Not Ready For Prime Time: Dodgers 5, Giants 3

The Giants had enough talent to win tonight. They went up against a pitcher who's owned them and hit his well enough to win. And their own starter, Jonathan Sanchez pitched well enough to win. But none of those things happened, of course. And the impediment to their success was themselves.

On offense, baserunning mistakes and that old favorite (you guessed it) poor situational hitting cost them several runs. On D, fielding errors cost them a couple of runs and forced Sanchez to throw extra pitches which lead to him leaving the game after just 5 innings. Oh, and they walked nine hitters. Despite those gaffes, they still almost won the game. But they're not quite good enough to make this many mistakes and still beat a good team.

The Dodgers had something to do with this result as well. Rafael Furcal used his great arm to gun down Randy Winn in the 1st inning on a play when it looked like he'd score easily. Then the threat of Furcal's arm caused 3rd base coach Tim Flannery to hold up Travis Ishikawa on a play he probably could've scored on. Finally, Ishikawa compounded the error by getting doubled off 3rd on a lineout by Emmanuel Burris.

Juan Uribe had a particularly shitty game, making a big error, and failing to knock in a run, despite batting with 8 men on in 3 AB's with a total of 3 outs (1st and 2nd with 0 outs, bases loaded with 2 outs, bases loaded with 1 out). Bobby Howry lost it in the 9th, but by then, the Giants sloppy play had already all but sealed their fate.

TOMORROW: Tim Lincecum tries to win the rubber game of the Dodger series, thus striking a devastating blow to the heart of pure evil.