Sigh of Relief

The Giants pulled one out.  They beat those tough, tough Oakland Athletics in the final of their 4 game, home-and-away 2016 series by a score of 12 - 6.

Madison Bumgarner on the hill.  He also hit, which, as it was in an American League ballpark, says a lot about the tattered state of the Giants right now.  When this game started, my first thought was "OMG, our hopes lie with Ruben Tejada?"  but then my second thought was "Madison better damn well not get himself hurt."  Even that Pena guy is banged up.  The Giants also brought up a River Cat named Grant Greene.  So, 2 newbies and a rook for the G's.

Madison was not sharp.  Fortunately, the Giants decided to do some offense tonight - they seem to do that about every other game and tonight there was enough so that the mighty A's couldn't overwhelm them.  Madbum went 6 1/3 innings, threw 104 pitches, walked no one and struck out 4.  He also gave up 4 runs, all earned, on 7 hits.  The first of those came in the 1st inning, a solo shot to Marcus Semien (his 16th, so at least he is a legit hitter).  The Giants came roaring back in the 3rd, initiated by Madbum's lead-off double.  Then, a walk to Span, a single by Pagan and a ground rule double over the center field wall by Belt gave the Giants 2 runs.  A homer by Posey made it 5 - 1 and a solo shot by Crawford made it 6 - 1.  The Giants tacked on 2 in the 4th, rbi's by Pagan and Crawford.  They seemed to know better than to think the bullpen could hold a 5 run lead.  Good thing, too, as the swingin' A's scored 1 in the bottom of the 4th, then homered for 2 more in the 7th, the end of Madbum's night.

The Giants tacked on 4 more in the 9th on a Crawford single, 5 walks and a Belt single.  The A's added 2 in the bottom of the 9th off of Derek Law, who is still very much a work in progress.  So a sloppy game, again, but a victory this time.  9 more games against Arizona and Colorado before the All Star break.  Arizona's been good to the Giants so far, maybe that can continue.  They'll need the remaining core: Span, Angel, Posey, Belt and Craw, to continue to hit.  The Giants have gone 3 - 4 in the last 7 games.  Amazingly, LA in that time has picked up exactly 0 games (heh, heh).

Giants get clobbered again

13-11 loss at home
No do-overs in this game, I suppose. Giants bullpen fell apart completely last night and the A's scored eight runs in the last two innings to grab another win. Those are the first back-to-back losses for San Francisco since they lost three straight June 4-7. In between they were 14-3, so I can't get too upset. The team will have its ups and downs. Speaking of downs, it seems Joe Panik may have a concussion from the beaning he took in Tampa Bay ten days ago and will likely go on the DL.

Giants have eight more games left on this twenty-game stretch without a break. Their first off-day is Thursday, July 7th. Then it's three more and the All-Star Break. Bit of a grind for the lads, I imagine. Let's see if they can make a good run of it.

Jake Peavy in Oakland tonight. GO GIANTS!

--M.C.

Giants Get Spanked

8-3 loss in SF
Dr. Jeff and Mr. Samardzija have been battling it out lately for control of number 29. The Dr. has good stuff and uses it effectively to rack up quality innings and lead the team to wins. The other guy serves up BP and gets whiplash watching screaming liners and soaring bombs fly off bats. Sometimes both guys play in the same game. You can guess who mostly showed up tonight. The Giants couldn't get much going off Oakland starter Daniel Mengden and the A's had a lopsided win. It's been a couple of weeks since the Giants got handed their hats like that. Let's hope that's the trend for the rest of the season--lots of wins bunched around occasional losses!

Three more games with the A's: Suarez tomorrow night in SF, then Peavy and Bumgarner in Oakland the next two nights.

GO GIANTS!

--M.C.

Vlog #18 "Who Were Those Frigging Guys?"

8-7 win vs. Phi 

The Giants just barely scraped out a series win against the lowly Phillies AND JohnnyC didn't really do much to help. Three one run games that took everything we got and made both our aces look very human.  Just shows you that any team can be tough any day.  Luckily our beloved Giants are tough almost everyday.

Win #49. Best in baseball.  Kershaw lost!  We be up by EIGHT!  Check out another Vlog of joy below:


Vlog #18 "Who Are Those Frigging Guys?"

Bum Luck

Giants lost today, 3 - 2.  Madison Bumgarner got little run support, again.  Madison gave up 0 runs and only 2 hits in his first 6 innings, but got shakey in the 7th.  A few more hits, including a home run.  Couple that with an offense that didn't come through, and the Gints could not  pull out a win

  
Is Madison becoming 2016's hard luck pitcher?  He's 8 - 4, and really should probably have 11 wins.  But the Giants retain their lead over LA.

Giants Pull Out Another One

5-4 win at home
It only took 22 pitches from closer Santiago Casilla to get the final two outs. That was spread out over five batters, mind you. And the final out required a replay review (he was clearly out). This was after a three-reliever 8th in which seven batters saw 31 pitches and scored two runs to make a 5-2 game into a 5-4 nail-biter. Just another ho-hum Giants squeaker. Brandon Belt gets the hitting star honors with a 3-run double in the 7th to overcome a 2-1 deficit--it was a home run anywhere but San Francisco. That man is hitting the cover off the ball: his current line is .305/.410/.537 which is good for a .947 OPS and third-best among first basemen behind only Anthony Rizzo and Paul Goldschmidt. (His 2.2 WAR ties him for fourth-best with Miguel Cabrera.)

Jake Peavy had another solid effort on the hill. When a team can get that kind of performance from the bottom end of the rotation that's very encouraging. The lads trailed most of the game but staged a four-run rally off the Phillies bullpen to win it. That's 12 of the last 14 and 15 of 21 in the month of June. Giants have 48 wins, tied for the most in the majors.

Madison Bumgarner tomorrow night.

GO GIANTS!

--M.C.


p.s. Giants are 31-9 in their last 40 games, their best stretch of 40 games since 1954.

Comeback

7-6 win in Pittsburgh
Giants starter Jeff Samardzija followed up his most impressive start (CG 4-hitter) of the season with his least impressive (3 IP, 3 HR, 6 R) but the Giants clawed their way back from the early deficit and pulled out a win. The mercurial righty has three starts this month, other than the gem, with a combined 12-2/3 and 14 runs allowed. He's seems to be a very on-off character, alternating between ass-kicking beast and gopher-ball machine. I reckon over the long haul he'll deliver more positives than negatives and we'll get lots of quality innings, but last night was ugly, his shortest outing so far.

Ramiro Peña, he of the who-dat club, clubbed two big hits to get the comeback going. BCraw added two hits, as did D-Span, and Joe Panik had a big two-RBI double. The 'pen (Law-Strickland-Osich-Gearrin-Casilla) delivered six scoreless on a mere four hits punctuated by nine whiffs. It's take a village sometimes!

Peña is a 30-year old utilityman from Monterrey, Mexico whose last stint in the bigs was two years ago in Atlanta. Last season he made two stops: one in El Paso with the PCL Chihuahuas (San Diego) and another in Culiacán with the Tomateros of the Mexican Pacific League. That's right, they are the Tomato Growers. Check out their logo:

That's awesome. The "minor" leagues have the best team names. Welcome back to the bigs, Ramiro, and keep slugging .692!

GO GIANTS!

--M.C.