Giants bust Cardinals’ seventh-inning mojo en route to NLCS Game 4 victory
SAN FRANCISCO — Before we delve any further into the San Francisco Giants’ 6-4 win Wednesday night that brought them within one win of another World Series, let’s consider these three facts about the St. Louis Cardinals postseason run of 2014:
• The Cardinals haven’t taken a lead into the seventh inning of a single game they’ve played this postseason, yet they’ve won four out of eight games.
• St. Louis has scored 15 runs in the seventh inning in their postseason games. Three times they’ve gone ahead in the seventh, twice they’ve tied a game.
• The Cardinals haven’t scored in the seventh in three of their postseason games — including Wednesday’s — and they’ve lost all three.
If you’ve been watching the Cardinals on TV the last few weeks, you know. If you’re an opposing fan watching the Cardinals on TV, you may even hold your breath. The Cardinals’ seventh-inning mojo, it would seem, is real.
But Giants shortstop Brandon Crawford begs to differ. Of course, when you slay the dragon, that’s your right.
“It’s not like it’s a magic inning,” Crawford said after his team’s Game 4 win. “We have enough confidence in our bullpen that we aren’t too worried about any specific inning.”
The Giants bullpen lived up to that praise Wednesday, though they still squirmed a bit. Manager Bruce Bochy, using a bit of his own mojo, called upon three of his best relief pitchers to secure a scoreless seventh.
“If you have those weapons,” said Giants reliever Javier Lopez, “you want to try to use them.”
It started simple enough. Jeremy Affeldt, one of San Francisco’s battle-tested lefties, got the first two outs of the inning, the second being that pesky Matt Carpenter. But Affeldt walked Jon Jay, so Bochy called for righty Jean Machi to face Matt Holliday. Holliday singled, which brought up Matt Adams as the go-ahead run.
Rewind to eight days ago: Adams came up with his team down two and unloaded a go-ahead, three-run homer off Clayton Kershaw that propelled the Cardinals to the NLCS. It happened in the seventh inning, of course. So when the Giants brought out lefty reliever Javier Lopez, the replay of Adams’ homer played ominously on TV.
Lopez threw ball one. OK. Lopez threw ball two. Uh-oh. Lopez threw ball three. Ummm. Then came a called strike and a foul ball and then it was a full count and then Lopez delivered another pitch.
Grounder to second. Exhale.
“It’s not how you draw it up, obviously,” Lopez said. “I knew I had to keep the ball down and I had a decent chance of getting a ground ball.”
The Giants went back to their dugout. There was no game-tying double off the ball. No go-ahead homer. Just a zero.
Even though there were two innings left, getting through the seventh without the Cardinals scoring seemed like a victory in its own right. The Giants know what their opponents are capable of, they’ve seen it firsthand in the other wild games of this series.
“There was a bit of relief,” said Giants first baseman Brandon Belt said, “every inning they didn’t hit a home run.”
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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
