Kansas City Royals evens series against San Francisco Giants – World Series Game 2 recap

You didn’t think it was going to be easy, right?

The San Francisco Giants dropped Game 2 of the World Series to the Kansas City Royals in a big way with the Royals evening the series with a 7-2 win. Despite the lopsided score, it didn’t get too wacky for the Giants until the Royals broke a 2-2 tie in the 6th inning, and boy, did they ever break it.

Pitching

Jake Peavy started the game for the Giants. He pitched 5 innings, though he did come out to face two batters in the 6th, allowing both of them on base before he was pulled for Jean Machi. Peavy got the credit for the loss, as his runners scored. His line on the night was 5 innings pitched, 6 hits, 4 earned runs, 2 walks, 1 strikeout.

Machi faced one batter, allowing a single to left field and a runner to score. Javier Lopez then came in to face one batter and get the first out of the 6th inning.

But then Hunter Strickland happened. Listen, I get he’s had a horrible postseason. He’s young. But he was lights out in Game 1. Maybe it was too risky of a situation to put him into, too stressful, too whatever, but I’ve learned not to question Bruce Bochy. Granted, this time, all the couch coaches looked pretty smart when Strickland gave up yet another postseason home run, and then had a shouting match on the field with Perez.

That was pretty much it for the Giants last night. Strickland was yanked for Jeremy Affeldt, who came in and finished out the horrid 6th inning.

On the plus side, Tim Lincecum finally got the pitch this postseason, and he pitched well. He threw 1.2 innings (the 7th and most of the 8th) allowing 0 hits, walks, or runs, and striking out two batters. Of course, Timmy left the game with an unknown injury after coming off the mound funny. A disappointing end for him to a pretty darn good outing after sitting all of October.

Santiago Casilla came in to close out the 8th, and he did it with a strikeout.

Hitting

Gregor Blanco lead off the game with a home run. At that point, Giants fans were feeling pretty good about this game. Of course, the next run wouldn’t come until a Brandon Belt double in the 4th inning, but it was good enough to tie the game.

Unfortunately for the Giants, that was all the offense they had in them. Once KC got to their bullpen, the Giants were pretty much useless at the plate. It’s not that they weren’t hitting, they had 9 hits on the night. In fact, every hitting in the lineup had a hit except Andrew Susac who only had 1 at-bat after replacing Michael Morse as the DH. However, after that crazy 6th inning, the only batters to reach base were Brandon Crawford and Blanco. Crawford did it twice, with a walk and a single, and Blanco drew a walk. Not enough hitting to get them or anyone else in.

Game 3

The series now moves back to San Francisco for three games and the Giants need to use this to their advantage. It would have been highly unlikely for the Giants to take both games in KC, so fans can’t be upset about a split. Now it’s just a best of 5 game series with SF having the home field advantage.

It’ll be a more familiar field for the Giants, different weather for the Royals, and well, the Royals starting pitchers are going to have to hit for themselves, which always proves interesting with AL teams. They’ll lose their DH Billy Butler except for the pinch hitting spots, so I strongly feel the Giants will have a good advantage in SF.

But the Royals are a good team, with a lot riding on them in their city. Don’t count them out yet.