Gaint's lose in Extra Innings, Looking ahead, Bumgarner Update

Matt Cain was Matt Cained last night and the Petco Park continued to be a place where the Giants struggle. The Giants had chances and only had one side of the quality pitching and timely hitting winning formula for the game. They were in it for most of the night which makes it all the more painfull.

Cain pitched fairly well going 6 innings while allowing 8 base runners and striking out 4. He gave up 2 runs and really deserved better than a no decision but I have to say that if this was 2 years ago it would have been an loss for him. On a side note is anyone else getting concerned about the falling strike out rate, I guess it isn’t that bad seeing that the walks have come down at the same time and he sports a 4-1 strike out to walk ratio. I think that if the walks start creeping up it will be time to worry.

The offense last night continued to be punchless minus Juan Uribe who had his second homer in as many games. The offense this team showed in the begging of the year is beginning to regress to what I would have more expected it to be.
I am skirting around the issue because I have really tried to forget it but David Eckstein hit a walk off home run. This is the same David Eckstein that has only 35 home runs in 5260 career at bats, not exactly the type of guy you expect the walk off from but I guess that things are evening out for us because how many times are you going to expect Edgar “I am as old as a dinosaur not to mention I look like one” Renteria to hit a 3 run bomb off of Billy Wagner.
So this loss hurts, and the Giants fall to 1-3 in one run games which I imagine there will be a lot of this season.

Looking Ahead:

Tonight’s game matches up two strong arms. Jonathan Sanchez is coming off a strong start where he went 8 dominating innings but consistency has always plagued Sanchez. Hopefully he continues to pitch well and this is the team that he had his near perfect game against last year. The Padres trot out Mat Latos who had a bit of a rough outing against the Braves but is a promising young arm with a lot of talent. This usually doesn’t bode well for the Giants offense but hopefully they can be patient and force Latos to come into the zone and get some good stuff to hit.

Wednesday’s game is a chance at redemption for Todd Wellemeyer who was abused by the Dodgers in his last outing. He faces Jon Garland who has been fairly solid this season. Hopefully the Giants are not depending on this game to escape a sweep because I would not have high hopes.

Bumgarner Watch:

Mad Bum threw 6 innings in Fresno allowing 4 base runners while striking out 3 and walking 1. He gave up only 1 earned run and was around the strike zone all night with 51 of 74 pitches for strikes.

Also encouraging is that it was reported that he was sitting at the low 90’s and topped out around 93 for the game after spending time with Giants pitching guru Dick Tidrow working on mechanics. This is some well needed good news and pushes me away from the panic button. Hopefully this trend continues.