Burning the Midnight Oil

After a much anticipated wait on my part, I have an announcement to make. Very soon I will be shifting my blogging activities to the Most Valuable Network Giants Cove, where I will be partnered with two other writers (link to the page can be found by clicking the above logo). By making this move, I hope to gain a slightly larger following than I have here at Croix De Candlestick. I'd like to thank everyone (all three of you) that faithfully read my work on a regular basis, and while I'll miss running my own blog, this is a leap into a much larger pool of readers. Unless something falls through, this will be my last post here so enjoy.


Talk About Good Timing

Right after I bash the Giant's starting rotation and stress about how much we need a solid starter, the starting pitchers start shutting opposing hitters down, and now our bullpen has become shaky. It's a tradeoff, but I'd rather have six to eight innings of scoreless baseball and one or two rocky innings than the other way around. Since losing two straight to the road warrior Rockies (14-42 away from Coors), this is what the starting rotation has done:

Brad Hennessey: 7 innings, 5 hits, 2 runs, 2 walks, 4 K's *surrendered 2 solo home runs

Kevin Correia: 6 innings, 5 hits, 2 runs, 6 K's, *after surrendering two 1st inning runs, Correia pitched 5 innings of scoreless ball

Jason Schmidt: 8 innings, 3 hits, no runs, 3 walks, 5 K's *77 of 121 pitchers thrown for strikes

Noah Lowry: 7 innings, 1 hit, no runs, 3 walks, 8 K's *left in 7th inning with tightness in his elbow

Brian Cooper: 7 innings, 4 hits, 1 run, 2 walks, 3 K's *started in place of Brett Tomko


Altogether, 35 innings, 18 hits, 5 runs. Thats a 1.29 ERA spanning over 5 starts, and 5 different pitchers, thankfully none of which are named Kirk Rueter. It's like I always say, good pitching wins games...and covers up the fact that the Giants haven't scored more than 6 runs in a game during that period. What's good is that the Giants don't need to score runs when the starting pitchers isn't giving any up. What's ironic is that during those 5 games, they're 3-2, and fell back 2 games in the NL West.

The culprits responsible reside in the relief corps. In those 5 games, the bullpen has pitched 9 total innings, and surrendered, 17 hits, and 13 runs, 12 earned. That puts them at an ERA of 12.00 flat. Funny...all this talk of the Giants bullpen is giving me the sudden urge to egg Tyler Walkers house. Missing Armando Benitez yet? According to the latest report, Benitez is set to come off the disabled list at earliest next weekend in Florida, which will move Walker into a considerably less high stress job as a middle relief/setup man, and allow us Giants fans to breathe a huge sigh of relief (no pun intended) once he's gone from the closer role.


Once again, thanks to everyone who read Croix De Candlestick on a regular basis. It's been a fun ride and I hope that everyone will continue to read my work at the Giants Cove. In case you missed it, links to the my soon to be home can be found on the sidebar for those of you using Mozilla, or by clicking on the logo at the top of this post.