On a bit of a roll, S.F. isn’t playing spoiler just yet
Madison Bumgarner and Buster Posey have been inseparable since 2010, one of baseball’s premier pitcher-catcher tandems and locker mates at the far end of the Giants’ clubhouse.
On Tuesday night, Bumgarner took the mound to “Fire on the Mountain,” as usual, but with a new twist. He was the only player in uniform who had been part of all three of the Giants’ World Series championships.
With Posey in Vail, Colo., recovering from Monday’s hip surgery, Bumgarner teamed with catcher Nick Hundley and pitched seven scoreless innings, repeatedly pitching in and out of trouble, in one of the most intense and memorable games of the season.
The Giants beat the Dia-
mondbacks 1-0 on Gorkys Hernandez’s sharp, pinch-hit single in the ninth inning that scored Steven Duggar from second base. Duggar was hurting with a left shoulder bruise after diving into second base moments earlier, but it didn’t prevent him from scoring with ease.
“There was this feeling around the dugout we were going to win this game,” Duggar said. “I got the vibe from everybody, the way guys were carrying themselves. There was just this sense we’d put something together and get out of here.”
Duggar had been heading first to third on Hundley’s single, then changed his mind and returned to second. He said his shoulder momentarily popped out when second baseman Ketel Marte applied a tag.
“When I felt it come out, I couldn’t feel like I could move,” said Duggar, who’ll be re-evaluated Wednesday, “but when I started to roll over, I felt it go in. When I was sitting there, I started moving it around, and it felt all right. So there was no way I was coming out of this game.”
Bumgarner did a splendid job of run prevention, getting big outs in traffic, especially in his final three innings when he faced a whopping 11 batters with runners in scoring position.
In the fifth, the Diamondbacks had a runner on third with one out and didn’t score.
In the sixth, they loaded the bases with one out. Third baseman Evan Longoria fielded Marte’s grounder and got the force at home, and Brandon Belt dived for Hundley’s offline throw to first, saving a run. Bumgarner retired Jeff Mathis on a fly to end the inning. In the seventh, Jon Jay was at third base with one out, thanks to left fielder Austin Slater, who dropped a routine fly, then slipped and literally kicked the ball toward the wall. Bumgarner got Paul Goldschmidt to pop up and Eduardo Escobar to ground out.
That left Bumgarner at 107 pitches, more than half of which (58) came in his final three innings. It was enough for manager Bruce Bochy to summon Sam Dyson for the eighth, another inning that wasn’t easy for the Giants.
With two outs, Ahmed tried scoring from first on David Peralta’s single, and it backfired. Showing athleticism not seen from other Giants center fielders of late, Duggar cut off the ball in the gap and quickly got it to shortstop Brandon Crawford, whose throw home was high but in plenty of time for Hundley to tag Ahmed for the final out.
“I’ve got to play with him enough where I’m starting to expect that kind of stuff out of him,” Bumgarner said of Duggar. “I definitely love having him out there. Me, personally, I don’t care if he ever gets a hit — I love him in center field. Anything else he does is a positive.”
The Giants had far fewer scoring chances — 1-for-6 with runners in scoring position compared with Arizona’s 1for-10 — but shut out the firstplace Diamondbacks in the first two games of the series, and Bochy rejected a question about whether the Giants have become spoilers.
“I hope we’re not being called that right now,” said Bochy, whose team has won five of six games, two started by Bumgarner. “I don’t know if we are or not, but I don’t like it. it just means it hasn’t gone very well for you.” John Shea is The San Francisco Chronicle’s national baseball writer. Email: jshea@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JohnSheaHey