Giants Take Two Of Three From Braves

The Giants continued their fast start to the 2010 season by winning the rubber match of their series at home against the Braves. Tim Lincecum, aside from a 2-run homerun to Brian McCann in the 1st inning, was dominant, striking out 10 batters in 7 innings. So much for his shaky spring training. Lincecum is now 2-0 with a 1.29 ERA with 17 strikeouts against 1 walk. He was able to locate his fastball on both sides of the plate and his change-up was nasty as ever.

Braves starting pitcher Kenshin Kawakami was making quick work of the Giants for the most part until Pablo Sandoval tripled in the 4th and came home on an Aubrey Huff single. He had thrown only 51 pitches at the start of the 6th inning when the Giants eventually took the lead on a Mark DeRosa single and throwing error by Jason Heyward. The Giants, just like on Friday, drew only one walk in today's game. Aubrey Huff walked in front of Mark DeRosa and on DeRosa's single and Heyward's fielding error, he scored the go-ahead run. The Giants are not going to be a team like the Phillies that has patient hitters 1-8. But especially as a team that's not going to hit many homeruns, they must realize that walks lead to rallies.

Good to see Pablo Sandoval have a monster day at the plate which included a Bondsian homerun through the howling wind in the 8th inning. I guess it was only a matter of time before he found his swing, but he was not looking good at the plate in the previous 5 games.

The Giants will take on the Pirates, who are coming off a rough series against the DBacks, next at home beginning tomorrow night. The Giants MUST take at least 2 of 3 from the Pirates, one of the worst teams in baseball. They have to be a dominant home team again like they were last year, and as the playoff teams do, they must beat the teams that are worse than them. Plus, after this series, the Giants will have some tough games such as facing the Dodgers in gross and smoggy Los Angeles, as well as hosting the Cardinals and Phillies.

Some final tid-bits:

*Saturday's game was plain ugly. The offensive output reminded me of a game in 2009. The Giants should have jumped all over Derek Lowe, who walked 7 batters. But they were horrible with runners in scoring position. Bruce Bochy any other game would have probably taken Todd Wellemeyer out after 6 innings, but he probably wanted to try to save his bullpen a bit after Friday's marathon game. Wellemeyer was great in the first 6 innings before things unraveled in the 7th.

*The great Andy Baggarly of the San Jose Mercury News reported that top prospect Buster Posey is 8-16 to begin the season in AAA Fresno. Since this team needs every ounce of offense that it can get, Bruce Bochy and Brian Sabean have to be considering bringing up Posey sooner rather than later. Eli Whiteside is a fine defensive catcher and he calls a very good game (he caught Jonathan Sanchez' no-hitter last year), but he's absolutely useless with the bat. Bobby Cox intentionally walked Juan Uribe to load the bases with 1 out yesterday in order to face Whiteside. And what do you know, Whiteside struck out on 3 pitches.

*Jason Heyward is the real deal. I can't believe he's only 20 years old. He hit 2 opposite-field homeruns this weekend and he hits the ball to left field with authority as well as Adrian Gonzalez. The most impressive aspect of his game so far is his plate discipline. He rarely swings at pitches outside the strike zone. He's going to be a superstar.