Media's Biased Influence, Once Again

One of my pet peeves about the media is that they bias their writing, which either influences the audience to feel a certain way, and/or caters to that stance.  As usual, the Giants offense is good boy that gets punished.

One reporter notes, "Given eight innings against one of the league's worst bullpens, the Giants couldn't overcome a deficit..."  It was 8-0 and they scored 5 runs in 8 innings.  Even Murderer's Row Yankees rarely overcame an 8-0 deficit, though (had to count them) they had an amazing 35 games out of 152 where they scored 9 or more runs (not going to check how many 8 run deficits are overcome by a team).  And that's a 5.63 ERA on the part of the bullpen, not exactly stellar.


Another newspaper similarly headlined that the Giants couldn't overcome Barry Zito's start, like that is the offense's fault.

They scored 5 runs, which is plenty enough to win most games.  There aren't any team today that can regularly overcome an 8-0 deficit.  Even the best offense would have trouble scoring 9 runs, while down 8 runs.  The offense did well to do what they did.  The headline should have been more about Zito's poor start exacerbated by poor defense, not about the offense not overcoming an 8-0 deficit.

The biggest comeback win this season was 6 runs in the NL.  Only 47 of the 706 games played in the NL this season even had one team score 9 runs, let alone come back from an 8-0 deficit.  The Giants offense did a great job coming back.  At least the Chronicle acknowledged that, noting "never-say-die" spirit.

Giants Showing More Offensive Fight

That's what I've been saying since Matt Cained the D-backs with his 2-run double and broke up that doubleplay, the Giants have been showing a lot more fight, either winning the games or at least coming back despite being behind, though there have been plenty of games where they overcame deficits to win.  Cain showed the offense how it's done, and he has won his last two starts because of the offense, not in spite of it, as he hasn't been quite the Cain we know and love.

This is the spirit a team needs to win their division and go deep into the playoffs.  I'm still hoping that the May 12th game was the turning point for our team.  So far, it has been.

ReCained Confidence Building

Over a week ago, Matt Cain said with his actions, "I ain't taking this anymore" and took things into his own hands.  As I noted in this post, on May 12th, he not only pitched a good game, he drove in 2 runs and set an example for the rest of the team by upending the secondbaseman in breaking up a double-play.  Shades of Ty Cobb!  I suggested that maybe he has redefined what it means to be "Cained" (which many fans use in describing when the Giants don't score enough runs for him - and sometimes others - to win a game).

Bochy dubbed Cain's efforts as "old school" and I wondered in my post whether it fired up the moribund Giants, which, even before Sandoval got injured, was basically playing around .500 all season.  Now, more than a week later, I think it has.

Thoughts and Research on Draft: First Round Picks Are Not Easy, Sabean Has Done Well in Picking

I wrote most of this (I almost always tweak my writing, plus I need to make it flow as a post, whereas in the comment, I had to flow from the comment) on DrB's great blog, in this post of his on one of the Giants games:  http://whenthegiantscometotown.blogspot.com/2012/05/game-wrap-5162012.html?showComment=1337290237617#c7333242136139406743

Someone complained about there being no impact players found by the Giants outside of the first round, where the commenter basically states that in the first round it is very easy to find good players, and therefore Sabean's hits there - Cain, Lincecum, Posey, Bumgarner - did not represent any skill on his part.  I did some research and wrote up text that I've been meaning to write up before the June Amateur draft for the past two seasons.  Better late than never, I guess.  :^)