pretty positive

The Giants are headed to Milwaukee, and as they leave San Francisco, they take with them a lot of positive things from this homestand.

They went 4-3 in this last week (and have gone 3-1 since the last blog), and have showed signs of being the baseball team that we all (well, at least I) expected them to be this year.

Some of the good things to come out of this homestand:

Brandon Crawford. In the last week, Crawford has raised his average from .212 to .234. He had two RBIs on Thursday against the Cardinals (in a game that the Giants won by two runs). His defense has also been perfect, committing no errors on the homestand. Hopefully, by playing every day, he can carry this momentum over and continue to gain confidence in the field.

Playing small ball. The Giants finally seem to be doing the little things in a game. Even in the loss today against the A's, on the rare times that the Giants scored, they scored by playing small ball. Both RBIs today came on sac flies. Getting a runner home from third with less than two outs has been a struggle for this team, and even though the offense fizzled in the latter part of the game today, the start of something was there.

Along those lines, the bats have started to come alive a bit. The offense scratched out eight hits on Thursday, Friday, and today and had a whopping ten hits on Saturday. Melky Cabrera has been a leader for the hitters, going 7-16 in those four games, capping it off with a 4-4 game today. He now leads the National League with 59 hits and is 3rd with a .353 batting average almost two months into the season. It's hard to ask for much more than that.

The negative thing to take away from this homestand is obviously Tim Lincecum. To quote my good friend Jenn, "I never thought Timmy would be the one to worry about in the rotation." The Giants are now 2-7 in his starts this season. While Lincecum, like anyone, has had rough patches in his career (his 0-5 August of 2010 comes to mind, and we all remember how he finished that season and what he did in the post-season for the Giants), but this year's struggle has lasted longer than any previous ones. He's got to figure out a way to avoid that big inning. The possible good news is that the problem seems to be more mental than mechanical. And even though it's been a tough 2012 for him so far, Lincecum is nothing if not a tough competitor (just watch that collison with Cowgill at the plate today). I believe that we'll have our Timmy back.