(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

In case anyone hasn’t been watching baseball the last three or so years, Clayton Kershaw is really good at the game of baseball. Like, really good. That being so, it wasn’t all that shocking to see the Giants spend nine innings flailing at a curveball that Kershaw only could have learned from Satan himself. But the real pain of today came right around the time that George Kontos threw a Sandoval-sized fastball right down the middle to the aforementioned demon-spawn that is Clayton Kershaw.

There is literally nothing more painful than a Dodger pitcher homering and shutting out the Giants on Opening Day. And when I say “literally” I’m not exaggerating for effect; I’m talking white-hot pain of a billion suns here, people. Last year the Giants blew a six run lead on Easter Sunday to start the season. This year Clayton Kershaw, patchy beardface and all, single-handedly smote the Giants all the way back to a time where there was no recorded history and sabre-toothed tigers wandered the icy tundra in vicious packs.

So let’s search for some silver linings. I’ll make a list:

• Baseball was played today. That’s pretty cool.
• The only thing Matt Cain has in common with Clayton Kershaw is that he too is very good at baseball.
• For the next six months we get to introduce them at the “Defending World Series Champion Giants” and I will never ever get tired of this.
• That was just one game take it one day at a time 161 games to play blah blah blah.
• Despite serving up Clayton Kershaw’s first ever career home run, I still really like George Kontos for some reason. Dude grows some pretty impressive stubble.
• No really, there were like twelve games today, I counted. I think it’s officially baseball season but I can’t be certain. Going to have to check my sources and get back to you on that one.

And with that I feel a mite calmer. The real test though will be enduring the endless deluge of “OMG THE DODGERS CHEMISTRY” on ESPN for the next week.

That said, If anyone mentions the name Clayton Kershaw to me in the next week, I will buy you a puppy, watch you love and raise it, and wait. I will wait and watch as you and that dog form an immutable bond rivaled only by the greatest dog/man combinations in history. I’m talking Lassie/Timmy-in-the-well level love here. Then, when you least expect it, you will have learned a valuable lesson about responsibility and will feel super guilty about making me sad after I bought you a dog. How’s that for an elaborate revenge scenario?

American Hero and NLCS MVP, Marco Scutaro (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

I’m going to be honest. After Bronson Arroyo bent the Giants over in Game 2 of the NLDS, this season felt over. Not many teams can come back from losing to the corn-rowed hair horrible guitar playing curveball mastery that was Arroyo.  Then the Giants did something weird. They went to Cincinnati needing to win three straight. And they went ahead and won three straight.

Along came the Cardinals, with the Giants drawing home field advantage. After four games against the defending World Series champs, this season really felt over. Like “start making plans for Spring Training” over. Barry Zito was handed the ball with everything on the line. Because nothing in the postseason makes any damn sense, Zito shut down the Cardinals and got the ball to Ryan Vogelsong who followed with a similar performance.

If you come up to me in 2009 and tell me that the Giants will be saved in the NLCS in 2012 by Barry Zito and some guy who spent a few years pitching (unsuccessfully) in Japan, I would have had you hauled off to the nearest mental hospital because time travel doesn’t exist and if it does you can’t be trusted to be out in the world. But it happened.

If the last two weeks have been indicative of anything, it’s that every postseason is unique. Strange things that make absolutely no sense happen. Sometimes those things happen to the Giants. And sometimes a journeyman middle infielder will hit .500 in a single series after getting steamrolled by a 230 pound middle linebacker named Matt Holliday.

I can’t pretend to understand what exactly is going on. The 2010 postseason was defined by tense pitching duels and Brian Wilson loading the bases every damn time he pitched. The Giants won by the skin of their teeth in games that raised the collective blood pressure of an entire city and in the end we got a parade out of it. This time around things have been different. Not better, not worse, just different.

This is a team just two years removed from their previous World Series incarnation. The pitching staff for the most part is intact, give or take a Vogelsong. The similarities on offense end with Posey, Sandoval, and Aubrey Huff. This time around there’s an alien bug creature playing right field and an opposite-field-hitting superhuman playing second. The one thing that the 2010 and 2012 teams have in common though is the strange twists of fate that follow them everywhere they go.

I’ll conclude my scattered rambling here. Hunter Pence hit a ball three times in one swing tonight. The sky opened up and submerged the infield with two outs to go in the ninth. The Giants came back not once, but twice to win a series where for all intents and purpose they were dead in the water. On Wednesday, they face the same pitcher that Pablo Sandoval tripled off in the All-Star game to help net the National League home field advantage. I’m done trying to predict anything with this team, but you can bet I’ll be the one weeping in the corner no matter what happens.

Matt Cain is still better than you. And me. And all of us.

My “Where Were You When Matt Cain Pitched a Perfect Game” begins on a night where my family was in town visiting for the weekend.  We had dinner plans that happened to overlap with what we all thought would be an ordinary unspectacular Astros game.  On the way to the restaurant, we had the radio on and Brandon Belt stepped up to the plate. The following exchange took place between me and a family member who will go unnamed (admittedly I may be paraphrasing a bit here):

Family Member (as Brandon Belt comes up to hit): I don’t know about Brandon Belt, he’s had all year and hasn’t done that well.

Brandon Belt hits a two-run home run to straightaway center-field

Me: What?

That was the first indicator that tonight was going to be strange in some way.  At the time we weren’t sure how, but weird things were happening and we didn’t know why.

Shortly after we turned off the radio, went into the restaurant, and settled in for a nice, long dinner.  Being the obsessive-to-the-point-of-rudeness type of Giants fan I am, I found myself checking my phone more often than is considered acceptable in an establishment of fine dining.  Through about four innings Cain still hadn’t given up a hit.  Or a walk. Or an anything.  I put my phone away as the Giants jumped out to an early ten run lead.  There was no way that this perfection on the pitching side would continue.

I didn’t check the score again until the seventh inning and once again noticed that the Astros had yet to reach base.  I mentioned this to my family who, much like normal functional human beings, were engaged in a conversation not about baseball.  If I remember correctly it was something about fine dining.  After explaining to the table what a perfect game was, I did the polite thing and excused myself from dessert for the ninth inning.  I experienced the final three outs of the 22nd perfect game in Major League history sitting in a parked car by myself, probably scaring every passerby as I violently beat the steering wheel every time a strike was thrown.

This may seem like the tragic tale of “How I Missed Most of the Greatest Matt Cain Performance Ever,” but really it’s a testament to how every fan experiences history differently.  Some people were at the game.  Others watched from the comfort of their living room.  And still others celebrated together in cities across the country as comrades-in-expatriation. Every fan’s experience was unique in some way, and everyone has their own story worth telling.  When your grandchildren ask you where you were when Matt Cain threw a perfect game, you can tell them that story.

Please, let Joaquin Arias not be some elaborate mirage of hitting. (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images)

We had the usual “shut down all hitting interface” command any time a runner reached second base.  After the first two reached base in the ninth against the Reds’ fill-in closer Sean Marshall, Brett Pill struck out on three pitches.  The next hitter, Angel Pagan, fell behind 0-2 in all of about three seconds.  But in the normal fashion of winning games in completely bizarre and unexpected ways, Pagan put the Giants on top with a go-ahead three-run homer, effectively ending the Giants’ 63912308371305 game losing streak at Great American Ballpark.

Quick Observations:

• Given how used to stressful ninth innings we are, it felt strange seeing Santiago Casilla strike out the side facing the top of the order in the ninth, but you won’t hear any complaints from me.  Just know that if Casilla saves 35-40 games this year, he’ll automatically be worth a lot more than the sunflower seeds we’re paying him.
• Brandon Belt is hitting .273/.368/.364.  It’s almost like regular playing time makes you play better.  When his power comes around expect big things.  For now, I’ll take the shiny on-base percentage.
• Rough series for Nate Schierholtz, who didn’t even reach base by way of a fielder’s choice.  I blame the evil that haunts the corridors of Great American Ballpark and expect that he’ll be fine as long as he continues to play every day.
• Welcome to the team Joaquin Arias, who went 2-3 with a walk and two runs scored in his debut start.  If he magically learned how to hit down in AAA he may very well win the Ryan Vogelsong Award winner for most pleasant reclamation project of the year.
• Pablo Sandoval’s hitting streak continues, as he now officially has the franchise record for most games hit in to start a season.  The next milestone is Jack Clark’s hit streak of 26 games.
• Javier Lopez needs to stop pitching to righties.  I’m not one to dwell on righty/lefty matchups, but Lopez has a massive platoon split.  Keep him around for the Joey Vottos and Jay Bruces and leave the righties to anyone else.

And now we’re done with playing in Cincinnati for the rest of the year.  Wasn’t it just a blast?  We were one miracle home run away from losing eight games in a row in that ballpark, a streak of Petco-Park-ian proportions.  That said, let’s never go back again ever.

Yea Boch', we feel that way too.

With the bases empty, the Giants are hitting a cool .282/.329/.408 this season.  From there, things only get worse:

• Runners on base: .231/.306/.402
• Runners in scoring position: .195/.282/.317
• Runners in scoring position w/2 outs: .171/.292/.303

It’s downright baffling how a team that’s otherwise solid offensively gets worse and worse the more they’re needed to come through.  Maybe it’s a team full of hitters who don’t know which way is up when a runner reaches second base.  It could be that they’re getting supremely unlucky.  I can’t pretend to know.  What I do know is that this is unsustainably horrid.  No one can be this bad at hitting with runners in scoring position for this long, and yet every game it just keeps happening.  Which leads us to our next problem:

• Innings 1-3: .310/.361/.481
• Innings 4-6: .248/.298/.386
• Innings 7-9: .202/.277/.335

Now this is an issue with a tangible reason, and that’s that this team is terrible at adjusting after it’s gone through the batting order the first time.  I’ve harped on this before, but it’s worth repeating: there are times when these hitters go up to the plate and look like they’re there without any semblance of a plan.  Yes, as a team they’re hitting surprisingly well.  The problem is that they’re not carrying over this approach to high leverage situations.  Just watching you can see that they’re overanxious and look generally uncomfortable in pressure situations.

Now these are some vast generalizations devoid of significant statistical backing, but the numbers above speak for themselves.  Last night against Mat Latos, they didn’t figure out that maybe not swinging a lot when the opposing pitcher is averaging ten pitches an inning might not be a bad idea.  Tonight they were flummoxed against a guy who gave up 46(!) home runs last year.  This of course was not helped by the continually shoddy defense and spectacular imploding bullpen, but these issues are always magnified when a team can’t score.

Based on the aggregate hitting of this team, they should be much better than they are with men on base.  There’s a chance the Law of Averages will make a long overdo appearance and this will all be a moot issue come May.  But this was the same thing we said last year, and the Giants spent the entire season making us pull our hair out.

It’s hard to point to any one thing as the reason for this recent bout of futility.  For now I’m going to attribute it to the vast hellscape that is Great American Ballpark.  No team loses nine games in a row in a stadium without there being some evil forces at work in the universe (see Petco Park, circa forever and always) and this is no exception.

Also, best wishes go out to Aubrey Huff.  I get on his case a lot here on this site, but it’s important to remember that these guys are still human beings and that the game they play is secondary to their physical and emotional well-being.  Get well soon.

Pablo Sandoval, seen thanking the Blood Gods that were sacrificed to for a Giants offense that could hit.

Go to the Giants team stats page.  Go on, I’ll wait.  Now see anything strange?  Well you should, because with Huff out of the lineup, no one in the 2-7 spots in the lineup has an OBP under .345.  Nate Schierholtz is hitting .372/.404/.744 and is tied for the team lead in home runs with Pablo Sandoval.  Somehow Manny Burriss is hitting .293/.341/.293.  Sandoval has a hit in every single game so far this season, tying Willie Mays’ franchise record.  Weird things are happening right now, and a lot of those things don’t seem to make sense.

Given how abysmal the Giants have been with runners in scoring position this season, it’s surprising to see how successful these hitters have been in the opening weeks of the season.  Right now they’re averaging 4.14 runs/game right now, something they didn’t do in any month last season.  So what in the name of Xenu is going on right now?

A lot of this can be attributed to the return of Buster Posey, the health of Pablo Sandoval, the patience of Melky Cabrera, and the red hot bat of Nate Schierholtz.  Posey has spent the better part of the last couple weeks throwing duck snort pop-ups between outfielders for hits while recovering from shingles.  Now he’s hitting the ball squarely and taking great at-bats.  Sandoval could easily have had 30 home runs last year had he stayed healthy the whole season, and now it appears as though his issues with his weight are under control.

But Sandoval and Posey were supposed to hit well, and really there are no surprises to be found there.  Where things get weird is with Cabrera and Schierholtz.  Right now Melky has 10 walks to just 6 strikeouts.  While this of course falls under the banner of “small sample size,” it also seems to be something of a statistical anomaly.  Last year in his indisputably best season, his best BB/K in a month was 9/14.  Now he’s turned into a mega patient walk machine who’s taking long, drawn-out at-bats.

Finally we get the strangeness that is Nate Schierholtz.  After tweaking his swing last year, Schierholtz saw immediate success as he began hitting for more power, eventually earning his way into a starting job.  This year he’s getting on base, not striking out, and has effectively ended the great “Aubrey Huff in Left Field” experiment as once again he’s played himself into an everyday job.

I can’t rightly say if I know the Giants will continue to hit this well; a competent offense hasn’t been seen in San Francisco since Barry Bonds patrolled left field.  It’s an unfamiliar feeling to go into a game expecting runs to be scored early and often, but that’s been the case so far this season.  Sure, this could be small sample sizes playing with our heads and regression could be right around the corner.  We’ve been conditioned to err on the side of pessimism as Giants fans and rightly so.  But if this continues and the Dodgers regress like they should (A.J. Ellis can’t have a .412 OBP forever) then the Giants may find themselves in the thick of a division race with a group of hitters that may actually be a shade above average.

Matt Cain, American Hero. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

A lot of things had to happen to lead us down this path of pitching dominance and complete offensive futility.  First, the Phillies were without their middle of the order, with both Ryan Howard and Chase Utley on the disabled list.  This left Shane Victorino, Jimmy Rollins, Hunter Pence, and nobody else to pick up the slack.  On the Giants side, the story of our hitters was that of the double play, as they managed to ground into four (and almost five were it not for an error), all against Lee.

I harp on the Giants’ offense pretty frequently and with good reason.  Their philosophy seems to be “Go up to the plate, swing at everything, and hope something good happens.”  Combine this unstructured approach with a pitcher like Lee who thrives off of throwing strikes and you have a recipe for a shutout.  Then you have a Phillies lineup missing two of their best hitters and you have a recipe for a good old-fashioned pitching shootout at the O.K. Corral.  Usually I like to start my game recaps a little before the game ends assuming there’s an assured outcome, but tonight allowed me no such luxury (uh oh, have I just given away a mega secret of beat writers and bloggers everywhere?).  That speaks volumes to the masterful performances of both starting pitchers, who barely allowed each other the chance to sit down before they finished inning after scoreless inning.

Let’s talk Matt Cain briefly.  When he beat the Pirates in his last start, it was easy to dismiss that as a result of facing a team with at least four hitters under the Mendoza line who looked like they’d never held a bat before.  To have tonight be his encore performance though, that shows us that Cain may be ready to enter the class of elite pitchers occupied by the likes of Roy Halladay, Tim Lincecum (the good version), and Lee.  Now of course these were just two starts, but 18 scoreless innings isn’t anything to sneeze at, even in the universe of small sample sizes.

In an extra inning game that came in well under three hours, it’s easy to have blinked and totally missed this one.  Both teams were guilty of being overly aggressive early in the count, but given that Lee and Cain were throwing strikes it’s not as though opposing hitters had much of a choice.  Oh and let’s not forget, Cain is going to be a Giant for a very long time now that he’s signed his fancy new extension.  I’ll admit, thinking of a rotation with Lincecum, Cain, and Madison Bumgarner fully realizing their potential (because let’s face it, MadBum has yet to hit his ceiling) makes me giggle.  And I don’t giggle for just anything, let me tell you.

Even though it went by insanely fast, this isn’t a game anyone will soon forget.  It’s not every day you see two pitchers matching each other the way Lee and Cain did tonight, and it was all made worth it by Melky Cabrera’s game-winning single in the 11th bringing in none other than Brandon Belt.  Belt had reached base after singling up the middle against one of the toughest lefty relievers in the game with a swear word for a last name in Bastardo, so kudos all around tonight for a few players that aren’t named Matt Cain.  Also that fills my quota of Belt mentions for this post.  More importantly though, Matt Cain is better than you.  He’s better than me.  Really, he’s better than all of us and I’m totally fine with that.