Can the 3-run Homer Trend Continue?

In the second time in as many nights the Giants were saved by a 3-run home run in the bottom of the eighth inning. This time, Bengie Molina provided the heroics and the G-Men beat the D'backs 4-3 and pulled to within 3 games of Colorado and stayed 6 games back of the Dodgers.

The win is great and the fact that it also allowed them to pick up a game on Colorado is even better. But this is a fire Bochy blog so let's get to what is going to be a daily feature: "Bochy's Strategery Move of the Night." If you have a better name, let us know, but we're going with this until it gets we hear better.

Last night's mental gem came in the top of the sixth inning with two outs and a runner on second. Bochy calls for an intentional walk to right-handed hitting Rusty Ryal to bring to the plate a lefty, Gerardo Parra. Pretty sound baseball logic as it gets you in position for a force out at any bag and the lefty-on-lefty match up, plus Parra's hitting .225 against lefties. Like most people, that's probably where the thinking stopped. But it shouldn't have.

Parra had already ripped a single off Sanchez and clearly wasn't fooled by anything he was throwing up there. A cursory glance at Parra's 2009 stats show that he is batting .354 with runners in scoring position and .324 with RISP and 2 outs. They both might be rookies, but Parra has over 300 more at-bats than Ryal. In his 23 total ABs, Ryal's got one RBI. One.

Maybe that's overthinking it, but considering the results (Parra singles in Upton from second and Romero singles in Ryal to give Arizona a 3-1 lead) perhaps not.