‘A wild day for sure’ has S.F. prevail in 13
GIANTS 9, ANGELS 3
ANAHEIM — With such a terrific pitching matchup Wednesday at Angel Stadium, of course the game wound up with neither starter factoring, unless you count the ramifications the Angels faced for using Shohei Ohtani to hit for himself, forfeiting their DH the entire game.
For the first time, an NL team employed a DH while its AL opponent did not.: Ohtani hit second in the Angels lineup and went 0for3 against Giants starter Kevin Gausman, which left the Angels using pitchers to hit in extra innings — which is when the Giants pulled off a 93 victory, improving their majorleague best record to 4826.
“It was a wild day for sure,” said outfielder Steven Duggar, who had the two biggest hits in extra innings. “Wild, wild finish.”
The runner placed at second base was supposed to help avoid long extrainning affairs, but not so Wednesday. The teams traded runs in the 12th before the Giants went ahead again on Brandon Crawford’s basesloaded walk in the 13th and then added another on a wild pitch — helped along because the Angels had an outfielder, Taylor Ward (a catcher in the minors), behind the plate after using their second catcher, Max Stassi, as a pinchhitter
thanks to being DHless.
Duggar then added a tworun single to right, and Mike Tauchman crushed a threerun homer.
The Giants had been 0for11 with runners in scoring position after failing to score in the 10th and 11th despite the runner placed at second. Finally, in the 12th, Duggar doubled in Donovan Solano to give San Francisco the lead, but the team couldn’t add on and the Angels tied it up again when Juan Lagares sent José Iglesias in with a bouncer up the middle that ticked off Dominic Leone’s leg and trickled too far away from Crawford for him to make a play on the ball.
For a few minutes, the Angels thought they’d won, because Lagares was ruled safe at the plate on Luis Rengifo’s grounder, but Buster Posey clearly tagged Lagares before he crossed the plate and the call was reversed on replay review.
“That was the most tense moment of the game,” manager Gabe Kapler said.
“You never know in that situation,” Duggar said. “Thankfully they got the call right, we kept the momentum and we were able to scratch a few across later.”
The Giants had to escape a hairy situation in the 10th. With the bases loaded and one out, Zack Littell got pinchhitter Stassi to strike out and Anthony Rendon bounced out to end the inning.
The Angels then had to use Ward at catcher when Kurt Suzuki left after taking a foul ball off the mask in the 12th, and pitcher Griffin Canning had to play left. In the 12th, with two outs and one on, starter Dylan Bundy had to hit and struck out to end the inning.
In the eighth, Giants first baseman Brandon Belt bunted against the shift for a single, this time with two strikes in the eighth. Belt went to third on a twoout hit by Solano and tried to score on an overthrow, but he was out at the plate and collapsed in a heap with a knee injury; he will get an MRI on Thursday.
The Giants made Ohtani work hard, throwing a seasonhigh 105 pitches in six innings, the second most he’s thrown in his career. Mike Yastrzemski provided all the Giants’ scoring off him, with a solo shot in the fifth, and Alex Dickerson chipped in with three hits, becoming the first player with three hits in a game off Ohtani, according to MLB’s Sarah Langs.
In the first inning, Gausman got Ohtani to ground out on a splitter, then he struck him out twice with the same pitch.
“He’s a great pitcher, and his splitter was moving in a way that I haven’t really seen recently,” Ohtani said. “He got the best of us.”
Gausman, like Ohtani a likely AllStar, went seven innings and allowed four hits and a walk while striking out nine; the only run off him was a homer by Luis Rengifo. Gausman’s ERA dipped to 1.49.
Ohtani’s hitting role entailed one unusual moment; he forgot he had his batting gloves, presumably covered with pine tar, in his back pocket when he took the mound in the second, and he had to summon a bat boy out to toss him the gloves. Otherwise, all spot checks went smoothly at Anaheim for a second consecutive game, and Ohtani was particularly on board, presenting his cap and glove and unbuckling his belt all with a big smile, a nod and a “thank you!” to the umpires.