Say what? L.A. base hit also a game-ending out
Tim Hudson has 215 wins, the most among active pitchers, and Saturday’s ended unlike any other.
A walk-off single by the other team.
“Oh, yeah. I don’t care how it looks,” said Hudson, elated to earn his first win of the year.
The Giants beat the Angels 5-4 in a game featuring home runs by three MVPs (and Brandon Crawford) and ending on a groundball that hit a runner, the first time in
five years a big-league game ended in such an odd fashion.
Poor Taylor Featherston, a rookie who had entered as a pinch-runner moments earlier and failed to stay clear of Matt Joyce’s sharp grounder to the right side. By rule, it was a dead ball and scored as a single for Joyce. Featherston was out, the putout going to the nearest defensive player, second baseman Joe Panik.
Panik won Friday’s series opener with a game-ending liner through the middle. He won Saturday’s matinee by simply standing there.
“Good for us, bad for them,” Hudson said. “But like I said, we’ll take it any way we can get it.”
It was the first game that ended with a runner hit by a batted ball since June 27, 2010, when the Pirates visited Oakland and Pedro Alvarez got in the way of a ball hit by Jose Tabata. The grateful A’s won 3-2.
On Saturday, Panik was probably in position to make the final play. The way it ended simply provided further drama to a game that had plenty already, much of it involving Mike Trout and Albert Pujols, the Angels’ dynamic duo.
Both homered off Hudson, the only two hits permitted by the 39-year-old, and there’s no shame in that. One’s in the 500- homer club. The other seems destined to join him. It was the 20th time that both homered in the same game, the first this year. Both homers were hit a long, long way. “What’re you talking about? They were paint-scrapers, they barely got it,” Hudson quipped. “No, you know, they’re two pretty good hitters.”
It was reliever Sergio Romo’s turn to face Trout and Pujols during a busy ninth inning. Hudson was pulled after walking the first batter, and Romo got a quick forceout. Trout, who struck out on a Romo slider Friday, singled to left, setting up Romo against Pujols.
Romo froze him with a fastball for strike three, a flashback to the 2012 World Series when Romo retired another eminent power hitter, Miguel Cabrera, with a similar pitch to finish a sweep of the Tigers.
“Everyone’s a dangerous at-bat, but those guys more so than others in a sense,” Romo said of Trout and Pujols. “Those guys are game-changers. You can be a little bit more amped up. I’m trying to be competitive with everybody. I’m pretty passionate about what I do. Facing those guys could add a little more.”
From there, the Angels got three straight hits — and lost. Kole Calhoun singled off Jeremy Affeldt, and David Freese singled off Santiago Casilla. Suddenly, 5-2 became 5-4 with the possible tying run at third. Featherston ran for Freese and moments later was the most embarrassed fellow in China Basin.
For the Giants, Buster Posey and Crawford homered, Nori Aoki hit a two-run single and Casey McGehee had a seasonhigh three hits and played perfect defense at third base in his best all-around game with the Giants.