What better way is there to ignore the Giants’ unfortunate loss than to watch the Fresno Grizzlies’ Drag Kings performing the hit internet sensation, Gangnam Style?
Because really, this is better to watch than the Giants’ game today.
You can’t take anything in baseball for granted. Literally, anything. A projectile small than an adult’s closed fist is being hurled at velocities well exceeding the automobile speed limit and then bounced around thousands of square feet of space occupied by nine fragile sacks of meat and bone piloted by a mysterious chemical concoction. Really, once you’ve spent enough time considering the convoluted track of evolution and conditioning necessary to produce Hunter Pence, it’s no stretch at all to think “Yeah, of course the Astros could beat the Giants this year. Weirder things have happened.
But if ever there was a chance for a sweep, this series was it. So thank all that’s holy that the Giants cashed that chance in, especially after a game that looked Belisario ugly in the opening innings. Ryan Vogelsong hasn’t been Vogelsongian lately – or rather, he’s been an entirely different kind of Vogelsongian, one hopefully consigned to the dustbin of history – and one hopes that he’ll regain that potent combination of movement and location on his fastball.
That said, if there’s a single pitcher on the Giants’ roster who will just slam himself into the wall (figuratively speaking) as many times as it takes to fix whatever is broken, it’s Vogelsong. Hell, he struck out seven in six innings tonight, which is a good sign of putting it back together after the Zitonian beginning. He got the win! » Continue reading “Giants Recap: Two Weird-Lookin Fellas Do Just Fine In Texas”
Kontos holds it down. (photo: flickr/SD Dirk)
The Giants played the Astros today. There’s probably one guy you’ve heard of who was in today’s lineup. Literally one. He’s the one who has become a unit of measurement. Yeah, that one.
Given that, it’s kind of hard to muster much to say about a game against the Astros, where they sent out arguably their worst starter and the Giants sent out Barry Zito. There was a game. Of baseball. It took nine innings. The Giants won. Yup.
But alright, anyone who follows me on Twitter or has talked to me recently knows of my seat at the front of the George Kontos bandwagon, and today was everything I could have hoped for. 2.2 innings of relief, including getting out of Zito’s jam after he got pulled early, eight up, eight down, and a totally respectable at-bat, all adding up to his first big league win.
Other things of note:
Giants attempt to avoid avoiding the sweep tomorrow evening with Ryan Vogelsong vs. Jordan Lyles.
Matt Cain with the Mythbusters gang (from Tory Belleci’s twitter)
So, in perhaps what may be the greatest news I have personally heard all day, Mythbuster Tory Belleci tweeted out some photos of the Giants’ own MATT. CAIN. on the Mythbusters set.
Mythbusters, for those who are unaware and my goodness, by the power vested in Willie Mays, may Matt Cain force you to watch this show, is a show that utilizes science and blowing s&#! up to prove whether or not myths can be achieved or if it’s just a myth.
Here are Tory’s tweets.
Look who came by. twitter.com/ToryBelleci/st…
— Tory Belleci (@ToryBelleci) August 23, 2012
It’s only THEE MATT CAIN from the
#SFGiants. twitter.com/ToryBelleci/st…— Tory Belleci (@ToryBelleci) August 23, 2012
I mean, the look on MATT CAIN’s face is the look of a man who is MATT CAIN and also happy to be there.
Mythbuster’s Kari Byron also tweeted photos out.
Look who stopped by
#mythbusters. Matt Cain! twitter.com/KariByron/stat…— Kari Byron (@KariByron) August 23, 2012
Busted twitter.com/KariByron/stat…
— Kari Byron (@KariByron) August 23, 2012
Careful, Kari, please don’t break Matt Cain’s face.
Now, the only questions are: when will this episode air and where can I get a Mythbusters jersey/baseball cap?
LA status: Swept
There were many ways this could have gone wrong. The Giants’ seemingly preternatural ability to avoid successfully completing a sweep. Buster Posey’s late scratch with a cranky hamstring, necessitating Hector Sanchez catching Matt Cain for the first time this season. The Dodgers’ general annoying Dodgerness.
But nope. Successful sweep. Successful sweep in LA, no less. Let that be a lesson to ya, Bums. You never when Joaquin Arias is coming for you. Um. Yeah.
Giants finish the night 2.5 games up on the Dodgers and 5.5 up on the Diamondbacks.
Tim Lincecum was decidedly decent on the mound. Wasn’t exactly the good ol’ Timmy going the distance with double digit strikeouts, but, hey, 5.2 innings and only giving up one run and one walk? Good enough this season!
Then there’s that Angel Pagan guy. He was pretty decent tonight. I mean, 3-for-5 with an RBI and an outfield assist that led to A.J. Ellis being thrown out at home? No big deal for the Contradictory Name Man.
And that Buster Posey, he can drive two runs in on a day off from catching! What a swell guy.
The Giants are now 1.5 games up on the Dodgers, which is always a nice thing to hear.
And it’s also pleasant to yell out, “THE BUMS LOST.” Two nights in a row.
Make it three days in a row, Giants. Make it three.
Madison Bumgarner: nice to children, but not the Dodger children. (Photo: imovermyhead/Flickr)
I’m going to start you off with a mind-blowing piece of trivia from the always-excellent Giants Nirvana:
This was the first occurrence in baseball history in which both starters have gone 8+ innings with 10+ strikeouts and zero walks.
— Giants Nirvana (@GiantsNirvana) August 21, 2012
Holy crap, people. Holy crap. We are living in an age of baseball wonders, and two of those wonders are Clayton Kershaw and Madison Bumgarner. Kershaw, of course, is an unspeakable creature of Mordor, with nothing but spite and bile in his heart, as with all Dodgers. But the man can pitch, and pitch he did, contributing his half of the twenty strikeouts and making Buster Posey in particular look pretty silly. It was going to take a miraculous effort to scratch anything across, and while we’ll come back to that in a second, the corollary was that the inexplicably functional Dodgers offense was going to have to be shut down.
And right on cue, Madison Bumgarner. 23-years-old, walking less than two batters a game this season, and spending the dawn of his career casually working the inside corner against right-handed hitters like it ain’t no thang. Tonight, if there was a thang, it was nowhere within Bumgarner’s vicinity. He pounded the corners with his fastball, jammed hitters into feeble groundouts, and relied mostly on an absolutely murderous slider (with even more movement than usual, it seemed) to get nine swinging strikeouts. There was also a strikeout looking, too. It was Hanley Ramirez (on a slider that didn’t dive into the dirt!). That’s never not funny. » Continue reading “Giants Recap: Duel of the Fates”
When I woke up on this fine Sunday morning, I was expecting to hear about baseball games and score updates. Maybe even something from Europe as the Premier League and La Liga start up this weekend.
What I didn’t expect, and probably never would have expected in — oh, I don’t know — fifty billion years, is the following post title from Hardball Talk:
Melky Cabrera bought a website and dreamed up a fake supplement in an attempt to beat his PED suspension
Uh. » Continue reading “The Tale Of Melky Cabrera And Fake Websites”
When you hear that the Giants are facing Eric Stults, he of the sub-3.00 ERA, you automatically think that there is no chance they will score a run. Pair that up with the fact that Barry Zito is starting, you could just write this off as a loss.
Except that it ended up being a win.
It wasn’t an unpredictable line for Zito, only lasting four innings. Also not surprising that he gave up four runs within those innings.
Typical Zito, though with only two walks and a strike out.
The narrative where the Giants don’t score enough runs to bail Zito out seemed to be broken today.
This Hunter Pence fellow hasn’t been too shabby lately, driving in two of the eight runs the Giants scored — and yes, that’s right, they scored eight runs for Barry Zito.
And then there’s Joaquin Arias, who is not as great as everyone thinks, but managed to have himself a game by going 3-for-5 with three RBI and a home run. It’s classic You Can’t Predict Baseball and inexplicably so, because who would’ve seen that coming? It’s like asking an aardvark to play catch and actually throws the ball back with 90% accuracy.
I don’t know where I was going with that analogy, but baseball can do that to someone after a while. I think.
The bullpen was quite solid, with a decent enough outing from Eric Hacker, who has been called up again.
Then Jeremy Affeldt happened and gave up two runs in the 9th. Man. At least Clay Hensley was able to close it out — also words that I didn’t think I would say at this point in the season.
(Photo: cal_gecko/Flickr)
A couple years ago, the Giants had owned the neighborhood. Street corners, front stoops, the drive-in, the drug-store, the YMCA; wherever you went in the West Side, if you saw a fella coming in black and orange, you stepped lively out of his way. Buster had moved in then, in those glory days, and by the time he’d been there two months his girl was wearing a black leather jacket and his beat-up old jalopy had Giants spray-painted on the hood. He didn’t so much fit in as take over, and even if he wasn’t exactly the leader by name, everyone knew he was the guy. Someone had to be the guy, and Buster was it.
Even the rumble with the Fish didn’t really stop him. Sure, it was an ugly year on the West Side; Buster was in and out of the doc’s while one by one, the guys who’d welcomed him into the gang dropped off the face of the earth. It got too hot around the neighborhood for Cody’s old man or Andres’s girl, and Pat shocked them all by going off to college (though the word was he had a social disease and just wanted a new pool of girls). Aubrey hung around, but he was kind of a mess, too old to rumble and too young to really figure out his life. So when Buster finally got off his crutches and came back to the block, it was just him and the lifers – Timmy pushing tea on the corners, cool-headed Matt who was in charge if anyone was, Madison still daring people to ask him if he had a girl’s name, and the rest. » Continue reading “Giants Recap: Rumble”
