Walk-off — but Wilmer this time!

Sweep x2

The biggest miss of the afternoon goes to Christian Koss.

It didn’t come with a bat in his hand, or a glove either — but with a Powerade cooler. As his teammates mobbed Wilmer Flores after his pinch-hit walk-off single, Koss, dutifully in his back-up infielder role, took up the celebratory fount, jogged the jug out onto the field, and looked for the man he aimed to anoint in the knot of bodies.

But this wasn’t Flores’s first rodeo. He spotted Koss right as the rookie launched the contents of the cooler. Flo dodged the flow, drenching Willy Adames instead.

Here’s a screen grab gallery of how it went down.

Hey, Wilmer or Willy, both had walk-offs in this series sweep — close enough. And Heliot Ramos, like an old pro, got the right guy in the end.

Only one pitch needed to punch in Flo’s 12th run of the year and seal the eighth consecutive victory for these San Francisco Giants, and much like Adames’s winner on Friday, or Heliot Ramos’s RBI single, or Mike Yastrzemski’s 3-run homer in the 4th, the hit went to the opposite field.

Mike Yastrzemski’s first homer of the season floated San Francisco in this one. Not much was happening with San Francisco offensively against Bryan Woo before it, and not much happened after it either.

Woo, an Alameda native, who loves throwing fastballs even more than Hicks does, had few issues until the 4th. His elevated four-seam and sinker gave Matt Chapman fits all afternoon. If there was contact, it was weak. The only hit San Francisco could muster was a Jung Hoo Lee specialty, an opposite field double that left his bat at the max speed of my 2001 Volkswagen EuroVan.

The only success the Giants were going to find against Woo’s heater would be to try and see it deep and push it to the opposite field. Ramos, who has now hit safely in the first nine games of this season, did exactly that to plate San Francisco’s first run and cut Seattle’s lead in half.

On the very next pitch, they had a lead.

Knowing he’d get a fastball, knowing he was going to get it in the zone (because Woo rarely starts at-bats with pitches off the plate) and knowing what he needed to do, Yaz delivered, for us, and also for his daughter, who he promised he’d hit one out for her before the game.

In a way, we are all Yaz’s daughters…

In his debut start, Hicks spent the evening in a delightful repartee with the Big Blue Behind The Plate. The right hander would throw a fastball and Big Blue would call it a strike. Big Blue waved his magic arms and the corners became an open field for diving sweepers and back-door sinkers to frolic. When the umpire is your friend, I imagine there’s no better place to be than the pitcher’s mound.

Four pitches on Sunday was all it took for Jordan Hicks to learn that home plate umpire D.J. Reyburn was not his friend, not even close.

A couple of batters into the 1st, Hicks embarked on a meditative retreat down the back of the mound, huffing and puffing through his intentional breathing exercises, desperate to calm down.

Two sinkers painted on the outside corner to Julio Rodríguez — strikes 2 and 3 in the eyes of many, most notably the ABS system — had been spurned by Reyburn. Ticked off, Hicks threw a flat, elevated, angry-dumb sweeper to Rodríguez that he deposited into the left field seats. Another elegant sinker on the inside to Cal Raleigh was again ignored and again, the less compelling follow-up was doubled.

The “injustice” of a missed call might feel idiosyncratic, as if in the 125 history of the modern game your inside fastball was the first inside fastball deemed a ball, but as we all now, this happens all the time. This fact of life drives some people crazy — I kind of think it’s the point. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: home plate umpires are philistines. Their caveman sensibilities are the ultimate obstacle, the one all artists must face and respond to. This is what baseball is really about: reaction, response. Mike Krukow preached this truth from his broadcast booth in those early innings. Yes, Jordan Hicks, your 97 MPH late-breaking sinker is often misunderstood — so what are you going to do about it?

Well, Hicks compromised… and things worked out! He stayed true to his mix (67% sink, 24% sweep), maintained velocity (97.5 MPH avg.), and gave in a little to the heart of the plate. The sinker was put in play more, but that often just means we get more plays like this!

9 of the 11 outs recorded on balls-in-play were on the ground. The two homers allowed — one to Rodríguez, the other to Raleigh in the 3rd — came with no one on base.

An outing not unlike Ray’s in tone on Saturday. Some underlying individual frustrations will nag him in the morning. Hicks wasn’t his sharpest, he definitely felt a little clipped in the wing thanks to the zone — but at the end of the day, he pitched into the 6th, and when the book closed on him, the Giants had the lead.

A lead preserved through Randy Rodriguez’s mopping-up of the 6th (though he did allow a hit and an inherited runner to score), Tyler Rogers’s breezy handling of the top of the order, Erik Miller’s nail-biter 8th, until Camilo Doval’s 2-2 slider to Randy Arozarena in the top of the 9th.

The game-tying double was Arozarena’s first hit of the series, and it felt inevitable. Good hitters always get their dues, also… Doval, man. Just doing that thing he often does, getting himself into bad counts which often produce bad situations. His downfall is his transparency. The first two pitches it was incredibly clear to everyone in the ballpark that he didn’t have a feel for his cutter. Back in the good ol’ days falling back on just the sinker and slider was more than enough, but Camilo has been far from tranquilo for some time now. He needs all the space and time he can get, yet he so often works himself into a cramped corner with no room for error.

To his credit, he did get two early groundouts. The problem became the Victor Robles single sandwiched between them. Robles advanced to second on a fielder’s choice and stole third easily. With the tying run a wild pitch or passed ball away, Doval had to revert back to the offering he felt most comfortable with. The slider wasn’t necessarily a bad one in terms of location, it was just the fourth of the at-bat. That many sliders in a row is a triggering experience for all of us, and honestly, Doval might feel similarly about pitching in the 9th. Bob Melvin shelved Ryan Walker for this one since he pitched in the last two games. If Doval turns in more outings like this one though, resting Walker will be a luxury San Francisco can’t afford.

On a final note: Victor Robles made one of the better defensive plays I’ve seen in the 9th. He made the catch before leaping into the side-netting where it looks like his shoulder may have popped out. I’m not sure, but he fell back onto the field of play and for a moment it looked to me like he was about to pass out from the pain. A long injury delay that ended up being a weird prelude to the Powerade bath that followed immediately after.