W	L	GB
LA	77	58	-	On pace to win 92 games.
GIANTS	70	66	7.5	One streak over, another must begin.

Yesterday

Giants defeated Colorado, 7-3, to end that brutal seven-game losing streak.

LA won at San Diego, 2-0. 

Today

Giants finish up at Colorado as Madison Bumgarner seeks his 17th win and a critical split of this road series. Game time is slated for 1:10 PM local, or 3:10 PM Eastern, right in the middle of our fantasy football draft. Multi-taskers, we are.

LA is at San Diego; Brett Anderson looks to make it 3 of 4. Hard-luck Andrew Cashner has the temerity to oppose.

Last Night's Game

The offense-- whether sequential, long-ball, or two-out clutch-- that had been missing since the beginning of the road trip showed up yesterday to the tune of fifteen hits, eight of them for extra bases. It wasn't just that the lineup picked up Jake Peavy; Peavy himself picked things up with two doubles, a run scored, and a RBI. Nick "The Forgotten Man" Noonan kicked off the scoring with a RBI double as he got a rare start at first base. Matt Duffy had three hits and two RBI and the top of the order-- Angel Pagan and Gregor Blanco-- both hit solo shots out of the park, in Pagan's case his first homer of the year. Peavy lasted into the sixth, allowing but four hits and a walk, and the hard-luck pitcher finally earned himself a win. The bullpen-- Lopez, Strickland, Osich, Casilla-- was its usual impregnable self. The only blot on the proceedings was the Giants' season-long trend of squandering baserunners; fifteen hits and four walks yielded seven runs because they stranded ten and hit into three double plays. 

As the ugly little chart at the top of the page shows, the Dodgers' current pace would leave them at 92-70 when it's over, and the Giants would need to go 22-4 to match it and force a tie and playoff. While it goes without saying that the Giants need to embark on a seven-game (at least) winning streak right now, LA, who are 8-2 over their last ten, need to hit a skid like real soon for this blog to have any continuing relevance. The road trip is by no means over; a Labor Day afternoon game plus two evenings in Arizona await before the Giants return home to face San Diego, Cincinnati, and those Diamondbacks again. Meanwhile, the Dodgers launch the Battle of LA at Anaheim tomorrow, the first of three, then they follow the Giants at Arizona before taking on the Rockies back at Chavez Ravine the week afterward.  We have to hope one or more of those locations contains a land mine of sorts.