GIFs from last night...

The Giants didn’t win last night, but that’s okay. It’s August, everybody’s tired and teetering on burn out, so when we get tense, hard-fought games like that, I’ll take it. More impressively, the Giants, despite not doing very much for most of the game still had several gif-able moments during those few blips of intense action.

As you know, gifs are the best way to communicate. See the site staff’s GIF roundtables for the pitchers and hitters, but before you do that, watch these looped moments from last night’s game.

Gorkys Hernandez’s throw home

This play kept the Dodgers off the board in the bottom of the 5th inning while Derek Holland was still on the mound. Although the Giants would need Reyes Moronta to keep the game scoreless later in the inning after Derek Holland loaded the bases, that wobbly inning was built upon the rock that was this throw.

Wow! What a throw!

The broadcast very quickly threw up the Statcast data on the throw, too:

The bat has scuffled in the second half, but Gorkys’ defense has been consistent all season. It was a play that really +1’d espirit de corps for the Giants, which had been lacking on the night until that point. In real time, it looked like Gorkys had just barely nailed Brian Dozier, but Buster Posey knew otherwise...

Buster Posey: “He’s out”

What I like about this one is how it reveals Posey and then he delivers the news. He expels “He’s out” like the last machine in the assembly line putting the logo on an item. I said on Twitter at the time and will reaffirm here that this .gif has replaced the original “Ain’t Havin’ It” of Buster Posey lore (he actually said “I didn’t have it” — as in a good grip on the ball):

Young, vital Posey tsk-tsking himself for not having a solid grip on the ball before uncorking a wild, but effective throw to catch a base stealer is a good one and it’s served us well. But it’s 2018, and Buster Posey has seen it all and he, like us, is so very, very tired. Buster’s already done the work. The simple act of handing the ball to somebody else and affirmatively, unequivocally saying, “He’s out” is a perfect bookend to the mighty “Ain’t Havin’ It”.

Gorkys Hernandez fist pump

Oh, but we’re not done with this play. The call on the field was that Brian Dozier beat the tag. Not so said most of us and, most importantly, Buster Posey, and so Bruce Bochy challenged. We’ll never know how many monkeys and how many goats are running the replay room in New York, and some nights the monkey to goat ratio works in the Giants favor and sometimes it doesn’t. On this night, the goats and monkeys were perfectly balanced (meaning, I guess, that when the monkeys jumped around, the goats stayed on the floor, and when the goats jumped around, the monkeys stayed on the floor), and the call on the field was overturned.

Now, maybe you don’t want the umpire’s call. Maybe you just want the low key fist pump.

Ahhhhhhh, but then maybe you’re a weirdo like me and you want Gorkys pumping forever...

When this season is over, that left arm is going to be enormous.

Andrew McCutchen’s 3-run home run celebration

Well, the home run itself isn’t the most gif-able part of the sequence, although this one does end with Chris Taylor looking beside himself...

It’s this side-step “A-how ya doin’?” hat tip McCutchen gives as he crosses home plate that really makes the moment:

Let’s remake the “Wild Wild West” music video with Andrew McCutchen.

Chase d’Arnaud’s bunt

Scientists, engineers, doctors, lawyers, mechanics, writers, directors, couples trying to conceive, and athletes from all sports have said at some point “It doesn’t have to be pretty, it just has to work.”

But let me contradict myself: this is beautiful. Show this to someone who’s never seen a baseball game before and they would laugh but also wonder if Chase d’Arnaud was in some kind of peril. He kinda was! He took his bunt assignment very seriously.

How did he get that bunt down? He’s a professional.