By Morris Phillips
SAN FRANCISCO–Close games mean rare opportunities, and Andrew McCutchen knows that’s the time to ramp it up. When Arizona’s Paul Goldschmidt took reliever Hunter Strickland out of the park in the top of the ninth Tuesday night to tie the game, McCutchen got his cue.
In the bottom of the ninth, Kelby Tomlinson drew a walk. A sacrifice moved Tomlinson up a base, then Austin Jackson was intentionally walked, and reliever Jorge De La Rosa, in his worst moment, missed with a pair of splits to Brandon Belt, then walked the bases loaded on four pitches. In the Giants’ dugout, McCutchen took it all in, his competitive juices starting to flow.
“I was just sitting there, like, ‘This is about to happen again,” McCutchen recalled.
Yeah, but only because McCutchen–who had six hits and the game-ending home run against the Dodgers on Saturday–was about to make it happen.
On the first pitch fastball from De La Rosa, McCutchen singled and the Giants were 4-3 winners.
“We get a guy like Andrew McCutchen. I said he’s going to impact our club,” Bruce Bochy said. “And he’s shown that. In that position, you couldn’t ask for a better guy to be up there.”
The Giants evened their record with the 4-3 win, a sure sign that through the first 10 games of the season, the team is embracing the need to survive a tough early schedule, win just enough against the most prominent teams on their schedule, and hopefully thrive after that. In the team’s clubhouse, you can almost see the scratch and claw marks on the walls.
“We’re all about just scoring runs,” McCutchen said. “We’re a team that can do it. It’s been a little odd that we haven’t been doing that right now, but today was a good game.”
The Giants are the lowest scoring team in the National League, having scored just 30 runs in their first 10 games. Heck, the first four games for the Giants were the worst for run scoring any MLB team has experienced in 30 years. They scored just twice. But after a pair of 1-0 wins against the Dodgers, one blowout win over the Mariners, and a couple of games won by McCutchen on the final at-bat, the Giants have five wins to show for all their frustration.
That’s called surviving.
Tyler Beede made his major league debut on Tuesday, starting in place of Johnny Cueto, who has developed some lower body issues that have forced the cautious Giants to scratch him temporarily. Beede, the former first round pick from Vanderbilt, made 76 starts in the minors, and would have arrived in San Francisco last season were it not for an unfortunately timed injury.
Not surprisingly after such a lengthy build up to his inevitable rise to the majors, nerves played into his debut as his pitch count skyrocketed, and his control deserted him. But after allowing two, first inning runs, Beede settled enough to get the Giants through four innings down just 2-0.
“I was obviously working in and out of situations for the next three innings, but just limiting damage,” Beede said. When guys get on its just kind of bearing down and making a quality pitch, getting a ground ball or getting a strikeout. It’s easier said than done, but going out there and pitching against these guys shows that my stuff can play at this level. So its just a matter of making those adjustments I need to make, and obviously, commanding the ball a little bit better.”
The Giants conclude this homestand and series with the Diamondbacks today at 12:45PM at AT&T Park.
