Matt Cain's evil twin (Loki Cain) replaced the real Matt Cain in his last two starts. Today, the The Real Matt Cain showed up and stamped-out a standardized CainStart™: 7 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 4 BB, 6 SO, Game Score 55, ND. That ND was courtesy of a lovely bit of ball by the Giants in the 8th when Matt was still on the hook for a loss. Olympic Nate leads off with a homer. Funny chap, this Nate, every time I give up on him he does something flashy. Then Andres Torres gets a ground ball inside-the-park-homerun! Talk about flashy! Suddenly it is 3-2 and everyone is feeling good. Freddy Sanchez grounds out (1-7 with 2 K, ouch!), but Aubrey Huff works a walk. Huff then breaks up a Panda DP-ball with a good slide at second. Buster Posey gets a hit to move Sandoval to third, and then is inexplicably replaced by pinch-runner Eli Whiteside. (You had to think "extra innings" at that point--taking Buster out seemed pointless.) Travis Ishikawa ties it up with a single up the middle. Edgar Renteria grounded out to end the rally.
That was unfortunately it for the Giants. The Rockies completed the mercy-killing in the 15th inning with Dexter Fowler. That guy had 10 hits (3 3B) and 7 walks in the series--he was on base 7 times today with 3 hits (1 3B) and 4 walks. In the fourth game, the fourth run by the home team ended it on the Fourth of July. At the numerical halfway-point in the season, the San Francisco side finds itself in fourth place with a 41-40 record.
Enjoy the rest of your Fourth. Time for me to fire up the bar-be-cue.
Happy Independence Day.
--M.C.
5 comments:
When one cannot score when one's lead-off hitter hits a triple, one should not expect to win one's game.
When that happened and it was 2 outs and Edgar was up, I knew all hope was lost. However, when I was watching gameday on my phone, it was the bottom of the 14th with the bases loaded and no outs and then...my phone died. I was certain we'd lose right then and there. Later on when I returned home, I was surprised to see that Mota actually got out of it and managed to load the bases again in the 15th. Oh well. At least the game wasn't predictable.
Damn, Andres is magical. He's been my 2nd favourite position player for a while now (this young lady wrote on her blog her experience with him from last season, great guy, nice story). Aubrey is up there too. I still love Pablito the best. I imagined our season to go almost exactly like how the Padres' is going. And it actually looked like that at first. I can't believe how many close games they have been winning. sigh. I have an idea how next year's will go, but, this one ain't over yet and I gotta say, we're only 4.5 games out of the wild card after going 2-8 in our last 10. There's plenty of time for everyone else to hit rock bottom.
I like that we're getting all of the shit out of the way now. When the Padres scuffle, I'd like to see what they do. Fangraphs agrees with me in that they've been a bit lucky. I really want to get rid of Edgar. We've been terrible since his return. I mean, a lot of players haven't played to their potential, but, with Bengie gone, I can really only blame him on the same level.
I feel bad for Eli, the fans have really turned on him. I still can't believe Bochy took out Posey though. I have a feeling Mota won't be around if he keeps loading the bases and losing games like that.
One more thing, I really, REALLY hate Dexter Fowler.
The team's mojo was in great shape after Posey came up from Fresno, remember? Then when Renteria came off the DL it was all ruined. When you have over-paid players they end up in the lineup more than they should and more deserving players get shoved aside. All jocks are paid for what they did in the past. Rowand is of course the other classic example. He won a Gold Glove and contributed to a World Series Championship, with the White Sox, therefore he would be a great guy to anchor the batting order for the next 10 years. And we all know the Zito story. At least he's finally doing the job for us while getting those huge dollars we give him for what he did while pitching for the As.
The flawed roster construction and unsustainable salary structure has to be put squarely on to one man--GM Brian Sabean. I hate to be a broken record, but he's a buffoon and needs to be Molina'd.
We are stuck with Edgar Renteria--the organization has not produced a major-league shortstop in many years, and the closest two aren't the answer. Ehire Adrianza is 20 years old, in high-A ball and racking up a sub-.700 OPS. Brandon Crawford is in AA and belting to the tune of .237/.335/.373.
Maybe we could get something out of Ryan Rohlinger. Otherwise, we are fucked at SS.
Molina'd. I like that.
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