World Series, Game One: Poop

When Cliff Lee was staked to a 2-0 lead after 2 innings, I said to myself, "There ya go, Cliff.  There's your run support."  Three hours later images of 7 Eleven signs popped into my head.

So what happened?  Was the extra time between starts a problem for Lee?  Hard to say, but two things were obvious.  One, he did not have command of his curveball tonight, so the Giants could sit on the fastball, cutter, or change up.  That's still not easy, but to eliminate some of his arsenal is a big deal.  Two, his location with his other pitches wasn't a whole lot better.  He fell behind in counts and his pitch count surpassed 100 in the fifth inning, an inning he did not complete.

A big moment in this game was the lead off error by Michael Young in the 3rd.  Lee has said before that he pitches so much better when he gets the first out of the inning.  After the fail bunt attempt by Lincecum, Lee hit Torres, then the double by Sanchez, then the single by Posey.  Lee finished off the inning with two strikeouts, but the two run lead, which seemed like plenty based on what we've seen from Cliff over the last month, had evaporated and would be a distant memory two innings later.

I've said before that for us to be successful, we have to win every time Lee pitches.  Now the task is to win four out of six, with Lee only starting one of those games.  But that's exactly what we did against the Yankees last week.

It's important to get a split in San Fran, so CJ Wilson needs to outduel Matt Cain tomorrow night to bring this thing home 1-1.  He'll have to shut down an offense that scored a shocking amount of runs tonight, and do it without getting a good blueprint of how to be successful by watching a Cliff Lee gem.

We've seen the Rangers bounce back in this postseason, and they'll need to do it again.  They'll forget about this loss and go back to the ballpark tomorrow looking at the game ahead of them, not the one behind them.  We, as fans, need to do the same.