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Cain’s brilliance carries Giants
By Jeremy Harness June 2, 2010 |
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SAN FRANCISCO - Wednesday’s game marked the continued resurgence for Matt Cain, and a little bit of redemption for Aaron Rowand. For Cain, it doesn’t get much better than the one-hitter he fired May 28 against Arizona, but he came pretty close on Wednesday when the Giants sorely needed a victory, going eight innings and shutting down the Colorado Rockies in a 4-1 win at AT&T Park. He didn’t shut out the Rockies like he did the Diamondbacks five days ago, but he allowed Colorado to scored only once while walking three and striking out five before clearing the way for Brian Wilson to pitch a perfect ninth to grab his 13th save of the season. In the process, he got a huge assist from an unlikely source in Rowand, whose fifth-inning double drove in two runs and kick-started the previously ice-cold offense and allowed the Giants to salvage the finale of a three-game series. After what happened to Barry Zito the night before, as he himself surrendered only a single run but got tagged with a no-decision, worse fate was anticipated for Cain, who is well-versed in something like this. After three scoreless innings, Colorado second baseman and Bay Area native Troy Tulowitzki’s solo home run in the fourth gave the Rockies a 1-0 lead. Meanwhile, the Giants’ offense was stuck in neutral, having promising rallies in the third and fourth innings destroyed by double plays and had gotten only two runners on base. All of that changed in the fifth inning, however. With two outs, Aubrey Huff came up with back-to-back singles before Rowand, who had hit right into a twin killing in his previous at-bat and was batting only .154 on this homestand, smoked a belt-high fastball from Colorado starter Jeff Francis over center fielder Carlos Gonzalez’s head to drive in both guys and give the Giants a 2-1 lead. Rowand said after the game that since Francis had used the changeup to induce him into that double play earlier, that he was going to go with the fastball, figuring that he was looking for the changeup. He was right. He added that when the ball came off the bat, he figured it was going to be right at Gonzalez, citing the fact that he, along with his teammates, had been hitting the ball hard but only to go into opponents’ gloves. “When it feels like there’s 45 fielders standing out there, it’s tough,” he said. “Luckily, I got it up enough to get it over his head. “But you have to stay within yourself. I said that for a couple of weeks, ‘Don’t change anything, don’t change anything. After a couple weeks of hitting balls at people, it’s tough to keep going home and telling yourself the same thing. “But you’ve got to be able to separate it and stay where you want to be, but it’s a lot easier said than done when you’re not getting results. You’re working your butt off on something, and you’re doing something right, but it doesn’t seem to go your way. If it’s consistently not going your way, human nature is, you’re got to figure out something, you’ve got to change something.” The Giants then added a couple more runs in the sixth to give Cain a little breathing room. After Freddy Sanchez walked, Pablo Sandoval scooped up a pitch from below his knees and sent it into the gap in left-center, allowing Sanchez to motor all the way from first to score. Two batters later, Bengie Molina singled in Sandoval to extend the Giants’ lead to 4-1. |
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