MLB.com
The boos, which Barry Zito hadn't heard all year at AT&T Park, returned on Saturday night.
But the fans' catcalls paled in comparison to the wrath of manager Bruce Bochy, who lectured his starting pitchers after the Giants' 11-3 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Bochy was fed up with the ineffectiveness of the starters, who thrived for most of the season and were expected to lead San Francisco toward prominence. After Zito allowed nine runs (seven earned) while pitching a season-low 3 2/3 innings for the second start in a row, Bochy no longer could contain his frustration. He essentially told his pitchers to snap out of it, though the forcefulness of his voice as he addressed reporters indicated that he used harsher language.
"They all need to step up," said Bochy, who summoned Zito, Tim Lincecum, Jonathan Sanchez and Madison Bumgarner. Matt Cain, who has pitched capably this month (2-2, 2.76 ERA), was resting at home for his Sunday appearance. "It's tough when you go through stretches like this. But the last thing we can do is accept it. You have to do something about it, individually, as a staff and as a team. These are all critical games. We're just not getting it done, and we know it."
"The starters got called in," Zito acknowledged. "We gotta do better. That's the bottom line."
The Giants remain in contention, though their third consecutive defeat dropped them 1 1/2 games behind National League Wild Card leader Philadelphia and kept them six games behind first-place San Diego in the NL West. Memo to the Giants: Look out for Colorado, which trails them by only three games.
If the Giants' pitching continues to flounder, reaching the postseason will be a fantasy by mid-September. San Francisco's starters are 5-13 with a 5.56 ERA in August, largely explaining the club's 11-14 record this month. Through five games on this homestand, Giants starters are 1-3 with a 9.12 ERA.
"Baseball's funny like that. There's an ebb and a flow always. It's just not a good time for us to be having a lull right now," Zito said. "There's a playoff race. It's still August, yeah, but we can't take anything lightly."
Simply put, the starters are starting poorly. Zito allowed Arizona six first-inning runs, though right fielder Jose Guillen misplayed a two-out fly ball that made two runs unearned. That followed the three runs Lincecum yielded in Friday night's first inning, as well as the four Bumgarner surrendered in Wednesday's initial frame against Cincinnati.
"As the starting rotation, we know that we set the tone out there," Zito said. "We have to make a statement in the first inning, second inning, and we haven't been doing that. So we're taking this pretty seriously."
Lincecum, the two-time reigning NL Cy Young Award winner, lost all five of his August starts while compiling a 7.82 ERA. Zito (8-10), the 2002 AL Cy Young recipient, hasn't won a game since July 16 and is 0-6, 5.51 in nine appearances since. The left-hander also has lost three games in seven days, including last Sunday's setback at St. Louis and his 12th-inning relief lapse Wednesday against Cincinnati. The last pitcher to absorb three defeats, including at least two starts, during a one-week span was Jorge De La Rosa, then with Kansas City, from June 16-22, 2007.
In some instances with some teams, both Lincecum and Zito would be candidates for removal from the rotation. But given their past excellence and the lack of qualified stand-ins at Triple-A Fresno, the Giants have no choice but to stick with their current quintet.
"Believe me, we're working on it. Because we know this isn't going to work," Bochy said. "We're not getting it done. The starting staff is what we're built on. We're going to have to get this fixed really soon."
The D-backs have made some repairs since the Giants swept them July 22-25 at Phoenix. They're 14-12 in August.
"We've played hard," interim D-backs manager Kirk Gibson said.
Arizona's standouts include first baseman Adam LaRoche, who spurned the Giants' overtures as a free agent last offseason. LaRoche wanted to play in a better hitters' park, but he looked at home while depositing his second homer into McCovey Cove in two nights, a two-run drive in the ninth inning.
The game became a rout eight innings earlier. Zito reached two-strike counts on six of the 11 hitters he faced in Arizona's crushing first inning. But he retired just one of them. Two collected hits, a pair drew walks and another -- Daniel Hudson, the opposing pitcher batting .154 -- was hit by a pitch. Those lapses helped set up the inning's biggest hit, Miguel Montero's bases-loaded, three-run double with two outs.
"I'm just not in a good rhythm out there," Zito said. "The pitches just aren't crisp right now."
Much to Bochy's chagrin, the same goes for the rest of the staff.
No comments:
Post a Comment