The Giants bats were quiet through five innings, but then woke up to provide Tim Licecum with enough offense to win the game. Lincecum earned his fifteenth win of the season as San Francisco rallied, winning by a final score of 4-1.
Lincecum was magnificent yet again, allowing just one run on five hits and three walks, with ten strikeouts over seven and two-thirds innings pitched. Jack Taschner relieved Lincecum in the eighth inning after the Giants took a 2-1 lead, but was unable to end the inning, allowing a single, and forcing Brian Wilson to get an attempt at the four-out save. Wilson promptly ended the inning, and got back to work in the ninth. After retiring the first batter of the ninth inning, Wilson allowed an infield hit, but then got a perfect groundball to second base that was turned into a game-ending doubleplay.
After getting just two hits through five innings, the Giants hitters turned it on. Dave Roberts hit a one-out triple to the corner in left-centerfield, but was then thrown at the plate on the next play to end the inning when Fred Lewis hit a shallow fly to center. The very next inning Bengie Molina and Pablo Sandoval would go back-to-back with solo homeruns to tie and take the lead. The homers would force Rockies starter Livan Hernandez out of the game. But a two hit performance by Omar Vizquel would set up two more runs in the eighth inning, to extend the lead to three runs. With runners on first and second, Roberts attempted to sacrifice the runners over, but instead laid down a perfect bunt to beat the wild throw as he collided with the first baseman, allowing Vizquel to score. Lewis would ground into a doubleplay next, but not before Velez was able to score ahead of Roberts being tagged out for the final out of the inning.
The Giants will get a much needed day off on Thursday before starting a short road trip, featuring two three-game series’ at Cincinnati and Colorado.
