The San Francisco Giants may never take batting practice again.
For the second night in a row, the orange and black dominated the St. Louis Cardinals in every facet of the game, winning 8-2 on the back of a four RBI performance by Buster Posey.
This comes a day after manager Bruce Bochy made two dramatic changes on the heels of an awful series with San Diego, cancelling batting practice and telling his players not to show up to AT&T Park until 5 PM, and dropping leadoff hitter Denard Span to eighth in the batting order. Bochy stuck with those changes on Friday, and whether or not directly related, the Giants soared once again.
What’s more, San Francisco again extended their lead over St. Louis in the NL wild card race to three games, staying a game ahead of the New York Mets, who also won on Friday. The Dodgers lead over the Giants atop the NL West remains at four games.
Posey finally ended his home run drought at 184 at bats, and finished with three hits after a four hit performance on Thursday. The Giants had the game well in hand before Posey went yard, however, blasting things open during a six run bottom of the third rally, that started following a costly Yadier Molina throwing error. Every Giant had reached base by the bottom of the fourth inning.
San Francisco starter Matt Moore wasn’t at his best, but did just enough to earn his fourth win as a Giant, giving up only two runs in five innings of work despite allowing 10 baserunners.
The Giants second error in 30 games nearly lead to a run in the third inning, when a Moore pickoff throw went under the glove of first baseman Brandon Belt, advancing the Cardinals’ Tommy Pham to second base. Pham advanced to third base on a Matt Carpenter groundout and made his way home when Aledmys Diaz appeared to leg out an infield single. The run would be scraped off the board, however, after a replay review showed that Brandon Crawford’s throw beat Diaz by a millisecond.
The six run third inning followed, knocking out rookie starting pitcher Luke Weaver in his first ever appearance against the Giants after just 2 and 2/3 innings. The inning was indicative of the 180° turnaround the San Francisco offense has experienced in the last two days, finding themselves on the right side of the types of close plays that had been breaking the other way for the better part of two months.
It all started with an errant throw to second base by eight time Gold Glover Yadier Molina, blowing a chance for a potential inning ending double play. The mistake would prove to be crippling. After a Weaver walk loaded the bases, Panik opened the scoring with a deep sacrifice fly to right-center, that was deep enough to be a grand slam in most ballparks, and advanced all the runners to keep the bases juiced. Buster Posey followed with a bloop single into shallow right that scored two runs, then Brandon Belt smacked a double to left center to bring in two of his own, extending the Giants lead to 5-0. Bruce Bochy’s second successful challenge helped add one more for good measure, when replay showed that Belt’s foot narrowly beat a Molina tag at home plate, after Belt rumbled in from second base following a Brandon Crawford single.
Though Weaver crumbled during the rally, because of Molina’s error, all six runs were unearned.
The Cardinals got one back in the fourth inning, when Molina did his best to atone with an RBI single, and looked like they might have a big inning of their own. Moore buckled down, however, getting out of the two on, no out situation by getting Johnny Peralta to fly out to center, and ending the inning with consecutive strikeouts.
Posey extended his RBI tally to four and ended his home run drought on a towering shot to left center in the fifth, giving the Giants an 8-2 lead. This was much to the delight of his teammates, who swarmed him in the dugout after initially giving him the silent treatment.
Despite San Francisco’s dominating performance, Moore barely earned the win, loading the bases and walking in a run with two outs in the fifth inning. Bochy jogged out to the mound, a telltale sign that you’ve got one more chance, and Moore rewarded his manager’s generosity by getting Peralta to fly out.
The Giants bullpen was stellar, pitching four scoreless innings following Moore’s departure. Santiago Casilla made his first appearance after being demoted from the closing role, tossing a 1-2-3 eighth inning.
Jeff Samardzija takes the hill for the Giants tommorrow facing the Cardinals’ Mike Leake in the third game of the four game set. First pitch is scheduled for 6:05 and can be listened to live on KNBR 680.
