Wade Jr.'s would-be home run haunted him during offseason
SCOTTSDALE, ARIZ. >> The ball hooked, hooked and hooked some more. Ten, maybe 20 feet further toward the foul pole, and LaMonte Wade Jr. would have only added to his legend of late-game heroics, propelling the Giants to the NLCS with a walkoff win in Game 5 against the Dodgers. But the ball off Wade's bat flew just far enough foul to allow Max Scherzer one more pitch.
With San Francisco trailing 2-1 and Kris Bryant on first base, Scherzer fired a 2-2 fastball high and outside. Wade left the bat on his shoulder, and home plate umpire Doug Eddings rung him up. One batter later, the Giants' magical season had come to an abrupt end against the division rival they outraced for the NL West title.
The ball was flying Saturday afternoon in the warm Arizona air at Salt River Fields in the Giants' first day game of the spring. Nobody benefitted more than the Giants lineup that had been held hitless for seven innings the night prior. Beyond Wade's 2-for-2 showing, center fielder Steven Duggar slapped a line drive home run to the deepest part of the ballpark in leftcenter field.
“Honestly, when I first got home, all I could think about for those first two weeks was that Scherzer at-bat,” Wade said Saturday afternoon, after launching a homer and ripping a triple in his first two at-bats of spring training.
WEBB, STROMAN ACE CONNECTION >> It wasn't even three weeks ago that Logan Webb and Marcus Stroman were going back and forth on Twitter about the possibility of organizing their own exhibitions here in Arizona. Anything to play competitive baseball amid a lockout that showed no signs of ending anytime soon.
At 7:05 p.m. Friday night, Webb threw the first pitch of the Giants' condensed Cactus League slate. Eight minutes later, after a 1-2-3 top half with two punchouts, the Cubs' Stroman fired his first pitch to Mike Yastrzemski. It took a little longer than they had hoped, but the two respective staff aces got what they wanted in its fullest, truest form. When players were locked out for 99 days and this first spring training game delayed by 10 days, the big news Friday was that they were playing baseball, at last.
“It's honestly perfect,” Webb said. “I was a little nervous out there. It was good to get that feeling again. I was sitting in the dugout before and there's this feeling you get in your chest. I can't really explain it. I tried to take it all in and get that feeling again.”
He started the game with a sinker. He rung up four batters with his out pitch, the changeup. And he proudly walked off the mound after recording his final strikeout with his slider, the weak link of his repertoire that he's been honing in bullpens this spring.
“There were a couple today that felt really good,” Webb said.
On March 2, Webb sent out a tweet that caught the attention of a couple players, including Stroman. Like many of his peers, Webb was in Arizona but locked out of his team's facilities, unable to organize more than glorified bullpen sessions. “Need to get some sim games going here in AZ,” Webb wrote. Stroman was game, just out of town.
The lockout ended less than a week later, so no sim games materialized. But the interaction was the birth of a bond between two hurlers with similar styles.