San Francisco Giants rebound with dominating 2-1 win over Houston Astros – MLB Update
The San Francisco Giants managed to beat league rivals Houston Astros 2-1 in the second outing at AT&T Park in San Francisco on Friday, August 26 to tie the four-game series at 2-all.
The Giants’ starter Madison Bumgarner became the ultimate reason for the Giants dominating win after many days. The right-hand hurler held the opposition scoreless in his first six innings and struck-out two batters to create the real pressure over the dominating
opposition. Bumgarner allowed the only run of the game in the seventh inning when Astros’ short-stop Clint Barmes grounded out to third scoring Matt Downs.
Bumgarner allowed five hits and three walks but these could not prevent him from getting his eighth win of the season with a 3.59 ERA. After Bumgarner allowed a run, Ramon Ramirez replaced him up the middle of the seventh inning and worked until completing
eight without allowing any run and taking three batters for his ninth hold. Santiago Casilla got his second save crushing two batters with gritty pitches in the last inning of the competition.
The Giants’ batting was in trouble against the Astros’ starter J.A. Happ but Chris Stewart, Orlando Cabrera and Jeff Keppinger joined to shatter a scoreless tie in the bottom of the fifth inning. Chris Stewart reached at first base on an error by shortstop
Barmes, then Bumgarner sacrificed to send Stewart on second base. While Stewart was on second, Happ allowed a walk to Cabrera giving Giants a fair chance to get the game under their arm. Happ strived hard to avoid any run, as he tossed two straight strikes
and then allowed a foul, ball and then two fouls and one ball before finally went for a line drive double by Keppinger.
"It's big considering the pitching performance we got," Keppinger said. "Goodness, at this point we just needed one so we could tie it up and at least extend the game and keep on going. Fortunately the ball found the gap and we got two."
Giants were under great pressure after losing the four game series opener but they retaliated in a brilliant manner to remove all the allegations. Manager Bruce Bochy had made some changes in the line-up, resting Aubrey Huff and Pablo Sandoval to create
diversity in the rotation. It worked and Bochy was pleased on his decision.
"We're mixing it up to see if we can't put a spark in the lineup, ignite it, get it going," Bochy said. "We've had our struggles all year with it. It has been ongoing. It'd be nice to come out of it this last month, which they're capable of doing."
Happ lost his fifteenth game and became one of the worst pitchers of this season. He made only four wins and his ERA 6.03 is among the lowest records of 2011 regular season.
Tags: