SFGate/San Francisco Chronicle
Jonathan Sanchez must have taken a few meditation classes at Ohio Dominican University. His serenity is laudable.
In his past three starts, Sanchez has surrendered six runs in 20 innings and taken a defeat and two no-decisions, one of them Saturday in the Giants' 3-2 loss to the Brewers, who won on a ninth-inning suicide squeeze.
When asked about having to pitch near-perfect ball every time out, Sanchez shrugged and said, "That's every day. It was the same last year and it's going to be the same this year, close games."
When a punchless team fails to score until the eighth inning, and then because of an error, it has to accept some defeats such as this, when the other guys execute at the right time. In the ninth inning, against Guillermo Mota, the Brewers were like Swiss watch makers.
With the scored tied 2-2, Ryan Braun singled on a 3-2 pitch. When Mota fell behind 3-2 to Prince Fielder, Braun ran and Fielder hit a groundball to the spot Brandon Crawford vacated to take a potential throw at second base.
Crawford retreated and did well to knock down a ball that took what he described as a "funny hop." Casey McGehee's dribbler advanced the runners into scoring position, forcing manager Bruce Bochy to walk Yuniesky Betancourt intentionally to load the bases and establish a force at any base.
Brewers manager Ron Roenicke sent Jonathan Lucroy in to pinch-hit. He was hitting .328 with no sacrifice bunts this season. The infield was playing in. Even so, Bochy said a squeeze crossed his mind, but even if he wanted to pitch out, he couldn't after Mota again fell behind 1-0.
With Braun racing home from third, Lucroy pushed a perfect bunt to Mota's left. The pitcher jumped off the mound quickly, but the ball went under his glove. Even if he had fielded it, he had no chance to get the out.
"I tried to do the best I can, and I couldn't even touch it," Mota said. "That was a good squeeze bunt."
Sergio Romo is pitching better than Mota now and struck out two of his three hitters in the eighth, even waiting 12 minutes to throw a slider past Carlos Gomez to end the inning after a delay caused by a leg injury to home-plate umpire Mark Wegner.
Bochy could have let Romo face Braun in the ninth, then gone to Javier Lopez to face Fielder, but Bochy said you cannot play matchups and burn relievers late in a tie game, so he picked Mota, who could pitch several innings.
Sanchez allowed only two hits in seven innings, but one proved extremely costly.
In the first inning, Gomez hit an 0-2 slider down the right-field line. Cody Ross tried to grab the ball with his backhand, but it rolled past him into the corner. Gomez ignited the afterburners and scored on what was ruled an inside-the-park home run.
Ross begged to differ.
"I missed it," he said. "It should have been an error, actually. I blew it. It's not a home run. It definitely shouldn't go against Sanchez. I went down to get it and I whiffed."
Ross needs to erase this game from his mental DVR. Besides that play, he nearly collided with Freddy Sanchez trying to catch a ball in short right, struck out looking to strand a runner at third and grounded into a double play to end the eighth inning after Pat Burrell's one-out single tied the game.
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