[新聞] Belt backs Bumgarner in Giants' victory
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Belt backs Bumgarner in Giants' victory
By Chris Haft / MLB.com | 7/20/2011 2:50 AM ET
SAN FRANCISCO -- The big-time hitter the Giants have been craving showed up
Tuesday night at AT&T Park.
It wasn't Carlos Beltran, who remained with the New York Mets. It wasn't
Willie McCovey or Will Clark, who were both on the premises but finished
terrorizing opponents decades ago.
No, the impact hitter who helped the Giants subdue the Los Angeles Dodgers,
5-3, didn't arrive by trade or the wayback machine. It was somebody who was
expected all along to bolster San Francisco's offense this year: Brandon Belt.
Belt celebrated his return to the Major Leagues by homering and driving in
three runs, including two with a bases-loaded, tiebreaking double in seventh
inning.
Whether Belt can come close to sustaining this production remains to be seen.
The 23-year-old rookie, San Francisco's most prized position-player prospect,
hit only .211 in his previous two tours of duty with the Giants.
But the Giants insist that Belt has gained the self-assurance he needs to
cope with the challenges of the Majors. Manager Bruce Bochy said that Belt
proved this not with anything he did between the foul lines, but with his
good-natured response to teasing about his final game for Triple-A Fresno
before being recalled. Belt struck out four times, yet the Giants recalled
him to fill in for first baseman Aubrey Huff, who's enduring back woes.
Belt's inglorious farewell appearance with Fresno prompted Clark, making one
of his periodic visits as a special assistant, and even Bochy to insist that
he surely was the only player in history to receive a big league promotion
after such a dismal performance.
"He was laughing about it," Bochy said. "That's the sign of some confidence."
Said Belt, "I think normally it definitely would do a lot of damage to my
confidence. But I've been feeling good the past couple of weeks. I tried to
make sure it didn't get my confidence down too much. I wanted to come out
here, be aggressive and take my hacks."
That he did. Dodgers starter Rubby De La Rosa wowed all witnesses at the
outset by reaching 100 mph with his fastball and flinging wicked-looking
breaking pitches at 90 mph. But Belt proved that De La Rosa was vulnerable by
driving a 91-mph delivery onto the right-field arcade to lead off the second
inning. It was Belt's second homer as a Giant -- both against Los Angeles.
Belt generated more excitement -- and offense -- with the score deadlocked,
3-3, in the seventh inning.
Andres Torres, batting only .103 (3-for-28) off left-handers, drilled a
leadoff double against Dodgers southpaw Hong-Chih Kuo. Torres advanced to
third on Mike Fontenot's sacrifice bunt and waited there as Pablo Sandoval
drew an intentional walk and was replaced by pinch-runner Emmanuel Burriss,
who stole second base while drawing a pickoff throw. In the vast majority of
such situations, runners trapped in that fashion would be thrown out. But
Burriss reached second base safely with a headfirst slide underneath first
baseman James Loney's high relay.
"That's an out we can get," Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said. "It's not
quite a catch-and-throw with a tie game, a runner at third, and James has got
to peek. It's still a big out we don't get."
That prompted a two-out intentional walk to Cody Ross that loaded the bases
but set up a potential force play at all of them. Belt defied the
lefty-versus-lefty percentages by lining Kuo's first pitch inside the
left-field line to score Torres and Burriss.
Bochy said that he had faith in Belt's ability to produce.
"Brandon gives you a good at-bat. He has discipline up there and, more than
likely, he's going to put the ball in play," Bochy said. "The thing I liked
about him, he was aggressive. That's always a good sign for a young kid.
Sometimes they're a little tentative, but he wasn't."
That made a winner of Madison Bumgarner (5-9), who lasted eight innings and
surrendered three runs and four hits -- all in the third inning. Receiving
more than three runs of support for the first time in a home game, Bumgarner
retired the final 16 batters he faced.
Bumgarner believed that the pitches he threw in the third inning were just as
good as the pitches he threw in the other seven innings, which all were
perfect.
"I felt just as strong at the end as I did early on, which was nice," he said.
The Giants lengthened their National League West lead over second-place
Arizona to 4 1/2 games and extended their winning streak against Los Angeles
to six games, their longest since July 19-Sept. 26, 1969.
The only unwelcome development for the Giants was the discomfort that
Sandoval felt in his right quadriceps muscle, which forced the third
baseman's departure in the seventh inning. Sandoval aggravated his quad in
the fifth inning while sliding into second base but stayed in the game long
enough to make a nice diving stop of Aaron Miles' sharp grounder leading off
the seventh. Sandoval also contributed his 16th RBI of the month with a
fifth-inning single that erased Los Angeles' 3-2 lead.
Chris Haft is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the
approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
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