San Francisco Giants starter Tim Lincecum was on the verge of making a bit of career history tonight at AT&T Park, looking for his 1000th career strikeout. He reached his milestone, but got knocked out of the game early in what turned out to be a wild extra-inning affair with the Washington Nationals. The Giants scored four times late in the game to force extras, eventually getting the win on a Freddy Sanchez single by a score of 5-4 in 13 innings, the longest game the Giants have had in 2011.
Lincecum lasted only five innings of work, giving up four runs to the Nats in the first three innings including a Micheal Morse homer in the second. Timmy gave up five hits with three walks and five strikeouts during his 101 pitch outing, while earning the historic 1,000th strikeout in the second inning against Jerry Hairston Jr.
The Giants bats remained silent against the Nats John Lannan, who kept the Giants to only three hits before Aaron Rowand launched a homer in the seventh to break up the shutout. Lannan would depart after the inning only to watch Todd Coffey and Sean Burnett give up three runs in the eighth off of a Aubrey Huff two run single followed by a Nate Schierholtz RBI single a few batters later to tie up the game.
Both the Giants and Nationals wasted opportunities in extra innings, but in the bottom of the thirteenth Freddy Sanchez slapped a single to right field to score Chris Stewart from third, giving the Giants their eighth walk-off win of the year.
Javier Lopez (W 3-1) was the winning pitcher with his excellent one and 1/3 innings of work in extras, while Craig Stammen (L 0-1) took the loss for Washington.
With the win the Giants move to 34-26 on the season. Full box score can be found here.
The Giants will have the second meeting of the series with the Nationals Tuesday as Jonathan Sanchez (4-3 3.50 ERA) will be on the mound to take on Jordan Zimmerman (3-6 3.61 ERA) for the Nats. First pitch is set for 7:15 PT with coverage on CSN Bay Area and KNBR 680 AM.