Cain gets roughed up in the city of brotherly love

PHILLIES 8 - GIANTS 2

It was almost a carbon copy of the game the night before.  The Giants jumped out to an early lead, the starter was shutting the Phillies down, the Phillies tied the game, in the next inning they put the game away, and Pat Burrell homered.

All the Sabean and Bochy detractors are getting ready to start dancing in the streets especially after two of Sabean's trade pickups contributed to the losses the last couple of nights, with Mike Fontenot's errors and Chris Ray's Ray's inability to get batters out.  At least Ray won't be able to give up any more runs now that he is on the DL.  But at least we got Affeldt back so he can give up a couple of runs for him!

The Giants this season are 67-54 which is a huge improvement over last season right?

Well it is an improvement but considering the Giants were 66-55 at this point last season, you realize that maybe things aren't that much better.  Last season around this time, the Giants went into a slide that cost them the playoffs and this season's version of the Giants look poised to do the same.

Nothing looks right for the Giants.  The offense couldn't take advantage of the Phillis weakest link in Joe Blanton.  To show what a difference an offense makes, Blanton's ERA coming into last nights game was actually higher than Todd Wellemeyer's 5.69 to 5.68.  Wellemeyer was DFA and Blanton looks to be a factor on the Phillies all the way to the playoffs.

However, if you want to pin the recent losses on the offense then one would have to assume the Giants pitching staff has been doing it's job.  Well, when you consider that in the last 3 games that the Giants have lost after they won that 11 inning affair vs the Padres on Saturday, the Giants pitchers have given up 8, 9, and 8 runs, you realize that the rotation isn't doing it's job.

But cheer up Giants faithful, the Phillie favorite Aaron Rowand will be making an appearance in the starting lineup today so Huff can get a day off and Posey can rest his legs at first base!

We were robbed!

If this picture and this video don't show how safe Ishi was yesterday then the quote by Mets catcher Henry Blanco in this story will.


“He was safe all the way,” Blanco said, grinning. “Good for us.”


This call cost the Giants the winning run in the 9th inning.  A good start from Jonathan Sanchez and a rally against closer Francisco Rodriguez were completely wasted.  Now, the Giants did have another chance to get a runner home from third with 2 outs in the 9th inning but the call clearly took the wind out of the Giants sails.


It is unbelievable that MLB continues to let these calls go on.  They keep going on and on with no end in sight.  What is going to take to get baseball to finally come into the 21st century and bring in instant replay?  Is it going to take a blown call in the playoffs?




Well maybe not.  


It's probably going to take the World Series being decided by a blown call to get instant replay to decide things other than homeruns.  


The fact that instant replay is being used to make sure that homeruns are called correctly shows that MLB does have some interest in getting calls right.  


The 2 biggest arguments against instant replay are time and the human element.  


First of all, you don't need to have instant replay to overturn every call.  A typical baseball game doesn't have very many calls that are that closely contested.  If you limit managers to so many challenges a game then you don't have to worry about managers abusing the privilege and limiting the amount of time a replay can be reviewed to say 2 minutes would add 8 minutes to a game if both managers used each of their challenges and they both took the full 2 minutes to review.


As for the human element, you can never take that out of baseball unless there are nothing but robot umpires umping the game.  You wouldn't allow instant replay to determine balls and strikes so the human element would not be completely eliminated.  You also would only have a few challenges per game so the human element would not be taken out of the game on calls in the field as well.  MLB has already taken the human element out of homerun calls so why should they be worried about other calls in the field?


Lastly, Phil Cuzzi needs to be replaced as a major league ump.  Fire-Sabean.com has a post about  Cuzzi and blown calls that will make you wonder why this guy even has a job.  Cuzzi's explanation of the call will also make your blood boil:


  Cuzzi said that he had not yet seen the replay. "I'll look at it, but I figured I'd eat first,” he said, laughing. “He made a decent attempt to put the tag on him. That’s what it looked to me, and that’s why I called him out.”


So a guy makes a decent attempt to make a tag and the runner is out?  Seriously, has this guy read the rule book?  I haven't read it for a while but I don't remember anywhere that it states that a good attempt to make a tag will result in the runner being called out.


If there wasn't enough reasons to think that Giants baseball was torture already, I think this will add another one.


Link of the day:


Rich Lee draws.  This guy is awesome and he has the best Giants art I have ever seen: