After back-to-back showings of absolutely inept offense the San Francisco Giants seemed to figure it out at the plate against Hiroki Kuroda and the Los Angeles Dodgers Sunday afternoon, exploding for eight runs to back Madison Bumgarner's fine effort, taking the W by the score of 8-1 at AT&T Park.
Bumgarner (W 11-12) kept his fine second falk of the season rolling after five full innings of three hit ball, keeping the Dodgers to the lone run in the first inning, walking three and fanning eight along the way. He had his work cut out for him though, throwing 101 pitches in his shortest outing since July 30 against the Reds, all the while quietly earning his fourth win in a row and creeping his record closer to .500 after his tough start to 2011; a tough feat indeed if you consider the poor output of the offense this season. The G-Men also used a lot of their young guns in the bullpen this afternoon to help Bummy out as Dan Runzler, Steve Edelfsen and Waldis Joaquin joined the ol' timer Guillermo Mota to lock down the Dodgers for the last four innings, allowing one hit and one walk combined between them.
Actually seeing eight runs on the scoreboard for the Black and Orange these days almost feels like a witnessing a mirage, but they managed to play small ball all afternoon to slowly ease the Boys in Blue into submission. Five different Giants players racked up RBI's, lead by Aubrey Huff and Jeff Keppinger's 2-4 day with two RBI's apiece, while Pablo Sandoval went 3-4 with an RBI as well. Eli Whiteside and Mark DeRosa even got in on the action, each with an RBI single this afternoon to boot.
With the win the Giants move to 76-70 on the year, only 3.5 games ahead of LA for third place (ya, we're counting that way now). Full box score can be found here.