Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Cain, Giants come up short

Old nemesis Mat Latos made it look easy against the Giants. He needed 37 pitches in the 6th inning to create a mirage of a rally and watch it vanish. Otherwise it was easy pickings. If the doubleheader sweep in NYC got you excited about the 2012 New Improved Giants Offense then you probably didn't enjoy the 2011 Retro Look they sported tonight. Matt Cain can take comfort in knowing that run support is continuing along normal lines, zero in 15 innings is a fair market rate, and that's all he wants, no more, no less. After all, a 10-51 record in games in which the Giants score two or fewer seems reasonable, eh?

The Tennessee Stud wasn't sharp early on unless he was facing Joey Votto. He made one of the best lefty batters in the game look silly twice. But a 38-pitch 1st was enough to doom him the way Latos was dealing. Cain gave up nine home runs all of last season, he has allowed four this season. He gave up two in Arizona in his first start and two tonight, sandwiching those road starts around 18 scoreless at home. I thought Bochy would leave him in to pitch the rest of the 7th even after the homer by Ryan Ludwick, but I suppose they wanted a chance to look at Dan Otero. Poor guy did nothing to help his cause and was unfortunately also hurt by a double play chance that went awry. A grind game turned into a joke game and the nice little hit-and-homer thing in the 9th by Pablo and Posey was lost in the ugliness. Matt lost his streak but is still pitching--did you see where Cliff Lee was DL'd after his 10-inning performance? Sandoval kept his streak going, quite a nice little bit of history there, breaking a club record held by Willie Mays.

--M.C.

p.s. Matt's Game Score was 56, and his first three starts were 42, 96, and 86. His career Game Score Average is 57.


               
Year   GS GmScA
2005    7  62.9
2006   31  53.3
2007   32  54.7
2008   34  53.5
2009   33  58.3
2010   33  58.4
2011   33  58.9

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 4/24/2012.

3 comments:

nomisnala said...

I was listening to the game in my car on XM radio on the Cincinnati channel, when in the 9th inning their announcer said: "The giants have been in 3 shutouts, and on the winning side of all three shutouts." "At least til now." Then boom after a severely inside pitch Posey goes deep. At least he shut-up their announcer about the darn shutout.

Zo said...

There was a third "strike" in the first inning that wasn't called. It happened just before the home run. Maybe the outcome would have been different, but then again, Latos was awfully good, and nursing his imaginary grudge against the Giants for spoiling his 2010 season. K&K stated that the Giants looked flat. I read in the paper that they arrived in Cincy at 3 am, which makes me wonder why they travelled after a night game. Why didn't they stay in NY and then take the short flight first thing in the morning?

JC Parsons said...

Is it safe to say that Otero is toast? He may have been good in spring training but he sucks so far in the show. I hate how important the last guy in the bullpen can be....yesterday was not an example of this...but he has already pitched in several key situations. Time to try a new guy...wonder who?