Your 2009 Giants are 77-66: Sweeping D-Rox, Part Deux?

Just like last time, the Giants need another unbelievable three game sweep to bring themselves within spitting distance of the D-Rox in the wild card race. Unlike last time, they are now in a horrible streak of playing and even a sweep would only bring them within 1.5 games of the lead. The D-Rox showed great poise and stability in not collapsing after getting shown up by the Giants that way, just as the Giants showed great poise and stability in not collapsing after getting shown up by the D-Rox the week before in Colorado.

Now we got the rubber match with the D-Rox playing three in SF, and the Giants needing another miracle sweep. Aiding that possibility is the fact that the rotation gods have the Giants sending out the same three starters who spearheaded that sweep to face Colorado again. Can they do it again?

Game 1: Lincecum vs. Jason Hammel

Lincecum with rest facing one of the D-Rox's mid to back of the rotation guys. Hammel, however, has pitched well in the two games since facing the Giants. And he didn't really do that poorly against the Giants, with good relief, he would have won facing Matt Cain. 2.92 ERA on the road now, and he has pitched well in SF. It should be another close game with Lincecum squeeking by unless Tim is too amped up and starts throwing wild. However, those days of Lincecum should be behind us now and he should show us he's the gamer who shall lead us back to the Playoff Land once again.

I was impressed with Lincecum going public with his thoughts about the Giants position right now, and what they have to do to get back into the playoff chase. What was impressive was that he did that without pointing the finger at anyone other than the team itself. That is showing off more leadership than he had shown before, showing development and maturity. This season's bonus playoff chase is paying off with some of our young players learning things about themselves that will pay off in future playoff chases.

Game 2: Zito vs. Ubaldo Jimenez

Last time, Ubaldo lost to Lincecum in a duel of the two team's pitching titans, ace vs. ace. This time, while Zito has been pitching better, like an ace at times, Ubaldo should get the upper hand. He pitched as well as usual in the two starts since, and just has pitched well all season, 3.32 ERA overall, 3.42 ERA on the road, 2.60 ERA in the second half, 3.55 ERA in 4 starts in SF. Does not look good.

Looks even worse looking at Zito. While he has had a stellar second half, it looks like he left it all on the field with his great outing against Colorado, where he went 8.1 IP, 8 hits, 1 ER/R, 1 walk, and 7 strikeouts. In the two starts since, he didn't go past the 5th inning once, and had a 5.00 ERA. We need the Zito of that start and the 8 starts before that where he had a 1.92 ERA. Without that Zito, we can forget about winning this game.

The only silver lining is that in 10 career starts against Colorado, Zito has a 1.92 ERA. Talk about coincidences!!!

Game 3: Cain vs. Jorge de la Rosa

Jorge de la Rosa is another of the D-Rox's mid-to-back of rotation starters. However, just like with Hammel, don't let that fool you. Though he has a 4.37 ERA overall, he is much better with his splits: 3.84 ERA on the road, 3.21 ERA in the second half, 1.32 ERA in 2 starts and 3 appearances in SF. These all speak well of his chances.

However, Cain is no push over either. With a 2.61 ERA this season and improved DOM%, Cain has took a step up in his pitching performance this season. However, he has not been the same in his last 8 starts, 3.83 ERA, which is good but not as good as he was earlier in the season. And he has been steadily getting worse: in August, his ERA was 3.74, in September thus far, 4.15.

In fact, looking at his starts this season, his strikeout rate appears to have started its downslide around the time he went to the All-Star game, which is just after he had that ball hit him on his hand. Not that he hasn't pitched well, any pitcher would be glad to have his stats, but his K/9 has dipped severely - only 5.9 K/9 in his last 6 starts, though at least he has been able to reduce his walks too, keeping his K/BB ratio at a high 2.25, which is good for starter.

So this looks like it will be a battle to win the rubber match of the 3-game series and it can go either way, though I must note that de la Rosa is on an uptrend and Cain has been on a downtrend. It also don't look great that Cain had his two of his worse games in months, heck, even the season, against Colorado last time and LA in his last start, meaning Cain had a chance to step it up for the Giants twice already and didn't. Despite a 3.48 ERA for his career, he has a 4.13 ERA against the D-gers, though at least he has a 3.16 ERA against the D-Rox. However, in this season, Cain has a 3.60 ERA against the D-Rox and 15 walks vs. 23 strikeouts in 25 IP plus gave 5 HR.

Giants Thoughts

Same as last series, both the last series against Colorado and the last series we just played against LA, though now even more so: we need to sweep. Luckily, we did sweep them last time, but since then our Giants look like they left everything on the field in that series while the D-Rox went on to beat up on the teams they faced, the teams they were suppose to beat up on, going 9-1 on their homestand and 10-1 after getting swept by the Giants. If they didn't lose twice to the Padres over the weekend, and almost lost all three, the Giants were pretty much out of the race without much chance of recovering.

Even now, if the Giants were to somehow sweep them, we would still be 1.5 games behind them. The good news is if the Giants were to accomplish that, the D-Rox would be on a 5 game losing streak, played poorly in two straight series on the road against San Diego and San Francisco, and would be facing more road games (and tougher teams) headed into the few weeks of the season, while the Giants would face weaker teams and play more games at home.

However, the Giants look like they are more headed towards winning the series 2-1, which would leave us at 3.5 games behind them with only 16 games left to go and none against them. While I have seen (and read about) teams that blew a big lead like that with that many games left to play, the odds are not that great that the D-Rox will blow it like that. Particularly since they have played so well since Tracy took over, and since they have played even better when the games counted while the Giants have struggled to stay at .500.

The only two months where the Giants played above .500 - June and August - took the performances of players doing very well. In June, it was Sandoval breaking out and supported by hot hitting by Schierholtz, Rowand, and Ishikawa, among others. In August, it was the entire pitching staff carrying the team into the win column. As I noted in the last series, we need another group effort of hot play to carry us closer to the D-Rox and to push past them.

I wonder what Bochy is going to do this series. Ishikawa inexplicable has been hot at home this whole season, a point driven home by his 3 hits last night. Does he keep Travis in the lineup for Colorado? If he does, then where would Uribe play, as Sandoval would be at 3B and Sanchez is at 2B, which means then he supplants Renteria at SS, which would hurt Renteria's feeling (though he hasn't really hit for much of anything in September). Sanchez hasn't done that well either since his return, so perhaps he might sit for Uribe sometimes, but he had two hits himself last night. But you can't sit Uribe the way he is hitting right now either. Looks like Renteria sits again tonight and Ishikawa and Uribe starts.

And in the outfield, Schierholtz, Rowand, and Winn have not been hitting at all in September. Will we be seeing more of Velez, Torres, and Bowker in the games to come? Not today, outfield of Velez, Rowand, Winn. Winn has been getting on base lately, so Bochy is going with the hot hand. Lewis actually is 6 for 7 against Hammel but Bochy, like last time, is saving him in case we can pinch hit against Hammel in the game with runners on base. We'll see how that works, though I must note that between starting Velez and Lewis, I would have to go with Velez right now. And Rowand vs. Lewis, I would have to go with Rowand's defense, particularly in AT&T.

The big news is that Sandoval is finally batting 4th and Molina 5th. This is the first time all season that Molina has not batted 4th when he was in the lineup. It is a changing of the guard, a sign for next season when Sandoval will be the big RBI bat in the lineup and Molina most probably is gone. Finally, this should have been done probably at the start of August when Molina had been scuffling up to then (if I recall right, he started hitting again in August).

And when will we be seeing Buster Posey? We are basically nearing desperation point now. I don't see Bochy playing him against the D-Rox - you win with those who brung you to this point, so you have to go with Molina in the series - but will he see any starting action at all? One would hope so and the sooner the better.