DETROIT — Like the early Halloween revelers who filtered from the bars around Comerica Park and into the stands Saturday night, the San Francisco Giants have undergone a dramatic autumn costume change, from wide-eyed underdogs to ruthless front-runners.
The Giants fell to a two-games-to-none deficit before winning their National League division series and to a three-games-to-one deficit before emerging from the champions series. But after a 2-0 victory over the Detroit Tigers, they have taken an authoritative three-games-to-none lead in the World Series.
"It's a good situation, but there's nothing been done yet," Giants Manager Bruce Bochy said. "It's a number, just like I said about two. Now its three. That's not the series."
The Giants have now won six straight games in the postseason and have not trailed a single inning in those games. And now this team that spent the early days of October teetering ingloriously along the brink of elimination needs just one victory to win their second championship in three years. Game 4 is Sunday in Detroit, where the Giants' Matt Cain is scheduled to face the Tigers' Max Scherzer.
"You don't really have to tell them anything," Tigers Manager Jim Leyland said of his players. "They know. They can count. We're down three games to zero."The Tigers, who never trailed during their American League Championship Series sweep of the Yankees, have experienced a dramatic turnaround of their own, falling limp at the plate. Late Thursday night in San Francisco, after his team lost their second straight game with a meek showing at the plate, Leyland hoped aloud that a return home might reinvigorate his team's offense.
Home for the Tigers, despite temperatures that hovered in the mid-40s, seemed a warmer place, with a crowd of 42,262, many bundled and cheering the Tigers' every move. But still the bats did not ignite.
Ryan Vogelsong returned to the mound for the Giants after throwing seven sparkling innings last Sunday in Game 6 of the N.L.C.S. That outing brought him his second victory of the playoffs and lowered his postseason earned run average to 1.42. Even so, he represented potential respite for the Tigers. They struggled against a pair of left-handed starters during the first two games of the series and managed just 10 hits and 3 runs through those games. During the regular season, the Tigers batted .275 against right-handers and .253 against left-handers.
But Vogelsong did not oblige. He pitched five and two-thirds innings, giving up five hits and four walks, while striking out three. Again and again, he worked out of troublesome spots, inflating the hopes of the crowd before puncturing them once more.
The Tigers' first mouthwatering chance appeared when cleanup hitter Prince Fielder — who had a 1.017 on-base-plus-slugging percentage against right-handers, compared to an .808 O.P.S. against left-handers, during the regular season — stepped to the plate with two on and one out in the first inning. But Fielder flailed awkwardly at an outside changeup and grounded into a double play, ending the inning.
Instead, it was the Giants who slipped ahead. Leading off the top of the second, Hunter Pence drew only his second walk of the postseason, stole second, advanced to third on a wild pitch and scored when Gregor Blanco crushed a hanging slider against the faraway wall in right-center field for triple. The Giants added a run when Brandon Crawford, batting ninth, plopped a single into center.
The two-run second was the only sign of rust for Anibal Sanchez, who last started for the Tigers on Oct. 14. He pitched seven innings, gave up six hits and one walk to go with eight strikeouts.
But his efforts went unrewarded as the Tigers offense failed to capitalize on its chances. In the third, Omar Infante and Austin Jackson provided back-to-back one-out singles. But as Miguel Cabrera — the recipient of a humongous commemorative crown before the game that acknowledged his regular season triple crown — waited on deck, Quintin Berry rolled a ball to second for another inning-ending double play.
Cabrera got his chance in the fifth inning after the Tigers had pushed Vogelsong against the ropes, loading the bases. Earlier in the day, Cabrera had admitted to being nervous while receiving the Hank Aaron award, which is given yearly to the players considered the "most outstanding offensive performers" in each league. Cabrera stumbled with his words after Hank Aaron showered him with praise.
But here he was in his element, strolling to the plate, his chest puffed, the low, ominous bass line of the Kanye West song "Mercy" thumping through the public address system, and the crowd bubbled along with expectancy. But after slicing a ball tantalizingly on the wrong side of the right-field foul line, Cabrera could only float a ball into the air above shortstop, deflating the crowd again.
"Right now, he's the best hitter in the game," Vogelsong said of Cabrera. "I was just trying to make pitches there. It's a lot easier facing him in that situation when there's two outs."
The Giants have recently had the luxury of a former Cy Young winner working out of their bullpen: Tim Lincecum, who entered the game with 14 strikeouts in 102/3 innings as a reliever this October, pitched two and a third hitless innings, striking out three.
Sergio Romo closed the game with a perfect ninth, and the Giants strutted off the field, unrecognizable from earlier this month.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 28, 2012
An earlier version of this article misidentified the pitching matchup for Game 4. The scheduled matchup for that game is the San Francisco Giants' Matt Cain and the Detroit Tigers' Max Scherzer.
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