A completely-biased, totally-outrageous, completely-irrational and sometimes unbelievably-unhinged view of San Francisco Giants Baseball.

April 30, 2016

Bochy still confident in underperforming arms

We agree, Matt. We can't watch either.
When asked about the back end of his rotation, Giants Manager Bruce Bochy urged patience.

"I have too much confidence in these two guys. We're in April here."

Bochy has the experience and the hardware. But just because we don't have his pedigree doesn't mean we don't have eyes.

Matt Cain has and ERA of 7.00; Jake Peavy of 8.61. Oh, and April is history. Clearly, so is the patience of Giants fans. Take a look at Twitter.

The offense showed up Saturday (sort of) as the Giants scored five runs. That still wasn't enough as they fell 6-5 at New York.

The Giants are certainly contributing to the grease fire that is the NL West, where everybody, EVERYBODY, has a losing record.

The Giants parlayed five hits, seven walks and a well-timed throwing error to put up five runs but the "you've gotta be kidding me" moments are starting to pile up.

In this case, it was Brandon Belt getting thrown out at third base to kill a gift rally (you NEVER make the third out at third base) and Cain being left in a game to surrender the long balls that eventually did the team in.

Cain allowed two runs in each of the first two innings to dig the Giants a hole, one they nearly climbed out of in a three-run rally punctuated by a Belt's bases-filled walk and Hunter Pence's two-run single. Belt's base running misadventure killed the big 'mo', and Cain failed to keep it close.

Cain, like Peavy, simply cannot pitch deep into games anymore. On this day he gave up long balls inthe fifth and sixth, pushing the deficit back to three runs; enough to offset an eighth-inning surge against the Mets bullpen.

Right about now you're thinking "Dude, where are the jokes?" Or "why such a downer?"

Well, this stuff ain't funny and the Giants are in total denial. 

"I know both of them are close," said Bochy. "I think when it's all said and done, these two will get their wins and help us a lot."

Based on what?

Roughly $220 million was spent to fix last year's obvious deficiency; pitching. The guys they brought in are doing what they're paid to do, but the problem persists.

Forty percent of the rotation isn't getting it done. It's not one of those "rough spots" either. These two are consistently dreadful.

Combined they've made ten starts and won one game. That's not even the scary part -- okay, that's scary. Scarier, then, is the fact that they've thrown 50 innings. Easy math, right? Five innings per start on average. You gotta throw six to get a quality start. Not many of those.

For comparison: Johnny Cueto has thrown 37 1/3 all by himself. He's 4-1.

Look, guys struggle. It happens. And sometimes you're the victim of circumstance -- we all remember Cain getting so little run support his name became a verb.

This ain't that, and it isn't 2013 any more. That's the last time either was a benefit tons team.

We applaud loyalty. We love it. We like winning games more. Give 'em their love but not a job.

There's a saving grace in all of this. The rest of the division is just as inept. The Dodgers have dropped six in a row and share San Francisco's lofty 12-13 mark. 

They can't expect that to continue. They're fortunate they aren't already buried; see 2015 as Exhibit A.

There it is! It's a repeat of 2015!

The Giants did this last year, only that time the rest of the division didn't cooperate. Different year, same thing.

So what, exactly, did they fix?

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