San Francisco Giants Win Fourth Series in a Row, Take Two-of-Three from Dodgers

Surprise surprise, the San Francisco Giants are playing .500 baseball after the first 20 games of the regular season. And who knows, at this rate they might not be done playing when October comes around.

Granted the Giants' every day cleanup hitter is still their catcher, Bengie Molina who would most likely be hitting sixth or lower on most other teams, but he is driving a much better all around Giants offense this season.

After beating the Dodgers on Wednesday night, San Francisco has now won four consecutive series after an abysmal opening season road-trip which saw them go win-less (0-6).

On the trip the Giants were swept by the Padres and these same Dodgers but have since taken four out of five games against those same foes in this stretch of four consecutive series victories.

Now the majority of baseball fans would look at the calendar and tell you that it is only April and that it is too early to make any rash declarations about how a team will fare over 162 games but I'm not in the majority. 

While watching the 2009 version of the Giants so far this season, it is absolutely night and day from the 2008 team.

Clutch two-out hitting from a Giants shortstop hasn't been seen in San Francisco since their current first baseman Rich Aurilia was driving in runs back in his first stint as a Giant during the late '90s-early '00s. However, the current Giants shortstop Edgar Renteria is showing signs off his former self.

Renteria, who signed a two-year, 18 million dollar contract with the Giants this off-season was rudely welcomed by most of the die-hard San Francisco faithful who did not agree with the acquisition.

However, after stumbling out of the blocks in the first few games which saw Renteria drop to the eighth spot in the lineup, the veteran shortstop has been absolutely tattooing the ball all over the field in his last 11 games. Renteria is 15-41 which equates to a .365 average with 2 hrs, 9 runs scored and 11 RBI. 

Not only is Renteria starting to heat up but last year's rookie sensation Pablo Sandoval is starting to readjust to the National League pitchers who have appeared to figure out how to get the kid out.

Sandoval struggled early on this season, despite hitting a stout .345 in 41 games last season. For the first couple weeks of this season however, Sandoval had been struggling with poor pitch selection as pitchers had figured out that Sandoval would more often than not swing at pitches out of the strike zone.

Yet over his past eight games the Giants third baseman has become more selective at the plating which has helped him go 15-for-his-last-34, a cool .441 average with five RBI including three on a clutch three-run home run that un-tied the score in the eighth inning in a game down in Arizona.

For the majority of the last few games these two lights out hitters have been getting on-base for "Big Money" Molina, the Giants catcher and cleanup hitter who is off to a blistering start, hitting .329 for the season with 4 hrs and already 18 RBI.

The Giants may not have the prototypical lineup with their catcher and slowest runner in the league hitting cleanup, but their offense is getting the job done. Even though most fans, including the vast majority of Giants fans will still tell you that the offense is not good enough to win the division, I beg to differ.

The Giants lineup this year is far and away better than last year's lineup. Pablo Sandoval and Edgar Renteria on the left-side of the infield replace Jose Castillo and Ivan Ochoa.

A rookie sensation and a former all-star take the place of two no-name infielders, which is an absolute huge upgrade for the offense, plus the Giants no longer have to deal with Ray Durham at second base, nor Dave Roberts in left-field.

The offense may not be flashy but they will produce for quite a bit more runs than last season.

In this past series with the Dodgers where they took two out of the three games, the Giants scored a total of 17 runs, averaging nearly six runs per game for the series.

Now the offense isn't going to put up that amount of runs every series but say they can average between 4-5 runs a game, with the deepest starting rotation in the MLB, the Giants can do some major damage this season.

Over the past 11 games, the Giants starters have allowed just 13 earned runs in 71 and 1/3 innings pitched which works out to a flat-out ridiculous 1.64 ERA.

1.64! Not over four games, not over six games but over the past 11 games, the starters have combined for an ERA of significantly lower than two runs/per game. 

It is no surprise the pitching is doing well considering the Giants have three different Cy Young award winners in their rotation, and one of which (Barry Zito) is slotted behind one of the non-Cy Young award winners (Matt Cain) in the rotation.

All of the top four pitchers in the Giants rotation have at one time been a clear cut ace in their career or been thought of as a future ace. Then throw in Jonathan Sanchez as the fifth starter, a hard-throwing lefty with electric stuff, it is hard to find a game where the Giants don't have the edge in the starting pitching match-up.

Only if the opposing team's No. 1 starter is going up against Zito or Sanchez can you really say the opposing team has the advantage. With that being said, more often than not, the Giants feel that they have a great chance at coming away with a victory heading into a ball game.

From the looks of things in the NL West, the Dodgers are the only team that stands in the way of the Giants winning the division and other than Chad Billingsly, and Klayton Kershaw, none of the other Dodgers starters are of any significance at all. The Giants rotation is just hands down, flat-out better than that of the Dodgers.

And despite the Dodgers having a potent lineup, more often than not the Giants starters will be able to shut them down, meanwhile the Dodgers pitchers will have a hard time overcoming the new and improved Giants offense that will only need to score a few runs for their team to win.

Plus if the Giants do end up taking the division, find me one team that wants to face Tim Lincecum, Randy Johnson, and Matt Cain, two times each in a potential seven game series. If the Giants can turn their fortunes around this season and make the playoffs, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they go deep in the post-season as well.