Today was a pretty lousy day for baseball.

That’s not a particularly bold or controversial statement. The Giants had two, TWO, games against the St. Louis Cardinals, with their two best pitchers taking their turns. The Cardinals sit atop the NL Central and have the best record in the majors at 37-18. They’re real darn good. But still, a win or AT LEAST a competitive loss would’ve been a little better than the whuppin’ that happened today.

It’s a well known fact by now that the Giants are getting by on their offense, almost exclusively. They lead the NL in OPS+ with 112 (.732 OPS), but rank last in the NL in ERA+ with 83 (4.11 ERA). This ain’t your slightly older brother’s Giants. But really, how bad has it been? Pretty ugly:

Bumgarner is the only Giants starter with positive WAR and that’s before today’s game. Pitching WAR has its problems, and Fangraphs ranks the pitchers a little differently, but the outlook is pretty sad.

But that just makes today’s futility at the plate all the more frustrating. I understand that today’s scores aren’t actually totally accurate. If I squint and stand up too quickly I can believe that the Giants would’ve beaten the Cardinals been slightly less humiliated if they had run out their varsity lineup: Buster Posey sat for the second game, while Angel Pagan and Pablo Sandoval remain sidelined with injuries.

Guillermo Quiroz, Joaquin Arias and Nick Noonan are, well, not very good:

So that’s my positive takeaway from this game. If this had been game 7 of a hypothetical playoffs and the Giants had the chance to play with an ideal lineup, they maybe they would’ve stood a chance against Wainwright. Maybe.

But unfortunately that’s just not the way the world works, and the Giants don’t have a reasonable Plan B if one of their starters goes down. I don’t know if you’re scared yet, but I sure am.

And yes, the pitchers. The pitchers the pitchers the pitchers. I don’t know if this is just naive or if I don’t want to admit what the xFIP dragons have been saying all along, but I don’t think Matt Cain is broken. I don’t know anything about sign-stealing, if it’s really a thing or if it’s just a convenient excuse for getting spanked, but I’m sure going to cling to that as long as it’s a viable explanation. And the 9 strikeouts and 5 perfect innings have to be a good sign, right? Right? Matt Cain Panic Level: 1.9/10.

And Madison Bumgarner? Let’s focus on the six strikeouts in six innings, rather than the five runs over that stretch. It’s one thing to accept that your team has gone from pitching-heavy to hitting-heavy, and when your rotation is Cain-Bumgarner-PrayForRain. Now, we’re just praying for rain every day. It can’t stay this bad.

But hey, no errors.

After about the 6th inning or so, I spent a while trying to figure out what the theme of tonight’s postgamer would be. First I wanted to talk about how good Ryan Vogelsong is, and say again that he’ll be getting Cy Young votes. Second I wanted to fawn over Buster Posey’s .399 OBP, and say again that he’ll be getting MVP votes. Third, I wanted to point out the offensive contributions by Hunter Pence and Marco Scutaro, and give credit where credit is due to Brian Sabean and the Front Office.

Instead, given the late hour of this post, tonight’s theme is going to be me going to bed early, and the following: Continue reading →

This was the first game that I’ve watched in about a week, and it was certainly a game worth paying attention to. Now, the games in Colorado were just ridiculous; yesterday’s game got way out of hand. Tonight’s game was never comfortable, but never out of reach. Babe Buster came up to bat in the first in a home-run situation and clubbed it out, as he’s pretty much been doing regularly since the All-Star Break. Posey’s name will be in the discussion for MVP this year; Andrew McCutchen is probably the front-runner, but Posey (and Melky Cabrera) will almost certainly be in the running.

Barry Zito was excellent. His curveball curved, his cutter cut, his slider slid, his fastball…looked like a grandma driving through the suburbs on a Sunday afternoon. He really didn’t make many mistakes, as the hits against him mostly came on relatively good pitches, or pitches out of the zone. He also didn’t walk anybody, for just the second time this year. Continue reading →