In play: out(s)

That headline is actually the browser bar over at McCovey Chronicles, an excellent Giants blog. It's pretty funny to think of the thousands of baseball fans affected by MLB's decision making on Gameday pitch-by-pitch live boxscore data...the phrases "In play, no outs" and their derivatives hold a special place in many fans' hearts.


Angels 4, San Francisco 3

I've been mentioning how badly this team needed a 6+ game win streak. And as they reached 5 and had cut their divisional deficit to 2.5 games, I was pleasedm but figured it was sorta over. I mean, yesterday afternoon's pitching matchup was Matt "30 years old and cut by the Giants last season" Palmer versus Tim "2008 NL Cy Young winner" Lincecum.

For a while, it looked like this was it for the LA winning streak. Lincecum struck out something like 5 of the first 9 Angels he saw, and Matt Palmer gave up 2 runs, which usually spells doom for the team's putrid offense against a good starting pitcher.* However, they managed a run in the fourth off a Rivera single, and then played some serious defense. Robb Quinlan, typically an infielder, threw out a Giant at home courtesy of an absolutely gorgeous throw on the fly to Jeff Mathis, and Mathis did superb job blocking the plate. With that, the Giants were out in the bottom of the seventh, and the Angels came to bat for the eighth.

Somehow, both Torii Hunter and Vlad Guerrero managed pinch hit singles. Vlad has gone 3-3 in pinch hit situations this season...maybe it's time to put him in the game every 3rd inning. Scioscia remarked on his choice between the players: "We have two pretty good choices. It's like, what do you want for dinner, linguine with red sauce or white sauce? They're both good."

It's cute because Scioscia is fat.

Figgins followed the consecutive singles by Hunter and Guerrero with a run-scoring double off the glove of the Giants second baseman to get the Angels within one, and an infield single for Erick Aybar plated the tying run. The winning run came on a Juan Rivera groundout to third. I happen to think that San Francisco third baseman Pablo Sandoval had a play on Aybar at the plate, but he elected to throw to first, and that, as they say, was the game.

The Angels get today off before playing the Dodgers in Anaheim. I'll be in LA, so I'll try to make it to one of the three subsequent Angels/Rockies games if I can convince Greg to head out to Anaheim.


Miscellany:

• My flight's at 7:00 AM tomorrow morning, and the T starts running from Ruggles at 5:30. Gonna be cuttin' it quite fine.
• Speaking of the flight, I believe I'll have wireless internet onboard, which promises to be thoroughly entertaining, as long as I remember to copy over some Entourage episodes.
• With summer comes New Phone Day. I'm currently looking at the iPhone and the Samsung Impression. I'm impressed by the Impression (hardy har har), but it lacks WiFi. The iPhone, on the other hand, is notoriously unreliable and you have to, ugh, touch the screen to type. If they build an iPhone with a sliding keyboard, I'll be the first guy in line.
• Memo to Craigslist users: Not every bicycle part is for "fixies," and not a single Huffy/Magna/1990's+ Schwinn is worth more than $50. Ever.