Cary Edmondson-USA TODAY Sports
It did not need to be announced; did not need to be scrawled on an injury report. Curt Casali’s grimaces said plenty. His awkward strike-three swing against Sergio Romo in the seventh inning was a huge red flag. His eighth-inning strikeout against Lou Trivino, after which he grabbed at his back on the way to the dugout, propped that flag a few feet higher.
The backup catcher was hurting, but so is the No. 1 catcher. And so Casali was not moving out of the squat.
“It was definitely tight, but not tight enough to come out of the game,” Casali said as the magic elixir that is a big hit washed over him. “My job when I’m out there is to not have Buster [Posey] come in the game. And I’m very happy that he didn’t have to.”
As are the Giants, who gave their legendary catcher a second day off with a tight back and their No. 2 gave them a 6-5 win with a walk-off double in the 10th inning against the A’s on Saturday at Oracle Park.
Casali was 0-for-4 with four strikeouts, each looking more painful — and we’re talking literally — than the last. He typically plays every third game, and he was getting a rare back to back on a chilly San Francisco night.
His fifth at-bat arrived in the 10th, after Steven Duggar — now 10-for-23 with runners in scoring position — had driven in Brandon Crawford to hold serve, after the A’s had manufactured their ghost-runner run but nothing more. The game might not have reached a 10th, but Crawford’s single an inning earlier resulted in a gutsy Ron Wotus sending LaMonte Wade Jr., who was easily thrown out by a Tony Kemp-Matt Olson-Sean Murphy relay.
DUGGAR SCORES FROM FIRST TO WIN IT pic.twitter.com/nYcIxkXIzj
— KNBR (@KNBR) June 27, 2021
Extras are cruel to catchers, especially ones with a bad back. If Casali wanted to end it, it was best to do it himself. What was the mindset?
“Hit the ball,” said the amiable catcher, who has caught six shutouts but whose bat had lagged behind until recently. He had offseason hamate surgery that has hindered his bottom hand.
He got a 2-0 fastball from Burch Smith, and he did just that — hit it, down the left-field line — which he had not been able to do all night. The speedy Duggar rounded second and rounded third and saw Wotus again giving the green light.
Not that he needed it.
“Just head down, high knees, let’s try to get home,” said Duggar, who reached base four out of five times, drove in the game-tying run and scored the game-winner. “… Probably would have blew through a stop sign, too, if I had a chance, if Wo would’ve thrown it up. It was quite a blur.”
And then it was a celebration that Duggar himself joined in the infield, the club jumping around a catcher who was a few strikes away from matching Mike Tauchman’s five-strikeout game.
But the Giants could not afford to pinch-hit because Posey’s back tightened up Friday and had not loosened enough for them to feel comfortable jeopardizing his health. Duggar is only playing because he was recalled when injuries to players like Alex Dickerson and Mike Yastrzemski afforded him a chance, and he ran with it — “ran” the operative verb — and is a non-optionable contributor to a team filled with them. Wade was option-able, somehow, when Dickerson returned, and yet Brandon Belt’s injury offered a new path, and Wade proceeded to reach base three out of five times Saturday including a two-run shot, his fifth of the season.
The 50-26 Giants, the first club to reach that round victory number, continue to win with players other fanbases certainly have never heard of.
“It’s just really special to be a part of. Fifty wins is more than a lot of people thought we’d get at this point in time,” said Casali, whose only other MLB walkoff came in 2016 with Tampa. “We have plans to keep on going.”