Coming into tonight, Madison Bumgarner had a streak of winning in his last 8 starts at home, dating back to August 9, 2011. By the end of the game, the streak was broken.

The Giants lost 4-1 to the St. Louis Cardinals, who didn’t even need to deploy Carlos Beltran and his barking knee to beat the home team. The team continues to be mystified by runners in scoring position, going 2-for-11 in such situations. Maybe Bam-Bam needs to have guys stand on base during batting practice, since obviously the guys have no idea how to hit in games when presented with extra guys standing around out there.

How to summarize the Giants batters tonight? Maybe something like this:

This includes two strike-outs each for Charlie Culberson, Brandon Crawford, Nate Schierholtz and Emmanuel Burriss. Yikes. » Continue reading “Giants Recap: The One Where Bumgarner’s Streak Ends”

The Giants look to face the reigning World Champions in their only visit to San Francisco this season.

What is to be expected from this series?

Well, one team’s gonna win, that’s for sure. Maybe it’ll be the Giants, but with the way they play games, who knows?

Otherwise, clownshoes, clownshoes, clownshoes.

Someone’s also gotta set up a bubble wrap roll next to the tarp so that there’s easy access to it.

Madison Bumgarner and Matt Cain are scheduled to pitch in the series. Jaime Garcia and Adam Wainwright go for the Cardinals.

No word on if the lineup will make sense today or not.

We're gonna need to get used to this one. I'm so sorry.

Fourteen errors. Or three. I don’t even know. Leaving the bases loaded. Giving up a home run to stupid Marco Scutaro and his stupid face in the ninth. This one wasn’t pretty. I may have to borrow from our friends over at Second Place Is Not An Option and come up with a theme for cheerful distractions in lieu of recaps of losses.

But hey, seems like Joaquin Arias isn’t utterly broken, at least?

Madison Bumgarner takes on Jaime Garcia and the Cardinals tomorrow. I kinda want to hide.

The Giants and the Rockies have a weird relationship. I don’t know that they’ve often been rivals, competing head-to-head in the same season, but they’re always orbiting around each other. One’s playing spoiler for the other, or they’re both chasing the wild card only to fall short, or the Rockies can’t win a single frigging game against the Atlanta Braves and the world collapses around my 7 year-old self.

Anyway, I’ve always found wins against the Rockies to be satisfying for some ephemeral reason. Maybe it’s all that Coors Field trauma. First-round pick Christian Friedrich embarrassed the Giants on his first go-round through the lineup, but he was unable to join the hallowed ranks of “random rookies who have totally dominated SF’s lineup,” because no sir Gregor Blanco was not having any of that. Blanco is probably going to be the leadoff hitter for a while now, and I’m okay with that. Especially if he keeps inexplicably crushing dingers.

(Seriously, watch that clip if you didn’t see it, Blanco hit the crud out of it. In fact, watch it if you did see it. I’ll still be here.)

Ryan Vogelsong did not look sharp, but he wriggled out of trouble and retired ten straight to end the game, so it was the Jekkyl side of the “Giants pitcher struggles early” standard. Brett Pill looked positively awful for most of the night and then some idiot threw him a fastball and he smoked it, because Brett Pill eats fastballs like mere mortals eat nachos. Turned out that insurance run was really important, so good on him, but still, he had some bad ABs. I mean, wow. Brandon Belt is still alive, etc.

In the interests of completion, I should also add that that Buster Posey guy’s pretty good, and that Sergio Romo faced his daily allotment of one batter and made poor Michael Cuddyer rethink this entire “baseball” thing for at least a few minutes. Yeesh.

That last inning, man. I almost had to rewrite this stupid thing. A little sloppiness from Casilla, a defensive lapse from Arias (who promptly made up for it!), and suddenly it’s a whole ‘nother ballgame. If Troy Tulowitzki hadn’t gotten beaned by one of his own teammates, we’re probably still playing. But hey, whatever, baseball gods, we’ll take it. It worked for the 2010 Giants, it’ll work now. Timmy goes tomorrow to try to sweep a stupid two-game series.

The Giants, with a record of .500, are coming back home to begin a three series homestand. It starts off with a two game series with the Colorado Rockies.

Of course, the Giants are basically now the Grizzlies with their recent lineups.

For example, yesterday’s lineup:

Blanco, RF
Arias, 3B
Cabrera, Me, LF
Pill, 1B
Pagan, CF
Sanchez, H, C
Culberson, 2B
Crawford, SS
Zito, P

This is all for the chemistry, of course. Because the Giants have terrible clubhouse atmosphere and the Grizzlies are so above them.

(Nope.)

For the love of everything, Giants, please don’t embarrass yourself in front of the team that routinely has Dinger behind home plate at Coors.

A few roster moves to report on this warm and sunny Mother’s Day morning.

Conor Gillapsie was optioned to Fresno as the corresponding move for Culberson. Culberson will be starting at second base today, which, frankly, probably can’t be worse than the other options. It makes sense to see what they have as middle infield options since Pablo Sandoval seems to be recovering quickly and Joaquin Arias has been good at third, and the middle infield is likely to be a more ongoing concern. On the Affeldt front, Blackley has been fine, but was never going to be a long term solution to any bullpen questions, so that’s not a move that should be a surprise.

The Giants behind Barry Zito take on Joe Saunders and the Diamondbacks at 1:10 this afternoon.

Don't question it. Just accept it.

I’ve never been in the Giants’ clubhouse when Matt Cain sees the lineup behind him, but I’d imagine it’s something like this. » Continue reading “Giants Recap: Cain Prevents Caining”

Or: Play in VS mode, sacks.

Tonight’s recap is brought to you by Google translator.

Bruce Bochy is that his left-handed left-handed lineup to hit there tonight can not be put,Brett Pill, because it is not a solid outfielder, it completely backfired. He is also the defense of some authorities to have something to hurt you, play it through a giant, but it is not above average outfielder. Too high.

(Bruce Bochy put his lefties can’t hit lefties lineup out there tonight and it totally backfired because Brett Pill is not a solid outfielder. He’s not even an above average outfielder, so having the matchup thing out there over having a COMPETENT DEFENSE hurt the Giants. Too much.) » Continue reading “Giants Recap: Matchups Suck”

So the Giants actually beat LA today with Ryan Vogelsong on the mound. Brett Pill hit a two run homer in the second inning and that was all it took for them to win — offensively, at least.

The defense worked hard tonight. Hey, it’s amazing what players can actually do when they’re playing the positions they’re supposed to play. Amazing, innit? » Continue reading “Giants Recap: Whoa, They Beat Kershaw”