Today’s Magic Number…

Giants won yesterday, but so did the Padres and the Braves, so the gap did not get wider, and the standing did not change for either the NL West Division or the Wild Card.  But the magic number changed from four to three.   Three measly games and we see playoffs.  Or…if the Giants sweep the D-Backs tonight and the Padres lose, I think the magic number would be one. Or the Giants AND the Padres could win tonight and the number would be two.  I think.  

The Bay Area is playoff happy already.  I’m trying not to be negative (my natural state) but I think it’s premature to think it’s a lock, too. Maybe I shouldn’t be watching that Ted Williams biography right now.  His entire story seems to be “soooo cloooose…!”  What a crusher if…well never mind.

Pitching dominated again last night, the Giants only managing five hits. Luckily their five hits were more productive than the D-Backs eight, thanks to the 3-run RBI homer by Pat.  Even though he’s apparently not part of the team, I’ll take the runs!  Sorry Latos. 

“There’s Beard Inside” is the new slogan, if the hotties holding up the Brian Wilson signs wearing the fake beards have any pull in the advertising department.  Wish I had a picture of that-hilarious.  Oh and did you hear? Samwise Gamgee and Rudy are pulling for the Giants to win the World Series!  Wait…

Apparently Sean Astin is normally a Dodgers fan, but was at the game last night and decided the Dodgers are out so he’s rooting for the Giants.  I think that makes him NOT a Dodgers fan, but we can consult with Emma about that one.  Stab me in the head but for some reason I’m always interested in which celebrities like what teams.  I wish there was a site that chronicled that.  I know the Dodgers and the Yankees get all the pretty celebrities in their fandom, but the Giants have celebrity fans too!

You hear that Giants?  “You can do it!”

Well Shut THEM Down

More Star Wars?  Yeesh.

Kudos to Matt Cain for paying back the Dodgers by making the D-Backs suffer.  Eight innings, allowing zero runs and only three hits with nine strikeouts, earning his eighth win of the season. 

And then Wilson follows him up by finishing them off in the ninth and earning his 27th save. No hits, no runs, no loading bases; weird but perfect outing for Wilson.

Andres Torres was on fire both offensively and defensively, slamming one out of the park in the third inning off of Rodrigo Lopez, and then at the bottom of the same inning, he prevents Chris Young from doing they same with a great snag off the wall.  (Get out your magnifying glass, because no one takes pictures of the good stuff!)

Fairly straight forward game, which was a nice breather from the twists and turns of the last series.  So um…yep!  Don’t know what else to say about it.  Let’s do that three more times!

Our Bum vs Dem Bums

Madison Bumgarner pitches 5.5 innings and gets his third win of the season.  Not bad, minus that one teensy little home run.  Good on ya, son!  (I can call him “son” because he’s like 15 years old and I am not.)  Still need to snag your bobblehead on eBay one of these days.

Buster and his .350 batting average continued his 13 game hitting streak, racking up an RBI in the process.  But it was our main man with the killer arm Nate Shierholtz (who’s last name is still impossible to spell) who brought in two runs with his third home run of the season.  Good on ya buddy, you were due!

And since I’m talking to players as if they read this, “Hey Mr. Wilson!”  You’re awesome and all, but serious what is with the pension for drama?  Why can’t you just get your three outs?  Why does it gotta be two outs, and then loading bases for 20 minutes before effortlessly getting the third out by striking the dude out with three pitches?  Boom. Boom.  Boom.  Like you couldn’t have done that three batters ago?   I feel like you’re addicted to drama.  But…so long as the drama works out in our favor, I guess I’ll suffer the nervous sweating and nails digging into my palms. 

The Dodgers and the Rockies are on a losing streak and we’re in second place again.  We are a different team.  That said…yes we beat the Dodgers yesterday, in their home turf, but let’s not get all full of ourselves just yet.  It’s one game.  Two to go.  Game faces on, people!

Happy All-Star Break

The Giants complete their longest (distance-wise anyway) road tour with much success.  Only 4 games behind (still in fourth place though – bummer) with a 7-4 victory!  I definitely thought it was going to be worse, but I guess seven game losing streaks gives me bouts of pessimism. 

Not to make this a Buster Posey blog, but Buster Posey Buster Posey Buster Posey.  The guy had a great road trip!  His numbers were ridiculous.  Was it a fluke, or is he making the All-Star team next year?  Hoping for the latter.

Date ▴	Tm		Opp	AB	R	H	HR	RBI	BA
Jul 1	SFG	@	COL	4	2	2	1	1	.297
Jul 2	SFG	@	COL	3	0	2	0	0	.308
Jul 3	SFG	@	COL	2	1	0	0	0	.302
Jul 4	SFG	@	COL	4	0	1	0	0	.300
Jul 5	SFG	@	MIL	4	2	2	1	1	.307
Jul 6	SFG	@	MIL	3	0	1	0	1	.308
Jul 7	SFG	@	MIL	4	3	4	2	6	.331
Jul 8	SFG	@	MIL	4	1	2	1	1	.336
Jul 9	SFG	@	WSN	4	0	1	0	0	.333
Jul 10	SFG	@	WSN	5	2	4	1	3	.351
Jul 11	SFG	@	WSN	3	1	1	0	2	.350
	SFG			40	12	20	6	15	.500

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 7/14/2010.

In fact, the 7 wins were pretty much all batting, as the pitching was nothing to really brag about.  Lincecum and Bumgarner got their win, but otherwise it was the offense doing most of the bailing.  It’s a crazy focus shift.  It was all about pitching for me before this month, now all of a sudden, it’s the Posey, Huff and Ishikawa show.  Gotta say, killer hitting is pretty fun!

I skipped the All-Star game.  I was out, but even so, I can’t say I was overly excited about it.  It’s kind of like when half the Sharks when to the Olympics, and that was the Olympics, this is just the All-Star game.  Lincecum didn’t end up pitching, but according to The Stew, he was the only guy signing balls before the game.  And anyway, that means he gets to start against the Mets tomorrow, which is more interesting to me.

It is pretty cool that the National League finally broke their 1996 on up losing streak, though. Also cool that Brian Wilson got the opportunity to keep their lead by throwing a perfect 8th inning.  Go Brian!  Maybe they should swap out the Panda caps for Rooster hats?

Nice cleats, btw…I think…uh.

Rocky Weekend

Hey kids!  Now you too can own a genuine authentic 4th of July MLB cap worn by the San Francisco Giants on the weekend they got slaughtered by Colorado!

Went 1-3 against Colorado.  At least the streak got broken.  And what the heck?  The only game they won was the game where Ubaldo Jiminez was pitching?  That dude practically had a negative ERA and yet somehow the Giants scored 11 runs that game.  They rarely get 11 hits, forget about 11 runs!  Look at what they did to him!

Year	Age	Tm	Lg	W	L	W-L%	ERA
2010	26	COL	NL	14	1	.933	2.27

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 7/6/2010.

HA!  He’s got a 2-something ERA now.  What a loser.  Actually, that’s still pretty ridiculous.  How the heck did they hit off that guy?  Huff is awesome.  I love Huff, he’s my favorite “new” guy, even though all these guys are new to me.  I thought it was going to be DeRosa, but look where that went?  Nowhere.  So yay Huff.  I don’t care if Googling you is kind of scary, you’re awesome. 

Speaking of awesome, congrats to Tim Lincecum and Brian Wilson for making the All-Star Team!  Lincecum has been in a slump, but he and his long hair are still popular thanks to his back-to-back Cy Youngs, so hardly a surprise.  And Wilson is awesome pretty much always, mohawk and all.  Hey!  They both have weird hair.  Coincidence or conspiracy?

Hey kids!  Don’t forget to buy your 2010 authentic All-Star gear!

Sox Knocked Off

Well, our socks anyway.  Red Sox took the series, but at least we weren’t swept!  By the skin of our teeth, mind you, but a victory is a victory.

The wife and kids were out on Friday, which is a rarity but perfect timing in that I got to watch the first game uninterrupted.  Right off the bat, the Sox score three runs.  But then the Giants catch up in the second and pass them in the third and then get yet another in the eighth.  But that’s not enough for me.  I know better at this point.  It could be 12-1 Giants, and I’d still be wary of the ninth.  And it wasn’t 12-1 Giants, it was 5-3 Giants.  So I was standing a lot in the end, my palms were sweating and the Sox made Wilson work for that last out.  They even had to get one more run in before we finally finished them off.  Three innings with loaded bases, ten walks, three wild pitches and we eek out a win by one run.  Awesome but TORTURE! 

I skipped watching Saturday in favor of taking the family to see TOY STORY 3.  Excellent picture, perhaps my least favorite of the three, but maybe that’s because I’ve only seen it the one time so far. I doubt they will make more after this, and you couldn’t ask for a better story for the characters to go out on.  I dug it. I didn’t dig that we lost 4-2, however.  In a surprise (for me anyway) last minute change, they brought up Madison Bumgarner to start the game, and I think he did okay.  Sure, the Giants lost, but he only allowed four runs and pitched seven innings.  Pretty good for a rookie.  I’d like to see more of him. 

Sunday went to my wife’s BFF’s house to watch the game on the big screen.  HD is funny in that everyone seems much uglier on TV.  Not sure if I want it now or not.  The grass was never greener at AT&T park though, I’ll admit that.  Great scenery shots on a perfect cloudless day in San Francisco.  Aaand we lose again, pretty much the same way we did the day before.  The Sox score right off the bat, and then we spend the rest of the game trying to hold them at bay and catch up.  Lincecum floundered through three innings before being pulled.  Our Golden Boy isn’t so golden these days. He’s 8-3 mind you, but that’s not good enough for a back-to-back Cy Young winner, right?  We eek out one run in the first because Andres Torres steals makes it to first when no one else could and then proceeds to steal two bases, ensuring his status as the World’s Fastest Giant.  Otherwise, the Giants don’t do much and the Sox take the rubber match 5-1.

So 2-1 Red Sox.  Since I had a fairly bad feeling about them coming to town in the first place, I guess I’m happy we at least took one game and avoided a sweep.  Can’t deny their all-star status, it was a very exciting weekend with them in town.  If I was a jerk, I could say that, while we didn’t win, we at least injured one of their starters in each of the three games. If I was a jerk.

After lunch at the BFF’s house, we moved on to my sister-in-law’s house for dinner where her husband, my father-in-law and I decided to watch the Yankees/Dodgers game, in hopes that at least the Dodgers would also lose, allowing the Giants to keep their second place status.  But nope!  5-0 Dodgers.  Bummer.  Wait..now it’s 5-2 Dodgers.  Wait…now it’s 6-6 and going into extra innings.  Now it’s the 10th inning and the Yankees take it 8-6!  Unbelievable rally, and even more unbelievable that there was a room full of Giants fans rooting for the Yankees.  A rarity and somewhat fun.  I’m sure the Dodgers are pissed at losing their lead.  I wonder if being pissed is a good thing for the Giants today.  Will they be tired and sloppy or more determined than ever to make up for yesterday? 

Monte Irvin’s number 20 was officially retired on Saturday, making him the 11th player to have his number retired by the San Francisco Giants. Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Juan Marichal, Gaylord Perry and Orlando
Cepeda all showed up to honor one of their own.  Congratulations Monte!  Sorry we lost on your big day!

Jonathan Sanchez’s no-hitter celebrated its 5 year anniversary on Sunday. Sanchez was the fifth Giant in history to pitch a no-hitter, and he was joined by the other four, Juan Marichal, Gaylord Perry,
Ed Halicki and John Montefusco.  Congratulations Jonathan!  Sorry we lost on your big day!

Crazy weekend, full of awesome stuff. I feel like I’m skipping half of it.  I guess that’s what happens when you’ve got two rivalries on the west coast playing each others teams. 

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1

WOO!  The streak is over!  Okay, is it a reason to celebrate when it takes eight games and extra innings to finally eek out a victory over the Padres?  Hell yes!

Apparently they avoided tying a franchise record for the longest losing streak against an opponent to start a season.  Who has that record, I don’t know.  How do you find out?  But anyway, thank you Torres, Downs and Wilson!  We can finally move on!  To Arizona…where hopefully things will be…less torturous?

Padres are at 23-16, Giants at 22-16 and the Dodgers at 22-17.  Ridiculously tight race, where one loss will change everything.  Should be an interesting week!

SF @ TX

10-4, good buddy!

Posey still hitting like crazy, averaging .440 for the spring and Fred Lewis got to be a DH rarity and hit a two run homer.  Brian Wilson closed 6 out of 7 batters.  Why does it seem like everyone but the two superstars of last season are doing awesome this spring? 

This game was available on MLB.tv last night, but damn if I could get it to work.  I kept getting a “lost connection” error.  I don’t know if this is common with live games, as like a bandwidth issue, or if I was just having crummy internet connectivity.  So far MLB.tv is a bust for me.  Oh well.