Bumgarner HR, fans 14, pitches 3-hitter

For the second time in a week, our bullpen got a day pass courtesy of our number one starter. Picking up the first hit of the ball game was Blanco with a hard ground ball to the right of the second baseman.

He has allowed two runs in 25 1/3 innings in his last three starts, with 35 strikeouts. Bumgarner even helped himself, recording an RBI double in the 5th inning and a solo homerun in the 7th.

And he may do it with both his arm and his bat.

The Giants won’t want to wait longer than Friday to activate Susac, since they’d want to bring back Hector Sanchez when rosters expand September 1. “It could make or break the season the way things are right now”, Bumgarner said. “That’s an impressive outing with how hot it was”. “He’s so strong and bounces back so well. I don’t know exactly what we’re going to do, but when you look at him in moments, he’s the old Matt Cain”.

“It’s fun to do good right there after that”, said Tomlinson, who admitted that he’d only been walked intentionally a time or two in his life. “And he’s thrown a lot of them”. The Nationals only mustered three against him.

Those runs were more than enough run support for Bumgarner, who was dominant once again down the stretch. “I got it pretty good”, Harper said. He tied a career-high with 14 strikeouts while walking just one in his fifth-career complete-game shutout.

The San Francisco Giants simply took care of what they needed to do on Thursday getting the win over the Nationals.

The four-game sweep of the Nationals – the Giants’ first at home since May 28-30, 1971, against the franchise (then the Montreal Expos) – lifted them 11 games over.500, equaling their high-water mark for the season.

The Nationals were coming off consecutive shutouts by NL West-leading Los Angeles and arrived into the Bay Area about 2 a.m. after a night game at Dodger Stadium on Wednesday.

The Giants travel to St. Louis to open a three game series beginning Monday night against the Cardinals. I think that’s evident today. “So tomorrow we’ve got a tough customer and we’ll have to see what we can do tomorrow, but we can’t worry about it now”. This time, though, Bumgarner came back with a fastball slightly elevated but still in the strike zone.

“He’s got that type of swing where he’s gonna be consistent”.

The Giants added another against Ross in the fifth. In this series especially, the offense responded. A towering home run to left from Hunter Pence kept the inning going as he absolutely crushed a hanging off-speed pitch.

After winning the first two games of the series with game-ending homers, Baltimore enjoyed a pressure-free blowout at the expense of a free-falling Oakland team that has lost six straight and 16 of 23. The players in the clubhouse played none the wiser, but the Giants’ 2015 hinges on the second half of August and the Nationals series was the first litmus test.

More significantly, the vaunted rotation that was fortified when Scherzer came onboard with a $210 million contract ranks just sixth in the league in ERA at 3.83 and yielded 18 runs in 15 2/3 innings to the Giants.

Tomlinson’s double produced two of the runs in a three-run fifth against Nationals reliever Tanner Roark that increased San Francisco’s advantage to 9-1.

The win was the Giants’ 12th in their last 14 home games. He struck out three and did not walk a batter.

“I really thought this homestand was critical for us”, Bruce Bochy said.

The Nationals made no such adjustment against Bumgarner, who hurt them in every respect.