Dirty Sanchez: Not What You Thought You Were Googling...Sicko

If only the Giants could continue this wonderful run of kindergarten arithmetic victories. Alas, the streak will most likely come to an end Sunday when Barry Zit0-5 takes the mound against the Cincinnati Reds.

But let's focus first on last night's masterpiece of a game by Jonathan Sanchez. The guy has always had filthy stuff, but, early in his career, he has been too easily rattled by a defensive miscue (of which there have been many) or a mistake pitch. I think this lends credence to why he was initially so effective as a reliever - he pitched well and didn't have too many things go wrong in his cup of coffee in 2006, thus, little chance of mental breakdown in limited innings.

So what's changed this year? In my purely non-expert opinion, the obvious improvement has been mechanical: he has been locating all his pitches much better, leading to more efficient outings. When he loses the release point, he gets wild, and he can still lose it completely, as he did against a very potent Brewers lineup earlier this month, although he still struck out eight.

Last night, he maintained the release point (10 strikeouts to one walk) and his poise and it resulted in the longest outing of his career. The wild card with Sanchez is that he simply doesn't strike me as a guy who maintains his composure - his success feeds success and, conversely, his failure feeds failure. He is improving as a pitcher before our eyes, but his mental makeup is still suspect.

So the Giants have a young lefty starter with incredible stuff, sometimes erratic control, and a questionable mound presence with boom/bust potential. Hmmm. Don't say it - please don't say that ghastly overrunning second base in the NLDS word that rhymes with testes (ironically).

So what do you say? Jonathan "Dirty" Sanchez - the next Shawn ***** or the second Johan Santana?

Who says we don't know nuance?