Come 11

The San Francisco Giants behind starter Ryan Vogelsong won their league-leading 11th shutout of the season in Seattle Thursday, while Gerritt Cole won his majors-leading 11th victory as the Pittsburgh Pirates swept the Chicago White Sox.  It was the Pirates' eighth straight victory.

But the disquieting aspect of the Giants season is they get shut out almost as often as they shut out others.  That was the case on Wednesday night when they wasted a stellar Bumgarden start with a 1-0 loss, though against the best pitcher in the American League.

The Giants bats woke up against a rookie pitcher on Thursday, with Matt Duffy's triple the most dramatic of their hits.  If you don't count Brandon Belt's monumental not-home run that the wind blew back from deep center field.  Duffy and Panik remain the guys you'd go to see play regardless.

So the Giants split their 4 games with Seattle, and remain 2.5 behind the Dodgers.  They now head to LA.

A feature of the two games in Seattle was the conspicuous presence of thousands of Giants fans in the stands.  They chanted, they cheered, they were the crowd sound on the radio.  Amazing.

Injured Giants are starting to return.  Blanco comes back Friday, Peavy is in the wings with Cain so far looking like he'll come soon after.  I don't have the patience to go through all the teams in those evaluations of which team needs what, but the Giants are going to have to make some decisions regarding pitchers, and I've got no answers.  The outfield gets healed when Hunter Pence does.  They could use a utility infielder with some hitting.  So far they've shown admirable patience with McGehee but he's not producing. The other night when he came up with men on base again, I wonder if he had the same thought as I did--with two outs at least he can't hit into a double play. Maybe that relaxed him, because he hit a double.

 A number of the Giants are streaky, including Posey, Belt and Pagan.  Others are still question marks, like Justin Maxwell.  McG just doesn't seem to be working out.  Unless they don't have a prospect ready, he's an obvious roster move.  But that's easy for me to say.  I don't even know the guy.