Having lost everything, Giants become well-rounded baseball team

Cool!

It had been awhile. Six days to be exact. Nearly a week. Last Wednesday, the last ‘W’ for our San Francisco Giants.

Coincidentally it was Blake Snell’s last start against Milwaukee that the Giants exploded for 13 runs, and he toed the rubber for Tuesday’s opener against the Baltimore Orioles when the bats posted double-digit runs again.

The way Snell was pitching, the 10 runs plated bordered on excessive. Baltimore’s offense is in a bit of a dive lately, and they didn’t get much of a confidence boost against the reigning NL Cy Young winner. The lefty allowed just one hit over his six shutout innings pitched. He racked up 10+ strikeouts for the fifth time this season, his dozen K’s were his highest game total since his record-setting 15 against Colorado in July.

Common demons like inning efficiency or pitch count dogged Snell in this one. The starter dealt 14 first pitch strikes to the 17 batters he faced through the 5th. He finished that frame having tossed around 75 pitches, a count that would make Mike Krukow proud. 70% of his four-seam fastballs scraped the zone, generating 17 called-strikes. Even with his curveball taking the day off (just 6% of his mix), Snell missed bats with 50% of his 22 whiffs coming from his wilting offspeed.

The change-up peeled off his other offerings all evening. When the slider went right, it went left. The fastball rose and it dove. After freezing AL MVP contender Gunnar Henderson on three straight four-seamers in the 1st, he K’ed the lefty power threat on low-and-in offspeeds in the 4th and for his final act to close out the 6th.

With a runner on second and two-outs in the 5th—Baltimore’s first opportunity with a runner in scoring position—Coby Mayo prayed for a fastball before each pitch, kept thinking he got one before swinging over a change-up. Five straight offspeed offerings and three whiffs stranded the runner, finished off the 5th and secured Snell’s 10th strikeout.

Sean Hjelle, Erik Miller, Tyler Rogers, and Tristan Beck scattered four hits over the last three innings to preserve San Francisco’s first shutout since August 15th. The offense had been held scoreless five times in that span, including thrice in the past week, so I can’t knock the offense laying it on a bit thick in this one.

Two pitches into the game, Mike Yastrzemski punched his 16th homer of the season against his former organization, and then added another run on a two-out RBI single in the 2nd.

Yup, you read that right: a two-out RBI, early runs. And get this: in the at-bat before, Brett Wisely lifted a sacrifice fly to right with the bases loaded! No desperate hacking, no stranded runners or unproductive outs—just getting the job done on a 1-0 count in a situational AB.

Even more bizarrely in the 4th, Grant McCray (who went 2-for-2 with 3 R, 2 BB) scored on Donovan Walton’s single…after he stole second. Aggressive base-running? Manufacturing a run? More hitting with runners in scoring position? Believe it.

After tagging Craig Kimbrel for six runs in the 9th, San Francisco ended the game going 5-for-9 with runners in scoring position, including two RBI sacrifice hits (both by Wisely) and two stolen bases (both by McCray).

Truly a sight to behold…if only the Giants started doing this kind of stuff a tad bit sooner…