Norris leads Padres to 5-4 win over Giants, Bumgarner

SAN DIEGO Madison Bumgarner stood on the mound and stared. Plate umpire Joe West stared back. Ten seconds. Twenty. In another setting, you’d have holsters and tumbleweeds.

Two time zones away, the Kansas City Royals clinched a division title Thursday night. Bumgarner will not stand in their way this time. The San Francisco Giants face an impractical deficit now their tragic number shrank to three after a 5-4 loss to the San Diego Padres at Petco Park and neither Hunter Pence nor Brandon Belt is expected to play again this season, manager Bruce Bochy said.

Someone else besides Bumgarner will stand soaked and weary-armed and hoist a World Series MVP trophy with weary arms at October’s end.

But Bumgarner is not backing down. Not from a showman umpire with a tight strike zone, and not from a major league lineup under any circumstances. Give him a rope and a calf and it doesn’t matter whether it’s the middle of a dusty ranch or the National Finals Rodeo.

Derek Norris poked a three-run home run over the fence in the second, but Bumgarner swung shut the gate after that, allowing just one more hit and no more runs through the seventh.

Bumgarner was in line to win his 19th game of the season, but the Giants bullpen imploded again as they absorbed a walk-off loss for the second consecutive night. Hunter Strickland walked the first batter of the eighth inning before Sergio Romo served up a tying double to Matt Kemp. Norris started the ninth with a double off Mike Broadway, and Alexi Amarista’s pinch hit off Josh Osich sent the Padres scrambling onto the field.

It wasn’t long ago that Bumgarner was in the middle of a celebration, and although his team disintegrated around him this summer, there is little doubt he would be equipped for another harvest season of heavy lifting.

One season after setting a playoff record for innings, and one start after throwing a season-high 117 pitches, he tossed 120 against the Padres and appeared to get stronger as the game went along. He entered needing just one strikeout to break his career high of 219. He got nine, and 11 more would match the franchise record for a left-hander (239, set by Cy Seymour in 1898).

He departed with a 4-3 lead yet came no closer to becoming the Giants’ first 20-game winner since Bill Swift and John Burkett in 1993. Theoretically, he has two starts remaining on the final homestand; he is lined up to face the Los Angeles Dodgers on Tuesday, then would be rested for the regular-season finale Oct. 4 against the Colorado Rockies.

Brandon Crawford danced in the tiebreaking run in the fifth inning that set Bumgarner up to win. Crawford started abruptly off third base and caused right-hander Ian Kennedy to step off the rubber with the wrong foot; umpires immediately signaled a balk and Crawford trotted the rest of the way home.

Crawford also started the scoring in the second inning when he connected for a solo homer, his long-awaited 20th of the season to take the team lead away from Buster Posey. Crawford joined Rich Aurilia, Alvin Dark and Hall of Famer Travis Jackson as the only players in Giants history to hit 20 home runs in a season as a shortstop.

The Padres took a 3-1 lead when Norris connected against Bumgarner. But Alejandro De Aza cut into the lead with an RBI single in the third. Matt Duffy followed with a double, giving him 47 extra-base hits on the season the same number that Posey accumulated in his rookie season.

De Aza doubled to start a two-run rally in the fifth. Crawford drew a two-out walk, Marlon Byrd hit a tying single, a wild pitch advanced both runners and then Crawford juked the pitcher.

The Giants won’t wave a white flag until they’re eliminated, but Bochy is ready to toss in the towel as it concerns two of his middle-of-the-order hitters. He said he didn’t expect Pence (oblique) or Belt (concussion) to play again this season.

“I’m at that point with all of them,” said Bochy, adding concussed outfielders Nori Aoki and Gregor Blanco to the list. “I’d be shocked if any of them played (again) this year.”

Belt saw concussion specialist Dr. Mickey Collins in Pittsburgh, and although the Giants learned nothing substantially new, Belt was given a similar protocol that he followed after his concussion last year.

Pence keeps trying to swing a bat with limited success, and although he hasn’t given up on returning, the same urgency won’t be there from management now that the Giants are eight back with 10 to play.

(c)2015 San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.)

Visit the San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.) at www.mercurynews.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.