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Madison Bumgarner's Arm, Branson Crawford's Bat Lead Way As Giants Cruise Past Pirates In NL Wild-Card Game
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San Francisco Giants left-hander Madison Bumgarner shut down the Pirates offense Wednesday night en route to an eight- victory in the NL wild-card game in Pittsburgh. (Photo : Getty Pictures)
A 4-hit shutout by Madison Bumgarner and a grand slam by Brandon Crawford carried the San Francisco Giants to an 8- win over the Pittsburgh Pirates in the National League Wild Card playoff on Wednesday.
Crawford launched a hanging curve from Pirates starter Edinson Volquez into the right-field seats in the fourth inning to snap a scoreless tie. It was the 1st postseason grand slam hit by a shortstop.
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With Brandon Belt adding 3 RBIs with a pair of singles, left-hander Bumgarner sailed through the Pirates lineup providing up 4 hits, striking out ten and walking 1 in a masterful performance.
“Crawford naturally gave us a good cushion, but it begins with that guy on the mound and what a job he did,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said about ace starter Bumgarner.
“It’s difficult to place with each other a much better game than we just had.”
The victory sent the Giants into the very best-of-five NL Divisional Series against the leading-seeded NL East champion Washington Nationals starting on Friday.
NL West winners the Los Angeles Dodgers host the NL Central champion St. Louis Cardinals in the other divisional series.
LIGHTS OUT
The standing-room crowd of much more than 40,000 that packed PNC Park sent the decibel level soaring from the commence and heeded a media contact to produce a “blackout” by wearing black to the game.

 
 But it was Bumgarner who caused a Pittsburgh power outage with his dominant command and confusing arsenal, giving the Pirates no hope of a comeback right after San Francisco’s early barrage.
“He was on tonight,” said Crawford. “When he does that, he’s lights out.” Pittsburgh manager Clint Hurdle tipped his cap to the Giants left-hander.
“He had it all working tonight. Absolutely a quite professional, effectively pitched game by him,” Hurdle told reporters. “We attempted to counterpunch but we just couldn’t muster anything.”
Bumgarner, who was 18-10 for the duration of the regular season with a 2.98 earned run average, stated Crawford’s beautiful blast was a turning point.
“That was huge. To go from a absolutely nothing-nothing at all ball game to four- fairly early on like that was fairly large for us,” the pitcher said.
Crawford stated his soaring grand slam, which came soon after singles by Pablo Sandoval, Hunter Pence and a stroll to Brandon Belt, was not his program.
“I was happy to be in a position to be in that scenario, but the final thing on my thoughts was probably to hit a house run,” said Crawford. “I was just attempting to hit some thing great sufficient to get Pablo house. I figured that would most likely be sufficient for Madison.”
Crawford, who hit ten residence runs this season, was stunned that his slam was a playoff very first by a shortstop.
“That is crazy,” he mentioned. “With all the wonderful shortstops that have played before, it’s quite specific.”
Whilst the Giants carry on in pursuit of their third Planet Series title in 5 seasons soon after winning it in 2010 and 2012, the Pirates must wait in their quest to finish a 35-year title drought.
“We completed short but we laid it all out for everyone every single evening. We emptied the bucket for our fans every evening we played, all 163 games,” stated manager Hurdle, whose group ended a 21-year postseason absence last year.
“We’ve got much more work to do since we all want to play longer. We want to uncover a way to bring that sixth planet championship back to Pittsburgh.”
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