Halladay’s Groin, Bunt, HD Coverage
After the Phillies’ 4-2 victory in the Fifth Game of the NLCS, Charlie Manuel matter-of-factly mentioned that Roy Halladay pitched from the second inning on with a mild groin strain suffered while “humping up” on a pitch to Buster Posey.
That may not explain Halladay’s initial motionless on the bunt in the third inning, but it certainly explains his slight limp as he walked back to the dugout at the end of that bizarre trade. He pitched with a groin strain on a wet mound. Not surprising, just amazing.
Incidentally, I do not want to hear from Giants’ fans complaining that the game was decided by the bad fair/foul call on Halladay’s third-inning bunt. It was, in fact, decided on Pablo Sandoval’s bad footwork on the same play. If he had been able to find third base, that game-changing sacrifice bunt would’ve been a game-changing double-play and there would be no complaining.
One last note to a very specific audience: for ardent fans of MLB Network in HD in New York City, you noticed as I did that the damn thing disappeared off the Time-Warner HD tier some time on Tuesday. Turns out it has simply been relocated to the sports tier, Channel 489. If it happened somewhere else, I suggest you go to the network’s website.
Baseball Nerd 
Doc din’t move ‘cuz it was a blatant foul ball… tough luck Gigantes but he’d a’ gotten that bunt down on the next pitch or else blasted a homer on the one following that, so get over it. We have, and now you’re back in our park with an infield we know. Sincerely, good luck to you.
That’s a funny time stamp in anybody’s zone… it’s now 0005hrs EDT and by the way? Chollie’s only making an excuse for himself, pulling the pitcher in the 7th for the sake of potential runs when you know he doesn’t like to do that (even less than he likes making excuses).
(And now they make me wait… time now 0008.
Keith, you won’t get a complaint from me. I’ll hear this from those who read my blog but Sandoval has been a liability at third base this year. Not only he couldn’t find third base on Halladay’s bunt, but he had a throwing error late in the game (though it didn’t cost the Giants). At the plate, he’s been inconsistent hitting into a ton of doubleplays. His weight (270 pounds plus) has the Giants’ organization wondering if he’ll be on the big club next year, in Triple A or somewhere else. Continue the great work here and with MSNBC!
I’m not going to make any excuses for our loss. We made mistakes, squandered opportunities, and the Phillies took advantage of scoring opportunities. Now we need to win one game in two chances on their field. They’re a very good team, and we knew that coming into the NLCS.
Giants Baseball – Torture!
Another reason, I think, no one should really complain about the bunt is that Posey, gamer that he is, clearly recognized that the bunt was foul and jumped on it, obscuring the umpire’s view, in the hope of ‘stealing’ an out at third. Nothing wrong with that — it’s really a veteran move, not a rookie move — but in this case it kind of backfired.
I tend to believe that most games are NOT decided on any ONE play, and this was not one of the few exceptions to that belief. It is a team sport and it lasts 9 whole innings. Bad plays happen, and should be outweighed by good plays. So, you’ll get no whining or complaining from me on last night’s game. The Giants have been torturing us all season, but so far they win when it counts most. Knock. Okay, here it comes:
GO GIANTS!!!!!!!
Note to Keith:
Since using my actual email address to post a comment the other day, I’ve been inundated with half-arsed fraud attempts such as:
“Email Management”
Add sender to Contacts
To:
undisclosed-recipients
Dear SbC GloBAL ACCOUNT User;
Due to the congestion in all SbC GloBAL ACCOUNT and removal of all unused
Accounts,we would be shutting down all unused accounts,You will have to
confirm your E-mail by filling out your Login Info below after clicking the
reply button, or your account will be suspended within 48 hours for security
reasons.
User name: ………………………
Password:………………………..
Date Of Birth: …………………..
Country Or Territory:……………
…as well as the usual Lagos attempts to gain my bank account #.
Making email addresses public is probably not the way to go.
As an “ardent fan” of MLB Network, I can’t tell you how annoying I think Matt Vasgersian is. He can’t get one sentence out without tripping all over the words or getting them in the wrong order: “And now to what happened in tomorrow’s game, yesterday’s game, that is, as the New York Rangers faced the Phillies, that is, the Yankees.” Then he throws in some smart aleck impersonation, sneers at Harold Reynolds who is the main reason to watch MLB Tonight (Matt clearly doesn’t get along with Harold), and does that weird exaggerated mouth movement of his. Greg Amsinger always sounds like he’s about to say “Dude!” but he has turned out to be the best of the main sportscasters on MLB Network. But now that FOX has Mitch Williams– can they keep him?
Huh. Guess it was my fault. Stupid me.
@jimh… I hear you. I ended up opening a “junk account” because I got spammed so much after posting here… now I go into the junk account and clean it out every so often. I think every Nigerian-type scammer on the planet looks for addresses here! 🙂 Word to the wise….