High-Five!

Robbie Ray threw 5 perfect innings in his debut, and when he wasn’t perfect, his team had his back with an impressive display of both offense and defense. Alright!

Reds starter righty Nick Martinez and lefty Robbie Ray may have been separated at birth. It seemed like everything Martinez did during the top of the frame, Ray followed suit in the bottom, like a delayed reflection.

Both pitchers cruised through the first four innings of Sunday’s rubber match between the Cincinnati Reds and San Francisco Giants.

Martinez, like every other Cincinnati arm this series, generally pitched with count leverage. It felt like every Giants batter stepping into the box was already down a strike. Shuffling through six different pitches, Martinez threw everything away and away, only coming in briefly on a hitter to set up the next pitch away. Nothing was off the plate, nor was anything he threw completely on it either.

When Ray took the mound, he simplified things as he always does. Caveman grunting through his hard-hard-slow approach to pitching, he played his four-seamer off his slider which accounted for nearly 90% of his offerings today (according to Baseball Savant, some of those might’ve actually been his change-up).

Typically Ray has been a high-walk, high-K pitcher, but mirroring Marinez today, the Giants lefty was efficient while limiting long at-bats. There were only five 3-ball counts through the first five innings, and none of them resulted in a base-on-balls. He managed a somewhat subdued velocity on his fastball with excellent location, while benefiting from solid defense behind him on balls in play.

The first half of the game was akin to a leisurely stroll: Lots of strikes, lots of insignificant contact, zero stress. The two starters recorded 25 consecutive outs before we saw the game’s first base runner — who didn’t run the bases at all but jogged them after Heliot Ramos yanked a Martinez change-up into the left field bleachers.

Ramos’s second long-ball in three games opened up the scoring. After the breezy first five innings, both Ray and Martinez came off the rails a bit in the 6th.

A lead-off double from Tyler Fitzgerald appeared to be inconsequential after Martinez followed the extra base hit with two quick strikeouts of LaMonte Wade Jr. and Willy Adames. Needing a hit to score a run, Jung Hoo Lee showed off his bat-to-ball and situational hitting skills by slapping an outside cutter into right field for an RBI double, his second hit in as many at-bats with two-outs and runners in scoring position.

Lee extended the inning, and Matt Chapman took the opportunity to pile on with his first home run of 2025.

An impressive swing especially considering how far that sinker was inside, and how far away that pitch’s location was from the preceding cutter off the plate away.

But Martinez’s stumble in the top of the inning appeared to trip Robbie up as well.

Gavin Lux rolled a single up the middle to break-up Ray’s perfect-o on the first pitch of the inning. The year’s first web-gem by Matt Chapman managed to just postpone rather than quell the Cincinnati response. The retaliatory blow came soon after, when Ex-Giant Austin Wynns ripped a hanging slider 410 feet to left center.

Wynns’s homer followed a pitch clock violation, Ray’s first hiccup of the game. Dealing with a runner in scoring position for the first time, Ray was looking to reassert control over the game with some macho pitching. He wanted a capital-K K. Not only did he get called for an automatic ball, but Ray also showed his hand by finishing his motion as Gonzalez waved off the throw. The 1-2 heater that never was looked to be a decent one: mid-90s, a bit elevated, on the outer third of the plate. Who knows what Wynns would’ve done with that pitch, because Ray decided to switch things up after the automatic ball. The slider had been great all game, but — perhaps still grinding his teeth about the previous infraction — the one he delivered clearly lacked conviction, and Wynns teed off on its shape-less break.

A knock about the ears that sent Ray spinning. Five pitches later, official pain-in-the-rear Matt McLain took a middle-middle four-seamer deep to pull the Reds within one. Four straight balls after that, Ray’s day was done.

5.1 innings pitched, 3 H, 3 ER, 1 BB, 5 K, 2 HR — a pitching line that doesn’t quite capture Ray’s dominant season debut, nor how quickly it fell apart.

Still, reliever Erik Miller secured the hold, not without complicating things first by giving up a single to put the tying run on base. But with traffic on the base paths, Miller coaxed a 4-6-3 double play off the bat off yesterday’s hero Christian Encarnacion-Strand, preserving the Giants’ significantly winnowed, but still existent, lead.

Up until that point everything offensively for the Giants and Reds had happened fast, i.e. sudden home-runs producing crooked numbers. What proved to be the decisive rally in the 8th was of a different style, something Giants fans had only read about in history books, or seen in black-and-white newsreels of sped-up game action narrated by a deep voice proclaiming the values of Small Ball.

Aggressive base-running! An infield single! A sacrifice bunt and a sacrifice fly! Considering the Giants teams of recent years, these qualify as phenomena — and to all happen in the same inning, nothing short of a miracle.

All of it was set-up by speed. The speed of Tyler Fitzgerald forced Elly De La Cruz to spike a throw to first on a routine grounder. Wade Jr.’s well-placed bunt pushed Fitz to second from which he stole third (barely) and then scored on Willy Adames flyball to center.

Jung Hoo Lee then extended the inning with his speed by legging out a single that just rolled past the outstretched glove of another ex-teammate Taylor Rogers (Tyler probably would’ve got it). A four-pitch walk from new reliever Scott Barlow advanced Lee into scoring position who scored from said position on a Ramos single.

But the Reds-Giants, Martinez-Ray atmospheric connection threatened to continue in the 8th, with two people that are actually identical twins.

After a series of paper cuts forced Taylor Rogers off the mound in the top frame, nearly the same fate fell upon his brother, Tyler in the bottom.

As often it is the case with Tyler on the mound, things got weird.

Stress levels skyrocketed after a dinky lead-off single and walk immediately put the Giants new three-run in jeopardy, the tying run now represented at the plate with no outs in this notoriously hitter friendly park with the wind whipping off the Ohio from right to left.

Fortunately Matt McLain didn’t tie the game with one swing, but his poorly hit grounder was so poorly hit it worked to advance both runners into scoring position. At least one run scoring felt inevitable. An off-balanced, goofy swing being just goofy enough to bloop a dying quail into the outfield meant San Francisco’s lead would be back to one. Based on how this Opening Week series has gone, this outcome felt predetermined. It’d happen today and it’d continue to happen for the rest of the season. Day after day, another nail biter, another barn burner — our bullpen would be spent by May.

The fatalistic, but learned and earned, outlook of a San Francisco fan.

Important reminder though: we’re all just a bunch of doofuses. Baseball is a game of 9 doofuses against 9 doofuses trying not to out-doofus one another. We should never underestimate the ability of people to be doofuses! Often our only hope in hopeless situations are the mistakes of others.

And hark! Good news! A Reds player turned off his brain! Rejoice!

Off the bat, Santiago Espinal’s grounder to third would be the second out of the inning but at least plate a run. Instead, the trail runner on second, Jacob Hurtubise bolted for third even though the baseball was hit directly towards third. Chapman charged and fielded the grounder easily, and practically collided with Hurtubise for the first out before throwing down to first for the second.

Instead of whittling down the Giants lead and setting up one more at-bat with the potential tying run at the plate, the double-play ended the inning and erased the Reds’ fourth run, prompting Tyler Rogers to gleefully skip off the mound, once again affirmed as the more handsome, more successful, and in this case, luckier twin.

Camilo Doval stepped into his old closer role (Ryan Walker is day-to-day with back discomfort) and turned in a breezy 9th (aided by a final flash of leather). The 6 – 3 final secured the Giants first series win of 2025.

Somersaulting on to Houston.