All Hands On Deck

Until Saturday, October 23 2010, I had never endured a game that felt as long, as torturous, as frustrating, and ultimately as euphoric as Game 6 of the NLCS did. Unlike most of the postseason that year, on this night I was out with friends at Gordon Biersch in Palo Alto so I had to rely on a tv at the other end of the restaurant and couldn’t hear any audio. Being a true Giants fan, I was trying to pay as much attention to the game as possible, inadvertently shutting out a lot of what was going on at our table. I was SO tense.

The 1st inning felt like the 8th. It didn’t help that Jonathan Sanchez had nothing left after throwing 208.2 innings until now. In the top of the 1st he threw 25 pitches and gave up 2 runs so it was an uphill climb immediately. The Phills and their fans were fired up. I could tell it was a rough atmosphere to be in just by seeing it on the TV. Philadelphia had the momentum after winning Game 5 in San Francisco and Roy Oswalt was on the mound who already beat the Giants 6-1 in Game 2 throwing 8 innings, with 3 H, 1R, 1ER, 9K. Scary. But the 2010 San Francisco Giants were battlers and they were about to grind out one of the best wins in franchise history. Let us talk about that.

The Most Important Play – Defensively

In the box score it reads: Line Drive Double Play: 1B, Victorino out at 2B/1B-SS

But it was so much crazier than that! The Giants had just taken the lead on the Uribe home run in the top of the 8th and Bochy was bringing in The Freak to pitch to Jayson Werth, Shane Victorino, and Raul Ibanez in the bottom half. Time to bite your nails. Timmy looked dominant as he handled Werth, striking him out on 5 pitches. Then things weren’t fun anymore. Victorino followed with a single after a great 8 pitch at bat, then Ibanez singled him to 2nd and it was time to freak out. That’s exactly what happened, Bochy took The Freak out. In comes Brian Wilson for the 5 out save.

Oddly enough for Wilson, 5 out saves weren’t that uncommon. He recorded 6 five out saves in 2010. So he was no stranger to the 8th. First pitch to Carlos Ruiz: strike. Whew. Looks like he’s got his control. Then Wilson throws the next pitch 3 feet in front of the plate that Posey makes a great stop on to keep the runners at 1st and 2nd. All right, maybe he doesn’t have it. Can’t anything come easy in this game? You couldn’t relax for one pitch.

Then something incredible happened. Miracles are not scheduled. Nor are they predicted. They just happen. Without warning. They can be in the form of a fireman being in the right place at the right time, avoiding a sure car accident, or a first baseman’s glove snagging a line drive. Tonight’s miracle came in the form of a line drive double play that ended the threat and the 8th inning. With a 1-1 count, Wilson threw a fastball that slightly jammed Ruiz, but he still got good wood on it. If statcast was around, we may have seen that the ball left his bat at 90 mph. Not an Aaron Judge liner, but hard nonetheless. This is where that miracle happens: it was RIGHT AT Aubrey Huff. Right at him! If he’s playing on the line that’s a base hit and the Phillies have just tied the game because Victorino (LOL) didn’t freeze! He took off for home and I have yet to see a replay that shows where he was or what he was doing. He was so far from 2nd that no camera caught him. Unbelievable. What a break for the Giants. If that ball had been 3 feet in either direction and the Phillies had comeback to win that game, we would have seen Matt Cain vs. Cole Hamels in Game 7. I am incredibly grateful I never had to watch that game. The second miracle of that play was that Huff didn’t throw it into left field. He took his time and got the force.

The Most Important Play – Offensively

It would be very easy to say that Juan Uribe’s solo homer in the 8th to give the Giants the lead is the biggest hit of this game. But I don’t want to take the easy way out. Let’s dive into an earlier play. A play you may have forgotten about. You know Uribe’s homer was our 3rd run, but how did we score the first two? Ground attack.

Now, I’ve already said that Jonathan Sanchez had nothing left, but, whatever ounce of energy he had was infused into his bat. He lead off the top of the 3rd with a 2 strike single that just barely eluded Utley. Utley will tell you he should have made the play, but it went as a hit as he never touched it. Then Sanchez’s base running came into play. With 2 strikes Andres Torres smoked a ball to deepest center field that Victorino almost made the catch of the postseason on, but he bobbled it and it fell up against the fence. Sanchez jogged into 2nd with Torres hot on his heels thinking he had an easy double (if Sanchez wasn’t on, Torres would have had a standup triple).

With Sanchez standing on 2nd, Torres had to scramble back to 1st at full speed, diving in just ahead of the throw. Come on, guys. Will nothing come easy tonight? If it seemed like every Giants batter had 2 strikes on him, you’d almost be right. Oswalt had 2 strikes on 16 of the 26 batters he faced. In fact, that’s how this 3rd inning got started. Sanchez saw 2 strikes, base hit. Torres saw 2 strikes, base hit. Now with 2 on and 0 outs, Freddy Sanchez came to the plate and bunted them over on the first pitch he saw, not waiting around for 2 strikes. And neither were Huff and Buster. Huff ripped a single right back up Oswalt to score Sanchez but Torres was hosed at the plate by Victorino, preventing a tie game. Now comes the the biggest play. With the tying run on 2nd and 2 outs, Buster swings at the first pitch and hits a little tapper to 3rd (something we all now know as a “Buster Special”). Placido Polanco charges in and throws to 1st on the run, but throws it wide, into Buster, pulling Ryan Howard off the bag. The ball rolls away and Huff scores from 2nd easily to tie the game!

It officially goes down as an E5 and the Giants tied it up (not the last time they would benefit from a huge E5 in a playoff game on the road)! If Buster doesn’t bust his ass up the line on that, Howard can catch that ball, tag him, and the inning’s over. Uribe’s 8th inning homer only ties it, and Game 6 goes to extra innings. With Jeremy Affeldt, Javy Lopez, and Brian Wilson already used by the 9th, it would have been very interesting to see what Bochy would have done in extras, while also thinking about who to save for Game 7. But the E5 tied it and we will never know.

Odd Stats

The strategy the Giants had in Game 2 against Oswalt was clearly to see a lot of pitches because in his 8 innings pitched, only once did the Giants put the ball in play on the first pitch. They let Oswalt get deep into the count, but that may have backfired because he had 2 strikes on 16 of the 30 guys he faced (16 of 26 in G6!). The difference in Game 6 was that the Giants put the ball in play on the first pitch 10 times and batted .600 when they did that. In all other at bats they were 7-31 (.226). All 3 of their runs scored on first pitch swings: Huff’s RBI single, Posey’s ball that went as E5, and Uribe’s home run. Speaking of Uribe’s shot into the first row, he was pretty clutch late for the Giants that year. 8 of his 24 big flies in 2010 came in the 7th inning or later and 4 of those either tied the game or gave the Giants the lead. Those were off tough pitchers in the likes of Jonathan Broxton, Heath Bell, and Clayton Kershaw. He also wasn’t a stranger to swinging early as 5 of his 24 jacks were first pitch ambushes. In 2010, Ryan Madson only gave up 4 home runs in 53 IP before Uribe took his first pitch deep. It was a great match up for the Giants as Uribe’s career totals off Madson now were 2-3, 2 HR, 3 RBI.

Great At Bat

The Giants put up some great ABs against Oswalt throughout this game.

That’s 56 pitches in 8 at bats! Those are great at bats. However, their outcomes didn’t score any runs, nor lead to any runs being scored. The at bat of this game was put up by the starting pitcher of this game: Jonathan Sanchez leading off the top of the 3rd. Although things were about to get worse for him in this game, it was already pretty bad. He had thrown a 25 pitch, 2 run 1st inning, settled down in the 2nd still throwing another 18, so he was 43 pitches deep before his first at bat. Then he was quickly down 0-2 to Oswalt who was CRUISING, having thrown 9 of 9 first pitch strikes, had a 2 run lead, and had only thrown 28 pitches before the 3rd. They were 2 pitchers going in opposite directions. Sanchez took the third pitch for a ball, a curveball that just missed. Not sure how he took that one and Oswalt looked upset he didn’t get the call, snapping his glove at the ball as it came back to him. Then fun things happened. The 1-2 pitch was a fastball on the outside that Sanchez put a nice, flat swing on and he shot it under Utley’s glove into center field for a hit! That’s right, Chase! How do you like that!?

That started the 2 run rally that tied the game and allowed Uribe to win it in the 8th. Huge. Great at bat.

Brian Wilson striking out Ryan Howard to end this game sent me running around Gordon Biersch giving high fives to strangers while recording with my phone. If you were there, I either apologize or would totally do it again.

Other Minor Notables

In 7 at bats against Roy Oswalt in the NLCS, Buster Posey saw 33 pitches.

Second place for Most Important Play of the game goes to Mark Gardner for keeping Affeldt in the bullpen when the benches emptied in the bottom of the 3rd.

---

Next Blog: 2010 World Series Game 1