Boston Scores Three in the Ninth to Stun San Francisco

Boston trailed 2-0 heading into the bottom of the ninth and scored three times without a single extra-base hit until Nick Sogard's go-ahead double broke the game open. San Francisco watched a dominant pitching performance evaporate in the span of one inning, falling 3-2.

For eight innings, this game belonged to Blade Tidwell and the Giants' offense. Tidwell was sharp — 5.2 innings, 3 hits, zero earned runs, 7 strikeouts — and the run support came early and emphatically. Willy Adames launched a 403-foot homer to left center in the first inning to put San Francisco ahead 1-0, and Andrew Knizner followed with a 394-foot shot to the same part of the park in the third to make it 2-0. Knizner finished 3-for-4 on the night. Patrick Sandoval held his own for Boston — 5.2 innings, 5 hits, 2 earned runs, 6 strikeouts — but the Giants looked to be in full control heading into the late innings.

Then the ninth happened. Eli White singled to center, scoring Caleb Durbin to cut it to 2-1. Durbin had gone 2-for-3 on the night and appears to have been the catalyst Boston needed at the top of that inning. Then came the swing that decided everything: Sogard doubled to left, scoring Monasterio and sending White to third, and the win probability lurched from 35% to 84% in Boston's favor — a 49-point swing on a single at-bat. The Giants challenged the ensuing play, when Wilyer Abreu grounded into a fielder's choice that scored White for the 3-2 lead, but the call on the field was upheld. Just like that, a two-run deficit was a one-run Boston advantage.

The story of the night was the cruelty of the ninth inning for San Francisco. Tidwell gave them exactly what they needed, the offense staked them to a lead with two long balls, and Boston's bullpen — Greg Weissert and Wyatt Olds combined for 2.1 scoreless innings — kept the Red Sox close enough to matter. Abreu went 0-for-5 but drove in the winning run on a ground ball, which looks like the kind of ugly, opportunistic win that teams remember in September. San Francisco, for their part, will have a hard time explaining how Tidwell's seven-strikeout gem ended up in the loss column.