Left for dead after four innings, the San Francisco Giants became the walking dead. The sac-bunting dead. The singling and doubling dead.
Then they, and the majority of the 41,940 screaming fans, became oh so alive again.
The Giants trailed the defending National League West Division champion Los Angeles Dodgers by five runs entering the bottom of the fifth inning of the 2016 home opener Thursday at AT&T Park, but the little things added up against Dodgers left-hander Alex Wood and eventually LA’s bullpen. The Giants rallied with a three-run fifth, four-run sixth and five-run eighth to sink the Dodgers 12-6 in the first game of a four-game series against the hated Blue Men.
It was another doozy between the California rivals. and the first of 19 meetings this season. Get your defibrillator warmed up because this is just the first in what should be several heart-stopping showdowns.
“That was great to watch,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said. “It was slow going there at first, but the bats came alive and a lot of good things happened. You look through the lineup and everybody did something.”
When all was said and done, the offensive-minded Giants (3-1) had 17 hits, and 12 runs in a game for the second time in four games. Every Giant starter finished with at least one hit. Second baseman Joe Panik had three, to go along with three RBIs and three runs, and catcher Buster Posey was also 3-for-5 with two RBIs.
While those in the Giants’ marketing department have already pencilled in another World Series title — it’s an even year, after all — Bochy likely won’t win manager of the year honours after disclosing how easy it is for him to set the lineup. It’s not Murderer’s Row, but he has plenty of flexibility.
“You can almost draw out of a hat and you’d be happy with it,” he said of his options.
The Giants’ hitters make opposing pitchers work. There’s no easy out in the lineup. Even the Giants’ pitchers make opposing pitchers work. San Francisco’s Jake Peavy, who struggled on the mound Thursday, hit a single.
“It’s nice to have an offense that doesn’t lean on one or two guys,” Bochy said.
Cleanup hitter Hunter Pence had just one hit, and he saved it for his final at-bat. He crushed a 1-0 pitch from reliever Pedro Baez over the left field fence for a grand slam. It still hasn’t landed.
“The grand slam was nice, but, obviously, these things don’t happen without a lot of good at-bats in front of it, people getting on base,” Pence said.
Pence took several abbreviated, back-realigning practice swings before stepping in the batter’s box. Then he narrowed down what he might expect from Baez.
“For me, personally, I knew he threw hard,” Pence said. “I knew he had a good fastball, a good slider. If it was a slider, I wanted to catch it out front and if it was a fastball, catch it a little deep and maybe hit something the other way.”
He got a slider and he made Baez pay for the belt-high mistake.
The Dodgers (3-1), who shut out the Padres in three straight games to open the season, were two-thirds of an inning away from starting the year with 32 consecutive scoreless innings, which would have tied a record set by the 1963 Cardinals.
But the Dodgers likely learned a valuable lesson in assessing the carnage: The Giants aren’t the Padres. Bochy said the offense is the deepest he’s had in San Francisco.
It all started with a glimmer of momentum in the fifth inning. Denard Span’s RBI groundout ended the Dodgers’ scoreless innings streak. And Panik added a clutch, RBI triple with two outs and Posey followed with an RBI double.
It was then that Flo Rida’s “Welcome to my house” blared throughout the ballpark and that the Dodgers were on the ropes in the battle of heavyweights.
Panik and Posey had RBI hits in the sixth too, giving the Giants a seemingly comfortable 7-4 lead, but Joc Pederson smacked a two-run shot in the eighth to pull the Dodgers within one.
Pence’s slam -- the sixth in his career -- was needed offense. The ball easily cleared the 382-foot mark in left-center field.
“I’ve seen him hit enough, I’m not surprised,” Posey said. “I’m going to go ahead and start it right now: We got to go ahead and get him in the Home Run Derby this year. Because I think it would be really fun to watch him in a home run derby. I watch him take BP and he hits balls as far as I think anybody out there.”
They all counted the same for the Giants on Thursday, the dinkers, bloops, liners and the monster homer. One thing set up the next. And the Giants came back to life in a thriller.