Quite the turnaround to take the series
The San Francisco Giants liked what they saw yesterday…
I mean, the Mets played some really good baseball against them. They were a nuisance, pills in the box, working long at-bats, rolling singles through gaps, capitalizing with runners on base. Walks and hits piled up to a dozen runs — the Giants saw that, and probably said Hey, they looked like they were having fun, we should do something like that.
Baseball is easy. Just manifest. Have fun. Hit the ball hard, hit it often, hit and run. Score early, score late. Don’t settle for one base, take two. Don’t settle for one 3-run homer, hit two. Give up 12 runs one day, score 12 the next.
That’s what the Giants did. 3-run bombs from Rafael Devers in the 3rd and Casey Schmitt in the 9th served as the slices of Dutch crunch, barely containing an impressively saucy rib-eye sandwich.
They went 6-for-10 with runners in scoring position. With 13 hits and 5 walks, they left just 5 on-base. Jung Hoo Lee reached base 5 times, recording his first 4-hit game of his MLB career (3 1B, 1 2B). Devers smoked 3 hits, drove in 4 while reaching base 4 times. He and Schmitt combined for 8 hard-hit balls between them. Dom Smith and Patrick Bailey bagged a pair of RBIs, and lead-off man Heliot Ramos collected two knocks and an RBI of his own.
All of this an excessive amount of support for Carson Whisenhunt who took home his first win in his second career big league start.
The crooked numbers came early against Mets starter Frankie Montas. The veteran right-hander retired the first 6 batters he faced before the line-up knocked him off his rails. The penny on the tracks: Lee’s lead-off single in the 3rd. The one with the seeing-eye — he rolled a 95 MPH fastball right back up the middle. That seemingly inconsequential hit turned into a trip around the bases with help from his aggressive base running. He stole second and without hesitation broke for third when the throw scooted under Lindor’s glove and rolled towards center. The ball didn’t even reach the outfield grass before Jeff McNeil picked it, but because he went in feet first, Lee saw the play develop in front of him and was primed to pop back up and motor on. Thanks to his speed and McNeil having to send a rushed and off-balance relay, Lee took third easily. Feet-first into second, head-first into third, then no-slide necessary into home on Patrick Bailey’s line-drive single.
You don’t have a pulse if good, aggressive base-running doesn’t get you hyped. Though at times these Giants have looked dead on their cleats, they still feel. Beauty still inspires, even on the wrong side of .500.
Lee manufactured a run the hard way, and with the blood pumping and juices flowing, Devers drove in three the easy way. Turn-and-burn. 106 MPH off the bat. He’d touch that mark two more times in the game. In the 7th, he smoked the ball so hard off the wall in left that it got him thrown out at second.
In the 4th, a hit-and-run by Schmitt and Lee set up another crooked number against Montas.
With runners at the corners and one-out, Patrick Bailey put the ball in play in a 2-strike count and good things happened. Pete Alonso fielded the ball from his knee and with a myriad of other better options, he chose to make a throw home. He double-clutched trying to grip the baseball, and his throw was well tardy. A very similar conundrum to a play Dom Smith made yesterday. Charging in on a firm bunt off the bat of Lindor, Smith’s play was in front of him, to the plate, but he hesitated, thought about going to second and trying to get two, but ended up getting zero. It’s possible Alonso had that play in the back of his head. He probably saw that from the dugout and asked himself what he would’ve done. Go home, of course. Given the opportunity, that’s what he did, and came up empty when he probably had a play at second, and, at the very least, the out at first.
An out would’ve softened the rally, instead it dragged gloriously on. After a sacrifice bunt from McCray moved two into scoring position, Ramos hustled in another run by legging out an 2-out infield single. Devers in a 2-strike count lunged at a decent Montas splitter below the zone and muscled it up the middle for an RBI single, giving the Giants a 7-1 lead.
By the end of the 3rd, they had forced Montas to throw 60 pitches. By the end of the 4th, he was at 87 and booed off the field, only to come out in the 5th, walk Chapman, be replaced and get booed again as he trudged back to the dugout.
The early lead was especially important against a team like the Mets. We saw it yesterday, with the talent in their bullpen, games aren’t drawn-out affairs, they’re sprints to the 5th or 6th inning. 7 runs through four frames kept New York from taking the reins and dictating the pace.
And that early lead stayed intact because of the efforts of Carson Whisenhunt. Adrenaline certainly got the best of him in his debut against Pittsburgh earlier this week. A pitcher needs to have a feel of the baseball if he wants to throw a decent offspeed, and it was clear the craziness of the moment had numbed Whisenhunt up. His signature pitch was too flat and stayed in the zone. The Pirates recorded four hits off of it, including a double and a homer.
Though he still had some mixed results against New York, it was clear the young lefty was more in touch with the offering. In the first at-bat of the game, he slung a pair of excellent changes down-and-in to Nimmo. Neither fetched a swing, but it’s infinitely better to miss down than up, and the offspeed set up a dotted knee-high sinker for a called strike-three.
Poor location got him facing Lindor. In a 2-strike count, he elevated an offspeed that hung out over the plate for him to lift up into the airstream blowing out to left.
That was really Whisenhunt’s one hiccup. He didn’t give up another hit until the 5th inning. He continued to play off the anticipation of his change-up with excellent command of the sinker. That pitch made the trip with him from San Francisco. After bagging 14 called strikes with the fastball against Pittsburgh, he stole 10 more on Sunday, fetching three of his four strikeouts. Though getting more swing-and-miss out of it would be nice, his use of his primary pitch has been really encouraging early on.
A turn-around 12-4 win to claim the series against the Mets, who were 38-17 at home. A nice and, to be honest, surprising response to the home sweep a week ago. Hopefully we’ll see something similar in Pittsburgh.