The Giants pulled off one of their more improbable victories tonight, edging the Mets in a weird and wacky contest. New York starter Tijuan Walker was overpowering, his only blemish a solo shot from Kris Bryant in the 4th, but was inexplicably pulled by manager Luis Rojas in the 7th with two on and two out. Brandon Crawford then roped an RBI double that scored both runners and gave the Giants the 3-2 lead they would not relinquish. It's not like they didn't try. Two muffed pop flies in the 9th brought Pete Alonso up with two outs and the bases loaded, but an unflappable Jake McGee got the final out.
Johnny Cueto got the start and looked like he'd get the final out of the 5th but a Bryant error extended the inning and ended his night. Tony Watson gave up a run in the 6th but otherwise the bullpen was superb, particularly Tyler Rogers in the 8th. McGee really had to dig deep after the fielding miscues and he got it done. The story in New York will be Rojas' quick hook--Walker had only thrown 74 pitches--but the story here is another great effort by the Giants. They turned five double plays! They only got four hits! BCraw's double off reliever Aaron Loup was the first extra-base hit he's allowed to a lefty hitter all season.
Alex Wood goes tomorrow at 4:10 PT.
Go Giants!
--M.C.
p.s. That's win 82 which was my goal for this season. Good thing I like to revise and update my goals!
3 comments:
An issue I see with the sloppy fielding is that McGee had to throw 24 pitches. As the giants do not have a day off and the Braves have 2 days off, that could loom large. Also Belt will not be available at least for some of the games vs. Atlanta. Another win during a Casali start. Perhaps if Bryant had not made the error and allowed another player to come up Alvarez would have pitched an inning instead of Watson. Tonight the Dodgers and the Padres are playing a wild one. I think the bums no hit the Pads in relief for 9 plus innings until Tatis homered to tie it up, but the dodgers are again trying to break the game open. Dodger manager had their pitcher purposely balk with a man on second so he would not relay the signs to Tatis. It backfired as Tatis homered anyway. But my hope is that both of those teams will be more than tired. Hard to believe Muncy so far is 0-7. This is the same guy that the giants cannot get out. Padres used up all their position players too early and the bums were able to intentionally walk a lot of batters to face the Padres pinch hitting pitchers. Of course the giants cannot do that, because pitchers hit the giants better than position players.
It took the Dodgers 16 innings just to keep pace with the Giants.
The Padres ran out of hitters, and had to pinch hit pitchers in key extra-inning situations. Dave Roberts had a lot of strategies up his sleeve and they worked out for him, although the intentional balk did not do what he had hoped. Interesting to see Shaun Anderson pitching for the Padres. How many times in extra innings with a man on third did batters hit ground balls directly to the pitcher? Had to be the longest game since they instituted starting with a man on second, but I did not look it up to verify. What happened to the clutch hitting Padres? I still can't get over the 0 for 7 for Muncy. Giants need to watch the tapes of that game.
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