Giants score 11 runs again! It's still not enough,,

REDS 12 - GIANTS 11

At least the game was exciting.

The score was 10-1 going into the bottom of the 5th.  I was at work at the time and was pretty glad I wasn't watching the game.  I got home and decided to check out what the carnage was only to see that the Giants had pulled to 10-8 in the 8th inning.  Andres Torres tied the game and I couldn't believe my eyes!  Next thing you know Aubrey Huff is hitting a sacrifice fly to put the Giants ahead 11-10 in the 9th inning!

Then Pablo Sandoval showed some of that lackluster defense that he has been showing a little too much this season.

Pablo threw away the second out of the 9th inning allowing the tying run to get to second.  That run scored on the double by the next batter and tied the game.  Some guy named Nick Massett came in and struck out 4 G-men in 2 innings and Francisco Cordero shut them down for 2 more innings and then the Reds scored off of Barry Zito in the 12th and the game was over.  Reds win.

There are a lot of positives to take from this game.

The 1933 New York Giants 

The Giants scored 11 runs in their third consecutive game(the first time they have done that since 1953 and the first time ever in San Francisco), they pounded out at least 17 hits for the 3rd straight game (first time since 1933!), they came back from 9 runs down!  Pablo Sandoval, Jose Guillen, Juan Uribe, Mike Fontenot, Jose Guillen, and Andres Torres each had multi-hit games.

There were some alarming stats too.

The 8 runs, 7 earned,  that Madison Bumgarner gave up.  It could just be a result of the rookie facing the highest scoring team in the league or a result of a guy who has passed his career number of innings pitched and is running on fumes.

The Giants also committed 5 errors.  Yes 5 errors! sure 3 of those were committed by pitchers and 2 of them were committed by Ramon Ramirez in his 2 innings of work and of course the most costly error of all was Pablo Sandoval's error in the 9th.

So you take some good and you take some bad.  Ultimately this game will be filed in the "L" column and that's what will count at the end of the season.  Hopefully the Giants can keep scoring runs with the D-backs coming to town tonight.

I almost forgot to mention that Brandon Belt made his AAA debut last night.  What does the kid do?  He hits his 20th homer of the season and steals his 12th base.  Look out for this guy in September.  Head on over to 22Gigantes to see some pictures and a video from the game.  It's worth it to hear Gigantes' son screaming "DADDY I JUST GOT HIS AUTOGRAPH!" After Belt "Belted" his homerun.

Giants score two touchdowns and add a safety for good measure

GIANTS 16 - REDS 5

The Giants have been putting up video game numbers 

Yes, I'm talking about the San Francisco Giants.

The Giants continued their hot-hitting ways last night.  One night after scoring an impressive 11 runs on 17 hits, the boys in Orange and Black scored a ridiculous 16 runs on 18 hits.  

Just because it's fun to do I will tell you that they scored 27 runs over the last 2 nights, on 35 hits, and they hit 6 home runs over those games.  The 16 runs were only 1 run less than the Giants scored in all 6 games against Philadelphia and St. Louis!

Look, I'll be the first guy to admit that you can't take a whole lot from a 16 run game.  It's a fluke thing that doesn't happen very often.  As far as I could tell the last time that the Giants scored at least 16 runs in a game was on Sept. 3, 2004 when the Giants put up 18 on the D-Backs Barry Bonds and everybody's favorite Giant Edgardo Alfonso went deep in what had to be the game of his career since he pounded out 5 hits that night!

So what can we take from these two games?

Well the Giants have embarrassed a legitimate post season contender in the Cincinnati Reds.  Who, by the way, were the highest scoring team in the league coming in to the series.  They also have picked themselves up off the ground, yet again this season.  

Am I convinced they are back yet?

No, but there is still a lot of baseball to be played and they are still tied for the wildcard.  Also, with tomorrows game, they will be able to get their record to an even .500 over their last 12 games against contenders.  Which is what you need to do over the course of a long season if you want to have a shot at making it to the postseason.  

This could be the start of a nice little winning streak since the hapless Diamondbacks are coming into town tomorrow.

By the Way, Pablo Sandoval's homerun last night was an absolute BOMB.  If you think the Panda isn't back then consider that he is Hitting .306 with 5 homeruns for the month of August.