The Giants Baseball Blog

After taking the first 4 games of their mini 6 game home stand, the Giants narrowly missed walking away with a 6-game sweep as they battled the D-Backs into extra innings in both of their losses. With the Diamondbacks taking 2 out of 3 in the series, it pulls them to within a half game of the 2nd place Giants, who are now 1.5 back of the first place Rockies. It's really a shame they couldn't quite squeak out Wednesday's game to back a terrific outing by Madison Bumgarner and take the series vs. Arizona, but everyone will happily take a 4-2 stint anytime. Bumgarner has been the Giants default ace throughout the first month of the season, and he showed you exactly why Wednesday, going 7.1 innings, allowing 1 run on 5 hits and a walk to go with 7 punch-outs. The performance lowered his ERA to 1.87 and his WHIP to 0.89 to go with his 3-0 record. As great as MadBum was Wednesday though, the two key starts during this home stand in my eyes though came from the arms of Tim Lince

After starting off the road trip by taking 3 of 4 in Chicago and winning in comeback fashion, the Giants came just short of pulling off two comeback wins in the first two games of their series with the Brewers. In game one, the inevitable happened as Barry Zito came tumbling back to earth and his 16-start team winning streak came to an end as the Brewers really teed off on him. It was the worst I've seen Zito look since early last year as he just wasn't fooling anyone and didn't have his crisp command working for him but it was one game in a live yard and I'm confident he'll get back on track in his next outing back home. Ryan Vogelsong had the complete opposite luck in Wednesday's game, as the Brewers jumped him for 3 early runs, but he nailed down after to turn in a very solid effort. It's really been only one Brewer's hitter that the Giants haven't been able to figure out and that's been Yuniesky Betancourt. Had it not been for his grand sla

Through the first week of the season, the Giants pitching was on point and it had to be, cause their lineup wasn't giving them much support. However, they've picked things up in week 2, and head in to Sunday's game in Chicago with a chance to take 3 of 4 from the Cubbies. The two wins in this series have come behind the arms of Ryan Vogelsong and Madison Bumgarner, who each earned victories in opposite fashion. Vogelsong gave up five runs early on in the series opener on Thursday, but buckled down after that, and ended up pitching well enough to allow the Giants to come back from the early 5-run deficit. Then on Saturday, Madison Bumgarner had the Cubs hitters absolutely stuck until the 7th inning, when they finally broke through for 2 runs against him. Still, the start was good enough to earn MadBum his 3rd consecutive victory to start the season, and he'll carry a 1.77 ERA and 0.94 WHIP into his next start. The starting pitching, particularly Bumgarner and Zito, has

The Giants' rotation was considered one of the better ones in baseball coming in, and they certainly haven't disappointed through the first 4 games of the season. After Matt Cain's solid outing in the opener that the Giants couldn't support offensively, things have gone all good for the Orange and Black. Madison Bumgarner followed Cain's start with 8 shutout innings of baseball in game two, and although he didn't do it in spectacular fashion, Tim Lincecum got the W in his 2013 debut in the rubber match with LA and didn't allow a run despite walking 7 over 5 innings of work. All these performances led up to another big one, as the Giants came home to raise the flag for their 2013 home opener, and Barry Zito picked right up where he left off in last years game 5 vs. St. Louis in the NLCS. Zito went 7 shutout innings, and displayed a lot of the traits that made him successful in the 2nd half of last season and in October. He was in the strike-zone constantly,

In one of the more frustrating openers in recent memory, Clayton Kershaw showed exactly why he's considered by many the best pitcher in the game. Not only did he shut down the Giants and complete a game in under 100 pitches, but he also homered to drive in the games first run. There just weren't a lot of positives to take out of this one on the Giants side, outside of the fact that Cain was pretty darn impressive himself after that rocky first inning. Had it not been for that 30-pitch effort in the first, Cain may have been able to take the ball into the 8th inning like Kershaw did and maybe things turn out differently, but unfortunately the early season pitch count forced Cainer out after 6. It took him a few innings to really get command of the fastball, but after that, he had everything working smoothly as evident by his 8 strikeouts and just one walk over the 6 frames. And in typical, pre-2012 Giants fashion, they were unable to support Matty when he was out there throwin