All of a sudden hooking Jordan Zimmermann when he was one out away from finishing a division series-tying 3-hit shutout doesn't look half as bad as it looked in Game 2. Madison Bumgarner couldn't have picked worse for the moment in which he'd surrender his first postseason runs in two years.
And a stocky catcher who bunts about as often as Nevada experiences a cold snap in July just might have turned the series around for the Washington Nationals who looked booked and cooked after 18 innings and a bitter Game Two loss. He also might have punctured the San Francisco Giants' armor of near-flawless fundamentals and image of poise in the postseason high pressures.
"If you'd told me before the game that that was going to happen," said Nationals relief pitcher Tyler Clippard, "I'd have called you crazy." Which is exactly what they're calling Bumgarner's pick of Nats catcher Wilson Ramos's seventh-inning sacrifice bunt and throw to third that ended up far past the bullpen off the left field line, allowing two Nats runs to cross the plate to break a scoreless Game 3 pitching duel.
The Giants started the inning nine defensive outs from going to the National League Championship Series. They ended it in the hole 3-0, went on to lose 4-1, and suddenly people who thought the Nats arrived in San Francisco as dead men walking think the Giants may have handed the Nats the keys to the kingdom, instead.
Bumgarner and Doug Fister had locked down a tremendous pitching duel entering the seventh, enough to cause Detroit Tiger fans to lament even further the deal that made a Nat out of Fister in the first place. They sent Fister to Washington for two no-names who ended up doing no favors and a prospect who wasn't likely to see showtime for another season or two. It left the Tigers having to deal for David Price mid-season and even Price couldn't help the Tigers stay in this postseason.
Fister and Bumgarner traded scoreless innings Sunday until the Nats began to shove in earnest in the top of the seventh. Ian Desmond opened with a clean single to left, Bryce Harper wrung himself a walk, and up came Ramos, who hadn't dropped a sacrifice bunt in three years, but who might have been seeded with the thought of it in light of his tendency to hit into double plays.
As a matter of fact, until Sunday Ramos had never attempted a bunt on two strikes, ever, regular or postseason. "Every day in [batting practice], I lay down a bunt two times," he admitted after the game. "So pretty much not at all. I don't do that too much." Here he was in the hole against Bumgarner, 1-2, after showing bunt the entire at-bat.
The Nats were so aware of Ramos's bare familiarity with the bunt that they actually took the bunt sign off when the count got there. But Ramos decided on his own to get a bunt down. He was too well aware his Nats hadn't put anything on the board in the past, oh, 21 innings. They hadn't even gotten any baserunner that far in the same span.
Now Bumgarner threw something just too simple to miss. And Ramos pushed it up the first base side, just about even with the mound and far enough away from it that your immediate thought would have been, "Get the obvious out." Especially if you're a pitcher who recorded only four outs in fielding eight bunts on the season and may have a tendency toward trouble throwing to second, never mind third, when you do field them.
You didn't need any replay to hear Giants catcher Buster Posey hollering "Third!" to Bumgarner a split second before he fielded the ball. Then he turned. And threw. The ball didn't get anywhere near third baseman Pablo Sandoval, who dove stretching like a first baseman trying to reach it and missed by inches while going down in a heap.
The ball sailed past the line and through the Giants bullpen. Desmond and Harper crossed the plate unmolested, though it's possible the ball bumping the bullpen warmup mounds gave Harper the time he needed to get home safe. Nats shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera promptly hit a ball one service into left to send home Ramos, who got in well enough ahead of Posey's tag bid, and only after that did Bumgarner get his three outs for the side.
"We probably should have taken the out [at] first," Posey admitted after the game. "I made a mistake telling him to throw to third."
"Of all the scenarios of how this series could have come out, us being down 0-2 and coming out here to face Madison Bumgarner is not the best," said Nats infielder Ryan Zimmermann, whose field presence has been limited thanks to slow injury recovery but whose dugout presence remains invaluable. "But that's how it went. So guess what? Just when it looked like we didn't have a chance, now we have a chance."
And how. In Game 4, the Nats get to abuse Ryan Vogelsong (5.54 ERA in September) while sending one of their own pitching bellwethers, Gio Gonzalez, up against him. The Nats won't see Bumgarner again this set unless it comes down to a fifth game and Giants manager Bruce Bochy is crazy enough to think Bumgarner can go Sandy Koufax. (Koufax's legend includes pitching a World Series-winning shutout on two days' rest and a couple of pennant clinchers likewise.)
But it probably will be a Stephen Strasburg/Jake Peavy rematch in Game 5. And don't let the Game 1 results fool you — the Giants pried only one earned run out of Strasburg (the other was unearned following a two-out passed ball) even while he scattered eight hits, and the Nats had begun wearing Jake Peavy down when he left the game with a mere 2-0 lead.
Fister actually took a better postseason jacket into the game than Bumgarner, who was looking like Superman thanks to his shutout to dump the Pittsburgh Pirates in the wild card game. But Fister entered the game with a 1.77 postseason ERA, the lowest among active starting pitchers, and used all the hoopla around Bumgarner to work his own masterpiece.
In fact, his biggest out just might have been the one he pounded on Bumgarner, a pitcher who can hit and who has accomplished at least one slightly surreal stat if you're aware of the fine detail. Put it this way: what now-retired Derek Jeter never did in his career, Bumgarner did twice this season.
So Bumgarner batted in the second inning with the bases loaded and two out. While everyone was busy crowing about Bumgarner's way with the bat and even the long ball, Fister got him chasing a sinkerball that a golfer would have had trouble hitting. It ended the only threat against Fister in which any Giant got even as far as second, never mind third.
Anything beyond the seventh could only have been anticlimactic unless the Giants found a way to come back and win. Clippard and Giants reliever Jean Machi swapped three-up, three-down in the eighth, and Machi hung around to open the ninth against Harper.
He threw a delicious slider on 1-1 that tailed slightly away and maybe a sliver below Harper's knees. But Harper caught every inch of it and drove it so far over the right field wall the ball missed clearing the stadium and even landing in McCovey Cove by just a few feet if that much.
It turned out that Harper's skyrocket was a gilt-edged insurance policy for the Nats because of closer Drew Storen getting into just enough trouble in the bottom of the ninth. Sandoval — who caught Fister's bunt attempt over the third base line right after the Cabrera RBI single like a bellyflopping whale — opened with a base hit. Hunter Pence doubled him to third, and up came Brandon Belt, the man who'd won the Saturday night marathon that shouldn't have been in Washington with a long unanswered home run.
Right there you could sense every Nationals fan and observer thinking, uh oh, Storen's channeling his inner 2012 division series Game 5. But all he channeled instead was freezing Belt on 2-2 with maybe the nastiest slider of Storen's life. He surrendered one run when Brandon Crawford nudged Kung Fu Panda home on a sacrifice fly, but he got Travis Ishikawa to ground out to Cabrera at short for the game.
"We needed one little thing to jump our way," Fister said after the game, "and it did."
"I shouldn't have done it," Bumgarner fumed after the game. "Regardless of whether I should have thrown it over there or not, I can't throw the ball away there ... I just screwed it up for us. We've got to come out tomorrow, ready to play. And I know we will. I'm not worried about it. It's just unfortunate we had to lose a game like that."
A hundred years earlier, Bullet Joe Bush of the Philadelphia Athletics threw Herbie Moran's sac bunt past third to let Hank Gowdy score one 1914 World Series-winning run for the Boston Braves. If the Nats go on to win this set, Wilson Ramos will have shoved Moran to one side as having laid down the most powerful bunt of all-time.
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