Harrison, Fitzgerald stay the course

Kyle Harrison continued his dominance over the Rockies, and Tyler Fitzgerald continued to be weirdly good at hitting.

The San Francisco Giants are desperate to prove that they are not the Colorado Rockies.

The two teams came into this weekend’s series with an identical 13-17 record over their past 30 games. The way this post All Star Break has gone so far means the jury is still out, and if the jury is still out 100+ games into the season then the issue feels somewhat decided. The plan for the Giants was never to be engaged in this argument in the first place. It shouldn’t be up for debate.

But if they’re stuck in this scrap, they might as well win it. They did so convincingly in the series opener on Friday.

Familiarity usually breeds contempt—maybe for the Rockies, but not for Kyle Harrison.

The 22-year old lefty has made four starts against Colorado this season, allowing just 4 runs on 11 hits over 23.2 innings. Friday’s outing was his best. The southpaw tied his career high with 11 strikeouts over 6.2 innings. He allowed only 1 run on 1 hit and 2 walks, upping his slurve usage in support of his dominant fastball to retire 14 batters in a row between the 3rd and the 7th.

The only stress Harrison dealt with in the start came in the 3rd.

A single and walk led off the inning for Colorado, and a spiked change-up allowed the runners to advance with Ezequiel Tovar at the plate. The shortstop already has a long resume over his short career of burning the Giants, and he nearly did it again, ripping a middle-middle change-up four hundred feet to dead center that appeared destined to erase San Francisco’s early 3-run lead. Instead, Heliot Ramos tracked down the drive at the wall and Tovar had to settle for a very loud and long sac fly.

The hard contact didn’t seem to rattle Harrison. Tovar was the first of 14 consecutive bats he’d set down in the game, including a stretch of 5 K’s in a row through the 5th and into the 6th. Brendan Rodgers’ 9-pitch walk with two outs in the 7th spoiled Harrison’s chance at setting a new high in K’s as well as tying his career high of pitching through 7 complete (a mark he set on May 7th against Colorado). With 106 pitches thrown, Bob Melvin opted for Luke Jackson to close out the frame. Though the start didn’t end with a third out, Harrison still left the field tipping his cap to applause.

As Harrison dominated, Tyler Fitzgerald continued his offensive tear with a two homer, three hit and four RBI night.

His first 2-run shot was launched in the 4th off Kyle Freeland, jumping on a first-pitch slider that extended the Giants lead to 6-1.

In the 6th, he pulled an inside-slider into the left-center bleachers to collect his first career multi-homer game and career high of four RBIs in a game. Fitzgerald’s 7 home runs is the most in an 8 game stretch for a Giant since Barry Bonds in 2004. The rookie shortstop has now collected an extra base-hit in 8 straight games, increasing his slugging percentage to .660 and his OPS to 1.060.

While Fitzgerald provided the knockout clout, Jorge Soler landed the first blow with a lead-off homer.

The first fist in the 1-2 punch provided by the Giants top of the lineup, Soler was never retired, reaching base five times and scoring four runs. His first three trips to the plate produced runs with his single in the 4th the most detrimental to the impressive campaign Freeland appeared to be building.

Momentum was shifting away from the Giants after a deflating 3rd inning in which Ramos’s lead-off triple was followed up by the Colorado lefty striking out the side. He’d start the 4th with another K, and followed another triple from Casey Schmitt with another strikeout.

3B K K K K 3B K — an odd run of plate appearances, but unfortunately in-line with a pattern of ineffectual at-bats with runners in scoring position established a game earlier against LA. They nearly missed out on another runner-on-third-less-than-two-out scenario in the 2nd if not for Mike Yastrzemski’s bold base-running on a fly ball caught by second baseman Rodgers in shallow right field.

The score was still in the Giants favor, but with every opportunity missed, the dread seeped in. Two runs would not be enough. The stress would kill us. With a double-header on Saturday, with the doubt lingering in the shadows, the need for a comfortable win felt dire.

So just when Freeland looked like he’d spoil another three-bagger, Soler heralded in the light, dumping a 2-2 slider on the hands into left-center to plate San Francisco’s 4th run. Next pitch, Fitzgerald plated the 5th and 6th.

Including Ramos’s 3-run blast in the 8th, the top third of the Giants lineup recorded 8 hits including 4 home runs, scored 8 runs and drove in 10.

The thwacking Kyle Harrison, Tyler Fitzgerald and Jorge Soler gave Colorado in the Giants’ 11-4 win on Friday was nice to see, but the satisfaction one can get from these individual wins is shallow if not sustained over this series and beyond.