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Madison Bumgarner throws Nationals a bone(-headed gift) in Game 3 Madison Bumgarner throws Nationals a bone(-headed gift) in Game 3
(35 minutes later)
SAN FRANCISCO — You never want to wake up a sleeping giant, even if you are the Giants.SAN FRANCISCO — You never want to wake up a sleeping giant, even if you are the Giants.
Ignited by a two-run throwing error by San Francisco ace left-hander Madison Bumgarner, then buoyed by both a sliding catch in left field and a titanic home run over the right field bleacher by Bryce Harper, the Washington Nationals battered their way back into this National League Division Series on Monday afternoon with a 4-1 win at AT&T Park. With one wild throw Monday, San Francisco may have awakened the team with the National League’s best record: the Washington Nationals, who accepted that gift and used it as the fulcrum of their 4-1 victory in Game 3 of this National League Division Series.
Where it will lead is unknown, but this virtually defined what a momentum-turning playoff game feels like. The Nats’ gritty, aggressive Doug Fister won with seven scoreless inning of head-to-head dueling with Bumgarner, who has one of the game’s best October records. Now Gio Gonzalez, a southpaw who has been dominant in his last two starts, faces Ryan Vogelsong of the Giants in Tuesday night’s Game 4, a matchup that has long been assumed to favor the Nationals. A moment arrives in many postseason baseball series in which one team in behind in games, clinging to playoff life and the string of zeroes beside that team’s name on the scoreboard seems to stretch back for as long as that team can remember. In October, what is really a minor slump suddenly seems like eternity.
Ian Desmond’s single into left field to start the seventh inning of a scoreless game on a gorgeous afternoon should have been a small enough annoyance for Bumgarner to ignore, especially coming after his 9-0 shutout of Pittsburgh in the wild-card game last week. Even his subsequent walk to Harper could have been viewed merely as judicious pitching, given that Harper hit a 440-foot homer earlier in this series. For Washington, that line of zeroes, extending back to the third inning of Saturday’s Game 2 looked like this, at least in the Nationals’ minds: 000-000-000-000-000-000.
But when he picked up a no-out sacrifice bunt attempt by Wilson Ramos, a large catcher with a serious history of hamstring injuries, Bumgarner made an instantaneous decision — a huge gaffe perpetrated in an instant — that may have swung the direction of this series. Yes, the Nats would score again, but if you’ve seen team after team expire in the clutches of the October Slump Monster, you suspected that next run might arrive next spring in Viera, Fla.
Bumgarner’s wild peg to third would not have beaten the speedy Desmond. But it also pulled Pablo Sandoval off the bag and left him doing pointless splits as the ball rolled deep into the Giants’ scattering bullpen down the left field line. The ball rolled so far that, even though Desmond and Harper hesitated to figure out where it was, both scored while Ramos took second. Then, the Giants let their prey escape — for a day, or perhaps for considerably more than that.
Until Bumgarner’s egregiously unwise error, Washington was in a catatonic scoring slump: scoreless for its last 21 innings. Yet as soon as they scored — on a gift — for that 2-0 lead, they immediately started to hit rockets around AT&T Park. Asdrubal Cabrera followed Bumgarner’s error with an RBI single. In addition to Harper’s blast, other Nats sent outfielders scurrying deep. The slump may be over. “We had a ball bounce our way today,” said Doug Fister, who got the victory with seven shutout innings in the Nats’ 4-1 victory to cut their deficit to two games to one. “We needed one little thing to jump our way and it did.”
As Harper batted in the ninth, Giants fans began chanting, “What’s wrong with Harper?” Answer: “He’s a bum.” Just as the chant behind home plate reached its conclusion a second time, there was an enormous “crack” followed by a mammoth, towering home run. The fans fell silence except for one, who couldn’t help himself and just said, “Whoa!” That bounce, that break, was more than a little thing; it was a symbolic play. The Giants had won 10 straight postseason games because, at least in October, they create the impression that they never make fundamental errors or lose their poise for an instant and make mistakes in sensible split-second baseball judgment. In other words, they are clutch in that vague way that some teams, some veterans always seem to have an extra eye, a clock in their head, that tells them where to throw, how hard to press their advanatage.
What of the Giants? Perhaps they will notice that they have scored just six runs, five of them earned, in 36 innings. That’s a 1.25 ERA for the Nats’ staff. Is the slump on the other foot? There is no more important factor to watch in the postseason than which dugout has the cold bats. The two most central Giants on a depleted roster that has battled for months to resuscitate a deteriorating season are former N.L. MVP catcher Buster Posey and ace southpaw Madison Bumgarner, the only star hurler still healthy from the Giants’ World Series wins in 2010 and ’12.
In October, a terrible creature, universally feared but seldom defeated, attacks talented but increasingly nervous teams as one scoreless inning after another strangles their hopes of playoff glory. Call it the Pressure Monster or the Tension Tapeworm. Postseason playoff watchers have seen it countless times but can count on their fingers the teams that escaped. On one play, they both blundered. The first mistake was by Posey who screaming “third [base]” rather than “first” as Bumgarner fielded a sacrifice bunt attempt by Wilson Ramos in the seventh inning of a scoreless game. Perhaps Posey sensed that this was a “dagger” moment. Throw out the lead runner, force the Nats to pinch hit (Ryan Zimmerman) for the effective Fister, escape the inning with another “zero” and then get into the Nats bullpen. He thinks that fast, senses the momentum of the game that well. But he overplayed his hand.
To get out of the clutches of that 000-000-000-000-000-000-000 Thing — and that’s exactly what the Washington Nationals’ linescore looked like from the third inning of Game 2 until the seventh inning Monday — a team almost always needs help. From your psychiatrist. From a ball lost in the sun. From a pebble in front of third base like the one that won the 1924 World Series for the Senators. From a third strike a catcher drops to start a rally. The second mistake was both physical and mental. Bumgarner turned to third, saw that he had no chance to throw out the swift Ian Desmond and, instead of ignoring Posey and throwing out Ramos at first, gunned the ball to third base anyway — and threw it wildly, too.
But the last place the Nats expected to get surcease, pity, aid in distress or a gawdawful is-my-brain-full-of-rocks fundamental blunder was from the biggest, baddest put-your-pretty-little-96-win-season-in-the-grave pitcher on the Giants’ staff: Madison Your Worst Nightmare Bumgarner. As the ball rolled far down the left field line into the confusion of the Giants bullpen, a goofy parade worthy of Market Street broke out on the bases. The Nats barely knew where the ball was. Third base coach Bob (Wave ’Em) Henley said, “I didn’t know exactly where the ball was, but I knew they didn’t have it” and he started sending everybody in sight. “I couldn’t pick up Desmond” out of the dirt but “I yelled as loud as I could.”
Nonetheless, in a split second, Bumgarner drove the thin edge of a potentially mighty wedge into San Francisco’s hopes of stampeding the nervous, offensively paralyzed Nats into a sweep and a winter of disturbing comparisons to 2012. Bryce Harper needed less encouragement, flying home for a 2-0 lead. More than the ice was broken. The Giants’ mystique also had shown its first major crack in this series.
In a general’s dreams of battle, the hope is not simply for your enemy to fail, to show weakness, but to reveal the crucial chink in its armor at the point where it was supposed to be strongest, almost invulnerable. Asdrubal Cabrera plated Ramos with an RBI single shortly thereafter. And Harper — who had a superb game with two superior catches in left field, a walk and a run scored off Bumgarner — added an incredible insurance-run home run in the ninth inning with a blast, perhaps 425 feet, entirely over the right field bleachers beyond the 365-foot sign.
For the Giants, that strength was fundamental execution of basic plays and, just as important, a sense of near-perfect judgment about when to press for an advantage in pressure situation and when to play the house percentages. You would choke. Then they would choke you. Before Harper’s blast, Giants fans behind home plate started to chant, “What’s wrong with Harper?” Answer: “He’s a bum.” Just as they finished their second chorus, Harper’s bat gave a shivering “CRACK.” The fans went silent, except one who simply said, “Whoa!”
And that’s how it had gone in the first two games of this series. The Nats aided the Giants to bits and pieces of all three of their runs in a 3-2 loss in Game 1. That may be how the Giants feel, to some degree, too. After that two-run mistake, the Nats played with flare, Desmond showing off his gun arm at shortstop while three Nats hit long drives that were caught. The Nats’ slump in this series is very likely over, especially because the Giants’ Ryan Vogelsong is a crafty but make-do starter in Game 4. He’ll face Gio Gonzalez, who has been very good recently but was nervous to the brink of implosion in two playoff starts in 2012.
And in Game 2, they held a 1-0 lead with two outs in the ninth inning when Manager Matt Williams did whatever that thing was that he did that I can barely remember anymore because I can’t stop thinking about Bumgarner’s throw. Momentum has turned in this series. The Giants don’t want to face a Game 5 in Washington with Stephen Strasburg and Jordan Zimmermann available. But can Gonzalez get them there? The Giants, without regulars Angel Pagan, Marco Scutaro and Michael Morse, now use six lefty hitters against right-handers. Against Gonzalez the Giants may be forced to a weaker lineup with right-handed hitting rookies or disadvantaged lefties. Even Nats Manager Matt Williams, who seldom points at rivals’ weaknesses, mentioned it vaguely.
Will the Giants be able to forget it? The Nats, with Giant help, have moved on from their haunting moment and loss. Will San Francisco? Of such questions is October made. “There’s still a lot less pressure on them. They’re still up,” said Nats first baseman Adam LaRoche, adding that decent ninth-inning work by closer Drew Storen had value. “He needed that, too, after the other night,” said LaRoche, referring to Storen’s blown save in Game 2 that still looms as an eerie glowing nightlight behind the rest of this series.
So, the Giants make mistakes, too? “How about that,” LaRoche said. “That’s baseball.”
Ramos was this game’s hidden hero for getting down a sacrifice bunt toward first base with two strikes after taking two pitches right over the plate while in a bunt posture that seemed extremely foreign to him.
“That might be the first bunt of his career. I haven’t even seen him do it in batting practice,” said Denard Span, laughing. Henley actually whispered the signal into the ear of Ramos whose last successful bunt was in 2011.
Conspicuous valor went to Harper, who made a racing catch in left-center a step from the 382-foot sign with two men on base in the second inning, then a one-on, one-out face-first sliding catch to rob the Giants of a hit.
“Those are probably the two best catches I’ve seen him make all season,” said Span, who has certainly had the closest view all year. “He’s been tentative with the walls since last year in Los Angeles. He kind of shies away. But he had no fear and made an unbelievable play. The second [catch], he came flyin’ out of nowhere.”
An appreciative Fister said Bryce “is sacrificing. He’s stretching and cacthing and rolling on the ground. . . . We had our backs against the wall and we came out swinging.”
Aren’t you glad sports clichés aren’t dead? And that they are meant as dead seriously as in 1914.
The first major psychological damage in this series was inflicted when the Giants won games started by Strasburg and Zimmermann in D.C., where the Nats have the second-best home record in the sport. This game was half of a rebuttal as Bumgarner by the Bay has been the Giants’ best October knockout punch.
“Still got a lot of work to do,” Span said. “We gave ourselves a chance.”
In October, a terrible creature, universally feared but seldom defeated, attacks talented but increasingly nervous teams as one scoreless inning after another strangles their hopes of a long glorious postseason. Call it the Pressure Monster or the Tension Tapeworm. Playoff watchers have seen it countless times but can count on their fingers the teams that escaped. The Nats just did.
But those Houdini acts usually require outside help. From your psychiatrist. From a ball lost in the sun. From a pebble in front of third base like the one that won the 1924 World Series for the Senators. Or a throw such as Bumgarner’s.
Now it is the Giants who may notice their offensive struggles. In 36 innings in this series they have just six runs, five of them earned, and just two of them while a Nats starting pitcher was actually standing on the mound. The Nats’ team ERA is now 1.25. Excellent staffs usually grind down good batting orders in October.
Next up: Gonzalez. It’s only an elimination game for the Nats. But savvy as they are, the Giants know the true stakes. Tuesday is not their last stand. But they will be wise enough to treat it as such.
For more by Thomas Boswell, visit washingtonpost.com/boswell.For more by Thomas Boswell, visit washingtonpost.com/boswell.