For the better part of the last two weeks, former Giants’ catcher Hector Sanchez has tormented his former team.
In the past 10 days, Sanchez has launched three home runs against San Francisco, and upped his career average against the orange and black to .478. So it was only fitting that for the Giants to finally overcome the Padres on Saturday, it required a former Padres’ catcher giving his old squad a taste of its own medicine.
Giants’ reserve catcher Nick Hundley spent the first seven seasons of his career in San Diego, before playing two seasons in Colorado and finally making his way to San Francisco. On Saturday, the Giants were happy to have him on their side.
In the bottom half of the 12th inning, Hundley delivered a walkoff single to plate Kelby Tomlinson and push the Giants past the Padres by a final score of 5-4.
Hundley’s game-winning hit was one of the most important knocks of the season for a San Francisco team that remains 23 games under .500 and five games back of the fourth-place Padres in the National League West. Even though San Diego entered the season expecting to finish at the bottom of the division, the Padres had exerted a level of dominance over the Giants prior to Saturday, winning eight of the first 11 matchups between the two teams this season.
“We haven’t played well against the Padres, whether that’s us, or them, you know I think it’s a combination of both,” Hundley said. “You’ve got to give them credit, too. They play hard, they’ve got a lot of young guys who play hard.”
Though San Francisco knows it’s resigned to spending October at home –and has known that for the past two months– manager Bruce Bochy is routinely impressed with the fight his team has put up in the face of adversity. And on Saturday, the wave of adversity San Francisco faced was as tall as the mavericks down in Half Moon Bay.
The Giants began the day caught up in the current, after playing a near-five-hour contest on Friday evening only to fall to San Diego in 11 innings. On top of that, the Giants used all seven relievers on their roster last night, including George Kontos and Kyle Crick, a pair of arms Bochy wanted to give a day of rest. To make matters more challenging, the Giants were starting lefty Matt Moore, who entered Saturday’s contest with the highest ERA among all qualifying National League starters. And because San Francisco played past midnight on Friday, Bochy elected to give a few of his regulars a day off on Saturday.
So to recount: The Giants are awful against the Padres, they were starting a struggling pitcher, they had a short-handed bullpen, they were without a handful of regulars, and of course, Saturday’s game went into extra innings.
Yet, somehow, some way, the Giants battled back, and it started with a fourth-inning comeback. Trailing 4-1 in the fourth, San Francisco could have packed it in, but a rally at the bottom of the order helped the Giants put a three spot on the board in frame that ultimately helped define the ballgame.
“Without question, how we bounced back there, it was critical,” Bochy said. “When you lose a game the way we did last night, you get a day game the next day after going to extra innings, a lot of times the team that gets ahead, the other team has a tendency to get a little flat there but I’m just proud of how they bounced back.”
After the Giants’ offense showed resilience, Moore recovered following a blowup top of the fourth in which he allowed four runs. In the fifth and sixth innings, Moore put a pair of zeroes on the scoreboard, and Bochy said after the game he even considered sending his starter back out for the seventh if he wasn’t due up to hit.
“I think it was important,” Moore said. “It was a bad fourth inning. That wound up being the reason for the extra innings, that wound up being the reason for me coming out of the game in the sixth inning right there. That wound up being a pretty big moment.”
When Bochy finally did turn the game over to his bullpen, the first arm he called upon was Albert Suarez, who arrived on Saturday morning to take Steven Okert’s spot on the 25-man roster. Suarez has battled injuries this season, and his ability to make an impact on his first day back at the Major League level was crucial for the Giants.
“He (Suarez) gave us what we needed, a little shot in the arm there in the seventh and eighth,” Bochy said. “He had good stuff, the velo there was good, good breaking stuff.”
Though the Giants’ offense failed to score for seven straight innings after a three-run fourth, relievers Sam Dyson, Hunter Strickland and Josh Osich followed Suarez and kept a Padres’ offense that’s crushed San Francisco’s pitching staff this season off the board.
“All the way through. Matty Moore threw a great game,” Hundley said. “Six quality innings. Obviously one bad pitch to the pitcher and a couple RBIs but to throw up 11 zeroes as a unit, that’s outstanding. Albert Suarez threw the ball really well. That was impressive.”
While Bochy tried to end the game sooner by calling starters like Brandon Crawford, Denard Span and Buster Posey off the bench in the late innings, the Giants’ offense failed to capitalize on opportunities in the eighth, ninth and 11th innings when the team put leadoff runners on base.
Nevertheless, Hundley —who started in place of Posey– gave the Giants the type of lift they’re accustomed to receiving from their All-Star.
“He’s the best in the world, so no,” Hundley said, when asked if he feels like he has to match Posey’s offensive production. “I just try to be myself and try to, when I play, to make sure that he doesn’t have to play. He’s such a stalwart behind the plate, so the days that he does get off, I try to keep him out of the game.”
On Saturday, Hundley’s ability to be himself meant staying inside a Kevin Quackenbush breaking ball, and driving home the game-winning run in one of the Giants’ most resilient wins of the season. After playing 23 innings in a 22-hour span, the Giants were victorious, and that’s all that mattered.
“It’s good to see how they bounced back and I can tell you this, there were two tired teams out there, but they kept fighting, both clubs, a hard-fought game and it was a great win for us after losing a very tough one last night,” Bochy said.