My recap was going to start with something snarky like Usually the team who hits the baseball, wins in baseball. I know — a devastating, and devastatingly cheeky, take down of the San Francisco Giants and their poor offensive production when it often matters most.
With two outs in the 9th inning, down 3-2 in the series rubber match, Heliot Ramos dug into the box against Milwaukee closer Tyler Megill with the bases loaded. I cracked my knuckles, my fingers hanging over the keys, ready to whine…articulately.
For good reason, though! Up until that point, San Francisco had gone 1-for-8 with runners in scoring position, including 6 rally-killing K’s. Hacks galore. Runners stranded. Opportunities lost. If you’re losing by a single run, that’s a pretty damning batting line.
The Giants were swinging the whiff stick from the first pitch they saw from Milwaukee starter Chad Patrick.
The right-hander logged 7 strikeouts and 16 strikeouts through 5.1 innings pitched. Other than three consecutive 2-out hits he allowed in the 2nd, culminating in Luis Matos’s 2-run bomb (who is taking fans back to May of 2024, going 8-for-15 with 5 XBH since his call-up), Patrick cruised.
The only hitter he couldn’t really figure out was Willy Adames, who walked twice before singling to lead-off the 6th. He swiped second to set-up the Giants first at-bats with a runner in scoring position. In a situation where contact, and not particularly good contact, could’ve manufactured a run, the barrel of the order in Dom Smith, Casey Schmitt and Matt Chapman came up empty against Patrick and reliever Nick Mears.
The futility ambled on in the 8th. Jung Hoo Lee led off the frame with a squared up single against reliever Abner Uribe. But Ramos struck out to give Uribe a footing in the frame. After Adames singled to advance Lee to second, Smith chased a low-and-in sinker and Schmitt, the big bopper in yesterday’s game, bopped a very small one to first base to strand another potential run.
By the 9th, situational hitting felt helpless, the hitters hapless with a scoring opportunity, even after Matt Chapman led off the frame with a 2-strike double. To reiterate, a hit wasn’t required here. A series of well-directed balls in play could’ve forced a bottom of the 9th. But Wilmer Flores and Rafael Devers (pinch-hitting for the first time this season) both struck out against Megill: Flores on an admirable but ultimately unproductive 10-pitch scrap; Devers, with 1-out and runners on the corners after Matos’s hard-hit single, on three swings through three fastballs.
San Francisco had forced themselves into a corner, a run-scoring hit would have to do it. Yes, technically, Megill could walk a man (as he did to Lee to load the bases), or spike a curveball or a fastball as he did on Friday, to throw in the tying run — but that strategy didn’t ultimately prove successful. Going up against the magic of Milwaukee, facing off against a field of Bob Ueckers on the day the hometown team honored “Mr. Baseball”, San Francisco needed something decisive. They needed something magical.
Well-timed singles are magical.
Down 2-1 in the count, with Megill leaning into his 32nd pitch of the inning, Ramos returned a 100 MPH fastball to sender. The 102 MPH liner to center plated two and turned the game on its head.
The Giants had spent the day flailing, failing to achieve the most essential task in hitting. Hit the ball. Meanwhile, the Brewers bats weren’t served a strike-three from a San Francisco arm until the 8th inning with José Buttó on the hill. Somewhat surprising given the plate-approach of most hitters these days no matter who they’re facing, and extremely surprising in a game started by Robbie Ray, who has made a long and successful career of missing bats and K-ing batters.
In fact, the Brewers had more hits (6) than swings-and-misses (5) against Ray, something that an opponent hasn’t achieved against him since October 2022 (34 starts). The 14% swing-and-miss rate generated in this outing was half his season rate. He managed to coax swings out of the zone just 16% of the time from Brewers hitters, well below his 28.7% season chase percentage.
This was only the second time in 256 career starts that Ray didn’t record a strikeout. A freakish occurrence you have to turn the clock back a decade, to his first full season (August 14th, 2015) as a member of the Diamondbacks, to see again.
Milwaukee is a contact oriented team. Their weird success can be somewhat explained by the weird amount of production they get from putting the ball in play. The first two runs they plated in the 2nd and 3rd innings came on seeing-eye singles with a runner in scoring position. Christian Yelich’s RBI knock past a diving Dom Smith at first had an expected batting average of .070. It tied the game at 2.
Pesky contact, refusal to leave the zone, and perhaps some overall fatigue from Ray (his velocity was down across the board) would explain the strikeout anomaly. The 4 walks, the clutch contact, and the solo shot to Caleb Durbin in the 5th, would explain the frustrating outing for Ray.
But he was off the hook after Ramos’s single. Ryan Walker got the 9th instead of Randy Rodríguez and handed Milwaukee their second and third strikeouts of the afternoon for his first save since May 25th.
A hard-fought, well-played series win against one of the best teams in baseball. Amazing how a single can change a writer’s mood.
