Rookie Chris Heston stepped up tonight for a short-handed (short-armed?) Giants squad and delivered six solid innings to lead the team to a victory in Arizona. The sinker ball specialist generated nine ground ball outs along with five punch-outs and allowed only three hits in his second ML start. The Giants had bashed a dozen hits but were clinging to a slim 3-2 lead when FNG Casey McGehee launched a two-run homer in the 8th to seal the deal for the good guys. McGehee was fourth in the NL last season with 691 plate appearances but managed just FOUR long balls. Tonight though he cranked up the big fly when the team needed it most and the Giants took the series from the D-Backs.
With Matt Cain on the DL and Jake Peavy hurting the team needed some help on the hill and the 2009 12th round draft pick from East Carolina University answered the bell. Let's hope the youngster can keep it going until the oldsters can get back to full health.
Other FNG Nori Aoki had three hits to bring his 2015 total to six which leads the team. Rookie Matt Duffy got a start and chipped in two. FNGs and rookies--a deadly combo!
Ian Kennedy and Tim Hudson in San Diego tomorrow night.
GO GIANTS!
--M.C.
12 comments:
Great stuff from Heston - nothing straight.
If he cracks the rotation, is he the first call-up since Madison in 2010?
Heston's first few minutes were sure scary but he regrouped quickly and was impressive. Everything was low in the zone. He is another one that Hanchez can barely catch ( that WP was certainly catchable ). I hope Chris sticks around for awhile.
Just want to use this as an opportunity to point out some unwarranted dinger love. Sure it is nice that Casey took a great swing and got a homer BUT for the record, we did not need it to win at all. We had a 3-2 lead and the bullpen slammed the door. We won that game with pitching and a boat load of line drives. Casey actually stunk it up until the insurance run blast but since it went over the fence he gets a special notice. I know that is a little nit picky, but I think the general fascination with homers can often shadow the real keys to the game and tonight is a good example. The guy who really deserves some extra love is Brandon Crawford. His swing looks amazing right now.
Day ish game today, right? 3:40 or something weird.
Go Giants
That's a good question, El. Big start by the kid, that's for sure.
37. The Giants have 37 hits in the young season. That's pretty good. The paper today says that neither Belt nor Peavy will go on the disabled list. Belt may appear Thursday, at least for pinch hitting and Peavy should make his scheduled start.
Yes and no El: depends on how you want to count Vogelsong. If yes, then no, if no, then yes. :^)
I was impressed by Heston too, threw a quality start by striking out 5, he wasn't known for that in the minors, so it bodes well if he can strikeout guys while still getting GB outs.
Hear hear on Dinger Love! Lots of people have bemoaned the loss of Sandoval and Morse, but forget that they were replaced by McGehee, Aoki, Panik, who as a trio gets on base a lot. OBP love! People forget that generally OBP gets translated into runs more than SLG does, if you go by the lineup calculator's numbers.
I've been rooting for a Brandon breakout for a couple of years now, particularly Crawford, who looked ready to break out the past two starts of seasons, but would then get injured and get derailed for a while. Hopefully with Duffy around, the Giants can afford to DL him so he properly heals, and return to hitting goodness.
That's Zona for you, weird hours.
I just found the Peavy issue weird. He was fixed up by trainers moving his SI joint back in place yesterday, so why didn't they do that for him earlier? Though perhaps the reason is that the massage to shift that joint was so rough that he's bruised up now...
Yes, great news on Belt! He can hopefully get it going and our offense can really kick ass. It's our offense we can give a lot of credit so far, they have scored a lot of runs in the three games, though that's AZ's air, let's see how they do against SD's pitcher's park, plus they have good pitchers as well.
Pagan has 4, count 'em, 4 doubles in 3 games! He's on pace for 216 for the season - seems reachable!!! Sure, HR's are great & everything, but you won't go wrong cranking out doubles!
I like insurance runs. I don't care if they come from six bunt singles in a row or a two-run jack. Even good bullpens give up runs some of the time. You hate to see the club lose a game on a bad hop or a fluke play and those can happen no matter who is pitching. Any old piece of shit lineup can crank up a stray game-tying run now and then. Two runs is a little harder. Three even harder. I like it when the comeback odds get longer and longer. There are no guarantees in baseball. If there were they wouldn't have to play the goddamn games.
Oh, and I can love whatever the fuck I want, warranted or not.
An aside--did you know Joaquin Arias is one of 21 children? Biggest family I ever knew had 14 kids. They lived up the street and their three youngest were the same age as me and my two brothers.
Looks like we have an 8 man rotation. Cain and Possibly Peavy rotated to not starting or the DL. Lincecum, Hudson, Bumgarner still starting, Vogey on a moments notice, Petit when needed, and now Heston. Nice to see the giants bring up a minor league starter who does not suck. Go giants, keep tossing those shutout innings.
depends on how you want to count Vogelsong
OGC,
I was thinking something less circuitous, so, no Vogey.
Hee hee, so easy to irritate MOC. Nobody told you what to love, but if the bullpen gets no credit and an insurance dinger steals the show...something is wrong. Just saying
I like what I'm seeing from Heston, but we have had pitchers come up and do nicely in his first start, I think Sadowski was one, and who can forget William Van Landingham, so it's only one start.
But you gotta start somewhere and what he did was pretty nice, I agree.
And I would say good 8-man depth, as I don't see the 8 of them pitching in a row and then rotating.
Speaking of which, given all the talk about pitcher's arms and reducing stress, does anyone think that the MLB will move to a 6-man rotation scheme to lessen the strain of a long season? I think the Japanese currently use something like that in their league.
I personally don't think that works over a whole season in the MLB (issue of shifting so many starts from your best starters to a guy who is only good enough to be a 6th starter), but I've been advocating moving partially towards that in August, when bodies are tired and off-days are rare, just inserting a 6th starter to create an off day for the rest of the starters.
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