A day after launching his third home run of the season, San Francisco Giants’ second baseman Joe Panik was riding the pine.
Giants’ manager Bruce Bochy traditionally likes to keep a player that homers in a previous game in the lineup, but on Friday evening, Bochy was left with no choice but to sit his starting second baseman.
Panik didn’t play on Friday, and will be held out of Saturday’s game against the Minnesota Twins as he’s day-to-day with a sprained thumb.
“We’re day-to-day at this point, there’s no timetable,” Panik said. “It’s going to hopefully feel better each day and like I said, I’m active so it’s definitely not a DL thing.”
Panik injured himself diving for a ground ball in the middle of Thursday’s game in Milwaukee, but both Panik and Bochy said after Friday’s loss to Minnesota the second baseman won’t need to a trip to the disabled list.
“He (Panik) dove for it, sprained his left thumb, he’s going to need a couple of days,” Bochy said. “It’s not bad enough to put him on the DL, which tells you he’s going to be ready we think pretty soon because it’s only a 10-day disabled list now. So my guess is he’s out tomorrow, we’ll see where we’re at the next day and whether he can go or not. If not, we’ll give him one more day and then we have the day off. After that, he should be 100 percent.”
Bochy on Panik's sprained thumb:
"Its not bad enough to put him on the DL." pic.twitter.com/ha3xJiQxB2
— KNBR (@KNBR) June 10, 2017
The thumb injury came on a play Panik has made hundreds of times throughout his baseball career, but he acknowledged all it takes is one hiccup for an injury to occur. As far as he’s concerned, Panik said he’s lucky it’s not worse.
“In this game, when you play 162 games, bumps and bruises are going to happen,” Panik said. “Playing every day, you expect that to happen. Whether you’re going good or going bad, you never want that to happen. It could have been a lot worse, that’s the way I look at it. If it’s a day or two here, it’s not, it’s a lot better than it could have been.”
Panik couldn’t recall the specific play in which he was injured, but said starting pitcher Johnny Cueto was still in the game when he dove and sprained his thumb. Panik stayed in the game for the remainder of the Giants’ 9-5 victory, but said his thumb began to swell once the adrenaline wore off.
“Adrenaline and if you can stay in the game, you stay in the game,” Panik said. “Then after the game, everything was swelling kind of and it creeps in a little bit more, but you know what, you do what you got to do.”
A smooth Santana
Minnesota Twins’ starter Ervin Santana dazzled on Friday evening at AT&T Park, tossing his third complete game shutout of the season with a brilliant effort.
The Giants were shut out for the seventh time this year, and three of the four hits San Francisco recorded were infield singles. The lone extra base hit the team notched came off the bat of second baseman Aaron Hill, who started in Panik’s place.
Bochy said after the game Santana did an excellent job pitching to the corners and keeping Giants’ hitters off balance. The Twins’ right-hander threw first-pitch strikes to 26-of-31 hitters he faced, and needed just 91 pitches to put up nine consecutive zeroes.
“He made one (mistake), Hill took advantage of it, and it would have been nice to get that run in but he sure, hope does probably become a strategy when a guy is throwing that well to be honest,” Bochy said. “We just couldn’t get guys on base.”
The top four hitters in San Francisco’s lineup combined to go 1-for-16 against Santana, as No. 2 hitter third baseman Eduardo Nunez legged out a grounder to the left side of the infield to record the lone hit for the quartet. Nunez’s single extended his hit streak to 11 games, and his streak of reaching base safely to 24 games.
With the loss Friday, San Francisco dropped 15.0 games behind the first-place Colorado Rockies. But despite all of the struggles the Giants have encountered this year, Bochy insists his team is still fighting every day.
“I know things aren’t going well, but they’re coming out ready to play,” Bochy said. “We ran into a very good pitcher today. It’s frustrating for us because of the success that we’ve had. We’re not used to this. Believe me. We’re trying to get this thing going for each other, for the fans, everybody, get back to who we are, so in that respect, sure, it’s frustrating. It’s not a lot of fun to come out here and lose ball games.”
Bochy on loss to Twins:
"It's frustrating for us because of the success that we've had. We're not used to this believe me." pic.twitter.com/r0F2YCvlIe
— KNBR (@KNBR) June 10, 2017