Three times, the San Francisco Giants tried to bunt over the game-winning run and failed. The fourth time proved to be the charm.
A wild Randy Choate throw into right field on a Gregor Blanco sacrifice allowed Brandon Crawford to score all the way from second base and gave the Giants a 5-4 win over the St. Louis Cardinals in the 10th inning of Game 3 of the National League Championship Series at AT&T Park.
Blanco‘s game-winning bunt gives San Francisco a 2-1 series lead as both teams look to make their third World Series appearance in five years. The Giants hoisted the trophy in 2010 and 2012, thanks mostly to the production of their elite players.
If Tuesday was any indication, though, it’ll be the unsung heroes who play the biggest factor going forward.
Blanco, the Giants’ leadoff hitter, is hitting a paltry .111 for the postseason. His bunt came after an ugly failure on the at-bat’s first pitch, in which the ball bounced off the plate and back over the catcher’s head. Juan Perez could not get a bunt down in his two attempts to move Crawford into scoring position before sending a single into left field.
But when Blanco laid the second bunt down, the team’s fourth overall try, the outcome looked disastrous from the beginning. Placed in a spot where Choate could make a play, the 39-year-old lefty was forced into a sidearm flail that was off line from the get-go. The Cardinals reliever, used mostly as a situational reliever, has now given up three earned runs in 0.2 innings of work this postseason.
The on-field celebration for the Giants featured a mixture of glee and relief, as it appeared they were in the process of blowing a lead for the second straight game.
Quiet for most of their postseason run, the Giants offense came alive early against John Lackey. The Cardinals starter recorded two straight outs to start the game but then allowed five consecutive hitters to get on base, capped off by Travis Ishikawa, who sent a deep shot off the right-field wall to score three runs and give San Francisco a 4-0 lead.
Ishikawa, who made a spectacular diving catch and drove in the game-winning run in Game 1, is continuing to have a series to remember. Thrust into an increased role out of necessity, Ishikawa‘s teammates joked that his new cleats, ones designed by Nike for Mike Trout, temporarily transformed him into the Angels outfielder last week.
Ishikawa hasn’t quite been Trout. Instead, he’s become the unlikeliest of heroes for San Francisco so far in this series.
Designated for assignment by Pittsburgh in April and brought back to the Giants on a minor league contract, Ishikawa was closer to being out of baseball than on a postseason roster. But a late-season move to left field presented an opportunity to which Ishikawa has responded with some of the best baseball of his career.
A career .259 hitter in the regular season, the 31-year-old Seattle native is hitting .286 for the postseason and has four hits in eight at-bats this series.
“What he’s doing, it’s pretty tough,” Brandon Belt told reporters after Game 1, via Yahoo Sports’ David Brown. “But he makes it look…pretty easy for someone who hasn’t played that much.”
But while Ishikawa was continuing to etch his name in Giants postseason lore, the Cardinals were chipping away at a comeback that at times felt inevitable. A Kolten Wong triple drove in Jon Jay and Matt Holliday in the fourth inning and a Jhonny Peralta single plated Jay again in the sixth.
Noticeably getting hit hard despite a low pitch count, Tim Hudson was surprisingly kept in the game for the seventh. That would open the door for St. Louis’ own unlikely hero.
Randal Grichuk, whose biggest baseball moment before Tuesday was quite possibly competing in the 2004 Little League World Series (or his home run off Clayton Kershaw, but whatever), launched a hanging pitch from Hudson off the left-field foul pole to knot the game at 4-4.
Grichuk, himself in the lineup due to unforeseen circumstances, has fewer than 200 major league at-bats under his belt. He’s known to some as the Angels prospect who was taken one pick ahead of—you guessed it—Trout in the 2009 draft. One of the lighter running jokes of this series was Giants manager Bruce Bochy being unable to pronounce Grichuk‘s name.
But the names Grichuk, Blanco and Ishikawa became vital on an afternoon when superstar production was intermittent. Holliday, Matt Adams and Peralta went a combined 2-for-13. Hunter Pence knocked in Buster Posey on a first-inning single, while Pablo Sandoval and Pence each scored on Ishikawa‘s double, but their bats went radio silent for the subsequent nine innings.
In fact, San Francisco had only one hit between the first and 10th innings—a meaningless single from Tim Hudson. The Cardinals, for their part, had nine hits but went 2-for-7 with runners in scoring position.
Game 4 takes place at 8:07 p.m. ET Wednesday. Ryan Vogelsong is scheduled to pitch for the Giants, while Shelby Miller takes the bump for the Cardinals.
Vogelsong pitched twice against the Cardinals in the regular season, going 0-1 while allowing six runs in 13.1 innings. He gave up one run in 5.2 innings in San Francisco’s NLDS-clinching win over Washington.
Miller had a similar postseason experience, giving up two runs in his 5.2 innings of work as the Cardinals toppled the Los Angeles Dodgers. He did not face San Francisco during the regular season.
Given the way this series has gone, it may not matter who starts. The last two games have proved just how important it is to finish strong.
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