SAN FRANCISCO – The Giants appear to have zeroed in on a formula for first-place permanence – just don’t let the opponent score ever again.
Following up his team’s historic three-game shutout sweep of the Dodgers to start the week, Madison Bumgarner led the Giants to another franchise milestone with the club’s fourth consecutive shutout, a 5-0 blanking of the Cincinnati Reds on Thursday night at AT&T Park.
In 130 years, the Giants had never won four straight games by shutout. But Bumgarner’s first career complete game – a one-hitter at that – tacked nine more innings onto San Francisco’s string of nothingness, now at 36 innings.
The Giants also moved into first place into the N.L. West by themselves for the first time this year, one game ahead of the Dodgers.
But for the moment, the big story is all about the goose eggs, and the amazing record run of zeros might not stop anytime soon. Mr. Perfect Game, Matt Cain, pitches Friday night against the Reds, who had only been shut out one time this year before Bumgarner (10-4) put them to sleep with another stellar performance.
He allowed only a sixth-inning single by Ryan Hanigan, walks to Drew Stubbs in the first and fourth innings and nothing else. Bumgarner struck out eight in winning his fifth straight decision.
The Giants’ left-hander likely enhanced his chances for his first All-Star appearance by beating another prime All-Star candidate, Cincinnati ace Johnny Cueto, who beat San Francisco twice in 2011 and didn’t allow a run in 16 innings. Cueto (9-4) came into Thursday night’s game with victories in his last four starts.
The Giants jumped on Cueto quickly, however. After two were out in the first inning, Melky Cabrera drew a walk, Buster Posey singled to right and Angel Pagan laced a base hit to right. Cabrera scored on the hit, and when right fielder Jay Bruce’s throw got away from Hanigan at home plate, Posey also scored.
The Giants padded their lead with another two-out run in the sixth when Pagan walked and scored when Cincinnati left fielder Todd Frazier misjudged Pablo Sandoval’s fly ball and allowed it to go over his head for a double.
Two more runs crossed the plate in the seventh. Bumgarner’s one-out single was followed by Gregor Blanco’s triple into the right-center gap, and Blanco subsequently scored on Ryan Theriot’s single to center.
– Tim Lincecum received a bunch of congratulatory text messages following his slump-busting performance against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Wednesday. One that was particularly meaningful to him came from his old catcher, Bengie Molina.
Molina, Lincecum’s first catcher with the Giants and the main man behind the plate during his two Cy Young seasons, has kept in semiregular contact with the pitcher since he retired and has attempted to provide some long-distance pointers during his protracted slump via text.
Lincecum said Thursday that the support and advice he’s received from Molina through his rough patch has been helpful.
“If there’s one guy who knows me almost as well as my dad, it’d be him, I guess,” Lincecum said.
Molina gave an extended evaluation of Lincecum’s season-long problems in an interview with this newspaper’s Dan Brown last week and essentially stated that the right-hander’s issues were in his mind.
“In the games that I’ve seen that he’s lost, it’s because he’s beat himself,” Molina said. “If you don’t have that confidence and if you don’t have that fight in you, I think it’s really easy for you to lose the game.”
Lincecum maintained that he didn’t get a chance to read the article, but that the tone of the texts he’s received from Molina probably mirrored what the catcher told the newspaper.
“He just provides little stuff that you tend to forget,” Lincecum said. “That’s pretty much the gist of his text messages, and he’s really good. He’s always been a guy where we keep in touch with kind of open-ended texts.”
Lincecum said he wasn’t exactly barraged with Molina messages the first three months but received enough to know the catcher really wanted to help however he could.
“Every so often, just whenever he would feel he’d want to or need to,” he said. “It wasn’t clockwork where it was after every start or something like that. But I guess he was showing his concern at the time for what I was going through.”
So what did Molina have to say in his text to Lincecum after Wednesday’s game, a 3-0 giants win in which Lincecum pitched seven innings for his first victory since April 28?
“Pretty much just congratulations,” the pitcher said. “So I sent him one back that said thank you and told him that all those texts that he sends me don’t go unnoticed or unappreciated.”
– Catcher Hector Sanchez was feeling the aftereffects of a rough day behind the plate Wednesday catching Lincecum. He took a ball off his mask and was also shaken up making a spectacular layout catch of a foul ball.
“All my body’s sore,” said Sanchez, who added his hip, ribs and neck were feeling particularly stiff Thursday, although he added that none of the problems were serious.
Sanchez said that when he made the grab of Elian Herrera’s foul in the fourth inning, he hit the ground particularly hard and was a bit woozy when he made a throw to second base.
“When I went down, it was like the whole field was moving,” he said.
– Reds manager Dusty Baker will take part in the ceremony honoring the Giants’ 2002 World Series team on Sunday, but when asked if he was looking forward to it, Baker didn’t seem particularly enthused.
“Not yet,” he said. “I’ve seen the list of guys and I guess most everybody will be here. I’m looking forward to seeing them, but I’m not really looking forward to reliving the memory.”
The Giants lost the final two games of the 2002 Series to the Angels after taking a 3-2 lead in the Series and holding a 5-0 lead in the potential Game 6 clincher.
