Madison Bumgarner, Justin Maxwell lead San Francisco Giants to sweep over D-Backs

Jul 19, 2015; Phoenix, AZ, USA; Chalk dust flies as San Francisco Giants pitcher Madison Bumgarner uses a rosin bag in the first inning against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

Awhile back, I whined about the Giants being snakebit. Now they’re eating snake for lunch. They must have realized it’s much better to eat lunch than to be lunch. So they took a desert special to go—a win on Sunday for a weekend sweep!

The Giants bats combined for a total of 30 hits on Friday and Saturday. Sunday they added five more. Justin Maxwell, who has been pretty quiet at the plate, had a day. The backup outfielder hit a home run in the second inning to get the team going, and also made a diving catch on a line drive in the fifth that ended the inning.

The Giants went into Sunday’s game with their big gun on the mound. It wasn’t your typical Madison Bumgarner outing—he pitched five and a third innings and only threw 93 pitches. Bruce Bochy explained after the game: “That’s far enough; that’s a lot of work…there was no point in pushing him the way we pushed him last year.”

Bumgarner allowed one run on four hits and one walk. He struck out three.

The one run Bumgarner allowed came in the second inning, and almost didn’t happen. The Diamondbacks pitcher came to the plate with two men on and hit a ground ball to Brandon Crawford. Crawford started the double play, threw to Panik on second, who threw to Belt on first. Initially the ump ruled the hitter out at first—a double play, inning over, no run scored.

But the call was reversed, play resumed, and the pitcher reached first on a fielder’s choice. The next hitter lined out to end the inning. But the damage was done; the run scored and the game was tied at one run apiece.

Joe Panik drew a walk to start the third inning and scored on Hunter Pence’s line drive to left.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes the Giants scoring portion of the game. But it was enough.

The next time the Diamondbacks got something going was in the seventh and then in the eighth, but the Giants ended the threats. The final score was Giants 2, D-Backs 1