Giants get to Lee, take World Series game one
With Cliff Lee and Tim Lincecum on the mound in game one of the World Series you wouldn’t expect what transpired last night.
Lee got hammered for six runs and Lincecum gave up four as the Texas Rangers and San Francisco Giants slugged it out at packed out AT&T Park. It was the Giants who claimed first blood in the series slugging their way to an 11-7 win, chasing Lee after just 4 2/3 innings.
Riding the bat of Freddy Sanchez, who went 4-5 with three RBI’s, the Giants took a massive step towards winning their first World Series since 1954.
“You never think you're going to have success against a pitcher like that. He's one of the best pitchers in the game, been unhittable in the postseason,” Sanchez said of Lee.
"We know he throws a lot of strikes, we know he's one of the best pitchers in the game, especially in the postseason. We just wanted to attack him early.”
Lee had been unstoppable this postseason putting in two performances which had everyone raving. The left-handed pitcher became the first player ever to have three 10-plus strikeout games in the same post-season and improved to 7-0 with a 1.26 ERA in the play-offs.
All that counted for nothing as Lee struggled from start to finish.
"I was trying to make adjustments, I was up. I was down. I was in. I was out. I was trying to find it, and I was never really consistent with what I was doing,” Lee said after the game.
Despite his struggles it was the Rangers who took an early 2-0 lead, scoring twice in the first two innings. Vladimir Guerrero drove in Michael Young on an infield single and Elvis Andrus hit a sacrifice fly in the top of the second to give the Rangers a quick start.
But it was all Giants from then on. They levelled the match in the third inning and then put up a six-run fifth inning all-but finishing off the match. Juan Uribe finished off the scoring in the inning with a three-run home run that measured 409 feet.
The Rangers did try to make a comeback with two runs in the sixth inning but with the Giants’ bats on they added a further three runs in the eighth. Texas did add some respectability to the score with three-runs in the ninth but ultimately it wasn’t enough.
Game two is on Thursday night with Matt Cain – who hasn’t given up a run this post-season – taking on Texas’ CJ Wilson.
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