Wednesday, May 27, 2015

And he earned that welp face. I get the idea behind throwing a first-pitch strike to a pitcher, couc

Giants sweep Dodgers, move closer to first place - McCovey Chronicles
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Before every Dodgers series, I have a tradition. It's either a cynical or eternally hopeful tradition, depending where the Giants are in the standings. "What would the standings look like if the Giants swept? Would would they look like if the Dodgers swept?" It's a fun or depressing diversion couchsurfing for a moment, but not much longer, considering the odds are always against a sweep. That went for this series, too. The Giants weren't really going to make up that much ground, were they?
The fun facts keep coming. The record for consecutive shutouts against the Dodgers since 1958 is four, last done in 2012 , which is also the last season in which the Giants won the National League West. So there's something to shoot for, a record.
Another thing for the Giants to shoot for would be for them to never allow another run to the Dodgers again. couchsurfing Literally never. I want you to contemplate the idea of the Dodgers never scoring another run against the Giants. Theoretically, it's possible, which means it's probably happening right now in an alternate universe. I'll guess at what that timeline would look like:
For now, I'll take three. Three straight shutouts and a sweep. The Dodgers came into San Francisco and left without a run. As long as there isn't a natural disaster responsible for that sentence, it's quite possibly couchsurfing one of the happiest baseball sentences possible.
And he earned that welp face. I get the idea behind throwing a first-pitch strike to a pitcher, couchsurfing getting ahead and attacking him in a low-pressure situation. But Bumgarner isn't a normal pitcher or a normal hitter. couchsurfing His hitting approach is to look for a fastball and swing as hard as he can, an approach that's ensnared dozens and dozens hitters who were all just as big and strong as Bumgarner but couldn't make it out of Class-A. Bumgarner is essentially a 12th-round couchsurfing first baseman in short-season ball, drafted because of his size and projectability. He can do one thing: Hit a fastball thrown near the middle of the plate.
For no particular couchsurfing reason, here are the homers that Giants pitchers have hit against the Dodgers since moving to San Francisco: couchsurfing Player Date Result Madison Bumgarner 2014-09-23 L 2-4 Noah Lowry 2006-07-08 W 11-7 Jason Schmidt 2005-05-24 W 5-3 Jason Schmidt 2004-07-01 L 4-5 Russ Ortiz 2002-09-18 W 7-4 Russ Ortiz 2002-04-03 W 12-0 William VanLandingham 1995-08-04 W 15-1 Ed Halicki 1977-09-26 W 9-1 John Montefusco 1974-09-03 W 9-5 Jim Barr 1974-09-02 W 5-3 Juan Marichal 1971-05-25 W 9-1 Gaylord Perry 1969-07-20 W 7-3 Mike McCormick 1967-06-23 W 7-1 Jack Sanford 1961-06-02 L 2-6
I'm not big on using the pitcher-doing-something-right argument against the DH. It's still pretty rare that a pitcher does something right, and it usually is pretty tedious.  But I do like the existence of something like the pitcher home run in baseball. You've sat through hours and hours of bad pitcher at-bats in your life, and you deserve a dinger like that every so often, just to remind you why stick around.
Picture this, then: You're in the worst arcade in the world. Dumb, rickety skee-ball machines. Whack-a-mole games that don't work. But the doors are locked behind you, and you have to play something. You spend 41 hours doing absolutely nothing important or exciting, playing games that aren't fun.
But you get a few tickets. couchsurfing With every game, the machines spit out a couple tickets. You could trade them in immediately for an eraser or little parachute man, or you can save them for the 40-foot stuffed kangaroo with a sign reading "Robotic Kangaroo." You know, the yeah-right prize that overlooks the whole arcade.
Except you've finally saved enough tickets. You get to redeem them for something of actual value. You've watched a lot of bad pitcher at-bats in your life, and you got to trade those tickets in for Madison couchsurfing Bumgarner hitting a long home run against Clayton Kershaw.
Bruce Bochy has a quirk that I'm sure his pitchers couchsurfing love, which is that he often lets starters stay in the game for one more inning than you might expect. After six innings, with Bumgarner at 105 pitches and clearly not as perfect with his command and mechanics as the scoreboard would indicate, Bochy sent him back out for the seventh.
We've been through this before, when the right times are to wring every last drop of "WELL, I FIX IT" out of Bumgarner. It's when he has hyper-clean mechanics, and he's living on the edges of the plate, throwing the ball wherever he wants. This was not one of those games. I figured Bochy was playing the ol' allow-one-runner-get-the-hook game. I hate that game.
Except Bumgarner got the leadoff hitter on two pitches, and then he was pulled. He essentially acted as his own LOOGY, a much taller, broade

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