Well that certainly wasn't the pitching duel that everybody talked about. Congratulations to the San Francisco Giants as they take game 1. That was a pretty exciting game. I mean wow. Even though I'm not happy with the outcome, it was a hard fought, down to the wire kind of game for the Giants. And how about Cody Ross! Roy Halladay retired the first 7 batters he saw in the game. Then come's the eighth man in the Giant lineup named Cody Ross. And "BOOM" homerun. Then he come's up a second time and the same thing. What the...? How? Why? But even though he gave up 2 homeruns Roy still pitched very well. He went 7 innings, gave up 8 hits, and 4 runs, while striking out 7 and walking nobody. Not bad. Now it's not what we are used to seeing from Roy, but I would take that anyday against most ball clubs. I said "most". The Giants are not one of those clubs. You can just feel this series going 7 games and they are all going to be very close games. And really I think the Phillies offense is going to be alright. Those first couple of innings they were making good contact and sending the ball to deep in the outfield. So did the Giants.
And how about those Giants. Tim Lincecum had another solid performance. He gave up a solo shot to Carlos "chooch" Ruiz, and a 2 run shot Jayson Werth. But other than that he didn't really give up too much more. He did give up a lead off double to Ryan Howard, but he got out of that inning with no damage done. He to went 7 innings, gave up 6 hits, and 3 runs, while striking out 8 and walking 3. And although Brian Wilson got into just a little bit of trouble in the ninth he came away with the save and preserved Tim Lincecum's second postseason win ever.
But the outcome of this game could of been much different. The umpire behind the plate tonight had one of the smallest strike zones I have ever seen. Derryl Cousins is lucky I wasn't at the game or else he might be picking size C batteries out of his head! Pat Burrell was at the plate and down in the count 0-2. Roy pitches the ball and I said "yeeeessssssss thank you.............wait whhaaaaatttt??" "That was a ******* strike you *******!!!!!!!!" Now I don't care who you are and what team you like if you didn't see that pitch...trust me you would of said "yeah that was a strike". But noooooo he called it a ball. That would of ended the inning and the Giants would of walked away to the next inning with a 2-1 lead. But instead Burrell got the call and on the next pitch he hit a RBI double off the wall in left field. The Giants would tack on another run and obviously as we all know would go on to win.
Now I must say something here. I'm not making excuses for my Phillies. We had our chances. We left a few men on base. (7 to be exact) So yeah that play I described did change the game up to that point but we our chances and we could of done better with those chances but it just didn't happen that way. So one more time congratulations to the Giants on a well played game.
I'm a little worried about game 2. We have Roy Oswalt going for us and we all know what happened the last time he pitched. Yeah we won the game but he wasn't dominate in any sense of the word. Now I realize that those were the Reds and these are the Giants. But I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little worried. And also after seeing Jonathan Sanchez and what he can do, I'm a little worried about getting some hits and turning those hits into runs. I know one thing though. We are in for a hell of a ride the rest of the way.