Magic Wandoo Carries San Francisco Giants to a Sweep

Sep 11, 2014; San Francisco, CA, USA; San Francisco Giants right fielder

(8) loses his bat as he hits an RBI single against the Arizona Diamondbacks during the first inning at AT&T Park. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports

The Giants wasted no time getting on the board in this game. Angel Pagan lead off the 1st with a double down the right field line and Buster Posey broke out the magic wandoo with a hard hit ball to the short stop Cliff Pennington. Hunter Pence came up and one upped Buster Posey with the magic wandoo when he literally threw the bat and hit a single up the middle that hit second base and bounced over second baseman Chris Owings‘ head. Seriously, would you expect anything else from Hunter Pence?

The Giants would go on to score a run in the 3rd and 4th innings on a Pablo Sandoval and Brandon Crawford RBI singles respectively. A note on Brandon Crawford, he’s started to get the bat going again and he’s getting hits in key situations like we need him to.

Jake Peavy looked great once again but started getting hit hard in the 6th inning. Peavy gave up a 1 out triple to Pennington, and couldn’t get out of the inning when he gave up a 2 out double to Mark Trumbo to give up a run. The pitch count was high but with the score only 3-1, it seemed like Bruce Bochy didn’t want to take any chances and brought in Machi to get the last out of the 6th. Peavy finished his day with 5.2 IP, 6H, 1 ER and he walked none and struck out 8.  The Giants would build another rally with Travis Ishikawa getting a hit to lead off the 6th inning. Juan Perez hit a double down the line to score Ishikawa from 1st. Panik was walked and then Posey singled to drive in Perez. Sandoval walked loading the bases and then the Diamondbacks walked Hunter Pence to make the score 6-1. The bullpen was stellar once again. George Kontos came in to pitch the 7th inning and retired the Diamondbacks in order. He got one out in the 8th and then Javier Lopez came in and got an out and then hit a batter. Bochy then turned to Hunter Strickland to get the final out of the 8th. You know things are bad for the D-backs when even their own beat writers don’t think they can score runs. 

Apparently we missed the unwritten baseball rule about making pitching changes. Santiago Casilla came in to shut it down in the 9th to get some “maintenance” innings as per Kruk and Kuip. The Diamondbacks tried to make some noise with a solo homer by Jake Lamb and a single by Jordan Pacheco but Casilla finished the inning and the Giants completed the sweep to give them great momentum going into this weekend with the Dodgers.

All of the pieces are there right now and it couldn’t come at a better time. Timely hitting, scoring early, great starting pitching and stellar bullpen performances. AT&T Park is going to be rocking this weekend and will definitely have a playoff atmosphere. Let’s hope the Giants can get 2 out of 3 games in this next series to trim the lead down to 1 game. We’ve got the Boys in Blue right where we want them!