The San Francisco Giants are struggling to say the least. Even worse, Tim Lincecum is struggling. For the third straight start Lincecum gave up five walks. In this outing Lincecum surrendered six earned runs, which is a total of 11 in the last two starts. What is worse, in those two games, Lincecum has only pitched 9.2 innings. Needless to say, something isn’t right with the back-to-back Cy Young award winner. On Wednesday night, Lincecum threw 96 pitches in 4.2 innings, only 56 of those pitches were strikes. Lincecum appears to be pressing the issue. Whatever it may be, the SF Giants need to work out the kinks with their young star. With the poor offense, the Giants can’t afford to have their ace having command problems.
The Giants lost 7-3 on Wednesday night. Aubrey Huff committed an error in the first inning, and Pablo Sandoval committed a mental error in the third, which led to three Washington runs. The Giants have to come to the ball park mentally prepared the rest of the season. Mental mistakes have cost the Giants too many times this season. If the SF Giants are to contend, these next couple of weeks will be crucial to the teams psyche.
The Giants offense proved to have problems once again Wednesday night. The team went 1-11 with runners in scoring position. The Giants earned only one walk in Wednesday’s game. Clutch hitting seems to be elusive. These numbers must change overnight if the Giants are to succeed. The batters have to put runs on the board at critical points in the game to take the stress off the pitching staff. The only bright spot for the Giants offense Wednesday was Juan Uribe, who went deep with his sixth homer of the year.
More bad news for the Giants. SS Edgar Renteria went back to the DL with hamstring issues. Renteria is hitting .326 in 23 games this season, but has been hampered with a bad right hamstring throughout the season. Renteria no joins Emmanuel Burriss and Mark DeRosa on the DL. Relief Pitchers Jeremy Affeldt and Brandon Medders are also injured at the moment. Between the injuries and the lack of offense, the Giants have not been able to get a solid line-up rolling all season.
Despite the misfortunes, the Giants must continue the fight. The team is now fourth in the division, at 23-22 they are 2.5 games back of the SD Padres. By no means are the Giants out of the race, which will go down to the last days of the season. From this moment forward, no game is to be overlooked, and the Giants have to be mentally tough.
Barry Zito will look to get lucky win number seven this afternoon at 12:45. This will be Zito’s third attempt at number seven. After starting the season 6-0, Zito has dropped his last two. Zito will face the Nationals Craig Stammen. Look for the Giants to come out pissed and put up a fight the rest of the season.
Go Giants.
