Giants need Bumgarner to be less confrontational

The same personality traits that make someone great can also be their Achilles' heel. Bumgarner pitched his best game in more than a month Monday night, in a must-win setting, against a team that had beaten him four straight times and clocked him on the same field the last time he pitched there. In the seventh inning Monday night, we saw the other 1 percent. Even Clayton Kershaw, who by all account wanted Puig shipped out last winter, told the Los Angeles Times the fight was not Puig's fault and that Bumgarner was "asking for it." Let's say Bumgarner goes out for the eighth inning and needs 20 pitches to preserve his 1-0 lead. Maybe manager Bruce Bochy goes to the bullpen in the ninth and the Giants blow it again. The prevailing theory is that Bochy did not want to risk Bumgarner getting drilled on his pitching arm in a retaliatory strike. Javier Lopez had an interesting comment after Hunter Strickland blew the save and was asked whether he, as the senior reliever, needs to be a counselor to the younger guys at this perilous time. Lopez said yes and added, "It's nice to have Joe Nathan with his 370-something saves as a back-end piece who can drop some knowledge on the young guys." The Giants have 29 or 30 blown saves this year, with differing opinions on whether Albert Suarez actually blew one against the Brewers on June 13. After Andrew Toles' pinch single off Derek Law to start the ninth, Bochy had Lopez face Corey Seager. Lopez made the pitch he wanted and got the action he wanted, a groundball. Had Seager grounded into a double play, the Giants might have celebrated a 1-0 victory. If the Giants and Cardinals win and the Mets lose Tuesday night, the three would be tied for the two wild-card spots. Do you want to play one winner-take-all home game, or go on the road knowing if you lose one game you still have another shot, in a second road game. The Mets then would decide if they wanted to travel to St. Louis or sit back and play the loser of a Giants-Mets game at Busch Stadium. If they won that, they would play the wild-card game two days later, again on the road. Henry Schulman is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.