A journeyman named Matt Grace was on the mound in the seventh inning for the Diamondbacks on Saturday night when his pitching coach stopped by to advise the lefty how to work the Giants’ pinch-hitter, a lad with three days of major-league experience.
Opponents better devise a Plan B quickly for Joey Bart, because Plan A is not working.
With Brandon Crawford on first after a walk, Bart narrowly missed his first big-league homer, banging a drive off the top of the home bullpen fence in center field for another double that keyed a four-run inning that broke a 1-1 tie and propelled the Giants to their fifth straight victory, 5-1.
Manager Gabe Kapler thought Bart’s ball was gone off the bat as Starling Marte immediately ran to the wall, and everyone agreed Bart did not get all of it.
“When he gets all of the ball it’s generally speaking going to go out of the ballpark,” Kapler said. “There are no complaints in the dugout when you send a guy up for his first pinch-hitting appearance in the majors and he has an at-bat like that. That was plenty. We didn’t need anything more than that.”
Not to be lost in Bart’s shadow was Giants starter Tyler Anderson, who pitched his first career complete game, a three-hitter. The run he allowed was unearned.
Anderson had pitched eight innings twice with the Rockies, the last time beating the Giants 1-0 in 2018.
Another must-mention is Mike Yastrzemski, who made one of the best catches of the year at Oracle Park to save a run, leaping at the right-field fence on a Ketel Marte drive to end the sixth inning.
“I was so pumped and amazed he caught it, and I wanted to make sure he got up and wasn’t hurt,” Anderson said. “Yaz is a great player. He’s out there gaming every single day.”
Anderson doubtlessly would not have gotten his first complete game without the catch. The Giants might not have won.
Asked when he started to sense nine innings was possible, Anderson said, “Probably in the ninth inning with two outs I was like, ‘Damn, I may be able to get through this thing.’”
Bart was supposed to get the night off after two arduous games behind the plate. Instead he doubled for the third straight game, becoming the third Giant in the modern era (since 1901) with an extra-base hit in each of his first three games.
The others were Buster — wait for it — Maynard in 1940 and John Bowker in 2008.
The double sent Crawford to third in a strange but prosperous inning for the Giants.
After Grace walked pinch-hitter Mauricio Dubon to load the bases with nobody out, Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo asked one of his more seasoned pitchers, Javy Guerra, to try to keep the Giants off the board.
Instead, Guerra walked Yastrzemski and Alex Dickerson to force home two runs, the Giants’ seventh and eighth walks. Another scored on a Donovan Solano infield out, and Brandon Belt hit a scoring single to put the Giants ahead 5-1.
The Giants scored their first run in the first inning, off Zac Gallen, on a Belt double play after the second-year righty walked his first three batters on 15 pitches.
Anderson carried a one-hitter into the sixth when he nicked Kole Calhoun with a pitch with two outs. Yastrzemski saved Anderson and the Giants’ 1-0 lead when he leaped at the track and grabbed Ketel Marte’s drive, gloving the ball slightly behind him, his back arched, before crashing into the fence.
Marte stared in that direction looking for any sign that Yastrzemski dropped the ball as he hit the ground, but Yaz lifted his glove to show the ump, and the inning was over.
Henry Schulman covers the Giants for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: hschulman@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hankschulman
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August 23, 2020 at 11:19AM
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Joey Bart does it again with pinch double in Giants’ fifth straight win - San Francisco Chronicle
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