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For the first time this year, all four Yankees full-season affiliates were in action this past week, as Somerset, Hudson Valley, and kicked off their seasons on Friday night while Scranton put in a full week of work. Some bad weather led to several postponements around the system, but we got to see a great deal of the organization’s top prospects on both sides of the ball. With the first full week of the season beginning Tuesday night, let’s recap the appetizer.

Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders

Record: 6-3, 1 GB in the International League East after a 4-2 week against the Rochester Red Wings (Nationals)

Run differential: +29

Coming up: Home vs. Durham Bulls (Rays)

The RailRiders got off to a bad start to their first full week of the year after Tuesday’s opener was rained out, and they dropped back-to-back games to open the week. Poor defense doomed a less-sharp Brendan Beck on Wednesday, while the bats fell silent in Elmer Rodriguez’s season debut on Thursday. The right-hander tossed five solid innings, allowing one run with two strikeouts in a losing effort. He spent the first week of the season on the Temporarily Inactive List on paternity leave.

Scranton rebounded in a big way by dominating a Friday twin bill, taking the opener 4-2 before blasting their way to a 17-4 win in the nightcap that required Braden Shewmake (yes, the infielder) to get the final out. Remember Zack Short from spring training? He was the sacrificial lamb for Rochester in the seventh inning of that game. Carlos Lagrange pitched in the matinee and only lasted 3.1 innings, walking five batters in a choppy outing. It’s the first time we’ve really seen those command issues pop up.

Dom Hamel had a second straight mediocre start on Saturday, but was picked up by home runs by Paul DeJong and Seth Brown, who was promoted to Scranton after being in a weird, organizational limbo for a week without an assignment. The offense exploded again on Sunday, putting up 16 runs to secure a series victory, while Luis Gil made his season debut and allowed three runs in 4.2 choppy innings.

There are a lot of standout performers here. Ernesto Martinez Jr. had a very strong week as he makes his case as next-up on the first base depth chart. Yanquiel Fernández absolutely had a case to be the Prospect of the Week, but I’m not sure he counts. Either way, he went 8-for-25 with three home runs, five extra-base hits, and eight RBIs. It makes you wonder why a team like the Rockies gave up on someone who just turned 23, who’s able to put an absolute charge into the ball.

While other veterans like DeJong and Ali Sánchez had strong weeks, the focus is naturally on the prospects. Jasson Domínguez is hitting the cover off the ball to start the year and went 7-for-16 with two home runs and two doubles in four games this week. He’s only taken four at-bats against lefties this season, but the quality of his at-bats looks significantly better than it did last year. The defense remains an adventure, but he’s on the right track.

As for Spencer Jones… not so much. He came on towards the end of the week with two doubles and a home run, but he struck out a staggering 14 times in 23 plate appearances this week and has 19 in 37 PA on the season. It just has to be better.

On the pitching side, Scranton’s gotten great starts to the season from Yerry De los Santos, Kervin Castro, and Yovanny Cruz, whose longstanding command issues have yet to pop up with seven strikeouts to just one walk in 4.1 innings. With the current volatility of the bullpen, you can’t rule out that a few more sharp weeks will have him in pinstripes sooner than later

Players of Note:

Jasson Domínguez: .379/.455/.655, 2 HR, 7 RBI, 2 2B, 2 SB, 189 wRC+
Spencer Jones: .212, 2 HR, 9 RBI, 3 BB, 51.3 K%, 97 wRC+
Yanquiel Fernández: .270/.325/.757, 5 HR, 10 RBI, 7 XBH, 164 wRC+
Brendan Beck: 9.1 IP, 6 H, 4 R (2 ER), 0 BB, 15 K

Double-A Somerset Patriots

Record: 1-1, 0.5 GB in the Eastern League Northeast after a 1-1 week against the Portland Sea Dogs (Red Sox)

Run differential: +15

Coming up: Away @ Binghamton Rumble Ponies (Mets)

Somerset was rained out on Sunday, so we only managed to get a pair of very, very different games in against Portland in the Double-A version of The Rivalry.

Friday’s season opener was a blowout from the very start, with Somerset pouring on 18 runs on 22 hits thanks to big days by George Lombard Jr. (more on him later), Coby Morales, Garrett Martin, Marco Luciano, and Tyler Hardman. Saturday’s game was more of a pitcher’s duel, where Somerset lost 1-0, and the bats were held to just four measly hits.

Ben Hess started his season in unbelievable fashion, striking out the first seven hitters he faced on Friday before starting to struggle with command. The walks came back to bite him, but he settled in to fire five solid innings of two-run ball with nine strikeouts in his season debut. Kyle Carr and Xavier Rivas both pitched on Saturday, with Rivas as the piggyback, and walked seven hitters in 6.1 one-run innings, albeit with nine strikeouts. All five natural relievers used delivered scoreless relief.

Only two games means there isn’t much to go off of, but Morales drilled two home runs and had six RBIs, Hardman went 4-for-8 with a homer, Luciano went 5-for-9 with two doubles, and former Mexican League MVP Nick Torres went 3-for-5 in his first game of MLB-affiliated ball since 2018. Through all of it, the star of the show was the Yankees’ No. 1 prospect, who you’ll hear about later on.

Players of Note:

Ben Hess: 5 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 3 BB, 9 K
Marco Luciano: 5-for-9, RBI, 2 2B, 5 R
Tyler Hardman: 4-for-8, HR, 4 RBI, 2B
Coby Morales: 3-for-8, 2 HR, 6 RBI, 3 K

High-A Hudson Valley Renegades

Record: 2-0, 0.5 GB in the South Atlantic League North after a 2-0 week against the Brooklyn Cyclones (Mets)

Run differential: +9

Coming up: Home vs. Wilmington Blue Rocks (Nationals)

Like Somerset, storms in the Northeast postponed Sunday’s game against Brooklyn, but the Renegades still managed a successful mini-week that featured a plethora of 2025 draftees, including a pair making their professional debuts.

Hudson Valley took Friday’s season opener, 3-1, behind a strong start from Pico Kohn and steady hitting from the middle of the order. Sean Paul Liñan made his organizational debut after being acquired from the Nationals in the Jorbit Vivas trade and didn’t make it out of the third on Saturday, but the offense put up eight runs, and the bullpen did more solid work in relief to finish what turned into a two-game sweep.

Kohn, the team’s fourth-round pick last year out of Mississippi State, tossed 5.2 strong innings of one-run ball with eight strikeouts in his pro debut. Statcast is (still) not available for High-A and Double-A, so we don’t have data on what was working for him on a pitch-by-pitch level, but it’s likely he did a lot of his work with the slider, which complements his low-90s fastball. After the success we saw with Cam Schlittler, the Yankees will definitely try to bump up the 6-foot-4 right-hander’s fastball velo as he gets situated.

Elsewhere on the pitching staff, 2025 11th-rounder Ben Grable struck out two and got the save on Friday night in his pro debut, while Tony Rossi and Chris Veach, two intriguing former undrafted free agent relievers, combined for seven strikeouts in 2.1 scoreless innings.

Liñan struck out four in 2.2 innings to start Saturday’s contest and was mostly followed by strong relief. After Tanner Bauman’s rough outing, Hudson Valley got 5.2 scoreless innings with eight strikeouts from the trio of Hansel Rincon, Baron Stuart, and Jackson Fristoe.

The 2025 draftee trio of Kaeden Kent (3-for-7, 3 BB), Core Jackson (3-for-9, HR, 2B), and Kyle West (3-for-9, RBI) anchored the lineup this week, as did a familiar face looking to get off to a strong start in a new location. Former top prospect Roderick Arias made his High-A debut on Friday after two frustrating years in Single-A, and he looked sharp, going 4-for-8 with a walk and an RBI. Fingers crossed that a guy with his skillset can finally figure it out.

Players of Note:

Roderick Arias: 4-for-8, RBI, BB, K
Core Jackson: 3-for-9, HR, 2 RBI, 2B, 3 BB
Kaeden Kent: 3-for-7, 2B, 3 BB
Pico Kohn: 5.2 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 2 BB, 8 K

Single-A Tampa Tarpons

Record: 0-3, 3 GB in the Florida State League West after a 0-3 week against the Lakeland Flying Tigers (Tigers)

Run differential: -21

Coming up: Away @ Clearwater Threshers (Phillies)

For those who’ve followed Tarpons baseball for the last few years, it usually doesn’t matter who goes through the system; it’ll look like this more often than not. The top 2025 draftees, both pitchers and position players, get aggressively pushed to High-A in their first full season, so Tampa is usually left with late-round finds who need more development, undrafted arms, and international prospects graduating to full-season ball.

Tampa lost 12-7 on Friday, 13-4 on Saturday, and 13-6 on Sunday. They walked 32 batters, which is somehow even more than the Marlins against the Yankees at the same time. There’d be stretches of these games where you’d see good pitching, but more often than not, it was a Single-A classic: guys struggling to find the strike zone.

On the hitting side, it was good to see Brando Mayea make his Single-A debut after a few years of underperformance and injuries had harmed his trajectory. He had multiple singles registering over 105 mph, but also struck out a few times. 2024 seventh-rounder JoJo Jackson and 2025 UDFA Logan Maxwell had good weeks, as did Hans Montero. Rough week for Engelth Urena, who’s 0-for-10 to start the year.

On the pitching side? Oh boy. 2025 18th-rounder Justin West, Danny Flatt, and Henry Lalane got the starts, and none of them opened the 2026 season on a high note. Lalane, in particular, struggled with command as he tries to rebound from an injury-riddled 2025. One bright spot: the velo on his four-seamer is on its way back up.

The bullpen was a trainwreck. 2024 fifth-rounder Greysen Carter, who was sent to the Tampa backfields midseason last year to work on his command, continued to struggle with walks. Jose Ledesma and Jordarlin Mendoza got hit around, the team had to use multiple position player pitchers, and the only relievers who had scoreless innings were 2025 UDFA Matthew Tippie, Pedro Rodriguez, and Josh Tiedemann.

Players of Note:

Brando Mayea: 3-for-14, 3 RBI, 2B, 4 K
JoJo Jackson: 4-for-12, 3 RBI, BB, 2 SB
Henry Lalane: 2.2 IP, 2 H, 3 R, 4 BB, 2 K

Prospect of the Week: George Lombard Jr.

Weekly Stats: 6-for-9, HR, RBI, BB, 2 2B, SB

The Yankees’ No. 1 prospect got off to a tremendous start to his 2026 season on Friday. After a strong spring training as a non-roster invitee on both sides of the ball, he blasted a home run in his first at-bat of the season and opened the season with a 5-for-6 performance, finishing a triple shy of the cycle.

He followed it up with a more modest performance on Saturday, but he still doubled, walked, and stole a base in the shutout loss. It was only two games, but it was a dream start for a prospect whose biggest goal in 2026 is to improve his hit tool after an up-and-down start to his Double-A career last year.

Lombard started 2025 on a torrid hot streak in High-A to get him a promotion in early May, and another hot streak to start 2026 could make his dreams of a promotion to the Show more and more realistic in the near future.

The 2026 St. Louis Cardinals season is off and rolling! So far, they have displayed a gritty never-say-die attitude and style of play that Cardinals fans have historically appreciated. Rookie top prospect JJ Wetherholt is leading off (almost) every game and doesn’t look out of place doing it. Alec Burleson is doing Burly things, playing a solid defensive 1B and providing steady, consistent, offensive production. Jordan Walker, Nolan Gorman, and Victor Scott have each displayed varying levels of steps forward in their performances thus far! Obvious caveat that it’s still early, and we have much larger previous sample sizes to suggest that Cardinals fans should be rightfully skeptical, but also optimistic, that these improvements can be sustainable.

Ivan Herrera is really starting to lock in offensively. After a 1-13 (.077/.071/.154) -45 wRC+ to start the season in the Tampa Bay Rays series. Since then, Herrera seems to be locking in as that offensive threat once more, going 5-15 (.333/.545/.467) 189 wRC+. Small sample sizes abound! (sorry, Morty)

The other prominent Catcher on the team has once again drawn the ire of Cardinal nation as Pedro Pages is off to a relatively rough start offensively, going 3-16 (.188/.278/.375) 94 wRC+. Which isn’t THAT big of a deal if it weren’t for another young catcher putting up an early-season performance that seems to have Cardinals fans really revved up for a changing of the guard.

Jimmy Crooks is 8-18 (.444/.545/1.000) 285 wRC+ against AAA pitching in a 5-game sample size.

Crooks is off to a really good start, and when he makes contact with the baseball its really exciting. The defensive acumen is big league caliber, and Crooks clearly has a big league future. What still needs work is the quality of the at-bats. As you can see here from Prospect Savant, the swing decisions and the chase rate would only get worse, not better, as he faced the next level of pitching. Which we watched play out at the big level in his cup of coffee at the end of the 2025 season.

As we’ve seen with the likes of Nolan Gorman and Jordan Walker. All of these players have exciting traits when they impact the baseball, but controlling the strike zone, getting their pitch to hit, and covering areas of the zone that big league pitchers will pick apart are elements that prevent them from displaying their talents to their fullest potential.

Rebuilds are hard for fans. Especially a fan base that hasn’t experienced one in over 30 years. Patience is important for fans who hope to return to being a perennial force in the National League. I liken Cardinals prospects to a casserole. The likes many of you probably experienced this past Easter Sunday. Cardinals prospects like Jordan Walker once again, for example, have been elevated before they were “fully baked” at the minor league level. As an organization, you don’t want to “pick around the raw parts.” Chances are you’ll be left disappointed with your experience. Cardinals prospects should be viewed in a similar light. Despite your “hunger,” exercising caution and allowing players to fully develop at the minor league level will ultimately pay off long term.

The Cardinals took what I consider to be the right decision in demoting players like Josh Baez, Blaze Jordan, Jimmy Crooks, and Richard Fitts before the season. I also thought Nathan Church was someone who could benefit from more AAA seasoning, and after an electrifying performance on Opening Day, Church’s numbers early aren’t all that great. 3-22 (.136/.174/.136) -7 wRC+ I seem to have been correct (early) about that observation.

As all listed players above display exciting potential but aren’t quite ready to impact the major league level, and while the allure of something new and exciting at the AAA level will be tempting, as a majority of Cardinals fans watch a sub standard product that they’re not accustomed to, the Cardinals front office will exercise discipline and patience to ensure that players are fully ready to make the transition to the major leagues. Which means, barring injury, a lot of what you see is what you get early in 2026!

-Thanks for reading

Phillies News:

• Do the Phillies have a good outfield now?
• Phillies sign 17 year old Cuban RHP Cristian Rego
• With all the prospect extensions going around, should the Phillies consider one with Andrew Painter?
• Phillies asking for help to fund to renovate BayCare Ballpark. Why not just more sponsor money?!?!
• Sadly, former Phils catcher Tom Nieto passed away.

MLB News:

• Updated CBS Power Rankings
• MLB.com’s Top 10 Plays of the Week
• Dodgers place All-Star Mookie Betts on the IL with an oblique strain
• Bad news for the Mets! Juan Soto also lands on the IL

Good morning, Camden Chatters.

Is it dramatic to suggest that last night’s Orioles game against the White Sox was a must-win? Probably. But if the O’s had followed up an ugly sweep in Pittsburgh by losing to the two-time reigning worst team in the American League, even the most level-headed fans among us might have thrown their TVs out the window.

Fortunately, it didn’t happen. The O’s escaped the opener in the Windy City with a 2-1 victory to snap their three-game losing streak. Their record is now 4-6, which isn’t good but somehow ties them for third place in the AL East. Brandon Young, fresh up from the minors for his season debut, played the hero with five shutout innings of work, immediately making him the second-best starter on the Orioles. Gunnar Henderson hit a massive dinger. Ryan Helsley overcame control problems in the ninth to strand the tying and winning runs on base. Check out Stacey’s recap for the full breakdown of the action.

Was it the kind of game that will make anyone feel better about the Orioles? No, not really. The O’s offense again was utterly inept aside from the Henderson homer. Their only other run scored on a routine fly ball that fell in for a single when Austin Hays strained his hamstring on the play. The O’s went hitless with runners in scoring position, grounded into two double plays, and struck out seven times (three by Henderson) with just one walk. Tyler O’Neill failed to hustle on the Hays play, settling in at first base when he should have easily been on second. There was plenty of the typical O’s sloppiness, and you get the feeling that the Birds wouldn’t have been so fortunate to win if they’d been playing against a better team.

Still, a win is a win, and the Orioles will gladly take one however they can get it. They’ve got two more games to try to keep taking advantage of the White Sox. A reminder that today’s game has been moved up to a 3:10 ET start time rather than 7:40 in hopes of avoiding the bitter cold that’s sweeping through Chicago. Trevor Rogers will start for the Orioles against 2025 All-Star Shane Smith.

The O’s have yet to win two games in a row this season. Maybe today is the day that changes.

Links

Young’s solid start just what O’s need with rotation in flux – MLB.com

Kudos again to Young, who delivered in the clutch when many Orioles fans (OK, myself included) were expecting nothing.

Singley on Rutschman: “I think he’s getting to show a little bit of who he truly is” – School of Roch

Based on last night’s game alone, I don’t know who Adley is. He went 0-for-3 and committed a throwing error, but also hustled into a run and threw out two base stealers. The guy is all over the place.

Orioles reliever Dietrich Enns lands on injured list after hospital trip for foot infection – The Baltimore Banner

Craig Albernaz described Enns’ foot as “pretty gnarly.” I believe that’s a medical term.

Would a .500 record on May 1st be a bad sign for the Orioles? | MAILBAG – BaltimoreBaseball.com

A bad sign? At this point I’d kill for it.

Orioles birthdays and history

Is today your birthday? Happy birthday! You share your day with two former Orioles: right-hander Ricky Bones (57) and the late Baltimore-born righty Tom Phoebus (b. 1942, d. 2019), who threw a no-hitter for his hometown team in 1968. I’ll also give an honorable mention to fellow Maryland native Josh Hader (32), who isn’t technically a former Oriole but started his pro career in the O’s system before being traded as a prospect for Bud Norris.

On this date in 1977, a 20-year-old designated hitter named Eddie Murray made his major league debut for the Orioles, going 1-for-4. His first career hit was a seventh-inning single off the Rangers’ Bert Blyleven. Murray went on to win AL Rookie of the Year that season on his way to an incredible 21-year MLB career that led him to the National Baseball Hall of Fame (where he was later joined by Blyleven). The Orioles’ starting pitcher in Murray’s debut was another Hall of Famer, Jim Palmer. Quite the star-studded affair.

Random Orioles game of the day

Despite popular demand, it’s the return of the Random Orioles Game of the Day feature. I’ll use a random number generator to pick a season from Orioles history and check out how they fared on this date. Today’s random year is: 2023. Ooh, that was a good year.

On April 7, 2023, the Orioles beat the Yankees in a 7-6 barnburner in their home opener at Camden Yards. In front of a sellout crowd of 45,017, the O’s took a 4-0 lead, then fell behind 5-4, then tied the game on an Adley Rutschman RBI single in the sixth and took the lead on a Ramón Urías double in the seventh. Félix Bautista allowed the potential tying run to get to third base in the ninth before nailing down the final out. It was a great start for an Orioles team that ultimately was 17 games above .500 at home that year.

The Yankees had an excellent first week and a half of the season, winning three series in a row en route to a 7-2 start. Their pitching was fantastic, their offense was carried by a stellar top-half of the order, and even their two losses came in games in which they led late and only lost by one run. It wasn’t hard to envision a world where the team held on in those games and managed to run the table through the first nine games.

But even when everything’s going right, this is baseball, so there are still things going wrong. Perhaps the biggest spot of consternation among fans and analysts during this opening salvo has been the putrid play of the bottom of the Yankee lineup. The Yankees have gotten a .143 batting average combined from the 6-thru-9 slots of the order, along with a downright ghastly .402 OPS. As a fun (?) little reference point, that’s more than 100 points lower than CC Sabathia’s career OPS as a hitter.

Sure, no team expects the last hitters in their order to dominate, but the Yankees certainly expected something from the final four players on the card, rather than a convincing impression of National League pitchers hitting circa five years ago. So, with the usual caveats about the season being a tiny sample thus far and that we shouldn’t overreact to anything we’ve seen, do you think the bottom of the order will prove to be a major issue going forward?

I think the base answer to this question is still no. The bottom four of the Yankees’ order includes Jazz Chisholm Jr., who perhaps shouldn’t have been predicting 50/50 seasons but still has a 122 OPS+ as a member of the Yankees and projects as a near-All-Star caliber player. The rest of the order does not have the upside of Chisholm, but the expectation should still be that of improvement. Jose Caballero was never going to run the .828 OPS he posted in pinstripes last year, but he also won’t hit .129 all year. Austin Wells may never become a great pure hitter, but the career .717 OPS he carried into the season was pretty great for a plus defensive catcher.

All that said, if you’re inching toward the panic button regarding the bottom of the order, I can’t totally blame you. The most concerning hitter of all has been Ryan McMahon, who’s looked lost at times and is hitting .087 on the year. Chisholm will come around, and Wells provides ample value with his glove, but it’s not hard to wonder if the Yankees are going to be staring at two total blackholes on the left side of their infield sooner rather than later.

What do you think? Will the team’s lower hitters slowly regress to the mean and provide enough value with their bats to allow their generally strong gloves to play up? Or will we look up in a couple of months to see that the Yankees are still running out three or more players at the bottom of the order struggling to breach the Mendoza Line?

Today on the site, Michael starts us off with a review of the first week of minor league baseball that saw all full-season affiliates in action. We’ll also get a recap of last night’s American League action from Kevin, and a look ahead at the upcoming series with the A’s. Later, Jonathan will remember Oral Hildebrand, and Peter gives us his first At-Bat of the Week for the 2026 season, featuring Ben Rice.

Today’s Matchup

New York Yankees vs. A’s

Time: 7:05 p.m. EST

Video: YES Network, NBCSCA

Venue: Yankee Stadium, Bronx, NY

The Athletic | Chris Kirschner: Over the weekend, the Yankees faced the Marlins, and Miami have been doing something you might not have realized. Starting towards the end of last season, the Marlins have begun calling pitches in the dugout via the coaching staff and relaying them to the catcher and the pitcher. Don’t expect the Yankees to hop on that, as both players and coaches openly said over the weekend that they don’t like the idea.

New York Daily News | Peter Sblendorio: With a 7-2 record, the Yankees’ 2026 season has gone pretty well so far. One aspect of the team that has definitely struggled has been the lower part of the batting order, as the players who have batted in the 6-9 spots have a collective .404 OPS. However, between Jazz Chisholm Jr. hitting a big double on Sunday and just having faith in their players in general, the Yankees aren’t worried about that yet.

ESPN | David Schoenfield: As we’re now over a week into the new season, here’s one way to rank the MLB teams of 2026: watchability. Between how good they are, the young talent they have, and the style they play, Schoenfield tried to rank teams by how interesting they could be to watch this year. The Yankees came in at fifth.

PennLive | Brian Linder: Former Phillies’ player and longtime MLB coach Tom Nieto passed away recently. Nieto spent time in the Yankees’ organization from 1995-2002 and then was a manager of the GCL Yankees in 2012-13. In between then, he also worked with Willie Randolph during his tenure as the Mets’ manager. We send our best wishes to his family and loved ones.

If you’re wondering why the San Francisco Giants have won just three of their first eight games, well, the answer is very simple: they’re playing remarkably sloppy and dispirited baseball.

If you’re wondering why they’re playing remarkably sloppy and dispirited baseball, well … that answer is not so simple. The search for that answer keeps Buster Posey up at night. The search for that answer keeps Tony Vitello up at night. The search for that answer does not keep me up at night, because thankfully my salary is not contingent on the Giants winning games. You poor people are stuck reading my words in baseball sickness and in baseball health, and my goodness are the Giants a deathly sick bunch.

The Giants tried to remedy themselves on Monday, and my goodness it almost worked. They even had a few folks fooled for an hour or two, yours truly most certainly included.

Because here’s what the Giants have been doing all through this two-week slump to start the year: missing the cut off man, missing the tags, making bad throws, forgetting how to hit in situational at-bats, and struggling to stack hits on top of each other.

You know: the basic stuff. The fundamentals. The things that you expect the highly-paid baseball players to do with the baseball during the baseball game.

But on Monday, as they welcomed the Philadelphia Phillies to town, they didn’t do those things. Not at the onset, at least. They played clean, crisp, and sound baseball for quite a while, even when the results weren’t good.

Take the first inning, for example. In the top of the inning, Bryce Harper ripped a liner down the third base line, which felt like an automatic two-bagger. But Heliot Ramos played the carom brilliantly and fired a strike in to second base.

Did it work? Nope. Harper was safe by the slimmest of margins. But it was good baseball.

In the bottom half of the inning, Luis Arráez and Matt Chapman strung together back-to-back hard-hit one-out singles against Andrew Painter, as the offense looked like it knew what it was doing.

Did it work? Nope. Rafael Devers popped out and Ramos struck out, and the Giants didn’t score.

For the first time in a while, the Gians were playing fundamentally sound baseball, and it was fun to watch, even when they flirted with trouble. Like in the top of the third, for instance, when J.T. Realmuto led off with an infield single that was almost a sensational play by Chapman, but his throw was off line. Realmuto took second on a wild pitch before Adrian Houser walked Justin Crawford, putting two runners on base with no outs.

No matter. He struck out Trea Turner, then struck out Kyle Schwarber, then got Harper to ground out. It’s amazing how much more fun baseball is to watch when the team is capable of climbing out of holes and not shooting themselves in the foot.

But it was the bottom of the third where we really saw the Giants play honest-to-goodness, this-is-how-it’s-supposed-to-be-done baseball. It began when Willy Adames showed signs of slump-busting by leading off with his first of two doubles on the day. Arráez followed it up with a single, but the true sign that the Giants had exorcised their sloppy demons was when Arráez read the throw perfectly, and took second base when Crawford’s throw allowed him to.

Suddenly the Giants had two runners in scoring position and no outs, and before you could even make your “let’s see how they blow this” jokes, Chapman had lifted a first-pitch curveball from Painter into triple’s alley, which proved to be very aptly named on this occasion.

The thing about Chapman’s triple, however, was that it put him on third base, and the Giants are not good at scoring the runner from third base. But the Giants scored the runner from third base this time, thanks to a timely single flopped up the middle by Ramos. It was a three-run inning, which broke a streak of 36 straight innings without scoring three or more runs.

Not a good streak to have. But a very good streak to end.

History repeated itself in the fourth inning. Houser again allowed a leadoff single, and again that runner moved to second on a wild pitch, and again the veteran righty got out of it unscathed. And again they rallied in the bottom half of the inning, this time when Harrison Bader and Patrick Bailey bopped back-to-back one-out singles, followed by an Adames walk to load the bases.

Up came Arráez, who sure is a delightful antidote to the team’s situational woes. Who better to knock home a runner on third with just one out than the player who can put the ball in play more reliably than any other human being alive?

Arráez did exactly that, in bittersweet fashion: known more for his dinks and doinks than his power, Arráez absolutely put a charge in a Painter slider, driving it out towards triple’s alley.

It had the sound of a grand slam and, according to Statcast, it would have been in three parks — including the one that the Phillies spend half of the season in.

But Oracle Park giveth and Oracle Park taketh away, and Adolis García — who in the second inning had a similarly-hit ball knocked down by the wind for an out while he was in his home run trot — tracked down Arráez’s fly ball, limiting him to a sacrifice fly, but pushing the lead to 4-0.

That was all they’d score in the inning — and in the game, it would turn out — but the point still stood. The Giants were playing baseball competently. They were playing baseball cleanly. It was fun. More importantly, it was as it should be.

It was also temporary.

Houser’s bend-but-don’t-break approach backfired in the fifth, when he flew too close to the sun by allowing another leadoff single, with Realmuto once again being the offending party. This time Crawford followed with a double, and suddenly the Phillies had two on, no outs, and the top of their potent lineup coming up to bat.

The two sides reached a compromise when Turner grounded out, and a run scored in the process. But after Houser walked Schwarber, Harper made the Giants pay with his second double of the game, scoring a second run in the inning.

Houser would get out of the inning without any further damage, but the dam had cracked, and it was making way for the mistakes that have plagued them in recent games and weeks. And after a quick jaunt through the sixth, we reached the point in the game where it would cave away completely.

With Houser still in — he’d needed just 84 pitches to get through six innings — the Giants once again (and you’ll be shocked to hear this), gave up a leadoff runner, this time on a Crawford single. With Schwarber and Harper — two of the game’s most potent lefties — looming, it was clear that Houser would only be allowed to face one more batter. That batter, however, was Turner, who singled, sending Houser off the mound with a full-on rally started.

Vitello walked to the mound, and when he walked off it, Ryan Borucki had replaced Houser.

If you haven’t been watching the Giants this year (great choice in hindsight), the Borucki experiment has gone something like this: not well. More specifically, it’s gone quite awfully.

Borucki is on the roster because he’s quite good at getting lefties out, but in this era of pinch-hitters and three-batter minimums, it’s very difficult to have lefty specialists that aren’t frequently exposed to right-handed hitters. And Borucki should never, ever, ever face right-handed hitters.

So Vitello at least brought him in this time to face the lefty beef. The tragic error, however, was that Borucki hasn’t been good against lefties, either, this year. And so he walked Schwarber on four pitches and then gave up a game-tying, two-run single to Harper.

Just like that, Borucki had faced the left-handed power, but he hadn’t faced the minimum of three batters, and thus had to stay in to face Alec Bohm, who consequently doubled to score a run. Borucki would stay in to face one more lefty — Bryson Stott — and get his first and only out, before giving way to Caleb Kilian, who allowed one of the inherited runners to score on a sacrifice fly.

It was not pretty baseball by any stretch of the imagination, and the four runs had turned a two-run lead into a two-run deficit.

Fittingly, the offense had run dry during that time. The Giants didn’t have a baserunner in the fifth, sixth, or seventh innings, and their rally attempts in the late innings only came with two outs: a single by Jung Hoo Lee in the eighth, and a double by Adames in the ninth. Neither went anywhere, and so the Giants lost, again, this time 6-4.