Cody Ross. The Greatest Man Alive.
Here's Tendown 48.
First: 7 Consecutive One Run Games
You're going to get as little Tendown as I can get away with today; when I gave this week was Friday, with a long preview of both league championship series, and a look back at each of the previous NLCS appearances by the Giants, with a reflection of the way that I experienced all of them. It's not bad; I can't match it with anything today.
Here are the scores for our last 7 playoff games.
2003 NLDS Game 3 - Lost 4-3
Game 4 - Lost 7-6
2010 NLDS Game 1 - Won 1-0
Game 2 - Lost 5-4
Game 3 - Won 3-2
Game 4 - Won 3-2
2010 NLCS Game 1 - Won 4-3
I don't know if that's a record, but I'm going to keep saying it is until it gets some traction. Somebody tell McCarver we've played in 7 straight one run postseason games. This is why they call it torture.
Cody Ross hit two off Halladay last night - he's hitting over .350 in the postseason. Sanchez goes tonight - here was his record against the Phils this season: 13 innings, 2 ER, a .114 BA against (he led the NL in batting average against this season). He also led the NL in walks; one of the reasons why my forecast suggested that we might lose Games one and two is that a Lincecum loss to Halladay would put a ton of pressure on Sanchez - and that might lead to some wildness. He's gonna strike out some guys; he's gonna walk some guys - if we get through the fifth tonight and they haven't gotten to him, I think we're gonna win the game. Sanchez is a guy I wouldn't want my team to face - it's a patient team that gets him, one that drives up pitch counts, like the Yanks/Rays. The Phils high OBP should give them, even with their early season performances against Sanchez, the slight advantage tonight. Objectively, the Phils should have a slight advantage in every game, with 1-2 a little heavier advantage than 3-5. But essentially its no more than a mildly weighted coin flip - which is why I picked them in 7.
But now we're up one...
And if we win tonight...
As I mentioned in one of the previews to the NLDS, we're the best team in baseball when we score 3 runs - we're the second best team in baseball when we score the first run - just behind the Phils.
You want to make an in-game investment the rest of the series? Put some money down on whomever scores first.
A week ago, incidentally, the San Francisco Giants saved my life.
I was at my mother's last Sunday night, watching our improbable NLDS Game 3 comeback; we scored 2 runs in the ninth inning to come from behind and win when we were down to our final strike - the winning run scoring when the Braves second baseman made his third error of the night. It was a playoff game I've seen before - just never with my team on the correct side. When Jose Cruz's kid dropped the fly ball in 2003 I was just behind the third base dugout - and I distinctly had the sense as it happened of being the only person in the ballpark who was watching it happen - that everyone else assumed it to be a can of corn and I followed the ball all the way out of Cruz's glove.
I live about 40 minutes from my mother (50 when I miss the exit); that ninth inning rally pushed back my drive home, given that the Braves hit in the bottom of the ninth when otherwise they would not have - just outside the window when I would have been driving through the intersection at the same time my neighbor/cop (perhaps) was shooting the special needs 17 year old driver of the wrong way minivan. By the time I got there, the perimeter was being secured, and I had to turn in through the corner Publix plaza (in which there is a McDonalds - at which I bought french fries for my Lady Type Friend -of which I may have eaten some. Keep that on the DL, please).
Sure, I could have slid through the intersection minutes before the bang-bang-bang and not have known of the calamity until the following day.
Instead of that, I've decided to believe that it was the 2010 San Francisco Giants who saved my life.
After the jump - the rest of the Tendown. It's a half down edition this week.
