Your 2010 Giants are 7-2: Beat LA! Beat LA! Beat LA!

The Giants have won all three series they have played in so far.  They have been lucky to some degree so far, as Astros have been terrible and, well, the Pirates are the Pirates, plus they avoided Lance Berkman in Houston and Chipper Jones against Atlanta.

Still, they have faced a pretty good string of pitchers:  Oswalt, Wandy Rodriguez, Brett Myers, Tim Hudson, Derek Lowe, Kenshin Kawakami, plus Maholm and Charlie Morton.  They have all had sub-4 ERAs in recent years.  Only Burres was easy, but he was an emergency starter, so what would you expect (and the pitcher he replaced, Ross Ohlendorf, had a sub-4 ERA in 2009).  And taking out Burres start, the Giants have still averaged 5.6 runs scored in those 8 games against, again, pretty good starting pitching (at least they were in recent years).

And one thing I like to do to analyze how well an offense is doing is count the number of games where the offense scored 4 runs or more.  To me, when the offense has scored 4 runs or more, the team should win most of the time, so it did its job.  The Giants were 66-15 last season when they scored 4 runs or more (they were 12-7 when they scored exactly 4).  And that was with the lousy 4.0 average runs scored per game team of 2009.  The Giants have scored 4 runs or more 7 times in 2010 so far, which matches their 7-2 record.

Similarly for the defense - pitching and fielding - if they keep the runs allowed to 4 and under, I count that as doing their job, and that they should win most of the time.  The Giants were 81-30 when they keep their runs allowed to 4 runs or less (they were 12-12 when they scored exactly 4; as to be expected when they averaged 4 runs scored per game).  The Giants have allowed 4 runs or less 7 times in 2010 so far, which also matches their 7-2 record.

And now they face the hated D-gers.  The D-gers are 3.5 games behind us, and it has been their pitching, or lack thereof, that has dropped them to 3-5.  To show how desperate they are, they have Russ Ortiz, yes, that Russ Ortiz, in their bullpen (Colletti is one GM who loves ex-Giants, a small club including Billy Beane, the Pirates, Orioles, and I think Toronto might be one soon as well).

Game 1:  Todd Wellemeyer vs. Vicente Padilla

Wellemeyer had a nice first 6 innings, but unfortunately, possibly due to the use of the entire bullpen in the game before, Bochy brought him out for the 7th, whereupon he was beat upon.  His 6th was a bit shaky, as the announcers noted it, where he gave up a homer, flyout, then a deep flyout, and I was hoping he would go out.

However, another good reason NOT to bring him out, besides the bullpen, is that unless Bochy puts Wellemeyer into such situations where he's struggling a little, he won't ever know what Wellemeyer is capable of.  His opinion would become a self-fulfilling prophesy.  And that is something many fans don't seem to understand, particularly in the early parts of the season, or even mid-season:  sometimes you take the chance to stretch him out to see what he's capable of.  Then later, you can make a better decision on what the right decision should be.  Hence why Bochy sometimes makes decision that "anybody" can see is wrong;  sometimes, you need to take that risk/chance to learn about your player.

Padilla is not his late-2009 LA self:  2 starts, 11.42 ERA.  But that is mainly the 14 hits in 8.2 IP, as he struck out 8 and walked "only" 4, which is high but when a pitcher's K/BB ratio is 2.0 or better, he is doing well.  And he is pitching in LA, home of one of the most consistently extreme pitcher's park of the past 50 years.  That's why Jeff Weaver comes back here all the time, he looks good here, and then signs for big money elsewhere based on that, then ends up back here because he looks horrible there.

Still, this is Padilla, who, aside from pitching incredibly well for LA in late 2009, has been a mediocre to poor starter for the past 6 seasons, and it is that performance that I expected him to regress to this season, and his poor start to this season only confirms that expectation.  And he got beat up by Pittsburgh, who, as we saw this week, does not have as good an offense as the Giants do.

With a well rested pen and a pitcher's park, I think Wellemeyer can do OK to the 6th inning, whereupon our now well-rested pen can come in and shut down the D-gers the rest of the way.  And Padilla will make enough mistakes that we make him pay for it, and the Giants should sneak away with a win, despite our #5 starter facing their #1, but it's not a gimme.

Game 2:  Tim Lincecum vs. Charlie Haeger

Well, the way Lincecum has been pitching, while there is never an automatic win, we do expect days where Lincecum starts to be one in the win column.  However, this is not one of them.

Not that I think Haeger is all that good.  Looking at his historical performance, Lincecum should win this battle.  However, Haeger is a knuckleballer, and the only way to beat one is to have a lineup of patient hitters unwilling to swing at the slop unless it is a strike.

And as any Giants fan knows, our lineup is the antonym of patience, and Haeger in his first start of the season made the Marlins look silly with 12 strikeouts in 6 IP.  They are a bunch of free swingers, striking out 22% of their AB's in 2009.  The Giants, while better this year, is still a bit of a free swinging team, though as recent articles by Schulman showed, they are now in the middle, with some good at taking pitches (Renteria, Huff, DeRosa) and others not so much (and you know who they are).  Still, they are still last in the NL in pitches per PA with 3.61 (average of 3.84); Florida has a 3.98 pitch per PA.

Still, despite his good performance, he still gave up 4 runs (3 ER).  So it is not like the Marlins did no damage,.  However, they did that with only 3 hits (1 homer) and 4 walks.  Not every team can score 4 runs on 3 hits and 4 walks.  But the Giants have been pretty good at manufacturing runs this season by stringing together key walks and hits to get runs, so there is that.

I'm going to have to call this a push, it can go either way basically depending on which Haeger shows up, the one that did that to the Marlins or the one who has been showing up for the prior four seasons.

Game 3:  Barry Zito vs. Clayton Kershaw

Zito is probably off to his best start ever, certainly best as a Giants and the first time he won the first two starts in the season since 2003.  He didn't even do that in 2002, his Cy Young season, where he didn't win two games until his first start in May, and last year he didn't win his second until June 5th.  He has been known to be a slow starter and typically have a better ERA in the second half of the season, where his fanaticism with working out benefits him by him being stronger than others relatively as the season drags on.  He has also done well in D-ger Stadium, compiling a 3.86 ERA there over the years.

Still, Clayton "The Craw" Kershaw is not chopped liver himself.  He has a 2.51 ERA at home for his short MLB career (1.83 last season), and is their (so far) better version of Madison Bumgarner.  However he has had a tough 2010 season so far, only got to the 5.1 IP mark once in two starts, and had 6 walks and 5 walks, respectively in those two starts.

If he's the 2010 version, then we got this game easily, but if he the 2009 version, then we don't got a chance.  It can go either way, and I have no idea. But the good news is that he has no clue what the problem is.

Giants Thoughts

Any D-gers series is always tough.  Especially since we only have one of Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez facing them, so they get off relatively easy.  Still, Zito has been on a roll and Wellemeyer shut down the Braves for 6 IP.  This series can go either way, but with the Giants pitchers generally doing very well and the D-gers pitchers have NOT been doing very well, particularly the bullpen, I would have to think that they can pull off a series win here as well but there are two many question marks about the D-gers starting pitching to say that definitively.

Go Giants!