The dickhead Dodgers took the series 3-1 but as  Giants fan I am not worried. We played every game close and we never get off to a hot start on the road in So Cal. I would be happy to split the two upcoming games against San Diego (which makes not sense to have a two game series) and bring the team home wheres its time to party like its 2010!

Back to Barry though. He looked very shaky in the first inning and it had the smell of one of those “God Damn’t Zito” type of games. He gave up a single to Furcal to lead the game off, then a triple to the nerdiest looking player on the Dodgers Jamey Carroll and then the long ball to Matt Kemp. After that though he didn’t allow another hit and even pitched through some walks in the 6th to keep the game close. Zito left with a no decision after Pat Burrell launched a deep homerun to tie the game up in the top of the 7th.

***Warning Tangent Ahead***Burrell is a major issue with the team in my opinion. Although I like him a lot, his early season stats pretty much sum up his skill set now adays. He has 14 at bats, 2 hits which are each homeruns, and 5 strikeouts. Not to mention that he is a huge liability in the field. I really think we need to keep him as a Matt Stairs like pinch hitter where he has one job and thats to trot the bases. Once Cody Ross gets back it will be interesting to see what Bochy will do as to keep Brandon Belt on the team he has to keep the water buffalo Aubrey Huff in the outfield which just isn’t working. We give up so much field with Burrell and Huff in the outfield that even with Torres roaming center its just not enough protection for our pitchers. They work to hard to allow balls that could be caught, fall softly to the ground because our outfielder just wasn’t quick enough or didn’t have the right read on the ball off the bat.

Back to Zito though, again. I can’t jump on the guy to much as it was his first inning of the year that he blew it and that can happen to anyone. What I will say though is that his car accident this week was in West Hollywood which is nicknamed ‘Little Frisco’ by the locals…

Here is his line:

• He probably wouldn’t have gotten hit if he gained a couple miles per hour.
• This won’t be the last time he gets slammed in LA this season
• Hopefully its not the last time he is released in 2011
• Zito is apparently uninjured but I am sure this “traumatic” event will be an excuse for his 0-3/5.46 era in the month of April
• The cops believe that the other driver might have been Jeff Suppan, or any Giants fan in the world.
• Zito sucks

Ok thats all for today, stay tuned for our recap of Zito’s first start of the 2011 season later this week.

Trade Barry Zito will be making a triumphant return to the big leagues this year after being on the DL for Acute Lazyitus. During the break I missed a couple of terrible starts by our main man Barry, a few ok starts, and that whole World Series thing that happened (it is still awesome). 2010 was just an incredible year for Giants fans all around and even better for TradeBarryZito.com. I was able to watch the Giants fly through the playoffs with their amazing pitching, whilst pitching the same amount of innings as Zito. He rode the bench throughout the entire playoffs and earned a ring that has to leave a sour taste in his mouth. Probably not as sour as Bengie Molina’s ring though.

This year is different though, this year I will be following Barry like a slumping hitter follows the schedule to see which Giants pitchers he is facing. Just like that hitter my targets are set on Barry Zito.

There are already a ton of rumors floating around about Barry Zito getting cut before the 2011 season starts but I just can’t see that happening. We have Timmy, Matty, Sanchize, MadBum, but no one else that can be a consistent 5th starter. Jeff Suppan started off hot during Spring Training by his age and terribleness is showing pretty strong in his last couple outings. Dan Runzler is getting a shot at being a starter but there is no way he could produce for us this season making the transition a little over a week ago. Therefore unless we make a move we are stuck with Barry Zito. God help us…

Not only did Zito beat the Dodgers, but he out pitched Chad Billingsley to give him his first loss of the season. This was an exciting game to watch, as none of us really expected the Giants to beat the Dodgers with a Zito/Billingsley matchup.

Even though I run a website that is trying to trade this guitar playing hippy, I have to admit it when he impresses me. In the 5th inning, with the bases loaded and Brandon Medders completing his warm ups to come into the game to clean up Zito’s mess, Bochy made the long slow walk out to the pitchers mound. Zito greeted him with a glove over his mouth to cover up the conversation, while the gates to the bullpen opened up to let Medders onto the field. Zito never backed down, and argued for his chance to finish this inning and stay in the game. You could see the fire in his eyes, and that he wanted it.

Bochy gave him the shot and Zito delivered. I was extremely impressed with Zito’s actions.

The Giants were able to round up 3 runs for the 3-1 victory despite not having an extra base hit. Renteria and Sandoval both knocked runs in during the 7th inning using the small ball tactics we are becoming known for. Just imagine if we could pick up a power hitter…

Zito’s next start is Wednesday May 13th against the Washington Nationals.

Over the last three games, Barry has now given up a total of only three runs (and that was only in one inning against the Dodgers (yes the inning with the Balk)). So that is 19 scoreless innings out of the last 20.1. That’s dealing.

He also has lowered his ERA to a decent 3.99. The first time he has been under 4 in his career, for fucking ever, for a long time now at least.

Unfortunately the Giants couldn’t do shit offensively, getting dominated by Jason Hammel. Hammel threw six innings of scoreless ball and left after only 79 innings. Pulling a young pitcher after 79 pitches in a scoreless ball makes as much sense as pinch hitting Molina in the 7th for Fred Lewis in a double play situation.

Seriously Bochy what the fuck were you thinking. Ok here is the situation in case you missed the game.

Emmanuel Burriss doubles down the line to start off the bottom of the 7th. Steve Holm then grounds into a FC to the new pitcher Grilll and he makes an attempt at Burriss at 3rd but throws it away. So we have runners on the corners with no outs. Randy Winn then pinch hits for Zito and strikes out. So now we have a runner on third still, and Holm (a Catcher) on first with Fred Lewis up who has been peppering the ball all game.

Bochy sits Lewis for Molina who had the day off. So now we take out a guy who is hitting well, and needs more experience in this situation, for our most clutch hitter, that is a guaranteed double play if he hits it on the ground. So we have Catcher speed on first, and at the plate we have Molina who would lose a foot race against Jabba the Hut. Lewis only had 5 GDIP’s last year against Molina’s 23!

I don’t think I have to tell you what happened next, but I will. Bengie grounded out into a fucking inning ending double play.

Luckily the useless old man Rich Aurilla (the only happiness he brings to me, is when the stadium announcer calls out his name pre at-bat)got a game winning single in the 10th.

Zito didn’t get the win and is still looking for his first win of the season, but he is definitely starting the “is Zito back?” talks. I am happy to see him pitch well, and hopefully we get a couple more of these before the wheels fall off.

Go to 1:05 in.

In the second inning I started to get pretty worried as the classic sign that Zito was about to get ripped reared its ugly head. Zito left the first 7 pitches of the inning up in the zone but luckily got out of a jam with an inning ending double play. It was a big difference from the first inning when Barry only needed 9 pitches to retire the Dodgers.\

In the stands was a possibly drunk Barry Bonds sitting front row and looking better then everyone like always. I could smell the liquor threw the TV when he did an interview with Amy Gutierrez (who by the way is fucking awful). I am sure this is the only way he could go to a ball game and be on the nonathletic part of the stadium.

The Giants pulled out a great win 5-4 and continued to look like a legit team. We have now won 7 of our last 9, with both of those two losses happening during the last at bats of our opponents.

In the bottom of the third, we scored three on a couple of brain farts by the Dodgers and then a single by Pablo Sandoval. Zito then took a shutout into the 7th before getting tired and making some mistakes. He gave up a two run homerun to Casey Blake, an RBI single to Orlando Hudson, and then another RBI single to that fuck face Manny Ramirez. He was then pulled.

Zito had his 13-inning scoreless streak snapped and remains win less in his last 10 April starts. He pitched a total of 6 1/3 innings, allowing three runs and five hits.

“I’m still upset at myself for walking [Mark] Loretta and not bearing down on Blake,” Zito said. “Sure I was starting to tire, but I have to bear down. It’s strictly mental.”

We won Barry, you kept us in the game and we rallyed around you to steal back the win. Ill take a game like this from you everyday.

Unfortunately Zito got Cain’ed and the Giants scored zero runs while he was on the mound. We ended up beating the Padres on Bengie Molina’s two out ground rule double in the bottom of the ninth.

The way we won was actually pretty funny.  Andres Torres singled to right and stole second during Eugenio Velez’s strikeout. That brought up Fred Lewis with Emmanuel Burriss on deck. The Padres decided to intentionally walk Freddy Lewis to get to the 0 for the century Burriss. As soon as they threw the first ball to Lewis, Bengie Molina (who had the day off and didn’t take batting practice) stepped outside the dugout to the on deck circle. The crowd of 26,593 fans (smallest since we opened At&t) erupted. Bengie showed how clutch he is, and ended the game.

Back to Zito though, like I have said before I am a Giants fan, so I am always routing for Zito. He just finally delivered.

Zito only allowed one runner past second base, and for the first time since July of last year, did not have a walk. He also lowered his ERA from 10.00 to a career low 5.63 (still have to get my jabs in).

“I just wanted to be aggressive today and let the hitters on the other side earn it themselves instead of falling behind and giving them free passes,” said Zito. “As good a [rotation] that we have, we want to go out and help the team more than the last guy did. Some of these outings were pretty impressive, but I’m just glad to get a win today, too.”

Anyone who received their SFGiants.com email today, knows that the title of the email was “Zito brings good vibes to finale at Dodger Stadium”, well that’s about all he brought because he sure didn’t bring any skill. You can read the whole article here but don’t waste your time its bullshit. They actually try to hype the game up by saying Barry Zito likes pitching in L.A “because he’s 3-1 with a 2.73 ERA in four career appearances there”. How shitty of a pitcher are you when your bragable stats still include an ERA close to three!

Randy Johnson had never lost in L.A going into this week and hes been pitching since the civil war; now that’s a fucking stat. (He lost, go Giants!)

Back to this weeks abortion of a ballgame though.

Any inclinations that Giants fans had that we might contend in this game, were quickly crushed by Rafeal Furcals lead off homerun in the bottom of the first. They then scored 2 in the second on Fred Lewis’s 3rd error that’s not scored an error (ETNSAE is a stat they should add) of the year.

Zito gave up six runs in just over 5 innings of work. Yes that’s right, he once again can’t go deep into a game. Since 2006, Barry Zito has only hit 8.0 in the innings column 6 times out of 56 starts. No that’s not 6 complete games (which CC Sabathia beat in 2008 with 7) that’s just completing the 8th inning.

Zito did however hit two Dodgers, which is decent.

He finished with 4k’s and 4 walks (and hit two batters) and tossed 94 pitches. He is now on the same stellar pace as last year, with his second straight loss making him 0-2 on the season.

Barry was able to calm down after a rocky first inning, and his fastball was noticeably quicker. He was hitting 87-88 MPH consistently. If he can get that up to 90, I think Ill have to take this website down.

Just like last year, I feel its important for me to mention why this site is here. Well, I am a diehard Giants fan. I like Barry Zito as a person, but as a Giant it makes me want to pull my hair out every time I see him on the mound because I know what we could be doing for this team if we didn’t have his salary. Hes a good guy, and is very dedicated. He just isn’t good anymore.

It doesn’t matter if he worked out all offseason with Giants Closer Brian Wilson. It doesn’t matter if he started surfing again to keep his mind at ease. He just doesn’t have top of the rotation stuff, and does not deserve the cash we are paying him. I sure hope he is donating a lot of his salary to charity, because he definitely isn’t earning it.

Oh, and wtf is up with Scott Hairston. Robs a homerun from Bengie Molina, than next inning takes one out of the deepest part of the field. That guy kills us every time we play against him. He has 41 career homeruns, and 10 against the Giants.

Here is Barry Zito’s line for the game in a 7-3 loss to the San Diego Padres.