The first game against the Philadelphia Phillies was building up to becoming the stamp of the Giants' season. Throughout the early part of the season, the Giants won with scrappy small ball play, keep-it-close pitching, and timely hits.
The game had much the same feeling. To many, the Giants' lineup does not strike fear in anyone. No one is a big bopper. There are a couple speedy guys in Emmanuel Burriss and Eugenio Velez, a good RISP guy with not much pop in Bengie Molina, and decent 15-20 hr power guy in Aarond Rowand in an emotional comeback to his former team.
On the opposite spectrum, when people see the Phillies lineup, they see a powerful, strong lineup hosting the major league leader in homeruns in Chase Utley, a former home run king in Ryan Howard, RBI machine in Pat Burrell and a former Giants player in Pedro Feliz looking to stick it to his former team.
The sign of a blowout was all but written in lead on the lineup cards.
The first scoring came from the Phillies off Utley's two-run blast. Jose Castillo countered with a RBI single. Pedro Feliz hit a two-run homer of his own to put the Phillies to what seemed like an insurmountable lead at 4-1.
In the 7th inning, the scrappines the Giants displayed in their previous games came to the fore. They scored three runs to tie up the game. The sequence was as follows: single, bunt single, single, bases loaded, strikeout, single, first two runs score, single, bases loaded, groundout, third run scores.
Pat Misch went 4 innings to start off the game. Misch game is to work the ball on both sides of the place, raise and lower the sight line and change speeds. Basically a pitchers pitcher. But, his pitches don't really have much movement, so when he bites off a large chunk of the plate, he will get hammered. As can be seen by Utley and Feliz's homeruns.
While the comeback was on, the Giants bullpen was straight dealing. Through 5 innings of shutout ball, the team of 5 relievers--Keiichi Yabu, Vinnie Chulk, Jack Taschner, Tyler Walker, and Merkin Valdez--gave up only one hit through that span.
Aaron Rowand came through in the 10th inning, hitting a homerun to give the Giants the lead. Brian Wilson was brought in to save the game. He got to a full count on Burrell with two outs, but then he grooved a fastball and Burrell clobbered it for a game winning two-run homer.
The energy and momentum the Giants built up just popped. It wasn't meant to be. Power beats out small ball.
Wilson has the mentality and the stuff to be a closer. But, he really needs to work on finishing off a hiter. He seems to get into a lot of 0-2 counts but then all of a sudden he is in a full count and either walks the guy or allows a hit. He needs to watch some tapes of other good closers. Once those closers get into a 0-2 count, they throw their strikeout pitch and finish off the hitter. Wilson does not necessarily have that strikeout pitch. He has a very good fastball that he can locate. But once a hitter gets a bead on it, then he needs that other pitch. In this game, he just threw one too many fastballs to a good fastball hitter.
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