Giants (7) vs Rockies (9)

The Giants again had not enough offense until it was too late. The regulars are still mostly in a slump with Randy Winn (.043), Edgar Renteria (.263), Bengie Molina (.238) and Aaron Rowand going a combined 2 for 10 on the day. Even starters Pablo Sandoval and Kevin Frandsen, who have been hitting well, got in on the act with a combined 0 for 4. Of the starters, only Travis Ishikawa stood out with a 2 for 3 performance. Of course, with no one ahead or behind him in the lineup hitting, Travis had no RBI or runs scored.

The score wasn't as close at it appears. It was 9-3 going into the bottom of the 9th. In the 9th, the Giants scored 4 runs on the strength of yet another 2 out HR by Ryan Rohlinger. This time with 2 men on base. Is it too early in his career to start calling Rohlinger "Mr. March"? You may recall that Ryan did this same thing last year, when he had some big hits late in games during the spring.

The pitching was impressive, at least the pitching that mattered. Ronnie Ray had a terrible outing, giving up 5 runs on 4 hits and 2 walks.....and that was just in 1 inning. Pat Misch continues his one good game, one bad game pattern by giving up 3 runs (2 earned) in his inning of work. He gave up 3 hits and a walk (plus an error). Too many baserunners to be sure, but he was victimized a little by bad luck (or bad infield positioning). On one base hit, with a man on first breaking on the pitch, the ball was hit to where Manny Burris HAD been. Manny had broke to cover 2B and even though he stopped and made a lunge for the ball........a weak ground ball got under his glove for a basehit. On another basehit, the exact same thing happened on the opposite side of the field only this time Renteria was covering 2B and he was able to stop the ball from getting through to the outfield, but it was an infield base hit. Two ground balls that could have been double plays, but the wrong guys were covering 2B.......just bad luck for Misch. The other run was given up by Henry Sosa who allowed 2 hits in the 9th and struck out 1.

The pitchers who are going to be on the team fared MUCH better. Matt Cain had another good outing. He threw 3 shutout innings allowing 3 hits and striking out 3 Rockies. The only really hard hit ball was Clint Barmes' triple. Cain was in control all the way. Bobby Howry pitched another perfect inning to keep his spring ERA at 0.00. Jeremy Affeldt threw 2 innings today and appears to be over his earlier mechanical problems. He allowed 1 hit and 1 walk, while tallying 1 strikeout. Affeldt looked MUCH better than he did earlier in the spring.

Defensively, it was a tight game, with one exception. Emmanuel Burriss continues to make stupid mistakes and make errors on easy plays. He committed another 2 errors today, both on easy groundballs that were hit right to him. On one play the ball landed right at his feet and he still had plenty of time to get the runner, but he panicked and could not find the handle on the ball, reaching down and missing it 2 or 3 times. I don't know what has happened to Burriss, I don't remember seeing this from him until this past Arizona Fall League season.

In what has been a pattern in past springs, the Rockies used only 17 players in the game, while the Giants used 26. Clint Barmes went 4 for 4 and 7 Rockies starters had 4 or more plate appearances. For the Giants Bowker had 4 and Ishikawa and Renteria had 3 PA's........no one else had more than 2. Also the Rockies starter went 4 innings and they even had a reliever go 3.2 innings. Heck.....the Giants haven't even had a starter go more than 3.0 innings. Yet another reason why Spring Training is hard to handicap.