Giants handling pressure of playoff push
In the first three innings of Thursday’s series finale against the Seattle Mariners, the San Francisco Giants looked overwhelmed by the moment and fazed by pressure.
Rookie center fielder Mauricio Dubón committed a mental error by missing a cut-off man,
allowing the Mariners to tack on an extra run. Starting pitcher Tyler Anderson lost his composure, voiced his frustration about a call and was ejected by home plate umpire Edwin Moscoso before recording an out in the third inning. A Giants offense that has been consistent and patient throughout the season was taking bad swings and making weak contact against Mariners pitcher Nick Margevicius, who gave up seven runs in San Francisco last week.
The mistakes were uncharacteristic for a Giants team that had won 16 of its past 24 games to climb back to .500, but not unsurprising considering the club had played on just two of the previous six days due to postponements. Rust is expected after long layoffs, but for a franchise chasing its first playoff berth since 2016, it can’t last long.
Fortunately for the Giants and first-year manager Gabe Kapler, it didn’t.
Veteran infielder Wilmer Flores, who is batting .311 with an .893 OPS in innings 7-9 of games this year, delivered the goahead, two-out, two-run triple in the top of the seventh that gave the Giants a lead they wouldn’t surrender in a 6-4 win.
“I think the whole year, every game has been big,” Flores said. “We have already played those guys, I don’t think we need to put pressure on ourselves. It’s another game that we needed to win. You don’t
want to go out there thinking that we have to do things, we just have to go out there and do our thing.”
The Giants rallied for a combined five runs in the sixth and seventh innings and their bullpen tossed seven shutout innings to beat the Mariners and improve to 25-24 with 11 games to play. With 10 days left in the regular season, the Giants have little time to create separation from their competitors in the National League Wildcard standings and plenty of time to lose their grip on a postseason berth.
The schedule gets tougher as the Giants will play the A’s, Rockies and Padres in their final three series of the season, but Kapler said the team has
the proper perspective to handle adversity down the stretch.
“We are likely going to lose a game at some point during this home stretch,” Kapler said. “So rather than make every game so critical that you apply additional pressure, I think figuring out ways to relax into this and be calm through this and really just make it a normal baseball game as the pressure intensifies, that mirrors what happens in the playoffs.”
The Giants will start their three-game series in Oakland on Friday with a 1.0-game lead over the Phillies for the first Wildcard spot, but with several other playoff hopefuls in pursuit including the Cardinals, Brewers and Mets,
it’s probably too early to fret over the out-of-town scoreboard.
A Giants team that blends many veterans with valuable postseason experience including Brandon Belt, Brandon Crawford and Johnny Cueto also has an extensive group of key contributors who have never played into October. Rookies including Dubón, Friday’s starter Logan Webb, catcher Joey Bart and a long list of relief pitchers are in the midst of their first major league playoff race, so the challenge for Kapler, his coaching staff and the veterans is keeping emotions in check and ensuring the pressure doesn’t lead to critical mistakes such as the ones the Giants made Thursday.