Giants are one win from World Series with 6-4 victory over Cardinals

The aces went down in a hurry this October. Clayton Kershaw and David Price, gone. Stephen Strasburg and Max Scherzer, done. Zack Greinke and Justin Verlander, out. Jered Weaver and Jordan Zimmermann, see you in spring training.

The best starting pitcher remaining in the playoffs, as legitimate an ace as any of those guys, is Madison Bumgarner.

The San Francisco Giants could not have planned this any better. They are one victory from their third World Series in five years.

Bumgarner starts Thursday, at home.

“Both of those things are really good for us,” Giants pitcher Ryan Vogelsong said. “But you can’t win or lose the game on paper.”

The St. Louis Cardinals must win three consecutive elimination games or call it a season. The Giants scored three runs in an improbable sixth-inning rally Wednesday, the decisive runs in a 6-4 victory over St. Louis. San Francisco leads the best-of-seven NL championship series, three games to one.

“It was a matter of getting some Giants karma going,” Vogelsong said. “We find mysterious ways to score runs.”

They have hit two home runs this postseason, in 327 at-bats. In the division series clincher, they scored the winning run on a wild pitch. On Tuesday, they scored the winning run on a throwing error by the opposing pitcher.

On Wednesday, they scored the tying and winning runs Thursday on ground balls to first base. No matter.

“I couldn’t even give a flying flip how you do it,” Giants General Manager Brian Sabean said. “We don’t look at it as having to be artistic. We look at it as the end result.”

In their last six postseason games, the Giants have scored 22 runs, 12 of which scored without the batter getting a hit.

And so it went Wednesday. The Cardinals took a 4-3 lead into the sixth inning. Marco Gonzales, the fourth St. Louis pitcher, gave up a walk to Juan Perez and a single to Brandon Crawford. The Giants used a pinch-hitter, Matt Duffy, to sacrifice the runners into scoring position, and then the weirdness commenced.

The Cardinals used to have a pretty good first baseman, guy by the name of Albert Pujols. On the whole, it’s hard to say St. Louis has missed him; the Cardinals have gotten to the league Championship Series in each of the three years since he left for the Angels. But, boy, did they miss him on defense Wednesday.

Matt Adams, the Cardinals’ lumbering first baseman, fielded consecutive ground balls. On the first, hit by Gregor Blanco, Adams stabbed the ball and threw home - off balance, and with a short hop. Perez slid to the wide side of the plate, Cardinals catcher Tony Cruz had no chance to get the out, and the Giants had tied the score, 4-4.

“I was throwing on the run,” Adams said, “with a fast runner on third.”

The Giants also had runners on first and third, with one out. The next batter, Joe Panik, grounded to Adams, who stepped on first base for the second out. That removed the force at second, but Adams threw to second anyway — too late for the tag on Blanco. Adams might have had a better chance to get Crawford at home, but the run scored, and the Giants led, 5-4.

“I should have touched first and checked home,” Adams said.

The Cardinals tried a new pitcher, Seth Maness. But Buster Posey singled home a run, the third one he drove in, and the Giants led, 6-4.

“We still found a way to score a couple of weird ones there too,” Posey said.

The countdown was on to Bumgarner.

After Vogelsong had covered the first three innings, ineffectively, and Yusmeiro Petit had covered the next three with ease, the Giants used three relievers for the seventh inning.

They got three outs from Sergio Romo in the eighth, three more from Santiago Casilla in the ninth, and they had closed within 27 outs of the World Series.