In the first inning, Pablo Sandoval stepped to the plate. There were two runners on and two out. That’s when the epiphany struck. The first six hitters had come to the plate for the Giants, and I didn’t reflexively twitch at the mention of any of them. There were no Jose Castillos, Eugenio Velezes, Lance Niekros, Dan Ortmeiers...really, this can go on for another six paragraphs, all the way back to Yamid Haad. The guy hitting seventh had carried the team offensively at times, and the guy hitting eighth was the in-season offensive cavalry last year. It was a real, hard-to-mock lineup.
A real, hard-to-mock lineup? Or a heat-related hallucination? You know, I think the lineup is real. The sixteen runs, on the other hand, are as fake as the singing cactus trying to pick my pocket right now. I’ll believe that the Giants scored sixteen runs when it cools down tonight.
How quickly things can change. Just a few games ago, the Phillies looked like the class of the National League, and the Giants looked like also-rans. Now the Giants have put up a touchdown-plus in consecutive games, and the Phillies have lost two in a row at home against the Astros. This turn of events suits me just fine.