A highly-tense, extremely dramatic, nail-biting 9-run win.
Some games don’t go according to the plan. Or the backup plan, for that matter. Some games simply don’t follow any plan at all, or even any script that you’ve read before. Such was the case for the San Francisco Giants on Tuesday night, in a highly memorable victory over the Chicago Cubs, which somehow was both the most tense nail-biter they’ve played all year, and also the largest margin of victory (or defeat) that they’ve been involved in all year.
The plan, as Buster Posey made no attempt to hide months ago, was to win with starting pitching and defense. This game did not go according to that plan.
It wasn’t a game that was antithetical to the plan, mind you, just … dismissive of it. The defense was fine, especially in comparison to Monday’s clank-mitt affair; they only committed one error this time, courtesy of backup backup second baseman Brett Wisely. Justin Verlander was fine, if far from dominant, allowing eight baserunners and three runs while fighting to get through five innings (a stat line that, importantly, looks much better when remembering that the Cubs have the best offense in baseball).
That feels right. The Giants rotation entered the game 18th in the Majors in ERA (albeit fifth in FIP). Their mitts ranked 20th in the Majors in Defensive Runs Saved. Those numbers are good enough to give them a chance in many games (as was the case on Tuesday), but not good enough to make them a team that wins far more games than they lose (as the Giants have done this year).
So we move to the backup plan. The backup plan, as revealed through the first month-and-a-half of the season, is to have a nearly impenetrable bullpen, and essentially reduce each game to five innings of defense and nine innings of offense. The backup plan has served them nicely, and it’s not hard to see why. They have two All-Star closers, plus a submarine who is second in the Majors in appearances over the last five years, while sporting a 2.84 ERA. They have a fourth reliever who is probably better than those first three. They have a lefty killer. They have their two best starting pitcher prospects since Madison Bumgarner. And the mop-up duty, eighth-arm-in-the-pen has a career 3.14 ERA.
It’s a damn good backup plan, but there are two potential obstacles with relying on a bullpen for wins.
The first potential obstacle is that your starting pitching and offense havo to first play well enough to give the bullpen a lead to preserve. That proved to be no issue on Tuesday, with Verlander holding his own while the offense got steadily to work.
They struck first in the second inning with some good old fashioned small-ball. Matt Chapman led off with a walk, and moved to third on a one-out single by LaMonte Wade Jr. Heliot Ramos, who reached base five times on the day, showed the power of putting the ball in play with an absolute doink of an infield single to score Chapman. Jon Berti helped the Giants case, fielding the ball on the third base line, thinking about throwing home, thinking better of it, and then making a no-chance throw to first that was quite off line, allowing Wade to take third.
The Giants did what good offenses do, and capitalized on that gift, with Patrick Bailey lifting a fly ball deep enough to allow the ultra-slow Wade to easily score against the decent arm of Ian Happ.
They added two more runs in the third inning, when Willy Adames singled, and scored on a majestic home run from Jung Hoo Lee, whose dinger tour of historic ballparks continued through legendary Wrigley Field.
After the Cubs cut the lead in half on a Miguel Amaya two-run blast, the Giants added a fifth run in comical fashion. Ramos kicked things off with his second infield single, and took third on a Bailey single. Wisely then proceeded to bunt the ball either so poorly or so well — Hunter Pence and Dave Flemming were split on the intention — that it went over the head of Michael Busch diving in from first. The Cubs easily got the out at first, then caught Bailey in a rundown, which he kept alive long enough for Ramos to score, before the Cubs threw the ball away, anyway.
And so, after Verlander labored through a fifth inning in which he gave up a run and left two on base, the Giants handed a 5-3 lead to that backup plan bullpen, which has had the second-best ERA in the Majors this year.
Which brings us to our second potential obstacle with relying on the bullpen, and one that Giants fans are all too familiar with after spending the last few years watching designed bullpen games: it only takes one player not having it to sink the ship.
Randy Rodríguez had it, though he flirted with not having it. After striking out Busch, he gave up a single and a walk, which sandwiched a 370-foot out. That brought up Amaya, who already had a homer on the day, as the go-ahead run.
Rodríguez threw him good morning, good evening, and good night, and made him look foolish for good measure.
Camilo Doval had it. He needed just seven pitches to cruise through the seventh inning.
Tyler Rogers had it. He needed just nine pitches to breeze through the eighth inning.
Ryan Walker did not have it, though he flirted with having it. He faced Pete Crow-Armstrong to start the inning, and missed the strike zone on the first three pitches. He recovered to make it a competitive challenge, but relented and walked the budding superstar.
Then, as a reminder of what he’s capable of, he made Dansby Swanson look like an A-Ball hitter while striking him out.
But Carson Kelly entered the game as a pinch-hitter and Walker, who had issued just two walks all year, walked his second batter in the inning. Suddenly the Cubs had the walk-off run coming to the plate, and it was another pinch-hitter: certified Giants killer Justin Turner.
Turner smacked the second pitch he saw into right field, and Mike Yastrzemski, hoping to make a play on one of the runners, ran right past it. It probably didn’t matter, as Turner held at first, but Kelly cruised into third easily, while Crow-Armstrong touched home to make it a 5-4 game.
Suddenly the Cubs were just a fly ball away from tying the game, and providing a brand new way to deprive Verlander of his first win as a Giant.
Then, as another reminder of what he’s capable of, Walker dominated a helpless and hapless Happ with a critical strikeout.
And then came A Moment. With one of the best left-handed hitters in baseball stepping up to the plate, and with both the tying and walk-off runs on base, Bob Melvin walked to the mound.
Removing a closer before they’ve blown the save is a tricky situation. If it doesn’t work, you’ve created potential drama and distrust and have nothing to show for it. If it does work, you’ve created potential drama and distrust and can’t even guarantee that the outcome would have been any different had you let things be.
The easy thing to do is to let your closer work through it, and ensure that, if you lose, they’re the bad guy. But Melvin is surely disinterested in the easy thing, and whether it’s because he wanted to spare Walker the setback of another blown save, or simply preferred a left-handed pitcher against someone who is a few months away from earning half a billion dollars due to his ability to swing a bat from the left side, he opted for potential drama and distrust, signaling for Erik Miller to the displeasure of Walker.
Miller threw exactly one pitch to Kyle Tucker, who hit it 107.6 mph into center field for a game-tying single.
The Giants lead was gone. Verlander’s win was snatched. And the Cubs had the winning run on second base. Miller, unfazed, got ahead in the count against Seiya Suzuki, then got him to swing through a pair of sliders thrown in succession.
The backup plan had almost worked. The bullpen was good enough until it wasn’t, and then it was good enough to give you extra baseball to keep one eye on while you watched the Warriors.
But if the bottom of the ninth had shifted the momentum from the Giants to the Cubs, the top of the tenth drained San Francisco of whatever life they had. The speedy Adames began the frame on second and never left his post, with Lee, Chapman, and Wade flying out, with only a Wilmer Flores walk providing any value.
At this point, you would have bet a lot of money that the Giants were going to lose the baseball game. The Manfred Man heavily favors the home team when the top of the inning yields no runs, and momentum heavily favors the momentous. It was hard to see the Giants winning this game. Even now, as I recap it, it’s hard to see the Giants winning it, and I have the benefit of knowing exactly what happened.
Miller stayed in the game for the 10th. He faced a lefty in Busch and pitched around him, issuing a non-intentional intentional walk. Nico Hoerner then hit a fly ball, moving Suzuki — the walk-off run — to third base with just one out. Busch took second on defensive indifference, and the stage was set for the Cubs to complete the comeback with something as mild as a soft fly ball.
Crow-Armstrong had the chance to play hero, in what has been a special season for him. But he saw four straight sliders from Miller. He watched as one drifted away from the strike zone. He swung through the other three.
With two outs, Miller could focus on getting an out any way at all, but Swanson put up a fight. He worked the count full, then provided one of those unique baseball plays: he hit a ball so hard, and so loud, that the fan reaction — a crescendo of a cheer that then plummeted down a cavern to the most forlorn groan — was seemingly delayed, occurring after the missile found Chapman’s glove, as the collective brains processed what had transpired.
You might have once been sure the Giants would lose, but after surviving the 10th inning, the optimism switch was once again flipped. Now you could see them winning. They’d quelled the Chicago rally, stalled the momentum, and set the stage for a truly silly win, which we can all agree they are masterful at.
Yet we had no idea just how silly they could get.
Ramos led off the 11th. He had reached base on a pair of infield singles and a pitch hitting him, and was apparently worried that we had forgotten he’s also a power hitter. So he got ahead in the count, and when Ryan Pressly threw a get-it-in slider, Ramos pounced on it, smashing it 108.3 mph and 352 feet, over the leaping arm of Happ and into the famed ivy.
If you were pessimistic, you were briefly rewarded. If you thought the silliness that would ensue would go against the Giants (which, let’s face it, they’re equally masterful at), then your fire was fanned. Christian Koss, pinch-running as the Manfred Man, was unsure if the ball would get caught and, not wanting to stray too far from second, only made it one base over on a double to the wall. In an alternate universe, some very naughty shenanigans ensued as a result of that. But in this universe, the Giants had runners at second and third with no outs, which is a good place to be, and they treated it accordingly.
So Bailey singled, and the Giants had the lead back. Then Wisely laid down a much more conventional bunt, which the Cubs tried to come home on, and failed, and the Giants had a two-run lead. Then Yastrzemski walked and Adames was hit by a pitch, and the Giants had a three-run lead. Then Lee singled, and Chapman singled, and Flores singled, and the Giants had a seven-run lead, and Pressley was walking off the mound having allowed all seven batters he faced to reach safely.
Caleb Thielbar replaced Pressley. The comedy had already been written, but the Giants were in no mood to end the show. Koss struck out and Ramos, batting for the second time in the inning, wasted no time to add to his hit total, smacking the very first pitch he saw 113.6 mph — the hardest hit ball of the season for the Giants — for another double. Bailey had one more sacrifice fly in him, capping a nine-run 11th inning. It was the highest-scoring extra inning in Giants history (dating back to 1901, at least), and the highest-scoring extra inning in the long and rich history of Wrigley Field.
After blowing a lead, nearly losing on multiple occasions, and going into overtime, the Giants had somehow arrived, inexplicably, with a blowout win.
But there was one final candle to put on the cake. Kyle Harrison took the mound in the bottom half of the inning, making his season debut and the first relief outing of his career. He was called up after ramping his velocity up to 97 in Sacramento, and if there was any concern that the Pacific Coast League radar guns simply run a little hot, that concern was put to bed on Tuesday.
Harrison rolled out of the bullpen on a brisk night and struck out Kelly with a 96-mph heater, then got Nicky Lopez to meekly line out, before throwing heat at a once again helpless and hapless Happ, striking him out on three pitches, punctuating the night with a 96-mph fastball right through a feeble bat.
Just your casual 14-5 extra-innings ballgame, folks.