San Francisco – Patrick Bailey’s walkout homer in the tenth helped end the Giants four-game skid. Bruce Bochy’s Texas Rangers fell 3-2 to San Francisco who avoided a sweep to end their losing streak.
“As I’m watching it I was hoping it would go over the fence,” Bailey said about his first-career walk-off homer. “When it went over, it was the coolest feeling I’ve had so far.”
Bailey’s walk-off homer caps a day that saw him go 2-for-5 at the plate including the home run. At 24 years old, he became the youngest Giants player to hit a walk-off since Pablo Sandoval whose walk-off defeated the Washington Nationals back on May 12, 2009.
“All he’s done is come up in big moments and make big plays, get big hits,” said manager Gabe Kapler. “It’s no surprise that Pat Bailey’s doing that sort of job in that sort of situation.”
San Francisco was one out away from seeing their ace pitcher Logan Webb toss his second complete game of the season, and of his career. However, after he allowed a double to J.P. Martinez on a 2-2 count with two outs in the ninth, Kapler pulled him for closer Camilo Doval.
“Super challenging,” Kapler said about pulling Webb. “I always trust Logan in that situation and trust Doval in the same way. The way I would frame it very genuinely, I gave the ball to Doval and had a lot of trust that Doval was going to come in and get a swing and a miss or a soft ground ball like the one he got.”
“(Kapler) just told me we were looking for the strikeout and we were going to put (Closer Camilo Doval) in,” said Webb regarding his conversation with Kapler on the mound. “He comes down and gives the ball to the best closer in the game. I’m not going to complain about that.”
Doval got the grounder he needed to shortstop Brandon Crawford, but Ezequiel Duran beat the throw to first, and Martinez, who was stealing third, sprinted all the way home to tie the game at 1-1. Bailey caught Duran trying to steal second to end the top of the ninth.
“Yeah, that was huge,” Bailey said. “Obviously kind of not what we were looking forward to with the ninth and 10th.”
The Rangers took the lead an inning later in the 10th as Duran, who started the inning as the ghost runner, scored on a balk by Doval to make it a 2-1 game. Corey Seager grounded into a double play at second to end the inning.
Webb lasted 8 ⅔ innings, allowed six hits with six strikeouts on the day and got charged with the run scored by Martinez.
“I thought he had great command of his changeup, excellent command of his changeup,” said Kapler. “He’s putting it wherever he wanted, then it looked like he was able to go just below the zone right when he needed to. And then great durability, was north of 100 pitches and still maintaining his composure and stuff.”
Webb’s day started a bit rough as both Marcus Semien and Seager each hit singles to start the game. Webb managed to battle back, getting Nathaniel Lowe to ground into a fielder’s choice at second, followed by striking out Adolis Garcia, then forcing Jonah Heim to ground out to second to end the inning unscathed.
Michael Conforto hit a solo homer to center in the second inning, his 15th of the season and the first time he’s hit home runs on back-to-back days since mid-May. San Francisco also got good at-bats from Bailey and Thairo Estrada, who went 3-for-5 on the day with a double in the eighth inning.
The Giants faced a tough challenge as Texas starter Dane Dunning struck out a career-high 12 batters on the day, but Kapler says that he’s seeing the lineup starting to get to where they should be.
“Today we had multiple opportunities to do damage and to not have that close of a game,” Kapler said. “We weren’t able to capitalize on that, but that’s part of baseball. You don’t flip a switch and then you’re scoring six and seven runs. It’s very methodical.”
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