There are some lines Bruce Bochy is willing to cross, and some that he’s not.

Case in point: Matt Cain’s perfect game Wednesday night. Bochy was willing to make some small changes: Emmanuel Burriss replaced Ryan Theriot at second base in the sixth, and in the seventh, Joaquin Arias slid from shortstop to third base, replacing Pablo Sandoval, with Brandon Crawford inserted at shortstop.

The Burriss substitution, said Bochy after the game, was aimed at giving playing time to one player and rest to another during a 10-0 blowout. The seventh-inning switches, however, were made with perfection in mind, Bochy putting the best defense possible behind Cain. Sure enough, the first batter of the eighth, J.D. Martinez, hit a slow roller to third, which Arias charged, gloved cleanly, and threw on a line to nip the runner. And with two outs in the ninth, Arias fielded a sharply hit ball down the line and made the long throw in plenty of time to preserve Cain’s perfection. (Watch it here. Full highlights here.)

“We went against every unwritten rule in the book, I know, but Boch and I just thought we had to have our best defense in there at the end, and it worked out,” said Giants bench coach Ron Wotus. “Panda [Sandoval] would have a tough time making those two plays as easily as Arias made them.”

When it came to warming up a pitcher, however, Bochy was significantly more sly. With a comfortable lead, he wanted a reliever ready should Cain—whose pitch count through seven was 103—give up a hit. The manager was cognizant, however, of the emotional toll the sight of bullpen activity can take on a nerve-wracked starter, so he had reliever Shane Loux warming up “down underneath,” either in the batting cage or in the tunnel below the stands.

“We had somebody ready,” he said. “You couldn’t see him, but he was there.”

Far less tactful was first baseman Brandon Belt, who looked up from his seat in the dugout in the seventh inning, and was startled to see Cain in front of him.

“I sat down and Cainer just stopped and stared at me,” Belt told CSN Bay Area‘s Andrew Baggarly, referencing the superstition that nothing in the dugout order can change under such circumstances. “Yeah, I guess everything was OK until I sat in his seat.”

As if to follow suit, not only was the Giants television broadcast crew more than happy to reference the no-hitter, but prior to the ninth inning showed a “Giants No-Hit History” graphic, featuring each of San Francisco’s five previous no-hitters.

Just goes to show that dominant pitching trumps jinxes every time.

Update (6-15-12): Cain’s family is full of Code adherents.