For its struggling offense, an assist from the opposing pitcher was all Washington needed to keep its season alive.
The Nationals snapped a 21-inning scoreless stretch with a three-run seventh inning and avoided elimination in the best-of-5 Division Series with a 4-1 victory over the San Francisco Giants Monday at AT&T Park.
Washington, which was held without a run for the final 15 innings of a 2-1, 18-inning loss to the Giants in game two last Saturday, trailed the series 2-games-to-1 heading into Tuesday’s late game four.
It was a scoreless game until the Nationals finally broke through in the seventh against Madison Bumgarner. The San Francisco ace had cruised through six, running his postseason scoreless inning streak to 21 innings before allowing a leadoff single to Ian Desmond and walking Bryce Harper to open the frame.
Wilson Ramos fell behind in the count 1-2, but placed a sacrifice bunt down the first-base line and rather than go for the sure-out at first, Bumgarner tried to get Desmond at third and his throw sailed past third baseman Pablo Sandoval and down the left field line. That allowed not only Desmond to score, but Harper came all the way around from first to make it 2-0.
“I’ll be honest, I was hoping we’d get an out there. I think (Bumgarner) tried to do a little too much,” said Giants manager Bruce Bochy. “You can’t take it back, it happened and you move on.”
Asdrubal Cabrera followed with a run-scoring single that put the Naitonals up 3-0. The trio of seventh inning runs equaled the NL East champion’s series run total from the previous 33 innings.
That was more than enough for Doug Fister, who was excellent in seven innings of work. The right-hander, back in San Francisco and facing Burmgarner for the first time since allowing one earned run in losing game two of the 2012 World Series for Detroit, scattered four singles and struck out three to keep the Nationals alive.
“It really comes done to every pitch, every pitch matters,” said Fister. “Guys are out there playing their butts off. (Bumgarner) was throwing very well, fortunately a ball bounced our way tonight and that’s a testament to how our guys are playing.”
“Doug pitched great, he was in command all day with everything,” said Washington manager Matt Williams.
The Giants, who saw their 10-game postseason winning streak come to an end, loaded the bases in the second against Fister as the right-hander walked Brandon Belt and Travis Ishikawa and gave up a single to Pablo Sandoval. In between, Fister got a nice play by Bryce Harper in left field when he crashed against the wall catching Brandon Crawford’s fly out, and with the bases full and two outs, Fister struck out Bumgarner to end the threat.
It was the first of two great plays in left field by Harper, who robbed Ishikawa of a potential run-scoring hit with a diving play on a sinking line drive in the seventh. Harper also clubbed his second home run of the series in the ninth to put the Nationals up 4-0.
“It’s a difficult outfield to play, sun field in left, day game like this, it’s not easy. He was great defensively,” Williams said of Harper.
Washington had a chance to get to Bumgarner in the third when with two outs Denard Span picked up his first hit of the series on an opposite field single and Anthony Rendon followed with a single of his own. The San Francisco southpaw got Jayson Werth to ground out harmlessly to second base for the third out.
Starting with that ground out, Bumgarner retired 10 of 11 batters before the seventh. Though just one of the three runs he allowed were earned (thanks to his own throwing error), it was the first earned run allowed by the southpaw since surrendering six runs to the St. Louis Cardinals in game one of the 2012 National League Championship Series.
Story at rockdalecitizen.com
Story at rockdalecitizen.com
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