SAN FRANCISCO — The same story was writing itself again. A slumping lineup wasn’t scoring enough runs to support its pitchers. A turbulent bullpen wasn’t getting enough outs to support its offense. The pitchers knew it. The hitters knew it.
That’s what made Saturday’s extra-inning comeback that much sweeter. Staring down one of the game’s best closers, the Giants strung together four hits to walk-off against Kenley Jansen and the Dodgers. Not only revitalizing a beleaguered group of Giants relievers, but a rookie who struggled in his home debut.
“We felt that at some point we’re going to have to pick our pitching up,” said Joe Panik, who tied the game with a 10th-inning single. “To be able to do it today against their closer … it was definitely a great win to see a little life out of this offense.”
The Giants (37-26) snatched a win out of the Dodgers’ (33-30) hands, jolting a team that’s fallen into a lull after winning an MLB-best 21 games in May. Backed by a whopping nine pitchers, including the shortest outing of Jeff Samardzija’s (7-4, 3.36 ERA) season and a near-catastrophic AT&T Park debut by Chris Stratton, the Giants won a game Bruce Bochy agreed was the team’s best of the year.
But shortly before Denard Span, Panik, Brandon Belt and Buster Posey pieced together the euphoric, game-ending rally, Stratton was living a nightmare on the mound in the top half of the inning..
Adrian Gonzalez flipped a changeup, Stratton’s second pitch ever thrown at the Giants’ ballpark, into the left-field seats to put the Dodgers ahead, 3-2. Trayce Thompson then lined a single to bring out pitching coach Dave Righetti, who could only tell his rookie pitcher to forget and keep throwing. Stratton did just that. Eight pitches later, inning over.
“Good mound visit,” he quipped after the game, cleaned up after receiving a ceremonious beer shower for his first major league win.
It was a needed celebration after the four-hour fight had ended, one that started first between Samardzija and himself. The right-hander battled all afternoon with his command, consistently missing off the plate with his sinker.
That translated into nine base runners across four and two-thirds innings, throwing 98 pitches in that time. He only issued two of the Giants’ six walks, but his afternoon ended in the fifth inning after Justin Turner and Gonzalez bopped two-out hits to knot the score at two.
Bochy meandered from the dugout to the mound, about a 200-foot roundtrip he made six times between the nine pitchers he elected to use.
“I’m not really a big fan of that to be honest,” Bochy said of using nearly his entire bullpen. “We were going for the matchups.”
That’s status quo, and a five-pitcher seventh inning was quintessential Bochy. Derek Law, Josh Osich, Hunter Strickland, Javier Lopez and Cory Gearrin combined to get the inning’s three outs, but allow the game-tying run to score. That came from Gearrin, who Bochy complimented as one of his best relievers before the game, and he promptly entered the game by walking Thompson with the bases loaded.
After pitching a clean eighth inning, Gearrin handed the ball off to the Giant under siege more than any other for his late-game struggles: Santiago Casilla, The embattled closer, one day removed from yielding a ninth-inning, go-ahead home run to Turner, faced the Dodgers third baseman once again.
It only took one pitch to write the duo’s next ending: 6-4-3 double play.
“The bullpen is good,” Casilla said. “Sometimes we make mistakes and we pay, like me last night.
“The only thing I told the young guys is … ‘it’s about today.’ And we won.”
Casilla heeded his own advice, and the Giants’ hitters heeded their own as well. A couple weeks ago they discussed how they wanted to pick up their pitchers, Panik said. Bochy didn’t have nine pinch-hitters at his disposal, but the group he penciled in the starting lineup scraped out seven hits to validate his bullpen adventures. And they won.
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