Seventh inning lead Los Angeles Dodgers past San Francisco Giants 7-5 – MLB Season Review
It seems as if the Los Angeles Dodgers wanted to take revenge against the San Francisco Giants for last years defeat in the regular season.
With Marcus Thames’ RBI triple and Aaron Miles’ pinch-single, spectators witnessed some tremendous comeback in seventh inning and the National League western franchise Dodgers turned the tide into a winning outing.
Rafael Furcal launched two hits, Andre Ethier chipped an RBI single and Dodgers vanquished division rivals defending World Series Champions Giants with 7-5 on board Sunday, April 3 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.
Giants strived hard to remove the lead in last two innings with some strong hammering, but could not achieve much to cross four-run deficit. In eighth inning, Dodgers’ reliever Hong-Chih Kuo went loose with three walks that made Aubrey huff score an RBI.
Having Buster Posey at third and Pat Burrell at second base hope was building for the Giants but died quickly when Miguel Tejada popped out to foul territory.
In ninth inning, with over 50,000 spectators in the ground, the game took another dramatic jump when Giants’ hitter Aaron Rowand launched a grand slam off Dodgers closer Jonathan Broxton. However, he managed to restrict the later batters to just one hit
and ended the game with a 6.00 ERA.
Giants’ reliever Dan Runzler witnessed a nightmare, started with Marcus’ fly ball to left-fielder Aubrey Huff that allowed James Loney to score. Runzler proved an easy target for the batters as they availed the opportunity of slow pitches. Runzler went for
four costly RBI runs and struck-out just one.
Giants’ starter Barry Zito bounced back after receiving three lead-generating runs in the first inning. The Cy Young Award winner then tossed five shut-out innings and struck-out five batters.
Pitchers seemed out of momentum as Dodgers’ starter Hiroki Kuroda, having a 1-0 record, came into action for seven innings and received three runs on five hits including two homers. Kuroda managed to have five strike-outs and ended the game with a 3.86 ERA.
Dodgers paved the road to victory in the opening inning when they achieved a three run lead with the help of Matt Kemp’s huge 390-feet long grand slam and Jamey Carroll’s RBI single off Giants’ starter Barry Zito.
Both teams will play again at the same venue for the fourth of ten-scheduled games in the regular season on Monday, April 4, 2011.
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