NLCS Game 3: Giants win after Cardinals literally throw away game in 10th
The San Francisco Giants keep finding unusual ways to win this postseason. This time? E-1.
The Giants pulled out a 5-4 victory Tuesday in Game 3 of the National League Championship Series after St. Louis Cardinals reliever Randy Choate fielded a 10th-inning sac bunt by Gregor Blanco and threw it away. Brandon Crawford, who was on second base after walking to start the 10th, came around to score. It wasn’t the Cardinals’ over-the-fence walk-off of Game 2, but it gets the job done just the same.
Before the extra-inning drama: The Giants jumped out to an early 4-0 lead in the first inning, capped by a three-run double by Travis Ishikawa that was nearly a grand slam. The Cardinals chipped away at the Giants’ lead, scoring two in the fourth and one in the sixth, then tying it in the seventh when Randal Grichuk homered to left field.
The Giants now lead the series 2-1.
• Travis Ishikawa moved from eighth in the lineup to seventh for Game 3, and it immediately paid dividends for the Giants, as Ishikawa hit a bases-loaded double in the bottom of the first inning that cleared the sacks and gave the Giants a 4-0 lead.
• Juan Perez’s 10th-inning single was key to the Giants’ win. He singled after a six-pitch at-bat, moving Crawford to second and setting up the bunt situation. Perez’s single was the Giants’ first hit since the fourth inning.
• Grichuk was twisting around in right field when Ishikawa hit that first-inning double, and while he was never going to catch it, he certainly changed his Game 3 highlight with the seventh-inning game-tying homer. It was his second homer of the postseason, after hitting one off Clayton Kershaw in the NLDS.
• John Lackey withstood a brutal first inning and settled in to keep the Giants under wraps for the rest of his outing. He pitched six innings and only gave up one more hit after the four-hit first inning. Obviously not his best outing, but he turned a disaster into something salvageable for the Cardinals.
• Jon Jay made a great play in the first inning, robbing Joe Panik of extra bases on a fly ball to right-center. It was before the Giants’ rally, and had Jay not made the catch, the damage in the inning would have been much worse.
• Kolten Wong, who hit the winning homer in Game 2, continued to hit the ball well — doubling in his first at-bat, then tripling home two runs in the fourth inning. Who needs Yadier Molina, apparently, when you have Wong.
• Choate throwing away a bunt to end the game was worse than when Madison Bumgarner did it for the Giants in the NLDS.
• Did the Giants’ offense fall asleep between its four-run first inning and the wild 10th? From the second inning to the ninth, they got exactly one hit and it came from pitcher Tim Hudson in the fourth.
Pablo Sandoval stopped the Cardinals in the 10th with this nifty grab on a Matt Holliday grounder down the third-base line. The Cardinals had a runner on first at the time.
• Should the Cardinals have taken out Choate before he even had a chance to field a bunt?
• The windy confines of AT&T Park, which played a role in both Ishikawa’s double and Wong’s triple. Expect to hear more about which outfielders are best equipped to play at AT&T Park before the next two games here.
• The comeback Cards. Yes, they lost, but seriously, they’ve proven time and time again this postseason that we can’t count them out. They dug out of a 4-0 hole and got another late-inning homer.
Game 4 of the series is scheduled for Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET. Shelby Miller (10-9, 3.72 ERA) gets the start for the Cardinals, opposed by Ryan Vogelsong (8-13, 3.92 ERA) for the Giants.
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Mike Oz is an editor for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz
