No Panik: New players stepping up for Giants
WASHINGTON – The formula that produced another San Francisco Giants post-season victory Friday is familiar enough.
That new names were crucial to the 3-2 victory over the Washington Nationals in Game 1 of their National League Division Series is a frightening prospect for current and prospective opponents.
"Same as always," Giants manager Bruce Bochy summed up the combination of pitching, defense and more fight than flair that subdued a raucous crowd and the team with the best record in the league.
The highlight reel stuff from Friday will be Bryce Harper's monster home run to right field and Stephen Strasburg's high-octane stuff – 63 of his 89 pitches hitting 95 mph or higher.
They lost.
The Nationals only had six hits and never led in the game. The Giants had 11 hits, getting eight off Strasburg in five innings while striking just twice against all his velocity.
Yeah, slow down everyone.
"Don't overanalyze anything," Bochy says. "Don't try to do too much."
The Giants do plenty this time of year. Exactly how is difficult to quantify and they're not offering up explanations. They get it. It's up to everyone else – including the talented but as yet unsuccessful in October Nationals – to figure out.
How rookie Joe Panik turned around a 97 mph fastball from Strasburg for the third-inning single up the middle that gave San Francisco the lead it kept the rest of the game. How the even "rookier" Hunter Strickland struck out Ian Desmond with a 100 mph fastball to escape a bases-loaded situation in the sixth. How veteran Jake Peavy, who'd never won a play game until Friday, outpitched Strasburg without going over 91 mph.
They shrug.
"I don't know if there is another gear other than this team has a lot of experience in the postseason," Peavy says. "These guys see that nobody is scared of the moment. We understand that we might not be man-for-man the favorites. We are not given a lot of credit. We take a lot of pride in being chained together. I think it really translates in the postseason because you have to play that way."
Apparently.
The Giants have now won nine consecutive post-season games. That includes erasing a 3-1 deficit in the 2012 NLCS against St. Louis and a four-game sweep of Detroit in that year's World Series. They've won 12 of their last 16 in the playoffs, 23 of the last 31. They're starting to eliminate the old "small-sample-size" argument.
Maybe the rest of the world notices only in even-numbered years (2010 World Series winners, 2012 World Series winners, who knows what 2014 has in store), but when the Giants show up in October …
"Who knows?" says right fielder Hunter Pence, whose stolen base set up the second run. And he's already been through one of these Octobers with the Giants.
"There's really no definitive answer," he says. "The only thing with experience is that there's a background of confidence. It's the same game. It's just that there are a lot of emotions added to it, a lot of adrenaline."
Comprehending that makes sense for Buster Posey, who's been on the two previous wild rides, the star catcher and former MVP who was willing to guide a roller through a drawn-in infield for the decisive run after Panik tripled in the seventh.
But Panik, Strickland, Peavy? None have as much as a full season with this team.
"Since I came up, I wanted to be another link in the chain," says Panik, who filled a gap at second base after back problems wiped out veteran Marco Scutaro's season. "That is how this team is. To be able to be another link in the chain, that is special."
OK, the new guy gets it. He's in.
"He has been so consistent," Bochy says. "Really saved us because that was such a need for us at second base with Scutaro going down. He's got a short swing, uses the whole field."
That has something to do with Strasburg getting as few as two strikeouts, something he did just once in 34 starts this season.
GALLERY: NLDS - NATIONALS vs. GIANTS
Whatever the approach, it could be crucial going forward because the favored Nationals keep coming with electric starting pitching. Jordan Zimmermann, he of a no-hitter less than a week ago, certainly can change this series in hurry in Game 2 on Saturday.
"This is the best pitching in the world," says Pence, who was on the team that torched Justin Verlander at the top of his game to set the tone in the 2012 World Series. "You understand that. We didn't really talk anything other than going up there and having good at-bats. It's something that just happens. You can't force it. I don't think you can say, 'Take this approach and you're not going to strike out against Strasburg.' It just happened."
But it keeps happening.
Unless they're keeping secret some mystical truth they found in the depths of McCovey Cove, it's just what the Giants do.
It's always begun with pitching. In that nine-game post-season winning streak, the team earned run average is 0.99 – because it went up Friday.
Sure, there's a succession of exceptional pitching in the middle of the Giants' success. But Tim Lincecum is a reliever, not a star, these days. Matt Cain is out for the season. Madison Bumgarner doesn't pitch until Game 3 in this series.
And Peavy showed up Friday with no victories and a 9.27 ERA in five post-season starts, including 13 runs in 9 2/3 innings in a couple of Game 1's for San Diego back when Strasburg was in high school.
He merely held the Nationals hitless until Harper led off the fifth with a single, gave up two hits total before Strickland bailed him out in the sixth.
In the eighth, it was Sergio Romo striking out Desmond and getting Harper on a grounder with two men on and a one-run lead. That's Romo, the closer who got the final out of 2012 but lost that job this season.
"I was able to tap into that, slow the game down, not get too excited," he says. "We're always looked at as the underdog, especially in the postseason. It helps that we've been here before."