SFGate/San Francisco Chronicle
What a perfect and succinct commentary on the state of the Giants' pitching and hitting in 2009. In three games at Citizens Bank Park, a pinball machine for offense, the Giants held the Phillies to three runs in 25 innings and still lost twice.
Thursday night's 2-1 defeat was excruciating because the Giants not only wasted another Tim Lincecum gem, they squandered a chance to tie the Rockies for the National League wild-card lead, which would have made their trip to Philly an unqualified success.
"It's no harder than any other time this happened this year," Randy Winn said. "We've still got a month full of games. It would have been nice to win the series. It would have been nice to pull even with the Rockies. But it was a tough-fought series."
One has to step back from the hurly-burly of the pennant race to appreciate what transpired on the mound in front of 45,156 fans.
Lincecum squared off against Pedro Martinez in a battle of Cy Young versus Cy Old, as Scott Hatteberg famously said of a Barry Zito-Roger Clemens game six years ago.
Two diminutive pitchers with fantastic stuff dueled for seven innings.
Each allowed a solo home run, Eugenio Velez launching the game's first pitch into the right-field seats and Jayson Werth sending a hanging slider halfway to Delaware an inning later. Lincecum won the strikeout contest 11-9, but Martinez won the game because he did not make one serious mistake after Velez's home run.
Lincecum did.
With two outs and nobody on in the sixth inning of a 1-1 game, Lincecum threw a fastball that hit Chase Utley, who was 0-for-9 in the series. Ryan Howard then drove in the game's final run with a double into the right-center gap.
"Howard put a good swing on it and Utley was flying," Lincecum said after taking his fifth loss.
Both starters highly praised the other. Lincecum said it was "just ridiculous how nasty (Martinez's) stuff still is." Lincecum said he always looked to Martinez as a shining example of how well a small pitcher can succeed.
Martinez was even more effusive about Lincecum, saying, "He's amazing. He reminds me a lot of me, but twice as (good after) the same time in the big-leagues."
Velez's game-opening homer was a nice story, too. He grew up in the Dominican Republic watching Martinez and said, "That was my favorite pitcher. I felt so excited because that was the best pitcher I've ever faced."
But that was it for the Giants' offense. They squandered three doubles with less than two outs, including a leadoff drive by Velez in the sixth. Rather than sacrifice or hit a ball to the right side, Edgar Renteria tried to pull the first pitch and grounded to short, forcing Velez to stay at second.
Pablo Sandoval's one-out grounder got Velez to third, but Bengie Molina's 400-foot line-drive out to center in his first game back stranded Velez.
The Giants rallied for two baserunners with two outs in the ninth against Brad Lidge, but pinch-hitter Fred Lewis grounded into a fielder's choice to end it.
After failing to win a series in Philadelphia for the first time since 2004, the Giants flew to Milwaukee for three games in another venue that has not been kind to them. The Rockies, who lost Thursday to former Giant Pat Misch in his first big-league victory, host Arizona for three games.
The Giants did win the season series from the World Series champs, four games to three, but that was little consolation to manager Bruce Bochy, who said, "We've got to figure out a way to get some runs for this to work."
Lincecum looked at it another way, suggesting the team not fret over it.
"We've got to stop worrying if we're scoring runs," Lincecum said, "and just play baseball."
 San Francisco (73-61) Lost 1 | Philadelphia 2, San Francisco 1 |  Philadelphia (77-54) Won 1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Standings thru 9/3/09 | Recap: SF | PHI | Wrap | Gameday |
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