Well, Iannetta homered, so maybe they should play him there more often?

Ianetta is extremely impressive. They should just make him the regular catcher.

Iannetta just missed another homer, doubling off the centerfield wall. Both of these hits came off Tim Lincecum.

Please, Clint Hurdle, can't you just make him the starter? Please?

If you're watching the game, did you just see that balk call on Lincecum? That was unreal.

For the rest of you: with the game tied 2-2, Iannetta doubled to start the seventh and Barmes bunted him to third. With 1-0 count on Torrealba, as Lincecum was starting his motion, Bengie Molina called time and crew chief/home plate umpire Ron Darling granted it audibly. When Molina stood up, Lincecum stopped his windup, and Darling called a balk to score the run. I don't know how he did that after granting time. Of course Timmeh got a shallow flyout and a routine groundout to end the inning, but they lost the lead.

What was up with the balk call in the 7th? It looked to me like the ump called time then called a balk, which obviously makes no sense.

Edit: I'm too slow.

I assumed the balk call must have preceded the time call, but I don't know what the balk call could have been in that situation.

The new Pat Listach.

I think Molina may have asked for time and then Lincecum stopped, but the umpire didn't grant time and then called the balk and then yelled "time."

So franchise will have to wait until next year to go unbeaten? Lame...

"You're a .200 hitter! We want you in the box! Shut up and go to the bag!"

You mean .150 hitter

It seemed to me from the replays (granted, I only caught the last 3 or 4 because my gf was hollering from the other room about it) that the ump very clearly granted time when requested by Molina, then subsequently called a balk when Lincecum stepped off, time having been called. The audio replay in particular seemed to show that. Very strange call, and too bad it ended up being the winning run.

Then again, if you can't score against a Colorado pitching staff that's got a catcher playing 3rd and a third baseman playing 2nd behind them, you don't so much deserve to win anyway.

It's gonna take a lot more than two out-of-position players to get the Giants to score runs.

Seconded. The call may have been indefensible, but so are the Giants. The sooner this team has the worst record in the league, the better. It's what they deserve.

That said, I felt the ump might merely have made a small, human mistake -- starting to grant time, then seeing the balk and calling it before officially doing so -- until I saw his quote in the paper. His claim? "He started, stopped, then Bengie tried to cover for him by calling the timeout. Whether he didn’t have the sign or not, I don’t know about that, what was going on there."

Which is sufficiently at variance with the facts (pitcher stares in; catcher raises hands; pitcher starts motion anyway; ump stands and raises hands; pitcher stops motion) that there's only one conclusion: Darling knew the second he said, "that's a balk" that his was a bad call, but he wasn't man enough to correct it. I mean, there's a shot from behind the catcher. On the teevee. There is no way that Darling's ex-post rationalization bears resemblance to what happened.

What a putz.

Back on-topic, too bad about Tulowitzki's quad, but he should come back from that pretty quickly. The stupid decision there was leaving him in the game in the first place after the initial tweak. It was clear he wasn't right. What was his trainer thinking?