Wilmer Flores delivered the clutch hit the Giants have been starved for all series
Two runs didn’t take on Tuesday, nor was it enough on Wednesday — but on Thursday, two runs was just right.
Those runs weren’t a given either. The San Francisco Giants were down 1-0 going into the 7th. They looked as helpless as they had all series against Cleveland Guardians starter Gavin Williams. The 25-year old right-hander held the Giants scoreless for six innings, giving up just two hits and three walks with six strikeouts.
I wouldn’t say the stuff Williams dealt was dominant by any means. He earned a lot of early count leverage, but labored to put hitters away. Leading off the 1st, Mike Yastrzemski forced 9-pitches out of Williams before he swung over a shoe-top cutter. So it went all game: a lot of 3-ball counts, a lot of easy takes, but the lack-of-sharpness went unpunished.
The Giants put runners on base in every frame against Williams but the 4th. They had a runner in scoring position every inning but the 4th and the 6th — yet hits were scarce, hard contact hard to come by.
Rally, as it had been all series, was a foreign concept. The Giants could piece together the beginnings of something that resembled a scoring opportunity, but they could never secure the definitive blow, or provide the finishing touches. It’s not hard to suss out why.
A substantial rally is tough to manufacture when, one, a team tries to spread two already threadbare hits (both singles with the bases empty) across six innings; two, the lead-off man is retired in every frame against the starter but one (the 3rd); and three, only once did consecutive hitters reach base against the starter, which happened with one-out in the 5th and that pressure was immediately relieved by Willy Adames rolling into a routine 6-4-3 double play. Next frame, Williams ended his day with a strike-em-out, throw-em-out double play.
That pair of two-fers were deflating to say the least. Jon Miller’s disappointment seeped out through the airwaves as he reported on Heliot Ramos being cut-down at second. At that point, scoring a run felt impossible. I The Giants were 0-for-6 batting with a runner on second going into the 7th. They were 1-for-25 with runners in scoring position in the series, their last situational knock came ages ago in the 1st inning of the first game.
But for one inning, the series narrative for the offense changed. Williams was swapped with reliever Matt Festa, who in his third consecutive game, coughed up some key missing elements to the Giants rally formula.
By allowing the lead-off runner to reach base (Casey Schmitt’s second single of the game) and allowing back-to-back baserunners with a walk to Jung Hoo Lee, the Giants finally had a fiesta gathering against Festa on the bases. But they had also been here before, and had been burned before. What was still missing was the most elusive of all: the hit with a runner on base, the hit that would score a run.
Even Bob Melvin felt like that was asking for too much. He signaled Patrick Bailey to lay down a sacrifice bunt, trade an out for 90 feet and the opportunity to tie the game on an out. That was a distinct possibility with the Giants best RBI man in Wilmer Flores ready to come off the bench.
Flo stepped in for Christian Koss, and Cleveland’s manager Stephen Vogt swapped Festa with righty Nic Enright for the right-on-right advantage. The count went 2-2. Flo fouled off a 93 MPH fastball slightly up in the zone then stayed back on a looping slider. The baseball wasn’t scorched, just well placed, rolling between the third base bag and the third baseman to easily plate two and claim the lead.
The 2-1 lead stuck. Randy Rodriguez K’ed two in the 8th, and Camilo Doval set the Guardians down in order in the 9th for his 11th save.
Good thing too, because another 1-0 loss would’ve been too much to handle for the frayed nerves of this fanbase. The Giants had already played four 1-0 games and lost three of them. Their last one spoiled 8 scoreless innings from Logan Webb, and Thursday’s lack of run support nearly blew another Webb gem.
After spinning an out-of-character cutter and four-seam heavy outing against LA, the righty returned to a more typical mix of sinker (26%) – sweeper (33%) – change (19%). He went 7 strong, allowing 1 run on 7 hits and 0 walks while striking out 9. The outing was good for his fifth consecutive quality start, giving him a dozen in 15 appearances so far.
The Flores RBI double got the Giants back in the win column — their first since Webb’s last start in LA nearly a week ago. It was their 21st comeback win on the season, helping them improve to 18-15 in one-run games.