Little mistakes costly for Giants, Bumgarner, in close loss to Phillies
SAN FRANCISCO — Joe Panik had a split second to make a decision, and at the time he believed the Giants had just tied the score in the bottom of the eighth inning.
Imagine his surprise when left fielder Tyler Goeddel caught a sinking liner from Brandon Crawford, doubling off Panik at second base and effectively snuffing out the Giants’ best chance to get Madison Bumgarner off the hook in a 3-2 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies on Saturday night.
“It was a low-scoring game, you’ve got to be aggressive,” Panik said. “Hindsight is 20-20. You’ve got to score on that play to make it a tie game. I made the wrong choice, but I don’t know that I’d change it under the circumstances.”
Bumgarner, in falling to 8-4, sailed into the seventh inning
looking as dominant as ever with a 2-0 lead against a team that came in having lost 10 of 11. It was then that the Phillies scored on a runscoring single by Andres Blanco and a two-run home run by Cameron Rupp to knock Bumgarner from the game.
It started when Tommy Joseph, the former Giants farmhand who was part of the deal that brought Hunter Pence to the Giants, doubled down the left field line.
Bumgarner got Maikel Franco on a fly to right, with Blanco following with a ground ball that somehow eluded Bumgarner’s glove, and also narrowly got past Crawford at shortstop. It brought home Joseph to make the score 2-1.
Against Rupp, Bumgarner fell behind 3-0 but worked the count to 3-2, only to have Rupp crush a fastball over the center field fence to give the Phillies the lead and eventually the game.
“The ground ball up the middle, I should have caught,” Bumgarner said. “I don’t know how I missed it. I felt like I had it the whole way. That could have changed the inning there.”
As for the pitch to Rupp, Bumgarner, like Panik, had no real regrets. He didn’t want to walk Rupp and put the lead runner on base, so he went after him.
“I had to go after it, and he got it,” Bumgarner said. “It wasn’t a great pitch, but you don’t want to walk him, either.”
Bochy, who is sitting on 799 wins as the Giants manager, wasn’t about to throw either Panik or Bumgarner under the bus for mistakes made for the right reasons, even if the result turned out all wrong.
“It’s (Panik’s) read and the ball was hit well,” Bochy said. “He had his mind made up that the ball was going to drop and it didn’t. The left fielder made a nice play.”
As for Bumgarner, Bochy said, “He threw well. That was a pretty good effort he gave us. Just made a mistake there. The guy hit it out to the big part of the park. That was the difference.”
The three earned runs by the Phillies snapped a streak of 12 consecutive games by Bumgarner in which he had given up two earned runs or less. He gave up five hits, walked one and struck out seven in 61⁄3 innings.
Jeremy Hellickson (5-6) was the winning pitcher for the Phillies, giving up five hits and one earned run in six innings for his first win since May 18. Philadelphia got one inning of scoreless relief from three relievers — Edubray Ramos, David Hernandez and Jeanmar Gomez — with Gomez picking up his 20th save.
Until they broke through in the seventh, the closest the Phillies came to scoring was in the fifth when Franco reached third after a double and a wild pitch. Philadelphia, however, came up empty.
Bumgarner got Andres Blanco on a fly to center — with Franco holding at third — and then retired Rupp on a grounder to Crawford with the infield in. Jimmy Paredes then grounded to Crawford to end the inning.
The Giants scored in the second inning on Joseph’s error at first base on a ground ball from Gregor Blanco, scoring Buster Posey from third, and again in the third on Posey’s sacrifice fly, scoring Panik.
The Giants (48-28) lost a chance to pick up another game on the Dodgers, who lost to Pittsburgh. They remain seven games in front of the National League West.
Bumgarner threw 107 pitches, 71 for strikes. He has thrown at least 100 pitches in his last 12 starts, the longest such streak in the majors.
Relievers George Kontos and Hunter Strickland were unscored upon in the last 22⁄3 innings after Bumgarner departed. Bochy opted to rest Santiago Casilla and Cory Gearrin, who had each pitched in three consecutive games.
Sergio Romo (flexor strain) will pitch Sunday in a rehab start for Class-A San Jose in Stockton. Romo has missed 67 games.