Torture Ball Returns…Now With More Sodium

Torture Ball is back. Madison Bumgarner’s gem was nearly undone by a near meltdown by the nearly injured Brian Wilson, who hurt his (Oblique? Ankle? Elbow?) before finishing the ninth in the most cringe-inducing fashion. You know it’s a bad inning when Jason Giambi accidently singles to load the bases.

Bottom line: Quality bounce back game from Bumgarner. He wasn’t leaving pitches up and was inducing ground balls at a Derek Loweian rate. This is the Bumgarner of the World Series, this is the Bumgarner of 2011.

The Giants continue to score runs. Melky Cabrera continues to drive in runs from the 2-hole, making Giants fans all but forget about Freddy Sanchez. I won’t forget you Freddy. With Melky-Panda-Posey, the Giants lineup isn’t imposing, but soft-tossers can’t coast through the lineup like seasons past.

Brandon Watch 2012:

-Belt: Milk Carton Status. If you have seen Brandon Belt or any of his last known associates, contact the Denver PD. Bochy should be finding ways to give Belt Abs, but instead finds reasons to NOT play him. Oh, Pill hasn’t started yet. Benched. Let’s get Nate in there. Benched. Brian Dallimore hasn’t played in a while. Benched.

-Crawford: 4 for his last 8, Probably not stoked to be leaving the spacious Coors Field. He could hit .250. Oh my God Crawford could hit .250.

Emmanuel Burriss replaced Ryan Theriot in the 8th inning for defensive purposes. I will now replace myself at GiantsPod with Charles Barkley for grammar purposes.

Stats of the Day:

5: The number of innings pitched by Bumgarner before giving up a run

4: The least number of runs scored by the Giants in any game this season

3: The number of times the Giants have scored exactly four runs, apparently the magic number

2: The number of pitches thrown by Javier Lopez, LOOGY to the max

1: The number of series won by the Giants this season, which is one more than yesterday

Postgame Wrap: Well, There Went My Plans For the Evening

Through a combination of quirky work/gym schedules, early start times and overall malaise on my part, my partner Thomas Todd has been a trooper at cranking out these postgame wraps in my absence.

I offered to finally write my first tonight; 5:40 pm start, so I figured I could watch the game, jot down some notes, and still have a pretty nice little Wednesday. I was going to go to Home Depot. Yeah, buy some wallpaper, maybe get some flooring, stuff like that. Maybe Bed, Bath, & Beyond, I don’t know, I don’t know if I would’ve had enough time.

Well, that didn’t exactly happen.

It’s hard to know what to take from this game, aside from a newfound hatred for this juiced ball bullshit, and Coors Field in general. Tim Lincecum didn’t finish the third, Manny Burriss got three hits, and the Rockies managed to score 17 runs without a homer. None of those are going to happen very often.

It’s tempting (and fun!) to overreact to Hector Sanchez’s and Brett Pill’s respective defensive issues; if Hector had managed to block Lincecum’s pitches better, a lot of things could have been different. Certainly a few people wouldn’t have moved up 90 feet/scored, but also Lincecum may have felt like he couldn’t throw in the dirt for fear of another squirt-away. That certainly didn’t make the difference in this game, but hey. If Brett Pill hadn’t clanked twice on that 8-3-2-1-5-3-5-6 single by Ramon Hernandez, it could’ve saved a run or two. It wouldn’t have made the difference, but hey again.

Defensive acumen as part of a player’s skill set comes down to a few marginal small sample sizes that can have disastrous consequences. When they say that a player is spending extra time in the minors to work on his defense, and all we can see are those shiny hitting numbers, this may be the kind of thing they’re trying to avoid.

Fun fact: Before Carlos Gonzalez did it tonight, the last player to triple twice in the same game was Brett Pill, who did it on September 17 last year. Mark DeRosa batted cleanup that day.

Enough about that stupid game. Here’s my best shot at some Thomas Todd-style stats of the day:

47: Minutes combined between the Bottom of the 3rd and the Top of the 4th innings

34: Total hits in this game

25: Total runs in this game

10: Total pitchers used

10: Errors for the Giants this season

7: The position that Ryan Theriot should never, ever play

6: Number of times I wondered what Todd Helton was smiling at

5.8: Giants average runs/per so far this season

4: Hours of my life I’ll never get back

Shingles: I hear they suck

3: Times I considered changing my fantasy team name to “Pocket Full of Shingles”

2: Total hits for Angel Pagan this season

1: More stupid game in that stupid stadium before the Home Opener

Bonus stat of the day:

1: Rank among NL teams in Runs/game. #YCPB