CINCINNATI — Tim Lincecum in flashback brilliance out of the bullpen Wednesday. Matt Cain on the mound to start today. Hunter Pence leading tub-thumping revival meetings in the dugout.
The Giants are back in business.
“Hunter made that up to gather around and get pumped up and go out with the best attitude we have,” former Met Angel Pagan, who homered on the game’s second pitch, said after the Giants’ 8-3 victory over the Reds that squared the NLDS at two-apiece.
“Hunter inspired us to go out there and be positive and bring the best we can bring, and that’s what we have shown. This is today and thanks to the win today there will be a tomorrow.
“We are ready for that.”
There will be no more 2012 baseball tomorrows for the loser of this afternoon’s decisive Game 5 in which the Reds will give the ball to Mat Latos as they try to avoid the ignominy of becoming the first team to lose a best-of-five by dropping three straight at home after winning the first two on the road.
“It’s probably hard for them to believe we were up 2-0 out there, so they reversed it on us,” said Reds manager Dusty Baker, who went with Mike Leake yesterday after removing ace Johnny Cueto (strained oblique) from the active roster.
“But if we win [today], it won’t matter how many we were up.”
Inspirational speeches have their place, but it takes bats and arms, too. After being limited to a sum of four runs on 12 hits that included three that went for extra bases over the first three games, the Giants erupted for 11 hits including three home runs (Pagan, Gregor Blanco and Pablo Sandoval) and five doubles.
San Francisco held just a 3-2 lead in the bottom of the fourth, however, when the Reds put runners on first and second with one out against George Kontos, who had relieved starter Barry Zito an inning earlier.
Giants’ manager Bruce Bochy called on lefty Jose Mijares, who fanned Joey Votto. Bochy then called on the right-hander Lincecum, who fanned righty cleanup hitter Ryan Ludwick to end the inning.
That at-bat, on which Ludwick looked overmatched on a changeup, was just a snapshot of Lincecum’s dominance over 4¹/₃ innings of one-run, two-hit work in which he struck out six and walked none.
Indeed, Lincecum, dropped from the rotation following a rocky season (10-15, 5.18) and uneven September (4.63 ERA), threw 42 of his 55 pitches for strikes, including 10 of 13 changeups, five on which he got swings-and-misses.
“We’re playing for a different reason than just the season, to get to the NLCS and further, so I feel with that motivation it helps to get into those situations and not think about the difference between starting and the bullpen,” said Lincecum, who pitched two shutout relief innings in Sunday’s Game 2 defeat.
“I’ve just got to get my outs and do my job. You don’t have to pace yourself through a certain number of innings. You’re just there to get outs until they tell me I’m done.”
If the Giants can pull it off today, however, it is likely that Lincecum would return to the rotation in place of Zito during the NLCS against the winner of the St. Louis-Washington series the Cards lead 2-1.
“We knew Timmy would play a critical role in this series,” Bochy said of the 2008 and 2009 Cy Young winner who had pitched out of the bullpen just twice in 195 career appearances before this series. “I love a man like this who has the talent he does, and part of it was Timmy buying into what we were doing.
“He said, ‘I just want to do anything I can to help the ball club win.’ ”