SAN FRANCISCO–Since the start of the 2017 season, the Giants have had August 5 circled on their calendar as the day they would turn back the clock.
San Francisco planned an ode to greatness, and though the Giants managed to go off script for much of the night, they salvaged the ending with a grand finale, as Jarrett Parker hit a walkoff single in the 10th inning to plate Denard Span and down the Diamondbacks by a score of 5-4.
“First couple of at-bats, if they don’t go well, that’s what these young guys have to do, wash them off as we say,” Giants’ manager Bruce Bochy said, after Parker began the night 0-for-3. “He did a good job of that and the way their defense was set up. He runs pretty good and he just hit that ball in a good place.”
On Saturday night,, the Giants planned to honor their 1997 club that went from worst to first in the National League West and helped put baseball in San Francisco back on the map, and prior to first pitch at AT&T Park, that team received a beautiful tribute. Giants’ greats like J.T. Snow, Rich Aurilia and Barry Bonds were all on hand for a ceremony that featured a heavy emphasis on late-season wins over the Dodgers’ and Brian Johnson’s indelible walkoff home run that helped the Giants tie Los Angeles in first place on September 18 of that season.
That was the part of honoring the past the Giants got right. The rest? It took awhile to get sorted out, but eventually, San Francisco carried on a winning tradition that has somehow evaded its 2017 club.
On Saturday morning, San Francisco called up infielder Pablo Sandoval from AAA Sacramento, purchasing the contract of a 30-year-old infielder whose best seasons with the club came when the Giants won three World Series in five seasons.
For the first time since he left to sign a five-year, $95 million contract with the Red Sox following the Giants’ 2014 World Series win, Sandoval was wearing the orange and black, and hitting cleanup, a nod to the days when he was still a feared hitter.
With Brandon Belt heading to the seven-day concussion disabled list, the Giants called up Sandoval, despite the third baseman posting a .206 average in 29 at-bats with AAA Sacramento.
It was another attempt for the Giants to offer a player a second chance, and for Sandoval, Saturday night was the beginning of his redemption tour. By the time the seventh inning stretch rolled around, Sandoval was 0-for-2 with a pair of groundouts and a throwing error that led to an unearned run.
His march toward forgiveness will take time, but a leadoff double into the left center field gap that ignited a game-changing rally was an excellent start.
“That kind of woke us up, because we looked dead in the water,” Bochy said. “Walker was throwing the ball well, we just couldn’t do much with him and a nice piece of hitting by Pablo going the other way. He smoked it to get a double and you know, getting that first run it gets a lot for our club.”
Panda’s seventh-inning double did offer another window into the team’s storied past, as it preceded Hunter Pence’s two-run home run that conjured up images of Pence’s most electrifying moments. Most of those, of course, came in prior seasons, as his round-tripper marked his first home run at AT&T Park this season.
Sandwiched in between those two hits was a Parker double, his third since returning from the disabled list on Thursday.
“That was a team effort tonight,” Parker said. “Pablo coming up, Walker had done a good job shutting us down for the first part of the game and then Pablo comes up and gets a big knock and gets things going and then Hunter got a big knock too so it was just good to get that ball rolling.”
Fortunately for Pence, Saturday night was all about the glory days, and his two-run home run cut the score to 4-3, playing a pivotal role in the Giants’ comeback.
When Sandoval arrived in the Giants’ clubhouse on Saturday afternoon, he wasn’t the only player talking about the magical run the Giants enjoyed during the best seasons of his career. So too was George Kontos, the veteran reliever who had been with the club since the start of the 2012 season.
Kontos, though, was packing his bags. After regaling reporters with memories of the rings he earned with the franchise in 2012 and 2014, Kontos would finish cleaning out his locker in preparation for a move. The 32-year-old who leads the Giants in appearances this season with 50 was headed to Pittsburgh, as the Pirates claimed him off of waivers on Saturday morning.
While Kontos wouldn’t be around for the middle innings, as he was so often during the Giants’ best years, rookie Kyle Crick and righty Cory Gearrin were. They didn’t allow an earned run in three innings of work, but make no mistake, this is the type of game that had Kontos written all over it.
Some tributes went smoothly. Others took some time. Others didn’t happen.
Saturday was also the night 13th-year veteran Matt Cain was supposed to take his scheduled turn in the Giants’ rotation, but earlier this week, manager Bruce Bochy called off that part of the Giants’ celebration of franchise greats. Cain was moved to the bullpen to clear space for rookie Chris Stratton, who returned from the disabled list Saturday to make his first start at home.
After giving up two runs in the top of the first inning, Stratton settled into more of a groove, giving up just a lone unearned run over his final four innings of work to keep the Giants in the game.
“What a great job, just keeping his poise and making pitches and getting out of that to limit the damage there and keep us in the game,” Bochy said. “Ends up going five innings and they had him in a couple other tough places there when they had men on base, but for a guy that hadn’t pitched in I don’t know what, 12 days or so, I thought he had good stuff, good command and talk about composure.”
Stratton’s work did not go unnoticed, and though Saturday night was dedicated to celebrating the past, the rest of the season is about figuring out the future.
And that future will likely involve interim closer Sam Dyson, who staged his own tribute to the franchise’s past, with a rendition of Giants’ torture in the top of the ninth inning.
After a Buster Posey double play groundout plated Kelby Tomlinson to knot the game at 4-4 in the bottom of the eighth, Dyson came on and loaded the bases with a pair of two-out singles and a walk before inducing a groundout to end the inning. Eventually, San Francisco would honor its past the right way, but of course, it took longer than it should have.
