When the Giants Come to Town, It's Bye-Bye Baby

05.10.2009
5/10: Mother of All Victories?

Giants 7, Dodgers 5 (13 innings): Like Bill Murray said in the movie Stripes, as he and a female military police officer emerged, half-clothed or less, from a steamer trunk: "That was interesting."

How the Giants managed to win a game that was about 15% excitement and 85% distilled deadlier-than-fugu frustration, I don't know. I don't want to know. I think it has something to do with the Bleeder Theory: Once a team's 23-infield-hit-per-game quota is reached, the next hit will reach the outfield grass. That hit was Randy Winn's in the 13th inning.

This was the kind of game that prompts lazy sportswriters to blather on about one gritty, gamery team with luck and destiny on its side, the other with soured chemistry and reaping just desserts for trying to win a pennant with $100 bills tucked into the elastic of Manny Ramirez's g-string.

In reality, this game was "huge" (Rich Aurilia's words) because 1) it was a win and 2) it was, at 13 innings and 5 hours, literally much bigger than most other games in major league baseball. Destiny is decided by things like, oh, I don't know -- adding another hitter to the lineup, or helping Jonathan Sanchez harness his potential, or getting more production from first base.

Just think what the Giants' record would be if they hit a home run more than once every other game.

Player of the week: Gotta be Manny. No, not that one. Burriss is getting on base and playing great defense, each seeming to feed the other. I'm not sure it's wise to move him to leadoff now, but a couple more weeks of .500 OBP and Bochy will have no choice. For now, though, it's hard to believe Fred Lewis is irredeemably lost at the plate when for the year he's still getting on base 40% of the time. Lewis's OBP for May, supposedly one of the worst stretches of his career: .351. The extra-base hits will come. 

Pitcher of the week: Cain, Lincecum and Zito each posted one very good start, with Cain's all the more remarkable because he was one pitch away from Todd Helton making his day a disaster in the very first inning. But I'm giving the award to two bullpenners: Bobby Howry, who responded to his demotion from setup with five nearly perfect innings this week. I'm also giving a salt-of-the-earth hat tip to long man Justin Miller, who pitched in all three losses and ate five important innings. Work like that lets a bullpen do what it did today -- go seven innings with only one run surrendered.

If Brian Wilson hadn't coughed up Casey Blake's homer today, I'd give him a shout, too. I hope Blake's weird gesture, apparently in mockery of Wilson's post-game ritual, doesn't rattle Brian's cage too much.
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7 Comments

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obsessivegiantscompulsive | May 11, 2009 11:32 AM | Reply

I don't think it will rattle Wilson's cage, I think it will make him work that much tougher against the Dodgers from now on, literally, shutting down the Dodgers is defending his father's honor.

I think trying out Burriss at leadoff for a while won't hurt, I would rather see Lewis batting third where he was going great for a while, and see if he can restart that. Did not know, nor would have guessed, that his OBP is still .351 for the month of May. Just with no power though. Thought maybe Mother's Day would rev him up like a couple of years ago.

Thinking too much about the Giants record if they had a better HR hitter is counter-productive because they would have lost one of those great starters in order to obtain that hitter. 2009 should be considered a growth year, if we do well, great, but if not, we should be happy with a .500 record or so, as that would be great progress over last season.

Maybe we can pick up some bigger hitter mid-season, but right now, I would say think how good we could be right now if Ishikawa was hitting anything resembling even a replacement starter.

We really need him to get out of this bad streak, or the Giants will have to move on at some point sooner than later. I assume he is pressing because the Giants need him to hit homers, more so than ever, and he hasn't even connected for one yet. Also, Krukow said that pitchers have found a weakness and they've been pounding him there, and he needs to adjust.

About Howry, Bochy never said he lost his setup role to Valdez, he said that Valdez would be in the mix more often now. I mean, overall, his ERA is now low again, what more can you expect out of him, right?

Johnny Disaster | May 11, 2009 11:53 AM | Reply

I have to say, if you feel you have to do some little theatrical success gesture out on the field, you should expect to be mocked when you fail... not that I enjoy seeing friggin' Casey Blake doing it, but still.

Anonymous | May 11, 2009 1:17 PM | Reply

It is nice to see Howry recover/stabilize. Strike-throwers are so valuable on this staff.

I love what we're seeing from Cain. He's finally stopped pitching backwards, is throwing more strikes early in the count, learning how to coax the groun ball and only pitching for the strikeout when he really needs it. Would be great to see more pitchers on this staff learn to understand the value of strike one.

But I still see a deeply flawed team that is really challenging the notion that ugly wins=fun. We caught a Dodgers team on its heels in front of the most listless Dodgers/Giants crowd I've ever seen, and could still barely scratch out two wins, while being outscored 15-11.

Adam Dunn could've helped this team without costing a starting pitcher.

ELM replied to comment from Anonymous | May 11, 2009 1:21 PM | Reply

But did Adam Dunn want to play for the Giants? Reports were he wanted to be based on the East Coast. He signed with Washington for 2 years/$20 M, so the Giants probably would have had to pay much more than that to convince him to stay west and play his home games in a park that kills left-handed power.

obsessivegiantscompulsive replied to comment from Anonymous | May 11, 2009 7:48 PM | Reply

Dunn's UZR/150 says that his defense in LF and 1B will roughly cost his team 5-6 wins over a full season. His bat is not good enough to make up for that and the pitchers would look much, much worse than they are now, much like the Nat's rotation look pretty bad right now, except for Lannan.

UVHaight | May 11, 2009 5:57 PM | Reply

Sorry, that was me above. I think Dunn's first priority was to play for a contender, and he would've been much closer to that with the Giants than the Nats. AT&T might have been an issue for him, not sure.

GiantsBigWig | May 11, 2009 9:23 PM | Reply

Awesome win. Some games are pivotal in terms of the message that they send and this seemed to be one of them. I have to admit I am shocked at Burriss' move from clueless at the plate to hotter than a pistol, but he definitely was the player of the week. He will have to be an OBP stud to stay at the bigs at 2B with no slugging, and although I am not sold on Burriss yet, perhaps he can do just that, and if not he might just be the SS in 1.5 years at which position his bat will more likely play long-term. I would have to give Zito the pitcher of the week due to the continued shock value of his good performance. In his last 4 starts he has been pitching better than anyone on this very talented staff. Several of us guessed that he was due for a decent season based on the correction of his mechanical flaw and the strong end to the last season, but who would have ever guessed he would pitch this good? Why hasn't Bochy figured out that Affeldt should not be used as a left-handed specialist only and that his numbers are actually equally as good (even a bit better) vs. righties? If Wilson doesn't learn how to throw a change-up or another equally effective lower velocity pitch this is not the last time he is going to be mocked this season.

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