NL Championship Series Game 1: Giants 4, Phillies 3

Game 1 of the National League Championship Series was touted as the best postseason matchup in ages.  It was a pitching duel that featured two former Cy Young winners in Roy Halladay and Tim Lincecum.  What it turned out to be was the continuation of the coming out part for outfielder Cody Ross who led the San Francisco Giants to a 4-3 win over the defending NL Champion Philadelphia Phillies.

While both Tim Lincecum and Roy Halladay didn't pitch their best games, the key to this game was offense.  The Giants were able to get more going against Halladay then the Phillies could get against Lincecum.  The Giants scored four runs behind Cody Ross' two solo homeruns and Pat Burrell and Juan Uribe's RBI hits.  All the Giants needed was those four runs to win the game.

Tim Lincecum did give up a two-run homerun in Jayson Werth in the bottom of the sixth to cut the lead down to 4-3.  Lincecum went one more inning after that before handing the ball over to the bullpen.  Left-handed specialist, Javier Lopez, then came in for two outs against Chase Utley and Ryan Howard.  Then Brian Wilson was brought in for a four-out save and in normal Wilson fashion he made it interesting.

Game 1 was just the continuation of the Cody Ross coming out party.  Ross has stopped two no-hitters in back to back games with homeruns.  In the final game of the NLDS, Derek Lowe was on his way to a no-hitter before Ross went deep.

Ross has been a nice story for the Giants.  He was acquired by the Giants at the end of August when the Marlins released him and Brian Sabean put in a claim for him so that the San Diego Padres could not.  That move has turned out to be one of the best moves that Brian Sabean has made.  So far in this postseason, Cody Ross is batting .353 with 3 homeruns.

The Giants will go for another win tonight against Roy Oswalt, who they have had ownage on this year.  If the Giants win tonight, then they would have three chances in San Francisco to win two games.

Giants finally beat the Padres!!!!

Who knew it.  The Giants can actually beat the Padres, they are now 2-8 against the Friars this year.  

The good news is that the Giants managed to hang in there against Mat Latos, despite the home plate umpire doing his best to screw the Giants.  

Latos, who by the way may be a jerk, but no doubt is legit.  He is going to be a big pain in the ass for the Giants in the years to come.  This season, against the Giants, he has a 0.96 ERA.  in four starts and that includes today's game.

Back to the home plate umpire.  I'm not sure if he is from San Diego but he may of called the worst game I've seen all season.

In the bottom of the seventh inning, he called out Andres Torres on a third strike that was so far off the plate.  It had to be at least a foot outside.  If Torres would have been hitting left-handed it would of hit him.  As you can see from the screenshot of my MLB app from my iPhone that actually none of the strikes were actually strikes.

Either way, the Giants overcame the questionable calls and won the game with his legs.  After catching eleven innings, Buster Posey got a lead off double in the bottom of the 11th and then Pablo Sandoval got his second intentional walk of the game.  Then Juan Uribe came up and hit a single that allowed the hustling Posey to score from second.  GAME OVER!!

Giants-Dodgers rivalry is back

Great game last night.  Probably one of the best games I have seen all year.  What is also great about last night’s game is it probably will build the rivalry back up to where it belongs.  Hatred between fans and hatred between players.

Prior to this game it didn’t seem like the “new” Giants really had much of an understanding what the rivalry meant.  Well, they were introduced last night when the beanball war began.

It began in the 5th inning when Lincecum threw high and tight to Kemp and then on the following pitch hit him.  Kemp to exception to that and appeared to walk towards the mound in which Lincecum responded by walking toward Kemp.  Since Kemp is a real wussy anyway nothing happened.  He was probably worried that if he got beat up by a 5′ 9″ pitcher that Rihanna would have broke up with him.