SAN FRANCISCO — When it was over, the Giants could look back on a 10-game postseason winning streak with pride. It spanned three series and a wild-card game over two postseasons and set a National League record.
SAN FRANCISCO — When it was over, the Giants could look back on a 10-game postseason winning streak with pride. It spanned three series and a wild-card game over two postseasons and set a National League record.
The streak included plenty of plays like the decisive one Monday. This time, however, the Giants were the ones to compound the mental mistake with a physical one, and it cost them in a 4-1 loss to the Washington Nationals.
Madison Bumgarner’s throw in a key seventh-inning moment skipped into left field, and as the ball bounced off a railing and rolled over the bullpen mound, the game spun away, too. Two runs scored and the Nationals wouldn’t look back, winning behind Doug Fister and cutting the Giants’ lead in the National League Division Series to 2-1, with Ryan Vogelsong and Gio Gonzalez set to duel Tuesday at 6 p.m.
The pressure is on the Giants, as they learned in 2012, when they overcame a 2-0 deficit against the Cincinnati Reds. You put a team away when you have the chance, and they Giants didn’t.
“We know how good this club is that we’re playing,” manager Bruce Bochy said. “You have to play your best ball to beat them. Today we didn’t and we made a mistake that hurt us.”
Actually, it was two mistakes on the same play.
Bumgarner and Fister had cruised through most of a rematch of Game 2 of the 2012 World Series, but the Nationals got going with an Ian Desmond single and Bryce Harper walk to lead off the seventh. Slow-footed catcher Wilson Ramos had not laid down a sacrifice bunt in three years, but eager to stay out of a double play and advance the go-ahead run to third, the Nationals put the bunt on and kept it on even as Ramos fell behind 1-2.
Bumgarner threw a slider across the outside corner and Ramos tapped it perfectly, dropping it between the mound and first-base line. Even at 6-foot-5, 235-pounds, Bumgarner is a good athlete and nimble fielder. He bounced off the mound and scooped the ball up as catcher Buster Posey screamed to cut off the lead runner at third.
“Oh, lord,” Ramos said to himself as Posey yelled. He was afraid he had just bunted into a double play, but Bumgarner’s throw was so far to the left of Pablo Sandoval that he couldn’t get a glove on it, and it skipped away from the infield as Travis Ishikawa gave chase. Desmond scored easily and Harper came around all the way from first.
“I thought I might have had a shot,” Bumgarner said. “Regardless of whether I get (Desmond) out or not, I felt we still had a shot at getting Ramos at first. But I can’t throw the ball away right there, obviously. I shouldn’t have done that. Regardless of whether I should have thrown over there or not, I can’t throw that ball away.”
Bumgarner regretted the physical act. Posey regretted his decision.
“I just thought the way it jumped off the bat, we might have had a shot,” he said. “But Desmond had a good jump. We probably should have just taken the out at first.”
The two-run hole would become three before a stunned sellout crowd could fully comprehend what had just happened. Asdrubal Cabrera poked a bouncer into left and Ramos made good on Nationals third-base coach Bobby Henley’s aggressive send, scoring just ahead of Ishikawa’s throw home.
Fister, a Merced native, gave up just one run in that 2012 matchup but took a crushing loss. He wouldn’t bend this time.
The Giants had a couple of early chances as Fister knocked the rust off following a 10-day layoff, getting two runners on with one out in the second. But Harper made a leaping catch on the warning track on a drive hit by Brandon Crawford, and after a walk of Ishikawa, Fister threw a two-seamer past Bumgarner, who had two grand slams in the regular season.
Harper homered in the top of the ninth and Drew Storen—who blew Game 2 — held on after putting the first two runners on. As the Giants watched another team enjoy a handshake line for the first time since Game 4 of the 2012 NLCS, the late afternoon sun shined light on a troubling fact. The Giants are hitting .208 through three games, and they’ve scored just six runs.
“They really do have some tremendous arms, and you understand that when you’re going to play these guys,” right fielder Hunter Pence said. “They also play tremendous defense. That’s a good combination.”
The Giants will try to find the right one Tuesday, and if they do, Bumgarner’s error will be forgotten as they prepare for a third National League Championship Series in five seasons.
“The story has yet to be written,” Pence said. “A lot of times you don’t remember the games in the middle. You remember the clinch game.”