Sunday, August 3, 2014

Eruption

Madison Bumgarner, having observed Ryan Vogelsong's complete game the other day, went out and threw one himself.  It was not as though the bullpen was tired, they have only thrown a little over 2 innings in the last 3 days.  But Madison only threw 94 pitches to complete 9, 75 of them strikes.  Talk about efficient!  Especially considering that he chalked up 10 strikeouts along the way (his 1 BB was to the first batter of the game).

Meanwhile, the offense made quick work of Colon, and piled up the runs.  HOME RUNS from Hunter Pence (2, actually), Buster Posey and Brandon Belt.  Final score 9 to 0.  Here are some numbers:  Hunter Pence, 3 hits, 4 rbi, 2 hr.  Buster Posey, 4 hits, 3 rbi and a home run.  Other hits from Pablo, Brandon Crawford and 2 from Madison Bumgarner.  Hunter Pence has been fairly useless for quite some time, if he should remain hot, it would be a huge help.  If Michael Morse could follow suit, it would be even better.  Meanwhile, Angel Pagan should return fairly soon.

That is 3 exceptional starts in a row - you can discredit Michael Morse for misjudging the hit that broke up Jake Peavy's perfect game, but that was followed by a quick bang!  hbp!  bang! bang! bang! and it was 4 - 0.  Maybe a quicker move to the bullpen could have resulted in a victory, but you can't pull Peavy with that kind of a performance at that point.  Jacob deGrom's game was almost as dominant as Jake Peavy's, and the Giants just couldn't pile up enough points to overcome 4 runs. 

Madison is just 2 days past his 25th birthday and is the fourth NL pitcher to reach 13 wins.  Remember when the Giants were characterized as an old team?  Then, they became a fairly young team.  Now three of our five starters are kind of old - Hudson, Peavy and Vogelsong.  They're looking good, though.

3 comments:

obsessivegiantscompulsive said...

First thought that ran through my head when I heard about this was how the Giants had that dominant run in August/September of 2010 when they had like 15-20 straight games of giving up 3 runs or less (and slightly longer run with 4 runs or less). Hopefully this is a good start here, particularly with Bumgarner putting an Ace's stamp on this game after his downer of a start last time.

Zo said...

I had learned listening to the game that in Madison's last start, in Philly, he went 8 but had a rain delay during his stint - so maybe that took too much out of him.

obsessivegiantscompulsive said...

Zo, the announcers mentioned that at some point after his masterpiece, that Bumgarner was affected by that rain delay and then coming back to pitch, that this was the reason for why he did so poorly in that start afterward. He's been pretty locked in for a long time, so I tend to believe their statement.