Tim Lincecum’s pitching helps San Francisco Giants defeat San Diego Padres 8-4 – MLB Update
National League’s San Francisco Giants defeated division rivals San Diego Padres 8-4 in a one-sided competition on Wednesday, April 6 at Petco Park in San Diego.
The game emerged as a big day for Giants’ starter Tim Lincecum, who crushed the Padres’ line-up in his seven-shutout innings. The 26-year-old right-hand hurler achieved 13 strike-outs and allowed just one run on three hits.
Two times Cy Young Award winner started in the bottom of first and tossed two scoreless innings. In third, the Padres’ hitter Nick Hundley managed a huge homer off Lincecum after he struck-out Cameron Maybin. Lincecum then hit back and pitched four hit-less
innings.
Despite playing his 27th career game with at least 10 strike-outs, Lincecum realised the problem with his rhythm and said, "Having good rhythm, and sometimes I get out of that, and that's when I fall into trouble. But I made sure everything was
working right."
The Giants tilted the outing into their side early in the first inning when Aubrey Huff doubled on a ground ball to right-field that provided room for Freddy Sanchez to steal a run. The Number four hitter Buster Posey increased the lead to 3-0 hammering
a huge two-run homer off Padres’ starter Tim Stauffer.
Huff and Posey along with Pablo Sandoval again came into action in the middle of game. Huff managed another double in the fifth followed by an RBI single in the sixth pushing the lead to 4-1. Posey then made an RBI single to right allowing Miguel Tejada
and Sanchez a chance to steal a single each. Sandoval put the Padres under more pressure ticking a single to right and widened the lead to 8-1.
Stauffer pitched loose straight into the first inning and consumed eight hits allowing four runs, walked two and struck-out one in just over four innings.
"I just didn't feel real sharp overall," Stauffer said. "I battled a bit. But the first inning, getting down like that against a good pitcher like Lincecum, is a little bit of an uphill battle for us."
Padres turned the ninth inning into an interesting situation when Adrian Gonzalez scored on an error by short-stop Tejada and Chase Headley doubled to deep centre allowing Orlando Hudson and Brad Hawpe to score. With four batters left on the plate, the Padres
could not make further progress and lost 8-4 in the second and final competition against the Giants.
San Francisco put in a brilliant performance as their pitching line-up managed to restrict the Padres’ offence. San Diego will be looking to improve their performance and get their offence to fire to become more competitive.
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