SAN FRANCISCO — There’s plenty of reasons for the Giants to smiling right now. Their NL West lead seems to grow by the day, winning 25 of the last 31 games against division opponents. Journeymen like Grant Green are hitting game-deciding home runs, and mainstays like Brandon Crawford continue to dazzle each night. Even when the Giants do make a mistake or slip up, a positive turn covers it up.
Javier Lopez let a would-be double-play ball go past him. Buster Posey threw the ball to Jake Peavy when he wasn’t looking. Crawford craftily bailed out Lopez, and Posey nestled the ball right in Peavy’s glove. As close as the Giants have crept to falling apart, they’ve stayed air-tight.
“The fun thing about what’s happening is really that everyone’s doing something right now,” manager Bruce Bochy said. “Between the staff, guys we called up … they’re all doing something to contribute.”
Several Giants couldn’t hide behind their smiles in the clubhouse. One by one, players took friendly jabs at one another with the media. Anchored by a 4-2 win, this one pushing the team 23 games over .500, there was little to sulk on.
Bochy knows Peavy would’ve like to stay in the game long enough to earn a win, but the right-hander was upbeat about his manager’s decision after the game. In turn, Bochy extended a sign of good faith to his relievers. They delivered by holding onto a marginal lead over 4 2/3 innings.
“It was one of those (games) where the trust has got to be there,” Javier Lopez said. “…We know we gotta pitch better. It’s an easy thing to pick on the bullpen, we understand that … But it’s also a challenge for us to get better and it’s nice that he believes that we can continue to keep that lead.”
The left-hander was only a small piece of Saturday’s bullpen puzzle, and almost wasn’t at all. Lopez tripped on his way up the dugout steps, breaking out a barrel roll before laying on his back across the dirt warning track. With 40,000-plus iPhones in attendance, there was no use trying to pretend it didn’t happen.
“You gotta own it,” Lopez said.
Jeremy Affeldt ensured he did. He texted Lopez a video of the fall, one of several messages clogging up the left-hander’s phone about everything he did off the mound.
When Lopez actually got to pitching, he only needed to get one out, and Crawford did more to actually get it than Lopez did. The shortstop ranged behind second base to field a ground ball that led him on a collision course with Green. Crawford maintained his composure long enough to spin and fire toward first, keeping runners at second and third in the fifth inning.
“Craw came out of no where,” Bochy said. “I’ll be honest, I didn’t see him getting to the ball. … I (thought it would be) a hit, I was getting ready to go out and make a (pitching) change.”
“You’re welcome for your highlight reel,” Lopez recalled telling Crawford in the dugout.
Peavy said the play saved the game, but it had already been outdone as the most skillful play of the afternoon. In the fourth inning, Posey tossed a 3-0 pitch back to Peavy, who wasn’t looking at the incoming ball as he started down the third base umpire.
Posey got out of his crouch and tried shouting at Peavy, but it was too late. The ball hit Peavy square in the left shoulder, and neatly deflected into his glove.
“Who throws it in there other than Buster?” Peavy pondered after the game. “I’m waiting for him to do something wrong.”
The Giants catcher cracked up as he watched the play on a phone after the game. He mockingly said he was trying to do it, only after acknowledging he’d never done something quite like that.
“It doesn’t look real,” Posey said. “It just doesn’t look real.”
Skip to 32 seconds:
Outside of Saturday’s quirky antics, which all began when a beer tray went flying on a first-inning foul ball, Green had the most important swing of the day. With his parents in attendance, he blasted his first home run as a Giant. It was an especially meaningful moment for Green, who grew up a Giants fan despite residing in Orange County.
He gave the Giants a lead they never relinquished, and almost was a footnote in a game that specialized in anomalies. Green’s hit only one home in each of the last four seasons. The powerful swings are few and far between. Yet on Saturday at AT&T Park, there wasn’t a more fitting game for his out-of-ordinary stroke.
Videos courtesy of MLB.com
