18 games in September: XV

Buster Posey was the hero on September 21st in Chicago, belting a homer to give the Giants a 1-0 win. That was the fourth 1-0 game in The Streak™. The Giants split back-to-back 1-0 games (VI & VII) against the Padres and then lost 1-0 to the Dodgers (IX).

Carlos Zambrano was pulled for pinch-hitter Sam Fuld leading off the bottom of the 6th, and Matt Cain was pulled for pinch-hitter Travis Ishikawa leading off the top of the 7th. The Giants won the Battle of the Bullpens--Buster Posey hit his winner in the 8th off Andrew Cashner, who was in his second inning of work. Another outstanding pitching performance kept the Giants a half-game ahead of the Padres.


--M.C.

                                                          
Pitching                 IP H R ER BB SO HR  ERA BF Pit Str
Matt  Cain                6 2 0  0  1  2  0 3.00 21  82  49
Ramon  Ramirez W (1-3)    1 0 0  0  0  1  0 3.09  3  11   8
Sergio  Romo H (18)       1 0 0  0  0  1  0 2.30  3  14   9
Brian  Wilson S (44)      1 0 0  0  0  0  0 1.84  3  12   8
Team Totals               9 2 0  0  1  4  0 0.00 30 119  74

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 2/3/2011.

p.s.  Triples Alley takes a look at Matt Cain, FIP, and xFIP. Cain is the poster boy for sabermetric debate--he consistently "outperforms his peripherals" which is Saberspeak for "we don't get why he is successful and think he might just be lucky." It's interesting stuff. Here, here, and here are some examples of the digital ink spilled on our All-Star World Champion pitcher.