Another day, another comeback: SF Giants rally late to complete sweep of Rockies

DENVER — More often the batter pulled for a pinch hitter than the pinch hitter in key situations this season, Brandon Crawford’s role was reversed in the ninth inning Thursday. Trailing by one, Crawford was called on to bat for rookie Casey Schmitt and laced a game-tying double that paved the way to the San Francisco Giants’ sweep of the Colorado Rockies in their three-game series.

“I ran up and just gave him a big hug after that because I’ve been there,” starter Alex Cobb said after the Giants’ 6-4 win, their second straight game erasing an early deficit with a late-inning rally. “I’ve been through struggles and I know how good it feels to make an impact and contribute to a win.”

Crawford lined a two-strike curveball from Pierce Johnson into the right-center field gap, and LaMonte Wade Jr. lofted a fly ball deep enough to score the go-ahead run from third. Like their previous late-inning comeback, the ninth inning started with a pair of free passes as Johnson struggled to find the strike zone.

Blake Sabol, who drew the leadoff walk, raced home from second on Crawford’s double, and Mike Yastrzemski, who reached on another walk after Sabol, made it to third, putting him in position to score what amounted to the game-winning run on Wade’s sacrifice fly to right field. Crawford crossed the plate for an insurance run, then returned to the dugout, where he was greeted by Cobb’s open arms.

Entering this series, the Giants were 1-25 when trailing after seven innings. They have won the past two games, despite falling into that scenario both times.

“Especially here in Colorado, I feel like no lead is ever safe,” said Crawford, who owns a 1.088 OPS at Coors Field since 2019, the fourth-best mark in the majors. “From the offensive side, we know that no lead is safe and that we can bounce back and put a couple on the board late in the game.”

Of his approach, Crawford said, “at least trying to make contact, hopefully advance the runners. Fortunately I did a little more than that.”

Crawford, 36, had been lifted for a pinch hitter five times this season, all since May 17 and every time in the seventh inning or later. If he hasn’t officially lost the starting shortstop job to Schmitt, the slick-fielding rookie has at least cut into his playing time considerably. Crawford’s batting average entering Thursday was .181, and his OPS was .617, both worst among Giants regulars.

But Schmitt has cooled off since his red-hot start and had never faced Johnson. In addition to possessing the platoon advantage against the righty, Crawford had seen Johnson more than anybody on the Giants’ roster, with three hits in six at-bats. He watched two curveballs glance the outside corner and fouled off a fastball, before punishing another curveball that Johnson tried to sneak down and in.

“It was a great at-bat, obviously,” Kapler said. “My thinking is he has experience against Pierce Johnson, it’s a big moment and a big road trip for us, Casey’s been struggling a little bit against right-handed pitching, I just felt pretty good about Craw there.”

“You’re just happy,” added Cobb. “You see guys go through changes in their careers, go through struggles, they have one of two ways to go about it. They can either be a tough teammate to be around or they can be the same guy and maybe if you’re not contributing as much as you’d like on the field, you can still contribute in the clubhouse and be the guy that we expect him to be. He’s been that throughout this whole season.”

The Giants have beaten the Rockies 11 consecutive times and won 16 of their past 19 games at Coors Field. To pull out the past two, they had to climb out of early holes after their starters were hit hard and left the game early. They erased a 4-0 deficit on Tuesday with five runs in the seventh and the eighth, and on Wednesday climbed out of a 4-1 hole with a two-run homer from Michael Conforto in the sixth before rallying for three runs to take the lead in the ninth.

Cobb was only beginning to settle in when he left the game after the fifth inning, despite throwing only 83 pitches.

“It was a long day for him no matter what,” Kapler said. “After that first inning, it felt like it was a win for him to get through the portion of the game that he did as well as he did.”

Like Logan Webb on Wednesday, the Rockies jumped on Cobb as he adjusted to the unique conditions at Coors, which can alter pitch shapes. Colorado batted around and scored four runs in the bottom of the first, taking a lead it held until the Giants’ winning rally.

Facing the second batter of the fifth, Cobb threw a pitch that sailed up and in and grabbed at his left side. He was visited by Kapler and trainer Dave Groeschner, who had an extended conversation, but remained in the game to finish the inning. Cobb said he experienced a “shooting pain” around his left hip but that it subsided as he threw more pitches and that he had “zero concern” about it going forward.

“Their concern was that I was going to compensate and hurt something else, but I was feeling really good at that moment,” said Cobb, who didn’t allow a run after the first and retired 12 of the final 15 hitters he faced. “Obviously I had a very difficult first inning where my stuff just wasn’t completely sharp. I felt a little bit under water throwing the ball. I just didn’t feel like I had everything behind my pitches. Then I got into a groove and once you get into that groove, you want to stay in that groove and keep pitching.

“You know in this ballpark that a three-run lead is nothing and you want to be a part of the reason why the team comes back, so I wanted to stay out there.”

Until the ninth, the Giants had relied exclusively on two home runs to score their three runs, a departure from the first two games of this series, which were the Giants’ first consecutive games going homerless in the mile-high venue since July 3-4, 2018.

Thairo Estrada got San Francisco on the board in the top of the first, attacking the first pitch he saw from Colorado starter Chase Anderson, a chest-high fastball, and whacking it an estimated 424 feet, about halfway up the stands in left field. Continuing to burnish his All-Star résumé, Estrada’s homer was his seventh of the season, and he added his team-leading 14th stolen base after reaching on a walk in the seventh.

Conforto pulled the Giants within one with a two-run shot to right field in the sixth, driving home J.D. Davis after he tripled into the left-field corner. It was his first homer of June, coming in his third game back after a three-game absence with a bruised heel, and his team-leading 12th of the season. Before the heel injury, Conforto had homered seven times in May, all coming in a 14-game stretch.

“It’s very challenging to come to Coors Field and win a series, period,” Kapler said. “You can see in a game like today, you go down (4-1) after two kind of emotional games, it’d probably be easy to start looking forward to Chicago but these guys stayed in it the entire time.”

“This,” Cobb said, “was an extremely exciting series for us.”