MIAMI — Rennie Stennett has been checking box scores for four decades, waiting for another member of his small club. Stennett always received texts from friends when a player reached five or six hits, but it wasn’t until Tuesday morning that he got the news he’s been waiting for.
Stennett stopped watching a Giants-Marlins marathon in the 10th, but he woke up to texts saying that Brandon Crawford had picked up his seventh hit in the 14th inning. As luck would have it, Stennett lives nearby. Two of the six players to notch seven hits in a game met before Wednesday’s game.
Stennett congratulated Crawford and said he’s been watching him for a while. The two took photos together and had a brief conversation.
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SIGN UP HERE “We talked about the seven-hit games a little bit and his next couple of games,” Crawford said, “Which sounded like it went better than mine.”
Crawford was 0-for-4 on Tuesday. Stennett had a hit in each of the next four games after his big night, including five the next two days. He said the seven-hit game actually should have been cut short after one or two. Stennett’s Pirates scored nine runs in the first and he was playing on a bad ankle, but the team trainer told manager Danny Murtaugh to keep Stennett in until he made an out.
Stennett waited 41 years for another member of the seven-hit club.
“I didn’t realize it would take that long,” he said, smiling.
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--- Hunter Pence is starting in the No. 7 spot for the first time since 2009.
“Just trying to take a little bit of pressure off him — part of it is you try to help these guys out until they get their timing,” Bochy said.
The bottom of the lineup is really fighting it. Pence is 6-for-33 on the road trip and Joe Panik is 2-for-26. Gregor Blanco, hitting eighth, is 0-for-9 and he has just five hits in the second half.
--- The Giants asked Major League Baseball to take a look at that behind-the-back throw Posey made the other night. Dee Gordon didn’t break for second until the ball hit the dirt, so it should have been a wild pitch instead of a stolen base. The official scorekeeper here refused to even really discuss it, and MLB sided with him, saying it’s a stolen base.
It’s a small thing, but Posey is obviously proud of his success catching runners this season and that’s one stolen base that shouldn’t be on his record. In a weird way, Posey got punished for being so good defensively. If he had smothered that ball instead of somehow scooping it and firing a throw behind Christian Yelich’s back, it would have been a wild pitch all the way. (It was anyway, unless you’re the scorekeeper here.)