Panik gets big hits, takes a hit in split
WASHINGTON — Joe Panik played all 20 innings Sunday and would have been excused for exiting after 13.
The Giants’ second baseman was shaken when clobbered on the head on a strange play in which he and the ball simultaneously arrived at the plate in the second game of a day-night doubleheader.
The Giants are going nowhere this season. A concussion derailed Panik’s 2016 season. Yet he stuck around and wound up reaching base seven times in 10 plate appearances. Despite the effort, the Giants dropped the nightcap 6-2 in 11 innings to the Nationals and finished the day with a split.
In the opener, the Giants’ Chris Stratton made his third big-league start and pitched 62⁄3 scoreless innings in a 4-2 victory.
“All the (concussion) issues I had last year, they’re nonexistent right now,” Panik said. “You never know what could happen moving forward, waking up the next morning, but right now, I’m good to go.”
Panik, who homered in Saturday night’s series opener, went 3-for-4 with a walk in Sunday’s first game and 2-for-4 with a walk in the second. He drove in half of the Giants’ six runs.
The only time Panik had a chance to score, in the fourth in-
ning of the nightcap, he got drilled. He doubled, moving Denard Span to third. Span scored on Hunter Pence’s single, and Panik tried to do so as well. But three mighty forces — outfielder Michael A. Taylor’s throw, catcher Matt Wieters’ mitt and Panik’s face — converged, and Panik was out.
He said he didn’t know if the ball first hit him on the side of the face or his helmet. Either way, it knocked out his left contact, and he stayed on the ground a few moments.
Last year, Panik was beaned (by then-Tampa Bay pitcher Matt Moore) but played another week and a half before spending a month on the concussion disabled list. He returned to hit .215 the final 57 games and didn’t fully recover until the winter.
On Sunday, Panik passed the concussion protocol — even wagging his finger in front of his eyes while on the field — and said he feels nothing like he felt last year and will be more cautious this time.
“I’m going to keep monitoring it and be more honest,” he said.
The Nationals won the nightcap on Howie Kendrick’s walk-off grand slam off Albert Suarez, who gave up singles to Daniel Murphy and Ryan Zimmerman and intentionally walked Anthony Rendon.
Moore pitched seven innings to match Max Scherzer, a two-time Cy Young Award winner, giving up solo homers to Murphy and Zimmerman. Pablo Sandoval hit a homer to the upper deck, his first since returning to the Giants, to tie the score 2-2.
Moore, who entered with a majors-worst 5.88 ERA, said things he worked on panned out.
“It’s not so much mechanical as much as pace and effort,” he said. “I think at times, I grip the ball a little too tight and try to force something instead of allow it to happen.”
Scherzer struck out at least 10 batters for the 62nd time in his career. In the opener, Stratton did it for the first time. The only batter he walked was his last one. He threw 109 pitches and scattered five hits, not more than one in an inning.
“I’m getting a little older now,” said Stratton, the Giants’ top draft pick in 2012 who turns 27 on Aug. 22. “There have been ups and downs, and I’ve been through a lot of it. A lot of it prepared me for days like today. You have to stay levelheaded because this game can humble you real quick.”
Manager Bruce Bochy said all four of Stratton’s pitches work in the majors.
“It’s about commanding the ball and having the confidence you can pitch up here,” Bochy said. “Hopefully, this is a game he realizes how good his stuff is and his pitchability up here.”
Hunter Strickland pitched in both games and got booed in both by fans recalling his May 29 brawl with Bryce Harper. Strickland gave up a two-run homer to Rendon in the opener and pitched a scoreless ninth in the nightcap.