It was gonna be one or the other: Austin Barnes or Nick Ahmed. The number 8 hitter or the number 9. The back-up catcher or the back-up shortstop recently plucked from the scrap heap.
It’s never the ones you expect to do the damage against Tyler Rogers. You got to be a pesky hitter, you got to choke up, throw the barrel out and lunge. Both Barnes and Ahmed had one homer apiece in the 2024 season, making them perfect candidates to populate our nightmares.
Yup, in a 4-4 ballgame in the bottom of the 8th, it felt inevitable: someone had to stun the San Francisco Giants.