Post-game thread: Giants win in a romp

Even when Bruce Bochy was driving me insane in the losing years, playing veteran hitters who had no business starting, I always respected how he handled a pitching staff. He walked a fine line between pampering and abuse, and after the complete nonsense of Felipe Alou’s bullpen management, Bochy was a revelation. No manager is ever going to make the exact move you’d make, and it’s worth noting that you’d be wrong about a lot of those moves too.

So it is with great displeasure that I have to write this post-game thread. That was an unacceptable game.

Matt Cain starts the eighth. Why? Was he dominating? At times, yeah, but he’d also get into these weird squinks where he’d lose all control. He was at 100 pitches. Can’t imagine in what world it was a necessity that he’d start the eighth. The bullpen is rested.

Sergio Romo gives up a bloop single and gets yanked. The next hitter is Juan Uribe. For two years, the Giants watched Uribe flail against outside sliders. He has hit a ball into right field maybe .34 times in the regular season. He can hit a fastball, sure. He can hit a hanging slider. But if the pitch is placed well, Uribe has no chance.

So obviously, Bochy gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahcodycodycodycodycodycodycodycodycodycodycody

CODY ROSS

CODY ROSS

Now earn your win, Wilson.

That was the first time since, dang, maybe the Ankiel game last year that I was crushed by a baseball game. Just crushed. Cain shouldn’t have started th;;;;

Oh, dammit, Wilson. Don’t be hurt. What in the hell?

This is a bad trip, man. This is a bad trip. I WANT OFF. I WANT OFF. GET ME OFF. oh god, this isn’t going to end...

...

Ahem.

Well, this was going to be a maudlin recap of what it was like to watch a man’s career end. Guy plays high school ball, college ball, grinds through the minors, sits on a bench, doesn’t get his first starting job until he’s 31, does better than anyone expects ... and then has his wrist explode over and over again. It’s one thing to read it as a tweet. It’s another to watch it happen in front of you.

Then Mark DeRosa was listed as day-to-day. Okay. An alien popped out of his wrist and attacked Ripley before he could even swing the bat, but I guess he’s day-to-day. Hope he’s okay.

Then there was bullpen nonsense. Whatever trust Bruce Bochy lost in Sergio Romo after 130 quality innings before Eric Hinske should have been regained after Ben Francisco and Carlos Ruiz. Romo is a gift. He’s a righty with plus-control and strikeout stuff who can get righties and lefties out. There are, like, ten to twenty guys in baseball who fit those qualifications. Bochy has one, and when Wilson is right, he has two. He can use them better.

Then there were injuries. Aaron Rowand spontaneously combusted running down the line. Brian Wilson broke both of his legs and stayed in the game. How in the hell am I supposed to feel? Elation that the Giants finally took a patch out of Clayton Kershaw’s failbeard? Melancholy that Mark DeRosa might never get the chance to perform for the Giants? Fear that the Giants have lost their closer? Anger that Bochy was a complete nincompoop, nay, dunderhead when it came to managing a pitching staff again, which is like Darren Ford losing his speed? Love, pure love, for Cody Ross for being Cody Ross, which continues to be Not Jose Guillen in the best Cody Ross kind of way?

Ask me in November. I have no idea how to feel about this one, other than it would have been a whole lot worse to have lost it.