Anybody see the Giants-Cards game yesterday? I took a long lunch, ate some pizza & watched it at a nearby sportsbar.
Crazy, crazy game.
First of all the Cards pitchers combined to go 3-4, only a single away from hitting for the cycle. This started with yesterday's winner Jason Marquis pinch-hitting to lead off the 3rd and hitting a triple on the first pitch, Adam Wainwright leading off the 5th and hitting a line drive on the first pitch into the 7th row of the left field bleachers, and then Braden Looper doubling in the 9th. Neither Wainwright nor Looper had even taken batting practice since Spring Training, and in Wainwright's case it was his first major league at bat! So he joins a very short list of guys who've homered on their first pitch in the bigs.
Going back to the 3rd inning, after one pitch Marquis (who's now 5 for 13 as a pinch-hitter in his career) is on 3rd with nobody out. Eckstein singles him home, and then, after a multi-pitch at bat in which he doesn't look good at all, Spiezio hits a pop-up behind 2nd. Durham runs out there, but is looking straight into the sun & loses the ball. Sweeney on 1st & Ortmeier in RF also converge, but maybe not at full-speed because they don't seem to realize that Durham has lost it, and suddenly it lands with a plop for just about the lamest single you ever saw. If Eckstein had know it would drop he could easily have reached 3rd, but as it was he barely made it to 2nd in time. Now Pujols comes up and with 2 strikes hits a monstrous shot into right-center. Ortmeier goes back to the wall right at the 385 mark - can he make a leaping grab? - only to see the ball hit off the brick facade of the Promenade about 4 feet over his head. A home run in more than half the parks in the league, and extra bases anywhere else, but the ball ricochets off the brick so sharply that it winds up in Finley's glove in CF in about 0.3 seconds. Once again Eckstein had stayed close to the bag because the ball might have been caught, and with Finley's arm to consider he stops at 3rd. So, with two men on Pujols has just hit a ball that would have landed more than 400 feet from home plate, he's held to a single and NOBODY SCORES! Neither I nor Krukow nor Kuiper had ever seen anyhting like it. But I'm still feeling good, the bases are loaded with no outs and the 4-5-6 hitters due up. Except Rolen, who the graphic shows has a career .291 average with the bases loaded & 4 career slams, strikes out and then Encarnacion, who has 4 RBI's in the series already, grounds into a DP.
In the bottom of the 3rd the tables are turned when the G-men get the bases loaded with nobody out & the exact same thing happens, K + DP to end the inning.
Then in the 6th, Giants still leading 4-3, Encarnacion & Luna are on 2nd & 1st after leading off with back-to-back singles. LaRussa apparently calls a double-steal, but Encarnacion jumps too soon & Lowry holds the ball & has him caught off of second. He runs towards him to see which way he will break & when he leans back towards second Lowry throws the ball to Durham...about 8 feet over his head into center field. Now on 3rd & 2nd, Encarnacion & Luna score easily on Molina's single & Taguchi's sac fly. Cards now up 5-4. This was Lowry's first career error.
Next inning with Munter pitching the Cardinals send 9 men to the plate & score 4 runs like this: infield single, walk, RBI single to right, walk, 4-pitch bases-loaded walk, RBI infield single, RBI groundout to 2nd (the last two items after Kline replaced Munter). 4 runs on 3 walks & only one ball out of the infield. Which makes the the Cardinals' half of the 3rd inning seem even more bizarre in retrospect.
After the game the Giants send Ortmeier back to AAA and send Munter back to AA.
