On Monday, the San Francisco Giants lost to the Philadelphia Phillies 6-4, and I crafted an entire maybe-I’m-thinking-about-this-too-much narrative to go with it. In my recap, I mentioned the sloppiness and (in)attention to detail that has plagued the Giants through this cold, hard, long two-week season, and how they appeared to rid themselves of it on Monday, only to have it boomerang back and smack them in the face.
On Tuesday, the Giants beat the Phillies 6-0. This time there would be no boomerang.
There would be no fakeout. There would be no false hope and ensuing punishment for emptying your retirement to throw money at the salesman selling the false hope at your doorstep.
There were mistakes, however. We’ll cover those. And then we’ll circle back to them at the end of this article, for the grand aha! moment. Not unlike a boomerang. Just not a rude boomerang that sends you to bed miserable and leads your therapist to ask you why you let a group of adults who have never met you dictate your mood for nearly seven months of the year.
It was an ominous beginning, as one of those aforementioned mistakes arrived early, like the monster in the opening credits of a horror film that then disappears, and you’re not sure whether it’s going to come back as a key part of the plot, or if it was just a silly little juke. Robbie Ray got Trea Turner to ground out on the second pitch of the game, before ceding a first-pitch single to Kyle Schwarber. It then took Ray all of one pitch against two-time MVP — and one of Monday’s heroes — Bryce Harper to get the lefty slugger to chop a tailor made double play ball to second base.
Ray had taken the opening part of Philly’s lineup — a trio of hitters with a combined 14 All-Star appearances, currently on contracts that will pay them a combined $780 million — and retired them on all of four pitches.
Or so you thought at the crack of the bat. Unfortunately, even with plenty of time to make a good throw and a fine feed from Luis Arráez, Willy Adames missed first base badly, allowing Harper to reach on a fielder’s choice.
It had the potential to be a painful mistake, robbing Ray of not just a quick inning, but possibly a scoreless one, given that lefty masher Adolis García was stepping to the plate.
But Ray struck him out. Sure, it meant throwing an extra six pitches, but so what. He picked his teammate up.
In the bottom half of the inning, Adames’ picked himself up. Facing a star pitcher in Christopher Sánchez, Adames immediately made the fans at Oracle Park forget about his gaffe with a deep drive to right field that crashed off the bricks.
According to Statcast, it was a home run in 17 parks. At Oracle, it was just a feel-good double.
Matt Chapman followed by turning an 0-2 sinker inside-out for an opposite-field single, and third base coach Hector Borg wisely put on the stop sign for Adames at third.
It was a smart move. García, the right fielder, has a NASA-inspired rocket ship in his throwing arm, there were no outs, and the best contact hitter in baseball, Luis Arráez, was about to step to the plate.
You can score in any manner of ways in baseball, and on this particular occasion, Arráez opted for a 56.7-mph grounder that bounced two feet in front of the plate, ultimately resulting in his own out, but also a run scored.
But this game was the very essence of a devil on one shoulder, angel on the other affair. There were multiple instances where the baseballing seemed to repeat itself, only to offer an opportunity to choose a different, more dangerous path.
And so it was that Adames led off in the third inning, too, and once again hit a double. And so it was that Chapman once again followed up with a single, which once again was hit to right field. And Borg was once again faced with the reality that García has a cannon, there were no outs, and the best contact hitter on the planet was about to step into the box.
Sometimes you do things just to feel something, and so Borg, perhaps unwilling to go to bed tonight without knowing what would have happened had he sent Adames to challenge García, gave him the wave around.
Perhaps it would have been the right call had Heliot Ramos, who hit 0-4 with three strikeouts, been up next. But no: it was contact maven Luis Arráez, who never got the chance for the RBI, because García threw out Adames at home.
Borg chose the angel in the first inning and the devil in the third, and the Giants had made another mistake.
Another such situation occurred, though it was less an angel on one shoulder, and more a second devil that offered a free pass before getting back to his devilish ways.
In the second inning, with one out and a runner on base, Daniel Susac bopped a single, bringing up Jared Oliva for his first plate appearance of the year. He chopped a grounder to the left side, where Edmundo Sosa fielded it and kicked off an inning-ending double play.
In the fifth inning, Susac led off with a single, making him a perfect 5-5 (with a walk!) in his young MLB career (he would be retired for the first time in his next at-bat). Oliva again came up to bat, and again chopped an easy double play ball to the left side of the infield.
This time it went to Turner, who looked up to check on the runners, and consequently forgot to catch the ball. He would make no throw, and neither runner would be out. But, as if to atone for the fact that he had failed to hit the double play he was supposed to, Oliva was then promptly back-picked at first base.
In all, it was a rough first start of the year for Oliva, whose night ended when he awkwardly went to the batter’s box for a third plate appearance without realizing that he was being pinch-hit for.
But that seemingly-costly mistake (the out at first, not the pinch-hitting blunder, which presumably was the fault of someone in the dugout) did not haunt the Giants, as the unveiled something we haven’t seen much of this year: two-out magic. After Adames popped out for the second out of the inning, Chapman (who is heating up in a big way) blasted his third hit of the day, a 111.7-mph double to score Susac.
Arráez, eager to have so many opportunities with runners in scoring position, showed off his two-strike prowess with a 1-2 single into center, scoring Chapman. Suddenly the Giants led 3-0.
They weren’t done. Perhaps the most important bit of turning a mistake into a positive came an inning later, when Rafael Devers led off with a single. That brought up Casey Schmitt, who returned to the lineup as the DH after a few days out with an injury.
Sánchez had gotten the best of Schmitt to that point. He struck him out in the second, and then struck him out on three pitches in the fourth. He had so much ownage on Schmitt to that point, that Schmitt started off the at-bat by attempting a bunt. A bunt! In this economy!
He did not succeed, and soon he was down in the count 1-2, with no choice but to swing. And swing he did, lifting a ball deep into triple’s alley, though it hopped over the fence, costing him a third bag and an RBI. Instead, that. work would fall to Jung Hoo Lee, who entered the game as a pinch-hitter and easily brought the run home with a sacrifice fly.
All of this, however, was made possible by Ray, who thoroughly outclassed the Phillies. Ray didn’t always make it easy for himself, but he did always escape. Following that one-out single to set the table for Harper, Ray gave up a leadoff double to Sosa to open up the second. He followed that up with a leadoff walk to Harper in the fourth.
But he got out of those situations each time. And while he wasn’t exactly operating with peak efficiency, he was getting the job done as well as anyone.
Despite a rising pinch count, Ray was permitted to take his shutout all the way to the seventh inning, which was very understandably given the way the bullpen has behaved lately. It was there where, for the first and last time, Ray got himself into a pickle he couldn’t quite remove himself from.
It started, once again, with a leadoff runner reaching base, this time a Sosa walk. He recovered to get the next two outs, before losing a long battle to Dylan Moore, and issuing the second walk of the inning.
With that, Ray had not only started to show some wavering command, but had reached 109 pitches, and his night came to an end.
Which brings us back to Monday. During that game, Tony Vitello let Adrian Houser start the seventh, before pulling him with two runners on, and bringing in Ryan Borucki, who let both inherited runners score to bloat Houser’s ERA.
On Tuesday, and admittedly with two more outs, Vitello turned to his don’t-call-him-a-closer-just-call-him-when-you-need-him reliever, Ryan Walker, who inherited the two-on, two-out situation.
Walker, as he does, scared the [MadLibs: noun] out of you, turning an 0-2 count into a 3-2 count, while throwing a wild pitch that advanced the runners. But finally he got Crawford to ground out, ending the biggest threat of the night, and preserving the 4-0 lead.
That put a cap on a stellar Ray line: 6.2 innings, three hits, three walks, seven strikeouts, and no runs. When a team is struggling, they need a veteran with star potential to take over a game sometimes, and make life easier for everyone else.
Take note, hitters.
From there, it was all about having a little fun, giving you another little scare, and scoring a few extra runs, just for the hell of it. Walker stayed in to pitch the eighth and, despite having a few issues locating the strike zone, and a giving up a leadoff infield single to Turner and a one-out walk to Harper, got out of the inning unscathed.
The offense, meanwhile, tacked on some insurance with a delightful eighth inning rally, which began when Ramos reached base on a leadoff error (which probably should have been an infield hit), and continued when Schmitt drew a one-out walk.
And then, with two outs, came the big hit: Susac, the feel-good story of the year, tripled down the first-base line, scoring both runners, and securing his second three-hit game in as many Major League starts. He now has twice as many three-hit games in the Majors as his brother, and somewhere the A’s are wondering what in the world they’ve done.
The Giants are good again, at least for one day. Maybe on Wednesday they’ll make it two days.
