25

 

GIANTS        87-50                     Bats break through when needed most.

LA                  86-51      1  GB      Five games behind projected W-L record. 

San Diego      73-64    14  GB     Back in the second wild-card lead.

Yesterday

Giants defeated LA, 6-4, to take the series, and the season series, and to hold first place.  

Today

Giants at Colorado; 2:10 local time, 4:10 EDT. Quick turnaround after a early-evening game. Kevin Gausman starts against Kyle Freeland, another lefthander. He pitched well against the Giants at the O three weeks ago (Game Score 62).

LA is at St Louis; also a daytime start. The Cardinals have cooled off a bit, but they're still only three games behind San Diego in the wild-card race. 

Yesterday's Game

It's about time! The Giants' impotent offense came alive with a roar against the best pitcher in the league, and carried away a resounding victory while supported by no less than nine pitchers. San Francisco put eight men on against Walker Buehler in three innings, and six of them scored. Brandon Belt homered in the first, Steven Duggar, late of Sacramentio, ripped a two-run triple in the second and scored on Darin Ruf's single, and LaMonte Wade, Brandon Crawford, and Curt Casali finished Buehler off with two runs on three hits in the third. The Giants did all this without Buster Posey in the lineup, and Mike Yastrzemski showed signs of leaving Slumpville behind with two hits, including a wall-scraping double to deepest center, and a walk.  

With Buehler (now 13-3) thoroughly done after three, Dave Roberts summoned his bullpen, and they held the fort and eventually allowed the Dodgers to get back in it. Jake McGee was on in the ninth despite no save situation-- that's how seriously Kapler took both game and opponent-- and big Albert Pujols belted a two-run homer, the 678th of his career, to cut the lead to 6-4 with nobody out. The rally had  started when Kris Bryant, who'd made a brilliant defensive stop in the eighth, threw wildly on Austin Barnes' leadoff grounder. 

Max Muncy, hitless thus far in the series, singled with one out to bring the tying run to the plate. McGee then got Mookie Betts on a "borderline" strike three call that made up for several such calls which gave LA a run in the fifth. That brought the terrifying presence of Giant-killer Justin Turner to the plate. Swinging late on a 1-2 pitch, Turner faded a pop fly down the right-field line that Yastrzemski nabbed just before it hit the protective netting. Roberts properly appealed, and for the second time in three days replay affirmed a Giants victory after the fact.

 Not every manager has the cojones, or perhaps the desperation, to plan out back-to-back "bullpen games", but Kapler does. Here's how yesterday's nine fared:

Dominic Leone opened, and got three popups from the Dodgers' fearsome top of the order. 

Jose Alvarez started the second. Single, walk, RBI single, and he's outta there.

Zack Littell came in with first and second, nobody out. He immediately wild-pitched the runners into scoring position. Then: popup, strikeout, strikeout. Neither man scored, and the Giants scored three in the bottom of the inning, and that earned Littell the win.

Jay Jackson for the third. He wasn't quite as bad as he'd been on Saturday: a walk and a hit, but he did get two outs this time. With two on and Corey Seager up, Kapler made the switch to a lefty.

Jose Quintana walked Seager, the man he was expected to get, on some extremely "borderline" pitches. The three-batter rule obliged Kap to leave him in against Will Smith, and Quintana got him on a fly ball. The veteran lefty junkballer then pitched a quiet fourth, and struck out Max Muncy (!) in the fifth. With two out, though, Betts singled and Turner walked. Kapler came out and turned up the heat.

Rookie Camilo Doval, he of the 99-MPH fastball and recent arrival from Sacramento, followed three outside sliders with two flaming unhittable strikes before "strike three" was called "ball four" and Seager walked to load the bases. More strike-zone chicanery followed during Will Smith's at-bat, resulting in a walked-in run and a 6-2 score. With the crowd booing and catcalling umpire Tony Randazzo, Doval held his water and fanned Chris Taylor on a called third strike, leaving 'em loaded.  And Doval then came out for the sixth and retired the side in order.

Tony Watson retired the side in order in the seventh. Tyler Rogers did the same in the eighth, before McGee came on in the ninth and it got dicey. 

Doval, Watson, and Rogers retired ten straight batters against the best lineup in baseball and ensured the Dodgers would need more runs in the ninth than they had outs to spare. With all the welcome attention drawn to the Giants' long-overdue offensive outburst, this stretch of outstanding pitching was key to the win. 

Bottom line: six of the nine did their jobs.  A seventh labored, but got the third out. Two others had days to forget. Oh, it's a different brand of baseball, all right, but at the moment the San Francisco Giants do it better than anyone in the business. And now they have to do it all over again on short rest in the unfriendly confines of Coors Field, and 24 more times before the race is complete.