Bumgarner Plays Stopper, Giants Avoid Sweep

With the cold, overcast, rainy weather more suitable for that of a football game than a baseball game, the San Francisco Giants avoided the sweep behind the strong pitching of Madison Bumgarner, winning 6-1.

Matched up against the ace of all of New York's aces, Noah Syndergaard, Bumgarner stepped up and strung together his second consecutive quality start, going six innings while striking out six to outshine Thor and put an end New York's eight-game winning streak and San Francisco's three-game losing streak.

Bumgarner limited the amount of hard contact off the bats of the Mets and induced two broken bats in the process. Just like his previous start against San Diego, the San Francisco ace had excellent control of both his fastball and his breaking pitches.

New York only mounted a couple of rallies against Bumgarner, one in the third with runners on second and third with two outs, and one in the sixth with the bases loaded and two outs, but Bumgarner escaped both without surrendering a run.

New York's hottest hitter, Michael Conforto, was held in check by the Giants, going 0-5 with three strikeouts, two against Bumgarner and one against Santiago Casilla.

With Syndergaard on the mound, the Giants had to take advantage of every crack in his armor. Out of the stretch, the flamethrower is slower than the league average, and his batterymate, Kevin Plawecki, has a weak arm, so San Francisco baserunners had a field day as Matt Duffy stole two bags, and Brandon Crawford swiped one, their first, and Duffy's second, on the season.

Duffy's first stolen base in the fourth allowed him to advance to third on a Buster Posey single and score on a Belt groundout, which gave the Giants their first run of the season. The Duffman also had two hits on the day to go with the two steals.

The Giants didn't settle for the one run in the fourth, as right after Belt, Hunter Pence, who just missed a go-ahead grand slam by a few feet yesterday in the eighth, took a belt-high 98 MPH fastball the other way over the right field fence to give the Giants a 3-0 lead.

After Syndergaard had departed with two on and two outs in the fifth, Pence continued to torch the Mets, extending San Francisco's lead to 4-0 by singling home Duffy to drive home his fifth run of the game.

Angel Pagan carried the momentum of a strong April into the first game of May, knocking in a run of his own in the seventh to give the Giants a 5-0 lead.

The Mets offense woke up in the seventh, scoring a run on a David Wright RBI single off of Derek Law to give the Mets their first run of the game and cut the lead to 5-1. Posey would get that run right back in the eighth when Posey knocked a solo shot off of Logan Verrett, putting the Giants right back up five runs with a 6-1 lead.

Neil Walker and Wilmer Flores set the table for a rally in the eighth by singling off of Cory Gearrin, but Gearrin got Plawecki to line out to center, then Josh Osich recorded the next two outs by getting Lucas Duda to hit into a fielder's choice and striking out Curtis Granderson.

Casilla got some work in the ninth after not pitching since April 25th and shut the door on the Mets to secure San Francisco's 13th win of the season.

Syndergaard was handed his first loss of the season after the Mets had won in each of his first four starts.

Tomorrow, the Giants travel to Cincinnati where Johnny Cueto will make his first start against the Reds since being traded to Kansas City last year. Cueto will be matched up against Brandon Finnegan, who is coming into the game with a 1-1 record and a 3.86 ERA with 23 strikeouts over 28 innings.

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Pagan left the game in the seventh after tweaking his leg rounding first on his RBI single. Blanco replaced Pagan in the subsequent defensive inning. Pagan is the latest Giant to have an injury, as Joe Panik missed his second consecutive game after straining his right groin on Friday.

Ehire Adrianza, George Kontos, and Sergio Romo are all on the DL, and an injury requiring Pagan to miss a notable amount of time would be a major blow.

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