Game Recap

A terrific NLCS between the Phillies and Giants will continue Saturday in Philadelphia. Notes from Game 5 are below:

To force a Game 6, the Philadelphia Phillies offense needed to figure out San Francisco Giants ace Tim Lincecum. They did not, but, helped by an umpire’s blindness, a bad hop, and a hit-by-pitch, enough runs were scored against the the unorthodox right-hander to send the NLCS back to Philly.

The Philadelphia Phillies have nobody to blame for their Game 4 loss to the San Francisco Giants but themselves.

Last night’s NLCS game followed a script very familiar to Phillies fans.

The team scratched out a first-inning run, helped along by the miscues of their opponent.  They got key contributions throughout the lineup.  The unexpected hitting star continued to shine.  They were patient and did some damage against an opposing reliever.  The relief ace was lights out.  And they won the game thanks to some late-game heroics.

The San Francisco Giants are where few thought they would be at the beginning of the season...hell, at the beginning of the postseason. They are one win away from representing the National League in the World Series.

The Giants came into this series as heavy underdogs to the reigning two-time NL champion Philadelphia Phillies.

After shocking the world and hitting around Roy Halladay in Game 1, they have taken care of business so far at home and throw out the winner of the last two Cy Young Awards in Tim Lincecum.

The Yankees are on the verge of their 2010 season ending.

After winning Game One, the Yankees dropped Games Two, Three and Four and fell behind the Texas Rangers 3-1 in the American League Championship Series.

The Yankees also lost Mark Teixeira for the remainder of the 2010 postseason with a strained hamstring, which is a crucial loss to the Yankees offense and defense.

There's no doubt about it. That was a heart breaker. And while the Phillies have their Big 3 lined up to attempt to climb out of the hole they find themselves in, they'll be facing a Big 3 every bit as formidable—at least in these playoffs—of the Giants.

So what went wrong in Game 4? Well, the Phillies finally scored some runs. Five of them in fact. But they had chances to score more.

Every bit as important (and fatal) was poor run prevention. Here's what I saw happen in Game 5:

As the saying goes, if you can’t hit the baseball get the hell off the field was the theme coming into Game 5 tonight in the Bronx.

Instead, it was the New York Yankees who got the job done beating the Texas Rangers 7-2, in a must-win to stay-in the series game.

The Texas Rangers lost their first ever game when attempting to clinch a pennant. On an overcast day at Yankee Stadium, it was the Yankees who fought off elimination, bringing out the bats against C.J. Wilson. This game went the Yankees' way, the same way it had gone the Rangers' way over the last three games.

It's not as if the Rangers couldn't hit CC Sabathia—they just couldn't come through in the clutch, and after some home runs by New York, it was a 7-2 defeat for Texas in Game 5 of the ALCS.

Here lie your 2010 Minnesota Twins. April 5, 2010-October 9, 2010.