Giants break a lot of unwritten rules, complete sweep of Nationals 12-3

After their first series loss against the Mets, the Giants roar back to complete a sweep of the Nationals.

After dropping three of four to the New York Mets in their last series, the San Francisco Giants roared back in this three-game series against the Washington Nationals, winning all three games by a combined score of 24-6. Along the way, there were angry comments from Nationals players and their manager, Dave Martinez, as the Giants refused to let their foot off the gas even as they retained leads deep into games. This year, the Giants’ philosophy has been “score until they make you stop,” which makes perfect sense for a major league sport—nobody told the Germans to stop scoring when they were up 3-0 on Brazil in the 2014 World Cup semifinals—but somehow this has become controversial. The Giants have shown no willingness to give in, though.

The game today began somewhat strangely; after two pitches, Lucius Fox (former Giants international signing who went to the Rays in the Matt Moore trade) threw up on the field and was taken out for illness—after the game, Martinez mentioned he’d been dealing with a stomach flu, so hopefully he heals up quickly. Joc Pederson saw that, however, and decided he wanted to get out of the infield as soon as possible, so hit a monster home run as the leadoff batter.

Brandon Crawford doubled and was driven in by Wilmer Flores to extend the lead to 2-0 after one inning.

The Nationals got a run back in the bottom of the first, however, after a walk and two singles brought home Nelson Cruz.

The Giants then went back to work in the top of the inning. Thairo Estrada singled, then Joey Bart walked, then a wild pitch brought Estrada to third base in time for Joc Pederson to hit a sacrifice fly to bring Estrada home. Then, Brandon Belt brought out the big guns and tripled deep into center field to score Bart, bringing the score to 4-1.

The Nationals were determined to make this game interesting, however, and in the bottom of the third a Yadiel Hernandez home run with Keibert Ruiz on-base brought them within one run of the Giants, 4-3 after three innings.

So the Giants decided to do what they did best: keep scoring. In the top of the fifth, a Pederson double followed by a Ruf single and Flores single gave them back a run; it was 5-3 after five innings.

In the seventh inning, Joc decided that one home run wasn’t nearly enough, so he blasted his second solo shot of the day and fifth of the year.

The score was 6-3 after seven, and even though Logan Webb didn’t have his best stuff of the year today, his final line was still extremely good: 6.2 IP, 7 H, 3 R/ER, 1 BB, 6 K. Jose Álvarez, Tyler Rogers, and Zack Littell combined for the next seven outs, allowing no hits and no walks with one strikeout to keep the Nationals at 3.

That seemed like a reasonable way for the game to end, but the Giants had other plans. In the top of the ninth, they batted around, adding six runs to their total, somewhat aided by the Nationals’ pitchers inabilities to throw strikes. Belt walked to lead off the inning, then Ruf walked as well, then Crawford was HBP to load the bases with one out. Two consecutive singles followed—Flores and Luis Gonzalez—then a sac fly by Estrada was followed up by a Jason Vosler single. Then Bart was HBP. The score was 10-3 San Francisco before Washington made a pitching change. After the pitching change, Austin Slater hit a two-run single to finally end the scoring before Belt singled and Dubón flied out to end the top of the inning. Littell retired the side in order in the bottom of the ninth to complete the sweep of the Nationals.

The Giants are now 11-5, 2nd in the NL West behind the 10-4 Dodgers. They fly next to Milwaukee to play one game (one of the postponed ones from the delayed start of the season) before returning home to face the A’s.