Giants 1, Angels 8

Well, today was yet another bad game for the Giants. This one really had no socially redeemable qualities if you are a Giants' fan. Although Jonathan Sanchez only gave up 2 earned runs, unlike Kevin Correia last night, he probably deserved to give up more than even the 4 total runs he gave up. 10 hits (including 3 doubles) in 5 innings is WAY too many. The only thing that saved him was that, like Correia last night, he gave up ZERO walks. The 5 strikeouts were nice, but it is amazing to me that if not for a Eugenio Velez error on an easy bounding ball at 3B, he would only have given up 2 runs. He had good control as far as hitting the strike zone, but his control WITHIN the zone was lacking. You get the ball up…..and Major League hitters will hit it.

After Sanchez left the game, Tyler Walker came in and gave up another couple of runs on 2 hits; the big blow was a HR by Erick Aybar. Another too good pitch that allowed a HR by a skinny little SS who has all of 1 HR in 234 Major League ABs. After giving up 2 runs with no outs, Walker then got the next 3 batters to end the inning. Brian Wilson followed and gave up another run on 2 singles, while collecting 1 strikeout. Wilson was somewhat victimized by circumstances in his inning. The first hit he gave up was a groundball that was just out of the reach of Ryan Rohlinger at 3B. The second hit was a little looper that landed between the secondbaseman and the rightfielder. Personally, I think both Velez at 2B and I believe it was Tyler Graham in RF got pretty bad jumps on the ball….but in any case, neither ball was hit very hard. Bartolome Fortunato also gave up a run in his 1 inning of work. His run was richly deserved as he gave up 3 hits and a walk. Luckily, all 3 outs in his inning were by strikeouts or he would have given up more than just the one run. Bottom line is that every Giants pitcher gave up at least one run. That is never a good thing, no matter what the circumstances. The only good news is that the walk by Fortunato was the only walk allowed by Giants' pitchers on the day.

The news offensively was….……….well there was no offense to discuss. The Giants only had 4 hits, all singles by Aaron Rowand, Daniel Ortmeier, Rich Aurilia and Brian Bocock. Bocock had the only RBI on the day. Ortmeier also stole a base. Eugenio Velez did walk twice and stole a base. But that was negated by the fact that he was on 3B with 1 out, when he got caught too far off 3B on a ball hit right to the thirdbaseman. Velez made the second out and snuffed out one of the few scoring opportunities the Giants had all day. Just a bone-head play. It looks like the Giants are giving Justin Leone a look as a super utility guy. Leone played 3B, 1B, 2B and RF all in this one game. Unfortunately, he also took an 0 for 4 collar with a strikeout.

All in all an ugly game. An 8-1 snoozer where you heard a lot more Giants fans groaning and moaning than you heard balls hitting Giants bats. For those interested, I will post some photos after we get back from dinner or tomorrow morning at the latest..