SAN FRANCISCO — There are many ways to score in baseball. There’s the excitement of hitting a home run or the thrill of stringing together combination of base hits to get on the scoreboard.
However, in Friday night’s 6-4 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers, the San Francisco Giants scored the go-ahead run in an unorthodox way.
Three innings after the Dodgers gained a 4-2 lead with a four-run rally in the fourth, the Giants answered with one of their own in the seventh. The Giants knocked Dodgers reliever Tony Cingrani from the game after Gorkys Hernandez and Kelby Tomlinson tied the game with back-to-back RBI hits.
Pedro Baez took over with Hernandez on third and Tomlinson at second. As he delivered his second pitch to Joe Panik, he stumbled off the mound and committed a balk, which awarded Hernandez with home plate.
What a balk #Dodgers#BaezStrongpic.twitter.com/lcc9M2SXNZ
— How about just any Win ? (@EfrenAzUsa) April 28, 2018
“You don’t see it very often,” Bochy said. “It happens occasionally. It looked like his spikes caught there.”
Not only that, but Tomlinson moved up to third and scored on Panik’s sacrifice fly, putting the Giants ahead by the final score of 6-4.
“That was a big run there,” Bochy said. “And, of course, Panik came through to add another insurance run there.”
When asked if he’d seen anything similar to that, Bochy recalled that, “Casilla did that one time. We had something similar. It happens occasionally.”