Brandon Belt was 3-for-3 with a double that would’ve left every ballpark except Oracle Park. He’d recorded six hits in his last seven at-bats, including a home run. Suddenly the club’s hottest hitter was due up with two runners in scoring position and no outs in the eighth inning, with the Giants trailing by two.
And the Giants took Belt’s bat out of his hands.
Manager Gabe Kapler inserted Austin Slater for Belt to face lefty reliever Joe Mantiply. Slater grounded out, which scored a run to cut Arizona’s lead to 4-3. Still, why sub Slater in for Belt when San Francisco could have waited a batter and tapped him for Luis Gonzalez?
The answer is actually quite simple.
To ensure Slater got an at-bat against Mantiply, the Giants needed to put him in the game before the southpaw faced three batters. Belt’s spot was the third Giants hitter to face Mantiply; if San Francisco waited another batter, the Diamondbacks could’ve countered with a pitching change to negate the platoon advantage.
“If you use Slater for Gonzalez, you get Slater versus a righty,” Kapler said. “If you use Slater for Belt, you know you’re not going to get countered because it’s the third batter.”
Kapler said he told Belt exactly that reasoning in the moment. The decision had nothing to do with Belt, the manager said; it was to get Slater an opportunity to come through in a high-leverage moment.
In his career, Slater has an .854 OPS when facing left-handed pitchers. Belt’s career left-on-left OPS is .752. The numbers check out.
Slater rolled out to shortstop, and then Gonzalez drew Mantiply’s first walk since Opening Day — ending an MLB record for a lefty of 34 straight walk-less appearances. But neither Slater nor Gonzalez scored, as Brandon Crawford topped an inning-ending double play.
Trailing 4-3, the Giants got the leadoff man on in the ninth and again tapped the bench. But SF came up empty and its comeback bid fell just short.
“I think the way it lined up, it felt like we were about to break the game open,” Kapler said. “Getting Craw up in that situation was ideal. Hit the ball sharply on the ground, turned into a double play, that’s baseball. But I really liked the way we set up that inning, kind of go for it there in the eighth. And seemed to break our way up until that point, then it didn’t. That’s the luck of the draw of baseball sometimes.”