Giants do exactly what they were supposed to and had to

A three-game winning streak!

I have a philosophy about being a sports fan. It’s not a philosophy I discuss often, because it feels fairly obvious, though occasionally it cuts against the grain.

The philosophy in question: always celebrate the wins.

It’s also good life advice, but we’ll focus on that in the offseason. For now, we’re talking about San Francisco Giants baseball.

“Always celebrate the wins,” in my eyes, means acknowledging that in most baseball games, very little can be accomplished. Sure, occasionally a win will clinch a playoff berth, or set a record, or even result in a team’s third championship in five years as their third baseman makes snow angels in foul territory, but most of the time they’re just varying iterations of garden variety wins.

Something special or awful can occur as you attempt to stack them together, but in the two or three hours that the game is played, only two things can happen: the team you’re rooting for can win, or the team you’re rooting for can lose.

So I choose to celebrate the wins. When the Giants are eliminated from the postseason, I still take joy in the baseball games they win, even if they don’t mean anything (whatever that means). When they’re mired in a losing streak, I take joy in the baseball games they win, even if it’s a tiny band-aid on shark bite.

But like I said, sometimes it’s controversial. I celebrated Pablo Sandoval’s walk-off home run in the final game of the 2017 season, which bumped the Giants out of the top draft spot, cost them a chance to draft a decidedly mediocre Casey Mize, and instead forced them to draft future Pittsburgh Pirates superstar Joey Bart.

Many people did not celebrate that win, and I understand that.

This year, there’s a trend of people not celebrating wins. I hate to give any attention to negative Twitter users, which feels akin to keeping the camera on the streakers (which, come on … we all wish they did, watching drunk people make terrible but ultimately harmless life choices in front of loads of people is one of America’s greatest pastimes), but I feel like I should at least give the less-online segment of the fanbase a peek behind the curtains.

Oh yeah, I should have mentioned that it’s demonic and smells like sewage behind the curtains. Don’t go back there. Leave it to the professionals. Help is on the way.

This long-winded, overly-verbose, winding road of a lede really just serves to say the following: the Giants beat the Chicago White Sox 4-1 on Tuesday night, and if you find yourself not celebrating that, it’s probably because the White Sox are now 30-97.

If there’s ever a time to lack the pulsing adrenaline of victory, it’s when your team wins at home against one of the worst teams in the history of the sport, in a game they really couldn’t afford to lose. When a loss is inexcusable, a win feels more like the absence of defeat than anything else.

I’m still celebrating it. But consider this a judgement free zone, and you’re welcome to keep your emotions in the safe until Friday’s game.

This was a game the Giants were supposed to win, and win they did. It was a game they needed to win, and win they did. It was a game they were desperate to win, and win they did.

Was it pretty? No. But they weren’t supposed to, needing to, or desperate to win a pretty game. They were just supposed to, needing to, and desperate to win, period. Which, again, they did.

Hooray!

The tone was immediately set by Robbie Ray, which you knew would happen; you just weren’t entirely sure which direction it would go. You probably remember Ray’s last outing, when he took the mound against the Atlanta Braves for the start of the first inning and left the mound before the conclusion of the first inning, allowing 250% as many runs as the Giants would score all day, while recording just two outs.

Those outings happen to all pitchers, especially ones in the infancy stage of their recovery from Tommy John surgery. In the long run, nothing to worry about. But in the short term? A few fans likely had their breaths held, wondering which Robbie would arrive at Oracle Park on Tuesday.

So you knew the tone would be set for the game. Ray would recover and announce that the Giants were intent on turning their season around, or Ray would stumble and provide the umpteenth omen pointing towards a doomed season.

He made the tone-setting theatrical, as the long history of Giants pitchers dictates. He loaded the count against the first batter, Lenyn Sosa, before getting him to foul out. He loaded the count against the second batter, Luis Robert Jr., before striking him out. And he loaded the count against the third batter, Andrew Benintendi, before striking him out.

In the abstract, nine-pitch innings are better than 19-pitch ones, but sometimes it’s more powerful to be pushed to the edge, look over, and then emphatically yell, “oh, hell no.”

Still and all, the Giants didn’t inspire much confidence that they can win against teams that aren’t designed to lose. Had the pitching not been so dominant — or the opposing bats so futile — the Giants rallies would be known more for what they left on the table than for what they took off it. They struck first in the second inning, when Matt Chapman and Mike Yastrzemski knocked back-to-back one-out singles, with the former scoring on a fielder’s choice that Thairo Estrada kept from being an inning-ending double play by the slimmest of margins.

After Chicago tied it, the Giants retook the lead in the third inning when Heliot Ramos drew a bases-loaded walk with no outs but, despite watching back-to-back free passes, Michael Conforto swung at the first pitch he saw (and popped it up), and then Chapman grounded into the inning-ending double play that Estrada so narrowly had avoided.

They found their first insurance run in the fifth inning on an RBI single from Ramos that put two runners on with one out, but the rally would go no further than loading the bases and increasing the “runners stranded” stat.

They reverse-seared their approach in the seventh inning for their second insurance run when, following leadoff walks by Ramos and Mark Canha to start a rally, Chapman grounded into his second double play, but Yastrzemski picked him up with a run-scoring double.

In all, they went 2-11 with runners in scoring position. They put multiple runners on base in five innings, but never scored multiple runs.

But they won, and I, for one, am celebrating.

The pitching, thankfully, left nothing on the table. Ray gave a run back in the third inning on back-to-back two-out hits, but even that run required video assistance, after Ramos, Tyler Fitzgerald, and Curt Casali combined for a brilliant relay that was initially ruled an out.

From there on out, Ray was barely hittable. He didn’t allow another knock until a one-out single in the seventh inning and, after recording the inning’s second out, handed things to Sean Hjelle, who needed just two pitches to end what little threat Chicago’s meager offense had offered.

Ray’s final line: 6.2 innings, three hits, zero walks, one hit batter, one run, nine strikeouts, and a positive data point that Farhan Zaidi wasn’t entirely out of line with his “best rotation” comments.

The eighth inning belonged to Tyler Rogers, who was predictably fantastic, and who pitched his 11th consecutive scoreless outing … and his 10th without a hit in that time. And Ryan Walker flirted with immaculateness, needing a mere 11 pitches to strike out all three batters he faced in the ninth inning.

Sure, they needed to win. Sure, a loss would have been unfathomable. And sure, the issues that have led to defeats against competent teams were still on display.

But they spent two hours and 20 minutes playing a baseball games, and the only tangible options were to win or to lose. They won. And I celebrate those.