By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO — So painful. And so appropriate. The perfection of imperfection. A team that had bullpen problems all year, that had blown so many leads, blew its final game of the season, the one that couldn’t afford to be lost.
A big lead in the top of the ninth. So reassuring for the Giants. So worrying for their fans. A team built on pitching didn’t have the pitching when needed. Again and again, it happened in a season now at its end. The relievers could provide no relief.
“I would like to think you’re going to get three outs there,” sighed Giants manager Bruce Bochy. “We couldn’t do it.”
They couldn’t even come close to doing it.
Losing is never fun. Losing as the Giants lost Tuesday night was awful.
Ahead 5-2, after a beautiful eight innings from starter Matt Moore. But games last nine innings. Or more. And so Giants manager Bruce Bochy brought in Derek Law to replace Moore.
Then after one batter, Javier Lopez replaced Law. Then after one more batter, Sergio Romo replaced Lopez. Then after one more batter, Will Smith replaced Romo. And not one of them could get an out. Eventually, Hunter Strickland, the fifth Giants reliever, was throwing when Javier Baez — yes, him again — singled home Jason Heyward with the run that would give the Cubs the 6-5 victory and the National League Division Series, three games to one.
And before you knew it, there were the Chicago players dancing on the mound at AT&T Park, the Giants’ home. And before you knew it, some 500 to 800 Cubs fans were standing behind the first-base dugout, the Cubs' dugout, in an otherwise empty ballpark chanting and cheering for their Cubbies, their winners.
That Giants slogan, based partly on history and mostly on hope, “BeliEVEN,” was now only a reminder of a dream destroyed and a year gone haywire. The team with the best record in the first half of this “even” year flopped to the worst record in the second half. That they were in the playoffs at all was only because of a hot finish and two players, the remarkable Madison Bumgarner, who shut out the Mets in the Wild Card game, and Conor Gillaspie, who drove in the only runs that game with a homer.
Right after that, sure, anything was possible, but Giants manager Bruce Bochy knew what he had — and what he didn’t have. “We’re playing with house money,” Bochy mused before the playoff opener against the Cubs, who won 16 more games than San Francisco during the regular season.
Anything is possible in the postseason when baseball is distilled to a few games, and pitching is dominant. But that includes relief pitching, which the Giants lacked.
In a very quiet Giants post-game clubhouse, with teammates exchanging farewell hugs and handshakes, there stood Santiago Casilla, who had squandered his role as closer as August merged into September. He couldn’t hold a lead — what did he blow, seven games? — and neither could those who Bochy, in desperation, used as replacements.
The natural question was whether he thought Moore, who had thrown 120 pitches in his eight innings, could throw just enough more to get the victory that would send the series to the fifth game. He was willing. Bochy, obviously, was not.
“That was a lot of work he did,” Bochy said of Moore. “At that point where he was at, he did his job. We were lined up. We had all our guys set up. Everybody there. We just couldn’t get outs.”
Not one. Until it was too late.
“Sure, we can look now and say, ‘Hey, push him even more,’” Bochy said, “but we had confidence that these guys we put out there would get outs against that lineup, that we could get the matchups we wanted, and it didn’t work out.”
So the Giants are out. Done until spring training, when this even year will only be a distant memory and maybe Gillaspie, who hit so well in the last few games, finds a full-time place in the lineup and maybe somebody, anybody, develops into that much-needed closer.
“With the way the ball bounced in that ninth inning,” said Bochy, “I hate to use the word ‘destiny,’ but (the Cubs) had a great year, and that’s quite a comeback they mounted there. They got a break there on the throwing error (by Gold Glove shortstop Brandon Crawford) that set up the winning run.
“That’s frustrating when (Kris) Bryant beat the shift, and he hit the ball where the shortstop normally is ... But that’s baseball. You've got to get those last three outs, and that has been a problem for us.”
A huge, heartbreaking, season-ending problem.
