At some point this year, there was a brief moment — a very brief moment, but a moment nonetheless — where you wondered if the San Francisco Giants would win three games this season. And now they’ve won three straight. Things can change quickly, it turns out.
The Giants beat the Baltimore Orioles 6-3 on Friday, kicking off a nine-game road trip in style. More importantly, however, the Giants beat the Orioles in a fashion that made you feel happy and confident, not in a “even the sun shines on the Colorado Rockies 50 times a year” way.
They won because some of the stars that are supposed to carry the team, carried the team. They won because the players you’re worried about had encouraging games. They won because their starting pitching was excellent. They won because all of the above added up to give the bullpen enough of a buffer that they didn’t need to be great, or use their most trusted arms.
There are wins and there are “hey, maybe this team is all right” wins, and this was, thankfully, the latter.
The other day I wrote about how all teams make mistakes every game. And you can expand that: all teams get bad luck every game, and all teams have moments of inadequate play every game. And when a team is bad, those mistakes, bad luck, and inadequate play stand out like sore thumbs, because they have no way of overcoming it. When a team is good, you can go whole games, series, or even weeks not noticing the mistakes, bad luck, and inadequate play, because they have the ability to negate it entirely.
Let me give an example for those of you who watched the game on Apple TV, or listened to the radio: how many of you remember that the game started with Luis Arráez drawing a one-out walk, and Matt Chapman grounding into a frustrating double play on the very next pitch? Right now you’re probably nodding your head wisely, and saying ahh, yeah, oh…yeah, i guess that did happen.
Had the Giants been as useless as they were the last time they played an AL East team, that sequence would be seared into your brain. It would represent their ineptitude and struggles, and your general frustration with the team.
Instead, it was just a play.
A play you forgot as soon as the third inning rolled around when, with two outs and the bases empty, Willy Adames stepped up to the plate, worked the count full, forced Shane Baz to find the strike zone, and absolutely pummeled the baseball.
It was a gorgeous swing of the bat, and if you want to know why the Giants offense has been struggling lately — and why maybe it will break out a bit this week — well, it perhaps provided a comical insight.
Adames’ dinger brought life to the offense (their only hit the first time through the lineup was a Jung Hoo Lee double), as it was followed up by another Arráez walk (you don’t see that everyday) and a Chapman single. But Rafael Devers was unable to capitalize, ending the inning with a ground out.
That wasn’t a mistake, per se, but it was an opportunity not fully taken advantage of. Which, again: happens every game. And, again: you didn’t remember this one. I just told you it happened and you still might not remember that it happened. You might think that I’m making something up to prove a point, the way Duane Kuiper once admitted that he replaced a late-inning substitute’s name with his neighbor’s name during a Spring Training broadcast and no one noticed.
But I’m not. That really happened, and you really don’t remember it, perhaps because you didn’t watch the game and that’s why you’re here, or perhaps because it was Just Another Play in a game with plenty of good ones.
For instance, in the very next inning, when Casey Schmitt led off with one of the three doubles he had on the day, each as gorgeous and emphatic as the one before. Lee was robbed of an RBI single by second baseman Jeremiah Jackson, presenting yet another moment that could have been frustrating if the Giants weren’t so … good? Is that the word I’m looking for?
We’re used to Lee getting robbed (which moved Schmitt to third), tearing out our collective hair (mine’s getting grey, I don’t mind pulling it out) about the bad luck, and then wailing in frustration as Schmitt gets stranded on third by a strikeout, something you’ll mull over all night, with the only silver lining being that you permit yourself to have a second beer out of misery.
But no. Lee’s robbed base was followed up by an RBI single off the bat of Heliot Ramos, slumping in the slumpiest of slumps, in desperate need of such a hit.
And the rally continued with a single off the bat of Patrick Bailey, also slumping in the slumpiest of slumps, also in desperate need of such a hit (perhaps to save his entire career, if you made the mistake of listening to talking heads on the radio or the internet over the last week).
And while Harrison Bader couldn’t move either runner over, the table was set for another dynamic Adames plate appearance, which resulted in a double ripped down the left field line, scoring a third run and giving Adames his seventh extra-base hit in the last four games.
But it was the fifth inning that really provided the grist for the negative mill, should the Giants choose to … you know … uhh … mill it, or whatever. A Devers single and a Schmitt double put runners at second and third with just one out, but Lee was unable to find the situation at-bat to plate a run, and Ramos grounded out.
It could have been a moment that crumbled the game, especially with Baltimore starting to show some life on the offensive end. But like the other plays, it was a momentary struggle that you may have forgotten about, if you even registered it in the first place.
Because in the seventh inning, trying to add to a 3-1 lead, Chapman drew a one-out walk. And with two outs, Schmitt came through with the triple-double (animal style), knocking yet another triple. Chapman, running with two outs and never slowing down, ever so slightly beat out a tremendous left field relay, scoring the ever-important insurance run.
I think, at this point in the game/story, I’ve described the difference between a frustratingly bad team and a competent one. But what happened next happened next is the difference between a competent team and a good one.
The fifth inning failure was behind them thanks to the insurance run, but that insurance run would triple just three pitches later, on something no one saw coming: Lee hitting not just a two-run home run, but hitting a two-run home run in an 0-2 count against a left-handed pitcher, reliever Nick Raquet.
And if that doesn’t give you confidence in things turning around for the Giants, then I just don’t know what will.
Of course, half of the battle is on the other side of the ball, and it was there where the Giants did the exact same thing. Landen Roupp was not at his sharpest, but it didn’t matter because every mistake he wiped right off the board. He struggled mightily to find the strike zone, with just 54 of 93 pitches going for strikes, but somehow only walked two of the 25 batters he faced.
Even when Roupp didn’t erase his own mistakes, his teammates did, such as in the third inning, when he issued a one-out walk to Gunnar Henderson, before Adley Rutschman tattooed a two-out pitch off the right field wall. Yet even with the speedy Henderson getting a two-out jump, Lee was able to play the double so well that the runner was forced to stop at third, where he could only watch helplessly as Roupp struck out slugger Pete Alonso.
Funnily enough, the Orioles would finally break through an inning later, when they seemed to learn from that situation. Again they drew a one-out walk (this time Dylan Beavers), which was again followed by a double to right field (this time a one-out shot by Leody Taveras). This time Baltimore sent a runner, who barely scored ahead of nearly-perfect relay by Lee and Arráez.
But other than that, Roupp held the Orioles completely in check by challenging when he fell behind in the count, and being especially stingy early in the innings. He gave up a double in the first inning, but with two outs. He allowed a single in the second inning, but with two outs. He did the same in the fifth inning. Finally, in the sixth inning — his last — Roupp set down the side in order for the first time all night, and needed just 10 pitches to do so.
But the theme carried over into the bullpen. Keaton Winn handled the seventh, and the leadoff hitter, Jackson, reached safely on an Adames error, when his throw was in the dirt and Devers — to his own ire — couldn’t pick it out. Like the other mistakes in the game, this one you forgot … perhaps because of what transpired in the rest of the game, or perhaps because, if you looked away for a few seconds, you not only missed that play but the ensuing pitch, in which Winn induced a double play to pick his teammates up.
Similarly, J.T. Brubaker issued two walks in the eighth and had to be removed from the game, but that went largely unnoticed because Matt Gage entered and, two pitches later, the inning was over.
The Orioles finally got to the Giants bullpen in the ninth inning, when Tony Vitello was in the no-man’s land of trying to preserve a big-but-not-insurmountable lead. Vitello landed on Tidwell, a sensible choice, but it didn’t go well. Baltimore finally found life in the inning when Henderson smacked a gorgeous two-out, two-run home run, making the score a more respectable 6-3.
You would have understood if Vitello pulled Tidwell there. You also would have understood if he pulled him an inning later, after Taylor Ward doubled. And you would have been livid if hindsight analysis allowed you to criticize those lack of moves after the Giants lost.
But Vitello opted to preserve his bullpen, and trust his young reliever with the tying run still outside the batter’s box. And after Rutschman popped up, it became clear that, like all other situations in the game, the good outweighed whatever we would have complained about had they lost.
