Bay Area Baseball

Another sterling performance from Jonathan Sanchez tonight, its a good sign to see a guy bounce back from a terrible game like he had last week vs Colorado (5 ip, 7 er, 9 hits). Unfortunately its looking like yet another case of the Giants not scoring enough runs to help him out. The book is closed on Sanchez for the night at 7 ip, 3 er, 6 hits, with a solid 8 k’s which takes his total to 88, good for 5th in the NL, one ahead of another lefty you might have heard of with the initials JS, Johan Santana.

Sanchez was especially dirty early with 6 k’s in the first three innings, all swinging and he took a no hitter into the 6th inning. He showed a bit of tire in the 6th but really only gave up a couple of infield hits. He pitched into the 8th where he immediately allowed a leadoff HR to Ryan Raburn that went almost to the top of the LF bleachers.

It’s hard to pitch with only 0 runs of support through 5 and only 1 run through 8, but it seems like something that is becoming more and more commonplace for the Giants. Lincecum last week in Colorado goes 7 ip 0 er and gets an ND, a mere 4 runs in three games vs the A’s over the weekend, and only 3 runs last night for Lincecum (although they scored 5 in the 8th to win it and get him off the hook.) Basically its adding up to Giants starters having to pitch shutout or one run ball in order to keep the team in the game. Lincecum, who is 8-1, could easily be 15-0 with just 5 runs per game support.

Back to Sanchez, its really looking like he’s coming into his own and learning how to pitch effectively late into ballgames. He still struggles a bit out of the stretch but seems to be improving. A guy I’m glad to have on my fantasy team

Message to Bruce Bochy: Give the young guys a real chance, not just a couple games in the lineup each week. Maybe with consistent time guys like Burriss, Denker, Horwitz, Lewis and Bowker can get some real development going. We’ve seen it enough in the past with guys like Trevor Linden, Damon Minor and others where the Giants give only 2-300 ab’s to rookies with little success. Lets give these young guys a chance to play full time. Part of this is going to need to be done by Brian Sabean, who has to find a trading partner for Ray Durham, Rich Aurilia, wishfully Omar Vizquel, and maybe Randy Winn.

Other notes from around the league:

Quite a few solid pitching performances from starters today:

Kenny Rogers, Livan Hernandez, Joel Piniero and Kyle Davies 7 ip 1 er

Andy Pettitte, Manny Parra and Jon Lester 7 ip 0 er

Chad Billingsley 6.1 ip 1 er 9 k’s

Johnny Cueto and John Lannan 7 ip 2 er

Ryan Dempster 5 ip 1 er

Vicente Padilla 6 ip 1 er

Thats 9 starting pitchers going 7 ip with 2 er or less. Add in Sanchez going 7 with 3 er and Padilla and Dempster and you’ve got 12 out of 30 SP’s with really solid starts today.

Josh Hamilton with another HR today for Texas, thats an AL leading 19 for him. Milton Bradley strained his quad in the game, could be something to worry about for the offense with 3 of the top 15 players in fantasy baseball (w/ Ian Kinsler)

Also Marcus Thames’ last 8 hits have been home runs, guess all the heckling we did last night didn’t pay off.

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