Just like old times: Posey picks up Bumgarner

DENVER -- Ten seasons later, they’re still picking each other up. After all, they’ve got experience doing that, with the most iconic example coming when one of them hoisted the other in the air after the final out of the 2014 World Series.

It was five years ago that Buster Posey lifted Madison Bumgarner in a bear hug following the epic final act of Bumgarner’s herculean October effort. And for as much as a game in early August can give you reasons to recall the past, Saturday’s 6-5 Giants victory over the Rockies at Coors Field was such a contest.

• Box score

Bumgarner said afterward that nothing was working for him on this night. Indeed, his cutter was flat in Denver’s thin air and his four-seam fastball averaged 90.7 mph, below his season average of 91.6 mph. In the five-inning start, he gave up five runs on eight hits, including two homers, while walking one and striking out two.

His catcher wasn’t Posey, who was held out of the starting lineup in favor of backup Stephen Vogt because manager Bruce Bochy wanted to give him a day off before facing a left-hander in Colorado’s Kyle Freeland on Sunday.

But it was Posey who would pick up his battery mate of the last decade with a pinch-hit, go-ahead double into the right-center-field gap in the eighth inning that proved to be the difference.

In a season that may be Bumgarner’s last with the only Major League team he’s known in his career, as he is scheduled to become a free agent for the first time this winter, and one that is definitely the last for longtime manager Bochy, who will be retiring, Bumgarner, Posey and Pablo Sandoval are making one more push for the glory days.

“We’re the only three guys that were part of all three World Series [championships in 2010, ‘12 and ‘14],” said Sandoval, who was 3-for-5 with an RBI double and a run scored on a barrel roll of a slide that Bochy referred to as “a 6.1 on the Richter Scale.”

The trio is a decade older, and not the dominant force it used to be. Bumgarner has lost velocity and, while he has been consistently excellent, has never gone on a run like his incredible 2014 postseason, which was admittedly otherworldly.

Posey has had injury problems that sapped him of his power to a significant extent. Sandoval has had his ups and downs after leaving the Giants and struggling, only to return to the club for which he became a hero and the 2012 World Series MVP.

With a new cast of characters, San Francisco turned what was becoming another lost season into a competitive one with a 19-6 July. New role players like Mike Yastrzemski and Alex Dickerson have been heroes in 2019. On Saturday, newly acquired Scooter Gennett homered for the first time as a Giant. Steven Duggar robbed an Ian Desmond home run by bringing it back from over the wall in the fifth.

While they face an uphill climb to reach the postseason for the first time in three years, the Giants are in the thick of a Wild Card race, and the circumstances aren’t lost on the three elder statesmen.

“We feel like the way we played in July was like the run we did in 2014,” Sandoval said. “We won seven extra-inning games, and it’s been special.”

Bumgarner isn’t exactly the sentimental type, particularly after a poor outing. But he is the symbol of a team taking one more shot before Bochy and possibly Bumgarner himself say farewell. Bumgarner was widely expected to be dealt by Wednesday’s Trade Deadline, but it became more and more evident leading up to it, he would remain a Giant, at least for another two months.

“I don’t really look at it that way,” Bumgarner said about the trio perhaps trying for one last hurrah. “Everybody’s trying to win and a lot of guys have helped us do that. But [Posey’s hit] is definitely the one that stands out.”

The Giants will enter Sunday 2 1/2 games back in the National League Wild Card race. Though they were a force to be reckoned with in July, they’ve stumbled a bit of late and are competing with a roster that, from the outside looking in, doesn’t scream postseason run.

Of course, you could probably have said the same thing about a couple of those teams earlier this decade that ended up lifting a World Series trophy in the end.

“It’s been almost 10 years, and it’s still fun for us,” Sandoval said. “We still love the game the way we loved the game back then.”