Giants' clubhouse sign says it all: ‘Never Unprepared’
By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO — This was the game they should have lost. Well, could have lost. Their starting pitcher couldn’t make it into the fourth. The other team, the Cardinals, was banging balls off fences and, like that, was in front, 4-1.
Yet once again, the Giants found a way.
Once again the Giants pecked and pestered, getting great work from the bullpen and great movement from base runners, pressing the issue until the Cardinals were forced into making wrong decisions.
“Never Unprepared.” That small sign is posted on the Giants’ clubhouse door. Always ready. Always willing. To take the extra base. To take the mound, if only to face one batter.
“Whatever we need,” said Javier Lopez, the lefthander who was the fifth of the seven San Francisco pitchers. “We’re not flashy.”
Who needs flashy? The Giants beat St. Louis, 6-4, Wednesday night at AT&T Park, where the music pounded and the rally rags waved. They’re up three games to one in the best of seven National League Championship Series. They’re one game away from making to the World Series for the third time in five years.
But they’re also wary. Two years ago, 2012, it was the Cardinals who had the 3-1 lead in the NLCS. And the Giants won three in a row. They know what’s possible. Even with Madison Bumgarner pitching in Thursday’s Game 5.
“Great win, great comeback,” said Giants manager Bruce Bochy. “We’ve won three. But we have work to do.”
The work they’ve done in the first four games has been outstanding, if understated. Once more, no home runs — for the sixth straight game of the postseason — but beautiful defense and capable offense, waiting out a walk instead of flailing at a pitch, knowing what to do if there’s a deep fly or a soft grounder.
“It has to start somewhere,” said Bochy.
It started everywhere. It started when Yusmeiro Petit came in to pitch the fourth inning after Ryan Vogelsong, who had been so effective in his previous five postseason games, was so ineffective.
Petit, who would get the win, went three innings, allowing only one hit. Then Jeremy Affeldt went two-thirds of an inning. And Jean Machi one batter. And Lopez one-third of an inning. And Sergio Romo one inning. And finally Santiago Casilla one inning, the ninth, if one in which he gave up his first hit since September 11, a stretch of 10 games.
It started with pinch hitter Joaquin Arias singling to begin the third, Buster Posey singling, Pablo Sandoval walking and Hunter Pence singling. Now the score was 4-3. Now the momentum had switched.
The sixth was classic Giants less-is-more baseball. Juan Perez, pinch hitting (well, pinch walking), got to first. Brandon Crawford singled. Pinch hitter Matt Duffy sacrificed. Gregor Blanco grounded to first, but Matt Adams, after fielding the ball, couldn’t get Perez at the plate. The game was tied.
Not for long. Joe Panik also grounded to first, but Adams stepped on the bag, removing the force, and when he threw high to second to try for Blanco, Crawford dashed home from third.
Fundamental baseball. “Never Unprepared” baseball.
“I had talked to (third base coach) Tim Flannery,” said Crawford. “He said if there was a throw to second to take off for home. That’s what happened. We’re putting the pressure on.
“A big reason for our success is we’ve been getting on base and playing defense.”
Said Bochy, “Great base running by Crawford. If you’re not hitting the long ball, you have to find ways to manufacture runs.”
Neither team made an error that would be recorded in the box score in the a game that was just seven minutes short of four hours, but the Cardinals made the sort of botches that are the difference in playoff baseball.
“We found a way to score a couple of weird ones there,” said Posey, the Giants' leader. He drove in three runs and scored one.
“I can speak as a catcher. Sometimes those two-out RBIs can be big in shifting momentum.”
The runs in the third, the ones that brought the Giants into the game, as they also did the unsettled sellout crowd of 43,147, were scored with two outs. You sensed then the Cards might be in trouble.
“You have to do the little things,” said Bochy in a message repeated more than once of late. “Granted we’ve gotten a couple breaks, but at the same time, we’ve done some good things, little things. Arias pinch hits, and we find a way to get him across. Now you’re getting a little bit closer, and the hope starts to build up and the momentum starts to change, and that’s what happened.
“I’ve always said, to win a game you need pitching and you need timely hits. And tonight we got them.”
And got to within a game of another World Series.