It was a classic Caining out at AT&T Park as the Giants offense failed to support a strong effort by their Horse. Key Lines:
Marco Scutaro- 0 for 4. BA= .302. Scooter is now 0 for 9 leading off.
Brandon Crawford- 2 for 4, 2B. BA= .272. Crawford came within inches of tying it up in the 8'th with a prodigious blast off the very top of the wall in right-center that I am quite sure would have been a no doubter in any other ballpark. As it was, it was a leadoff double which the Giants characteristically failed to bring home.
Brandon Belt- 1 for 3, 2B, BB. BA= .266. I'll say this for Belt: Whenever he takes time off to clear his head and work on his mechanics, he puts the time to good use and comes back out smoking.
Roger Kieschnick- 2 for 4. BA= .381. So far, Roger K has hit all singles, but hey, that's still an improvement on the rest of the Giants lineup.
Gregor Blanco- 0 for 2, 2 BB. BA= .248. Blanco is a guy who needs to be drawing walks. Doesn't do a lot of good from the 8 hole, though.
Matt Cain- 7 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 0 BB, 6 K's. ERA= 4.47. What can I say? This was Cainer's 3'rd strong start in a row after the back-to-back shellings. Whew!
So, the Dodgers lose a game to the Cardinals in St Louis, 5-1. That means they are about to collapse and come back to the pack right? Does the Giants performance in this game give you any reason at all to care about what the Dodgers are doing? Guys! The Giants are not getting back in this race! But hey! They are 0.5 games closer to a Wild Card playoff spot than the division lead, so it is finally possible to think a WC could come from the NL West. I just ain't gonna be the Giants!
Madison Bumgarner faces Marco Estrada in game 3 of the series.
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No matter where the Giants are in the standings, I'll always care about what the Dodgers are doing, because I'll be wanting them to lose, no matter what. :^P
ReplyDeleteOne day, one game. Indicative of neither collapse nor aberration. Let's talk more about this at the end of the month.
Crawford has been doing nicely after his finger injury healed. I heard on the radio he's wearing a sliding glove that protects the fingers from jams, or something like that, has anyone ever heard of such a thing and can tell me more? Seems impossible to me, just curious, as a science geek.
Yeah Belt! Yes, he does, though in the past the good times last less than a week before it's two steps forwards, two steps back. Let's hope he has started another good two month streak and finish with a bang!
Yeah, not too worried about Roger K's power, I figure he's figuring out the hitting in the majors part, the power should come soon enough.
Well, Blanco was not even getting on base when he was leading off, and he could act as the secondary leadoff hitter down in the lineup if he can start stealing and getting to 2B, then the pitcher can bunt him over to 3B.
Another nice outing by Cain. Yet to be seen if he's coming out from his post-Perfecto down period, but got to start somewhere.
I was hoping Posey would bust out in this series, like he had in 2010 and 2012, but I guess it is not happening...
Posey just seems exhausted at this point. Scutaro too.
DeleteI think you might have to wait for the playoffs to realistically root for the Dodgers to lose.
You can see Crawford's glove if you watch on TV. It's basically just a full-hand splint that keeps all 4 fingers extended. I would be a bit worried that if he did a full-on jam of the hand into a bag, it could transfer all the force to his wrist, but I'm not an expert in orthopedics or sports medicine.
The more comments I read about Belt's grip and the changes that he made during his 3 day break, coupled with the timing, makes me seriously think somebody in the organization is reading blog comments. Good call, SpeierFuentes!!
Good point about Scutaro, recent reports noted that he has been battling back issues, I guess those new shoes are not helping him as much as originally hoped, for his uneven legs.
DeleteI still feel good about my chances to root for them to lose, I feel like this is similar to the Padres run in 2010, when their pitchers were overachieving, though it took until August for them to finally come off of the helium. But really, even the Giants pitchers, who had a much higher pedigre for achieving that in 2010 came down from that high eventually, only LA's starters and bullpen are more average than the Giants were, so their fall should be farther.
But yeah, we'll see, maybe they keep it going for another two months of 2-something ERA, not impossible to happen, just not likely in my opinion.
Francoeur gets start in CF! I was going to write on that somewhere, I looked it up and found that he had played CF before, but in that SSS, he had a monstrously negative defensive WAR tied to those games. Still, it was not like Blanco or Torres were doing anything for us in CF or leadoff lately. Worth a one game try at it, though in AT&T, I guess maybe Pence would cheat towards the CF gap? And Kieschnick won't be any help in the OF in LF, he's even less experienced.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, I was wondering if the Giants should just sit Blanco down - had that epiphany reading DrB's comment about how sitting down Belt seems to help him - and let him mentally reset himself, and return to his prior OKness, I mean his OPS was a great 775 not that long ago.
Hard to see Giants winning more than 20. 70-92 sounds doable for Giants to get a good draft pick.JT.
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