The Detroit Tigers outhit the Giants 11 to 5 on Friday night. They outwalked them too, 4 to 3, and earned 12 at-bats with a runner in scoring position while San Francisco had just 4. The visitors had hot bats in Kevin McGonigle, who reached base four times, and Spencer Torkelson, who reached thrice; and Dillon Dingler, one of the premier RBI men in the league, who quickly added to his robust total in the 1st inning.
But in baseball math, all that doesn’t necessarily add up to a win. A runner doesn’t mean
a run. One big swing can outweigh 27 little ones, and for once, the Giants weren’t on the receiving end of that head-butt of truth in their 5-2 win.
Hit home runs and never die. The Tigers had the knocks, 11 singles in all, but the Giants had the taters. Rafael Devers and Willy Adames both left the yard against right-handed starter Keider Montero: one claimed the lead in the 1st, and the other stretched it in the 5th.
Devers’s 24th was a two-fer — coming with two outs, in a two-strike count, and worth two runs. Montero sped his bat up with a four-seam fastball at the top of the zone in the previous pitch, and then tried to pull the rug out from under it with a slow-breaking knuckle curve. A 15 MPH difference is a tough adjustment for the hitter, the pitch probably would’ve been unhittable if it broke further down in, or out of, the zone… it didn’t. Montero hung it, and Devers crushed it.
The 2-run shot turned an early deficit into a lead that the Tigers would chase and nip at all evening. They had at least two runners on base in 6 of their 9 chances at the plate, bringing the tying run to the plate plenty of times. The Giants pitching and defense did their best impression of a supple and lithe white ash, bending but not breaking, as the ol’ cliché goes. For once, they played as the frustrator (this is a word), rather than the frustrated.
Adrian Houser gets a lot of credit for that, who pitched through the middle innings, after JT Brubaker handled the 1st. His only blemish came on a two-out flare from number-9 hitter Zach McKinstry that knotted the game at two runs a piece. The four-seamer on the hands didn’t deserve that outcome, and at the time, the RBI single felt like a harbinger of things to come. Paper cut after paper cut. Single run tallies all the way through to the end. A steady drip…drip…drip of baserunners eventually overflows a cup.
But Houser turned off the tap. He retired six in order through the 3rd and 4th frames while the Giants retook the lead. He’d kept Detroit off the board through to the 6th, putting him line to earn his first win since May.
It definitely got dicey at times. McKinstry and McGonigle put Houser in a first-and-third conundrum after lead-off singles in the 5th. The prospect of a run felt certain with the heart of the order stepping into the box. Another single felt just as plausible. The defense would trade an out, or outs, for a run, so a groundball would do, as would a deep enough flyball. Gleyber Torres got the ball in the air, but Jung Hoo Lee did an excellent job of charging the shallow-ish fly and releasing an accurate one-hopper to the plate. McKinstry bluffed home, then quickly retreated back to third as he watched the throw come in. With Dingler up, who is second to just Yordan Alvarez for in RBI totals, did the same thing. Again the ball drifted into foul territory, just over 200 feet from home. Lee charged in, caught it and got the ball back in quickly. Based on his arm’s reputation, evidenced by the previous throw, and the fact that the flyball bordered on a pop-up, neither runner chanced the advance. A nice sliding catch by left-fielder Grant McCray ended the threat.
In the 6th, Houser again worked around a pair of singles, ending his night with an 11-pitch epic against his ultimate foe: number-9 guy McKinstry, who had gone 2-for-2 with an RBI against the Giants right-hander. After five straight fouls in a 3-2 count, McKinstry conceded, flying out to center. Two more runners stranded.
Overall the Giants did a nice job of keeping Detroit’s singles small. How do you do that? By countering with your own little excellences. Doing little things to cut their little things down, and keep them from growing. In a 3-2 count, Houser put six straight pitches in the zone to McKinstry. He didn’t give in, he didn’t let McKinstry’s stubborn fight-’em-off swings beat him..
McGonigle yanked a low-liner into right to lead off the 7th against Keaton Winn. Off the bat it looked like a potential double, but the way Lee aggressively chased down the baseball kept McGonigle from risking a sprint to second against the right fielder’s strong assist arm. Lee’s initial accurate relay home in the 5th rippled into the latter innings. That mattered considering it kept the double play in order — which Gleyber Torres promptly grounded into — and with two outs, the subsequent walk and single proved manageable. If Lee doesn’t hold McGonigle to a single, that inning snowballs.
The Giants weren’t perfect. There were errors, throws to the wrong base, and free passes handed out — but they were perfect in managing their imperfections. Three of the four walks came with the bases empty. When Riley Greene took second on Drew Gilbert’s throw to third in the 7th, the individual error in judgment didn’t send the collective spinning off their axis into known oblivion. Sam Hentges didn’t implode, but countered by freezing Eduardo Valencia on a big 3-2 curveball. Another two runners stranded.
Back in the 2nd, when Christian Koss couldn’t put the ball in play with runners and second and third and one out, Bryce Eldridge didn’t swing out of his boots trying to pick up his teammate. He recognized Montero, with a base to play with, wasn’t giving him anything to hit. He took the walk, which extended the inning and got Lee, arguably the best two-out hitter in the Majors, a chance to rake in the split.
He touched his cap, much obliged, and roped a 2-RBI single .
San Francisco earned back the lead, and perhaps against all odds, they held onto it.
But if recent history is any guide, now that the Giants won the first game in the series, fans are in for a rough couple of days. And since Saturday is a Fox broadcast, we won’t even have Mike Krukow’s dulcet tones to guide us through it.
