by Michael Duca

SAN FRANCISCO–You try to get your victories where you can get them and against Chicago’s former lovable losers who lately have been Chicago’s lovable winners (as of Wed night six game winning streak) and the San Francisco Giants had plenty of small victories on Tuesday night. When you consider that they were down 8-0 against the Cubs starter Jake Arieta in the fifth inning had they managed to get Cubs manager Joe Maddon to use four members of his bullpen including his set up man Pedro Strop and his closer Hector Rondon who threw 19 pitches getting his 24th save on Tuesday night in the Cubs 8-5 win.

The Giants might be well set up to capture game two of the series based on that and they may have to rely on other people in the bullpen. When you got an eight-zip lead in the second half of the game as a manager your really looking forward to giving your big guys a night off. The Giants also got some help from some of the guys who didn’t start.

Buster Posey has looked bad in the last week there’s no way to sugarcoat and dress this Posey has now gone 4-33 and has two hits in his last 19 at bats for a .109 clip. Defensively he’s had a ball that went off his glove for a passed ball and he had a wild pitch that went off his glove that he should have blocked on Tuesday. On Wednesday to start the ball game the Cubs leftfielder and leadoff hitter Kyle Schwarber his a routine fly straight up by the pitchers mound and pitcher Jake Peavy looked like he had the catch but with Peavy to Posey’s back Posey backed up into him knocking him to the ground and the ball fell between them and it allowed Schwarber with a two base hit.

Posey’s bat has been slow he’s not seeing and hitting his pitches well and clearly needs a day or two to recharge the batteries and Giants manager Bruce Bochy got him out early last night in an 8-0 game and back up catcher Andrew Susac drove the ball to the wall in dead centerfield with bases loaded and drove in three runs and made that a premium bullpen game for Maddon so with one swing of the bat Susac gave Bochy another weapon on the bench that he could think about using.

It wasn’t a clutch situation for Susac’s return when it was 8-2 Cubs as it turned out with the bases loaded and two outs he drove in all three runs and he got them into a position where they had to bring in Strop in the eighth inning. They got into the back end of the pen even though it wasn’t a high stress game for the Cubs that turned into one.

Michael Duca does the Giants podcast each week for http://www.sportsradioservice.com