OAKLAND -- A few minutes after the most grueling outing of his season, Giants reliever Ryan Walker smiled and asked a rhetorical question.
"Do you get a save for that, too?"
The 28-year-old is a closer now, so the most important number on the back of his baseball card has changed. He is tasked with saving games, but on Sunday afternoon against the Oakland Athletics, Walker found himself in a peculiar spot. There was no save to pick up, but by saving himself, he clinched an absolutely necessary win for a team that tried all sorts of different ways to throw it away earlier in the day.
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Walker was surprised when manager Bob Melvin sent him back out for a second inning at the Coliseum after he threw a scoreless ninth, but it didn't take long for the adrenaline to kick back in. When the A's loaded the bases, Walker responded by striking out three straight, clinching a 4-2 win and a weekend split in the final Bay Bridge Series.
"You love to see that,” starting pitcher Blake Snell said. “That's our closer and he's going out for another inning -- that’s huge. Especially because we need it right now. We've got to do everything we can to win every game. That was big for us.”
Snell had his own escape three innings earlier, leaving the bases loaded with a strikeout and groundout in the seventh. His celebration was even bigger than Walker’s, a sign of how much this game meant.
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The Giants got back to .500 a day before returning home to face the historically bad Chicago White Sox. They are not at all in a good position, trailing the Atlanta Braves by four games for the final playoff spot in the National League. But with 36 to go, they are still alive, and they have a bit more time before the schedule turns tough again.
For most of Sunday, though, they looked like a team that shouldn't be looking at anyone else's wins or losses. They found creative ways to run into outs from the second through the sixth, and entering the seventh, they were being shut out by A's lefty JP Sears, who did the same thing two and a half weeks ago at Oracle Park. In the dugout, Melvin turned to a member of his staff.
"How many innings in a row is this guy going to shut us down?" he asked.
The timing proved perfect. Heliot Ramos went deep a moment later, and in the 10th, the Giants got homers from Jerar Encarnación and Michael Conforto to take a three-run lead. Walker had struck out a pair in the bottom of the ninth, but Melvin asked if he could go a second inning. He wasn't expecting to, but he felt good.
Melvin managed this one like a playoff game, and benefited a bit perhaps by the fact that Oakland manager Mark Kotsay will never need to do that this year. Three days after Mason Miller threw two innings against the New York Mets, he struck out a pair in a quick top of the ninth, but Kotsay didn't extend his own dominant right-hander.
The Giants took the lead off Dany Jimenez, leaving Walker to try and clinch his own win. Right from the start, things started to unravel.
Brett Wisely couldn't grab a grounder to second, and Walker issued a free pass and then allowed a single to load the bases. As Sean Hjelle and Taylor Rogers scrambled in the bullpen, Walker found himself feeling more at peace than just about any of the 32,000 at the Coliseum.
"I honestly feel more calm with [the bases] juiced than having a guy on first and second, oddly, because you don't have to worry about timing and stuff," he said. "Once that happened I just focused up and just focused on making my pitches."
Walker froze No. 3 hitter JJ Bleday with a nasty sinker and then threw a two-strike slider that Miguel Andujar missed by a foot. When Shea Langeliers swung through a slider, Walker pumped his fist twice and made a beeline for Patrick Bailey.
The appearance was the 62nd of the year for Walker, which tied him atop the NL leaderboard with teammate Tyler Rogers. He threw two innings and 35 pitches, both season-highs, but looked at his best with his back against the wall.
"I think being in the role right now, the adrenaline kind of just takes over," Walker said. "I felt like there was plenty of gas in the tank to get through what I needed to get through."
Walker is right near the top of the list of Giants who immediately would see their workloads change if the team fell way further back in the race, but right now, every game is a big one, and Melvin is leaning heavily on his best relievers, especially with Camilo Doval now back in Triple-A. The Giants pushed the pedal to the floor Sunday, with Snell throwing 109 pitches before handing it off to Rogers and Walker.
Life would be a lot easier if the lineup could pull away in some of these games, but right now, the group isn't capable of it. For the third time in six days, the Giants went to extra innings. It was stressful for Melvin, but also felt kind of right to the longtime A's manager, who spent much of Sunday soaking in the final Giants game at the Coliseum.
"Don't you kind of expect a game like this to end this place and the series between the Giants and the A's?" he said. "It almost had to happen like that."
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