Giants: Hard to win when you don’t score

By Art Spander

Bruce Bochy was talking about the little things, about moving a runner, about laying down a bunt. It’s the big thing that’s beating the Giants, an inability to score, whatever which way, a ground out, a home run. And when you can’t score, you can’t win. That’s a sporting truism. And right now, a San Francisco Giants flaw.

Everyone was so worried about Matt Cain, the Giants starter, winless since the middle of last season. What happens if Cain gets battered around as he did in his last start against the Rockies? The question was academic. San Francisco’s offensive woes seem to be endemic. Cain had his best game of the year. So encouraging. The Giants, beaten 4-0 by Toronto on a chilly, Candlestick-type Tuesday night at AT&T Park, had another scoreless round — shut out for the second time in three games.

Three runs over the last four games for the Giants — who somehow won one of those games, but none of the last three. “We ran into some well-pitched games the last two nights,’’ said Bochy. No question. It was lefthander J.A. Happ on Tuesday night for the Blue Jays. He was within one out of his first complete-game shutout in six years. It was righthander Aaron Sanchez on Monday night in the 3-1 win.

“We just need one critical hit,“ said Bochy, “one at bat that works.” Nothing is working for the Giants when they have a bat in their hands. The heart of the order, Buster Posey (0-for-4 including a double play), Hunter Pence (1-for-4) and Brandon Belt (0-for-3 with a walk) seem mystified.

Three days ago, there was near-panic about the fourth and fifth pitchers in the Giants’ rotation, Jake Peavy and Cain. Peavy made it through five innings on Monday night. Not without problems, yet he allowed only three runs. Then Cain was very effective Tuesday, going eight innings — his hadn’t gone more than six in his previous 18 starts — striking out seven, walking none and allowing six hits.

And the Giants couldn’t get a single run. Just as on Sunday they couldn’t get a single run.

In order, the Giants lost 2-0 to the Rockies, 3-1 to the Blue Jays and 4-0 to the Blue Jays. The Bad News Bears weren’t that bad.

“We’ve got to find a way to beat them,” said Bochy. One way is to get people across home plate.

It's hard to knock your pitcher when he’s decent on the mound and botches something when he’s at bat, but in the bottom of the sixth the Giants had runners on first and second with nobody out and their pitcher, Mr. Cain, coming up. Everyone from McCovey Cove to Cooperstown knew he would sacrifice, and he tried, without success.

Cain’s bunt was fielded by Happ, who forced the runner (Jarrett Parker, who had walked). Then leadoff man Denard Span grounded into a double play, the sequence of a team for which everything of late goes wrong — and nobody goes home.

Cain was as upbeat as someone can be when the ballclub is losing.

“I felt like I limited my mistakes,” he said. “We did a good job of keeping those to a minimum. This is something to build off of and carry into the next one.”

Unfortunately, he’s now 0-5 and is winless in 14 consecutive starts.

The bunt? “I didn't get the angle right to third," Cain said. “That's our job as pitchers. We need to be able to execute. That could have changed the game.”

That’s the Giants right now, talking about what might have been, could have and would have. If this had happened... but what did happen was another defeat, and with the homestand ending Wednesday with yet another game against the Blue Jays, San Francisco has a losing record, 17-18.

“I’ve tried to shake things up,” said Bochy, who had Duffy batting sixth instead of second (he was 0-for-3 with a walk). “But our big hitters are cold.”

Maybe they can sign Steph Curry to bat cleanup.

Will Lincecum save Giants after the pounding?

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — It’s all set up for Timmy.  All he has to do is show he still can pitch. Because the fourth and fifth starters in the Giants' rotation haven’t been able to thus far. So if little Tim Lincecum can show he’s a scintilla of what he used to be when he showcases Friday down in the desert, he very well could be the man to get his once (and former?) team out of the wilderness.

Life is timing. And that includes baseball. Who knows whether Lincecum, unsigned after hip surgery last year, still has enough to get batters out in the majors? But over the past two games, Wednesday in Cincinnati and Thursday night in San Francisco, the guys who took the mound for the Giants certainly didn’t. Suddenly there’s a sense of desperation at AT&T, a feeling of “OK, after Mad Bum, Cueto and Samardzija, what can we do?”

As capably demonstrated Thursday night on the banks of McCovey Cove, nothing. Except hope that Timmy still has something from his glory days of Cy Young Awards and that the Giants re-sign him.

On Wednesday at Cincy, Jake Peavy, the No. 4 starter, gave up three home runs in one inning. Then on Thursday night, the Gigantes (hey, it was Cinco de Mayo and that was the name on the uniform) were embarrassed by the Colorado Rockies, 17-7, giving up 13 runs in the fifth.

Yes, that’s been Matt Cain’s obstacle of an inning of late, but never was it as bad as on Thursday when, having been pounded for eight runs and 10 hits, he didn’t even wait for manager Bruce Bochy to take the ball but in a case of virtual surrender reached out and gave it to Bochy.

“We have to find a way to help the rotation like we should,” said Cain, certainly not willing to concede his place. “This is not easy. It’s frustrating.”

Cain had a 2-0 count on Colorado’s Nelson Arenado, with one on and two out in the first. A changeup got out over the plate, and Arenado, one of the game’s better hitters, hit it over the left field fence for his 12th home run of the year. The Rockies, just like that, were up 2-0.

“The biggest thing is to keep trusting myself,” said Cain, who threw a perfect game four years ago, before undergoing surgery in 2014. “My location was good, but the balls were just a little higher than we wanted.”

One game out of 162 can be ignored — in the World Series championship year of 2014, the Dodgers scored 14 in a late-season game against San Francisco — but when two-fifths of your staff are ineffective, you’re in trouble. And maybe in the market for replacements.

“We discussed Timmy,” Bochy said before the game, hardly contemplating what would happen during the game. “(General manager) Bobby Evans can say more about that than me. Timmy still is loved here. There are going to be a lot of teams there watching him. I can’t tell you what is going to happen.”

If the Giants don’t get help by Peavy and or Cain improving — as unlikely as that appears 30 games into the season — San Francisco signing Lincecum or trading for a top-line pitcher is a huge worry. Already the bullpen is a mess, and Vin Mazzaro, just brought up from Triple A, was a disaster after relieving Cain, allowing seven earned runs in a third of an inning.

Bochy was not so quick to dismiss Cain or Peavy. It’s the manager’s nature to keep on a level and never belittle his athletes, although thinking of the 12-run inning by the Mets and the 11-run inning by the Rockies, the manager shook his head. “It’s hit us twice in a week,” he said.

Knowing there may not be anyone better than Peavy or Cain, Bochy said that each of the pitchers, at times, has shown he still deserves to be part of the rotation.

“We just couldn’t get out of that inning,” said Bochy. “I thought our guys had good at bats this game, but the pitching just wasn’t there. Matt’s stuff was fine. It was his execution. He made a few mistakes.”

The question might be whether continuing to send out Peavy and Cain is a mistake. Then again, there may be no other option. Unless Tim Lincecum comes through in his glorified tryout and the Giants subsequently add him to the roster.

“We know our guys,” said Bochy. “We stand behind them. We know they’ll get better.”

They couldn’t get worse.

S.F. Examiner: No matter the changes, Giants will answer bell

By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Storm clouds swirled in the distance, above the Superstition Mountains. But Tuesday, for the Giants’ first full-squad workout of 2015, there was only sunshine.

When you’re the World Series champion, anything else would be unacceptable. So Panda has crossed the continent. “A good player, a good teammate, always a happy person,” center fielder Angel Pagan said about the dearly departed Pablo Sandoval. “But we have to move on.”

Read the full story here.

© 2015 The San Francisco Examiner 

The Sports Xchange: Cain, six-run fourth carry Giants

By Art Spander
The Sports Xchange

SAN FRANCISCO -- Matt Cain pitched as expected. Tim Hudson did not. And so the San Francisco Giants, who have haven't had an easy victory in a while, got one Friday night, defeating the Atlanta Braves 8-2.

"We don't have a lot of these games," Giants manager Bruce Bochy said. "It's kind of nice."

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2013 The Sports Xchange

Finally able, Cain gets that first win

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — The game wasn’t merely about Matt Cain and his vexing month of winless pitching. Then again, it was mostly about Matt Cain.
   
When a guy is your ace, throws a perfect game, is the All-Star starter and then has zero for April in the victory column, he is the central character in the mystery.
    
Dodgers-Giants remains the essential component of San Francisco baseball, as the unrelenting chants of “Beat L.A., Beat L.A.” bear witness. The final score means everything.
   
Sunday night’s final score, 4-3 in favor the franchise that carried “GIGANTES’’ on its uniforms for Cinco de Mayo, meant those Gigantes had swept the three-game series from Los Angeles.
  
Yet the Cain performance was not to be underestimated. To the Giants, who knew once more Matt was the rock of a pitching staff that is the team’s strength, and yes, to Cain himself.
   
No matter how much success a player has experienced, an 0-2 record with a 6.49 earned run average in six games must be bewildering at the least.
   
He and probably everyone else knew sooner or later the wrongs would be corrected, but the issue was when. The response was delivered by Cain along with his fastballs and breaking pitches in 7 1/3 reassuring innings.
  
“It was a solid effort,” said Giants manager Bruce Bochy of Cain. “A great job. No runs.”
   
Until an eighth inning Bochy said has become all too familiar for the Giants, when a 4-0 lead ebbed, relievers entered and departed and the normal sellout crowd of 41,000-plus at AT&T Park wondered why it always had to be so nerve-wracking.
  
“Our boys made it entertaining,” said Bochy, who by his subsequent smile made us understand he’d accept something less so. “It’s our nature. We made it close.”
  
But close or not, it was the Giants’ sixth straight win, three over the Dodgers, each by a run, after three over Arizona, following five straight defeats. Some chewed fingernails, some beautiful hitting — Sunday night Hunter Pence drove in all the San Francisco runs — and a lot of happy patrons.
   
The mini-achievement, Cain getting off the schneid for 2013 and also becoming the first Giant starter in 12 games to get a victory — oh, that bullpen has been spectacular — was simple enough.
   
“I didn’t make as many mistakes,” said Cain, “and some of the mistakes I was making were hit at guys.”
   
It is a baseball truism that nothing in the game is fair. Line drives are caught — as three line drives, or at least deep flies, off Sergio Romo were caught in the top of the ninth — while bloops and dribblers fall for hits.
   
“A couple ground balls go through,” Bochy said of the Dodgers' eighth. “Then in the (top of) ninth, hard-hit balls right at them.”
    
Still, it isn’t only a matter of fortune. When a pitcher is sharp, the breaks, good or bad, don’t have that much of an effect. Twice this season, Cain had given up three home runs in a single game. Sunday night he allowed nothing more destructive than a first-inning double by Matt Kemp, who never moved from second.
 
“All of the starters hadn’t been doing what we wanted to do,” said Cain. “To get off that skid, it just took some time.
  
“I had those bits where I was giving up home runs while ahead in the count. I wasn’t necessarily thinking about that, but about bearing down and just thinking about pitching. (Catcher Guillermo) Quiroz did a good job keeping me focused.”
   
Cain gave up five hits and three walks and, although charged only with one of the Dodger runs, still has an ERA 5.57. It will decline.
    
There was a report on ESPN, which televised the game nationally, that the Giants felt Cain’s problems were physical, he had dropped the angle of his delivery, causing his balls to flatten out. Bochy was in full denial about that or any other issue with Cain’s body.
  
“I never thought something was wrong with Matt,” said the manager. “I said along he was healthy, his arm was fine. And tonight he showed it.”
  
Cain was not one to disagree,
  
“My arm always felt good,” Cain said. “I was just making bad pitches. I didn’t pitch well. Tonight I made better pitches at times. Yes, sometimes when you make a bad pitch they’ll pop it up, but that wasn’t what happened.”
   
The Giants continued a remarkable record. Never in their 56 years in San Francisco have they lost a home game to the Dodgers when they built a lead of three runs or more.
   
That beat goes on. Matt Cain’s beating finally has changed.
  
“The most encouraging part,” answered Cain when asked, “was I got kind of better as the game went along.”
     
He’s a winner now. Of course, he always has been.