Jake Roth-USA TODAY Sports
Farhan Zaidi’s pickups may have spared Madison Bumgarner from Farhan Zaidi.
If Bumgarner’s solid outing Sunday was merely another victory in a legendary Giants career – and not the final time he would don the orange and black – he can thank the team’s boss.
Bumgarner made one large, three-run mistake three days before the trade deadline. That mistake would not be deadly because Mike Yastrzemski and Donovan Solano picked him up, two Zaidi fliers paying off again, in a 7-6 win over the Padres at Petco Park, making it seven straight series the Giants have captured.
The Giants did not need Bumgarner to carry them but rather to be good enough, and he was. He was efficient, throwing just 86 pitches in seven innings, and allowed four runs on four hits and two walks. Wil Myers launched a two-run homer off Will Smith in the ninth to narrow the lead, but a rejuvenated Giants offense also did just enough.
The endless conjecture of whether this will be Bumgarner’s goodbye is over; he’s thrown his final pitch before other GMs will make their final pitch to Zaidi. But a team that moved to 54-52, 2 ½ games off the wild-card lead, likely will be holding onto the face of its franchise.
Bumgarner threw one pitch he immediately knew he wanted back, a cutter to Hunter Renfroe that was a 444-foot, three-run bomb in the third. After that pitch, the Padres had one hit — an infield single — off Bumgarner, who again made low-90s heat work.
The homer put the Padres ahead 4-2, and the Giants offense finally went to work. A team that scored four runs in its past three games was awakened. The Giants tied the game in the fourth, thanks to a leadoff double by Yastrzemski and three straight two-out hits. First Solano singled in Yastrzmeski, before Bruce Bochy utilized his bench early, with rookie lefty Adrian Morejon, the Padres’ opener, out of the game. Pinch-hitting Pablo Sandoval and Alex Dickerson followed with singles against righty Luis Perdomo to tie it at 4-4.
In the sixth, Yastrzemski led off with a single and was sacrificed to second. Again Solano came through, singling in the go-ahead run for a 5-4 Giants lead. Solano would finish 2-for-3 with two walks, two RBIs and a run; Yastrzemski 4-for-5 with two runs, two RBIs and one massive defensive play.
Yastrzemski robbed what may have been a game-tying home run in the sixth. Franmil Reyes lifted a ball to right that just kept carrying — Yastrzemski thought he had it in deep right, then on the warning track, then at the wall. He leapt and kept it in the park, preserving a 5-4 lead, much to Bumgarner’s appreciation.
The Giants added two more in the ninth, as Dickerson (another Zaidi find) doubling and Buster Posey – along with Bumgarner, a holdover doing his part – ripping a double to drive him in, his third hit of the game. Brandon Crawford singled Posey in for the Giants’ final run — which would prove valuable.