Lincecum Deals

Now that's what we like to see out of Tim Lincecum. Seven innings of shutout ball, four hits, four walks, eight strikeouts. The stadium radar gun even had him hitting 100 mph in the first.

The woeful Giants offense played along, giving Lincecum a small lead to work with. Vizquel hit a very un-cheap homer to open the scoring, then run No. 2 came on a very un-Giants sequence of double, grounder, grounder.

Then came the bullpen, well-schooled in these kinds of things. For reasons I can't fathom, Kline was summoned to pitch to the left-handed Cruz and Hernandez to start the eighth. Perhaps Bochy liked the performance in the Yankees game and wanted to see if the semi-good times could continue. Alas, Kline gave up a pair of seeds and left the game with runners on second and third, no out. Correia delivered the coup de grace, via Mike Cameron. After that, the bullpen shut the Padres down.

This is just how the Giants have to win games. Great starting pitching, stingy bullpen work, and a few scuffling runs. Then maybe they can eke it out in the Xteenth. Hooray for the win and three in a row, but this doesn't mean things are turned around.

Comments

[Frank]

Man, where does all the hostility for Kline come from? He's not an all star and far from my favorite player, but he is certainly competent and not at all a bad call for that situation. And he's not even deserving of all the blame there. It certainly was not two "seeds." First guy singles, Schierholtz misplays the ball then fails to hustle after it, allowing Cruz to take 2nd. Next hitter hits a long fly ball that should have been easily caught. Instead of running back hard on the ball, Randy Winn lopes after it (having misread the ball), and misses what should have been a fairly easy catch. Instead of man on first, one out, now there are men on 2nd and 3d, no outs.
For the season, Kline has been pretty effective. In April his ERA was 3.38. The runs last night were the first runs he's given up in June (his June ERA is still just 1.59). May wasn't so good, but his numbers were skewed by the bad outing against Oakland where he loaded the bases then gave up the slam to Ellis. He had one other bad outing in June where he gave up an ER without getting an out, when Hennessey melted down and gave up Kline's run and a couple of his own. Last night is a good example of how his ERA gets inflated - he gets 2 ERs counted against him when one hitter really should have been retired and, if the defense had been better, they may have held them from scoring at all. So, his ERA goes from 3.60 to 4.50