Harrison and six relievers teamed up for a 2-0 shutout of Miami
It’s been nearly two weeks, not quite a fortnight, a dozen days to be exact since the San Francisco Giants have scored in the first inning of a game.
It goes without saying that in these current doldrums, the offense has been slow out of bed. Don’t expect them to score before their first cup of coffee, or second, or ever frankly. They aren’t in the business of making starting pitchers uncomfortable. Nope, we missed out on Aaron Judge and missed out on Shohei Ohtani — I guess we should resign ourselves now: no first inning fireworks for our weary heads. San Francisco’s 78 wRC+ in the 1st is far from the reaches of the bright lights of New York or LA. The company we keep: Colorado! St. Louis! Cleveland!
But in the opening frame of this series opener in Miami, Wilmer Flores put the Giants on the board with an 11-pitch, 2-out single after Heliot Ramos tripled for his 46th RBI of the year.
And I know what you’re thinking: Oh boy, I bet that early run woke the dormant beast that is this Giants line-up! Surely, the offense roared to life after that!
Nope!
A one-off homer from Matt Chapman doubled San Francisco’s lead in the 4th, and…that was it. A couple of runs, but it stuck!
Spare change is pretty much what we’ve been getting out of this line-up these days. Runs scrounged from under couch cushions, found stuck to the bottom of car cupholders. In the last twelve games, since logging 9 runs in their opener against the A’s, the Giants have scored 26 runs, which is jussstttt a touch more than two runs a game on average. Somewhat miraculously, while never plating more than four runs in a contest, San Francisco has gone 6-6. They’ve only lost twice in the seven games during that stretch in which they’ve scored at least two runs.
Friday’s low score wasn’t for lack of opportunity. San Francisco put plenty of men on base against starter Cal Quantrill, with a number of chances to knock the veteran righty around a bit, or extend their lead — but after Flores’s single, the bats went noodle-y. Hitters went 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position and no runs batted in, leaving ten stranded on base.
A lot of rallies fell by the wayside, which is frustrating but certainly an improvement from other recent showings. Everyone in the line-up but Mike Yastrzemski and Casey Schmitt (who hit the ball hard multiple times) registered a knock. Willy Adames, Jung Hoo Lee, and Tyler Fitzgerald all swiped a bag, while Fitzgerald went 3-for-4 (2 singles and a double). After a 3-hit night in the Detroit finale, Chapman reached safely in all four of his plate appearances, adding a walk, hit-by-pitch, and a scorched single to his 10th homer of the year.
Kyle Harrison impressed again in his second start of the season. While this tenure in the rotation might not be for much longer with Justin Verlander’s return imminent, Harrison isn’t letting any opportunity go to waste. After throwing 57 pitches through 4 IP in his first start, he stretched out to 80 through 5 scoreless innings. Five K’s all swinging through fastball, which he leaned on 63% of the time and touched 97 MPH. Despite leaning heavily on the gas as anticipated, Miami hitters couldn’t quite catch-up to the ride of Harrison’s four-seam. On 30 swings, they managed just 8 balls in play while fouling off a dozen of them with 10 whiffs. Though they worked three walks, they managed just one single off Harrison and went hitless in two at-bats with a runner in scoring position.
Harrison left after the 5th, and that’s when things got funky out of the bullpen.
Bob Melvin isn’t much for juggling acts. He likes straightforward frames, nothing messy so he isn’t forced to insert himself. Unlike his predecessors Gabe Kapler and Bruce Bochy, he’s not a button masher (granted, with the 3-batter minimum rule, things have changed). But with things up in the air with Camilo Doval’s recent reclamation of the closer role, as well as trying to end a three-game losing streak while nursing a slight lead, BoMel had to get out of his comfort zone and get creative, managing with a bit more urgency through some dicier situations than we typically see.
BoMel trotted out six relievers to record 12 outs and made mid-inning relief changes in the 6th, 7th, and 8th innings. The changes were probably necessary. In a 2-run game, the Marlins put seven runners on base (2 H, 4 BB, 1 HBP) with eight plate appearances with a runner in scoring position against the San Francisco bullpen. Eight opportunities in which a doink single could’ve ruined a perfectly good Friday evening. Luckily — or skillfully? — no doink was dealt.
Ryan Walker threw just two pitches and recorded one out in order to clean up a mess after Tristan Beck walked the tying run on base in the 6th. Instead of having Walker go out for the 7th, BoMel trotted out lefty Erik Miller (perhaps with his eye on matching up with the on-deck lefty Kyle Stowers). Miller gave up a lead-off double (the Marlins’ second hit of the game and only extra base-hit) and walked Stowers before striking out Nick Fortes after a sacrifice bunt pushed both runners to second and third. But to face the young Agustín Ramírez, coming off a 4-hit, 4-RBI night with the tying run in scoring position, Melvin called upon Tyler Rogers to cast his spell on the rookie. The wizardry worked, entrancing Ramírez with a paradoxical rising sinker on the outside corner.
Perhaps the wildest move of the late-inning sequence was throwing Spencer Bivens into the 8th after Rogers had only thrown five pitches. Bivens has been good, but he’s served mostly as a long man and hasn’t pitched in high leverage spots since last season. I’d like to think that the reasoning behind the decision was Melvin’s elephantine recall of a walk-off sacrifice fly Jesús Sánchez (who was leading off in the 8th) once hit off Tyler Rogers…nearly three years ago when Melvin was the manager of another team (to be fair, a balk and five-man infield made that game a little more memorable than your typical game) — but that’s probably not it. It’s possible he has an aesthetic aversion to relievers coming out of the dugout rather than the bullpen…except that can’t be the case, because that’s exactly what Camilo Doval did to bail out Bivens with 2-on and 2-out before taking the mound again in the 9th to secure a 4-out save, and with his mom in attendance!
Go moms!
Tonight, Camilo Doval pitched in an MLB game in front of his mother for the first time
Whatever the thinking was, or whatever premonitions or visions BoMel had in the dugout, let’s not stress over it. Sure, he got a little trigger happy, but in the end, the Giants came out unscathed.
They had it all the way.