First pitch: 3 things I heard around MLB clubhouses last week
By Kevin Henry
DENVER — Let’s take a tour around the NL West in this week’s First Pitch, with three things I heard from the Colorado Rockies, San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants.
With the Giants and Padres coming to Coors Field this week to meet the Rockies (and heading out of the Mile High City with a collective 5-1 record), it was a chance to not only get a pulse on what’s happening with two teams trying to catch the Arizona Diamondbacks and Los Angeles Dodgers, but also get a feel for their confidence levels in doing so.
Make no mistake, inside both clubhouses, it was very obvious that both the Giants and Padres feel they have plenty of season left to climb up the division ladders and make a postseason run.
MLB Rumors: San Francisco Giants finally healthy and feeling confident
Entering Monday, the Giants sit in third place in the division with a 33-32 record. They’re just 5-5 in their last 10 games, but it’s clear San Francisco feels like they’re in a better spot than they were 10 games ago. With Joc Pederson and Thairo Estrada both off the injured list and starting pitcher Alex Wood likely to rejoin the team prior to its rivalry series with the Dodgers this weekend, there is hope for the Giants to put together a strong stretch heading into July.
“Our whole offense, one through nine, just the whole year, I know we probably haven’t been putting up the runs we want to put up every game but we’ve put together quality at-bats every night,” said starting pitcher Alex Cobb, who went 5.0 innings in Thursday’s 6-4 win at Coors Field. “You know if you keep doing that, the runs are going to start coming and the hits are going to start falling. I think you’re just seeing that right now.”
Evidence of that came through on Sunday when both Pederson and Estrada hit a pair of home runs in a 13-3 home win over the Chicago Cubs. It marked just the third time the Giants have had two players with multiple home runs in the same game at Oracle Park and the first since 2005.
Can the Giants piece something together? There’s plenty of confidence they can, especially after a sweep in Colorado that I detailed in my Giants notebook earlier this week.