Sweep!

[gridlore]

San Francisco Giants: 5
Washington Nationals: 1

Bonds a Giant boost
Winning streak hits five as slugger homers, Hennessey deals

With all due respect to Brad Hennessey, who was the story of Wednesday night's 5-1 victory against the Nationals, Barry Bonds has been the story of the Giants' five-game winning streak and their bid to stay alive long enough to make next week's four-game series in San Diego meaningful.

"Since Barry came back, it's really made this team a lot better," Moises Alou said. "It's a whole different game. Hopefully we can keep playing the way are playing, and I think we will."

Bonds homered for his fourth consecutive game, a two-run wakeup call in the first inning for Washington starter John Patterson. Hennessey ran with the 2-0 lead and pitched the longest game of his big-league career, 72/3 innings, and won for the first time in 10 starts.

Hennessey compensated for the scant few mistakes he made on the mound by hitting his second home run of the season and a double, later scoring on a Randy Winn single. Not coincidentally, Hennessey's other homer came in his last win, July 28 at Milwaukee.

He held the Nats to three hits and one run, which scored on a second-inning infield single by Cristian Guzman. Omar Vizquel took the blame, saying he should have charged the ball harder. Vizquel also compensated at the plate with three hits, including a first-inning single that preceded Bonds' 707th homer, which leaves him seven short of the Babe.

Amazing the difference that man makes in our line-up.

Comments

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

No wonder the Giants have started playing well -- they finally have (almost) the lineup they should have had at the start of the season. I've heard a lot of speculation that if they had this lineup (probably plus J.T. Snow) from the start, they would have dominated the NL West (not that this is saying much, admittedly).

With an elimination number ("Magic Number" from San Diego's point of view) of 7, it still seems unlikely that the Giants will be able to catch the Padres, although playing them four times in the final eleven games gives us a chance, and those should be four very good games next week. And for anyone who says it's not right for a baseball team to make the playoffs with a losing record (which could still happen with either the Giants or Padres, I think), I will point to the 1993 season when the Giants went 103-59, winning more games than any other team in MLB except the blasted Atlanta Braves and did not make the playoffs.