Petit looking ahead to next start
SAN FRANCISCO -- Just five days after nearly pitching a perfect game against Arizona, Giants right-hander Yusmeiro Petit will make his next start Wednesday afternoon against the Colorado Rockies at AT&T Park.
Petit has been flooded with phone calls and emails from friends, family members and fans, congratulating him on his one-hit shutout and brush with perfection that ended with Eric Chavez's single with two outs in the ninth.
Petit said job No. 1 for him now is to put Friday night's emotional outing in the past and concentrate on the present.
"The key element now is to try and keep my concentration, to go ahead and study the hitters I have to face tomorrow and remind myself that the page that I wrote was a very beautiful page, but it's in the past," Petit said Tuesday. "So I have to concentrate on tomorrow's game."
Giants manager Bruce Bochy said he's not concerned about Petit getting too amped up or losing his focus.
"You saw how he handled that game," Bochy said. "He stayed composed. He wasn't caught up into what he was about to accomplish or close to accomplishing, and even when he gave up the hit, it didn't fluster him. He was just excited about a one-hit shutout. ... That's how excited he was about the game itself."
Petit is 3-0 with a 1.71 ERA in his first three starts with San Francisco. That streak started with a 5-3 Giants win at Colorado on Aug. 27. He allowed two runs on six hits over six innings, striking out six and walking three. In his next start, at Arizona, he gave up two runs on seven hits over six innings, striking out a career-high 10 and walking one in an 8-2 Giants win.
That set the stage for the first career shutout and complete game of his career when he struck out seven, allowed just one hit and walked none in a 3-0 Giants victory over Arizona.
What's been the key to his success?
"First of all, you have to keep the ball down and throw strikes," Petit said. "Secondly, I have been fortunate to get ahead of the hitters and especially the big guys in the lineup, keep them from hitting with the barrel of the bat, the middle of the lineup guys. Not that I'm not concentrating on the other guys, but the key thing for me is that I try to dominate those guys, and that has been very important for me."