Mercury News
What a magical moment it would've been: Buster Posey stealing a page from Will Clark's book and hitting a home run in his first major league at-bat.
Water cannons would've blasted off. Euphoria would've swept through the stands. Hope would've been pumped back into the fan base. Twitterers would've been tweeting.
It would've made absolutely no difference Friday night. Not in preventing an embarrassingly flat 10-3 defeat to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Not in reviving a pennant race in which the Giants are proving less relevant by the day.
Undone by their lifeless lineup once again, the Giants managed two hits in the first seven innings against right-hander Hiroki Kuroda, Matt Cain remained winless in 13 career starts against their archrivals, and the bullpen turned the game into a scrimmage. Combined with the Colorado Rockies' surging victory at San Diego, the Giants find themselves 5½ games back in the wild-card standings with 21 to play. They're 7½ games behind the NL West-leading Dodgers. And mighty Posey? He struck out. "It's my first at-bat," said Posey, who batted in the eighth inning and couldn't check his swing on Kuroda's 2-2 fastball. "I'll never get that back again." There are hundreds upon hundreds of at-bats the Giants can't get back this season — one-pitch outs, pop-ups with runners in scoring position, tailor-made double-play grounders, dispiriting swings at sliders away. And all this slow poison is reaching lethally toxic levels. "We knew this home- stand there was a sense of urgency," Giants manager Bruce Bochy said. "We just really haven't gotten the bats going. The pitching has done a tremendous job, but it's just not going to work without some timely hitting." Cain gave up a two-run double to James Loney in the first inning and a two-run home run to Casey Blake in the sixth. The Dodgers rubbed in salt against Merkin Valdez, Bob Howry and Joe Martinez. But the early runs off Cain were enough to overwhelm the Giants, whose offense could drown in an inflatable kiddie pool. The Giants had the look of resignation — complete with slumped shoulders and blank stares. Kuroda needed just 86 pitches to cruise through eight innings. "I've said this: When you don't hit, you look flat," Bochy said. "But they're trying, I'll tell you that. Guys are trying too hard." After seven innings, Bochy had seen enough. He brought in seven fresh players, including Posey, the Giants' most heralded hitting prospect in almost 20 years. Posey had watched eight games since his surprise promotion on Sept. 2. "It's a feeling I'll never have again," Posey said. "The crowd was great. That made it fun for me. I'll cherish this, for sure. "... (Hitting a home run) is probably what everyone would like to do, but it didn't work out that way." Bochy also brought in John Bowker, Kevin Frandsen, Ryan Rohlinger and Rich Aurilia — all players who've barely seen the field in September while the regulars continued to struggle. It's not as if the Giants had any hope of an epic comeback. They've rallied from a three-run deficit just three times all year. They haven't erased a deficit of five runs or more since 2008. And while the Rockies continued to romp, the Giants haven't shown any indication they can get on the kind of roll necessary to pump life back into their season. The Giants haven't won five consecutive games all year. Even last season's 72-90 team managed a five-game streak. Two, in fact. But with the next eight games against the Dodgers and Rockies, Cain said this is no time for self-loathing. "If we sit here and dwell on today "... we can't do that," Cain said. "I'm hugely disappointed. I feel I let our guys down. But if we think about what we did tonight, it'll carry over into the weekend and next week. We've gotta play like nothing happened."
From: MLB.com
 LA Dodgers (84-58) Won 1 | LA Dodgers 10, San Francisco 3 |  San Francisco (76-65) Lost 3 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Standings thru 9/11/09 | Recap: LAD | SF | Wrap | Gameday |
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