Cody Ross Wins Game…For Rockies

Hilarious. Simply, hilarious.

Venture to any San Francisco Giants message board, forum, blog – what have you – and you’ll find venom spewed at the mere mention of Jose Guillen, especially after his two run drop in the outfield last week. And that drop was simply awful. It should have been caught, simple as that. In fairness to him, it was clearly windy (as Freddy Sanchez struggled with a similar pop-up the next batter), but it was a play that needed to be made. So, alas, Guillen was the scapegoat. I’m not sure he was all that deserving, considering Barry Zito gave up four runs prior to that…but I digress. So, with Guillen’s drop – the pitchforks came out. “WHERE IS CODY ROSS??!?”….”CODY ROSS IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN GUILLEN”…you could run down comment after comment – it was clear. Cody Ross was the superior player to Jose Guillen. Or so I was told.

Frankly, I’m not a big fan of either. Guillen makes Bengie Molina look like Usain Bolt and Cody Ross looks like, well, Aaron Rowand part II. But watching last night, I couldn’t help but giggle in pure disgust as Cody Ross made one of the worst plays I’ve ever seen (combined with Freddy Sanchez’s inability to make a throw that any little leaguer could have done).

I’ll make it quick, to ease the pain. Giants up 1-0 in the top of the 9th after a fantastic outing by Jonathan Sanchez. Sanchez allows the first runner of the 9th to reach, resulting in Bochy pulling Dirty for Brian Wilson. Okay, understandable. After a mini battle with Carlos Gonzales, Brian Wilson gets him to break his bat and send a hard hit bloop into right field. Cody Ross, for whatever reason totally misplays the ball and starts running in towards second base like somebody just key’d his Geo Metro in the players parking lot. The ball, of course, goes sailing over his head, allowing the game tying run to score. But, just you wait, it gets better. Ross throws it wildly (a bit) to cut-off man Freddy Sanchez who has about 7 years worth of time to throw out Cargo who can’t be anymore than 34-40 feet past second base. I could have thrown out Gonzales from my couch he was so far away. But of course, Sanchez throws about a four hop fart at about 9mph that eventually hits Cargo as he slides into third, misses Brian Wilson who is backing up the play, and painfully comes to a stop inside the Rockies dugout. That of course allows Cargo to score, on a broken bat bloop…

For Cody Ross, it even got worse as he again played another ball poorly, this time off the wall, just moments later….thankfully the Giants were able to avoid letting that blunder score, but the damage was already done.

Listen – I’m not trying to pick on Cody Ross, though it might seem like that. We all make mistakes. Did I find it hysterically ironic that it was Ross, the labeled superior defender that outright cost the Giants a crucial game? Yes, very much so. But it’s more in the way of I like pain…

Ross’ (and Sanchez’s) play was a perfect way to describe the season, IMO. It was such a microcosm of it all. And in short, I think last nights game showed the G-men where they’ll be in October. Home.

With 30 some games to go in the playoff race, things like this simply can’t happen. They can’t. You can’t lose 3 of 4, at home, to two teams with a combined 45-82 road record and tell me you want to make the playoffs.

The Giants need to go 18-12 (that’s .600 level ball for you mathematicians) to win 90 games. Do you think 90 games gets you into the playoffs this year? The Phillies only need to go 17-14 the rest of the way to get to 90. I wont even give you the Padres number as I don’t want anybody jumping off a bridge.

Games like last night, cost you the playoffs. And not to be overly dramatic, but last night very well might have been the early nail in the coffin.