Tim Lincecum's nifty streak of high quality starts came crashing to earth, much as Tim himself did a couple times, and the Giants lost a close one to the tough Cincinnati Reds, 4-3. Marlon Byrd did most of the damage with a soft 2 RBI single that chased Lincecum in the fifth and an eigth inning game winning solo shot off Romo. Sergio doesn't give up many homers to righties, so that really hurt. The amazing Chapman closed out the ninth with ease. I sure hope we don't see that guy again this weekend.
A couple of the more memorable moments in tonight's nail-biter involved Tim literally falling off the mound as he delivered crucial pitches. Both of his ridiculous stumbles were the result of muddy cleats and it is a bit surprising that he didn't hurt himself. It was also surprising that Tim was able to actually get the ball to Buster as he was twisting into a heap on he ground. They were ugly moments that seemed to capture Tim's almost complete lack of control. Five walks, a HBP, a WP, and the two lovely flops mentioned above, were all jammed into 4.2 painful innings. He managed to wriggle out of a couple terrible innings, like the 31 pitch, 3 walk, first. However, it finally caught up to him on his 99th pitch as he lost the lead in the fifth and got yanked. All in all, this was a real shame, mostly because it seems to derail Tim's previous trend of excellent control. I know that it caught me off guard; I very much expected another solid outing. I sure don't have the "new" Tim figured out. Is there such a thing as consistently inconsistent?
Let's just run this stumbling metaphor into the dirt (pun intended) and point out that all you can do after you fall is get up, brush yourself off and try again. MadBum will get us back on track tomorrow, he is so tough on the road.
6 comments:
Tim's weird, huh? He was fortunate not to get the loss. Wasn't Posey's homer a beauty though?
Speaking of homers, Pence hit another one for the Cats, as well as 2 other hits. So he seems to be healthy.
Losing one-run games is not the Giants style! They'd won 9 of 12 one-run games before these last two. The Giants are 1-4 vs. Colorado, who were good for a while, then horrid. A non sequitur, I know, but you start looking at numbers like that and you get a little weird.
Tim's outing was a bummer. Maybe he is jinxed in Cincy. Another dinky little bandbox. Would like to see the Giants rack up some big offense in these dinky little bandboxes.
Come back soon, Hunter.
As much as some might think of Tim as a grizzled vet, he's a sensitive flower who can lose his focus, in this case, the muddy cleats, which I blame for all the acrobatics off the mound. But somehow the Reds guy handled it fine, so hopefully lesson learned for Timmy, he acknowledged losing focus because of the conditions.
The thing for me is, he was one missed called strike away from escaping the 5th inning and probably replaced the next. The umpire blew a called third strike (PitchF/X confirmed the announcers and Timmy's call), which seemed to upset Tim, who ended up hitting that batter two pitches later, setting up the dink hit that scored the two runs.
Which I guess is the universe balancing things out, because there were two monster hits previously with RISP that would have driven in a lot of runs. Or, if you play with fire enough, you will get burned, that was his third inning of RISP.
Still, had the umpire not screw up that call, he would have been out of the inning, at 95 pitches, still with the lead and eventually the Giants would have won the game. Margin was that close in this game, one mis-called pitch.
That's why, while I love the human touch umpires add, this really screwed things up for us and why I call for having technology call balls and strikes.
I know people hate to do that, but here's an idea I just came up with, to integrate the two. Have the home umpire wear an earpiece and have the PitchF/X give him the call, which he then announces to the crowd. That allows them to still give the hand signals, maybe make a show of it, if he's into that, but allows us, the fans, to not get so mad about blown calls like this.
Of course, if Timmy wasn't dancing so close to the edge almost every inning, it would have been a meaningless screw-up unnoticed and uncared about, so there is that too...
But it's one start, after 6 OK to dominant starts, I know it feels like deja vu, but I'm still believing until he puts up a long string of starts like this, then I will concede.
That was not just a bad call, but a bad bad call. It was a third strike and not close. How about allowing a minimum number of ball/strike appeals (say 2 per game per manager, win or lose)? That would have been a good spot to use one.
Pence coming to Cincy: http://blogs.mercurynews.com/giants/2015/05/15/breaking-hunter-pence-travels-to-rejoin-giants-in-cincinnati/
Looks like he'll be activated on Sat.
I call for having technology call balls and strikes
Yes please.
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