It was the first thing every baseball fan thought upon realizing the Giants and Phillies would meet in the National League Championship Series: Roy Halladay vs. Tim Lincecum.
It’s as good a pitching matchup as you’ll find. And it opens the 2010 NLCS when San Francisco travels to Philadelphia to face the two-time defending league champions in Game 1 on Saturday night at Citizens Bank Park.
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The only thing less than ideal is each pitcher could be a bit rusty. Lincecum last pitched Oct. 7 in Game 1 of San Francisco’s NLDS series against Atlanta. Halladay, meanwhile, worked a day earlier on Oct. 6 in Game 1 of his team’s series against the Reds.
But what a performance by each pitcher. Halladay threw the first postseason no-hitter since Don Larsen‘s perfect game in the 1956 World Series. He walked one Cincinnati batter and struck out eight in that 4-0 win, needing just 104 pitches to effortlessly dispatch the league’s top offense.
Lincecum wasn’t quite that efficient, but he did toss a complete-game two-hitter. He walked one batter and electrified AT&T Park with 14 strikeouts — the most ever by a Giants pitcher in the playoffs. And while Halladay had some margin for error, Lincecum needed to be that good. His team scored just one run.
So we get a two-time NL Cy Young Award winner (Lincecum) against a seven-time All-Star (Halladay) — a man who himself has an AL Cy Young and is the favorite to win another in the NL this season.
They didn’t pitch against each other in 2010. In fact, Halladay struggled in a 5-1 loss at San Francisco on April 26. In seven innings he gave up 10 hits and five earned runs. Lincecum left an April 28 start against the Phillies after 81Ú3 innings with one run allowed on three hits and 11 strikeouts before the bullpen blew it in a wild, 7-6 extra-inning loss. In the end, he was charged with two earned runs.
