CINCINNATI (AP) — The entire season was a comeback for Buster Posey, so he didn’t think anything of it when San Francisco needed one of the biggest yet to play for a pennant.
He led them to one of Giant proportions.
The National League batting champion hit the third grand slam in Giants postseason history on Thursday, sending San Francisco back to the championship series with a 6-4 victory over the Cincinnati Reds.
They will play Game 1 on Sunday, either in Washington against the Nationals or in San Francisco against the wild card St. Louis Cardinals. They planned to stick around town until the Nationals-Cardinals series, tied 2-all, is decided today.
The Giants became the first NL team to overcome a 2-0 deficit in the division series, which began in 1995. Major League Baseball’s changed playoff format this season allowed them to become the first to take a bestof five by winning the last three on the road.
Buster Posey’s second career grand slam, off Mat Latos, put the Giants up 6-0 in the fifth and sparked a joyous scrum in the San Francisco dugout. The ball smacked off the front of the upper deck in left field, just above Latos’ name on the video board.
For the first time in the series, the Giants could exhale.
Matt Cain and the bullpen held on, with more help from Posey. The All- Star catcher threw out Jay Bruce at third base to snuff out a sixth-inning rally that cut it to 6-3. The Giants had a pair of diving catches that preserved the lead in the eighth.
There was more drama in the ninth. Ryan Ludwick singled home a run before Romo got Rolen swinging to end it.
Walk-off for Nationals
WASHINGTON (AP) — Lance Lynn needed only a few words to describe a 13-pitch at-bat.
“Three-two heater. He beat me.”
There were more questions for the St. Louis Cardinals reliever, of course, but the answers were more or less the same. He went mano-amano with Jayson Werth in the bottom of the ninth inning of a playoff game, losing the battle when the Washington leadoff hitter put the baker’s dozen offering off the back wall of the visitor’s dugout beyond left field.
The Nationals’ 2-1 win Thursday in Game 4 kept the Cardinals from clinching the NL division series, and now there will be a decisive Game 5 in Washington. It’ll be hard to top this one — with Werth going strike, strike, ball, ball, foul, foul, foul, foul, foul, foul, ball and foul before launching the hit that had him circling the bases, tossing his helmet high and leaping into a pile of teammates at home plate.
The Cardinals wasted a stellar effort by Kyle Lohse, who allowed just two hits over seven innings with five strikeouts and a walk, his only miscue coming on Adam LaRoche’s dead-center homer in the second.
Ross Detwiler allowed three hits over six innings — the type of performance Washington needed after Gio Gonzalez, Jordan Zimmermann and Edwin Jackson were far from their best in Games 1-3.
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