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D-Back miscues aid Giants in 7-4 win
By Daniel Dullum July 23, 2010 |
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PHOENIX, Ariz. – Earlier in the day on Friday, Dan Haren’s Arizona Diamondback teammates played an ominous prank on him – cleaning out his locker, a time-honored tradition to indicate he’d been traded. Despite the rumors, Haren is still a Diamondback, for now. But his next scheduled start is Tuesday, and the chances of his wearing a new uniform increase by the day. Then, a few hours later, the San Francisco Giants showed up and played their own prank on the D-Backs – letting the floundering home team think they’d win a baseball game. Arizona second baseman Kelly Johnson hit for the cycle, but starting pitcher Edwin Jackson committed two costly throwing errors that allowed the go-ahead unearned runs in the seventh inning, and the Giants came from behind to defeat the Snakes 7-4 before 22,512 at Chase Field. “The way the game was unfolding, Sanchy (Giants starter Jonathan Sanchez) was struggling out there, but he got out of a lot of jams and made some big pitches when he had to,” Giants first baseman Aubrey Huff, who homered twice, said. “When Jackson sailed the ball on that bunt, you knew something good was going to happen. You’ve got to capitalize on mistakes like that.” “Any time you can win a game when somebody on the other side hits for the cycle, it’s a good thing,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said. Johnson became the third player this season to hit for the cycle with an eighth-inning single. Johnson homered in the first inning, doubled in the fifth and tripled in the sixth. San Francisco stranded nine baserunners and the Diamondbacks left 14 on base, in part accounting for the 3-hour, 45-minute length of the game. The teams swapped first-inning solo homers – the Giants’ Aubrey Huff hit his first blast of the night with two out, and in the bottom half, Johnson responded with a one-out shot that bounced off the right-center field fence and into the pool area. The game remained tied at 1-1 until the top of the fourth, when San Francisco’s Travis Ishikawa doubled and scored on a single by Edgar Renteria. Huff made it a 3-1 lead for the Giants with his second solo homer of the night, and No. 19 on the season. “BP felt good today, I had an epic batting practice,” Huff said. “Jackson’s always been tough on me. The first one, he made a mistake and I got him. Then he started busting me inside and I couldn’t get to his heater. “To be perfectly honest, I cheated on the second one. I stepped in the bucket and went after him,” Huff continued. “He’s got nasty stuff and I got lucky on him today.” The Diamondbacks had a golden opportunity to surge ahead in the bottom of the fifth by loading the bases with one out, but their penchant for whiffing came into play. After Chris Young led off with a walk, Kelly Johnson followed with a ground rule double and Justin Upton popped out to second. Adam LaRoche walked to load the bases, but Sanchez struck out Mark Reynolds and Rusty Rayl, both on change-ups and the latter on a long at-bat. Sanchez threw 104 pitches in five innings and wound up with a no-decision. “(Sanchez) did a great job of competing,” Bochy said. “He battled, worked hard. You don’t like to see that many pitches, but he did some Houdini acts out there, especially when he was running on fumes out there in the fifth. They kept fouling all those pitches off, but he kept his poise out there, used some grit and got through it.” “You get in trouble, so you better get after it,” Sanchez said. “You just have to make good pitches and see what happens.” But Arizona would cash in one inning later against San Francisco reliever Santiago Casilla, who replaced Sanchez after a long fifth inning. Bochy said Sanchez was “a batter away from being pulled in the fifth. He was getting tired.” But Sanchez, who struck out 10 and gave up five walks and four hits, disagreed. “I didn’t get tired at all,” Sanchez said. “I get four days to prepare myself to go deep in the game and throw a lot of pitches, so I wasn’t tired at all.” Stephen Drew led off the D-Backs sixth with a single, and Chris Snyder walked. After Jackson struck out, Young hit into a fielder’s choice, forcing Snyder, and stole second. Johnson sent a line drive to the left-center field warning track at the 413-foot sign, scoring Drew and Young with a game-tying triple. LaRoche finished the rally with an RBI single that put Arizona up 4-3. Reliever Chris Ray (3-0) replaced Casilla and got the final out of the sixth inning, just in time to pick up the win. In the San Francisco seventh, the Giants took advantage of back-to-back throwing errors by Jackson (6-9) and a two-RBI triple by Andres Torres to regain the lead. “He came through again for us with a huge hit and laid down a couple of perfect bunts,” Bochy said of Torres. “When you give up the lead like that and come back, that’s always a good thing. The squad did a great job with that.” After Nate Schierholtz led off with a single, Eli Whiteside and pinch-hitter Eugenio Velez each reached on wild throws by Jackson following the execution of a sacrifice bunt, with Schierholtz scoring on the Velez bunt. Torres then sent a towering drive off the center field fence, just below the home run stripe, scoring Whiteside and Velez and putting San Francisco back in front at 6-4. That, and a walk to Freddy Sanchez, chased Jackson in the process. “Jackson was throwing well,” Bochy said. “Then he came loose on a pair of perfect bunts.” The Giants tacked on a run in the ninth when Torres reached third on a misjudged fly to rightfielder Justin Upton and scored on a single by Huff. In the D-Backs eighth, San Francisco reliever Sergio Romo gave up the single that gave Johnson his cycle and coerced Upton to hit into a double play. But when LaRoche walked, closer Brian Wilson came in and got Reynolds to hit into a fielder’s choice. Wilson went on to retire the last three hitters he faced in the ninth for his 28th save. With the win, the Giants remain three games behind first-place San Diego in the NL West race. Saturday’s starting pitchers are Madison Bumgarner (3-2) for the Giants and Ian Kennedy (5-7) for Arizona. GIANTS NOTES: Bochy said setup pitcher Jeremy Affeldt was “OK” thought he didn’t pitch in the long contest on Friday and hopes the situation is day-to-day. “He started to warm up and started to tighten up in his side, so we shut him down. We’ll evaluate him (Saturday) and see where we’re at. We don’t want to take any chances.” |
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