Giants Hit First Home Runs At Home In 2012

Barry Zito's fastball is the same speed in a photograph as it is in a video

As the regular season winds down, these game recaps are going to get shorter and shorter. You will notice that recently, there haven’t been any game recaps or post, which is probably disappointing to no one. There are real life obligations that have come up, as opposed to baseball obligations which are fake life. I'll try to start updating daily from now on, even if it means just writing a fun fact about dungeons crabs. But it''s been getting a little too slow around here.  I mean, just scrolling through the front page of the site, there’s still something visible about the Astros series. Anything about the Astros at this point in time is useless. Hilarious, but useless.

Anyways, by this time in the season, I’m done complaining about bad teams acting bad. Wins are wins, even if they’re aided by Wilin Rosario playing defense like the Iron Giant on ice skates. It’s not as if the Rockies completely fumbled this game away Kyle Williams style. Instead they poured gasoline on each other in a Zoolander like fashion and Pablo Sandoval and Buster Posey took the opportunity to shoot them with a flamethrower.

It’s true, the Rockies are a complete mess of a baseball team. 2013 will be better, but 2012 is an absolute catastrophe.  Going into the season, it was your standard Rockies team: All hitting and no pitching. Then, they lost Troy Tulowitzki, Michael Cuddyer, Todd Helton and most recently Carlos Gonzalez. Now, they are a team with no hitting and no pitching. I’d prefer not have to analyze that.

But at this point in the season, when the finish lines in site and all you’re focused on is getting into the playoffs and going from there, any win is as significant as the next. 

Obviously, the story of this game, other than the Rockies playing like they were actually on the Rockies, was Pablo Sandoval. He’s hit 3 home runs in his past 2 games, appearing to have woken up from his post injury slumber. It’s just 2 games blah blah small sample size blah blah. Sandoval could go 0 for his next 345 and this post would mysteriously burn up in cyber space/ But right now, Sandoval looks like himself, in that he’s swinging the bat like a golf club, and hitting the ball like he’s hitting a golf ball.

It’s not as if Sandoval’s patience has been the problem. He’s swinging at 43.4% of pitches outside the strike zone, roughly the same as last season (44.1%), when he was normal Pablo Sandoval. The difference is that during the slump Sandoval wasn’t hitting for any power, meaning he wasn’t getting any lift on the ball. His fly ball rate in August and September was 28% and 32% respectively, whereas last season it was 38%. I’m no baseball expert, but watching him hit 3 home runs in 8 plate appearences leads me to believe he is finding a groove.

We’re far past the point where Sandoval swinging at bird droppings is an issue. That’s just who Sandoval is, and he’s proved that he can be successful at it. It’s just a matter of him getting the barrel of the bat on the ball wherever it ends up and it appears Sandoval is doing that.

<3 Dingerz. Not Dinger.

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The Giants magic number is 3. The Dodgers magic number is 16. That’s probably the only important thing in the world right now. Elections don’t matter.