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| Crawford drew key walk in 10th. Photo Credit: Jayne Oncea/USA Today Sports. |
A wild pitch by Cardinals reliever Randy Choate allowed the Giants Brandon Crawford to score and give San Francisco the walk off 5-4 win in Game 3 of the NLCS at AT&T Park.
By: Michael Hanley
The win enabled the Giants to take a 2-1 series lead on the St. Louis Cardinals with another home game to come before the series shifts back to St. Louis for Game 5.
Crawford got the bottom of the 10 inning when he drew a walk to lead off. This was big in that it put immediate pressure on Choate to now pitch from the stretch and have to bear down and get the next batter out or face some real trouble.
It also was an important moment just in terms of momentum as the walk broke a string of 16 consecutive batters for San Francisco going down with nothing to show for their effort at the plate. It was the first base runner for the Giants of nay kind since the starting pitcher Tim Hudson's two out single all the way back in the forth inning.
Next came Juan Perez who had the right idea of wanting to bunt over Crawford,m set up a situation of a man in scoring position at second base and only one out with some reliable bats coming up in the lineup.
Though bunting sounds very elementary and easy to do, not so when it is in a pressure packed situation like this one was with all of San Francisco and the country watching with much anticipation. Though he tried twice to get the bunt down, he could not and instead did even better, got a hit and moved Crawford over to second and had the Giants in business.
Gregor Blanco came up in a great situation with two on and nobody out. He was the next player to try and lay down the bunt to advance the runner and have them at second and third with only one out and set up an opportunity to win it in a variety of ways.
Blanco did get the bunt down and as luck would have it the bunt was textbook and Choate went to throw the ball to first base and his throw was off as the ball sailed past Kolten Wong who was covering first base. That enabled Crawford to come home and seal the win for the Giants.
Sergio Romo (1-1) got the win for San Francisco while Randy Choate (0-1) took the tough loss for the Cardinals.
Ryan Vogelsong will start for the Giants in Game 4 on Wednesday while the Cardinals will send Shelby Miller to the mound.
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