by
Greek Giant

Once upon a time there was a portly baseball player from Venezuela who smiled a lot, hit home runs off pitches high and low, inside and out, and also pitched shutout innings and also played a great third base and also once was an MVP of the World Series. His nickname was “The Panda.”

Because he was not loved in Boston, a habitat far from his native land, he did not perform well there. He simply did not like to eat beans and preferred Mission District burritos at Pancho Villa instead…

Then one day on a beesy day in Cincinnati when his baseball team was getting blown out.. he pitched again and did not give up any runs..

That’s the best headline I could think of right off the top of my head. This game was delayed due to various swarms of bees. I wish those damn bees had canceled the game outright. Drew Pomeranz was the picture of awful. The Giants were in a 5-zip hole after one inning. You wonder if Pomeranz and Smarge got the memo about the Reds jumping all over the Giants starting pitchers in the first inning… It was kind of ridiculous to see it happen for the fourth straight game!

No more epic comebacks here. It was just a sad day. New Giant Pat Venditte had a nightmare inning, the kind of inning featured in movies like Major League where the pitcher shows up drunk or high and gets clobbered thanks to his catcher telling the opposing hitters what the next pitch is… It was actually worse than that…

At the end of the day as many of you astute TWG commenters posted, this was a split between two resolutely bad teams.

The Giants bullpen is pretty much spent right before a three game series in Denver that begins tomorrow.

No worries, Madison Bumgarner is pitching Tuesday night.

Ummmm I really enjoyed Friday and Sunday’s wins…

Evan Longoria sat today in favor of Pablo Sandoval, who hit a three-run bomb and pitched another shutout inning in relief, both comic and tragic. The Panda now has a career ERA of zero. He’s my pick for dark horse Cy Young candidate in 2020.

The Box