Win gives Giants advantage with Madison Bumgarner on deck

SAN FRANCISCO – For one excruciating inning, the San Francisco Giants lost the formula that won them two World Series in the past four years.

Could someone really out-baseball these guys in the postseason?

Their 11-4 victory Saturday in Game 4 – tying the Series 2-2 – was an emphatic no. Not yet, anyway.

By rallying from a 4-1 deficit created in one of their sloppier innings of any of these three postseasons, the Giants accomplished several things:

• The regained the advantage in what's become a battle of two teams taking turns trying to force the issue and be the aggressor. Yes, it's only a tied series, but San Francisco has ace Madison Bumgarner lined up for Sunday's Game 5 – maybe a necessary Giants victory if they're to keep control.

• They re-established themselves over these upstart and often magical Royals in a rare matchup. We're used to the charmed group, the seeming team of destiny careening through a playoff year. Trouble is, both these teams have ridden that theme into this World Series.

• And the Giants moved the inning of decision even earlier in the game, a development that heaps more pressure on the Royals and especially Game 5 starter James Shields because it's an increasingly beleaguered crew of relievers trying to navigate through the middle innings.

Royals manager Ned Yost has repeatedly called the sixth the critical inning in this series, and it's worked to his team's advantage twice by getting a lead to hand over to his nearly untouchable bullpen trio of Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis and Greg Holland.

Giants manager Bruce Bochy denies it's a six-inning game in his mind but, then again, he also says he didn't notice the watered-down, heavy-track infield in San Francisco that's been no help to the speedy Royals.

"We don't think like that," Bochy says. "It's a nine inning game, and we know what a great bullpen they have. But you can't think like that."

But he certainly came out aggressively with Gregor Blanco stealing third in the first inning to set up the game's first run.

The Giants' own mistakes didn't allow them to seize the advantage, at least not until the real machinations began, this time in the fifth.

Yost has been clear from the start he's managing to win the World Series right here, right now. And he proved it when he replaced starting pitcher Jason Vargas with a 4-2 led after Joe Panik's leadoff single in the fifth.

The ideal scenario would be to have Jason Frasor finish the fifth, go to lefty Danny Duffy in the sixth and get maybe as much as two innings out normal starter Duffy to take some of the heat off the late-inning guys Yost has ridden this far, but ridden hard.

But so much didn't go according to this revised formula and the chain reaction was a game that got so out of hand it's hard to believe it contained as much strategy and maneuvering as in any game of this series.

Frasor got Buster Posey on a ground out but Hunter Pence's single cut the lead to 4-3 and in came Duffy. He allowed a game-tying sacrifice fly but was fortunate to escape a bases-loaded mess he helped create.

It only got worse as rookie Brandon Finnegan and Tim Collins were torched for seven runs over the next two innings.

It's not so much the details of the sudden San Francisco onslaught as much as the return of the "of course they did" Giants.

"Boch" is back.

Everything Bochy – the guy who was grimacing and slamming his hat as his team made bad throws and mental blunders in the four-run Kansas City third – did from the fifth inning on turned to … well, "out-baseballing" the other guys.

This is the Bochy the Giants simply believe in, the Bochy who is on the verge of placing himself firmly in the Hall of Fame conversation (the nine managers with at least three World Series titles are in the Hall).

Giants players have shrugged their way through these three runs to the World Series in five years, saying whatever their manager does usually seems to work out as long they execute the game's fundamentals.

When Pablo Sandoval suddenly discovers how to hit lefties, well, that's how these orange Octobers have gone in 2010 and 2012.

Sandoval, the switch-hitter who's hit 34 points lower lifetime as a right-hander and a career-worst .199 against lefties this year, looked positively pathetic striking out twice against Royals lefty Vargas.

The Royals brought in lefty Duffy specifically to turn him around in the fifth but the Panda's single sent Pence from first to third, from where he could score the tying run on Juan Perez's sacrifice fly.

The Royals were on the verge of wriggling out of a bases-loaded mess in the sixth with the game still tied when Sandoval lined a two-run single off lefty Finnegan.

"I thought we had the situation right in the palm of our hand," Yost says. "Clutch hitter."

Cold-blooded, too.

"I felt confident," Sandoval says. "I just tried to not put too much pressure on myself, look for where the pitch was and direct the ball."

Center field worked just fine.

Between those two Sandoval at-bats, could the game – the series, even – have turned when Yost didn't call for a bunt?

Yost, the guy who's taken so much heat despite his club's pla

yoff success, for his allegiance to the bunt as a weapon?

With the game tied, speedy Jarrod Dyson led off the Royals sixth with a single. Yost pinch-hit Nori Aoki, who handles the bat better than anyone else on the roster. The quick little lefty was a perfect drag-bunt candidate.

He grounded sharply to second base for a double play.

"I wasn't going to play for one run right there, I was going to play for two," Yost says of hoping Aoki could get on to set up a bunt for Alcides Escobar.

That's exactly what fell into place for the Giants in the bottom of the inning. Panik's sacrifice put runners on second and third and created the setting for Sandoval's go-ahead hit, which was followed by a Brandon belt RBI single.

All Kansas City got out of the rest of the night was a game lopsided enough to rest Herrera, Davis and Holland – a trio they'll need to grab back all those edges the Giants took away Saturday.

And the Giants only piled on the advantages.

Yusmeiro Petit finally got into a game in this series and his three shutout innings not only got him the victory but also provided a reminder that he could be a significant weapon when the teams get back to Kansas City next week. Petit has pitched 12 shutout innings this postseason, allowing four hits and striking out 13.

And Bochy used the big lead and the ninth to let Hunter Strickland, last seen melting down in Game 2 after allowing his fifth playoff homer, work a scoreless ninth, a stark contract to Finnegan's five runs and seven base runners in one inning.

Just one more unpredictable twist.

"Somewhere inside of me, secretly I had hoped that it would go seven games for the excitement and the thrill of it," Yost says. "Sure looks that way."

It might be the only way.

GALLERY: WORLD SERIES -- GIANTS vs. ROYALS