A little drama, a lotta Beat LA

Brett Wisely walked it off.

Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time wondering why I — and this is perhaps a controversial opinion — find this season of San Francisco Giants baseball so much more palatable than last year’s. The Giants have been the very definition of a mediocre baseball team, as was the case last year, as was the case the year before.

And with every failed bullpen game, every squandered bases-loaded situation, every feckless defeat, the 2024 season feels more and more like the 2023 season that ended with you flipping through your local community college’s annual catalog, seeing if any new hobbies might catch your eye.

Yet for me it’s felt different all along — again, I’m probably in the minority here. I’ve been telling myself it’s because I still believe in this team; I still believe that Jorge Soler will find his All-Star bat, that Blake Snell will return to his unhittable ways, that Robbie Ray and Alex Cobb will get healthy, that Luis Matos and Marco Luciano and Kyle Harrison will, after a certain number of games, flip the script from serviceable to thrilling. And while I do still believe that, the halfway point in the season snuck up earlier this week and positively slapped me in the face like a participant in Dana White’s latest morally-bankrupt endeavor.

My faith has perhaps not wavered, but … no, it’s definitely wavered. And even if it hadn’t, the loudness of my sermons about it sure would be dialed down.

But on Friday night, after taking a moment to digest the Giants 5-3 walk-off win over the Los Angeles Dodgers before diving into this recap, I realized why this year feels different. It’s so simple that I feel, frankly, a tad embarrassed.

They’re just a significantly more entertaining baseball team. At some point they made the shift; the season started irresponsibly feckless and I clung to “I still think they’ll be good.” Once the sample size drowned out my chants, the lifeless nature of the team was replaced by a scrappy one. There were comebacks, even though some fell short. There were attempted highlight plays, even though some turned to errors. There was spunk and energy, even in the maddening losses.

I’m probably a prisoner of the moment, to some extent. After all, this time last year the Giants were 10 games above .500 and ahead of the Dodgers in the standings; it’s not like the whole damn party was a bust. We were having fun there for a while, until we really, really weren’t.

The Giants are attempting to reverse that playbook this year, and being an entertaining team that is easy to root for is at least a good start. And on Friday they were exactly that.

I promise this isn’t just hindsight analysis. The Giants weren’t just entertaining and easy to root for because the game ended with a walk-off home run. They were also entertaining and easy to root for because … oh screw it, we’re already here, let’s cut to the walk-off home run.

Luis Matos drew a leadoff walk in the ninth and was replaced at first by Tyler Fitzgerald, as the Giants had dreams of small-balling their way to a winning run given that their petite second baseman was in the batter’s box with their offensively-deficient shortstop on deck, and then Brett Wisely said to hell with all that and put a ball in the arcade.

I hate to be an old man gatekeeping one of our most beloved institutions, but if the site of a scruffy and scrappy middle infielder who spent much of the year not wearing batting gloves but at some point started wearing them again hitting a walk-off home run doesn’t make you feel something, then perhaps we can find another sport for you.

But now, back to the original point. Wisely’s dramatic dinger wasn’t the only reason the game was entertaining. Sure, it made it a hell of a lot better, and yes, I actually tasted the notes in my post-game glass of wine, which sure as hell didn’t happen on Thursday. But it was entertaining the whole night through, in large part because you knew that what ultimately did happen could happen, and that kept you lingering by the TV all night long.

Logan Webb was quintessential Logan Webb, tossing pitches with all the herky-jerk movement of a fish-tailing street racer, leaving batters either flummoxed by where the ball ended up or rolling over the top of the ball; he faced 27 batters and 18 of those batters either hit ground balls or struck out. He received help from his defense (again: entertaining), and that’s exactly why you put people like Nick Ahmed on the field when a ground-ball pitcher is on the mound.

The Dodgers finally got to Webb in the fifth inning of what was then a scoreless game, when they strung together three of the five hits they mustered against the Giants ace: a Gavin Lux double sandwiched by singles from Miguel Rojas and Will Smith. Suddenly it was 2-0 Dodgers, and you feared one of their patented big innings might arise.

Instead, Webb got a double play to end the inning. And in the bottom half of the inning, both entertainment and fight answered in the form of a Matos solo home run.

Webb was invigorated by the gorgeous home run that cut the lead in half, and needed just eight pitches to cruise through the sixth inning. And the offense, in turn, was invigorated by the face of the franchise mowing down batters. So in the bottom half of the inning, Heliot Ramos led off by reaching base on a Freddie Freeman error that we’ve seen plenty of scorekeepers call infield hits this year.

But the labeling of ground balls does not matter; the annihilation of baseballs does, or so said the great philosopher Matt Chapman.

Just like that, the Giants led. What a glorious thing. Another lead erased and another inspired inning by Webb, who worked around a leadoff walk to induce yet another double play, and finish a strong seven-inning outing.

Tyler Rogers — sweet, wonderful Tyler Rogers, how we missed you that one day where you couldn’t pitch — took the mound for the eighth and, despite a leadoff infield single by Shohei Ohtani, seemed to have no trouble retiring the heart of LA’s terrifying lineup.

But the Giants, perhaps too committed to the entertainment bit, would squander a golden opportunity for insurance in the bottom of the eighth, with a leadoff single by LaMonte Wade Jr. and a one-out walk by Patrick Bailey going to waste. It would be just a one-run lead to give to Camilo Doval.

The fact that we started with the walk-off has buried the lede in a big way. You know Doval did not earn the save, and he wasted no time getting there. Andy Pages tripled on the second pitch of the inning, roping a middle-middle cutter at 107.1 mph at a low enough trajectory that even though Ramos took a good route, his extended arm was only enough to divert the ball away from him and ensure that Pages ended up with a three-bagger, instead of a double. One pitch later, Jason Heyward would tie the game on a sacrifice fly.

And then Doval cruised through the inning and we went to the bottom of the inning and that’s when Matos drew a walk and Fitzgerald replaced him at first and Wisely roped a line drive down the first base line that was called foul but Bob Melvin thought it hit Freeman’s glove so he challenged it and then you saw the first angle and it really looked like the ball did hit Freeman’s glove and you thought “yay!” and then you saw the other angle and it was clear that it didn’t hit Freeman’s glove so the call was upheld and you thought “rats!” and then Wisely hit a home run and you forgot about all of that until just now, didn’t you.

To quote the great Sarah Langs, baseball is the best. And with a thrilling night in the books, there’s only one final thing to say.

Rest in paradise, Orlando Cepeda.