Patrick Bailey, Justin Verlander power Giants' unforgettable win over Dodgers originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
SAN FRANCISCO — Giants manager Bob Melvin sat down behind a podium late Friday night and asked a question that was more pertinent than any he would be asked.
“Where do you want to start?” he said, smiling as he looked out at a packed interview room at Oracle Park.
With a game like that, where do you start?
Perhaps with Justin Verlander, the 42-year-old who celebrated 20 seasons of MLB service time by throwing seven strong innings against a star-filled lineup that seemingly had found its stride earlier this week at Dodger Stadium.
Or maybe with Matt Chapman and Dominic Smith, who combined for one of the better defensive plays of the year, saving an early run in a game that would go to extra innings. The stretch at first will send Smith to the MRI tube, but teammates stopped by after the 5-1 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers to celebrate him for giving everything he had — including perhaps part of his upper hamstring — to the effort.
How about with Grant McCray? The bold young outfielder has not started a game since he was added as a speed-and-defense September call-up, and his wheels weren’t enough to get him home safely when he tagged on a shallow fly ball in the bottom of the ninth. McCray was thrown out at the plate, but he recovered in a magnificent way, making a 101.7 mph throw to third in the top of the 10th to snuff out a potential Dodgers rally with Mookie Betts at the plate and Freddie Freeman due up.
You should probably start, though, with where this one ended.
Patrick Bailey has had a nightmare of a season at the plate, but he’s well on his way to a second straight Gold Glove Award and he might take home the Platinum Glove, too. It was the bat that was in the spotlight on Friday, though.
Bailey crushed a Tanner Scott fastball into the seats in left for a walk-off grand slam, which will fit nicely alongside his walk-off inside-the-park homer when he tells stories to his kids one day. It’s probably not a shock that he’s the first MLB player to do both in one season, but the way this one ended was a surprise. It had been 56 years since a Giants catcher hit a walk-off grand slam and more than two years since Bailey had gone deep from the right side.
On a night when you could have picked a half-dozen Giants to do the on-field interview and get splashed by Willy Adames, Bailey ended up being an easy choice, and then he went and joined what was described as the most exciting clubhouse celebration of the season.
When it was over and everyone had calmed down, it was clear that something had shifted.
The Giants are still taking things one day at a time, but they also have started to mention the MLB postseason, which now is well within their grasp. Perhaps that was because Friday felt like a playoff game.
“We’ve got a lot of young guys that haven’t quite experienced that atmosphere yet, so to come through in a big way like that, that’s a big boost to a team that hasn’t really proven ourselves,” Verlander said. “To know that when those moments come along, which inevitably they will, there’s big moments that come along if you want to make it to the playoffs, much less win in the playoffs, then you’ve got to have the belief that you can succeed in those moments.”
The Giants are long past the point of finding belief in a season that felt lost in July and August. They have been the hottest team in baseball for several weeks, steadily picking up ground on the New York Mets. On Friday, it felt like a dam broke.
Every other team in the wild-card race lost, and the Giants are now just a half-game behind the Mets, or 1.5 games if you take the tiebreaker into account. They picked up a game on the San Diego Padres, who lost to the last-place Colorado Rockies, and on the Cincinnati Reds, who got blanked up the road in Sacramento. The Arizona Diamondbacks got walked off in Minneapolis, and the Giants even gained ground on the Dodgers, who are hoping to wrap up the NL West in time to set their postseason rotation.
For all that has gone right in recent weeks, the Giants have always known that they would have to get through Los Angeles in the end. Friday was the start of a stretch of seven games in 10 days against the Dodgers, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto did his part, striking out 10 Giants and allowing just one hit.
But Verlander kept them close, with some help from Chapman and Smith. The Giants had a chance to walk it off in the bottom of the ninth, and there was some urgency. Shohei Ohtani, Betts and Freeman were due up in the 10th.
Melvin had no problem with the decision to send McCray, noting that it took a perfect throw to get him. Still, it was questionable, especially with Chapman due up next. It certainly wasn’t a fun walk back to the dugout for McCray, but as he grabbed his glove, he fired himself up.
“I just wanted to take one away, honestly,” he said.
McCray did so in memorable fashion. Catcher Ben Rortvedt tagged when Betts hit a fly ball to right and got cut down by the fastest throw by a Giant in the Statcast era. Asked about it later, McCray looked over at Casey Schmitt’s locker.
“Schmitt says he throws harder than me,” he said. “Will you guys let him know he doesn’t?”
As Verlander took his turn in front of the cameras, the two young players argued about who actually does have the better arm. It was the type of moment that didn’t exist in the clubhouse a few weeks ago, but right now, the Giants can seemingly do no wrong.
If you take a step back, it’s all a little insane.
In the top of the 10th, the Giants survived Ohtani-Betts-Freeman because of a stunning throw from a September call-up, which led to a scoreless inning for a reliever who was struggling in Triple-A for most of this season. In the bottom of the 10th, they got a walk-off from a catcher who has spent most of this season trying to get his average comfortably above .200.
The walk-off was Bailey’s sixth in the big leagues and gave him two memorable ones this season.
“Both are definitely pretty cool,” he said. “I’m definitely not as tired on this one.”
In between the inside-the-park walk-off and Friday’s slam, the Giants often struggled just to score one run. But right now they’re firing on all cylinders, and they’re no longer simply hoping to get back into the race. They’re right in the thick of things, and given how bad the Mets have played and how red-hot the Giants have been in September, they really should be considered the favorite to get that final postseason spot.
It’s been a long, strange journey, and Melvin, after figuring out where to start, summed it all up neatly.
“There have been extremes all year,” he said. “And we’re riding this one.”
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