After hyping the rivalry in the last post, I may as well talk about the games themselves. Admittedly, this is much easier to do when the Giants win. Let's face it. We didn't know what Barry Zito was going to bring to this game. Down in Los Angeles, on May 7th, in six innings he gave up 3 runs on 8 hits and four walks, striking out 3.
Maybe you'll want to stop here and look at the box score for a moment. It will all come back to you--the game with late inning errors by Conor Gillaspie, Steve Edlefsen, and Buster Posey. By the end of it all, the Dodgers had blown it open (with a handful of bunts!), winning 9-1. You might also recall that Travis Blackley and Brett Pill also made appearances in this game, and Blanco was still a bench player back then. Things can change quickly, can't they?
Tonight, the Giants turned the deficit around and won 8-0. That's more like the answer to the trivia question than it is a proposition concerning the iron law of baseball necessity, since I wouldn't want the Dodgers to turn around Ryan Vogelsong's 2-1 victory over Clayton Kershaw in their rematch tomorrow. Not at all. Zito struggled a bit with command, but in seven innings, he gave up only three hits (with two coming in the seventh), three walks, and struck out four.
What's more important after a disappointing road trip is that the Giants jumped out front early on offense. Gregor Blanco, Melky Cabrera, Angel Pagan, and Pablo Sandoval all had multi-hit games, snapping out of their more-or-less slumps at the same time. Joining them in the parade was Hector Sanchez, who went 2-for-4 with two RBIs. Despite the odd fact that Sanchez has a higher batting average than on base percentage, we should recognize that he continues to be one hell of an overachieving backup catcher.
Revel in those eight runs and thirteen hits while you can. Tomorrow is Kershaw.
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