Giants Win 9-1? What the H?

Oh, someone left the game with an injury? Whew, still the same team, then.

The Giants offensive juggernaut rolls on in spite of their impending elimination. They've won six straight now, and Brandon Belt has homered in two straight games. Heck, even Chris Stewart managed to hit his second career home run thanks to Coors Field, which is located on a space station orbiting the Earth.

Madison Bumgarner had another frigging incredible start, going 7 innings with no earned runs, and providing the crack-the-game-wide-open moment when he came up with two on and two out and very nearly cranked one out before settling for a two-run double. That was awesome.

Lots of fun little moments in this one, even though Pablo Sandoval was 0-for-4 and Cody Ross leaving the game with a strained hammy after hitting a homer and what would have been a double had he not come up lame. Let's hope this train keeps rolling, playoffs be damned.

Pablo Sandoval Hits for the Cycle in 8-5 Giants Win

Not pictured: Pablo Sandoval hitting a triple.

Baseball is the best. I think that's pretty much indisputable. Also indisputable: if you call yourself a baseball fan and you don't like Pablo Sandoval, you should probably hang it up. Hockey season will be starting soon. Try that for a while and get it together.

Seriously, Pablo Sandoval. A perpetually-smiling, fat third baseman who hits like if Ichiro were Vladimir Guerrero. He's a switch-hitter with an afro whose nickname is "Kung Fu Panda." He's naturally left-handed and taught himself to throw right-handed so he could be an infielder. There is nothing to not love. Last night, he hit the second cycle of 2011, and the 10th in San Francisco history. It was awesome. He went 4-for-4 with an intentional walk in his fifth plate appearance, and his homer was the 20th of the season for him. This dude missed FORTY games this season with a broken hamate bone in his hand, and still put together an All-Star year as well as being the best defensive third baseman in the National League by UZR. The Gold Glove will probably go to Scott Rolen, because the managers in MLB just go with the first name they can think of for position players.

Brandon Belt got a hit last night, an opposite-field homer. The Giants had their third 8-run game in their last 5 games. They had three 8-run games in eighty-nine games prior to that.

This Giants five-game winning streak is nice, and if they had broken their offensive slump just two weeks earlier, they might be in contention for a playoff berth rather than playing out the string and staying technically-not-eliminated for as long as they can. It's kind of sad, but performances last Pablo's last night are reminders that 2011 -- for all its disasters and tragedies and improbabilities along the way -- was one of the most exciting and thrilling and emotional as any season in my lifetime of following the team. That includes last year's World Series championship run. It has been one hell of a year, and I'm still looking forward to 2012. After a run of games like this, it's hard to hate life quite so much.

Brandon Belt Can't Do It By Himself: Giants Win 6-4 in 11

Bochy showed remarkable restraint not striking Runzler dead right there.

For once, the Giants almost lost a game due more to terrible starting pitching and worse luck than a completely anemic offense. After taking a 3-0 lead in the second inning behind a Brandon Belt home run, pinch-starter Dan "Herp de Derp What's a Strike Zone" Runzler gave up four runs in the third inning, then got yanked. It was real bad. The only thing worse was the Giants' luck. Baserunning gaffes, screaming line drives belted directly into Astros gloves, errant pickoff throws that bounce directly back to the second baseman, a wandering strike zone, Giants leadoff hitter reaching base in seven straight innings with no runs scored, and on and on.

It was only a monstrous home run by a Pablo Sandoval (who, until that point, had been 0-for-5 on that day) that allowed the Giants and their poor shellshocked bullpen a way-too-hard-fought win and, for the first time in seemingly forever, brought them within a game and a half of the Diamondbacks. It shouldn't have been like this. They shouldn't have been avoiding an Astros sweep today. An eleventh-inning win over the Houston Astros should not feel like a victory over the 1927 Mecha-Yankees. But such is the state of the team at this point. The Giants take the day off tomorrow to watch the D-Backs rough up the Marlins, then return home for six games against the Padres and Astros. If they take two of those six games, I'll weep fat tears of unimaginable joy.

Belt had four hits today, so it's a good thing he was sent down to Fresno all those times. Really took him to another level.

Giants Over Dodgers, 5-0

Herpin' my derp like yeah

Ryan Vogelsong qualified for, and now leads, the National League in ERA. Pablo Sandoval hit just the most massive home run. The defense was awesome. This was a nice, comfortable game. Maybe the first one this season. Refreshing.

The Brewers blew it in the desert, and today I found out that the Brew Crew just stinks on ice on the road this season. Hopefully that bears out when they come to AT&T in a few days, and also hopefully they get their act together and stomp on some snakes today. Just once guys, okay?

Today the Giants draw Rubby De La Rosa, who irks me endlessly because his name is "Rubby" BUT IT IS SOMEHOW NOT PRONOUNCED "RUBBY." The nerve of that guy. Hopefully the Giants can keep it up against him tonight, because tomorrow is Clayton Kershaw, and we all know how that one is playing out.

Injury news: Miguel Tejada went down with a lower ab strain, but somehow Aubrey Huff persists. Brandon Belt languishes. Aubrey Huff will outlive us all, smirking at us from above his massive soul patch. Aubrey Huff hit above Cody Ross in the order today. Guess which one didn't get two hits. I'm not calling for snipers at AT&T, because we know the lengths Bochy will go to in order to start a rookie over a gritty veteran. I'm not wishing for the possibility of injury to Aubrey Huff. I am honestly wishing for him to quit his Human Star Trek routine of only being good during even-numbered years. I am just thinking out loud, dudes. I am just saying.

Giants Beat Padres 6-1, Move 4 Games into First Place

Andres Torres -- FROZEN IN CARBONITE

Well, Pablo's hitting streak comes to an end, but it's fun winning baseball games by a comfortable margin for a change. I'm sure that will dry up, just like I'm sure Aubrey Huff will continue to roll grounders over to the second baseman and swing at balls in the dirt for strike three. When you're hitting worse than Miguel Tejada, Aaron Rowand, Chris Stewart, Eli Whiteside, and Tim Lincecum, YOU SHOULDN'T BE THE STARTING FIRST BASEMAN. At one point when I was scoring last Saturday's game in San Francisco, Huff was at bat, and I decided to just go ahead and write in "4-3." A pitch later, he came through for me. It's a good thing, since I was keeping score in pen.

In conclusion, FREE BELT.

Giants Somehow Take Two of Three From Scott Hairston

All-Star. Fuck the naysayers.

I was actually in Northern California for this series, and attended Saturday night's game. It was one of the best baseball experiences of my life, and luckily the Giants won. I got to experience the catharsis of Sergio Romo striking out Giants-killer Scott Hairston on three brutal sliders, less than 24 hours after he destroyed the G-Men for the one hundred and seventh time in his career.

So we have a team that has been more than decimated by injuries to key players. A team whose offense is tied together by a legit All-Star and a suddenly-living-up-to-expectations Nate Schierholtz. The downside is that they are surrounded by a bunch of creaky old timers having career-worst seasons offensively, a couple of banjo-swinging youngsters, and Aaron Rowand. I imagine this is what the first draft of Bochy's lineup card looks like every day:

1- Whoever can walk and then get picked off first

2- Out

3- Sandoval

4- Out

5- Out

6- Schierholtz

7- Out

8- Out

9- Pitcher???? (Ask Righetti)

Still though, besides Wilson (more guts than stuff), the Giants pitching, particularly their bullpen, is out of this world. The Giants win on smoke and mirrors most nights, and especially at home they refuse to give up, and inexplicably -- honestly, I have no idea how this happened -- the Giants have the fifth-best record in baseball, and are entering the All-Star Break three games ahead of the Diamondbacks in the NL West. If they can even get a halfway-warm bat or two by the tradeline, and if Huff continues to completely Aubrey it up at the plate and Bochy can wrap his head around giving Belt some starts, it may end up being another great season. Amazing.

So why am I so worried?

- Bill

Giants Win Game of the Year 6-5 in 14 Innings

Nailed it.

This started off as a terrible game. Really, just abysmal. Stranded leadoff runners by the bucketful. Giants swinging and missing at balls bowled slowly underhand across home plate. Everyone not named "Andres Torres" or "Pablo Sandoval" looking like they were swinging a rolled-up wet carpet. Madison Bumgarner giving up five runs. I noted on Twitter that this was a real stinky butthole of a game and a pretty lousy-looking team (in so many words).

These days, it seems like if you want to have your team look like just the best team around, you should play the Giants. The Padres, for seven or nine innings there, looked like they were the Bronx Bombers crossed with the Big Red Machine and huffing Swingin' A's fumes. Driving balls to the gaps, stealing a million bases, striking out the side on one pitch. Nate Schierholtz launched a mammoth home run off of the right field foul pole in the middle innings to bring the Giants within one run, but then the Padres scored again. Two runs? Insurmountable.

But in the eighth inning, Pablo Sandoval crushed a bomb to Triples Alley that he thought was gone. He only ended up with a game-tying double, but it was enough at the time. The Giants bullpen nodded and said, "We got this." Sandoval made just the best possible play to end the top of the ninth inning with a man on third, and the bullpen was off to the races, retiring the last 17 batters they faced. Giants pitchers ended the night with 19 strikeouts and one walk. Think about that for a second. I'll wait.

The Padres and Giants spent the last five innings trying to out-not-score one another, but only the Giants were getting men on base. The bottom of the fourteenth opened with the Padres inserting a pitcher named Pat Neshek, whose delivery can best be described as "oh my god what am i looking at." He hurked and jerked and threw a ball to Nate Schierholtz, then got a swinging strike, then a foul. Just as I was thinking, "Man, wouldn't it be awesome if..." Neshek spasmed and frothed and threw a ball out over the middle of the plate, and Nate Schierholtz hit just the highest fly ball I've ever seen. The Padres right fielder drifted back slowly and settled under it against the wall and... PANGGGG... it bounced off the tin roof top of the wall and into the cove. Juggernate's first two-homer game, and the Giants had their tenth walk-off win of the season.

A lousy game that was a must-win for the Giants became one of the best games I've seen this season. The Giants had this game in the bag multiple times and couldn't put it away. The offense needs at least one bat. The return of Mike Fontenot will be a cause for celebration. Yeesh. But this was a big, big win. What a game.

Giants Hate America, Lose to Padres 5-3

Okay, so now we need TWO hitters.

It should have been closer. Wasted opportunities. It could have been the Giants' tenth walk-off win of the season. Wasted opportunities wrapped inside a thin layer of squandered chances and served atop a bed of regrets.

This was only the third game of the season against the San Diego Banes of my GD Existence. Thanks to the unbalanced schedule, fully 20% of the remaining games are against the Padres. That is not hyperbole. Look it up. One in every five games from here on out is the worst two offenses in the National League trying to out-not-hit one another. The second half of the season is not going to be fun.

No trades forthcoming. The only combo-breaker in the Giants lineup of guaranteed outs is Pablo Sandoval, who is having a historic baseball-mauling streak that is being squandered on the rest of these mandolin-hitting suckbats. 13-game hitting streak, but 9-game extra-base hit streak, which equals the San Francisco team record. He's really brutalizing the ball to all fields and being the bounceback thinner Panda we all hoped he'd be at the beginning of the year. Now he just needs to hope some of that magic pixie dust wears off on Huff, Torres, Ross, and everyone else in the lineup. Tejada and Schierholtz are probably the two hitters in the lineup who aren't swinging at pickoff throws to first. And that is TERRIFYING.

Giants Put on Torture Clinic, Win 4-3

Exactly.

Probably the most stressful game of the season. The Giants got runners to second base or beyond and stranded them in innings 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and 8. This was "WASTED OPPORTUNITIES" writ large. To top it off, Javier Lopez gave up a fluke hit to a lefty for basically the third time this season, and Brian Wilson blew back-to-back saves for only the second time in his career, and the first time since 2008.

This was a pulses-pounding meltdown fest, and I can only imagine how Neil feels. I am certain he will make his baseball feelings known to all in short order. Mercy me, this was a...I don't even know what to call it. Giants get blown out tomorrow, make no mistake.

Neil, earlier I was feeling cocky after the Pablo Sandoval go-ahead double and was going to post this .gif, with the snakes being analogous to the Tigers. Since I believe I will not have another chance, here it is:

GAME TWO: Giants 6, Cubs 3: what is this i don't even

Show a little decorum Cody, geez.

Thankfully, the "expecting the worst" approach worked pretty well. Barry Zito only gave up two runs on an unfortunate homer, which is better than most were expecting. The Giants scored 19 runs in two games today, which not only brought them back to a positive run differential, but also took them from dead last in the majors in terms of offense, to fifth-worst. A momentous day, to be certain.

So the Giants have won seven in a row now. Somehow. Literally everyone got a hit today (except Barry Zito, but let's not be silly dudes). Manny Burriss got his first extra-base hit since 2007. Cody Ross and Pablo Sandoval barely -- BARELY -- missed home runs. The Giants are still kind of lousy at getting hits with runners in scoring position, but on the other hand, Nate Schierholtz is a two-strike clutch-hit machine.

Something else that's come out of the past week: Chris Stewart. He got called up to be Eli Whiteside's backup catcher when that whole...you know... thing went down. The line on him was that he was a good defensive catcher who was slightly worse than Eli Whiteside with the bat. (Which is kind of like saying that a dude with his upper body on fire is slightly less on fire than a guy with his whole body on fire.) But Whiteside kept letting every ball get past him, couldn't throw out a single base runner, and hit Eli Whiteside-level bad. He caught like four games in a row a couple weeks ago and then went "Oh, my body," and sat in a tub of ice for a bunch of days. While old greyhead was trying to keep his kneecaps from sliding down into his feet, Stewart started a mess of games, blocked tons of pitches, hosed all kinds of fools (seriously, he has a major cannon), called spectacular games, and his fist pumps got the fans and his pitchers fired up, all while hitting well above the Eli Whiteside line. As a bonus, his face is way less punchable than Eli's, which is nice. The Giants still have their eye on Yorvit Torrealba or whoever because they clearly need a real, actual catcher, but I am a huge fan of Stewart now. I'll take him over Whiteside, even though Whitey once hit a grand slam, and that was pretty neat. Also, his nickname is "Whitey."

Bochy Leaves Cain in Too Long, Giants Win Unnecessarily Stressful Game, 6-5

yeeeeeeeee

Well, the Giants were ahead 5-0 for most of that game, then 5-1, but in the seventh inning Bochy was like, "Hmm, Cain has thrown over 100 pitches and is visibly struggling with his command. He barely survived the sixth inning with every D'Backs hitter crushing the ball against him. Let's see how this plays out!"

Other than the shaky pitching, the Giants offense looked really solid for a change. Cody Ross has two doubles, 2RBI, 2 runs, a stolen base (stole home as part of a double steal) and a walk. Aubrey Huff had a hit and two walks. Nate Schierholtz hit a bit insurance RBI triple after being 0-for-3 to that point. Perhaps most importantly, Pablo Sandoval looked good, stroking an RBI single in his first at-bat and working an amazing 10-pitch walk which may have been the best Giants at-bat of the season to date. Even Eli Whiteside reached base twice!

So what could have been the Giants' easiest win this season instead became a gut-wrenching marathon. Since I'm leaving for vacation and my Baseball Feelings may be few and far between for the next ten days, it was a very Giants-like send-off.

- Bill

Just Pathetic: Giants Lose, 6-0

See, the ball is a metaphor for the Giants' playoff chances.

How many times must Aubrey Huff have a swinging strikeout or double-play groundout with runners in scoring position before Bochy is forced to admit that he's stinking on ice? One thousand times? Probably one thousand. I love Aubrey to death, but he is killing this team. It's not just his fault, though: everyone else on the Giants sucks too. Huff is just the guy hitting third or fourth every day. Really. Every day. Brandon Belt started yesterday. Know where he started? Left field. Know who's batting second today? Michael Tejada. Brandon Belt's sitting again today. You know who's playing instead? Aaron Rowand.

The Giants need to trade for six Jose Reyeii and have Pablo Sandoval come back ASAP. Since that won't be happening, we'll just hope for lightning to strike again. Should be any day now.

The Diamondbacks are in first place in the NL West for the first time since 2008. I'd rather have them there than the Rockies, but maybe this year's D-Backs are last year's Giants. (They're not.)

The Giants didn't get swept by the Brewers, so that's something. They start a series against the Cardinals today, and given today's lineup, this is a pretty good start for a Redbirds sweep with minimal effort. Tony LaRussa can finally bat his pitcher in the cleanup spot. He can go with a six-man infield. He can have his pitcher throw from center field. The Giants still won't be scoring any runs.

Your 2011 San Francisco Giants: Television Stars

As we roll toward spring training, and the reality of my lifelong baseball team winning the World Series in my lifetime not having fully sunk in, the San Francisco Giants will take the field in 2011 looking nearly the same as they did at the end of 2010.

Pablo Sandoval has been spending the past two months wearing Hefty bags while riding a stationary bike in a sauna as Bobby Southworth insults his father. It's all part of "Operation Dumbo Drop 2" or some similarly-named thing. The Panda had a brutally awful 2010, so one of the largest questions about 2011 is whether the dropped weight will result in a return to form, or whether Pablo will eat fifty Buca di Beppo dessert rafts between now and opening day and keep swinging at pickoff tosses to first.

The playoffs and World Series showed that Bruce Bochy is, shockingly, aware of which of his teammates are his best players in any given situation, so hopefully that means Aaron Rowand sees significantly less playoff time. There's also the returning Mark De Rosa, whose wrist disintegrated early in the season, and the newly-signed Miguel Tejada, about whom the nicest thing that can be said is "he's not Eric Chavez."

There's exciting stuff happening in the minors. Brandon Belt is the first baseman of the future, and apparently his swing is like Will Clark's but with the addition of the Red Dead Redemption "Dead-Eye" feature.

The Giants have also signed a deal to have a "24/7"-style show filmed, which will begin airing on Showtime in the second half of the season. Expect it to feature Brian Wilson amping up his "Andy Kaufman-as-baseball player" routine, and plenty of Aubrey Huff and Pat Burrell punching each other in their bare dicks.

It's Magic Inside.

- Hanstock