PICK ME UP: Pablo Sandoval cheers on his Giants teammates after his first-inning double in last night’s eventual 6-1 victory over the Cardinals in Game 6 of the NLCS in San Francisco. The two teams will square off in Game 7 tonight. (
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SAN FRANCISCO — One of the wildest months in National League playoff history fittingly has to come down to this.
You get the defending World Series champion Cardinals and their championship predecessors, the Giants, in a winner-take-all for the pennant tonight at AT&T Park. May the best scrapper win.
Last night, the Giants could thank Ryan Vogelsong for moving them closer to another improbable playoff series comeback, after the right-hander allowed one run over seven innings in a 6-1 victory over the Cardinals in Game 6 of the NLCS.
“I feed off the fans in this stadium and they were into it early and the adrenalin is going and it puts miles per hour on your fastball,” said Vogelsong, who struck out a career-high nine batters.
The Giants, who emerged from an 2-0 NLDS hole to defeat the Reds, will attempt to become the seventh team since LCS play expanded to a best-of-7 format in 1985 to overcome a 3-1 series deficit, when Matt Cain faces Kyle Lohse tonight. The Red Sox in 2007 were the last team to rebound from a 3-1 deficit to win a LCS.
But don’t forget the Cardinals were left for dead in the NLDS after falling into a six-run hole against the Nationals in Game 5 before rallying for a victory.
“You’ve seen us the last couple years it seems, unfortunately, we don’t win until we absolutely need to,” Lohse said. “So it’s one of those things where obviously we would love to have taken care of business the last two games. We haven’t.”
Vogelsong has been the Giants’ MVP of this series. After allowing two earned runs over seven innings in a Game 2 victory, he pitched 4 2/3 hitless innings last night and finally allowed a run in the sixth, snapping a 15-innings scoreless streak by Giants pitchers. Overall, he allowed four hits and walked one.
Chris Carpenter had his second straight flop for St. Louis, lasting only four innings and allowing five runs, three of which were unearned, on six hits and two walks.
The Giants did their damage in the second inning, scoring four runs to take a 5-0 lead. Marco Scutaro’s two-run double was the big hit, after Pete Kozma booted Vogelsong’s grounder, allowing the first run of the inning to score. Pablo Sandoval’s RBI single added another run.
It was Sandoval’s double in the first inning that put the Giants in position to take a 1-0 lead. Sandoval doubled Scutaro to third and Buster Posey’s chopper to third — a ball on which David Freese double-clutched — allowed the run to score.
Vogelsong didn’t allow a hit until the fifth, when Daniel Descalso delivered a single with two outs. Kozma followed with a single to give the Cardinals their first threat, but Vogelsong retired pinch hitter Skip Schumaker to keep the Giants’ lead at 5-0.
“Every person in that clubhouse, to the coaching staff to the front office, they believe in me,” Vogelsong said. “And I know they believe in me and that rubs off.”
As he studied the scene yesterday, Cain’s definition of “perfect game” was anything that would get the Giants to tonight.
Cain, who pitched a perfect game against the Astros on June 13, has already faced immense pressure once this month. The right-hander was entrusted with the ball for Game 5 of the NLDS against the Reds two weeks ago and got the win in the Giants’ 6-4 victory that completed the series comeback.
It went better than his previous start in a winner-take-all game, as a high-school senior, in which Cain says he struggled.
”I thought back to that game in high school,” Cain said. “I thought about what I did then. I know it’s a long time in-between. But I tried to use that, go out there and still have fun with it, enjoy it, not put too much pressure onto it.”