The Giants Baseball Blog

The Giants have been one of the worst teams in baseball away from AT&T Park this season at 9-15, but they're going to have to turn things around on this one, starting with the NL-leading Cardinals in St. Louis. The Giants record is slipping, and so is there spot in the NL West standings, and the big reason why has been their miserable play away from San Francisco. It wasn't more evident than it was on the teams recent painful roadie through Canada and Denver, but they couldn't even get themselves right in at least one of their mini two-game set with the A's over at the O.co. One big reason for the drastic home/road splits is, of course, the struggling starting pitching. Matt Cain's ERA (5.46), Madison Bumgarner's (3.55), Tim Lincecum's (5.86) and especially Barry Zito's (10.19) are all significantly higher  when they pitch away from the thick, foggy atmosphere on the San Francisco Bay. On the positive side of this, these guys' track records sug...

Since your reading this blog, you're probably no stranger to the fact that Ryan Vogelsong, one of the Giants steadiest starters the last 2 seasons before his slow start to 2013, will be shelved for the next 6 weeks with a fracture on his throwing hand. The question now for a team who's pitching staff was already working it's way out of a funk before this injury, is what do they do know? Wouldn't you know it, Vogey had been the Giants worst starter heading into his start Monday night, but coincidentally was turning in his best effort to date with a 5 inning, 3-hit taming of the powerful Washington Nationals. He was starting to look like the pre-2013 Vogey, hitting his spot with his low-90's fastball and showing complete command with that curve and change. Who knows if this was the first step towards him regaining his form or not, but nevertheless, we'll have to wait until July to see what kind of pitcher he'll be after this surgery. For a pitcher to have a ...

After playing their two worst games of the 2013 seasons north of the border in Toronto, the Giants got back on track Thursday in Colorado. They came back from an early 6-run deficit to beat the Rockies in game one of a 4-game set and will look to feed off that momentum throughout the weekend. In each game up in Toronto, the Giants starting pitcher put the team behind the 8-ball significantly early on. Barry Zito got knocked around pretty good on Tuesday night, but the real concern coming out of that series has to be with Ryan Vogelsong. I talked extensively about Vogey's struggles in our last post, so I won't keep beating a dead horse, but we're 1/4 of the way through the season, and it's really time to start assessing performances. Needless to say, Vogelsong has been one of the worst starters in the game up to this point  and is now sitting at 1-4 with a 8.06 ERA and 1.84 WHIP. The other starter I'm starting to worry about is Matt Cain, who's been dealing wit...

For the last 5+ years, the Giants have had what many consider one of the top pitching staffs in all of baseball, top to bottom. This year, however, their starting pitching has taken a major step back, and the bullpen isn't quite as bullet-proof as it's been the past few seasons. After nearly being swept by the struggling Phillies, the Giants have started out behind the 8-ball in their 4-game set with Atlanta, as Ryan Vogelsong had yet another tough outing Thursday night that pushed his ERA up to 7.78 through his 7 starts. Vogey gave up 6 runs on 7 hits through 4 1/3 and surrendered his league-leading 9th home run of the season. As bad as things have been with Cain and Lincecum this year, Vogelsong has had the roughest go of it through the season's first 6 weeks, and it's gotten to the point where even Bruce Bochy is showing some concern. The three right-handers in the rotation (Cain, Lincecum and Vogey) carry a combined ERA in the 6's, and when asked about the str...

After getting swept in San Diego by lowly Padres, the Giants had a statement to make in Arizona, and they turned what started out as a miserable road trip into a decent one by sweeping the D-Backs in Arizona. It was like the tale of two teams in each of the two series' on that road trip, as the Giants the Giants just kept finding ways to lose in San Diego then turned into the comeback machine again in Arizona. I figured it was going to be a tough roadie after the way the first two games of the trip went. First off, the Giants got another beautiful effort out of Tim Lincecum that was all for not. Timmy threw 7 innings of 2 run ball, striking out 9 Padres and giving the Giants more than enough opportunity to take control of the game, but the offense just couldn't figure out Andrew Cashner. Then in game two, things fell apart late and the defense came up with some costly mistakes, something you rarely see this team do. The bullpen was getting beat up a bit, the starting pitching...