... Into A Lot More Wreckage

On the heels of a brutal, 13-5 shellacking in LA three nights ago, the Giants were hammered again, by a count of 13-3, last night in Cincinnati. Pitchers' park, hitters' park, this time zone, that time zone, rain delay, no delay... none of it seems to matter when you're on the downward spiral.

The numbers from this latest debacle are.. well.. kinda amazing. Consider this: The Reds banged out 16 hits, received a positively ungodly 12 walks, with one hit batsman and one reaching on an error. Given 30 baserunners, they scored 13 runs, had two thrown out on the bases, and left fifteen men on base.

Heaven knows how many runs they might've scored if they'd hit with a little more efficiency!

Matt Cain's Game Score of 3 was the lowest of any Giant starter this season. The previous mark, 8, was set by Matt Moore-- two days ago. Yep, we're turnin' it around, all right...

Who needs the long ball? The Reds scored 13 runs without benefit of a homer. Who needs the big inning? They never scored more than 3 in any inning-- but they scored in 7 out of 9 innings.

Billy Hamilton, whose average and OBP were barely north of Gorky Hernandez' coming into the game, gave a one-day "Leadoff Man" clinic: 3-for-4 with 2 walks, 4 stolen bases, 4 runs scored. We still don't think he'll be a real leadoff man until he learns to take a walk every 5 AB or so, but at age 26 we sure do like him as a player.

Over on the Giants website comments page, one known as OAKMAN refers unfailingly to Hunter Strickland as "The Arsonist Formerly Known as Strickland." We'll now petition OAKMAN to come up with an appropriate nickname for Cory Gearrin. Has a 1.54 ERA ever been so deceiving? Gearrin kept his one-walk-per-inning ratio steady-- he now has 12 BB in 11.2 IP-- and once again allowed all 3 of his inherited runners to score, thus inflating Matt Cain's already-bruised ERA by several decimal points. If Hunter Strickland is "The Arsonist", what does that make Gearrin? "The Inflater?" "The Doormat?" "The Turnstile?" (We kinda like that last one.)

Note that since April 10, the home opener, the Giants still haven't matched their longest winning streak of the season-- two.

And on a positive note, it appears it won't take much for the 49ers to have a better season than the Giants in 2017!