Brandon Crawford drove in Patrick Bailey for the go-ahead run after the rookie reached on the 11th pitch of his at-bat in the 8th inning.
Patrick Bailey fouled off one 3-2 fastball. He sent the next pitch, another heater, back to the net. The St. Louis reliever on the other side of this battle, Chris Stratton, then turned to a curveball, and Bailey fought that pitch off, too.
This chess match went on for 11 pitches. Stratton fired, Bailey fouled. Finally, after fighting off five straight two-strike offerings, Bailey lined a fastball that caught just a little too much of the plate for a double into left field, winning the battle and setting the table for a game-deciding rally in the top of the eighth inning.
With another two-strike poke into center, Brandon Crawford singled Bailey home to score the go-ahead run in a 4-3 win over the Cardinals on Monday in the first game of a three-game series at Busch Stadium, delivering his second late-inning, go-ahead hit in the past week.
“One thing’s for sure is we’re never out of it,” Bailey said on the NBC Sports Bay Area postgame show. “We have consistent at bats from the first inning through the ninth, so we just have to wait for that moment for the big hit.”
The big hit came from Crawford, but Mitch Haniger also drove in a pair and Wilmer Flores reached base three times.
The big at-bat came from Bailey, who said his mindset throughout the 11-pitch battle was “just get something over the middle of the plate.
“I think I fouled off a couple pitches I could’ve hit well, but I stuck with it. With two strikes just let the fastball get deep … and I was able to get a fastball I could handle.”
Camilo Doval was called on for a four-out save, navigating a pair of walks, a hit batsman and a ground ball that took a freak hop into the outfield, to close out his National League-leading 17th game of the season and finish off a seven-inning outing from Logan Webb.
With the tying run on second base, Doval retired Paul Goldschmidt with a ground ball back to the mound for the final out.
The Giants (34-32) improved to 5-22 in games while trailing after six innings, with three wins coming in the past week, clinching a win in the season series over the Cardinals for the first time since 2014. They will go for only their third series win at Busch Stadium since 2013 in the final two games, with Alex Cobb and Anthony DeSclafani on the mound.
Webb earned the win but continued to be haunted by the home run ball, just as the Giants have been by Goldschmidt. The Cardinals first baseman launched one of a pair of St. Louis homers off Webb, the other from Paul DeJong, in the third time in 14 starts this season that Webb has been burned for multiple home runs, something that happened only once last season.
The two home runs accounted for all three of the Cardinals’ run against Webb, who was otherwise efficient while completing seven innings for the seventh time this season, rebounding from his second-shortest outing of the year his last time out.
It’s not yet the midpoint of the season and Webb has now allowed more home runs (12) than he has in any other season of his career.
Goldschmidt’s sixth-inning home run was the 31st of his career against the Giants, more since he entered the league in 2011 than anyone but St. Louis teammate Nolan Arenado (33), who singled twice but was kept in the ballpark. Goldschmidt already added two to that ledger this season during their four-game series at Oracle Park in April while going 7-for-17.
DeJong had more success against Webb than anyone else in the Cardinals’ lineup, improving to 7-for-12 with his second career home run against the Giants righty and another single in the seventh.
In addition to his immaculate at-bat in the eighth, Bailey caught Cardinals rookie Jordan Walker stealing second in the third with a laser beam throw that charted the perfect path into Crawford’s glove at the base of the bag.
“He had a great night,” manager Gabe Kapler said of Bailey, who also called pitches. “Did a nice job leading Webb. Patty was really controlling this one. Obviously that was a tremendous at bat, fighting for every pitch and then lining that ball into left-center.”
Haniger drove in the game-tying run in the seventh inning, singling home Flores on a sharp grounder that snuck just inside the first base bag, for his second RBI of the game. Haniger also doubled home a run in the third, collecting his first multi-hit and multi-RBI game of the month.
Flores reached base three times and hit the Giants’ hardest-hit ball of the game, lining a fifth-inning double off the very top of the left field wall at 108.2 mph, but eight inches was almost the number that made the difference, or approximately how short it fell of clearing the wall. Flores was left stranded on second, one of 11 runners the Giants left on base.
