Surging Dodgers Were Just The Right Medicine For Struggling Giants
Whoever said games don't matter in April wasn't at AT&T Park the past three days.
The flailing, bumbling, stumbling Giants decided June came early. They had lost eight in a row, were 4-10 with Matt Cain and Hunter Pence on the bench, and Pablo in Beantown and hardly looked the part of a defending World Series champion.
But guess who rolled into town just in time? The hottest team in baseball and winners of seven straight. Ladies and gentlemen, the Los Angeles Dodgers. Can I get an amen?
Suddenly, Timmy pitched. The defense played defense and the clock must have struck twelve because the Giants clutch hitting returned just in time to sweep the blue right out of the Dodgers' dugout.
Who's Justin Maxwell anyway? His 12th-inning pinch-hit single beat the Padres one week ago. Tuesday night he makes a brilliant catch, hits a triple and a towering home run an estimated 425 feet in a 6-2 win.
Today, he sweeps the Dodgers with a 10th-inning walk off single. Maxwell is a Giant because nobody else wanted him. It is SO Giants.
The Giants swept the Dodgers for the first time in almost two years. But it was so much more than a sweep. Giants reliever Jeremy Affeldt said before the series that facing a rival like the Dodgers could be exactly what the doctor ordered because it could jumpstart a struggling baseball team that was six games back through just 14 games.
Ya think? Affeldt's prophecy saw the Giants board their flight for Denver with a 7-10 record and just three games back of the bad guys. If this doesn't put them on a rocky mountain high, I don't know what will.
Sure it's only April. But it was beginning to shape up like June and a little bit like 2013 and every odd year before that.
I don't know about you, but when September rolls around and the Giants are knockin' on the wild card door once more, I'll look back to the week that turned it around.
Amen to that.