Aubrey Huff: Barry Zito's CGSO ‘For All the Haters Out There'

Barry Zito had the best outing of his career as a Giant (arguably) anyway, and afterward, Aubrey Huff said it was "for all the haters out there."

On Monday, Barry Zito threw the most unpredictable game in the history of baseball, tossing nine shutout innings for the third complete game shutout of his Giants career. And it happened in Coors Field of all places, with Zito becoming the first Giant ever to toss a shutout there.

OK, "most unpredictable" is a stretch. Especially since, you know, we predicted it.

But that prediction wasn't grounded in "Zito is awesome" -- it was based on the Giants hitting the ball well while the pitching struggled, which is the precise opposite of everything Giants. Whatever, Zito got hot and he did the unexpected.

Did he see it coming? Hell no. But he did say afterward that "anything's possible."

“Yeah sure,” Zito said, with a bit of a stammer, according to Andrew Baggarly of CSNBayArea.com. “I mean, anything’s possible.”

This was Zito's 17th time going more than six innings without allowing a run since joining the Giants, which, frankly, is more than we expected when we started counting them. And there's probably an argument that he's had "better" games, but this one had to be the sweetest.

Just ask Aubrey Huff, who said that the game was "for all the haters out there."

“It’s no secret he gets buried by fans and the media, everything like that, so … for all the haters out there, that’s for them,” Huff said. “That was fun to watch. I’ve never wanted to scoop a ball to end a game more in my life."

Of course it was fun to watch. The Giants got out to an 0-3 start behind bad performances by Tim Lincecum, Madison Bumgarner and Matt Cain. Zito was pitching in Colorado and he was going to get shelled. The Giants were going to get off to their worst start since the 1950's. Everyone was going to panic.

And then ... that happened. It doesn't make up for the underwhelming pitching he's delivered since joining the Giants in 2007. And it doesn't void out the rest of his contract. But it was a perfectly-timed, inexplicable gem of a game and right now, the Giants aren't ones to look a gift horse in the mouth.

So, um, play on, player.

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