Ryan Walker should do Justin Verlander’s laundry for a year. Or wash his car, or change his newborn’s diaper for a couple months or something. It’s the least he can do after Saturday’s 9th inning 3-run implosion against the Cardinals.
It was the third time this year that Walker got docked with a blown save in a Verlander start (the previous being 4/20 v. the Angels and 6/29 vs. the White Sox).
Walker hadn’t allowed a run since August 3rd. He had been good enough over his last 9 outings to work his way
back to the top of Bryan’s bullpen trust rankings, which has generally been a harbinger of collapse.
The signs were there from the first pitch. A perfectly placed sinker that all-time pitch framer Bailey framed poorly.
The next pitch Norman Gorman (his name is actually Nolan) found a hole with a hard-hit grounder, the first Cardinals’ lead-off runner to reach base since the 1st inning. Javy Lopez on the radio broadcast tried to calm the nerves of fans over the airwaves with soothing verbal caresses of That run doesn’t matter with a two-run lead; it’s okay, just focus on the hitter — but no one could hear him over the blaring sirens going off in their heads.
It had been awhile, but we had seen it before. Everything was off. It just felt yucky. For the first time in 18 games, a Giants hitter hadn’t stroked a baseball over the wall. Scoring chances went unfulfilled. The line-up was just 1-for-7 with runners in scoring position. Yoshi Yamamoto had taken a no-hitter into the 9th inning. The Mets had lost which turned up the pressure on the team to capitalize.
Walker tried to regain control of the frame and establish his slider against Winn and failed terribly. A bloop single by the shortstop put the tying run on base and brought the winning run to the plate. Again Javy tried to assure us that both knocks were store-brand cheap-o’s, but at this point looked dice-y at best. With very little room to operate, Walker went right at the next batter, throwing four straight sinkers to a street urchin named Jimmy Crooks with five Major League games under his belt, before he literally threw the baseball right at him.
In a 1-2 count, out of nowhere, the sinker plunked a viable double-play candidate in the belt. At this point, it was clear the whole thing was going down. The end was near. God is dead. The bases were loaded, and it all crumbled so quickly after that. Thomas Saggese flipped the second sinker he saw to center for St. Louis’s first run. Next up: the supremely-scuffling Jordan Walker against the supremely-stressed Ryan Walker — a metaphor for the inner demons a reliever must face on the mound. You don’t pitch against an opponent, you pitch against yourself. Imagine this said by a Force-spirit Javy Lopez.
After eight consecutive fastballs to the previous three hitters, Walker chose to go back to the slider against Walker. Walker hung it up in the zone, and Walker lined it towards Matt Chapman at third. On the replay, by the way Chapman races towards the bag after the ball has kicked off his glove, it looks like he thinks he’s caught the liner. Or maybe it was a last-ditch ruse to freeze the tying run and give Luis Matos a chance to make a play. Whatever it was — a ruse, a glove malfunction, a deflection — it doesn’t matter. The ball found grass. Game over.
Walker walked it off. Your call which player I’m referring to.
Pitching wise, San Francisco had been solid until the 9th. Verlander pitched 6 scoreless, allowing just three hits — all singles — while working around a tit-for-tat HBP and fielding error to set himself up for his third straight win of the year.
Despite a laborious 1st inning, the outing was nothing like the last. He needed 33 less pitches to get through an inning more of work. He struck out the side in his final frame, collecting his 3,535th to move into eighth on the all-time K list, passing Gaylord Perry. Without breaking stride, he then three-pitched Masyn Winn moving him one step closer to Don Sutton’s 3,574 mark.
Offensively, the Giants struggled to get the baseball airborne against Andre Pallante and his 60% groundball rate. The right-hander, who had gone 0-6 with a 8.67 starts allowing a homer in each of those games, gleefully rode the calendar as it flipped into September. New month, new man, I suppose. He worked 6 strong by keeping everything grounded. Pallante became the first starter in two weeks to keep San Francisco off the board in the first three innings, a feat aided by two 4-6-3 double plays in the 1st and 2nd innings.
San Francisco finally broke through in the 4th when Dom Smith led off the frame with a single, followed by a high-hopping knock up the middle by Chapman. Heads-up running allowed Chapman to take second base on the throw to third from the outfield. Casey Schmitt battled for 9 pitches, eventually soaring a rare flyball to center, plenty deep enough to put the Giants on the board. Drew Gilbert followed with an RBI double to left to double the lead. It’d prove to be San Francisco’s only hit with a runner in scoring position, and for most of the game, it felt like it’d be enough.
The opposing players were wearing their iconic Cardinals unis, the redbirds perched on the horizontal bat, St. Louis curlicued across their chest, but the swagger, so common to their teams year-after-year, was gone. Busch Stadium was empty, and the few in attendance had little to cheer for. The offense had been held scoreless for most of the night. The opportunities they had were undermined by their own extremely green personnel.
In the 5th, the 8 and 9 hitters strung together two singles against Verlander, giving St. Louis a precious at-bat with a runner in scoring position — which was immediately negated by an ill-advised double-steal led by Victor Scott II.
Desperation breeds risk, so I get Scott trying to spark something with his cleats. The kid does everything fast. He brushes his teeth fast. His sprint speed is the fleetest in the Majors. He ranks 5th in the NL with 31 stolen bases and had been thrown out only two times going into Saturday. But even with that kind of fuel in your engine, there are some situations in which you should take your foot off the gas. One is when you’re already in scoring position. Stealing third is hard, and the advantages the 90 extra feet gives a team is nominal compared to the risk. Stealing third is even harder when there’s a lefty at the plate, meaning the catcher has a clear field of vision, completely unobstructed to pretend they’re a shortstop again on the throw down. And when that catcher has one of the quickest pop times and a top CS above average like Patrick Bailey does, best to just tie your laces together to avoid any temptation.
Despite the warning signs, Scott went for it. He picked a good pitch to go in that it was Verlander curve — but the ball flattened out in the right-handed box allowing Bailey to take his momentum into the baseball and fire down to third. Even then, Scott made it close, the oven mitt a stitch away from finding the bag before Chapman’s tag. Close enough to deke St. Louis manager Ollie Marmol who signaled to challenge before thinking better of it and changing his mind. Too late, Ollie! That initial decision forced the umpiring crew to review the play and confirm the call.
In the 8th, with another runner in scoring position and two outs, Jose Butto came into the game for Joey Lucchesi and struggled to find the plate against DH Ivan Herrera. Down 3-0, representing the potential tying run if he were to reach base, Herrera lunged at a slider well-off the plate for an inning-ending ground-out.
The caught-stealing at third, the 3-0 ground out — both were damnable offenses that proved irrelevant after what happened in the 9th.
The healthy way to look at this is the Giants are still playing meaningful baseball. “Hope brings pressure” as Verlander eloquently put it in his post-game interview. A September of consequence is a gift, and an undefeated September just wasn’t going to happen. Losses were inevitable. Streaks don’t last forever either. Don’t be sad it’s over, be happy it happened. HAGS! The Giants still have a chance to win the series. And standings-wise, the team is pretty much in the same situation as they were yesterday. Thanks to a Mets loss, they’re still four games out of the Wild Card. And somehow their meltdown wasn’t even the worst in their division.
But does seeing that kind of collapse make losing this one sting even more? Opportunities to gain ground are not guaranteed. A win in hand turning to sand — tsk tsk. Every grain is so precious! The Giants can’t let any more slip through their fingers.
