Henry Schulman - San Francisco Chronicle (SFGate)
Does the earth have to move for Matt Cain to get a win against the Dodgers? Apparently even that will not do the trick.
Hours after an earthquake shook Southern California, Cain pitched a fine game for seven innings Tuesday night but fell to 0-5 in eight career starts against Los Angeles, which won 2-0 behind a pitcher lifted from the scrap heap and one of the most bizarre plays to befall the Giants in a long time.
For the sixth time this season, the Giants failed to score while Cain was the pitcher of record, and he fell to 6-9. He held the Dodgers to two runs (one earned), struck out eight and, for the first time in his career, finished consecutive starts without walking a batter.
Cain's control nearly was impeccable. He threw 29 balls and 89 strikes.
"Anytime you get that kind of a pitching effort and don't win it's frustrating," manager Bruce Bochy said for the zillionth time after a Cain start. "He did his job. He did a great job. We just couldn't get the bats going. It's a tough one when he pitched his heart out."
Coming off a four-hit shutout of Washington in his previous start, Cain was equally miserly in the first five innings Tuesday. The 5.4-magnitude quake that rocked Southern California at 11:42 a.m. seemed to shake all the power out of the bats in both dugouts.
The calm of a 0-0 game was shattered in the fourth inning when James Loney hit a shot off Cain's right ankle that ricocheted into the air and landed near the Giants' dugout. But the big horse was OK ... better than OK. He immediately struck out Casey Blake and Angel Berroa.
Cain used his curveball to great effect all night, but it also proved his undoing in the sixth inning. He threw a two-strike, two-out hanger to Loney, who drove it into left field for a single that broke the scoreless tie. Cain was livid with himself, jerking his body in anger as Matt Kemp trotted home from third.
The inning appeared to end when Blake doubled down the left-field line and Loney was thrown out at home. But when Fred Lewis initially bobbled the ball, he created a chaos he hardly could have imagined.
The ball popped off his hands and bounced onto the padding atop the short fence in foul territory. Lewis retrieved it and threw to Omar Vizquel, who threw home - but the umpires ruled the ball crossed the plane into the stands before Lewis grabbed it.
"The ruling on the field was that the ball left the top of the padding and went into the stands," crew chief Greg Gibson said. "Once it's in the stands, it's dead, and both runners advance two bases."
Not only was Loney not out, he was awarded home plate, giving the Dodgers a 2-0 lead.
Bochy argued the ball did not cross into the stands, but Vizquel backed the umpires' version.
"It looked like it went over and Fred grabbed it on the other side," said Vizquel, adding, "I've never seen that play happen before, not even in the highlights."
Coming from a guy who has played in 2,644 major-league games, that is saying something.
Said Lewis: "It was nobody's fault but mine," but he believes he grabbed the ball before it crossed into the stands.
"I was very surprised (by the call)," he said. "It's one of those plays, it makes you want replay in baseball more and more."
Giants hitters will not want to see replays of this game. They were held scoreless for six innings by 34-year-old Jason Johnson, who spent 2007 in Japan and the first half of 2008 at Triple-A Las Vegas. Chan Ho Park and Jonathan Broxton completed the shutout, which actually rendered moot the run scored on the disputed call.
Cain finished July with a 1.88 ERA in six starts. In typical Cain hard luck, he went 2-3.
The Giants are having poor luck with earthquakes. This was their second on the road this season. They were in St. Louis in April when the New Madrid Fault belched a little in nearby central Illinois.
Bochy has been through many and said, "I thought it was a bomb at first. After a couple of seconds, I realized it was an earthquake. There was a pretty good jolt to start it off."
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