Giants win NL pennant for third time in five seasons
SAN FRANCISCO – Breaking down Game 5 of the NL Championship Series at AT&T Park:
Box score: Giants 6, Cardinals 3; Giants win series, 4-1.
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The final: Travis Ishikawa's three-run homer in the ninth inning sent San Francisco to the World Series for the third time in the last five seasons.
The Giants got runners on first and second with one out against Michael Wacha on Pablo Sandoval's leadoff single and a walk to Brandon Belt before Ishikawa unloaded with a blast that barely reached the arcade in right field.
The Cardinals loaded the bases with two outs in the ninth off closer Santiago Casilla, but Jeremy Affeldt retired pinch-hitter Oscar Taveras on a comebacker to quell the threat.
Michael Morse's pinch-hit home run of reliever Pat Neshek leading off the eighth tied the game 3-3 and brought some life into a Giants offense that had looked moribund for several innings, unable to solve Adam Wainwright.
The St. Louis ace vindicated himself for his two subpar previous starts this postseason by throwing seven innings of two-run ball, allowing just four hits and striking out seven. Cardinals fans may spend the offseason wondering if he should have stayed in the game.
The Cardinals, held to four singles by Madison Bumgarner and his relievers in a 3-0 loss in Game 1, came out swinging against the big lefty. They hit three balls hard in the opening inning, about as many as they had in the series opener, and took the lead on Jon Jay's double in the third. After the Giants went ahead on Joe Panik's second homer of the year – which ended a streak of 242 plate appearances without a home run for San Francisco – St. Louis responded with bases-empty home runs by Matt Adams and Tony Cruz in the fourth.
Bumgarner, who was named the series MVP, allowed three runs on five in eight innings, a solid performance but not nearly as dominant as he had been earlier in the postseason.
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State of the Series: The Giants win it 4-1, the ninth consecutive postseason series they have won since 2010. San Francisco will face the Kansas City Royals in the World Series starting Tuesday at Kauffman Stadium. This was only the fourth time an LCS in either league had ended in a home run.
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Game 5 Pivot Point: Morse's home run sent the crowd into a frenzy after it had sat through three-plus innings of watching Giants batters go down in order. Morse, who battled an oblique injury that kept him out of action almost all of September, had just two home runs in 125 at-bats in the second half of the season.
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Star Turn: Cruz. Yadier Molina's backup got the call over A.J. Pierzynski mostly because he swings right-handed and Bumgarner is especially tough on lefty hitters. Cruz worked a walk to lead off the third and came around to score on the double by Jay.
Cruz then stunned the capacity crowd of 43,217 when, two outs after Adams' homer to right had tied the game 2-2, he blasted a no-doubter to left to put St. Louis ahead. Cruz had homered once in each of the last three seasons and picked a most opportune time to hit his first one in a postseason game.
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Man of the Moment: Wainwright, until Ishikawa's late heroics. The best active pitcher never to win a Cy Young Award had battled elbow and mechanical issues in the postseason, but came out pitching like the two-time 20-game winner he is. Wainwright spun his bedeviling curveball with great effectiveness and seemed to get stronger as the game went on, at one point retiring 10 Giants in a row from the fourth through the seventh inning. In the sixth, he struck out the heart of San Francisco's order – Buster Posey, Pablo Sandoval and Hunter Pence – making them look bad in the process. Other than Panik's home run, the Giants hardly touched him.
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Manager's Special: Wainwright had retired 10 in row and thrown 97 pitches when manager Mike Matheny opted to replace him with Neshek, who had allowed just one run – on a winning homer by Matt Kemp in the division series – in 6 2/3 innings this postseason. Morse foiled the strategy.
Matheny will also be second-guess for bringing in Wacha, who had not pitched since Sept. 26 and is usually a starter, to take over a tied game in the ninth.
GALLERY: NLCS - CARDINALS vs. GIANTS