Giants take Game 2, down Cardinals 7-1

If you missed it, here’s why I thought Scutaro’s career was over:

Scutaro’s 36, so a torn ACL probably would have knocked out his age-37 season, putting him at 38 with a new knee … maybe he would have come back, but the odds would have been a little long. But he got up and played for a few more innings, eventually leaving to get an MRI on his hip.

For blogger Dan Moore at Viva El Birdos, the Cardinals’ Game 2 performance Monday night was poor all the way around and hopefully not a harbinger of things to come in St. Louis:

The Cardinals and Giants get an off day Tuesday to travel to St. Louis for Games 3, 4 and 5, which begin Wednesday at 4 p.m. ET. All NLCS games are broadcast on FOX.

And, the entire play via MLB.com video:

Holliday, for his part, said he hopes Scutaro is OK:

Uh-oh. Here we went again.

So, yeah: no double play. Later, Scutaro would retire from the proceedings, but not before exacting a bit of revenge.

Ryan Vogelsong looks sharp in the early innings. There’s a difference between sharp Vogelsong and hittable Vogelsong -- there’s a snap to his two-seamer and knee-high control when he’s right. When he walks someone when he’s right, it’s usually on a stubborn pitch just out of the zone.

Pete Kozma walked in such an at-bat, with Vogelsong missing by a hair on consecutive two-strike pitches. Vogelsong didn’t want to let Rogers Kozma get a good swing off on a pitch up, so he teased. It’s what Vogelsong does. Occasionally, he gets burned.

In this writer’s humble opinion, there should not be room in the Great Game of Baseball for this sort of thing:

It’s one thing to slide into the base with great gusto, hoping to make the second baseman’s life just a bit more difficult than usual. It’s another thing to endanger his life.