After winning the first game of their three game set with the Dodgers on Monday, it looked like the Giants might be on their way to turning their disappointing start around, after jumping out to a 4-0 lead in the second inning on Tuesday. Those hopes dissipated quickly, however, when starting pitcher Matt Moore proceeded to give up six runs of his own in the bottom half of the inning, and three more in the fourth before exiting.
Giants broadcaster Mike Krukow talked about the frustration of watching Moore squander an opportunity, pointing specifically to the conservative nature in which he pitched. Krukow told Murph and Mac that the careful approach of the Giants’ pitchers has been a problem so far this season.
“What I learned is you have to have that attitude like I’m going to let it hang, I’m going to attack, I’m going to give them my best, if I’m not good enough I need to go home, and I’m going to find out if I’m good enough,” Krukow said. “But to go up there and try and protect, and try and shave the strike zone, and try and nibble at the strike zone — I mean even thinking about it right now makes me want to puke — but it’s the exact opposite of the attitude you have to have.
“You have to attack, and that’s the only way you’re going to survive up here, and I really believe last night that when that home run got hit, he got into shave mentality, he got into the protect mentality, I can’t blow this three-run lead they’ve given me. And it’s totally a product of a young mind, and that’s where his growth is going to go, you give Dave Righetti enough time and that’ll be changed and he’ll go right to that moment today…You may see some growth come out of this, something good come out of this.”
Krukow believes that the Gaints’ quick start messed with Moore mentally.
“You go out and you have a four run lead and now you’re thinking alright I’ve got a four-run lead,” Krukow said of Moore. “This is an example — he’s 27 years old — to me this is a real big example of what a young pitcher will do. You walk into a game and you’ve got your focus going, you’re pitching to that lineup all day long going into the game. Hundreds and hundreds of times, going over how you are going to pitch, and then you get four runs and it’s like, ‘whoa, where is that coming from, we don’t do that.’ And that’s a little weirdness.
“Now you go out there and the first guy hits a home run and it’s like ‘I can’t blow this lead. They gave me four runs, I can’t blow this lead.’ So his concentration goes in a defensive mode, rather than into an attack mode and it was reflective in the next guy that he faced, he walked him in four pitches and they weren’t close. A little switch goes on, and that feeling you have to have where you attack and you get strike one, now all of the sudden it’s like, ‘I don’t want to give up this three run lead’ and you get defensive, and that is totally an example of a young pitcher. Every once in a while you get reminders of this guy, you know he got to the big leagues when he was at a very young age and he’s still young mentally and he showed it in that regard last night.”