Giants Go For Sweep
The East Coast may not be as temperate as the Bay Area, but the San Francisco Giants have been enjoying playing on the road recently.
The Giants will be trying to complete their first-ever four-game sweep in Washington when the teams wrap up their series Monday at Nationals Park.
Oddsmakers from Sportsbook.com have made San Francisco -132 money line favorites (MLB Odds) for tonight’s game, the over/under has been set at 8.5 total runs (Matchup). Current public betting information shows that 51% of bets for this game have been placed on San Francisco -132 (View MLB Bet Percentages).
San Francisco (28-35) has won the first three games of this series and six straight away from home, including Sunday’s 6-3 victory. That win put the Giants in position for their first four-game sweep of the Nationals franchise since July 14-17, 1994, 11 years before the team moved from Montreal to Washington.
San Francisco’s most recent win came despite 94-degree temperatures and muggy conditions in Washington.
"If there’s hotter place to play, I’m glad I’m not there," manager Bruce Bochy told the Giants’ official Web site.
The Giants’ road winning streak is their longest since a six-game run last Aug. 16-31. They have not won seven straight road games since an eight-game streak to start the 2003 season.
John Bowker homered and Randy Winn drove in a pair of runs Sunday for the Giants, and Barry Zito earned his second win of the season. San Francisco has won five of seven overall.
"As the season’s gone on, we’ve progressively gotten better at stringing hits together and scoring runs, instead of one here and one there," said center fielder Aaron Rowand, who drove in the go-ahead run on a bad-hop single in a four-run fifth inning.
Lastings Milledge homered and drove in two runs for Washington (25-39), which has lost seven of its last eight games. Milledge, though, is 7-for-16 (.438) in his last five games against the Giants.
The Nationals have managed three runs or fewer in each of their last 13 defeats.
"We just couldn’t deliver,” Washington manager Manny Acta said. "We needed that hit today, and it never showed up for us.”
Garrett Mock made his major league debut for the Nationals and surrendered four runs in 4 1-3 innings. He was optioned back to the minors after the game to make room for Tyler Clippard, who will be called up from Triple-A Columbus to make his season debut in the series finale.
Clippard was acquired from the Yankees in an offseason trade after going 3-1 with a 6.33 ERA in six starts for New York in 2007. The 23-year-old right-hander had been 4-4 with a 3.41 ERA in 12 starts for Columbus.
The Giants counter with Matt Cain (2-4, 4.67 ERA), who gave up five runs in five innings of Wednesday’s 5-3 loss to the New York Mets, falling to 0-1 with a 5.76 ERA over his last four starts.
Cain is 1-2 with a 3.38 ERA in four career starts against the Nationals. The right-hander threw six innings in his last outing against Washington on Aug. 8 of last season, a 5-0 win for the Giants.
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