Cubs 4, Giants 2, 10 innings: Barry Zito ‘07 had his second straight strong outing, and he faced a pitcher who did his best imitation of Barry Zito ‘03. Lefty Rich Hill has a huge curveball that sets up his high-80s/low-90s fastball, and tonight Hill was throwing strikes with the yakker at will. Nasty stuff. Rookies Davis and Ortmeier were the top two slots for the Giants, and they went a combined 0–for-10 with 7 Ks. Misch didn’t pitch well in the extra inning, but he was done in by bad defense — a passed ball by Molina and a brutal error by Aurilia at second. Without those misplays, I might still have my headphones on.
PLODAG: Zito. I give him this personal goal for 2007: Do not set a new career-worst ERA. If the Giants stay on rotation, he has six, perhaps seven more starts to drop below 4.48, his 2004 mark. He’s at 4.74 after tonight. If he averages a modest 6 innings per start, he’ll need to surrender fewer than 11 earned runs. If he averages a more robust 7 innings per start, his upper limit is 14 runs. 
Runner-up: Another strong inning from Brian Wilson, who apparently took his team picture after applying his N’Sync Facial Hair Halloween Kit. Crazy kid! Will he joke around and still dig those sounds when he grows up to be a man? Now he’s young and free, but how will it be…won’t last forever, it’s kind of sad.
That looks like some horrible Photoshop work there. Yikes! And it's badly artifacted.
artifacted?
JPG images that have a low "quality" value when saved are subject to artifacts.
Wikipedia explains it and shows some examples.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compression_artifact
Even my favorite picture of the year has a bit of it:
http://www.trilliummud.com/pedroiscatching.jpg
I am really baffled by what is going on with this team. The losing the 1 run and 2 run games, losing the extra inning games. These are veterans and yet they seem to choke in close games. And they make very unveteran mistakes - Durhams failing to run into the OF for a pop up that Winn or Roberts couldn't get to a night or tw0 ago, Winn's turning to look instead of turning and firing the ball to 2d base to prevent the runner advancing. It is your basic head-up-your-ass baseball - and at the most inopportune times. And it's been all year long. Major concentration/effort lapses. Is it the distracted frustration of being nearly 20 games under 500? Loss of confidence for the same reasons?
"suck" is not the answer. These guys have drastically undrperformed their expected/career offensive numbers. They have also, including young guys like Frandsen, slumbered thru plays or innings in the field. What gives?
They suck.
My math is different.
If he pitches 6 games at 6 IP, that's 36 IP, added to 153.2 equals 189.2 IP. A 4.48 ERA or less requires then 94 runs earned on those IP. He's at 81 right now, or 13 extra earned runs over those 36 IP and 6 games (or an ERA of 3.25, about 2 ER per game pitched).
If it's 6 games at 7 IP, then that works out to 195.2 IP, 97 ER, or 16 ER over those last 42 IP (ERA of 3.43, about 2.5 ER per game pitched).
Personally, I don't care if he is below his career worse, as long as he ends the season on a pretty good streak of well pitched games. Do something he can build on for next season, when his pay goes up $4.5M to $14.5M. If he has really figured things out, and is really over the contract, then we look to have a great (not just good) rotation in 2008.