Duggar has two doubles, scores twice; Lowrie hurt
Giants fans were not alone getting antsy to see Steven Duggar. A fellow named Madison Bumgarner was, too.
“I’m glad he’s here,” Bumgarner said after Duggar, Reyes Moronta, Buster Posey and Pablo Sandoval all had a hand in the Giants’ 7-1 victory over the A’s at AT&T Park in the first Bay Bridge Series game Friday night.
“I was waiting. A lot of people were. A lot of people were excited to see what Duggar could do,” said Bumgarner, who had a pretty good game himself.
Duggar was in the “middle of everything,” as manager Bruce Bochy put it. Duggar doubled and scored the Giants’ first run on a balk by A’s starter Edwin Jackson, walked and scored the go-ahead run in the sixth on one of two RBI hits by Posey, then had the big hit in a five-run seventh, a two-run, bases-loaded double.
Even making an out in the first inning, Duggar forced Jackson to throw 11 pitches.
The Giants played a nearflawless game against a team as hot as a comet and grabbed a win they frankly needed more than Oakland, which lost for the sixth time in 25 games.
The A’s loss was compounded by an injury to their newly minted All-Star, second baseman Jed Lowrie, who sustained what the A’s described as a bone bruise and a calf bruise in his left leg when right fielder Stephen Piscotty slammed into him in the third inning as both tried to catch an Alen Hanson pop-up.
Lowrie stayed in the game
“Those are the situations we’ve been coming through pretty well in here recently. Seventh and eighth inning, we’ve been pretty good . ... That was kind of where the game was swung.”
Bob Melvin, A’s manager, on his team’s failure to score despite having the bases loaded with no outs in the seventh
until the fifth, when the leg tightened, but he hopes he avoided serious injury.
“It feels better now than it did when I came out of the game,” Lowrie said. “So hopefully that’s a good sign.”
The A’s went down on three hits, including Chad Pinder’s tying homer in the fifth against Bumgarner. Their third hit was a Piscotty single leading off the seventh that began a sequence that led to an escape act that saved the game for San Francisco.
Bumgarner followed the single by walking Matt Olson and Matt Chapman to load the bases with nobody out and the Giants leading 2-1.
Bochy called upon the rookie Moronta to preserve the lead, or at worst hold Oakland to the tying run.
Moronta struck out Pinder for the first out and retired pinch-hitter Nick Martini to strand all three runners. In between, Sandoval, the Giants’ third baseman, saved Moronta with a diving catch on Jonathan Lucroy’s missile down the line that would have scored at least two.
Bochy has placed a lot of faith in Moronta, which is easy to do because he throws 98 mph and has the good offspeed stuff to back it up.
Bumgarner paid Moronta a great compliment, saying he pitches differently knowing Moronta is warming up. Bumgarner felt he did not have to give in to Chapman with two on, knowing if he walked him Moronta had the stuff to bail him out.
“Those are the situations we’ve been coming through pretty well in here recently,” A’s manager Bob Melvin said. “Seventh and eighth inning, we’ve been pretty good. He made some good pitches (and he’s) got a good arm. That was kind of where the game was swung.”
Until the big seventh inning, the Giants had their customary trouble scoring runs. Their only run in the first five innings scored when Jackson caught his spikes on the mound while trying to throw a 3-2 pitch to Brandon Crawford and held the ball, a balk that allowed Duggar to score from third.
Bumgarner allowed the one run in six-plus innings, rebounding from a bad start against the Cardinals to get his third win. Bumgarner also hit his two hardest balls of the season, both outs.