Wilson Ramos' series-changing bunt

ByJAYSON STARK
October 7, 2014, 12:24 AM

— -- SAN FRANCISCO -- Does anything happen in October anymore that makes any sense?

We've seen four Cy Young winners go 0-3, with a 6.67 ERA. We've seen the most power-challenged playoff team since the '70s (your 95-homer Kansas City Royals) turn into the '61 Yankees. And now this:

The winning run of a win-or-go-fishing postseason game scores on a bunt. With two strikes. By a guy who hadn't laid down a sacrifice bunt in more than three years. And it ends a 22-inning October scoreless streak by a pitcher who, by fielding that bunt and then throwing it halfway to Sausalito, allows a postseason run to score against him for the first time in two years, four series and a span of 81 hitters.

Uh, yeah, sure. Of course it did.

"If you'd told me before the game that that was going to happen, I'd have called you crazy," said Nationals reliever Tyler Clippard, after one of the wildest, nuttiest October bunt plays ever had turned this National League Division Series into a whole different animal. "But that's what makes postseason baseball so much fun."

Well, right he is. And now, the fun in this NLDS might just be beginning, after the Nationals' 4-1 Game 3 win over the Giants on Monday, at turbocharged AT&T Park.

All of a sudden, the Nationals are now down two games to one, and find themselves a game away from evening up this series. And they'll have one of their hottest pitchers ( Gio Gonzalez) starting Tuesday, against a guy ( Ryan Vogelsong) who went 0-4, with a 5.53 ERA, in September.

So it's possible that when Madison Bumgarner heaved Wilson Ramos' shocking seventh-inning bunt past third base Monday afternoon, he might have done more than change one baseball game. He might have changed this whole series.