An errant pitch in the 9th capped a gritty comeback by the Giants and they snapped their two-game skid. They've played a nice stretch of ball lately: winning three of four from the Cubs, two of three from the Dodgers, and two of three from the Braves. Then they had three hard-fought close contests in Cleveland, just getting edged out and losing two of them to the best home team in baseball. If the Giants can go toe-to-toe with the Guardians and stand up to LA and Atlanta they are doing better than their record shows.
Last night was a breakthrough for our Thirty Million Dollar Man. Blake Snell went five scoreless allowing only one hit and three walks on what for him was a parsimonious 74 pitches. Let's see some more of that!
Youngsters Heliot Ramos and Casey Fitzgerald both homered off Yusei Kikuchi (who was awesome, whiffing 13 in 7-2/3) and that fueled the comeback. Ryan Walker had a rare bad outing and the Giants trailed late but still pulled out a win. Brett Wisely had the game-tying hit in the 9th. There's a nice youth core emerging on this club. Austin Slater got lost in the squeeze--the veteran OF was traded to the Reds for lefty reliever Alex Young.
I missed posting for the team's 90th game or the end of the fifth seasonal inning. That was the loss on Saturday. Here's the story so far:
They've gone 1-1 since then and their record after 92 contests is 45-47. That's good for third place (tied with Arizona), ten back of the top and 2-1/2 games out of the Wild Card. Logan Webb and Heliot Ramos are All-Stars. It's exciting to see Ramos put his game together.
Speaking of Webb, he goes tonight at 6:45 PT.
Go Giants!
--M.C.
4 comments:
Nick Ahmed was DFAd. They ain't bullshittin' about the Youth Movement! Looks like Wisely and Fitzgerald will man SS going forward. Luciano is still at AAA.
I could be wrong, but I just do not have that much faith in Melvin getting this team over 500, and staying there. Why did someone not come out to the mound during Webb's Meltdown and slow things down? All of the sudden after the inning before a guy hit a homerun on a pitch that was inside and not far from ankle height, he started, even when ahead of hitters, throwing a bunch of pitches right down the middle. What the heck.
Yeah you have to stop the bleeding right away. That was a crappy game.
Last year we did not have a guy like Ramos and at this time we were doing better than this year. I looked at Kapler as a plus win manager. I see Melvin, at least so far as a neutral win manager. Perhaps the team went against Kapler last year because of their own faults, kind of like the way the democratic party is going against their own leader. Not as if I do not like Melvin, I just don't see him as a guy inspiring this team to overachieve. I hope that I am wrong and the giants go on a nice win streak, but it seems unlikely. I also do not like Soler leading off. Although he has led off a few times with doubles, a Ramos hit to the outfield on more than one occasion left the slow running Soler on second base. The lead off man needs to be a high obp guy, with at least a drop of speed. Wade is high OBP but with leg injury no speed, but there are a few guys that they could try.
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