Buster Posey wishes every off day could be this fun.
After catching all 10 innings on Tuesday evening, the Giants’ All-Star gave his legs a rest, soaked up the AT&T Park sun, and smoked a go-ahead, pinch hit, two-run double in the bottom of the eighth inning to propel San Francisco to a series victory.
Manager Bruce Bochy gave four of the Giants’ regulars including Posey the day off on Wednesday, but there’s no rest for the weary, and Posey loves the big moment. With two on and two out in the bottom of the eighth inning, Posey pinch hit for Kelby Tomlinson and cracked a 3-2 pitch over the head of Indians’ left fielder Michael Brantley to push the Giants to a 5-4 victory.
“I think anybody will tell you a win, you don’t really care how you get it,” Posey said. “So we’ll take them any way.”
The Giants were in position to steal the series from Cleveland’s grasp thanks to a one-out error by Indians’ first baseman Carlos Santana, who channeled his inner Bill Buckner and allowed a Conor Gillaspie grounder to slip right through the wickets and allow a 4-2 lead to shrink by a run. After Gillaspie reached, catcher Nick Hundley struck out, but Bochy had his ace in the hole, and Posey delivered.
“He (Posey) knew if Hundley made an out there he was going to hit for Tomlinson,” Bochy said. “It was all set up and really, he might have hit anyway depending on what Hundley did. But really, it was a pretty nice bench I had today with the guys that were getting the day off.”
In the top of the ninth, interim closer Sam Dyson loaded the bases, but still picked up his fifth save of the season after earning the win with two scoreless innings of relief on Tuesday night.
Posey bailed out a Giants’ lineup that waited until the late stages of Wednesday’s contest to wake up, and got pitcher Matt Cain off the hook what would have been a tough loss.
“You can’t replace a guy like Buster,” Cain said. “To be able to have him in a big situation, Bochy did a great job of taking advantage of that and also Buster did a great job of taking advantage of that. He put a heck of an at-bat together, fouling off some good pitches, taking some close pitches and he finally got one that he could hit.”
Cain returned to the Giants’ rotation to replace starter Johnny Cueto who was placed on the disabled list on Saturday with blisters, and pitched reasonably well over six innings of work, but a brutal third inning nearly cost the Giants their shot at a series win.
Perhaps the only crime a pitcher can commit that’s worse than throwing an 0-2 pitch down the middle is walking the opposing pitcher, and in the top of the third inning on Wednesday, Cain did both.
After left-handers Matt Moore and Ty Blach combined to throw 14 innings while allowing just three earned runs in the first two games of the series, the Giants were hopeful Cain would be the latest pitcher to have a bounce back outing to start the second half.
“I thought he threw the ball well, I think he’s been pretty consistent this year,” Posey said. “I know maybe the ERA doesn’t show it, but in my opinion he’s had a little bit of tough luck with some inherited runners scoring. So yeah, it’s definitely nice to get him off the hook.”
With one out in the top of the third, Cain worked ahead of Indians’ starter Carlos Carrasco 1-2, but the Cleveland right-hander fouled off three straight pitches before Cain threw three consecutive balls to put Carrasco on first. In 15 career plate appearances entering Wednesday’s game, Carrasco had reached base just once, on a single back in 2015. But Cain issued the Venezuelan right-hander the first walk of his career, and it came back to haunt him.
On a separate note, how weird is Interleague play? Carrasco’s been in the Majors for eight seasons, and had a bat in his hand just 15 times prior to Wednesday.
After Carrasco reached second on another walk, Cleveland left fielder Michael Brantley singled through the right side of the infield and the sprint from second base to home plate turned into a 100-meter dash. With help from a Gorkys Hernandez throw that carried catcher Nick Hundley toward the first base line, Carrasco did his best Ricky Henderson impression and executed a flawless hook slide at home plate to score the first run of the game for Cleveland. A season runner, that Carrasco character is.
Against the very next batter, Cain worked ahead in the count 0-2, but flipped a slider over the heart of the plate that Indians’ third baseman Jose Ramirez roped into center field to plate two more runs and give Cleveland a 3-1 lead.
Though Cain kept the Indians off the board in five of the six innings he pitched on Wednesday, it was the walk to Carrasco –who scored his first Major League run– and the 0-2 mistake to Ramirez that put the Giants in a 3-1 hole.
In the bottom of the fifth, Giants’ center fielder Denard Span led off the inning with a solo home run off of Carrasco that landed in McCovey Cove to cut the Giants’ deficit to 3-2. Span’s splash hit was his second this season, and the 75th hit by a Giants’ player in the history of AT&T Park, so at least temporarily, the Levi’s sign hanging on the right field wall flashing the number of splash hits will look like an ode to former San Francisco pitcher Barry Zito.
As they’ve often done this season, the Giants squandered a chance at knotting the game up in the sixth inning, when left fielder Kelby Tomlinson hit into a 6-4-3 double play with runners on the corners and just one out. To make matters worse for Tomlinson, in the top of the seventh, he caught the second out of the inning, and jogged toward the dugout because he thought it was the third out. That allowed Erik Gonzalez to race from second to third, but reliever George Kontos ended up bailing his teammate out.
It was Tomlinson who ended up exiting the game in the eighth when the Giants needed a star to shine, and it was Posey who lifted his team to a second straight come-from-behind win over the reigning American League pennant winners.
“We should have been leading that game before the eighth inning and we weren’t,” Bochy said. “It took a big two-out hit form Buster to put us ahead but some guys got a start, that was a good thing.”