Though veterans Rafael Devers kicked off the Giants series in Colorado with a 114 MPH rocket in the 1st, and Willy Adames added a decisive 2-out, 2-run shot in the 7th, it was two rookies who provided the essential fuel of San Francisco’s 8-2 win in Denver.
Kai-Wei Teng made his season debut and first career start on August 2nd. The right-hander struggled to find his footing as a member of the rotation in four games. He showed moments of promise at the Major League level, but like in a raisin-heavy
trail mix, those M&Ms were few and far between in the handful of opportunities. He’s taxied around with an over-stuffed 8.78 ERA in the trunk since his last start on August 19th, loitering in limbo, waiting for his next opportunity.
That chance came when a back issue sent projected starter Carson Whisenhunt to the IL, right as the Giants wrapped up a 5-1 homestand and a run of 7-2 to reignite and reenergize a final month postseason push. Teng would get the ball with a chance to not only prove his value to the club, but also pitch the Giants back to .500 and start a pivotal road trip on the right foot.
And he’d have to do all of this in the rarefied air of Coors Field — every pitcher’s nightmare.
If the altitude affected him, Teng didn’t show it. Bases empty, runners on, Teng’s facial expression was inscrutable, his approach against an aggressive Colorado line-up pretty dang consistent. Lean sweeper heavy, spin it to the outside, stretch the corner with it — mix in a fastball and curve just enough to keep the Rockies from cheating out over the plate. Teng dealt with runners on base in four of his first five innings and stranded two runners in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th innings with the help of a career-high 8 strikeouts.
Managing runners on the corners with one-out in the 2nd, Teng three-pitched Kyle Karros for a key unproductive out, working out and in with sweeper-sinker-sweeper combination. He worked east-west again against Yanquiel Fernandez, freezing him with a back-door curve on the outside corner to get out of the jam. He’d strike out back-to-back batters again in the 3rd, this time getting aggressive chase with the sweeper from Hunter Goodman and Jordan Beck, to subdue a burgeoning rally.
Colorado clearly wanted to swing the bat. 17 of the 24 batters Teng faced dealt with an 0-1 count because of first pitch hacks. But credit goes to Teng for exploiting their free-wheelin’ plate “discipline”. He generated 17 whiffs and 10 of them came with his sweeper, eliciting a 53% chase-rate. Colorado obviously wanted stuff out over the plate. They kept expecting it, and he refused to give in, nor did he have to considering how well he maintained count leverage.
Yes, nine hits is a lot. A single and a double with one out in the 6th chased him from the game, runners that both came around to score with Joel Peguero on the mound, but by that time San Francisco already had a 6-run lead. Teng delivered the unproductive outs in the early goings when the tone needed to be set. He also didn’t hand out any free bases. That’s how pitchers get killed at Coors. With that massive outfield and thin-air, hits will inevitably fall or carry out over the wall, but innings get out of hand when those knocks are following up walks or vice-versa.
Maybe this was just an unexpected M&M, but Teng impressed today. If he felt pleased by his performance that earned him his second career win, or annoyed about the two late runs getting charged to his count, you couldn’t tell.
Here’s what Teng looked like in the dugout.
Anddddd here’s Drew Gilbert.
Drew Gilbert probably has ADHD. He can’t sit still in the dugout. If he’s up to bat, he’s going to swing, and after he makes a routine catch in the outfield, he’s going to rifle the ball into the infield as hard as he can. As a piece of the Tyler Rogers trade with the Mets, he put on a Giants uniform for the first time 6 days after Teng’s debut start against New York. The outfielder went 1-for-18 over his first week. There was a kid in the candy shop look to him — every pitch he saw, every ball hit his way, every rally he witnessed his eyes were as wide as his Pit Viper lenses. It didn’t feel very sustainable. Back in those jaded days of mid-August, nothing was good or would last or had a point.
Then Gilbert turned on a fastball from Mason Englert in the last game of the Rays series, and something clicked.
Beautiful things can have that effect and bring about fully-formed understanding. That swing sounded a mental Oh that reverberated around my consciousness during the next week. Gilbert’s playing time was sporadic, nor did he record another hit, but it would only be a matter of time.
He started in the opener against Baltimore and roped two doubles: one that left his bat at 106 MPH and reclaimed the Giants’ momentum. In his second start of the series, he came up a single shy of the cycle and drove in 3 runs.
In his first at-bat in Colorado, facing off a college teammate in Chase Dollander, Gilbert met a 99 MPH 4-seamer out in front of the plate and deposited it into the elevated right-field seats. He did his best Raffy Devers impression, hesitant to leave the box, just wanting to soak in the view. Adrenaline coursed through his body, picked him by his veins and pulled him around the diamond. His mouth didn’t stop moving as he rounded the bases. Expletives and encouragement and non-sequiters mixed together and fell out of his mouth in large chunks of verbal guacamole. he apparently needed to be physically restrained by the end of the celebration. No, Gilbert isn’t the kind of guy who can be calmed down by a gentle hand or soothing word.
After his 2-run shot in the 3rd — which was his fifth extra base-hit and seventh RBI in four games — Gilbert singled three more times and scored twice.
The dang kid just wouldn’t chill out, inserting himself in the middle of every significant rally the Giants put together on Monday.
His single in the 5th set-up runners at the corners with one-out. He’d stroll around the bases on subsequent walks from Devers and Adames and eventually score when Dom Smith deflected a Dollander 4-seamer through the gap between man and bag at third.
When Colorado put two runs on the board in the bottom of the 6th, whittling the Giants lead down to four, Gilbert responded with a lead off a single in the 7th. With two outs, the kid’s over-the-top personality started to draw more attention from reliever Anthony Molina. Was he a threat to steal at first? Or just being really annoying and distracting? Whatever it was, it rattled Molina, coaxing him to break his concentration and commit a disengagement violation. Moments later, Adames slugged a curveball over the left field wall.
Adames’s 26th was the nail in the coffin. Peguero and Keaton Winn would close out the final three frames with the help of two expertly turned double-plays to erase nagging singles and nip any semblance of a traumatic late-inning rally at Coors in the bud.
With Devers’ first inning solo shot, the Giants extended their team home run streak to 15 games. It’s the longest consecutive homer streak in the Majors this year, the francise’s longest since 2001, and one away from tying their San Francisco record.
To add on to the superlatives, the 114.5 exit velo was the hardest hit homer by a Giant in the Statcast Era (according to Sarah Langs). It was Devers’s 14th homer as a Giant, meaning he’s one shy of his Boston total in 28 fewer at-bats. He’s also one homer and 6 RBIs from his fourth career 30 HR – 100 RBI season.
Another! Another! Okay, to end on a bit of a weird, “mix-and-match” one (thanks Dave Flemming ): Gilbert became the first rookie in Giants history to bat 9th and record a 4-hit game.
That deserves a yee-haw!
Or whatever sound this is…
