The bullpen was rocked tonight in a 12-4 loss to the Astros, but it was not their only loss. After earning close to a fourth of the team’s wins this season, ace Tim Lincecum was literally knocked out of the game after taking a line drive off his knee in the fifth inning.
Lincecum was cruising until he was forced out of the game after four and a third innings pitched. He gave up two runs although only one of them was earned on one hit while allowing two more baserunners on walks, but he did strike out seven and who knows how many more he could have sat down if he had not gotten hurt. A line drive shot off the bat of Brad Ausmus popped Lincecum in the knee, a major blow to the Giants rotation. San Francisco is certainly out of contention, but they do not want this season to appear as a complete disappointment; if Lincecum’s injury is as serious as it looked it might get worse. At that point the Giants had a 3-2 lead, but the bullpen would get lit up in the seventh inning. Keiichi Yabu pitched a scoreless inning of relief after Lincecum left the game, but things went downhill from there. Alex Hinshaw left the game in the seventh inning after retiring a batter, but then allowing another to reach base on a walk; he handed the game over to Tyler Walker, who was unable to bail him out of trouble. A walk and a hit later three runs had scored and Houston was out front 5-3. Jack Taschner was brought in with one out in the inning, and was also unable to record a second out in the inning, instead he gave up a grand slam to Lance Berkman. Geno Espineli finished off the inning, but not before giving up a two run homer of his own; by the time the inning was over, eight runs had come across home plate for the Astros. Espineli finished the game, but allowed two more runs to score in the eighth inning, one of which came on a solo homer.
Randy Winn contributed with two RBI, one coming on a double and the other on a sacrifice fly. The Giants have been scoring a fair amount of runs lately thanks to sacrifice hits and trying to play small ball. Fred Lewis was three-for-four with a run scored, all three of his hits were singles. Aaron Rowand added a run with a solo shot in the ninth inning, but by then the damage done was irreversible.
Barry Zito and Randy Wolf will square off tomorrow at 5:05 p.m. as San Francisco will be forced to try to earn at least a series split by winning the next two games. It is still to be determined exactly how critical Lincecum’s injury might be.
