Postgame Wrap: And Then There Was One…Run

The term “pitchers duel” has always been a little funny – hard to punctuate – to me. There’s so much that goes into an at-bat, an inning, a game, that it’s really hard to know whether a low-scoring game is the result of great pitching, terrible hitting, or a spectacular conflagration of both. The number of times the Giants had to “tip their cap” to some middle-of-the-rotation spaz from wherever was so ridiculous that aside from leaving my cap permanently tipped, I couldn’t really trust a boxscore. Every time I heard about some pitcher having a “great” outing, I had to check who he had pitched against.

But then tonight happened, and it was spectacular, and it was a duel.

I’m not going to wax poetic on how this stacked up against the pitchers of yore because, well, I’m 24 years old and I have work to do tonight.

But this game was pretty amazing. The Giants in general are probably not going to be great against lefties due to their lefty-heavy roster, but it just seems petty to take anything away from Cliff Lee’s game. Matt Cain pitched like Matt Cain, the one of the two ace that he is. Any baseball fan who hadn’t seen either of these pitchers now finally understands the hype; how Cain pitched 21.1 scoreless innings in the postseason, and how Lee had a 1.26 ERA through 64.1 postseason innings until, you know:

So yeah, these pitchers wrote their own postgame wrap, and I’m going heavy on the nostalgic, movie references and pictures. Matt Cain is good. Cliff Lee is good. Good lineups have a hard time against them. Bad lineups wet their pants against them. #Fanalysis

Brandon Watch 2012:

Crawford: Awesome defense. Get outta here with your errors.

Belt: I was totally fine with him sitting today to start a righty against Lee, and his PH single in the 11th was clutch. The Giants are playing against a lefty on Friday, so I’m not totally confident that he’ll get a start, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Jonathon Niese ain’t Cliff Lee. Also, Bochy swapped in Belt in the 11th instead of Huff. Interesting.

Brief Stats of the Day:

19: Combined scoreless innings pitched by Lee and Cain

4: Double plays grounded into by the Giants today, after 6 consecutive games without bringing out the GIDP

1.1: Wins by the Giants in games in which Brandon Belt played