Media's Biased Influence, Once Again

One of my pet peeves about the media is that they bias their writing, which either influences the audience to feel a certain way, and/or caters to that stance.  As usual, the Giants offense is good boy that gets punished.

One reporter notes, "Given eight innings against one of the league's worst bullpens, the Giants couldn't overcome a deficit..."  It was 8-0 and they scored 5 runs in 8 innings.  Even Murderer's Row Yankees rarely overcame an 8-0 deficit, though (had to count them) they had an amazing 35 games out of 152 where they scored 9 or more runs (not going to check how many 8 run deficits are overcome by a team).  And that's a 5.63 ERA on the part of the bullpen, not exactly stellar.


Another newspaper similarly headlined that the Giants couldn't overcome Barry Zito's start, like that is the offense's fault.

They scored 5 runs, which is plenty enough to win most games.  There aren't any team today that can regularly overcome an 8-0 deficit.  Even the best offense would have trouble scoring 9 runs, while down 8 runs.  The offense did well to do what they did.  The headline should have been more about Zito's poor start exacerbated by poor defense, not about the offense not overcoming an 8-0 deficit.

The biggest comeback win this season was 6 runs in the NL.  Only 47 of the 706 games played in the NL this season even had one team score 9 runs, let alone come back from an 8-0 deficit.  The Giants offense did a great job coming back.  At least the Chronicle acknowledged that, noting "never-say-die" spirit.

Giants Showing More Offensive Fight

That's what I've been saying since Matt Cained the D-backs with his 2-run double and broke up that doubleplay, the Giants have been showing a lot more fight, either winning the games or at least coming back despite being behind, though there have been plenty of games where they overcame deficits to win.  Cain showed the offense how it's done, and he has won his last two starts because of the offense, not in spite of it, as he hasn't been quite the Cain we know and love.

This is the spirit a team needs to win their division and go deep into the playoffs.  I'm still hoping that the May 12th game was the turning point for our team.  So far, it has been.