Madison Bumgarner hit a home run! That's my favorite label for these posts. And also it's about 25 degrees cooler, so there's that. The Giants dropped the finale against the Cardinals today, 7 - 3.
Madison seemed to be cruising, he did not give up a hit for the first 3 innings. In the 4th, he gave up 2, and those were home runs by Paul DeJong and Jose Martinez, batting 4th and 5th in the Cardinals' lineup. That put the Giants behind 2 - 1 after they had Buster Posey had singled Joe Panik home in the 3rd. Madison tied that score with a monumental solo shot of his own in the 5th off of the Cards' starter, rookie (of course) Luke Weaver. It kind of fell apart after that. Harrison Bader hit another solo homer off of Madbum in the 6th, then a few more hits, and it was 5 - 2 when the inning ended. That was it for Madison, and Kyle Crick allowed 2 more runs to score in the 2/3 of an inning that he pitched in the 7th. Cardinal reliever Sandy Alcantara gave up a home run to Giants' call up Tim Federowicz in the 8th for the final score. Matt Moore pitched the 8th and 9th in relief and did not give up any runs.
It seems like Madison has been prone to the long ball lately. You may remember he gave up 2 in his last start against Arizona (which we lost, 2 - 1). He has given up 14 in just over 91 innings. That works out to a few more than he gave up in 2016, when he gave up 26 home runs in 226 innings. 14 in 91.3 works out to 35 (34.65). For total runs however, this year he has given up 32, which works out to 79.2 runs over 226 innings, last year he gave up 79. So, in spite of the fact that he has given up 5 home runs in 2 games, all of them solo shots, he is doing no more poorly that last year over all. Of course, you can't expect to win too many games against the Cardinals by scoring only 3 runs. We are 2 - 8 in our last 10 after winning 2 of 3 against Milwaukee (who seems to have taken it hard and have beaten the Nats 3 of 4 and LA 2 of 3 since then).
What to make of Matt Moore pitching in relief? If anything, it may mean that the Giants want to see what the rooks can do as starters in this lost season. Matt needs to figure something out in the winter. So here is what is left. We have another round through the western division and the Chicago White Sox. That starts tomorrow against Colorado in Denver. We play the Rox 5 more times, and Arizona and Los Angeles 6 more each, and San Diego 3 more. We have a losing record against each of these clubs; 4 for 14 against the Rox, 5 for 16 against the Padres, and 5 for 13 against the snakes. Our best effort has been against Los Angeles, mostly in the early part of the season. We are 6 for 13 against them. The Giants have one last chance to at least serve notice. That's about all they can do, but at least it would be something. As it is, they are again in danger of being MLB's worst.
1 comment:
Bum's pitched really well and been burned by the lack of offense. Today was an aberration, most of his starts have been strong.
Moore in relief? Sure, he's the worst starter in baseball. They have to do something. Maybe he can re-capture the magic.
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