Giants win game of defensive gaffes when Brewers make the last one

The SF Giants almost blew the game thanks to wild pitches and a costly error, but Mike Yastrzemski’s bat and Christian Yelich’s glove helped the Giants escape with a 6-5 win.

Going into the bottom of the eighth inning Thursday afternoon, it looked like the San Francisco Giants’ defensive miscues would cost them dearly in the series finale against the Milwaukee Brewers. Then Christian Yelich made an uglier defensive error than any of them to hand the Giants an improbable 6-5 win.

With runners on first and third with one out, Willy Adames lined a 3-2 pitch to his old Brewers teammate Yelich. The Brewers’ usual designated hitter, playing only his fourth game of the season in left field, botched the catch and then fell down as pinch-runner Christian Koss tagged up and scored easily from third to give the Giants a 6-5 lead.

That followed a game-tying fielder’s choice from Mike Yastrzemski after Tyler Fitzgerald’s leadoff walk and Wilmer Flores’ pinch-hit single. Yaz fouled off five pitches in the at-bat before grounding to second base, where Brice Turang’s throw home was too late to get Fitzgerald.

Camilo Doval had an adventurous ninth inning, yielding a walk and a single to Yelich, but he got Rhys Hoskins to fly out for his fifth save of the season.

Yastrzemski and Matt Chapman both homered and drove in two runs in the win, which saw the Giants get 5.1 innings of scoreless relief from their bullpen and come back from a 5-2 deficit. Chapman started the Giants’ resuscitation with a fifth-inning home run, knocking in Jung Hoo Lee, who reached base three times Thursday.

Lee also doubled in the Giants’ first run of the game in the first, driving in Yastrzemski after he singled and reached second on a balk by Brewers starter Tobias Myers (4 innings, two runs, 4 walks), the first in an escalating duel of defensive errors the teams would make. It was Lee’s 11th double of the season, tying him for the major league lead.

If that wasn’t enough, Lee turned a double play on Yelich’s first-inning sac fly, nailing Sal Frelick at first to end the inning.

In the bottom of the third, Yaz tied the game at 2-2 after a riveting home run launched into Levi’s Landing, his fourth bomb in what has been a tremendous offensive season so far.

Starter Landen Roupp didn’t help himself with his control issues Thursday. He issued three walks and threw two wild pitches. Both wild pitches led to Brewers runs, and one of them was followed by a LaMonte Wade, Jr. error that led to another run.

The Brewers scored their second run without the benefit of a hit when Garrett Mitchell walked, then stole second. After he moved to third on a ground ball, Mitchell scored on Roupp’s first wild pitch.

In the fourth inning, Joey Ortiz singled, went to second on a ground out, and then moved to third base on Roupp’s second wild pitch. After a walk to Vinny Capra, catcher Eric Haase delivered a textbook squeeze bunt down the third base line to Matt Chapman, that eventually scored Capra all the way from first when Wade simply missed the throw from Chapman.

That ended Roupp’s afternoon, though Spencer Bivens threw only a single pitch to get out of the inning, when Sam Huff nailed Turang trying to steal third with two outs.

Bivens got in trouble in the fifth when two Brewers reached base, but with runners on first and third, he got Ortiz to hit into a double play. Erik Miller got four outs, then Tyler Rogers struck out three Brewers in the eighth.

The defensive struggles weren’t limited to the baseball teams, either. The right field ball dude was handcuffed by a foul ball and ended up face-planting on the dirt, though it didn’t cost any runs, just his pride.

The Giants moved to 17-9, but they shouldn’t get big heads about their success. Especially when the man with the biggest head in baseball, Texas Rangers manager Bruce Bochy, brings his team to Oracle Park this weekend.