WASHINGTON — In an effort to get ahead of a forecasted series of showers, the San Francisco Giants successfully lobbied the Washington Nationals to move up Thursday’s series finale by four hours.
They got the game in. They did not get ahead of the showers. The Giants and Nationals played most of the afternoon in steady rain that alternated between light precipitation and a heavy soaking. When the grounds crew wasn’t re-enacting a page from a Richard Scarry book, busily spilling bags of moisture-absorbing dirt by the truckload, they were frantically unrolling and re-rolling the tarp. The windows on high in the press box fogged up so completely that reporters had to rely on crowd noise (as much as the tens of dozens of fans were making) to figure out what was happening on the field.
There was enough standing water to force a 50-minute delay in the third inning. A second delay interrupted play for 72 minutes in the eighth inning. And then, with the Giants one out away from pocketing a victory in the bottom of the ninth, Hurricane Camilo blew through and gave away a three-run lead that wasn’t quite bolted down.
But a team that has struggled all season with situational hitting managed to put the bat on the ball in enough crucial moments. And sometimes, against an error-prone opponent, that can be enough.
The Giants scored the automatic runner on Brett Wisely’s perfectly placed bunt single in the 10th inning, Michael Conforto drove in two more when he followed a pair of Washington errors with a jam-shot single, and left-hander Taylor Rogers succeeded where closer Camilo Doval had failed an inning earlier as the soaked-to-the-skin Giants eked out a desperately needed 9-5 victory and moved over .500 for the first time since May 31.
Shortstop Tyler Fitzgerald tied the San Francisco-era franchise record by stealing three bases. He seemingly wore half the infield on his muddy uniform as he stood at his locker after the game. He wore a look of incredulity, too.
“I can’t believe we got through that,” Fitzgerald said. “There were times I thought, ‘If it’s hit to me, I’m not sure I have a chance.’ Somehow, we made it.”
The Giants had to do more than survive Thursday. They had to come out on the winning side. Given the state of the National League wild-card standings, they are in no position to split a four-game series with a non-contending club that sold some of its best players at the July 30 trade deadline. The Giants already had clinched a winning road trip, but that wouldn’t be enough anymore. They needed to win to finish a 5-2 trip and take three of four at Nationals Park. And on the road this season, they’ve been downright messy when it comes to plating the entree. Entering Thursday, they had lost seven of eight road trip finales this season.
Giants manager Bob Melvin has pinned countless losses this season on a lack of situational hitting and squandered chances to score. So he didn’t hold his tongue in the first inning when plate umpire Stu Scheurwater punched out Mark Canha with one out and the bases loaded on a pitch that clearly appeared both high and wide. You couldn’t blame Melvin if he saw the blown call as a precursor to another big inning going by the boards.
Melvin wasn’t allowed to see anything beyond the first five batters of the game. Scheurwater demonstrated a quick trigger while ejecting Melvin for the second time this season. The hook after five batters wasn’t the quickest for Melvin this season — he got thrown out before the first pitch in a game at Colorado — but it meant that he’d watch the rest of the afternoon under cover in the visiting manager’s office.
There wasn’t much of a decision to be made when umpires delayed the game in the top of the third. Rookie left-hander Kyle Harrison had thrown 24 pitches in two innings but knew in advance that the Giants needed him to return in the event of an early stoppage. So he threw sporadically off a mound in an indoor cage. He kept moving to stay loose. When he went back to the bullpen, he simulated his pre-start routine, right down to wolfing another banana.
Weather aside, Harrison’s two starts on this trip have been a challenge to navigate with his lowest average fastball velocity of the season (91 mph, with some 88s mixed in) and a slider that is down from 84 mph to the upper 70s. He gave back a one-run lead on a pair of singles in the first inning and trudged off the mound after giving back another on a sacrifice fly in the fifth.
The Nationals nearly went ahead in the seventh when Ildemaro Vargas hit a deep fly ball to left field off left-hander Erik Miller. But Conforto timed his jump at the wall and saved at least an extra-base hit when he made the catch.
Michael Conforto makes a leaping catch at the wall in the seventh inning. (Scott Taetsch / Getty Images)
“I’m not sure if it would’ve went out or not,” Conforto said. “But some of their guys were joking that I was the reason we had to keep playing that game. They would’ve had a lead in the seventh before they tarped it.”
If the Nationals led, then the game would’ve been official and umpires could have called it when heavier stuff returned in the eighth. Instead, in a tie game, the only choice was to hope for another semi-break in the weather and play on.
The Nationals appeared to struggle more with the field conditions than the Giants did, making four errors on the afternoon including three after the ninth inning. But a series of situational swings helped, too. When Canha batted with two out and the bases loaded in the ninth, he practically slapped a fastball out of the catcher’s glove while collecting his fourth hit of the game and serving a two-run double to right field. A third run scored when the throw from right field wasn’t cut off and skidded into the photographer’s well for an error.
Then Doval, who struggled to convert a save the previous night as Jordan Hicks warmed up behind him, did the intolerable for a closer with a three-run advantage. He walked two of the first three batters he faced, which manifested in disaster when Luis García Jr. took a tardy swing at a letter-high fastball and somehow lofted a ball into the seats in the left-field corner.
Doval has 22 saves and it would be easier to blame the conditions for his struggles Thursday, but the walks have been an ongoing concern. He averaged 3.6 walks per nine innings entering this season; his rate is up to 5.9 walks this year.
“It’s the walks again,” said Melvin, who hasn’t stated that he is mulling a change in the ninth inning but might be nudging nearer to that position. “The home run, it was 93 mph off the bat or whatever? You’ve got to give the guy some credit for putting the bat on the ball. But the walks are the problem. He’s got to throw the ball over the plate and limit the free passes.”
Camilo Doval reacts after his fifth blown save of the season. (Scott Taetsch / Getty Images)
After another brief and unofficial delay to dress the field before the 10th, the Nationals turned Jerar Encarnacion’s base-running mistake into an advance when shortstop CJ Abrams fielded a grounder and threw wide to third base. Encarnacion rescued his read when he made a nifty slide to avoid the tag. Then Wisely, who is slumping and had entered the game as a defensive replacement, executed a bunt to the right side that got past the pitcher.
On his own, or a sign from the third-base coach?
“It was on my own … until I got the sign,” Wisely said. “And I was glad I got it. But I was going to do it anyway.”
This was no time to be content with scoring the automatic runner, though. Another Nationals error allowed the Giants to load the bases when Patrick Bailey put down a sacrifice bunt and Vargas flat-out dropped the throw that would’ve resulted in a forceout at third base. But Fitzgerald popped up and Heliot Ramos struck out, leaving Conforto to clean up a chance that the Giants couldn’t afford to squander.
Like Canha’s double in the ninth, Conforto’s contact was not crisply barreled. In a left-on-left matchup with Robert Garcia, he took an inside pitch and hit a blooper into left field that scored two runs.
“Honestly, that pitch beat me,” Conforto said. “They say good hitters get jammed. I just put the bat on it, had enough on it to get over the third baseman. He made a great pitch and I happened to get there in time.”
“Just put it in play,” Melvin said. “Sometimes there’s something to be said about that.”
The postgame clubhouse was a frenzy of activity as the Giants raced to pack up as if they’d overslept for a flight. The Giants had been informed that another storm was due to pass through the area and they were likely to be grounded interminably at Dulles International Airport if they didn’t get wheels off the ground within three hours. They couldn’t spare a minute to savor winning a game in which they blew three leads — or the winning record that they’d finally achieved as a first step toward staying in the postseason fight.
But Conforto took a moment to acknowledge the true standouts on a miserable afternoon for baseball. You can’t get situational hits if others do not rake.
“It was a grind for everybody who was out there and the grounds crew did a great job,” Conforto said. “They put the tarp on, pulled it off, put it on, pulled it off, worked on the field, made it playable. The umpires did a great job. And (the Nationals) fought us like crazy. We just had a big inning at the end and took this one home.”
(Photo of Michael Conforto and Matt Chapman: Mitchell Layton / Getty Images)
