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		Kershaw without flaw in shutout of the Giants By Morris Phillips July 20, 2011

	In a battle of aces where neither pitcher disappoints, hitters have to play the guessing game. In this one, Dioner Navarro was the guy who guessed right. Tim Lincecum left a fastball up in the seventh inning, and Navarro pounced, sending the offering into McCovey Cove. Lincecum’s shutout disappeared, and with Clayton Kershaw exceptionally, so did the game in a 1-0 Giants’ loss to the Dodgers. “You know it’s going to be tight game, so you got to be on top of yours. And I flinched first. Rough,” Lincecum said. Kershaw’s the last guy any Giants’ hitter wants to see and after Wednesday he has the numbers to validate the fear he creates. The 23-year old All-Star has made nine starts in his brief career against the Giants, and he’s 4-1 with 72 strikeouts in 62 plus innings. In addition, his ERA of 1.41 is lowest any pitcher with a minimum of 50 innings has posted against the Giants in their 54-season San Francisco history. For history buffs, Kershaw was third on the list, but by allowing just three hits in eight innings he passed Tim Burke (1.59), a reliever for the Expos, Mets and Yankees who was a 1989 All-Star and Pirates’ great Kent Tekulve (1.50) who side armed his way past the Giants a bunch back in the 70’s. Burke, who posted a 2.72 ERA and saved 102 ballgames in an eight-year career, retired prematurely to raise four orphans he and his wife adopted from Third World countries. In 1994, he wrote a book detailing his decision to retire and you can bet a few of the Giants of that era bought the book and sent Burke well wishes. The Giants’ loss was just the second in seven games following the All-Star Break and it marked only the second time the normally run-challenged Giants had scored less than four runs in their last eight contests. So the trends show the Giants are playing their best ball and starting to swing the bats, but the number that’s most alarming is eight. This marked the eighth time in Lincecum’s 21 starts this season that the Giants didn’t even bother to back him with a least one run. It’s not Lincecum’s best season and nowhere near his two Cy Young campaigns, but the lack of run support stands as the biggest reason his won-lost record sits at 8-8. “It’s stinks for Timmy because he pitched well,” Cody Ross admitted. “We couldn’t take advantage of it and couldn’t push anything across for him.” Lincecum scattered five hits and walked four in seven innings of work. Navarro’s home run the first Timmy has allowed since June 6, a period spanning eight starts. The unlikely hero has averaged less than five home runs a season in an eight-year big-league career and connected on the same day the Dodgers fired their hitting coach, Jeff Pentland. It was the fourth time Lincecum had allowed a hitter to deposit one in McCovey Cove and the first time any opposing hitter had done so this year. “I’ve been trying to reach that since day one. I never could… not even in batting practice,” Navarro said. Navarro guessed right, but he struggled behind the plate, picking up two errors trying to throw out Giants’ runners at second base. Both runners advanced to third on his errant throws, but Kershaw backed him up each time, stranding the runners in the first two innings. The Giants gave Pablo Sandoval the day off, but he pinch hit in the ninth and hit a fly ball to right that was caught. New acquisition Jeff Keppinger pinch hit in the seventh and was retired. The Giants’ six-game win streak against the Dodgers—their best run against the hated blue and white since 1969—came to an end. And Los Angeles ended a four-game slide that had them losing contact in the NL West. “We were struggling. We needed a win,” Kershaw said. The Giants have Thursday off and then welcome the Brewers Friday night when Milwaukee’s Shaun Marcum and Matt Cain will face off.