After two straight games in which they quickly trailed, it was refreshing to see the D-Backs get the fireworks started early this afternoon. Geraldo Perdomo took the fourth pitch of the game out of the park towards McCovey’s Cove to give Arizona its first lead of the series since the third inning of Monday’s game 1-0. Even better, they added on after the fact – a phenomenon that has been all too rare lately. They opened the very next frame with three consecutive leadoff singles from Blaze Alexander,
Alek Thomas, and Tim Tawa, the last of which plated Alexander to make it 2-0. After a successful sacrifice bunt from Jake McCarthy flipped the lineup for Perdomo, the young shortstop delivered with his second RBI in as many innings by singling to right to plate Thomas and advance Tawa to third who then scored on Ketel Marte’s subsequent sacrifice fly to extend the lead to 4-0 by the second inning.
Eduardo Rodriguez certainly appreciated the run support, but had one of his best outings of the year and continued a stretch of strong performances over his last three appearances against three contending teams (Dodgers, Red Sox, and Giants). In fact, he held the Giants hitless through the first 4.1 innings and only faced one batter with a runner in scoring position at the very end of his night. It seemed like he had command of all of his pitches and particularly leaned on a three-pitch mix of his fastball, changeup, and sinker (~89% collectively). This has been another disappointing season for the veteran lefty, but given his contract length, I’ll grasp at any positive momentum and the 32 year old seems like he’ll end the season on a high note. We’ll just have to hope that it can somehow translate into the offseason and then next year.
After Rodriguez dominated the Giants through the first six-plus innings, the Giants finally mounted a late comeback against the Arizona bullpen. They found some offensive consistency with two outs in the home half of the eighth with a pair of singles from Patrick Bailey and Heliot Ramos that set the table for the dangerous Rafael Devers. The slugger just missed a three-run homer by catapulting a middle-middle sinker from Andrew Saalfrank into “triples alley” to get the Giants on the board 5-2. Finally, in the ninth, they once again threatened with two runners in scoring position for Jung Hoo Lee who could only manage a sacrifice groundout for the final San Francisco run.
Baseball’s regular season is long enough that labelling in any one game as “must win” feels hyperbolic. Obviously, when you get into the postseason, that calculus changes as it seems as if every at-bat is make-or-break for the team, but even in that environment a single loss could be papered over relatively easily as even some of the best teams drop a game or two. There are “must-win” series and certainly crucial matchups, but outside of a few corner cases (i.e. game 162 itself), it’s hard to make the case that any one game out of 162 should be that heavily weighted comparatively. Today’s game was one of those exceptions. It goes without saying that every win is crucial with just 14 games left to play in the regular season, but this was a series with an elevated importance given the current National League wild card standings and the season series between these two teams deadlocked at five games apiece. A loss today probably would have put the team’s already flagging postseason hopes on ice. Instead, they kept the hope alive for another day. I’ll cling to that hope until the team is mathematically eliminated.
