(Editor’s Note: The original version of this article stated Posey had played in 10 elimination games. He’s played in 11. Text has been updated to reflect the error.)
Logan Webb was feeling the glow last week after his dominant performance against the Dodgers in the NL Division Series opener.
In the postgame interview room, seated next to catcher Buster Posey, Webb started to detail elements of the predetermined plan — surprise them with changeups to get ahead, entice them to chase out of the zone with two strikes — when Posey turned a stern, fatherly glare on him and mumbled a couple of shushing words.
Advertisement
Now Webb, 24, is about to become the youngest pitcher in Giants history to start an elimination game. He’ll oppose Dodgers left-hander Julio Urías on Thursday in San Francisco in a decisive Game 5 that will send one team packing and the other to face the Atlanta Braves in the NLCS. What Webb might lack in experience, his batterymate can supply.
Posey has been pretty good at these elimination games.
He has caught 11 of them in his career. The Giants have won 10.
Sure, in the NL wild-card games at Pittsburgh in 2014 and at New York’s Citi Field in 2016, the game plan didn’t require any more finesse than to make sure Madison Bumgarner knew how to get from the team hotel to the ballpark. Bumgarner threw shutouts in those games, and his legendary, five-inning performance out of the bullpen in Game 7 of the 2014 World Series at Kansas City lassoed the Giants’ third title in five seasons.
But there is no such thing as an easy win in an elimination game. Even if the outcome is one-sided, the buildup and tension are the same. There are anxieties to manage and butterflies to wrangle and squirts of adrenaline to balance. And when you’re a catcher, you have to deal with more than your own emotions. You must become a metronome for the collective, beginning with the guy who’s standing on the mound.
So as the Giants prepare for the ultimate showdown between two teams that each won 109 games to reach this point, the most victories between two opposing teams in a postseason game in major-league history, here’s a brief lookback at Posey’s 11 elimination games and where the momentum turned.
2012 NLDS Game 3 at Cincinnati
The NL West champion Giants dropped both their home games in somewhat sloppy fashion to the Reds and arrived at Great American Ball Park with their backs already against the wall. The Reds hadn’t lost three consecutive home games all season, and they’d only need to pick off one to advance. But manager Bruce Bochy went biblical in his pregame speech about Gideon leading the battle charge against hopeless odds, then Hunter Pence went bonkers with his ranting, raving, bug-eyed, “I want one more day with you guys” oratory that became the stuff of legend.
Advertisement
The speech energized them, but it’s not like they blew down doors. They survived in a 2-1, 10-inning victory in which they went 3 for 36, struck out 16 times and scored their runs by aid of a sacrifice bunt, a sacrifice fly, a passed ball and a short-hop error off the chest of an eight-time Gold Glove Award winner.
Hey, when you escape a burning house, you don’t care if you’re wearing one shoe.
“This is a group of guys that love each other and love playing together,” Pence said. “We want to play more baseball together. That’s what it’s all about.”
Pence made a sliding catch early in the game that inspired right-hander Ryan Vogelsong, who successfully dueled right-hander Homer Bailey on a night when the Reds ace allowed just one hit while striking out 10 in seven innings. The Giants’ Core Four bullpen was flawless. And the Giants took their first lead in the series in the 10th when Joaquin Arias hit a ground ball that ate up Scott Rolen in what would be the final series of his career.
“This was a game we had to throw everything at them,” Bochy said. “You never know what can happen, but I do know we had to win today. We had no choice. This game, it was do or die for us.”
2012 NLDS Game 4 at Cincinnati
Baseball players are a touch superstitious, you might have heard. So as the Giants faced another must-win game, the moment demanded another Hunter Pence speech.
The results were immediate. The Giants hit .126 in the first three games of the series but Angel Pagan belted the second pitch of Game 4 for a home run and the lights came on. Pagan, Marco Scutaro and Pablo Sandoval combined to go 6 for 11 with two walks, three doubles, two home runs, five RBIs and four runs scored against Mike Leake and the back end of the Reds bullpen.
But the Giants and their suddenly functional offense faced a different crisis on the pitching front. The unthinkable had happened to two-time Cy Young Award winner Tim Lincecum, who pitched so poorly in 2012 that Bochy decided to carry him on the postseason roster as a reliever. That meant left-hander Barry Zito, who had been a high-priced omission from the 2010 postseason roster, became their No. 4 starter. And Zito’s first postseason start as a Giant did not go well. He faced 16 batters, walked four and gave up four hits. The Giants led 3-2 in the third inning when Bochy took the baseball from Zito.
Advertisement
Bochy had a ton of outs to get from his bullpen. He used George Kontos to strand Zito’s runner in the third. And with two on and two out in the fourth, he turned to Lincecum, who captured momentum that the Giants wouldn’t relinquish. Lincecum struck out Ryan Ludwick and went on to throw four more innings. He struck out six and allowed just one run on a sacrifice fly.
Sandoval’s two-run homer in the seventh helped the Giants pull away for an 8-3 victory and set up a Game 5 that would put both teams against the wall.
“Personally, it was a great feeling just to come back in here and know I did my job,” Lincecum said. “There’s an added benefit there. But today, all I’m really thinking is, ‘Try to get to tomorrow.’”
2012 NLDS Game 5 at Cincinnati
Wait, wasn’t this article supposed to be about Buster Posey’s role in elimination games? Well, first consider he was behind the plate for every tense moment of the first two wins in Cincinnati. Then … you’ve arrived at Game 5.
It’s when Posey took his most iconic swing as a Giant. It’s when he hit the grand slam off Mat Latos.
The pregame Pence speeches were turning into a spectacle that included dugout huddles, flying gum and showers of sunflower seeds. The Giants needed one more victory to run the table in Cincinnati and advance to the NLCS, and it was a scoreless game in the fifth inning when the Giants struck for six runs.
Before Posey’s slam, Brandon Crawford had perhaps his most important hit as a Giant up to that point. It was his RBI triple down the right field line that scored Gregor Blanco and put the Giants on the board. Crawford scored on an error, then Scutaro walked and Sandoval singled to bring Posey to the plate. He’s probably never caught a pitch cleaner in his career, and even more memorable than his wallop of a smooth swing was the sight of Reds catcher Ryan Hanigan, turning his head in disgust at the moment of contact.
Advertisement
Posey made two other critical contributions in the Giants’ 6-4 victory, both of them behind the plate. First, with the Reds threatening against Matt Cain in the fifth, Posey maneuvered around Hanigan in the batter’s box and made a perfect throw to third base to nab Jay Bruce, whom Reds manager Dusty Baker had put in motion on a 3-2 count with no outs. The play helped to minimize what could have been a bigger inning.
Then in the ninth, when Ludwick’s RBI single brought the go-ahead run to the plate, Posey teamed with Sergio Romo in a 12-pitch battle with Bruce. Every pitch dripped with tension. Any of them could have resulted in a home run that would have ended the Giants’ season. And Bruce, a left-handed power hitter, was the worst possible matchup for Romo.
Bruce fouled off one two-seamer away after another. Then on the 12th pitch, Romo dared to throw a slider. It resulted in a fly out, Rolen struck out to end the game, and the Giants staved off elimination for a third consecutive night to win the series.
“It’s what Serge wanted to do,” Posey said. “He was committed to it. It was one of the best battles I’ve ever been a part of. Tell you what, it took a lot of guts for him to throw that last pitch.”
“It was a battle,” Romo said. “But I knew I wanted it just a little bit more.”
2012 NLCS Game 5 at St. Louis
What? We’re still on 2012? How long is this article, anyway?
Hey, we told you that Posey has caught 11 elimination games. We didn’t tell you he spaced them out. And in case you’ve forgotten, the Giants extricated themselves from Cincinnati only to reassume the wall-sitting position when they lost three of four to the Cardinals to begin the NLCS.
Once again, they needed to win three in a row. At least this time, a victory in Game 5 would send the series back to San Francisco. But Bumgarner was so erratic in his first two postseason starts (don’t worry, he’d figure it out eventually) that the Giants sent him to the bullpen in favor of Zito, whose performance against the Reds — and most of his tenure since signing a seven-year, $126 million contract, really — did not inspire confidence.
Advertisement
Then the Internet happened. The #RallyZito hashtag was born. And I soon realized that curating memes had become part of a sportswriter’s job. Instead of doom and gloom, there was a wellspring of fan support behind Zito.
“I was told I need to say Rally Zito,” Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda posted to Twitter.
Whether Zito was aware of the support or not, he finally became a big-money pitcher in a way that wasn’t meant as a jab at his contract. He stayed around the zone with all his pitches, mixing his snappier curve along with a slider, a cutter and an 85-mph fastball that kept hitting Posey’s target. It helped that umpire Ted Barrett, who also worked the plate for Cain’s perfect game in June, allowed him to color outside the lines a bit.
Zito struck out six in 7 2/3 shutout innings, and that wasn’t the extent of his impact. After Crawford hit a two-run single off Lance Lynn in the fourth inning, Zito contributed a surprise bunt hit that scored a surprised Blanco from third base to cap the four-run rally.
“I was shocked,” third base coach Tim Flannery said. “We work on it. We talk about it. But he did that all on his own. It was beautiful — brilliant.”
The Giants won 5-0 at Busch Stadium to send the series back to San Francisco — and line Zito up to start Game 1 of the World Series, if they could make it there.
“I tried Twitter a couple of years ago, and it was a pretty devastating experience for me,” Zito said. “I learned not to check the inbox. (But) I’m excited that the fans are fired up. And they’re going to bring all that momentum into the stadium these next two games here. I’m just happy the fans get to see us back at AT&T Park.”
2012 NLCS Game 6 vs. St. Louis
The Cardinals’ Chris Carpenter had pitched and won Game 7 of the World Series the previous year. Vogelsong had been a minor-league free agent who was hoping for a shot to pitch somewhere after bouncing around Japan and several Triple-A stops for six seasons.
Advertisement
In terms of career accomplishments, Game 6 should have been a pitching mismatch. And it was, in the Giants’ favor. Vogelsong, fueled by his superstitious night-before-a-start meal of chicken enchiladas, struck out nine in seven innings and the Giants took a 6-1 victory.
Scutaro was the other key contributor who helped the series go the distance in the series. In Game 2, he got clobbered by Matt Holliday’s takeout slide and writhed on the dirt in agony. He’d later say that the hip injury he sustained in the collision hastened the end of his career. But in that series, it only brought more edge to his game. He would go on to hit .500 in the NLCS and win MVP honors, and his two-run double in the second inning was the biggest hit in Game 6.
“Marco told me something,” Vogelsong said. “It was, ‘Concentrate and win every pitch, win every swing, win every inning.’ I think we just go with that. And it’s been working for us.”
The Giants became the third team in major-league history to win five elimination games in a single postseason, joining the 1981 Dodgers and the 1985 Royals.
They needed one more to win the pennant.
“Do I believe in clutch?” said Pence, narrowing his intense eyes as if trying to stare down the abstraction. “I don’t know. But I believe in adversity. And I believe that’s when you find out what you’re made of.”
2012 NLCS Game 7 vs. St. Louis
It was one game for the National League pennant and the tension went away quickly. The Giants staked Cain to a seven-run lead by the third inning and beat the Cardinals 9-0 to advance to their fifth World Series in the San Francisco era.
The celebration was what you remember. As left-hander Javier Lopez was attempting to button up the final out in the ninth, the skies opened and a sudden downpour soaked everyone on the field and in the stands. Scutaro held out his arms, looked to the sky and tasted the rain on his tongue.
Advertisement
“That just didn’t make any sense,” said Cain, and I think he was talking about the rain, and not a team that rattled off six win-or-go-home victories against the Cardinals and Reds to tie the 1985 Kansas City Royals for the most in a single postseason.
They did it by outscoring the Cardinals 20-1 over the final three games. And over the six elimination victories, their bullpen allowed a total of two runs.
A whole lot of talent and steady nerve allowed the Giants to cheat death six times to win the pennant. But there was a little magic, too. The Giants led 2-0 in the third inning when Cardinals starting pitcher Kyle Lohse was removed and Pence greeted reliever Joe Kelly (yes, the current Dodgers reliever) with one of the weirdest swings in franchise history. Kelly shattered Pence’s bat but the barrel continued to accelerate and made contact with the ball not once but two more times, redirecting a grounder past stunned shortstop Pete Kozma for a three-run double.
Perhaps there’s time for Pence to teach that trick to the current Giants hitters in the event they face Kelly during Thursday’s NLDS Game 5.
In the ninth, Crawford fielded a grounder in between the puddles on the infield and Scutaro got his final revenge on Holliday, catching a pop-up through the raindrops. And when the Giants descended to the clubhouse, they soaked themselves some more. They’d have one more champagne celebration after sweeping the Detroit Tigers to win the World Series.
But first they had to win those six elimination games.
“We’re a little numb right now, to be honest, with our backs against the wall as long as they’ve been and to do this,” said Bochy, after his gang of Gideons blew their horns. “This is a special group. They have that ‘never say die’ attitude. They didn’t want to go home, and they found a way to get it done.”
Advertisement
2014 NL wild-card game at Pittsburgh
The Giants finished 88-74 in 2014 and in second place, six games behind the Dodgers. But it was good enough to get into the wild-card game against the Pirates, where they faced right-hander Edinson Volquez. (Pittsburgh manager Clint Hurdle had used Gerrit Cole in the regular-season finale in a futile effort to chase down the Cardinals for the NL Central title. The Cardinals won anyway to clinch.)
Any elimination game on the road is going to present an intimidating environment, but the crowd at PNC Park might have been the loudest and most spirited the Giants had encountered over their accomplished run. And when Crawford tagged Volquez’s curveball for a grand slam in the fourth inning, the deafening roar instantly ceased and was replaced by stunned silence.
“Do you hear silence? I don’t know if you really do,” said Travis Ishikawa, who watched Crawford’s slam from the on-deck circle. “I don’t know if silence is a sound. But I heard it. Walking to the plate, after that home run, that’s all I heard.”
The Giants won 8-0 and Bumgarner, still just a 25-year-old, had begun to burnish his postseason reputation. He had noise-cancelling stuff of his own while striking out 10 in a four-hitter and the Giants advanced to an NL Division Series against the Washington Nationals, who led the league with 96 victories.
“Honestly, I don’t say it much, but in the bullpen you just had that feeling,” Posey said. “He was throwing the ball wherever he wanted. The moment just didn’t seem too big for him.”
2014 World Series Game 7 at Kansas City
The Giants won an 18-inning marathon at Nationals Park and were able to dispatch the NL’s winningest team in the NLDS. Against the Cardinals in the NLCS, Ishikawa hit the first pennant-clinching home run since Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” in 1951. Those two rounds were filled with tension and unforgettable moments.
But the Giants didn’t face elimination against either of those teams. In the World Series, though, they played the ultimate elimination game.
Advertisement
Bumgarner, working on two days of rest, rode to their rescue.
After Bumgarner threw a shutout in Game 5 at San Francisco, Kansas City manager Ned Yost crossed paths with him in a stadium corridor and said he was relieved the Royals had seen the last of the big left-hander in the series. Bumgarner merely nodded and smiled. He was the ace up Bochy’s sleeve.
“He takes the mound with the feeling that he’s the best player in the stadium, and you know what? He might be,” right-hander Tim Hudson said. “The great players do that. They answer the call.”
Michael Morse, who began the postseason on the disabled list with an oblique strain, became a critical contributor. In the NLCS clincher, he came off the bench to hit the tying home run in the eighth inning off Pat Neshek that set up Ishikawa’s homer in the ninth. And when Morse got the start in Game 7 at Kansas City, his RBI single in the fourth inning gave the Giants a 3-2 lead.
But the Royals had chased Hudson in the second inning. It took a dynamic double play behind Jeremy Affeldt, with second baseman Joe Panik making a diving stop and glove-flipping his feed to Crawford, to quiet the Royals in the third. Affeldt delivered 2 1/3 clutch innings and would become the winning pitcher.
Bochy’s plan called for Bumgarner to follow for at least an inning, ideally two. Bochy secretly hoped for more.
“I was staying away from him every inning (in the dugout) because I was hoping he wouldn’t go, ‘I’m starting to get a little tired,'” Bochy said. “Because there’s no way I would have taken him out unless he would have told me that. We just got on his horse and rode it.”
With two outs in the ninth, Alex Gordon singled to left field and it scooted past Blanco for a two-base error. The tying run was on third base. The winning run was at the plate in the form of Salvador Perez. And Posey called for a succession of high fastballs.
Advertisement
Perez fouled off a 2-2 heater at the letters. Bumgarner threw it again, Perez hit a foul pop, and as Sandoval settled underneath it, Posey threw off his mask. He wore a look of pure delight as he glanced back and forth between Bumgarner on the mound and Sandoval gloving the final out and joyfully trust-falling into the grass.
Posey rushed to the mound to deliver the mother of all Buster Hugs.
“I’m gassed, just gassed, and I’m ready to sleep for a day,” Posey said. “Physically, obviously, it’s a grind but when you go all the way to the seventh game of the World Series, you’re waking up in the middle of the night thinking about who you’re facing, who you’ve got on the mound, how are we going to get this guy out … It’s not just when you’re at the park, you know what I’m saying?
“But it’s worth it. It’s worth it for all this.”
2016 NL wild-card game at New York
We’re not done yet. And neither is Bumgarner.
The Giants tumbled from baseball’s best record at the All-Star break in 2016 to barely backing into the postseason as the second wild-card. They’d have to win on the road again and Mets right-hander Noah Syndergaard might have had the best pure stuff in the game at the time.
But Bumgarner simply refused to yield.
The game was scoreless through eight innings but the Giants outlasted Syndergaard, who struck out 10 before yielding the mound to Mets closer Jeurys Familia. And once again, Crawford contributed the underrated, rally-igniting hit. He connected for a leadoff double, Panik drew a one-out walk and then Conor Gillaspie stepped into his Ishikawa moment.
Gillaspie and Ishikawa shared career parallels. Both were highly touted draft picks who didn’t find sustained success in the major leagues and probably didn’t do themselves any favors by putting so much pressure on themselves. Like Ishikawa, Gillaspie had moved on from the Giants and later returned as a minor-league free agent. He no longer felt the anxiety of proving himself or maximizing his opportunities. He gained an understanding of who he was and what kind of role he’d have in this game. It’s funny how inner peace can drive production.
Advertisement
Gillaspie drilled a three-run homer off Familia, and as he threatened to tear off arms in the dugout with high fives, Bumgarner was the only person who kept his senses. He merely wandered over to Gillaspie with a nudge and a nod.
“Conor,” he said, “I appreciate the hell out of that.”
Bochy had to stay calm, too. Amid the dugout chaos, all he could think about was the fact that Jarrett Parker had been in the on-deck circle to pinch hit for Bumgarner, and for a moment, anyway, he couldn’t hear the coaches screaming at him to come back.
The message was received in time, Bumgarner remained in the game, he recorded three more outs to complete his second shutout in a wild-card knockout contest and the Giants won 3-0 to advance to the NLDS against the Chicago Cubs.
“It was weird,” Posey said. “I felt there was such a calmness with everybody today. I mean, Syndergaard was dominating us. But there still wasn’t … it didn’t feel like there was a panic in the dugout, and probably Bum deserves a lot of credit for that, because we know with him on the mound, there’s a good chance we’re going to have an opportunity the next half-inning to scratch a run across.”
2016 NLDS Game 3 vs. Chicago
The original published version of this article mistakenly omitted this game. Clean forgot about it. Didn’t occur to me that the Cubs had taken both games at Wrigley Field and put the Giants in elimination mode for the rest of the NLDS. So if you’re here for the first time, thanks for bearing with this disclosure. And if you’re a repeat visitor, welcome back. We hope this is an enriching experience for you.
It should be! The Giants ended up winning just one game in their series against the Cubs, so that lone victory is assigned a less exalted place in the collective conscience. But it really was a tremendous and thrilling game. It was Bumgarner’s final postseason start as a Giant. And it involved Bumgarner giving up a home run to the opposing pitcher in the second inning.
Advertisement
Jake Arrieta took Bumgarner deep as the left-hander’s 24-inning postseason scoreless streak ended with a thud. Bumgarner’s velocity was down. He didn’t trust his fastball and threw just 28 of them among 101 pitches, yet gutted his way through five innings and departed with the Giants trailing 3-1.
“He’s done so much for us,” Panik said. “It’s about time we returned the favor.”
They did in the eighth. With the Giants trailing 3-2, after Brandon Belt singled and Posey walked, Cubs manager Joe Maddon turned to left-hander Aroldis Chapman for a six-out save. The second batter he faced was a left-on-left matchup with Gillaspie, who had never seen him before. Gillaspie had only seen three pitches in his career as hard as the 100.2 mph first-pitch fastball that he fouled off. When Chapman threw another, Gillaspie scorched a two-run triple into the right-center gap. It was the first triple Chapman had allowed to a left-handed batter in his career.
“You just fire your hands, you know?” Gillaspie said. “Sometimes it works out. Often it doesn’t.”
It did not work out for the Giants in the series, but even after the Cubs’ Kris Bryant hit a tying, two-run homer off Romo in the ninth, the home team found a way to extend the series. Giants lefty Ty Blach pitched a pair of scoreless innings to give the Giants a chance in the 13th.
The Cubs’ Mike Montgomery would go on to become the first Cubs pitcher in more than a century to throw the clinching pitch in a World Series. But while pitching his fifth inning in relief in Game 3, the Giants got to him. Crawford and Panik hit back-to-back doubles as the Giants walked it off.
“That’s one of the best, most exciting games I’ve ever been involved in,” Bochy said. “The game had everything — pitching, timely hitting on both sides. I know it’s easy to say because we came out on top, but you saw two good teams going at it. And it’s hard to have a better game to watch than what we had tonight.”
Advertisement
“Every team believes in themselves, I feel, but there are a few that have proof,” Romo said. “That belief is real. That belief is there. I’d like to say those of us who have the rings that we have, there’s proof in the belief. Today was just another example.”
2016 NLDS Game 4 vs. Chicago
And now, at the risk of disrupting all the good feels, we come to the only elimination game that the Giants didn’t win with Posey behind the plate and Bochy on the dugout rail.
The Giants bullpen was unreliable during most of the club’s second-half freefall in 2016, and the final inning of the season featured the most painful meltdown of them all. Matt Moore struck out 10 in eight dominant innings, Gillaspie kept fueling rallies with a four-hit night and the Giants led 5-2 entering the ninth. They were three outs away from sending the series back to Wrigley Field, where they’d put the ball in Johnny Cueto’s capable hands.
In Game 1, Cueto had held the Cubs to just a Javier Baéz home run that rattled in the basket atop the ivy-covered wall in left field in the Giants’ 1-0 loss. Everyone from Theo Epstein to Joe Maddon acknowledged after the fact: They were terrified of Cueto and a likely relief appearance from Bumgarner in a potential Game 5. Of all the things that had to happen for the Cubs to win the World Series at long last, roaring back in the ninth to win Game 4 of the NLDS in San Francisco was near the top of the list.
Bochy used five relievers in a failed effort to stem the Cubs’ four-run rally. Crawford committed an error, too. We’ll spare you the rest of the gory details except to point out that Kris Bryant singled off Derek Law to start the threat. Seems like a handy guy to have around in a tight spot.
Now as the Giants play their first elimination game since that night against the Cubs, they’ll have Bryant in home whites. And they’ll have Posey behind the plate.
You might have noticed that other than the grand slam off Latos in Cincinnati, Posey didn’t have many other signature contributions with the bat in these 11 elimination games. He was just 9 for 43 (.209) with five walks in those games and the slam was his only extra-base hit.
Advertisement
But there’s little doubt that Posey’s poise, calm and confidence radiated to the rest of the team as the Giants won nine of 10 times with their backs against the wall.
As Bochy said when I reached him by phone earlier this week, “We don’t accomplish any of that without Buster.”
This fact might have snuck up on everyone, but Posey is the major-league all-time leader with 14 postseason shutouts caught. Yadier Molina caught eight. Yogi Berra caught seven. And Posey has started far fewer postseason games than either of them. He has caught a shutout in an astounding 24.6 percent of his postseason starts behind the plate.
The Giants will hand the ball to Webb against the Dodgers, but the entire pitching staff will be available, and Posey will be behind the plate to orchestrate the game regardless of what path it takes. No matter how it turns out, this Game 5 against the Dodgers will be a game that is discussed, dissected and imprinted on psyches of fans of both teams for decades to come.
Maybe it’ll even include a Buster Hug at the end.
(Photo of Posey’s 2012 grand slam: Andy Lyons / Getty Images)