Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, the Giants just might have figured out what to do with Barry Zito. Have him throw to Pablo Sandoval. Barry Zito had his best start of the year and it was a real beauty today against the Padres. I know the Padres offense isn't that great but anyone has been able to hit Zito. But today Zito looked sharper than ever throwing seven scoreless with five strikeouts and more importantly, ZERO WALKS!! He did hit a guy but he immediately got the double play. Barry Zito looked like a whole different player out there today.
Now before all you guys jump on me and say its just one game, this isn't the first time this has happened. Barry Zito's best month of his Giant career came last September when opposing hitters hit .225/.301./.336. Guess who caught the majority of those starts? That's right, Pablo Sandoval. Sandoval caught five games last year of Zito's and hitters hit .213/.293./.311 while giving up just one homerun. That's a lousy .604 OPS! A lot of pitchers have had their own personal catcher. Maddux had one and so did Randy Johnson for a while just to name a few HOFers. So combine last year's month worth of games to today's start and I think we have found Zito's very own personal catcher. Zito has not had a stretch of six games this good with any other catcher so why not give Molina every 5th day off? Look what Molina did today. He got the walkoff, pinch hit single!
It doesn't take long to see that a pitcher and catcher connect and mesh well and its very obvious Zito and Sandoval do. Sandoval even caught Zito in spring training and he did well. Zito is a whole different pitcher when Pablo is behind the plate with a cool calm about him and an aggressive charge to him. If the Giants want to win ballgames, they need to keep the Sandoval as Zito's backstop.