Another epic bullpen collapse ends Giants season

Really, could this season have ended any other way? 

The largest ninth-inning comeback in postseason history punctuated a season filled with bullpen failure, and so ended the San Francisco Giants season. 

Carrying a 5-2 lead into the ninth inning and sitting just three outs away from forcing a penultimate Game Five, the Giants bullpen wrecked it. Five pitchers, aided by an error, surrendered four runs as San Francisco's season went down to defeat in appropriate fashion: they gave it away.

How fitting was it that the closer San Francisco fans pleaded for was on the hill for the opposition when it ended. Chicago had the ability to close a game out. San Francisco hadn't showed that capacity all year as the front office crossed it's fingers and hoped for the best. As it was, the major expenditures, both in cash and personnel, were undone by a bargain basement relief corps. At the time they most needed someone to close it out, they Giants had nothing. Nothing. Nothing. 

Even year magic? Nothing more than a good marketing slogan.

There will be a lot of finger-pointing but the  bottom line is this: San Francisco's bullpen was awful all year. The deficiency was obvious. Management fiddled while Rome burned and now the season lies in ashes. Bobby Evans, Brian Sabean: well done. Your team lost because it deserved it. With an entire season on the line, five pitchers can't get three outs while trying to protect a three-run lead? Only one word comes to mind: "inept".

Seventy-eight times in their history the Giants had carried a lead into the ninth inning of the postseason game. They had never lost under those circumstances. Under Manager Bruce Bochy they were 10-0 when facing elimination.

Only this group could blow that kind of karma.

Starting pitcher Matt Moore was in complete control of the ball game. His pitch count was elevated (120 tosses after eight innings) but he was cruising. He'd retired the previous seven hitters and had struck out 10 while allowing just two hits. He hadn't allowed a hit since the fourth. He'd struck out two in the eighth, so naturally he had to come out.

Yeah, watch the other guys celebrate. Fun, huh? (SF Gate / The Chronicle)

Only Bochy can explain why he chose to make a switch. Whatever his reasoning, he was proven to be dead wrong. Come on, Boch! You knew the bullpen stunk. You had a guy on the hill who'd thrown 133 pitches earlier this year, and he was dealing! He starts the ninth. Anything else is managerial malpractice.

Until the pen got involved the night had been glorious. A fast start seemed essential, and the Giants delivered one. Denard Span led led off the home first with a double and scored on back-to-back fly balls. Buster Posey logged the RBI and three batters into the game the Giants were up 1-0.

Chicago got that run back in the third on a homer by veteran catcher David Ross but the Giants jumped back on top with two in the fourth and another deuce in the fifth. It should have been enough, even after the Cubs got one in the top half of the fifth on Brandon Crawford's throwing error. Unfortunately those eight glorious innings just set the stage for a horrific ninth.

Moore departed in a move that echoed Dusty Baker pulling Russ Ortiz with a 5-0 lead and just seven outs standing between the Giants and the 2002 title. Baker may never be forgiven, and neither should those responsible for this debacle. 

The first four Cubs hitters reached, each against different hurlers. Ben Zobrist's double off Sergio Romo made it 5-3 and put the tying runs in scoring position. The carnage continued against Will Smith as Willson Contreras singled to tie the game. Four pitchers, four baserunners, three hits, tie game. Sickening.

A double play could have provided relief but the 1-6-3 destined to take place on Jason Heyward's poor sacrifice attempt went awry when Crawford made his second throwing error of the night. One out, runner at second. Enter Hunter Strickland. Javier Baez, a thorn in the Giants side all series, completed the collapse with an RBI single up the middle.

Up 6-5 the Cubs turned to closer Aroldis Chapman, a trade deadline collectible the Giants fan base desperately coveted. The Giants had racked him a night earlier, and those occasions are rare. Chapman mowed the Giants down in order. Season, dismal season, over.

The Giants asked Derek Law, Javier Lopez, Romo, Smith and Strickland to get three outs. They responded with four runs on four hits, throwing 24 pitches. Game, set, match. Far from providing relief, the elephant in the room crushed the life right out of every Giants fan who hadn't already retreated into a Jose Quervo-fueled haze. By comparison, the Cubs got five relief innings out of five men, allowing two runs on four hits. 

That was the difference between Game Five and watching the rest of the season on TV -- provided you can bear to watch. 

San Francisco wasted not only Moore's stellar outing but an 11-hit attack (the Cubs had just six hits, just to twist the knife). Conor Gillaspie had a four-hit night while Panik and Span added two. They should have been heroes, not footnotes. 

And so it was that the Giants finished what will certainly be remembered as one of the greatest collapses in Major League history. A team that held the best record in the sport at the All-Star Break fell off a cliff and never regained it's footing as it tumbled toward oblivion. They scratched and clawed their way into the postseason but in the end simply didn't have the goods. We could have told management that. Every caller, blogger and message board dweller warned of impending doom but the front office knew better.  

We see how that worked out.

With distance this will become just one more season where the Giants came up short. Old timers like this scribe grew up on them. But this regime was supposed to be different. These were winners, solid guys who didn't beat themselves. Isn't that "The Giants Way"? This season began with great hope, but it was all a mirage. In the end all they did was rip our hearts out.

It's baseball, nothing but sport. We will recover; but that's not gonna happen anytime soon. The 2002 and 2003 seasons still haunt every fiber of our being. We still see Candy Maldonado sliding to catch nothing in 1987. The images are seared into our brain, and so is the hurt.

The 2016 is dead. Some of our soul left with it. Shame on you, Giants. Shame on you.

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