Giants Chip Away at Early Deficit, Win the Rubber Game

Aug 19, 2014; Chicago, IL, San Francisco Giants third baseman

(48) congratulates catcher

(28) after he hits a home run in the fifth inning of the game against the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field. Mandatory Credit: Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports

The Giants and Cubs split the first two games of the series, with the first game incidentally being finished right before the last. So it was expected that both teams would be a bit tired after having to play half a game, but the 1st inning was anything but tiring.

After dropping the continuation of the suspended game, the Giants got off to a quick start on offense against Travis Wood. Angel Pagan singled, Buster Posey walked, and Pablo Sandoval hit a single to bring in the Giants first run of the game. Michael Morse was hit by a pitch, which loaded the bases, but neither Adam Duvall nor Joe Panik could get on base after that.

So Madison Bumgarner took the hill with a one run lead, hoping to capitalize on his road successes this season. However, the 1st inning was anything but easy for Bumgarner, as he gave up back-to-back two out home runs, giving the Cubs at 3-1 lead.

The Giants now had to play a game of catch-up, and they did just fine chipping away at the lead. They did so in the 3rd inning off a Pablo Sandoval RBI double, and a Bumgarner single in the 4th inning.

Posey gave the Giants the lead with a solo home run in the 5th inning, and then something weird happened, as if the series couldn’t get any weirder. The feed for Comcast Sports Net Bay Area went out, and Giants fans went into total pandemonium.

CSN did their best to keep the audio feed going, and then they switched over to the CSN Chicago feed. Then as if that wasn’t perplexing enough, they took the delayed Chicago video feed and combined it with the Bay Area audio feed. After a while, all of the technical difficulties were sorted out, and order was restored.

The Giants did make some more noise in the 7th inning, as Morse hit a sacrifice fly extended the Giants lead to 5-3. Bumgarner had settled in with the lead, but ran into a jam in the 7th inning.

After giving up two singles, Bumgarner got two outs. With runners at 2nd and 3rd, Cubs’ rookie phenom Javier Baez came up to the plate and struck out swinging. This sealed the deal for Bumgarner, as he went 7 innings giving up only the three runs, while striking out 12. He is now 14-9 on the season with a 3.17 ERA.

The game essentially went into cruise control after the 7th, as Javier Lopez and Sergio Romo shut down any chance of a comeback for the Cubs in the 8th.  Pagan singled in the 9th but was caught stealing, and Posey hit a double but the Giants went down quietly after that. Posey went 4-for-4 in tonight’s game, with 2 doubles, a single and a home run.

Santiago Casilla came in to close out the 9th inning; he got a ground out, a strikeout, gave up a single, and struck out Arismendy Alcantara to end the ballgame.

The Giants leave Chicago on a winning note, and will head to Washington for a three game set against the Nationals starting tomorrow night.