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Back-to-back jacks gives Lincecum his just due
By Jeremy Harness August 27, 2008 |
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SAN FRANCISCO - The way he pitched on Wednesday night - the way he hit his spots and froze Colorado batters on numerous called third strikes - Tim Lincecum had to have this one. But for six innings, Colorado starter Livan Hernandez was a little bit better. While he didn't compile the strikeouts that Lincecum did - more on that later - but the one-time World Series hero held his old team to a mere three hits and left every impression that most of the crowd of 31,627 fans at AT&T Park would go home a disappointed bunch. That is, until Bengie Molina and Pablo Sandoval touched Hernandez for back-to-back homers in the seventh inning to give Lincecum his much-deserved 15th victory of the season, 4-1, to salvage the finale of a three-game series. To do so, Lincecum threw a career-high 132 pitches while going 7 1/3 innings and giving up only five hits and walking three. He also struck out 10 batters, marking the seventh time he has reached double-digit strikeouts this season. Jason Schmidt in 2004, Ray Sadecki (1968) and John Montefusco (1975) are the only pitchers who have accomplished that. "I'm trying to go as far into the game as I can," Lincecum said. "Whether it's at 120 pitches, 100 pitches, 130 pitches, it's fine with me. You've got to let the leash out a little bit as time goes on, and I think it's going to hopefully help me next year in getting closer to 200 innings, something that I've never done before." Lincecum gave up only one run - tying him for the lowest ERA in the majors at 2.43, which he now shares with Cleveland's Cliff Lee - but for six innings, it appeared that run was going to be enough to deny him the win. He lost his location for a brief part of the second inning, but the Rockies used that to grab a 1-0 lead, as Troy Tulowitzki's single scored Chris Iannetta, who had doubled in front of him. "The first couple innings, they got some hits off him, but he settled down," Giants manager Bruce Bochy said. "He got in a good groove and started getting the ball down. He was leaving some off-speed pitches up early, but he made an adjustment and started getting it down. "That was the difference in the game." The Giants, meanwhile, struggled to find any offense but had a tie score staring them right in the face after Dave Roberts lined a one-out triple into right-center in the sixth, with a surging Fred Lewis stepping to the plate. Lewis then flied one at middle depth into center field, seemingly deep enough for the speedy Roberts to tag up and score. But Willy Taveras, not known for having a very strong arm, literally threw those ambitions out the window. He fired a strike directly in front of home plate, where Iannetta easily put the tag on Roberts to keep the Giants off the scoreboard. It didn't take very long for the Giants to respond, however, when they finally got a hold of Hernandez in the seventh. With one out, Molina, who had hit two home runs off Hernandez in his career, tagged a solo homer off of a belt-high fastball to tie the game. "I was really hoping for him to make a mistake, and finally, he did, and we took advantage of that," Molina said. "He was tough (on Wednesday), really tough." Exactly one pitch later, Sandoval reached across the plate and poked one into the tunnel just inside the left-field foul pole for his first major-league home run, sending most of the crowd of 31,627 into a fever pitch and putting Lincecum back in the driver's seat for good. |
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