RUNS NEEDED
For the Giants to succeed in playoffs, relievers will require a cushion
SAN FRANCISCO — An empty champagne bottle sat on Bruce Bochy’s desk. Outside his office, down the hallway, the home clubhouse at AT&T Park was a sticky mist. Bochy, in his damp T-shirt, leaned back in his chair. The Giants’ manager looked as drained as the bottle.
“It’s different how we got here this time, how we struggled to get here,” Bochy said. “But it’s special. That’s our way, with our backs against the wall.”
Not just “against” the wall. The Giants were backed so far into the wall that they created dents. Over the past two months, there were times when we all wondered — and Bochy
himself had to wonder — if this sort of champagne day would ever arrive.
But it did. The Giants’ rolling-momentum 7-1 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers on Sunday finished off a series sweep that allowed Bochy’s team to leave behind a summer of near-collapse and clinch one of the two wild-card spots available in the National League playoffs.
That was the clinical news. But this was also an aesthetically pleasing clinch. On a brilliant, high-def postcard Bay Area afternoon that had a little bit of everything — including a warm “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” singalong as a seventh-inning stretch salute to retiring Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully — the Giants jumped out to an early 5-0 lead and kept down the accelerator to the finish.
Entering the weekend, Bochy was convinced that his team would have to win all three games against the Dodgers to guarantee itself a wild-card playoff spot — and he turned out to be right. But for followers of the Giants or simply casual bystanders, here are the four most important points to note moving forward:
1. By winning Sunday, the Giants avoided a tiebreaking playoff game in St. Louis that would have been played Monday, which would have been a terrible development for all mankind.
2. The next playoff step will be Wednesday afternoon in New York City when the Giants confront a win-orgo-home wild-card playoff game against the Mets. The Giants will have their ace pitcher, Madison Bumgarner, on the mound. Back in 2014, Bumgarner was in the exact same situation and shut out the Pittsburgh Pirates to launch the Giants on their third World Series title run in five years, allowing them to keep their even-year championship streak (2010, 2012, 2014) alive.
3. If the Giants do win Wednesday, they will advance to Chicago and begin the best-of-five National League Division Series with the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field on Friday. The Cubs, baseball’s franchise of lovable doom and curses aplenty, must already be staring at the calendar and wishing it were an odd year.
4. To have any hope of winning another World Series, however, the Giants must make use of a different formula than they largely used in the last three championship runs. Which we will allow Giants’ outfielder Hunter Pence and his distinctive nuclear hairstyle to explain.
“If we play like we did today,” said Pence amid Sunday’s celebration, “we’re pretty good.”
It wasn’t just Sunday. It was all last week. In winning five of the season’s final six games, including the weekend sweep of the Dodgers, the secret to the Giants’ success was to never reach the final innings in perilous shape. In all five victories, they had at least a three-run lead going into the ninth — and it usually was much larger, such as Sunday’s six-run lead.
That is in sharp contrast to much of the season’s second half, which the Giants entered with Major League Baseball’s best record, only to see it melt down painfully. On so many nights, the Giants entered the ninth inning with a one-run or two-run lead and proceeded to have their bullpen leak oil and lose the game.
The best way to avoid that? Pound out the runs early and often, then pound out some more. That gives the relief pitcher assigned closing duties — Sergio Romo and Santiago Casilla did it the past week — so much more leeway and comfort and margin for error.
“It takes a little pressure off the pitching staff,” agreed Giants shortstop Brandon Crawford.
Bochy heard plenty of questions about his bullpen options during the team’s slump. But he always maintained, as he did again Sunday, that the bigger issue was an inability of the Giants to take a tworun lead and build it into a five- or six-run lead over the middle innings.
“That’s what got away from us in the second half, the adding on,” Bochy said. “We just had trouble putting numbers on the board.”
Sunday, the Giants’ two runs in the first inning were followed by three runs in the second and two more in the eighth. The math is so simple. But for two months, the Giants had been turning simple math into unsolvable calculus. They either didn’t bear down in middle-inning at-bats after taking a lead, or they gripped their bats too tight, or they made baserunning errors that eliminated potential runs and brought the Giants to the ninth with dread along for the ride.
In their 2014 division series against Washington, all three Giants’ victories were by one run. That isn’t likely going to work this time. Bochy acknowledged that in the postseason, every opposing pitcher will be a load to handle, beginning with the Mets’ Noah Syndergaard on Wednesday. But in past postseasons, the Giants have found a way to score enough runs against baseball’s best arms. This time, they must score even more.
Pence is not too worried about the details.
“We know that atmosphere,” Pence said. “That’s the beauty of it. I think this is a group with a tendency to handle the big moments.”
The next big moments are Wednesday in New York. The Giants must win for there to be more baseball at AT&T Park in 2016. But the same was true in 2014, when they headed to Pittsburgh. That turned out pretty well. The Giants won, 8-0. If they score eight runs again for Bumgarner, you can clear space on the manager’s desk for more empty bottles.