It’s quite possible that finally — five months into the 2011 baseball season — the Nationals have finally found their leadoff hitter. Batting in the first slot in the line-up last night, centerfield veteran Rick Ankiel blasted two home runs in leading the Nationals to a 5-3 victory over the Braves at Nationals Park. Ankiel’s homers allowed Livan Hernandez (six innings, six hits and three strikeouts) to walk away with his sixth win of the season.

Ankiel’s homers were only his fourth and fifth of the year and came in the first and the fifth inning — both off of usually reliable Braves’ starter Jair Jurrjens, who registered his fourth loss. Ankiel, who has been in and out of the line-up all year (and has struggled at the plate) seems finally to be swinging with authority. “You just look for a pitch to drive. Sometimes you get it, sometimes you make it happen, sometimes you don’t,” Ankiel said after the victory. “Lately, I’ve been making good contact and good things are happening.”

It’s too soon to tell whether Ankiel’s Monday night performance means that he will be an every game feature at the leadoff position, but Nats’ skipper Davey Johnson liked what he saw: “Now he [Ankiel] is [playing] and he has cut down on his strikeouts, his swings are better,” Johnson said. “That comes with playing. In the last couple of years, I don’t think he has played much.”

Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: If either Pittsburgh or Cincinnati are to have a chance in the N.L. Central, they’re going to have to beat the teams behind them. Last night they didn’t. Newest Ahoy Derrek Lee celebrated his arrival in Pittsburgh with two home runs, but the Pirates couldn’t beat the no-account Cubs, suffering their fourth loss in a row by a 5-3 score. Catch ‘em while you can; they’re fading, and fast . . .

(more…)

If you’re going to score four runs off of Tim Lincecum — no matter how much he might be struggling — you take it and head for the dugout with a win. Right? The Nationals had Lincecum on the ropes on Monday night, but the Washington relief corps couldn’t put the game away, and the Giants won in 13 innings, 5-4.

The most recent Nats’ problem has been with their bullpen, as Monday’s starter John Lannan provided a solid outing — perhaps the best of his career. Lannan held the Giants to four hits over seven innings and the offense came through, with Michael Morse providing the big power, then providing his own timely hitting to put the Anacostia Nine up by 4-1 heading into the 8th. That’s when the Nationals bullpen decided to implode.

The eighth inning was a nightmare: the Giants notched, in order, a single, a double, a single, a single and a single. None of the balls were particularly hard hit, but the hard luck Nationals could not keep the Giants at bay. The primary victim was Sean Burnett, who pitched well, but could not keep a bleeder from Aubrey Huff dropping in front of Jayson Werth along the line in right field. It seemed as if this was just “one of those games,” except that the Nationals have been unable to recently hold leads, but have often been able to escape the danger — as they did in Arizona on Sunday.

Sean Burnett was emotional on the mound after giving up the Huff single, as if he couldn’t believe that the ball actually dropped in: “You make good pitches. He hit it where they weren’t,” Burnett said after the loss. “It’s frustrating. You’ve just got to keep pitching. Hopefully your luck changes. I feel like I’m throwing the ball well, but I’ve got nothing to show for it.”

The denouement came at about 3 am Washington time, when San Francisco faced off against semi-Newbie Craig Stammen, who gave up a walk to Chris Stewart and a single to Andres Torres, before Freddy Sanchez put a single down the right field line to score Stewart and win the game.

Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: The Giants of 2011 look a lot like the Giants of 2010 — they win one run games, they’re tough at home, they depend on hitting with runners in scoring position, they have a crew of tough starters, and a lights-out closer . . . which is to say, they are built for the playoffs. Their missing piece might well be Juan Uribe, a spark plug that they now wish they’d re-signed . . .

Kiss It Goodbye? Arrogance in a baseball player isn’t always a bad thing, but the game has a way of beating it out of you. Harper blew a kiss (here tis, folks) to Greensboro Grasshoppers pitcher Zachary Neal after hitting a homer off of him — apparently his 14th of the year. Mike Rizzo and Jim Riggleman might have something to say about it, if his manager at Hagerstown hasn’t already made it clear . . . it would be interesting to see if he’d ever do it against a guy like, say, Roy Halladay or, better yet — Carlos Zambrano . . . well, he’s not here yet, so there’s time . . . Mike Schmidt had a bit to say about this, and well said: “Tone it down and play the game.”

Jason Marquis was masterful on Friday night against the San Francisco Giants, pitching a five hit complete game shutout of the McCoveys — as Washington blanked the Giants, 3-0 at Nationals Park. The victory may have marked the most satisfying win for the Nationals all year: the victory featured stellar starting pitching, timely hitting, and good defense. Washington’s three runs were provided by a two run homer from left fielder Laynce Nix and a single from Marquis. Ian Desmond went 3-3.

After the victory, Marquis downplayed the game as a duel between him and Lincecum: “I never worry about the opposing pitcher other than when I step in the box,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s Cy Young or the fifth starter on any team; you still have to make pitches to keep your team in the game. I have to be on top of my game and not worry about what anybody else is doing.” Even so, Marquis was the better pitcher at Nationals Park on Friday — he threw 96 pitches, 64 of them for strikes and he’s now 3-0 on the year.

The Nationals scoring against Lincecum came on a hefty home run shot into the right field seats by Laynce Nix, who was 2-3. Nix raised his season average to .314. “That was the first time I faced Tim and I was fortunate to get a pitch over the plate I could handle,” Nix said. “He’s a great pitcher, no question about that. He’s got great stuff that is tough to pick up. He had good stuff tonight.”

Book ‘Em, Danno: Pale Hose manager Ozzie Guillen was suspended for two games and fined by Major League Baseball for violating the league’s “social media policy and other regulations regarding the use of electronic equipment during the course of a game.” Guillen was thrown out of Wednesday’s game at Yankee Stadium. When he returned to the clubhouse he tweeted about the incident: “This one going to cost me a lot money this is patetic (sic),” Guillen tweeted. A second tweet followed: “Today a tough guy show up a yankee stadium.” Guillen put a good spin on his suspension: “I hope the [White Sox] players play better without me, because with me, they aren’t playing too good.”

Say hello to my little friend: This is going to be ugly. Major League Baseball has placed Braves pitching coach Roger McDowell on administrative leave and is investigating charges that he made homophobic comments to fans prior to the Atlanta-San Francisco game at AT&T park last Saturday. The allegations were made by fan Justin Quinn, who participated in a press conference on McDowell’s actions; standing with his wife and two daughters, Quinn said he saw McDowell making obscene gestures during batting practice. After McDowell made the comments and gestures, Quinn said that he told him he shouldn’t say those things in front of his children. According to Quinn, McDowell then picked up a bat and threatened him: “How much are your teeth worth?” McDowell also allegedly told the fan that “kids don’t belong at the f —king ballpark.” Nice.

They call it a ‘Royale’ with cheese: Cincinnati Reds’ pitcher Mike Leake pleaded guilty on Friday to a reduced charge of “unauthorized use of property,” after being arrested for shoplifting at a local Macy’s department store on April 18. Leake held an in-dugout press conference on Friday to explain his actions, which stemmed from a mix-up when he attempted to exchange shirts he had purchased from the store. “It was a serious lapse in judgment,” Leake told the press. Cincinnati fans have been predictably supportive of Leake during this troubled time: a sign at Cincinnati’s Great American ballpark read — “we gave you the bunt sign, Mike, not the steal sign.”

The Washington Nationals are now 1-4 and have lost three in a row. After a good start on Wednesday night in Florida (the Nats took a 4-0 lead on the solid pitching of Livan Hernandez), the Nationals fell to the Marlins, 7-4. The game was a symbol of what Washington seems to do so well: after innings of good starting pitching, the Nationals bats fell silent, the opposition was let back into the game, and the bullpen was less than stellar. Reason to panic? Not according to Nationals’ players: skipper Jim Riggleman said after the game that the clubhouse was still positive and that it was only a matter of time before the Nats break out. True enough, it’s still early — right? Right?

It’s not a secret, the hole in the Nats team is the starting pitching: the relief core is solid, the team should be able to hit. But in the early going, the bullpen has struggled — and key players bats are silent. Chad Gaudin and Todd Coffey’s ERA is soaring, and even the best arms seem tentative. Adam LaRoche, Michael Morse and Rick Ankiel are looking up at the Mendoza line, hitting .158, 118 and .133 respectively. Of course, or so the argument goes, we can expect that the Nats are going to have trouble getting on track so long as they face the Marlins, Riggleman told Mark Zuckerman. “You have to start feeling that you’ve got to put these guys away when you have an opportunity,” the manager said. “They’ve got a good group there, and they’ve had their way with us for a couple years now. There’s nothing to do but battle your way out of it and bust open a ballgame to where they can’t come back.”

I’d Rather Eat Glass Than Hear Another Word About The Phillies: While baseball is oohing and ahhing about Philadelphia’s Phab Phour, let’s try to remember that the San Francisco Giants are the champions of the world. Last night they showed why: the Giants sent the Padres packing 8-4 behind the pitching of (who else?) Tim Lincecum. Lincecum was at his best, holding the Friars to three hits in seven innings: he struck out 13. He struck out 13. So while there’s all this talk about Halliday, Lee, Oswalt, and Hamels (as, I suppose, there should be), Lincecum is still the best pitcher in baseball. Yeah, yeah, yeah — but what about Halliday? Well, what about him?

For all of the sturm and drung about the NL East, it’s still the NL Least — the NL West is the tougher division. By far. Check the facts: the NL West has supplied two World Series teams in the last five years, the Rockies and Giants, the West has provided the NL’s best pitching staffs in three of the last five years (Dodgers, Padres and Giants), and nine of the last 12 Cy Young winners have come from the NL West (that’s unbelievable, when you think about it). Sure, there’s the Phab Phour in Philly (and a tough but, let’s admit, not a great staff in Atlanta), but the NL West has a top-flight rotation in San Fran and nothing to sneeze at in Los Angeles, Colorado and San Diego. Name one Atlanta starter who’s as good as Ubaldo Jimenez. Yeah, okay: Tim Hudson and Derek Lowe are savvy, but that’s because they have to be — their fastballs are Ubaldo’s change-up.

That’s just a part of it. While anyone and their mother can pick the Phillies to win the NL East, you have to flip a coin when it comes to the West. “No more division has been more hotly contest over the past five years,” Sport Illustrated noted in its baseball preview issue. No one would be totally shocked if the Padres came close again this year — a reminder to those who thought they’d be the worst team in baseball in ’10. No division in baseball has had tighter races (since ’06 no one has won the West by more than two games), and the West has more one run games than anyone else. So . . . so, Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez and Bumgarner don’t sound like Halliday, Lee, Oswalt and Hamels, but they were good enough last year to win it all — and the Giants have Brian Wilson. And the Phillies have . . . well, they’ll let us know. The Giants are slow out of the gate, but last night’s ho-hummer in Friarland is a reminder that San Francisco remains the team to beat.

In the end, it really wasn’t that much of a contest. Behind the pitching of righty ace Tim Lincecum and the long ball hitting of veteran shortstop (and series MVP) Edgar Renteria, the San Francisco Giants won the 106th Fall Classic — downing the Texas Rangers 3-1 in the fifth game of the World Series and taking the series four games to one. That the difference was pitching should not come as a surprise. The Giants rode the arms of their best pitchers, while beating Texas ace Cliff Lee twice. Giants’ starters held the hit-heavy Rangers’ line-up to an embarrassingly anemic .167 batting average, with the Rangers’ best hitters unable to unlock the Giants’ best starters. After scoring seven runs in the first game against the Giants, Texas’ bats went quiet in the Fall Classic’s final four games, scoring just five runs in the final 36 innings of the series. “As a competitor, you want to put it on yourself,” Texas third sacker Michael Young said during post-game interviews in the Rangers’ clubhouse. “They threw the ball well, but no matter who is out there, we still feel we’re capable of scoring runs. We just didn’t get it done.”

The same message was given by patch-em-up and let-em-play veteran Edgar Renteria, who manfully stop-gapped the Giants at shortstop, while providing a home run bat that had been silent nearly all season. The crafty and savvy shortstop walked away from the 106th World Series with the MVP, a much deserved reward for a player who spent the year nursing an aching neck and all sorts of tears and pulls to compile a .412 (7 for 17, two home runs, six RBIs) Fall Classic. Renteria, 34 — and in his fifteenth season — hit a three run dinger in the fifth game to notch his place in Giants’ (and baseball) history. “I got confident, looking for one pitch, and if he throws it I’m going to hit it back to the middle,” Renteria said of his home run stroke against Texas ace Cliff Lee. “So he tried to throw the cutter, and the cutter stayed in the middle, and that’s why it went out.” That Renteria would be the player at the center of the Giants’ postgame celebration seemed oddly just: a legendary franchise that boasts some of the greatest players in baseball history now has a new hero — a slap-and-run good-glove defender who plays quietly behind, argubly, the very best pitching staff in baseball. That’s what made the San Franciso Giants the Champions of the World.

The San Francisco Giants are 27 outs from a World Series win, the first since the team moved from New York to the west coast. If Sunday night is any indication, the send-em-to-the-golf-course triumph will come as a result of stellar pitching and situational hitting: Giants specialities that have flummoxed (in turn) the Atlanta Braves, Philadelphia Phillies and now, the Texas Rangers. Madison Bumgarner is the latest example of how the Giants have dominated the series — throwing 8 innings of three hit baseball (106 pitches, 69 strikes) in shutting down a potent Rangers’ offense. Bumgarner was nearly unhittable, becoming the fifth youngest pitcher in baseball history (21 years and 91 days) to start in the Fall Classic. “He was as good as I’ve seen him,” San Francisco catcher Buster Posey said after the win. “He was in and out, really. The first couple of innings he might have yanked a couple of fastballs, but after that he was unreal.”

The Rangers, stymied by San Francisco’s arms (Bumgarner struck out Vlad Guerrero three times and Michael Young twice), will attempt to get back into the series on Monday by sending uber ace Cliff Lee to the mound to face-off against Tim Lincecum. So while a Giants’ win in the Series is far from guaranteed, San Francisco has to be confident that it can do to Lee what it did on Sunday to Tommy Hunter — and last week to the Rangers’ bullpen. And yet, Texas sounded anything but confident. “We still have to find a way to score runs,” Texas third sacker Michael Young (.250 for the series), said after the Bumgarner outing. Young’s view was seconded by Nelson Cruz — who’s hitting a Willie Harris-like .188 against Giants’ pitching: “We need more hits and more people on base.”

Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: Not only is San Francisco’s pitching good, it’s home grown. Tim Lincecum was a 2006 (tenth overall) San Francisco draft pick, Matt Cain was selected by the Giants in the first round (25th overall) in 2002, Jonathan Sanchez was picked up by the Gigantes in the 27th round in 2004 and Madison Bumgarner was a Brian Sabean favorite in 2007 — when he was drafted tenth overall. It’s the first home-grown rotation to reach the World Series since 1986, when Boston trotted out Bruce Hurst, Roger Clemens, Oil Can Boyd and Al Nipper to face the New York Mets. The San Francisco model (draft pitching, buy hitting) is followed throughout baseball, but few teams have had as much success in following it as the Giants. The Giants follow two other principles: they don’t dilly dally in moving their best young arms to the majors (Lincecum and Bumgarner each spent two years in the minors), and they don’t trade them for hitting — Sabean pushed aside a proposed Lincecum for Alex Rios deal, turned down a Cain for Prince Fielder deal and spurned numerous suitors (including your Washington Nationals) for Jonathan Sanchez . . .

The Norris Nine? We’ve received a ton of mail from readers following up on our little ditty about proposed Texas Rangers’ nicknames. One reader divided his list into two parts — “old ones” and “new ones.” Among the old: the “Spurs” (an old Dallas-Ft. Worth baseball team), the “Strangers” (a 1970s nickname given the Rangers because of their relocation from D.C.), and the “Hambones” — which is Josh Hamilton’s nickname. Hmmmm. This reader lists as new ones the “Ex-Senators,” the “Re-Arrangers,” and “the Bushies.” This last makes sense, given the prominence of the Bush family, who have found themselves (with Nolan Ryan), in camera range during the Series. But the best nominee from this (anonymous) reader is “The Texas Walkers,” named for the “Walker, Texas Ranger” television series, starring (quick intake of breath) Chuck Norris. This has potential (this reader implies), because it can be morphed into “The Norris Nine” — which has a certain ring. This regular CFG reader (and who isn’t) isn’t the first fan to put the Rangers together with the aging kick boxer. Back in August of 2009, when the Rangers were contending for a Wild Card spot with the Boston Pedroia’s, a Red Sox fan (with entirely too much time on his hands), gave us this . . .

The first game of the 2010 World Series wasn’t exactly a pitcher’s duel. The pumped-up Fox Television special of a “classic match-up” between two great pitchers (including one whose post-season numbers were right up there with Sandy Koufax and Christy Mathewson), turned into a sloppy slugfest (six errors, 18 runs and 25 hits) that ranks with some of the worst played games in World Series history. It’s not as if San Francisco manager Bruce Bochy didn’t know it. Bochy all but admitted that the game could have been more cleanly played, but he shrugged philosophically: “We’ll take the win,” he said after the completion of the whirlwind 11-7 tilt. “We were expecting to win,” Ranger Elvis Andrus reflected, “but they played better than us. That’s just the way it is.”

Well, that’s right — the Giants played better than the Rangers. But not by much. While Lee (vying for post-season honors with some of the all-time greats) looked merely human — 4.2 innings, six earned runs — McCovey righty Tim Lincecum pitched like the head-in-the-clouds hippie (5.2 innings, 8 hits, four runs) his detractors criticize him for being: he allowed four hits in the first two innings, gave up a double to the opposing pitcher, and ran a runner back to an unoccupied base. While the post-game Giants touted their dominance over Lee (whose curve just wasn’t working), the truth is that Lincecum looked like he wandered into the game by accident. Then too, you have to believe that without Brian “Beach Boy” Wilson’s shut-em-down appearance (and using him shows you just how desperate Bochy was to finish the game), the contest might have been tied in the 9th — and won by the Texans in the 10th.

There have been plenty of poorly played World Series games (this certainly isn’t the first), and there’s no guarantee that such an indifferently played first contest will mean that this version of “the Fall Classic” won’t be classic. After all, the 1960 Yankees-Pirates series featured two teams with solid rotations who couldn’t pitch a fig when it came to October. The Yankees made the Pirates look silly in three of those games (by scores of 16-3, 10-0 and 12-0), but then lost the series on one of baseball’s most exciting moments. That probably won’t happen here, but an 11-7 score is hardly a fair indictation of things to come:  the Giants still boast one of the best staffs in recent post-season history, while the Rangers’ order is capable of putting Mantle-like numbers on the opposing scoreboard. But it’s only a seven game series, and with Cliff Lee’s outing behind them, the Giants have to be optimistic — particularly if they win tonight.