San Francisco Giants drop finale to the Phillies, but win the three-game series

Jun 7, 2015; Philadelphia, PA, USA; San Francisco Giants left fielder Nori Aoki (23) reacts after reaching first on an error against the Philadelphia Phillies during the ninth inning at Citizens Bank Park. The San Francisco Giants won 6-4. Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

The good news? We won the war. The bad news? We lost this battle.

I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t matter, because it always matters, but I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. You wanna know why? Because it was a good effort, everyone gave it their best shot, and the Giants went down swinging. You can’t ask for more than that.

The Giants runs today were all scored playing small ball. There were no home run heroes, just 25 guys picking each other up along the way. Especially in the ninth inning—that’s when it looked like they might get something going. They did in fact, as Nori Aoki reached on a Phillies error and scored on Buster Posey’s RBI single. That narrowed the lead to two runs.

Posey snuck over to second base on defensive indifference while Brandon Belt was at the plate with two outs, and we had a good shot at tying the game. The first baseman already had a run scored and RBI under his belt (sorry, I just couldn’t resist)—his best showing so far in this series, and he singled on a line drive, moving Buster over to third.

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Brandon Crawford was up next and he represented the go=ahead run. Crawford has emerged this season as not only one of the best defensive shortstops in the bigs, but one of, if not the, best-hitting shortstop in the game. If anyone could close the deal, it would be Brandon Crawford. Unfortunately, he struck out to end the game.

As for the the rest of the team’s scoring: one run in the second inning when Belt scored on Matt Duffy’s groundout and two more in the third. Joe Panik came home on Angel Pagan’s double, and Pagan followed suit when Belt grounded into a force. Pagan was actually called out when the Phillies applied the tag at third on a Posey fielder’s choice, but after a replay review, the call on the field was overturned.

Ryan Vogelsong pitched a decent game: 6 2/3 innings, giving up 5 runs on seven hits (including one homer) with five strikeouts. Vogelsong left the game with two runners on, and Javier Lopez entered the game to pitch to Jeff Francoeur, who has become a royal pain in the…OK, he’s become a thorn in his former team’s side. This time, Frenchy cleared the bases with a double on a line drive to left field, giving him six RBI for the series.

It’s easy to do the math. In a three-game series, the winner of two games is the series winner. So, no matter how it turned out today, the Giants were already winners. Besides that, I already said I couldn’t be mad because we went down swinging. Crawford was our last hitter and he struck out. Swinging.

Final score: Giants 5, Phillies 7

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