Small Steps

It is fascinating how so many small details in baseball become truly pivotal. In tonight's Giants victory over Arizona, with two outs and the Giants leading 4-0, Cody Ross was on third base, Brandon Crawford was on first. The Diamondbacks caught Brandon stealing and had him dead to rights at second base; however, Crawford stopped halfway, forced Arizona to chase him to get the third out of the inning, and Ross alertly ran home for a fifth run of the game.

When the Diamondbacks pulled within one run later on a three run home run off Matt Cain, that bit of smart baserunning by Cody Ross became so much more important, considering we ended up with a 6-5 victory. Not only was it an extra run in a one run victory, it also prevented the Diamondbacks from actually tying the Giants at any point, which meant that Matt Cain earned his sixth victory of the year. Morale is boosted by such statistical means.

On the flip side, consider how much one small miscall might have changed things. In the ninth, when Arizona runners tried to advance on a ball dropped by the catcher, Pablo Sandoval took a strong throw from Eli Whiteside and applied a tag. The umpire called the runner safe, even though Pablo's left foot actually blocked the bag and prevented the Diamondback from tagging the base before Pablo tagged him. Replays showed this clearly. Such a small call, but it could have be disastrous. Fortunately, Brian Wilson remained indomitable and struck out the final batter to win the first game of a three game series in Arizona, against the Diamondbacks who are now 1 1/2 games behind us in the division.

Subtleties like that make baseball fascinating from an intellectual level, I think, even for those who are not particularly fans.