San Francisco Giants: Another Win, Another QS by an SP

That Jackie Bradley hitting streak? It’s nice n’ all, but the San Francisco Giants starting pitchers are on quite a roll them themselves. It’s not quite a consecutive games streak, but in the past 14 games, including Wednesday’s 4-3 extra-innings victory over San Diego, Giants starters have registered quality starts in 13 of them—all wins.

And of those 13 quality starts, the starting pitcher allowed just one run in 12 of them. In that other win? Johnny Cueto gave up a whopping two runs.

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A quality start, for the record, is an outing in which a pitcher tosses at least six innings and allows no more than three runs. Giants starters have performed far better than the minimum requirements for a QS.

Today’s stellar outing was authored by Jake Peavy, who has been much maligned for his ineffective pitching for most of the season, but he held the Padres to just one run before coming out of the game with two outs in the seventh inning. His replacement, Josh Osich, lost the lead the following inning, on a two-run home run by Padres third baseman Yangervis Solarte.

Despite the bullpen hiccup (there haven’t been many of those during the hot streak), the Giants walked away with the win on a walk-off single by shortstop Brandon Crawford, who knocked in third baseman Matt Duffy in the bottom of the 10^th inning.

The Giants were playing short-handed, with left fielder Angel Pagan landing on the disabled list with a hamstring injury and right fielder Hunter Pence nursing a hammy of his own. Catcher Buster Posey also sat the game out. No worry: utility sparkplug Kelby Tomlinson handled left field and went 2-for-4 at the plate, with an RBI. He is now batting .344 in 61 at-bats this season. Gregor Blanco had two hits and scored a run filling in for Pence, and Trevor Brown also picked up a hit and scored once in Posey’s stead.

But the best performance of the day belonged to Peavy. He got knocked out of his previous start in the second inning (the one loss during the Giants’ hot 14-game ride), but having pitched well in the previous two starts, Peavy now has three respectable performances in his last four outings.

Next: Romo, Pagan, Low-Score Wins

But it’s still a bit early to get comfortable with Peavy—today’s start came against a Padres lineup in which no one entered the game batting higher than .267 (leadoff hitter Jon Jay). But for now, Manager Bruce Bochy’s patience is paying off; if your fifth best starter allows your team to be competitive in three out of four games, that works. For now.