San Francisco Giants Drop Third Consecutive Home Playoff Game, Lose LCS Opener To Cardinals

The San Francisco Giants aren’t one to go down without a fight, but unfortunately, their punches just weren’t powerful enough as they couldn’t overcome an early deficit. Madison Bumgarner continued his woeful 2012 postseason, getting shelled for six runs in just 3.2 innings, ballooning his two start ERA to 14.73. David Freese and Carlos Beltran, both of whom who have solid history against the North Carolina native took the 23 year old deep – both for the second time this year as each also homered against Madison in the regular season.

Oct 14, 2012; San Francisco, CA, USA; General view of inside AT

With their never say die attitude, the Giants came back with a spirited four run rally in the bottom half of the fourth after the Cardinals had put up four of their own in the top half, but they couldn’t muster another run as the Card bullpen shut them down. A small, scoreless rally in the fifth was the best the Giants could do, but Hunter Pence and Brandon Belt were unable to deliver the big blow to put the Giants within one after Marco Scutaro and Buster Posey were able to get on.

SadBum – Where oh where have you gone, Madison Bumgarner of 2010. The then rookie shocked the world with his lights out stuff during the ’10 postseason, but through two starts in 2012 Bumgarner looks – well – nothing short of awful. Not only are his pitches missing location, but he clearly looks mentally exhausted – allowing runners to get massive leads – at times not even looking runners back, as if he went to the Tim Lincecum school of holding runners on. Back to back seasons of 205+ innings could be catching up with Bumgarner, who’s been un-Bumgarner like since mid-August.

Where’s The Wood? -The Giants’ offensive problems that haunted them during the first two games of the NLDS in San Francisco continued to plague them tonight as the first six batters combined to go 5 of 23 – with two of those hits coming off the bat of Marco Scutaro. The four run rally aside, the Giants’ offense looked anemic for most of the evening as they were no-hit through the first three innings and looked lethargic against the Cardinals stout pen.

The Giants dropped their third consecutive home playoff game and now must win tomorrow to avoid another 2-0 deficit. Chris Carpenter will oppose Ryan Vogelsong before the two teams head back to St. Louis.