San Francisco Giants Struggle Offensively in a Tight Game 3
By Jamie Faue
The San Francisco Giants fell to the Kansas City Royals 3-2 on cold night offensively for the Giants as they only got one hit and one run off Royals starter Jeremy Guthrie. Their only other run came off a groundout by Buster Posey in the sixth.
The Royals would start off the night swinging away against Tim Hudson as Alcides Escobar ripped a double to the right field corner on the first pitch he saw. Two straight groundouts would follow to get Escobar home and give the Royals an early 1-0 lead.
In the 2nd inning Hudson opened the inning by giving up a leadoff single to Mike Moustakas, followed by walk to Omar Infante. After that Hudson would finally settle in and get out of the inning by getting Salvador Perez to fly out to left and have Jarrod Dyson ground into a double play.
In the top of the 2nd the Giants had a couple of chances to get some offense going with an infield single by Hunter Pence and a base hit by Brandon Belt. However, Pence was caught stealing during Belt’s at-bat so Belt lost his opportunity to advance Pence into scoring position. Travis Ishikawa flied out to right to end the inning.
The next three innings were quiet as Guthrie and Hudson both retired their next nine batters.
That streak was broken in the top of the sixth by Escobar who got a leadoff single up the middle to start what would be a two-run Kansas City rally. Escobar scored on an RBI double by Gordon to make it 2-0 Royals late in the game. Hudson went on to face just one more batter in Lorenzo Cain who grounded out to Pablo Sandoval.
Afterward in came the “lefty specialist” Javier Lopez to face left-handed batter Eric Hosmer. After an 11 pitch at-bat Hosmer won the battle with Lopez for an RBI single back up the middle that would make it 3-0 Royals in sixth.
The San Francisco Giants responded nicely in the bottom of the sixth by getting a single from Brandon Crawford and an RBI double from pinch-hitter Michael Morse to cut the Royals’ lead down to 3-1. The Royals then took out Guthrie and once again brought in Kelvin Herrera to try and shut down the Giants’ rally.
However, Herrera struggled to throw strikes as he walked his first batter Gregor Blanco on four straight balls leading to two runners on with no outs in the sixth. After a meeting on the mound, which calmed down Herrera,he got three straight groundouts to end the inning despite giving up a run on one of those grounders to Posey that made it a 3-2 Royals lead.
In the seventh both teams each got a base runner on but could not get that runner home. The last two innings were quiet as both bullpens were strong by retiring every batter that was sent to the plate.
The Royals will go into game four tomorrow with a two games to one series lead on the throwing Jason Vargas on the mound against Ryan Vogelsong for the San Francisco Giants.