I can’t wait until Christian Friedrich’s next start. He’ll be found after the game, sitting in the team shower, shivering under the shower head, shivering in his soaking uniform.

“B-b-but I threw the ball! How did they hit it?”

Rockies Pitching Coach Bob Apodaca will turn off the shower tap, and slide down next to Friedrich.

“Son, you’re going to have to learn sooner or later. Not every team is the Giants.”

Today was Christian Friedrich’s second major league start, and he looked pretty unhittable for most of the game. Caveat: Giants, because they Giants.

It’s all downhill from here, kid.

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Tonight’s wrap is going to be pretty quick. Pretty half-assed, honestly, thanks to the fact that I spent most of the night shmoozing with BayAreaSportsGuy and company, and drinking a beer for every run that Timmy gave up.
So yeah, this game sucked, but in a very status quo kind of way. The Giants, true to fashion, managed one rally that produced two runs and made their fans not totally give up on them. Lincecum struck out 8 in 5 innings, which is just enough to keep up hope that he’s not broken and make you ignore the 10 baserunners and 4 runs he gave up. Melky Cabrera tripled, because that’s what he does on days that end in Y, and Timmy even legged out an infield hit. Yaaaawn.
Of course, it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t close to enough. The Dodgers managed to score in three separate innings, which is more than the Giants have since Sunday’s extra-inning win.
So yeah , today’s game managed to keep basically every question still open. Lincecum still strikes people out while giving up runs, a la Zack Greinke, but worse. The Giants continue to hit! sometimes, but only once or twice a game. The bullpen continues to be moohd, which is a combination of “meh” and “good.” Good enough to keep your job, but not good enough to be, well, good.
The Giants are going to continue playing, and may win or lose. Vamos Gigantes, supongo.

Stats of the Game:
13: Number of times the Giants reached base tonight
2: Number of runs the Giants scored
5: Number of innings pitched by Tim Lincecum tonight
0: Number of people who made up their minds about Tim Lincecum tonight

Bonus Stat of the Day
3: People from Twitter I met for the first time tonight

The good news, such as it is, is that you can’t get two losses for the same stupid game.

But if you can, man, it would be for this game. Nothing looked good from the seventh inning on, and very little before then. The Giants committed three errors, but deserved at least a couple more. Conor Gillaspie’s defensive flaws finally made their presence felt, and their debut was spectacular. Buster Posey looked uncomfortable at first, Theriot looked tree-like at second, and even the plays that the outfielders made looked pretty awkward.

Barry Zito and Joaquin Arias were the highlights of this game, which is a sentence we can file under “Things We Never Expected To Say, Volume 16.” Arias is making a case for regular starts, either platooning with Crawford or at third. I’m not ready to give up on Gillaspie after just one game – one awful, awful game – but today certainly didn’t help anything.

Also, enough of this crap. The strict platoon thing hasn’t failed every time, but if anything today’s game shows that it ain’t gospel. Pill, Sanchez and Theriot combined for an 0-for-12 today, and the defense was awful. I don’t mind Hector as a backup for Posey to rest him, and even as a regular battery-mate to Zito. But he is not a good enough hitter, especially against lefties, to keep Brandon Belt out of the lineup.

A simple proposal: let’s play our best players at their ideal positions. Sure, you might get some 0-fers, but you might get them anyway. You may as well throw the best players out on the field, and see what happens. I’ve been a Bochy apologist most of the time, but that’s over after this game. Today’s lineup was such crap, something’s gotta give. But it probably won’t.

Brandon Watch 2012:

Stats of the Day:

9.00: Travis Blackley’s ERA after today’s game

3.00: Travis Blackley’s ERA before today’s game

2: Starting position players who got hits today

0: Number of times Matt Kemp made an out today

Bonus Stat of the Day:

Sucked: This game