Balk, bullpen come up big as SF Giants beat Gausman, Belt in win over Blue Jays
Alex Wood pitched five-plus shutout innings taking down the bulk of a bullpen game in a 3-0 win.
TORONTO — Facing two old friends Tuesday night, the Giants offered a reminder that they were doing just all right without them.
Opposed by an opener and, eventually, Alex Wood, Kevin Gausman pitched about as well as he could have hoped against the club that balked at giving him a long-term deal two offseasons ago. But he was ultimately outdueled by a bullpen effort in a 3-0 Giants win, improving their record to 13-2 over their past 15 games and 10-0 away from home this month.
The 10-game road winning streak is San Francisco’s longest since 1952, before moving west. No team in MLB history has gone unbeaten for an entire month with at least 12 road games; the Giants can become the first with three more wins to close the month.
Brandon Belt nearly did in his former team, doubling in the eighth to put the tying run on second base with two outs, but the Giants (45-34) called on Camilo Doval, who got World Baseball Classic teammate Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to fly out to end the threat before shutting the door in the ninth, recording his National League-leading 23rd save.
In his first game against his old club, Belt struck out twice and flew out to center before being pinch-run for after his eighth-inning hit.
Wood’s new role: Apparently demoted to a bullpen role after being lit up for six runs in his last start, Wood entered in the second inning after opener Ryan Walker. In only the second relief appearance of his Giants career (61 starts), Wood clearly corrected any issues from his previous outing, blanking the Blue Jays for five-plus innings, allowing only five hits and striking out seven. After walking four batters in his last start, Wood didn’t issue a single free pass Tuesday.
“I thought it was a really good outing for Alex,” Kapler said. “(We) had a chat about it and decided it was best for this start. We’ll just evaluate it each time out.”
Wood credited a change in his posture, more upright in his delivery, for the improved performance, which he hopes will keep him in the starting rotation going forward.
“That’s what they wanted to do this time out. I didn’t have much to stand on after my last start, so,” Wood said, trailing off. “I told Kap if I start feeling good — when I’m pitching the way I can, like I did tonight, and start stringing together something consistent — I think the difference is marginal. But when I’ve thrown like I did in my last outing, the marginal difference then becomes a little bit wider.”
It took the work of Tyler Rogers to extinguish a fire in the seventh, though. Wood shut down Toronto’s lineup from the second through the sixth, but the first batter of the seventh, Daulton Varsho, ripped a leadoff double. Two sacrifices would have been enough to tie the score, but Rogers made Danny Jansen and Cavan Biggio look foolish to record the final two outs of the inning by strikeout, stranding Varsho at third, recording his 19th scoreless appearance in 22 outings since the start of May.
With the addition of Wood, the Giants have more starters pitching out of relief (six on Tuesday) than they do in their rotation (Logan Webb and Alex Cobb are seemingly the only two assured starts every fifth day). That has meant frequent usages of openers such as Walker, who became the first pitcher since 1966 to pitch three games in a row and start two of them. The Giants improved to 10-3 in games without a traditional starter.
“When we can all work together like that and be on our A-game,” Walker said, “we’re unstoppable.”
Balking it up: The one freebie Toronto got against Wood came in the third inning, when he was called for an initially confusing balk. With Belt at the plate, Wood appeared to have gotten the third out of the inning, getting Belt to roll over on a ground ball to second base, and Giants players headed back to their dugout. But Blue Jays third base coach Luis Rivera began protesting, players retook their positions and Belt stepped back into the batter’s box.
Umpires said Wood never came to a complete stop and was called for a balk, advancing Bo Bichette to third base, and giving him a 3-2 count on Belt. He struck him out on the next pitch, ending the inning, and flipped his glove toward either the Blue Jays dugout or home plate umpire, clearly perturbed by the incident.
“It was strange,” Wood said. “I was shocked. I think it’s becoming apparent across the league that is something the league is trying to crack down on, I guess. … After I heard the explanation of why they called it, you’ve just got to be extra careful and make sure every part of you is extremely still for a second before you throw the baseball.”
Added Kapler: “They called a balk on Gaus, too, so I suppose it evened out, somehow.”
The balk against Gausman proved to be more consequential.
Thairo Estrada gave the Giants their first hit of the evening with a soft single to right field with one out in the fifth, then stole second base (his 18th of the season, fifth-most in the NL). That put him in scoring position for Patrick Bailey, but it’s all for naught without a balk on Gausman that advanced him to third. That forced the Blue Jays infield in, and Bailey snuck a line drive just over the glove of Guerrero Jr. at first base for an RBI double down the line.
Estrada also drove in the Giants’ two insurance runs in the top of the ninth with a double off the left-field wall that scored Joc Pederson and J.D. Davis.
Frenemies: Gausman’s first time facing his former team went better than Belt’s, though he was still handed the loss despite allowing only the one run over six innings.
It took until Davis’ walk with one out in the fourth for the Giants to get their first baserunner and until Estrada’s fifth-inning single for their first hit. Both players were the only members of the Giants lineup to reach base multiple times.
Gausman received a standing ovation after striking out LaMonte Wade Jr. in the third. It was the 1,500th of his career and his seventh of an eventual dozen strikeouts he recorded, one away from matching a career-high (and his most in any six-inning start). San Francisco hitters swung at 53 of his pitches and whiffed 22 times.
Kapler was asked before the game about the advantages of facing someone such as Gausman, with whom the Giants were so familiar.
“I think you feel more of an edge when you know a pitcher intimately that’s not as good as Kevin,” he said. “To be honest, I think his stuff is more going to tell the story today. If he’s on, he’s going to be a huge challenge for us.”