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		Pitching keeping Giants in the hunt By Shooty Babbit July 23, 2010

	SAN FRANCISCO--The Giants always will have great pitching because that organization prides itself on quality starters every night right now their pitching is as good as any in the Major Leagues. They would have to understand what it takes to be competitive and the Giants are a good team and not caught up with a bunch of stars, not a lot of players who are too proud of their career and understand what it takes to win. The Giants know the window of opportunity doesn't stay open that long and the team has been able to absorb a few unfortunate injuries to guys like Mark DeRosa but as a whole their running really smooth right now and they grind it out every night when they pitch like they do. Pitcher Matt Cain: For me Matt Cain going forward is the most powerful pitcher on that staff, he's strong, he's powerful, he's built to last. It's nice to see him out there every time pitching with confidence, he's not only a power pitcher but he's learning how to pitch with the combination of the two which makes you a deadly pitcher in the Major Leagues. Pitcher Tim Lincecum: Watching Lincecum pitch against the New York Mets a team that I scout for is a sore subject but Lincecum in his last outing shutout the Mets 2-0 at Pac Bell last week and his stuff is good and with Lincecum you have to give him credit for reinventing himself on the fly. What I mean by that earlier Lincecum was not throwing with that 95-97 MPH velocity like he did last season like when he first came into the league and he's depending more on his change up and he's getting big league hitters out with it so you have to tip your hat to what he's able to do without the best stuff that we've seen in the past. Pitcher Barry Zito: Look at Zito he's got that conquesting look in his eye. I never seen him look this way before and I know success brings confidence it also gives you a snarl that you can back up and right now he's backing his snarl up. He's got everything working and he's finally gotten over the hype of living up to his contract that the San Francisco Giants have given him. The other guys on the staff have been good to him and instead of taking the attention away from him and giving up on him they give him the opportunity to focus on him being Barry Zito and he's done a great job with that. Pablo Sandoval: One thing you have to understand the thing that he did in the first place is by him coming up and being as good as he was and having the success that he did that's not easy to do and people this week made a judgment on him right away unfortunately for the league they weren't able to do what half of the teams could do and now the teams are trying to figure out how to pitch to Sandoval and teams are making the adjustments to do so. Sandoval is about ready to put in a lot of work he's a free swinging guy and I always said that a coach wants those kinds of guys that are aggressive that you can tone down close to the ones that you can kick your foot in their ankle to keep them amped up. That is not the case with Sandoval he's very athletic even though he's a big guy and he's got great hand eye coordination and he'll figure it out he's a young kid and this guy is playing at the Major League level right now. Shooty Babbit is a scout for the New York Mets and is analyst for Comcast Sports and is filling in for Ken Gimblin and Joe Cronin for Sportstalk radio