Sadowski loses game, streak - keeps poise
SFGate/San Francisco Chronicle
From the sounds of his postgame comments Wednesday afternoon, Ryan Sadowski just as easily could have been talking about continuing his scoreless-innings streak as talking about his first major-league loss.
This time, reality was the latter, in the form of a 7-0 loss during which the Giants really didn't contest Florida on a brilliantly sunny day at AT&T Park.
"I could have let it fall apart at a lot of different spots, but I didn't," Sadowski said. "... I competed well and stuck to my strengths."
Those positives weren't enough to beat Chris Volstad, who struck out six and allowed only five hits. Using a sinking fastball in the mid-90s, a slow curve and an occasional changeup - all with equally precise control - the 6-foot-8 right-hander tossed his first career complete game.
The Marlins scored three runs - two earned - in five-plus innings against Sadowski, pushed their lead to 4-0 off reliever Justin Miller in the seventh and got an unneeded three-run shot from Dan Uggla in the ninth against Merkin Valdez. The Giants rarely threatened, moving only two runners into scoring position.
"Volstad was just awesome," Sadowski said. "He made it so if I gave up one, it was going to be enough."
Unlike his first two starts, Sadowski struggled with his command, walking two in the first inning, two more - including Volstad - in the fifth and hitting a batter in the sixth. The right-hander showed poise in limiting the damage in innings that appeared headed for scoring binges. He pushed his career-commencing scoreless-innings streak to 16 before allowing a run in the fourth.
Even then, things could have been a lot worse. Sadowski gave up back-to-back one-out hits but got an important strikeout of Cody Ross with runners on second and third before John Baker's grounder found a hole on the left side and drove home Jorge Cantu. In the fifth, Sadowski yielded only one run despite giving up two walks, a hit and a Wes Helms fly-out that would have been a homer in most other parks.
"If you're around (Sadowski), you can see his persona, his mentality and the way he goes about his business," Aaron Rowand said. "He's very calm and cool-headed with everything he does. When he needs to make pitches, he makes pitches, and that's why he's going to be around here for a long time."
In some senses, the Giants deserved to be in a surprisingly positive mood following a 7-0 whitewash. They still won their 12th series in 14 tries at home and can rest on the fact that they've won seven of their past 11 games.
"The bottom line is we won the series, and we can move on to playing San Diego and try to do it again," Rowand said. "It's not September yet. The key to being consistent and trying to find yourself in the postseason mix at the end of the year is to continually win series."
That type of optimism also oozes from Sadowski, who took the end of his scoreless streak in stride. His 16 consecutive shutout innings were the most by a Giants rookie since Al Worthington tossed 19 in 1953.
"There are a lot of people who have never given up a run in the big leagues, so it's actually probably more of an accomplishment to have given up a run," Sadowski said. "That's the way I look at it. Man, I hope I get the opportunity to give up a few hundred of these."
Just not all at once.
From: MLB.com
 Florida (44-42) Won 1 | Florida 7, San Francisco 0 |  San Francisco (46-38) Lost 1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Standings thru 7/8/09 | Recap: FLA | SF | Gameday | Marlins stats | Giants stats |
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