Game 140: Pirates 7 Giants 0

With nothing to do due to the fear of a hurricane bearing down on North Carolina, I actually stayed in and watched most of this one last night. The early going was interesting, it seemed like Zach Duke put someone on base every inning. Indeed he put two runners on in the first, one on in the second, and loaded the bases with no outs in the third, but escaped unscathed every single time. All in all, he only got one 1-2-3 innings the whole game, but he strung nine zeroes together for his second career shutout, which is a pretty stunning statement about the quality of the Giants offense. Really, it was a vintage Zach Duke performance, if we define vintage as "his awesome rookie year in which he somehow managed an ERA under 2.00 with a 1.21 WHIP."

On the offensive side of things, it was a weird night that saw FOUR run scoring sac flies and two triples, one by Brian Bixler and one by Bone Crusher Moss. Freddy Sanchez, Nate McLouth, Ryan Doumit, and Adam LaRoche combined for ten hits (four by Doumit) and since those four batted consecutively, that's a recipe for a lot of runs. Maybe the surprise of the night, though, was Bixler. He made some very nice plays at short including an awesome one where he dove up the middle, rolled on to his back, and threw to Freddy from his back to get a force out at second. He was only 1/5 at the plate, but his one hit was that aforementioned triple. He really looked like a totally different player than the guy that was lost in the headlights this April. It's still only one game against the Giants, but it's nice to see nontheless.