Andres Torres smacked a 2 run HR while Tim Lincecum conjured up memories of seasons past with a vintage performance as he and 2 relievers made the 2 runs stand up. Key Lines:
Gregor Blanco- 2 for 4, SB(6). BA= .261. The Giants need Blanco to get on base, especially when he is hitting at the top of the order. He has some power, but tends to start thinking he is Babe Ruth up there after he gets a few long hits and the BA starts to suffer. More of this!
Andres Torres- 1 for 3, HR(2). BA= .277. Torres is now something like 6 for 9 with 2 BB's in his career against Josh Johnson with an incredible 5 XBH's. Is it SSS luck or ownage, as Kruk and Kuip would say?
Tim Lincecum- 7 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 BB, 6 K's. ERA= 4.75. Timmy was on tonight. Good FB command while mixing in 3 other pitches. Most notably, he brought back the curveball to excellent effect. I don't recall which one, but one of the TV commentators on either Fox or possible the Rockies' feed, commented that they had faced the Early Timmy and extolled his FB/hammer curve combo. Maybe that got back to Timmy and he took it to heart? I seem to recall that Timmy ditched the curveball because MLB hitters were picking it up and laying off plus he had developed that killer split-change. Now it's the split-change that hitters have learned to pick up. Why not use both while mixing up the pitches a bit more? That's what Timmy did in this game, but it all starts with FB command.
With the Win the Giants stayed 2 games behind the NL West leading D'Backs who topped the Cardinals 7-6 by 2 games. The Rockies edged the Reds 5-4 to stay 2.5 games back. Yasiel Puig hit 2 dingers to lead the Dodgers to a 9-7 win over the Pathetic Padres 9-7. The Padres are in 4'th place, 7 games out while the Dodgers remain in last place 7.5 games behind the leaders.
Barry Zito tries for a sweep of the 2 game series facing RA Dickey and his knuckleball this afternoon.
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Great game Timmy. Zito needs some redemption out there today... Puig is starting to scare me a little bit.
ReplyDeleteKG
For sure.
DeleteThe Dbacks and Rockies are playing well and beating good/very good teams.
Puig looks pretty amazing. The Dodgers crowd and dugout showed a sign of life for the first time all year. Absolute laser shots. Its been an area the Giants have publicly shunned, the Cubans, Sabean calling it very unpredictable. It sure was the night of the Cubans - Cespedes had a HR as well and Betancourt walked off against his A's. They seem cut from the same cloth - swing the bat hard. I like having one of those on our team. I miss vintage 2009-10 Juan Uribe. You'd think with the Giants 'rep' as hackers we'd be more into that market.
ReplyDeleteGood for Timmy. I'd caution two things: he was unraveling a tad, walking the pitcher and giving up a hit to Melky, Panda turned a line drive into 2 outs with the help of a flying Scutaro. He avoided the big inning, but that is what plagues... Also, the Jays do not see Mr. Lincecum very much at all.
Romo made two big power hitters look stupid to end the game. I bet they'd rather face the Reds Cuban lefty than Romo.
We'll see how Puig holds up after teams get a book on him. Of course they had all spring training to do that! Cespedes is good but manageable. Hopefully that will be the case with Puig once things settle down.
DeleteI hate to give Donnie Two Times any props, but he knew what he had from spring training, and its a bold move to throw him right into the leadoff spot. This is a pretty amazing start to a career, ending the first game on a throw out double play and then power hitting your club to a 2nd victory. For sure there will be a book, and I don't know why either Puig or Cespedes ever see fastballs, but that's just me...
DeleteMost likely with Mattingly, its desperate moves for desperate times, he doesn't have anything to lose anymore.
st never shows enough to provide any holes
Deleteadvance scouts will now watch everything...they will find puig holes...unless he is like trout, and doesnt have too many
thing about puig is that he is a complete player, so he can go through slumps and still contribute
bums still dont have enough pitching
bacci
Yep, it's early on Puig. Obviously I hope the league puts together a book on him. But he looked great this Spring. And he has REALLY showcased all 5 tools in his first two game. He looks like the real deal. And as noted above, he's brought life to the fans and the dugout for the first time this year.
ReplyDeleteGiants could stand to roll the dice if a Cespedes/Puig situation comes up in the future.
Something like that, a promising kid comes up and contributes, is a big emotional lift for the team involved.
DeleteEven just knowing you have someone like ready to come up is comforting.
so thats what its like playing toronto in a real big league park...who knew?
ReplyDeleteoh boy, are the talking heads all in a lather over the new breaking ped stuff
keep hearing how they "cant clean up baseball until there are real penalties" you mean like the ones that have cleaned up football, golf, soccer, olympic sports, etc?
these guys make me laugh
bacci
Malcolm Gladwell had a great article about PEDS about a decade ago, about how it's just a never ending circle, it is just human nature for someone to try to cheat.
DeleteBut I agree that there's no real penalties and for that I blame the MLB Players Association for digging in their heels and not allowing much penalty to be implemented. If players lost a year with the first violation and three years for the second, I think that would at least make them think twice about cheating, though at this point, it is a kind of a joke, the MLBPA does not realize how bad they look with each of these scandals coming up, it could cause a backlash on par with the last baseball strike in terms of huge drop in interest in the game.
ANYTHING that builds Timmy's confidence is okay by me
ReplyDeleteI really want to sweep the Jays today - put the hammer down Zeets.
Did I see a different game last night than you Doc? Timmy definitely looked better than he has in recent memory but there were 3-4 balls hit to the wall in left that if just one of those goes over the fence we are having a different discussion entirely. The command looked better but he hung several pitches and they just didn't make him pay. The line drive for a double play was another example of how he was more lucky than good.
ReplyDeleteWell, 6 K' against 1 BB in 7 IP is good pitching no matter how you cut it. You can make very convincing statistical case that Timmy's struggles for the past 1+ years are nothing more than an extended run of bad luck. Maybe the "good luck" last night was just things evening out.
Delete