The season seems to take so long, but then the end gets here quickly. After a long good year, the Dodgers and Giants play their last scheduled match up against each other. They may see each other in the playoffs, but this is the last regularly scheduled match.

It’s amazing what a week of baseball brought. The Dodgers gained 2 games on the Rockies and the Giants are still 3.5 games behind them. I like where the Dodgers stand.

I was talking to a Giants fan last night who said, “The Dodgers are in real good shape.” They know they did what they had to do against the Pirates and now if they can play well this weekend, they should definitely go to the playoffs.

Here are the pitching matchups and my take on who has the advantage.

Friday: Vicente Padilla, RHP (11-6, 4.42)  vs. Jonathan Sanchez, LHP (6-12, 4.16)

Advantage Dodgers.  He’s just pitching well right now, and the Dodgers seemed to have Sanchez’s number last weekend.

Saturday: Jon Garland, RHP (10-11, 4.19) vs Brad Penny, RHP (10-8, 5.04)

Having seen Penny first hand on Sunday, definitely advantage Giants.  He wants to win against the Dodgers.  Period.

Sunday: Randy Wolf, LHP (10-6, 3.24)  vs. Tim Lincecum, RHP (14-5, 2.30)

Wow.  Wolf is sharp right now, but Lincecum is still Cy Young level.  Advantage Giants.  If the Dodgers can get to him late, they have a chance, but that should be a great game.

Well – hopefully we can take 2 of 3 and keep the lead we have.  We’ll see.  Then again the bats seemed to jump out last weekend, so hopefully it will be the same this weekend.  At least if we lose 2 of 3 we can go back to playing the Pirates.  Go Blue.

Casey Blake - LA Times

Yee Ha!  What a way to start.  Big wins are always fun…especially when you live up here.  Sadly I won’t be at work the next few days for the weekend, because it would have been really fun to talk about this game.

I’m making it official.  Casey Blake is my favorite player on the Dodgers right now.  If you’ve read this blog, you know I’ve been partial for a long time.  I like Manny and Loney and Pierre, but Blake just gets the job done.  He is a good guy and a great player.  Sometimes up, sometimes down, but he is clutch when they need it.  I’m glad to see his body seems to be ok after resting for a bit. 

My prediction rang true that the Dodgers would have the advantage, but it definitely wasn’t what I expected.  Matt Cain is a good pitcher and the Dodgers ate him up.  It’s interesting how Manny is just playing smart these days.  He’s hit a few homeruns of late, but he’s trying to hit to the right side and he was involved in driving in runs tonight.  I agree with people that something seems a little off, but he’s a good enough player that he’s still contributing.

It was great to see Loney playing well too.  He has a sweet swing.  I still think he’ll win the batting title some day, but he when he connects, man does he drive it.

We saw history tonight too.  Buster Posey is the Giants true catching prospect, and he made is major league debut.  They’ve been talking about this guy for weeks as he just tore up the minors this year.  What was interesting was that they’ve had him in the majors for almost a week and he hasn’t been in a game.  Bruce Bochy said he was waiting for the right time, but it was weird that they waited so long.  I guess that being down 7-1 was long enough.  Based on his stats we’ll be seeing a lot of him, and he seems to be the heir apparent for Bengie Molina.

It was real interesting reading the local papers today to see what they said about the series this weekend.  What was interesting was that there wasn’t a lot to read.  The Giants are on the cusp of not making the playoffs and everyone knows the Dodgers are better, they just hope they can stay close to still catch the Rockies.  The Giants are playing the Dodgers this weekend, but the focus is the next series with the Rockies.  As a Dodgerfan, I wanted the big story on how important this series is…but none of that was there.  The focus was Tim Lincecum’s back, Buster Posey being in the bigs, and the hope to catch the Rockies.

Bring on tomorrow and Sunday.  If anyone is going to the game on Sunday, let me know and we can meet up.  The Willie McCovey statue might be a good place before the game.  E-mail me at scott@sfdodgerfan.com.

Go Dodgers.

Scott Work Cube Day 2

Well, the sweep didn’t quite happen. Tim Lincecum did his thing and the Dodgers bullpen just couldn’t hold out long enough.

I was checking in on the game since it was during work and knew it would come down to the end. It was tied when I left work and I told my Giant fan co-worker, “You better hope they put Broxton in so you have a chance…” It ended up that they didn’t need Broxton, Mota did just fine. I knew he was in trouble with that first walk.

No sweep, but the Dodgers still showed why they are in 1st place.

What was interesting tonight was in listening to the talk shows after the game. Let’s just say the fans and talk show host were livid. I mean livid. Livid first at the umpires, livid second at the Giants for having no offense, and livid third at Brian Sabean for getting them into this mess.

I’ll be the first to say the umpires had a bad series. Literally one fan called in and thought the Giants probably would have gotten better calls down in LA. Those calls did affect the game, so I can see their disdain.

The offense though of the Giants is weak. As the talk show host said it, “when you have to depend on Juan Uribe to be your walk off homerun guy…you’re in trouble.”   Enough said.

Even more, as much as I think Brian Sabean has done a pretty good job this year with what the Giants have, this talk show host felt he should be fired now. He found real fault that the Giants went into the year planning on Bengie Molina being an acceptable clean up hitter. He felt that all the veterans (including Molina) should be canned and the young guys should take the team where it needs to go.

I see where he was going, but it was a bit extreme. The Giants are way better than expected already, so the comments are pretty harsh. I think the real problem is that the plan was never to win the World Series, just to compete this year. I think the fans have gotten a taste of the wildcard and now have expected that this was the potential all along. It never was.   They still have a chance at the wild card and that should be the goal to be realistic.

Anyway – the highlight of the day was this morning listening to the talk shows. They played the sound clip of Manny Ramirez hitting his homerun last night and in the background they also played someone throwing up. It was the most realistic throw up sound clip I’ve ever heard and it was hilarious to hear it next to Manny’s homerun. High points to the Murph and Mac show (click here) on KNBR for really funny radio.  I’m totally biased because I love Giants fans wanting to barf at Manny’s success, but it was great.  If anyone can find the sound bite, send it to me and I’ll post it to the next post.

Special thanks again to all the extra hits over this series.  Keep the comments coming. 

Coming up next – a response to a few of the comments from the last few days.  The biggest one being – how far is too far in terms of rivalry gloating?  More specifically when is the rivalry fun, versus mean?  Most Giants fans up here actually wish the rivalry were meaner like it was in the old days at Candlestick Park.  What do you think – is the Dodgers/Giants rivalry too soft, or too hard?  Let me know and I’ll compose the comments in the next post.

Work Cube Whiteboard

I’m writing this as I watch the Giants broadcasters dissect the game tonight. Let’s just say they’re a little stunned. As two of them said, they just weren’t expecting the Giants to get blown out like they did tonight. With the Giants pitching as it is, blowouts like this aren’t real common. Yet with the errors the Giants had tonight, it just wasn’t close. They spent a lot of time in their discussion stating just how good the Dodgers are this year. Bring on the spoon, because I can eat up that praise and their shock all day!  

Tonight just wasn’t close. Wolf and Ethier were on and Manny just raked. It was great to see Manny hit a homerun tonight. Hopefully his hand is feeling better now. He is officially claiming the title of “Giant Killer.” He continues to step up against the Giants and it’s just great to see the fans continue to hate him all the more for being so good.

Today was a fun day because it came after the win last night. I rubbed it in to my co-workers and put the Dodgers score on my whiteboard at work (See picture). I got some great comments. I had one guy who didn’t know I was a Dodgerfan say, “Why in the world are you celebrating that the Dodgers won?” I said, “BECAUSE I’M A DODGERFAN!” He rolled his eyes and then said, “well then I’m not coming back to your cube any time soon….” Such it is. 

Another Giants fan was lamenting that the Giants just can’t catch up when they are down. Last night, I was confident the Dodgers would win with a 4-1 lead (even though I was right on Broxton), and I was right.   The Giants have great pitching, but they just don’t have the offense.

The papers and the TV were touting how important this series was to the Giants.  After seeing the Dodgers struggle so much with Atlanta, it’s great to see them come in and build up their lead in the west.  Even if they lose to Lincecum tomorrow, the Dodgers still showed already why they are the best in the West.

I don’t want to rub it in too much tomorrow…but oh what fun to do what I can.  Go Blue.

Tim Lincecum - SF Giants.com

I’m going to keep this short and sweet this week.

• The Giants are only 5.5 games behind the Dodgers.
• Freddy Sanchez has been the man and has been a great pick up.
• Tim Lincecum won his NL leading 13th game.

Oh yes – the Giants are improving and are definitely going for it.

Honestly, I still don’t know if they can win the World Series, but if the Dodgers slip in the next month, they may make it interesting. The Dodgers need to take at least 2 of three this week in SF to push the Giants down a little.

I’m going to do a post on each game this week – so stay tuned.