San Francisco Giants: Picking up the pieces after Los Angeles Dodgers sweep

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Well that was rough. Going into a series against the Los Angeles Dodgers a game and a half above them in the National League West, the San Francisco Giants (57-48) get rocked in two games and let the third one get away on Sunday Night Baseball to fall 1.5 games back in the division.

The Dodgers outscored the Giants 17-4, got to Tim Lincecum, Ryan Vogelsong, and eventually new starter Jake Peavy in the fifth inning. It was brutal to see the offense also sputter throughout the weekend, but that was expected with the pitching lineup coming in. Don Mattingly organized the pitching staff against the Giants after the All-Star break, and that proved to work wonders.

Now, San Francisco will have to get over it quickly as a three-game pack against the Pittsburgh Pirates (55-49) begins on Monday night, and they're also looking for a playoff spot. It's an important series in case either of these teams are looking for one of the wild card spots at the end of the season. If the Pirates sweep this, they'll have a better record than the Giants.

Pittsburgh is in the midst of a 16-game jaunt against NL West teams. After sweeping the Colorado Rockies earlier, they lost back-to-back 8-1 games before salvaging the final game. Now they'll have to face the beefy portion of the Giants' starting lineup with Madison Bumgarner, Tim Hudson, and Big Time Timmy Jim.

Andrew McCutchen is the only player hitting over .300 (.312) in the batting lineup for the Pirates. Neil Walker has been the second power hitter with 15 home runs and 48 RBIs; Pedro Alvarez has the same number of HRs and just one less RBI. Josh Harrison has reeled in seven hits, four RBIs, and two stolen bases in the last seven games.

Pitching Matchups

• Monday: Madison Bumgarner (L, 12-7, 3.19) vs Vance Worley (R, 3-1, 3.10)
  First pitch - 10:15 PM ET | TV: NBC Bay Area, ROOT Sports Pittsburgh
• Tuesday: Tim Hudson (R, 8-7, 2.65) vs Francisco Liriano (L, 2-7, 4.18)
  First pitch - 10:15 PM ET | TV: CSN Bay Area, ROOT Sports Pittsburgh, MLB Network
• Wednesday: Tim Lincecum (R, 9-7, 3.96) vs Charlie Morton (R, 5-10, 3.40)
  First pitch - 3:45 PM ET | TV: CSN Bay Area, ROOT Sports Pittsburgh, MLB Network

San Francisco Giants Notebook: Tough pitching challenge in way of extending division lead

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There was no sweep of the struggling Philadelphia Phillies, but the San Francisco Giants (57-45) finally remembers what it's like to win some games.

After getting blown away by Oakland, San Francisco has won three consecutive series and boast a 7-3 record in their last 10 games. Sure, those series are against some of the worst competition in the National League at the moment, but after a horrendous June and all the nagging injuries that are piling up this team, the Giants will take anything positive.

The SF offense finally took a slide this week in the finale, losing a 2-1 decision that saw the team strand seven in scoring position. Tim Hudson had too high of a pitch count to get past six innings but pitched relatively well considering he gave up eight hits. Cole Hamels was a shade better with 10 strikeouts in eight innings.

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At least Jonathan Papelbon didn't give it up for Philly. He was the reason why Tuesday night's game turned into a 5+ hour long jaunt by giving up the game-tying run in the ninth inning. He was also responsible for giving up a three-run double to Hunter Pence on Wednesday night, the only runs scored in that game.

Papelbon's rough week was glorious for the Giants. Now taking a firm lead back in the NL West, they look to extend it in a weekend series against the Los Angeles Dodgers (56-47).

LA lost their final two games in Pittsburgh and have lost four of their last six. It could be a lot more if San Diego wasn't so insufferable on offense, barely scraping by with 1-0 wins on the weekend before the All-Star Break.

The offense has been a let down for most of the slide, but in the last two losses, both pitching and defense has been a problem as they gave up 18 total runs. But the Dodgers will have their great trifecta of starting pitchers coming to San Francisco. Runs could be at premium.

Notes

• Brandon Belt, who's still fighting concussion symptoms, will be returning to San Francisco with the team.
• It's possible that Yasiel Puig will be back as early as the series opener on Friday night.
• The Dodgers are 3-7 against the Giants this season.

Pitching Matchups

• Friday, July 25th - Zack Greinke (R, 11-6, 2.90) vs Tim Lincecum (L, 9-6, 3.65)
  First pitch - 10:15 PM ET | TV: NBC Bay Area, SportsNet LA
• Saturday, July 26th - Clayton Kershaw (L, 11-2, 1.92) vs Ryan Vogelsong (R, 5-7, 3.99)
  First pitch - 9:05 PM ET | TV: CSN Bay Area, SportsNet LA, MLB Network
• Sunday, July 27th - Hyun-Jin Ryu (L, 11-5, 3.39) vs Yusmeiro Petit (R, 3-3, 4.24)
  First pitch - 8:07 PM ET | TV: ESPN

BC Lions Notebook: A battle between CFL's best tailbacks

Photo from CFL.ca

After putting down the Montreal Alouettes 41-5, the BC Lions have surged back to an even .500 record and will look to keep the momentum going when they host the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, who are coming off of their first loss of the season.

Quarterback Kevin Glenn is starting to look comfortable under center. The fill-in for Travis Lulay completed 23 out of 31 passes for 301 yards and 2 touchdowns in the Alouettes beatdown, an efficient night with zero turnovers. The backfield tandem of Andrew Harris and Stefan Logan reeled in a total of 146 yards on the ground, not making an impact in the endzone but kept the ball in the hands of BC.

Adding in the time former BYU quarterback John Beck put in, BC had 373 total yards in the air. Emmanuel Arceneaux was the leader in the clubhouse with 145 yards on 8 catches with 3 touchdowns. Six different players recorded a multi-catch effort. Arceneaux was sorely missed in the first two weeks of the season and it's shown.

Things are on the uprise for BC. Now they'll have a strong test at home against Winnipeg. Last week's big game saw the Blue Bombers get rocked 26-3 against the Edmonton Eskimos' incredible defense. A well oiled offensive machine early this season was halted and quarterback Drew Willy struggled.

Willy completed just above 50 percent of his passes and rookie running back Nic Grigsby couldn't get anything significant going on the ground. Grigsby has been a great surprise for Winnipeg this season, tied at second in the CFL in rushing with 268 yards, just five yards behind the league leader, Harris.

If Grigsby can be contained and Willy has a similar outing against the BC defense, the Lions will look poised to grab a winning record on Friday night.

>Game 5: Winnipeg (3-1) at BC (2-2) | Kickoff: Friday, July 25th, 10:00 PM ET | Web: ESPN3

Keys to the Game

• All Harris, all the time. The dual-threat tailback had 150 yards by himself in the win last week, including a catch in the endzone. If Harris thrives, the team will be too.
• Carry over the defensive torment from last week. BC would only make this game easier if the effort on defense from last week is duplicated. The Bombers did nothing until the end of the first half, but even when got a little offense going as the game went on, the Eskimos didn't give up anything in the endzone. The Lions don't have to be that stingy, but close.
• Glenn keeps the ball out of the other teams' hands. In the first two losses, Glenn threw six turnovers. Last two victories. None.

BC Lions Notebook: Revenge on the mind against Montreal Alouettes

The BC Lions got off the two-game losing streak schnide after defeating the Saskatchewan Roughriders 26-13 on the road and moving to 1-2 on the season. Up next, they'll have a rematch against the Montreal Alouettes after looking abysmal in the first meeting.

Everything went wrong in a 24-9 loss two weeks ago in Toronto when quarterback Kevin Glenn got sacked five times and running backs Stefan Logan and Andrew Harris had 13 carries for just 54 yards. Harris took the loss personally and told CFL.ca that he wasn't mentally ready for the game.

“After the week we got embarrassed in Montreal I just took it personally to make an impact, I was miserable all week because I had a bad taste in my mouth so I just came with an attitude and attacked every play,” Harris said. “When you have space and you have that attitude everything seems to work out.” 

Harris is a key weapon if BC wants to get revenge on Montreal. He leads the league in yards from scrimmage (47 carries for 368 yards) and was much more positive on the outcome in Riderville.

As Harris believes a team should get better as the season progresses, BC definitely set expectations low after starting the season off with two losses. But all of this is considered damage control until Travis Lulay gets back.

Originally expected to be out just for the season opener, Lulay was put on the six-game injured list right before their Week 1 game. He will be out for Friday's game against Winnipeg and the following Friday's road game at Calgary. For now, he's scheduled to return in a home date against Hamilton on Friday, August 8th.

Montreal could very easily be 2-1 but lost to Winnipeg in a heart-breaking loss in which the Blue Bombers threw a game-winning touchdown on their final down with under 30 seconds to go. Alouettes head coach Tom Higgins blamed penalties and believed that outside of the gut-wrenching loss, the team is getting better.

“There were way too many penalties, that hurt, but I think it was a good football team out on the field and we’re getting better, but it would feel better if we could have finished that drive and not let it go in for a touchdown.”

Three Keys to the Game

1. Start improving turnover ratio. As it stands right now, the Lions are -5 in turnovers this season. Their offensive line is completely banged up already but they must avoid giving the Alouettes extra possessions like they did two weeks ago.
2. Limit Brandon Whitaker. He's third in the CFL in rushing with 203 yards on 38 touches.
3. Keep the game clean. Penalties plagued the Alouettes last week, but the Lions draw just 9.7 flags per game, over 3 penalties less than the league average.

Giants Notebook: What to look for in season's second half

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What to watch in the second half of the season

1) The starting rotation will have a new order. Madison Bumgarner leads the pack, followed by Tim Hudson, Tim Lincecum, Ryan Vogelsong, and Matt Cain. Seeing Cain last in the order looks weird, but he's definitely not been the same over the past few years. His record looks worse than his actual pitching, however, and none of the pitchers have showed that they deserve to be demoted from the starting lineup.

Cain's move to the final starter is still it bit shocking, considering he's improved over the course of his last three starts and given up just four total runs.

Over the course of the Giants' downfall, Tim Lincecum probably emerges as the starting pitcher the Giants can trust the most. We'll see if Bumgarner can gain some more consistency and if Hudson can return to the form he was at in the first two months of this season.

2) How will the bullpen improve? As of late in the Giants' tumble in June, the starting pitching has been less of an issue and more of a bullpen problem. There are a handful of games that they could have come away from victorious and instead it took Sergio Romo failing in the final inning or multiple relievers blowing a lead or a tie down the stretch.

Jean Machi needs to return to how he was pitching earlier in the season to aid the bullpen, and it would be terrific for San Francisco if Santiago Casilla could become the go-to guy at the closer position.

3) What helps the Giants down the stretch? They have the easiest record based on win-loss total in the National League. The NL West is a disaster, but more importantly, they have to win games at home again. While it is the easiest schedule, there are more trips further out East. Chicago, Kansas City, Milwaukee, New York Philadelphia, Washington, tonight in Miami are all part of a brutal month and a half slate.

Basically, any stretches of 6-16 a AT&T Park will be unacceptable. They must keep winning the series at home.

Keys to the second half of the season

1. Angel Pagan's health. Now for two straight years, the Giants have fell off the map when Pagan is out for an extended period of time. There's talk of the Giants going after some bats, bud I'd wait to see what happens when Pagan is back at 100 percent.
2. Lincecum's return to dominance. He's absolutely been tearing it up, and fans have truly been celebrating "Tim Lincecum Day" because it's turned out to provide this team's best chance to win in recent weeks.
3. Smash it early. On offense, the Giants need to do two things. Start hitting the ball out of the park again, and do it early. San Francisco is 38-11 when put the first run on the board. They aren't built to be a comeback team. They're built to destroy everybody on the mound, play small ball, and to get runners in with two outs. All of that went missing in June.

Next up: at Marlins (44-50)

Similar to San Francisco, Miami has really struggled heading into the All-Star break pit stop. The Marlins have been a pain in the Giants' side, but they've been tougher to handle at AT&T Park. Dealing with plenty of injuries like Jarrod Saltalamacchia and A.J. Ramos out along with their ace Jose Fernandez, SF must capitalize and get off to a solid start in the back half of the season just to gain a little bit of momentum.

PlayStation News: Battlefield 4 releases large patch, Uncharted trilogy on PS4?

Here's the latest news I wrote over at Gamer Headlines for Wednesday, July 9th, 2014.

Battlefield 4 releases patch for PlayStation 3 and 4, adds modes and game fixes

A large amount of bugs and glitches were fixed along with DICE even adding a new game mode to both PlayStation editions of Battlefield 4, a game that apparently will never be completely fixed.

It's been eight months since the game has been released and many fans and gamers are just looking ahead to the next installment, Battlefield: Hardline -- assuming that isn't filled with bugs and glitches that make the game damn near unplayable.

I truly admire DICE's attempt to fix a disaster, but EA needs to do some quality control instead of releasing a buggy game and simply apologizing for it later. By no means does game need to be 100% out of the box, but game-breaking glitches are simply not acceptable.

Sony president believes Uncharted 'good candidate' to remake on PlayStation 4

We all saw a ton of Sony HD remasters on the PS3 -- God of War, Jak and Daxter, Sly Cooper, etc. Let's hope that trend doesn't continue with 1080P and 60FPS updates on the PS4. There's no need for those games to be re-released on the PS4 and there's no reason to upgrade the entire PS3 catalog to the "super high-definition" we get in PS4 games.

However, with the PS4 opening up its life with a much bigger install base than its predecessor, it would be wise for Sony to update its biggest hits and re-release them. They're doing it with The Last of Us, and they should do it with Uncharted. Releasing a trilogy package would be a great deal for those that missed out on it in the last generation.

San Francisco Giants Notebook: Oakland A's bring more heavy artillery to the mound

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The San Francisco Giants (49-41) won't have to deal with Jeff Samardzija, but they'll still have to face the debut of Cole Hammel, another Chicago Cubs pitcher that the Oakland A's (57-33) received in their blockbuster deal.

The first two games of the Battle of the Bay series weren't exactly dominated by the A's, but they final score certainly showed it. A solid pitching duel ended as Oakland broke through in Monday night's game, and San Francisco only got one runner home plate while going 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position on Tuesday.

Bringing in runs with two outs remains a thing of the past for the Giants, and the struggles in the bullpen continue. On Monday, Ryan Vogelsong may have been tagged with three earned runs, but it was Juan Gutierrez who came in and let two runners on base immediately score after throwing one pitch. Then two runs were tagged on him (unearned).

The pitching in general wasn't good that night. The A's had 19 RISP; the Giants had two.

Madison Bumgarner had a bad third inning giving up four runs but San Francisco easily could have had some offense in the first couple innings. Instead, Sonny Gray cruised to 9-3 and had more strikeouts (8) than hits (6) given up.

It won't get any easier in AT&T Park. The A's will come in fully loaded on the mound with Hammel tonight and then Scott Kazmir on Thursday night. Both players combine with an 18-8 record on the season and a 2.76 ERA.

Bottom line: The Giants are still slumping with a 7-20 record since starting the season hot and they've run into a huge buzzsaw in a much better team. We'll see if the magic can come back at AT&T Park and if anything bounces in their favor in the final two games of this series.