See No Evil: Giants 7, Brewers 1

Very scary moment in the game tonight as Giants rookie pitcher -- and team-leader in wins -- Joe Martinez was struck in the head by a line drive off the bat of Mike Cameron. Martinez was bloodied and dazed, but walked off under his own power, and seemed okay pending tests. It doesn't seem serious, which on a day where one baseball player has already tragically died after pitching the best game of his life, is welcome news. Because that is all terribly depressing, I'm going to ignore it for the rest of this post:

I've determined the secret to winning Giants baseball -- I need to not watch it live. So far this season I've had to TiVo two games because of work, and the Giants are 2-0. I've watched one game live, and they are 0-1. Some people will tell you three games isn't a large enough enough sample size to determine trends about baseball. Those people probably also hate America. Until I have any more evidence, I'm just going to go with the old scientific theorem, "The trend is your friend".

Matt Cain was great, and more amazingly, he got run support, as the Giants won it, 7-1. Cain allowed only 1 run and 6 baserunners in 7 innings, while striking out 5. He accomplished this against a strong Brewer lineup, settling in nicely after a bit of a lucky start, when two long flyballs to right Death Valley were knocked down by the wind and died in Randy Winn's glove at the wall.

Speaking of Winn: He looked great in the field and at the plate -- a good sign for the notoriously slow starter -- and more and more, I'm coming to believe those who believe he's one of the more underrated players in baseball. He plays very well in the toughest RF in the league, hits .300 (3 of the last 4 years), draws walks, and steals bases at a very high rate (42/47 last 2+ years). If he has another good year, the Giants may be able to trade him for something shiny at the trade deadline if they fall out of the race.

Not that I'm thinking they'll be out of the race. In fact, if the prospects I had the most confidence in coming into the season -- Sandoval, Lewis, Ishikawa -- keep hitting (though I doubt Lewis will hit .500+), I might struggle to supress my fanboy optimism. I know the Giants have a potentially great rotation, but there's no guarantee it'll workl out that way. If the offense was good enough that they didn't need a dominant staff, I could be talked into their chances to win the division. Yeah, that's right -- I said it.

TOMORROW: The Giants take it on the road down to San Diego, where they take on the lowly Padres. Lucky for San Diego, the Giants are throwing Barry Zito -- the perfect cure for my fanboy optimism. He'll take on the Padres' Shawn Hill.