A night not to feel blue
Bruce Bochy busted out an old truism after the Giants beat the Dodgers 6- 2 Tuesday night in the first 2015 meeting of these ancient rivals. Divisions cannot be won in April, but they can be lost.
The Dodgers soared over the first two weeks of the season while the Giants flailed. Another three bad games could
have knocked San Francisco nine games out of first place with less than three weeks gone.
A freshly shorn Tim Lincecum, Justin Maxwell and others made sure that will not happen, guiding the Giants to a good team win on a night not fit for man or beast, unless that beast is an Alaskan husky.
“The fellows played well tonight,” Bochy said after his boys ended a seven- game Dodgers win streak. “A much- needed win. It’s been a tough homestand.”
Or, as Lincecum put it, “It was a good day to battle.”
Lincecum earned his first win by morphing into Tim Hudson, sort of. Not a strike- throwing machine by any means, Lincecum’s chief asset in holding the Dodgers to one run in six innings was the double- play grounder. He induced three in a game for the second time in his career, the first since 2008.
Adrian Gonzalez also lined into a double play in the first.
After dinking and doinking lefty Brett Anderson for four runs through four innings, with Brandon Crawford bunting home a run and two more scoring on a dribbler by Nori Aoki that turned into a single and a Gonzalez throwing error, the Giants took a 4- 1 lead.
Maxwell provided the thump, blasting a two- run homer into the tunnel down the left- field line in the eighth, against Pedro Baez, after Maxwell made an absurd catch in the top half.
With two on, one out and Yasiel Puig representing the tying run, Maxwell sprinted from the right- center gap and caught Puig’s foul ball in the corner as he slid and banged his right knee into an unpadded portion of the wall.
It was an eye- opening rivalry debut for a player who has been around the block, but was unknown to most Giants fans. Maxwell was one of them growing up in Maryland because his dad loved Willie Mays. Maxwell surely understands the nature of Dodgers- Giants.
“He’s put together some pretty good at- bats for us,” Crawford said. “He’s played pretty good defense, too. We saw it in spring training. He made a great catch. I didn’t think he would get there off the bat. He got to it, made a nice catch sliding into the wall, then turned around a 97- mph fastball and hit a home run.”
The Giants played the type of good all- around baseball that was missing over the first two weeks: smart at the plate, good defense and good pitching.
Buster Posey had three hits and an RBI after taking extra batting practice in the early afternoon. Crawford cashed in a Maxwell second- inning triple with a perfect bunt and started a wicked- hard double play with a dive behind second base and glove flip in the sixth inning.
Most of all, Lincecum pitched his second good start out of three on a night the Giants needed it.
Perhaps the sight of those blue uniforms played a part.
“The rivalry is always going to be in the back of our minds,” Lincecum said. “It’s nice to start out with a win against a team like that. They won seven in a row until today. It's nice to get a win against them and move from where we started.”