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| Bumgardner cooled off the Royals lineup. Photo Credit: USA Today Sports |
Madison Bumgardner pitched a gem tonight and led his team to a 7-1 win over the Royals in Game 1 of the World Series.
By: Michael Hanley
The Giants victory gives them home field advantage for now as they swiped this hug opening road game to the fall classic. For KC, they will for the first time in this postseason have to regroup and comeback off a loss.
Pablo Sandoval got the Giants on the board early with an RBI single to right filed, that brought home Gregor Blanco for the early 1-0 lead. It was the perfect start the Giants could have hoped for especially being in a hostile environment like Kauffman Stadium is in KC.
Hunter Pence would add to the lead as he belted a two run home run to give San Francisco a 3-0 lead. It was a surprise not only how the Giants were scoring with a base hit and home run, instead of what had become the customary way of scoring runs in sacrifice fly, ground out, errors etc.
It also was surprising to see how off the mark James Shields was for the Royals. He could not find the strike zone what so ever which cost him dearly as the Giants hitter just sat on pitches and teed off when they got that pitch they were looking for.
Madison Bumgardner (1-0) though he would not be sharp early, but would get better as the game wore on. He would again get into a groove and just started mowing down the Royals lineup. He wound up pitching a terrific game for San Francisco. He would finish with only giving up one run on three hits, striking out five.
San Francisco would continue to pile on as they added another run courtesy of Michael Morse who singled in Hunter Pence to make it 4-0. That was followed by a run being walked in courtesy of Gregor Blanco who showed his patience and worked a bases loaded walk to bring home Brandon Belt, which made it 5-0.
Later in the game Joe Panik added another run as he tripled home Blanco to make it a 6-0 lead over Kansas City. Sandoval would come back and join the fun as he singled home Panik to make it a full touchdown lead on the Royals.
It was an offensive outburst that few outside of the Giants players themselves and their fans could have envisioned against such a tough and dominant Royals pitching staff coming into this game. They had scored in just about every other fashion heading into the world series.
Tonight though they got back to basics and were using a mix of solid at bats which resulted in hits and some power courtesy of Hunter Pence's home run to generate their offense.
James Shields (0-1) had a disaster of a start for KC as he only lasted three innings as he gave up five runs on seven hits in only three innings of work. It put the team behind the eight ball right away and was a deficit the team could never get close to making up.
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