San Francisco's Matt Cain was dominant in Game Two.
The San Francisco Giants were longshots to make it to the World Series, but after two games, they look like they’re exactly where they belong. With a 9-0 win in Game Two, the Giants have scored 20 runs in the series and earned their first postseason shutout since 1962.
For seven innings, it was the kind of low-scoring pitchers’ battle everyone expected to see in the first game. The Giants’ Matt Cain pitched 7 2/3 innings and has yet to surrender an earned run this postseason. He gave up just four hits on the night, including a long double to Ian Kinsler that hit the top of the center field fence and bounced back in the park.
The score remained 0-0 until the bottom of the 5th inning, when the Rangers’ C.J. Wilson gave up a solo home run to Edgar Renteria. After facing and walking the first batter in the 7th, Wilson left the game due to a blister on his throwing hand.
Perhaps the Rangers should’ve made him pitch through it. Even with the blister, Wilson might have fared better than his relievers. Darren Oliver came in to finish the 7th, giving up an RBI single to Juan Uribe but holding the score to 2-0.
In the 8th inning, the Rangers got one man on after a walk but couldn’t bring him home, allowing the Giants to seize control in the bottom of the inning. San Francisco delivered the knockout punch: seven runs with two outs in a half-inning that lasted close to half an hour.
Darren O’Day faced the first three batters, striking out the first two and surrendering a base hit to the Giants’ Buster Posey. O’Day was replaced by lefty Derek Holland, who came in to face left-handed right fielder Nate Schierholtz. Holland walked Schierholtz on four pitches, then threw four more balls in a row to walk Cody Ross and load the bases with two outs.
The Rangers quickly sent Mark Lowe to warm up, but there was no one ready to spell Holland, who had yet to throw a strike in the inning. It was Holland against Aubrey Huff with bases loaded and two outs. Ball one. Ball two. Ball three. Holland had thrown 11 straight balls, Huff wasn’t swinging, and the Giants’ crowd was wildly waving its orange poms and Lincecum wigs.
Would Holland really walk in a run in the World Series? With the bases loaded, two outs, and a 3-0 count, he delivered the pitch. Strike one (finally). But the relief was short-lived. Another pitch, another ball (looked close, but not close enough), and Posey crossed the plate to make it 3-0. Holland faced only three batters, and 13 of his 14 pitches were balls.
Lowe came in – and promptly threw ball one to Uribe. He worked the count full, but eventually walked in another run, then surrendered a single to Renteria to drive in two more runs and push the score to 6-0 in favor of the Giants.
With runners on first and third, Michael Kirkman came in to relieve Lowe and gave up a two-run RBI triple to pinch hitter Aaron Rowand. The next batter, Andres Torres, had opened the inning with a strikeout; he got a second chance later in the 8th, and he hit an RBI double before a Freddy Sanchez swing-and-miss mercifully ended the inning at 9-0.
Unlike in the division race, when Texas lost Game One to the Yankees but came back big to win the next game, the Rangers looked even worse in Game Two – and Game One hadn’t pretty.
This time, Texas couldn’t bounce back, or even keep it close. The final score, 9-0, was the largest margin of defeat in a World Series game in 25 years, and it put the Rangers in a huge hole as they head back to Texas for Game Three. Of the fifty-one teams that started a World Series up two games, forty of them went on to win it all.
There could still be plenty of baseball to play, but only if the Rangers can play well for an entire game. They’ll try to find the strike zone, their power hitting, and a win when they bring the Series back to Arlington Saturday evening.
