As ridiculous as it sounds, figuring out a punny name to properly capture the Giants recent power surge was a bit of a pressing matter for announcers Hunter Pence and David Flemming after Matt Chapman lifted a grand slam in the 4th inning off Cubs starter Edward Cabrera. The opportunity was too good to pass up. Baseball had become fun again. The improbable occasion had to be christened.
Pence, ever the wordsmith, stumbled over the syllables as he proposed the blocky Slam Cancisco.
Flemming, ever the
editor, simplified it to a much more sensible, if unimaginative, Slam Francisco.
They’re both wrong.
Considering how many of these four-run, four-baggers the Giants have packed into such a short period of time, the proper nickname is obviously Slam Slamcislamco.
Say that six times fast — one for each blast. The Giants are the seventh team in MLB history to hit six grand slams in a span of 18 games (including the 2020 Slam Diego Padres). Chapman’s shot that landed in the basket over the ivy was the team’s third of the road trip and broke a 5-5 tie with the Angels for the Major League lead.
Turns out this odd beast of a line-up was just getting started.
Three batters later Casey Schmitt rocketed a flat 3-2 change-up 411 feet to left-center. A no-doubter that at the time felt a little superfluous at 8-0, but would prove to not reach be half of the run total of what the team would eventually score in their 18-3 blowout at Wrigley.
San Francisco hitters just kept feeding the bleacher creatures. They peppered seven total homers in all, the most for any team in a single game all season, and the most for a Giants order since April 2023 — a 12-3 win also played in Chicago, just on the Southside.
Willy Adames followed up his 427-foot, 2-run shot in the 1st with another off sidewinder, Hoby Milner, in the 6th.
A couple of beats passed before Chapman capped the 7-run frame by demolishing a hanging curveball from reliever Ethan Roberts into the NUTRL sign floating above the left field seats. The 3-run homer earned him his sixth, seventh, and eighth RBIs on the day, tying a San Francisco-era single game record most recently matched by Wilmer Flores’s 3-HR performance against the Athletics in early 2025.
Not to be out done by the veterans, Schmitt claimed his pair of homers with a 9-iron shot off of position player Carson Kelly — a pitch after recent call-up Jonah Cox had done the same.
Over the past week, the Giants’ offense has posted hit totals of 25, 20, and 19, and run totals of 19, 12, and 18 — and they’ve won those three games too! Call it trying to make up for lost time, blowing off steam — whatever is happening, it’s excessive and over-the-top and pretty dang fun to watch.
Many were skeptical of the 20-run outburst in Colorado and were then vindicated by the early returns in Milwaukee, and yet here we are on the following weekend back to stuffing ourselves on loaded taters. It’s obviously not sustainable — but it feels slightly less ridiculous than it did back in Colorado.
I wrote last week how it wasn’t the offense that worried me, it was the pitching. The game following the 20-run win, the San Francisco arms gave up 16 runs to the Brewers. A poor ability to challenge hitters and attack the zone allowed the tying run to come to the plate in the 9th in a game the Giants once led 12-3 thanks to a Eric Haase grand slam.
But the bullpen did end up holding on in that one. The night before, Logan Webb took a no-hitter into the 7th inning in a 1-0 win. And today, the all-around pitching performance didn’t want coaches and fans to pull at their eye sockets in exasperation.
That’s not to say the arms were perfect. Pitching with a lead for his entire outing, Robbie Ray was as inefficient as ever. He walked 5 hitters and only struck out 4 while needing nearly 100 pitches to do it. He did, however, allow just two inconsequential singles and managed to get through that pesky fifth frame for the first time since May 8th, logging his 14th and 15th outs of the game on his 97th and final offering.
Back in May, the relationship between Giants line-up and Giants starter was completely flipped. The toothless offense had handed Ray losses in five starts in which he allowed 3 earned runs or fewer. Now they’ve hit grand slams in each of his last three games, it’s just the veteran hadn’t managed to hang around the mound long enough to qualify for a statistical win until Friday’s scoreless outing.
Bullpen reinforcement in Carson Seymour may have been still jet-lagged from the last-minute red-eye from Sacramento, and was far from “lights-out” in his 2026 debut, but the right-hander managed to relieve the beleaguered pen with three innings of work.
A double play ball, closing out frames — these are small feats compared to what the offense did today, but its those types of in-game victories that the pitchers need a lot more of if this team wants to really make strides getting back to .500.
