Posey’s walk-off single lifts Giants over Dodgers
SAN FRANCISCO — Buster Posey threw his bat twice in the Giants’ 5-4, 10-inning victory Saturday night.
The first time was a fluke. It slipped out of his hands, caught in the netting behind home plate and remained suspended 20 feet off the ground like a moth in a spider web. At the end of the first inning, stadium workers brought out an orange ladder to retrieve it.
The second time was frustration. Posey scorched a line drive that found the glove of Dodgers shortstop Corey Seager in the eighth. He threw his bat, intentionally this time, as if he had just four-putted — a reminder that even a player as decorated, accomplished and confident as Posey needs validation once in a while.
“As much as I tell myself that I hit it hard and did everything right, you want the positive result,” Posey said. “That’s truly the greatest challenge as a hitter: to understand that even though the box score doesn’t look the way you want, it’s so important to maintain that positive attitude through 162 games.
“You never know when it’ll flip the other way.”
It could happen in your next at-bat.
At the end of an exhausting game against their archrivals, most of which they played from their heels, the Giants and their franchise star received their validation. After letting two leads slip away, they wrote their own ending.
They scored twice against Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen and formed an ant colony around Posey after his top-spun single delivered the Giants a comeback victory at AT&T Park.
Giants manager Bruce Bochy, who seldom speaks in absolutes, reflexively agreed: This was his team’s best victory of the season.
“I’d say so,” Bochy said. “I mean, with losing a tough one the night before, we had a lead, we lost it, then to come back against one of the better closers in the game, sure, I’d say so. Playing the Dodgers, exciting game, the fans were into it — yeah, I’d put that at the top, if not the top.”
The Giants expended so much effort and extended so much care to secure a victory. Bochy turned the seventh inning into a long march without provisions, using five relievers and still losing the lead when Cory Gearrin issued a basesloaded walk.
Santiago Casilla came through his personal wall of flames in the ninth, preserving a tie when he induced a double-play grounder from Justin Turner, the same Muppet-orange bearded hitter who hit the winning home run off him the previous night.
They had scraped up two leads, failed to hold them both, and it left them to rely on a rookie making his first home appearance. Bochy had Chris Stratton remaining to pitch the 10th, and the right-hander’s second pitch was a changeup off the plate that nevertheless allowed Adrian Gonzalez to extend his arms.
Left fielder Jarrett Parker gave his best volleyball jump, extending his glove 2 feet over the fence. It was not far enough, and when the ball ricocheted off a railing and back onto the field, Parker angrily slung it over the bullpen mounds.
It appeared the Giants would walk out of China Basin having used every arm, and holding nothing in their hands.
Instead, Stratton found himself lured into the shower and bracing himself against a deluge of very cheap, very cold beer. That’s the custom when a kid picks up his first big league win.
Bochy lauded Stratton’s toughness for bearing down after the inning began with a home run and a single. Pitching coach Dave Righetti made a mound visit to remind the rookie to hold down the damage.
“I went 1-2-3 after that,” Stratton said. “So … good mound visit.”
“That’s not the first time Gonzalez has taken someone the other way,” said Bochy, after his club re-established a four-game lead in the N.L. West. “He could have gotten unraveled. But he kept his poise and kept it a one-run game and ends up getting a win out of it.”
It took the Giants (3726) upending Jansen in a save opportunity for the first time in more than two years. They had three hits through nine innings. Against one of the game’s best closers, they strung together four.
Denard Span hit a oneout double and scored the tying run when Joe Panik dumped a single to left field. Brandon Belt blooped another hit in front of the Dodgers’ no-doubles defense. Then Posey sent a sellout crowd howling into the night, rapping the game winner up the middle.
Posey’s winning swing came with a new bat. The first one, for all its aerodynamic attributes, “had to take a timeout,” he said.
Outfielder Angel Pagan n (hamstring) went 1 for 3 with a single in his first rehab game for Triple-A Sacramento at El Paso. … Right-hander Sergio Romo (elbow) began lightly throwing on the mound but remains “a ways away,” Bochy said. … The club plans to activate right-hander Matt Cain (hamstring) from the disabled list to start Monday against the Milwaukee Brewers.