Giants Top Cardinals To Reach World Series

San Francisco scored one run in the first, one run in the second, and then the damn broke. The Giants scored five runs in the third inning, tacked on another in the seventh, and for good measure one more in the eighth. The pitching staff shut out St. Louis to give San Francisco a 9-0 win Tuesday night and the win sent the Giants to the World Series to face the Detroit Tigers.

The Cardinals went up 3-1 in the National League Championship Series against the Giants, but San Francisco, which won the NL West, rallied to take the series. St. Louis made the playoffs as a wild card team. The Cardinals had the worst record of any National League team in the playoffs, 88-74, the same record as the Tigers.

With the win, San Francisco improved to 6-0 in elimination games. The Giants got hits from nine players and a Brandon Belt home run in the bottom of the eighth put an exclamation point on an NLCS victory. Hunter Pence went 2-for-5 with two RBI. Marco Scutaro was 3-for-4.

St. Louis managed to scatter seven hits in the game (Yadier Molina went 4-for-4) but scored zero runs, marking the second time in the series St. Louis was shut out. The Cardinals scored just one run over the series’ final three games.

The Giants’ got a solid pitching performance from starter Matt Cain, who went 5.2 innings and allowed five hits to earn the win. Jeremy Affeldt, Santiago Casilla, Javier Lopez, and Sergio Romo combined to throw 3.1 innings of scoreless, two-hit baseball.

The NLCS pitted the defending World Series champion Cardinals against the 2010 champion Giants, which the Associated Press reports marks the first time the previous two World Series winners faced off in the postseason since the 1958 World Series between the Braves and Yankees.

CBS reports that game one of the World Series between the San Francisco Giants and Detroit Tigers will be Wednesday night at either 7:30 or 8:07 pm in San Francisco. The Tigers advanced by defeating the New York Yankees in the ALCS.