DEAR GIANTS,
ARE YOU NOT COMFORTABLE IN FIRST PLACE?!
WOULD YOU RATHER BE BACK IN SECOND?! THIRD?!
No...? well, I didn't think so.
Oh and that's not all I have to say.
A quick summary of the game: both the Giants and the Brewers both put in a few hits. The difference? The Brewers managed to send 2 men home whereas the Giants could only send one home. On some crappy fielding, the Brewers loaded the bases and sent a ball out to deep right field and scored two of their base runners.
As for the Giants, we'll get on base any way we can. Sandoval hit what looked like a pop-up but ended up dropping in fair ground, earning him a single. We loaded the bases after that. Unfortunately, after scoring Sandoval, outfielder Cody Ross was left stranded on third. There were no runs scored for the Giants after that and the final score was 2-1, Lincecum stuck with the loss.
view from our seats tonight in section 109.
Let's cut to the chase.
The problem tonight:
(in my opinion)
Line-up, Line-up, Line-up
The first thing my friend said today after they announced the starting line up was, "What the hell kind of line up is that?" At the time, I didn't think much of it. I felt confident that the Giants could beat the Brewers. In my mind, the Brewers was supposed to be an easy series. Of course, it didn't turn out that way at all.
The series for the Brewers was going to be a cushion. A cushion before we played the Rockies and the Padres. With only 14 games left, it's time for us to get serious. (haven't I been saying that the past billion posts?) Instead, we're falling more behind and now we are back in that lovely place, you know, being tied with the Padres.
Tonight's line up began with Fontenot, since our usual lead-off man, Andres Torres is out for a short while due to something along the lines of a burst appendix. My first thoughts were, "where's Freddy Sanchez?" Since both him and Fontenot play second base, having Fontenot in naturally meant that Freddy was not in. The thing is, Freddy is our hottest hitter right now.
Like I said, I didn't think much of it. Fontenot was then followed up by Uribe, which is also strange. Uribe does not usually bat in the top of the line-up, but rather towards the end. This did stick out to me, but I wasn't worried quite yet.
Huff batted third followed by Posey.
Recently this has been working for the team, the two pretty much in sync. Pat Burrell was next,
then Sandoval, then Guillen, Cody Ross, and finally Tim Lincecum (who successfully bunted today, by the way). The end of the line-up didn't look so weird, but nevertheless in the end it was the problem.
In my mind, it works like this.
The perfect Giants line-up right now would look like this:
Torres, Freddy, Huff, Posey, Sandoval, Guillen, Ross, Uribe, Pitcher.
Unfortunately, Torres is out, so ideally, I would want our line-up to look like this:
Ross (I thought he served as a good lead-off man), Freddy, Huff, Posey, Burrell, Sandoval, Guillen, Uribe, pitcher.
Tonight the problem was that there was NO RHYTHM in the line up.
Fontenot starting out wasn't entirely bad, but having him in the line up means we can't have Freddy. Oh opportunity costs how you burden me.
Uribe is the most choppy part in the line-up. It was almost as if Bochy forgot to put him in and just stuck him in the second place because it was so last minute. He did nothing. There was no energy flow, and the energy flow is always at the top of the line up. Huff wouldn't be as productive as he usually is because he's lacking the energy that Sanchez usually seems to give him.
The down side to having in sync batters is that when one sucks the other sucks as well, and that seems to be the case with Posey and Huff right now. Huff had no drive tonight, so Posey had no drive. The logic behind it? Aubrey Huff has bad at-bats, Buster Posey has bad at-bats. So the whole tophalf of our line up is...just angry and frustrated at themselves.
Burrell came next. The thing is, Burrell usually doesn't play the whole 9 innings. He comes in every once in awhile, a pinch hit here or there to give us a boost, but that's about it. I guess since we were missing an outfielder we needed him. He's sort of a little jolt in the line-up as well. Sort of a yield sign, but not a stop sign like Uribe was.
Anyway, after we yielded during Burrell's at bat we move on to our third baseman Sandoval. Pablo has been slumping recently, though he did conjure up a hit tonight, which is good. While he isn't usually at the top of the line up, he usually isn't this far towards the end either. He's normally right around where Uribe is, so it was odd seeing the two of them bat at such different times instead of one after the other.
He wasn't a large problem, though like I said it was just a bit odd to see him at the end of the line up. Our outfielders bat next, Guillen up first. Guillen homered against the Dodgers recently, but didn't seem in the mood to give us a hand tonight. His at-bats generally went quick as he took a couple balls and strikes, maybe fowled a few before grounding out, lining out, popping out, or striking out. The problem with all those words is that they end with "out."
Cody Ross was up next. He seems to jump around in the line-up a lot, but usually sticking towards the end. Sporting a new shiny bald cut, the former Marlin produced some good at-bats today and found himself standing on third at one point -- only to be stranded there. He, like Guillen wasn't quite a problem, that seemed to flow just fine. At one point though, Ross was so mad after his at bat, he stabbed the ground with his bat, threw off his helmet and his gloves and all walked off into the outfield with the home plate ump shaking his head in the background; oh and of course the poor ball boy who had to collect all of his equipment!
It's hard to explain, but the line-up just LACKED FLOW.
there was no ELECTRICITY.
Nothing to get the rally going.
And this is such a bad time for Bochy to be playing with the line-up. In my opinion, it's so important right now to just play STRAIGHT GAMES. No funny moves or strange line ups. Put the hot hitters in and move the non hot hitters towards the end. An important note: Do not put Juan Uribe second in the line-up.
I'm really starting to understand that phrase: So close, but oh so far away.
Tomorrow is our last game against the Brewers before we see the...Chicago Cubs I believe, the Giants will be on the road again. Tomorrow, Barry Zito will pitch and instead of making some remark now about how we can't let the Brewers sweep us and our offense needs to step it up right now for Zito and for the sake of everyone out there; I'm just going to let his pitching tomorrow do the talking.
the most I can say right now is just...
Hang in there boys.
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