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Ryan Vogelsong was not a lucky pitcher in 2014. Bad fortune followed him to his final regular-season pitch in Friday night’s 4-1 loss to the Padres, which assured the Giants will hit the road for Wednesday’s wild-card playoff game.
Vogelsong sawed Rene Rivera’s bat in half, but the ball floated into short left field for a two-run single. That gave Vogelsong three earned runs on the night and a final ERA of 3.996, which will be rounded in official stats to 4.00.
Still, Vogelsong penned another good comeback tale for the season. He lowered his ERA from last year by 1.73 and threw 81 more innings.
By making all 32 starts, Vogelsong also assured he will make enough in incentives over his $5 million base salary to surpass by at least $500,000 the $6.5 million he would have earned had the Giants exercised the option on his old contract.
All of that gratified Vogelsong, especially after the questions in the offseason and spring training about his ability to start every game.
“On the other hand,” he said, “I still didn’t throw the ball the way I wanted to all year.”
Vogelsong will be a free agent once again, his future in San Francisco cloudy once more.
“That’s what makes the way I pitched tonight even tougher to take,” he said. “You never know where you’re going to be next year in free agency. That’s why I wanted to end with a good one, depending on what happens in the playoffs. I wanted to have a good one to finish off and I blew it.”
So did the offense, which went silent against Ian Kennedy for the second time in six days and scored one unearned run on a Brandon Crawford sacrifice fly.
Some of the struggling regulars might be rested Saturday and Sunday now that the Giants cannot gain a home-field advantage for Wednesday.
Manager Bruce Bochy played his regulars Friday night except for Buster Posey, who is nursing a tight back that was concerning enough to warrant an MRI exam. However, Bochy said Posey could have played.
“With where we’re at, we’re better off giving him a day and make sure we don’t risk an injury here,” Bochy said. “Basically, we’re being very cautious.”
In some ways, knowing the Giants will travel for their playoff game helps by eliminating one layer of uncertainty. The Giants had a winning road record (43-38), so that is not particularly scary.
“Obviously we’d like to do it in front of fans here,” said Madison Bumgarner, who will start against the Bucs or Cards. “Hopefully we’ll have a few more series to come after that one game.”
Henry Schulman is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: hschulman@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hankschulman
NL wild-card seeding
Team |
GR |
Rec |
GB |
Pittsburgh |
2 |
88-72 |
— |
Giants |
2 |
86-74 |
2 |
Note: Pirates hold tiebreaker
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