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SAN FRANCISCO – A pitching change slows down the game.

The manager ambles to the mound, waits for the next reliever to arrive from the bullpen, hands over the baseball. Maybe there’s a brief mound meeting with the infielders. Entrance music. Warmups. Squeeze in a commercial or two. Finally, a signal from the plate umpire.

The league became so concerned about how long this entire process takes, it implemented a countdown clock prior to last season. They wanted to cut down on the dead time.

And yet it all happened so fast in the ninth inning Tuesday night.

Five relievers, six batters. A blue blur. A franchise-record 32nd blown save.

And for the Giants, dead time.

A season suffocated with a four-run ninth inning and a 6-5 loss to the Chicago Cubs in Game 4 of the NL Division Series, and although the Giants knew their bullpen was a congenital defect, likely to shorten their lifespan this October, they did not expect it to kill them so swiftly and suddenly.

The reaction in public discourse was just as swift and sudden. In the stands and from the couch, it always is – especially now that anyone can hit self-publish.

But reaction and perspective are seldom branches of the same tree.

So on this, the first day of winter in San Francisco, here is an attempt at some pruning.

Some perspective from this corner:

–How could Bruce Bochy possibly defend taking out Matt Moore out after eight innings?

So many times, what has made Bochy brilliant in October has been his resolute decision making. He has found a way to have a shorter hook with his established players and yet also invest more trust in them. It’s why Edgar Renteria was a World Series MVP when he could’ve been left off the first division series roster. It’s why Madison Bumgarner threw five innings of relief in Game 7 when nobody expected him to be physically capable of more than two.

I do believe that Bochy could have pushed Moore past 120 pitches, especially when he let him throw 133 in pursuit of a no-hitter at Dodger Stadium in August. This is why I believe he did not:

1. The Giants had a three-run lead.

If it’s 3-2, I believe Moore goes out for the ninth. But Bochy probably felt like this: any major league bullpen, even one as dysfunctional as the Giants in the second half, should be able to get three outs before giving up three runs.

2. There are 25 players on the roster. Eight are relievers – nine, if you counted Jeff Samardzija. That is more than one-third of the major leaguers at Bochy’s disposal. If he couldn’t count on that third of his roster to be good enough to get three outs, then the Giants really didn’t deserve to go any further than they did.

Bochy alluded to this, saying, “I would like to think you’re going to get three outs there. We couldn’t do it.”

3. The playoff journey had barely begun. If it had been a World Series game, or, say, Game 6 of an NLCS, then I believe Bochy sends Moore out for the ninth.

Yes, you manage with more urgency in an elimination game. Bochy knows that, obviously. The Giants had won 10 consecutive with their backs against the wall before Tuesday.

But Bochy couldn’t expect his starting pitchers to do every bit of the lifting through one more game against the Cubs, and then through two more best-of-7 series. At some point, the bullpen was going to have to be functional, at minimum, for the Giants to be the last team standing again.

So while the bullpen collapse itself shouldn’t have surprised anyone, the swiftness of it was a stunner. And while the Giants still could be playing baseball now if Bochy had pushed Moore to start the ninth, I’m not sure it would have mattered in the final analysis.

It was a bad decision, because it didn’t work out. But in context, no, I’m not sure it was monumentally bad. If a manager can’t trust more than a third of the roster, what else do you expect to happen?

–Why didn’t Moore lobby to stay in?

We haven’t known Moore long. He’s only been a Giant since Aug. 1. But I think we have enough of a gauge on his personality to know that he isn’t a Bumgarner. He won’t walk up to a manager and say, “Like hell you’re taking the ball away from me.”

“I think in the moment right there with a three-run lead, I don’t want to make it about myself, right?” Moore said. “I don’t want to sit there and say, `No, leave me in,’ when we’ve got guys down there.”

Players on winning teams have to trust one another. Moore trusted that his bullpen could get three outs. He trusted the judgment of Bochy and pitching coach Dave Righetti. He was being a good teammate. How twisted this game can be, then, that sometimes a little selfishness is just what a team truly needs.

–Why was Bochy so fixated on matchups in the ninth, instead of letting one guy be his closer?

If you’re wondering about this, you’re not alone. It’s been a sticking point among the relievers themselves all season. As Bochy told me in September, he has held more meetings this season about and with the relievers concerning roles than he could ever remember in 20 years as a big league manager.

Bochy’s overriding principle: if you get an out, I’ll leave you in. Too many times, the relievers allowed the tying run to reach base or come to the plate. And so he made a switch. He couldn’t trust the men, so he trusted the percentages.

Look at what happened after Sergio Romo gave up the tying home run to Kris Bryant in Game 3. Bochy left Romo out there with the bases empty for one more batter. Romo retired him. So he got another. And another. He retired six in a row, including left-handers.

So when Derek Law gave up a ground ball single to start the ninth, and Anthony Rizzo was up next, Bochy went left-on-left with Javier Lopez. And when Lopez issued a walk, Bochy went to Romo for Ben Zobrist. Double to right field. And so on.

–Why didn’t Bochy just go to Will Smith to start the inning?

This seems to be the question that the analytics community is asking, and it’s a valid one.

The Giants paid a huge price to get Smith, sending Phil Bickford, their first-round pick in last year’s draft, plus Triple-A catcher Andrew Susac to Milwaukee on Aug. 1. They should have thought highly enough of Smith, then, that they could have felt comfortable entrusting a three-run lead to him in the ninth.

This is the most concrete criticism, given the numbers. Smith was handling right-handers as well as left-handers. The one thing Smith has not been is a dependable strike thrower. He has struck out 26 in 18 1/3 innings, but he’s also walked nine.

With a three-run lead, I think Bochy wanted to make sure the last thing a reliever did was issue a walk to start the inning. He trusted that Law would throw strikes to Bryant, which he did.

After the single, Bochy likely didn’t bring in Smith to face Rizzo because of the numbers. (Rizzo was 4 for 11 with a homer and two doubles off him.)

So Lopez drew his familiar assignment: the big lefty in the middle of the lineup for a one-batter confrontation. And while the full-count walk wasn’t a fitting final act to Lopez’s decorated Giants career, it more than made sense given the way his season has gone.

(He faced 77 lefties in the regular season and walked 10 of them while striking out only 10 and also giving up two homers. Put another way: lefties hit .112/.177/.146 against him last year, and .208/.315/.312 this year.)

So many times since 2010, Lopez was poison to that important lefty: Prince Fielder, Joey Votto, Ryan Howard. That poison lost its effectiveness this year. Bochy trusted it could work one more time.

So when Smith finally entered the game after Zobrist doubled off Romo, the tying runs were in scoring position and the Giants already had their heels dragging in the sand. Then the Cubs threw some more in their eyes with a couple of well placed hits up the middle – bad BABIP has been part of this bullpen’s yearlong struggles, too – including Javier Baez’s go-ahead knock which came on what was supposed to be a waste pitch away that was nevertheless in a tough location down in the zone.

I’d venture to say we haven’t seen the best of Will Smith as a Giant. Maybe we didn’t see enough of him in the ninth inning of Game 4.

But Smith wasn’t the most interesting omission early in that inning…

–Why wasn’t ousted closer Santiago Casilla one of the five relievers that appeared in the ninth?

Now we are getting somewhere. But first, let’s make one thing clear: any Giants fan who spent three months ripping Bochy for using Casilla as the closer has no license to rip Bochy for not using him in this series.

Out of sheer curiosity, though, it’s a tremendous question to ask. As Carl Steward so eloquently wrote, the poster boy for the Giants’ bullpen failures didn’t even appear on the poster Tuesday night. (By the way, if you haven’t already, be sure to read Carl’s story with exclusive reaction from a weeping Casilla.)

This might be Bochy’s greatest irony of all, because he truly believed to the very end that Casilla had the best stuff and the best chance to get the job done in the ninth inning.

Remember how much warm and fuzzy love Jeremy Affeldt received upon his retirement last year, and what a (justifiably) big deal was made that he ended his career with 22 consecutive scoreless playoff appearances – one short of Mariano Rivera’s record?

Well, Casilla has thrown 20 consecutive scoreless playoff appearances. Over that span, he held batters to a .176 average. In this postseason, he appeared just once, when the Giants trailed on the road in Game 2.

Casilla was not the same guy this year, you might say. There were those nine blown saves. That much is true. But his rate stats were on par if not better than his career norms. He set highs for strikeouts per nine innings and strikeout-to-walk ratio. And he still throws hard. After everything that happened, he still might have been the Giants’ best reliever. Bochy sure thought so.

But Bochy also knew that Casilla was emotional, and it really affected him when he (and Bochy) got booed as he entered a game that he ended up blowing Sept. 17 against the Cardinals.

I’m convinced that if the same Game 4 circumstance had come up on the road, Casilla would have pitched in that ninth inning. Bochy simply had made up his mind that he was not going to use Casilla with a lead at home. (Now, why would Casilla even be on the roster, if that were the case, is another question.)

So much of these postseason games are about energy and momentum, and I believe that Bochy felt a dreadful crowd reaction to Casilla taking the mound would have infused the Cubs with belief and the Giants with, well, dread.

Just imagine, then. It must have killed Bochy to remain so convinced of Casilla’s value and then bow, in a sense, to the mob mentality and not use him in a game, and a season, that slipped away.

Even when you’ve been doing this job for 20 years, and will go to the Hall of Fame for being so good at it, you can learn new lessons.

This is what I believe Bochy will take away from Game 4:

Screw what the fans think.

–What was the Giants’ biggest bullpen miscalculation?

Maybe they didn’t make it Tuesday night. Maybe they made it prior to Game 1, when they didn’t keep left-hander Steven Okert on the roster. Nobody was throwing the ball better down the stretch, and the Giants left him off.

His September numbers: 9 games, 8 innings, 1 run, 1 walk, 8 strikeouts.

Their second biggest bullpen error? Maybe it was not putting right-hander Cory Gearrin on the roster. He’s a ground ball oriented matchup right-hander, and in a two-inning stint against the Cardinals on Sept. 18, he struck out five of six batters while generating an astounding 13 swings and misses.

His September numbers: 9 games, 6.2 innings, 1 run, 1 walk, 13 strikeouts.

Yes, Okert did give up a huge, three-run homer to San Diego’s Ryan Schimpf that cost the Giants a game Sept. 13. But that came after he kept throwing fastballs with Trevor Brown behind the plate. It became clear Okert had the breaking pitches to get left-handers out.

There’s no way the Giants were going to leave off Lopez or Romo. They’ve been a part of three World Series teams, and their experience had to be viewed an asset – particularly in a bullpen with so many other postseason newbies.

But remove the rings from their fingers, and Okert and Gearrin were pitching better.

–Didn’t the Cubs pretty much give away Game 4?

Yes, and that’s a galling thought: for the first time in the series, the Cubs did not play a clean nine innings. They made plenty of little mistakes.

Dexter Fowler committed a huge baserunning gaffe in the sixth inning to allow a blooper to turn into a 9-6 fielder’s choice. John Lackey was late to cover first base on Denard Span’s grounder, which allowed the Giants to score a run in the fourth.

Even Jason Heyward’s bunt attempt in the ninth was way too hard, and should’ve been a double play if Brandon Crawford hadn’t thrown wildly to first while making the turn.

Sure, the Cubs were the better team overall, and gave the Giants so few openings while winning the first two games at Wrigley Field. But they started to play tight in Game 4. One can only imagine how they might have tightened up in a winner-take-all Game 5.

And yet the Cubs won. The Cubs are moving on.

Here’s one other galling thought: the Giants offense did more than enough to win.

Even though the Giants bullpen was unreliable most of the season, especially in the ninth inning after the All-Star break, the relievers might have absorbed too much of the blame in August and September. That’s because a whole lot of those losses could have been avoided if a meager and underperforming offense had stayed awake in the middle and late innings and padded leads.

Well, guess what? That offense did its job in Game 4. They padded a 3-2 lead in the fifth. And they did it even after catching an extremely bad break, when Crawford came within a millimeter of a home run on his ball that struck the top of the arcade. So many times, the Giants would have stranded Crawford and Hunter Pence in scoring position, and bemoaned their misfortune afterwards. This time, the Giants managed to score those two runs, anyway. Conor Gillaspie’s third hit (out of four) and Joe Panik’s sacrifice fly ensured it.

They took a 5-2 lead that stretched the boundaries of a save situation. And the bullpen blew it anyway.

So many times, the Giants offense failed to paper over a bad bullpen. This time, a bad Giants bullpen allowed the Cubs to paper over their own many little mistakes.

–What happened to Crawford on those two errant throws?

I don’t know, except to tell you he’s not perfect. His left elbow was really sore. Perhaps his right shoulder was, too. And while it’ll take a lot more for the Cubs to get square with the universe, maybe two errors from a Gold Glove shortstop Tuesday night helped to make up for the Alex Gonzalez butchery in the Steve Bartman game.

–Can Angel Pagan play Game 5?

Well, there isn’t a Game 5. But the Giants already scratched him, just in case.

–Javier Baez is good.

That’s not a question. That’s because that doesn’t need to be a question. Baez’s defensive skills at second base are transcendent. And his breakneck hustle on a routine grounder allowed him to end up on third base and eventually score. He was the difference maker for the Cubs in this series because he had more energy than the entire Giants lineup put together, and in this (supposed) post-greenie world, energy is the most precious commodity in the game.

–How do the Giants fix their bullpen this winter?

Let’s put it this way: the Cubs weren’t the biggest winner after Game 4.

Mark Melancon’s agent was.