The 2009 Giants are 51-44: Rock D'Rox!

The Giants will fly into Colorado licking their wounds but proud of avoiding what would have been a horrendous sweep by slapping together 4 runs in the 8th and actually giving their starter (particularly Zito, who has not gotten much run support, despite contributing another good start) a break for once. It was a tough series heading in, and it turned out to be so: the Braves have a damn good rotation, kind of scary really. Thank goodness we are not in the East playing them more the rest of the season. And the good news is that they face the D-gers 7 times in the next 2 weeks (roughly).

Unfortunately, we face a tough rotation in Colorado as well, though arguably the bottom of their rotation. Hammel, De La Rosa, and Cook have the worse ERA's of the rotation but still they are pretty darn good overall, better than the Giants rotation overall, but with no one comparable to Lincecum and Cain, thus far.

Game 1: Matt Cain vs. Jason Hammel

Giants should win. Cain has about a 4 ERA in Colorado, but Hammel has a 7.62 ERA this season in Coors with 7 HR in 8 starts and 1 relief, .379 BAA, and 1.97 WHIP. He has one good start out of the eight. He has mostly been putrid and a batting ball pitcher in Coors this season. Meanwhile, Cain has had a number of good outings in Coors, including his May 7th start.

But this is Coors, so really, I have to put all the games as mostly coin flips, as it depends on what type of balls come out of the humidor. But with such a big differential, I have to give the Giants the edge here, though I wouldn't be surprised if we lose either.

Game 2: Jonathan Sanchez vs. Jorge De La Rosa

Two flakey pitchers with high 4 ERA's facing each other. But all is not as it seems. De La Rosa has been OK to very good in his last 4 starts and 6 of his last 8. Sanchez has not, but has a no-hitter and a nice outing last time. This is probably the best pitched game of the series for the pair of starters.

The caveat on De La Rosa is that while his last three home starts have been OK to very good (actually two very goods out of three), his overall ERA at home is 5.81 compared to his 3.88 ERA on the road. So the bad De La Rosa lurks somewhere within him, and his ERA at home for his career is 5.05.

However, Sanchez has a 7.06 ERA in Coors, though oddly, no homers in 21.2 IP. And in three starts in Colorado last year, he had two good starts and one bad one, and even in that one, he wasn't that bad, just unlucky with 9 hits in 5.0 IP (and 3 walks, which was bad). He appears to have been bad as a reliever there, but mostly good as a starter last year.

So, basically, yee ol' coin toss.

Game 3: Ryan Sadowski vs. Aaron Cook

Like most pitchers, Cook is not as good a pitcher at home as on the road, but he's not that bad either. Career 4.70 ERA at Coors, 4.58 ERA this year, so he's pretty consistent at home. However, he has had three consecutive bad starts at home, four out of five. He had some nice starts early on to balance things out, but in his last three starts: 5.82 ERA, 1.76 WHIP, 26 hits, 4 walks, 9 K's in 17.0 IP, only 1 HR. Also, against SF at home: 5.61 ERA, 1.67 WHIP, 86 hits, 27 walks, only 22 K's in 67.1 IP and 13 games, 11 starts, 5 HR.

Sadowski, being a ground ball pitcher, could do well here, depending on how much the thin air in Colorado allows him to pinpoint control his pitches. Though, according to Sadowski, he hasn't really had good command yet, even though he did well in his first three starts. Perhaps he has been too jacked up from being up in the majors, plus the pressure of knowing that a poor start could put him back down and Pucetas comes up. Hopefully he would be getting over that a bit, but after his poor outing last time, he is probably feeling some pressure.

So if Sadowski can't get it together and the humidor is in a giving mood, this is probably the highest scoring game of the series, as it looks like the Giants got Cook's number at home (and at AT&T, really). Too much to account for, have to call it a toss-up, a flip of the coin.

Giants Thoughts

This series doesn't look at bad as I thought coming in blind. The Giants typically do poorly in series in Colorado. But with Cain in the mix, we have a good chance of winning the series, since the other two games could, probably should, yield a win. And there is even a glimmer of hope that we might sweep them and bring the road trip to a great conclusion, if achieved.

And the Giants bats should come alive, as it is Coors Field, but I must note that their bats were quiet this season in Coors, and while above average in Coors in 2008, not the mashing one might see in Coors. Plus, as we saw in Atlanta, the bats were not that alive then either.

Still, I have to wonder how much Sue Burns death hung a pall over the team during this trip. In addition, the Braves rotation was pretty good - all the starters were basically low 4 ERA or better - and we lucked out in missing Vazquez. Sometimes you have to tip your hat to them.

Still, Sandoval was pretty much shut down this trip so far. Some might say that it is because the league finally adjusted to him. But he was so dominant for such a long time - 6 weeks - that I find that odd. So, he will be a key to the Colorado series, if he can awaken his bat once more, we should have a good chance to do some good stuff here. The good news is that, unlike against the Pirates and the Braves, we get to face bad pitchers (relatively and at home), so perhaps Sandoval will not be as challenged as he has been thus far on this road trip.

Hopefully Rowand will heal his various bumps and bruises and return to the hitting fool he had been previously when we get to Colorado. He had been so cold so suddenly that I wonder if he was playing injured again. We need him to heat up again because Bowker and Downs have not been hitting much thus far, plus Sandoval wasn't hitting either, which puts a big hole between Winn and Molina, two of our hottest hitters.

Other good news from today's game was Schierholtz's 3 hits. With that, he has hits in 7 of his last 9 games where he had 2+ plate appearances, hitting .333/.351/.417/.768. He had been extremely cold before that and hit .167/.212/.200/.412 in 9 games, 8 starts. That probably caused the Giants to decide to bring up Bowker. His better hitting with Bowker's struggles will probably lead the Giants to drop Bowker back to the minors at the end of the month when Aurilia comes off the DL.

They say Bowker has shown something, but that's hard to see when he's hitting .179/.226/.286/.512 with pretty regular play. However, this shows how a few games can change a players batting line when he is just brought up. In the five games leading up to the decision to keep him up and DL Aurilia instead, he hit .267/.250/.467/.717, which is not that bad compared to what we had been getting out of LF and 1B. And he hit .255/.300/.408/.708 last season.

And Ishikawa has started to heat up at the right time with 3 hits today, coming into a homer haven like Coors. Hopefully he can blast some out there. Other than Sandoval, he has been the big homerun hitter since June started. He had 6 in that period while Sandoval has blasted 12 homers (doing my fantasy team a world of good). Molina had 3 in that period, Rowand 4, Schierholtz 3, and Uribe 4. Ishikawa is now 4th on the team overall in homers.

Not that he was ever that cold. After a couple of Oh-fers, he now has a 3 game hitting streak, 5 for 13. And before that he had a 10 game hitting streak, .351/.351/.568/.919, 2 HR in 37 AB. And before that, he hit in 8 of 10 games. The last time he had more than 2 straight Oh-Fer games while starting was in May 20-24. Since that time, in 34 games and 29 starts, he has had only 6 games where he had 2+ plate appearances but no hits. And in 27 games with 3+ plate appearances, only 5 games with no hits.

And since he was kicked in the butt by Bochy on May 9th, he has hit .308/.357/.497/.854, 7 HR in 143 AB, and pretty consistently hit that high since then, despite one benching due to Sandoval and one semi-benching due to Bowker being in the mix at 1B.

That is probably why the Giants passed on Adam LaRoche, he is not hitting as well as that right now, and the Pirates probably wanted someone the Giants wanted to keep (remember, they have a keeper list of their prospects; probably the Red Sox gave up players who were not on their keeper list, they lucked out that the Pirates were willing to accept those players, they were not that highly rated, they should have traded LaRoche late last season, during his usual hot streak at the end of the season, or during the off-season).