Huff, Huffman shines as Indians beat Giants
Cleveland Indians’ David Huff made his best outing of the spring season on Thursday to guide Indians in beating San Francisco Giants by 7-1 .Huff , who has been competing for his starting pitching rotation position, threw five scoreless innings and trimmed his spring ERA from 8.25 to 5.82. He threw 3 2-3 hitless innings before eventually hit by Giants’ catcher Buster Posey for a single to the left. The 26 years old left hander struck out two Giants’ hitters with a walk and three hits in five innings. His performance against Giants will make Manager Manny Acta lot to think before announcing his rotation on Saturday.
Jeanmar Gomez threw remaining four innings of the game. He allowed the only Giants' run when shortstop Miguel Tejada hit a solo homer in the 7th inning. Other than that, Gomez was very impressive with six strike outs.
Giants’ Barry Zito, who had been pretty good so far with a 2-0 win record in the spring season before the Thursday game, had an off day. He threw two scoreless innings before eventually hammered in three innings giving away three runs. Jack Hannahan hit off Zito to right-center field for a double and reached the third base off of Adam Everett’s single. Carlos Santana then hit a grounder to allow Hannahan to complete his run. Carlos Santana went on to complete his run off of Austin Kearns' groundout after Chad Huffman doubled home Everett. Luke Carlin hit a solo homer in the sixth inning to make the score 4-0. Zito gave away four runs in seven hits with five strikeouts and a walk.
Zito’s successor Ramon Ramirez was completely out of sorts on Thursday bleeding away three earned runs with only one out. No more damage was done to the Giants after Ramirez as Jeremy Affeldt, Guillermo Mota, Dan Runzler threw 2 2-3 scoreless innings with only one hit which came off Affeldt’s pitch.
While batting, Chad Huffman did most of the damage to Giants with four RBIs and one run to his name. Carlos Santana was the other prominent name in the score sheet with two runs and one RBI to his name in his three visits to the diamond. Catcher Luke Carlin, third baseman Jack Hannahan and Shortstop Adam Everett put their name on the Box Score with one run each. Miguel Tejada was the only Giants’ hitter who scored a run with a home run.
This was Giants’ fourth consecutive loss in Cactus league and will face another tough task on Friday when they visit Kansas City Royal. Aubrey Huff is expected to start against Royals while Madison Bumgarner will play his final Cactus League game. On the other hand, Indians will play their next game against the Milwaukee Brewers at Maryvale Baseball Park.
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