each his own. I plan to see the movie. I will say this, though: In general I do not like baseball movies because I find the real game to be much more exciting and suspenseful than any storyline they can come up with in a movie. To me, every single game is like a movie unfolding in itself. Same thing with a season, a postseason series, the success of a minor leaguer who makes it to the majors. The failure of a minor leaguer is in it's own way a wonderful tragedy. Heck, Ryan Vogelsong's story, as I have said many times, is a Hollywood movie waiting to be made! That story would put The Natural to shame!
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