Giants Halfway to Gaudy World Series Ring

We're pretty impressed with Matt Cain and the San Francisco Giants.

Derek Holland and the rest of the Texas Rangers bullpen on the other hand? Not so much.

After C.J. Wilson pitched six solid innings, allowing just two runs on three hits, Darren Oliver tossed a scoreless seventh. So far so good, the Rangers just needed to score a few runs, right? Wrong.

O'Day retired the first two batters of the eighth before allowing an infield single. He was promptly replaced by Holland, who to AT&T Park's delight, walked Nate Schierholtz on four pitches. Then he walked Cody Ross on four pitches. He followed that up with a five-pitch walk to Aubrey Huff with the bases loaded. I'm sure he wanted to cry at that point, especially over the fact that he helped spike O'Day's ERA to a whopping 18.00.

This debacle came after Holland threw a perfect strike from 300-plus feet just hours earlier.

By this time, Ron Washington had seen enough. Holland was replaced by Mark Lowe, who walked Juan Uribe to force in yet another run. Edgar Renteria then singled in two more before Michael Kirkman came in for "relief" to give up an Aaron Rowand triple, which scored two more runs. Then Andres Torres brought Rowand home with a double, and before ya knew it, the Giants were up 9-0.

To make matters worse, Josh Hamilton, Michael Young and Nelson Cruz are a combined 3-for-25 (batting .120) over the first two games of the World Series, while the Rangers are hitting .227 as a team. They have scored only seven runs in the series sp far, which is the same amount of runs the Giants managed to core with two out and nobody on in the eighth inning of Game 2. Yikes. Says Hamilton:

The Giants are hitting on all cylinders right now. We obviously aren’t... I expected more out of us.

Me too, buddy. Texas scattered just four hits last night and went 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position. Meanwhile, San Francisco has scored 20 runs over the previous two games. Clearly, that is not how to win a ballgame, Rangers.

Of course, last night Texas played without Vladimir Guerrero, their designated hitter, who had two errors in right field during their 11-7 Game 1 loss. When the Rangers head home this weekend to play by the American League's rules in Arlington, Vlad will DH and bat fourth.

Game 3 is set for Saturday at 6:30pm ET with Colby Lewis taking the home hill against Jonathan Sanchez.

[Fanhouse]