After losing three of four to the New York Mets in their last series, the San Francisco Giants hit back against the Washington Nationals in that three-game series, winning all three games by a total of 24-6. Along the way, there were angry comments from Nationals players and their manager Dave Martinez as the Giants refused to take their foot off the gas despite maintaining the lead deep into games. This year, the Giants’ philosophy was “go for it until they stop you,” which makes perfect sense for a major-league sport — no one told the Germans to stop scoring when they were in the World Cup semifinals led 3-0 against Brazil in 2014 – but somehow that has become controversial. However, the Giants have shown no willingness to give up.
The game started a bit strange today; After two pitches, Lucius Fox (former Giants International signing who traded with Matt Moore to the Rays) vomited on the field and was pulled out due to illness — after the game, Martinez mentioned he had stomach flu. so hopefully he heals quickly. Joc Pederson saw this, however, and decided he wanted to get out of the infield as soon as possible, so he hit a monster home run as the leadoff batter.
Brandon Crawford doubled and was hustled in by Wilmer Flores to extend the lead to 2-0 after one inning.
The Nationals got a run back into the bottom of the first, but after a walk and two singles, they brought home Nelson Cruz.
The Giants then got back to work in the top of the inning. Thairo Estrada singled, then Joey Bart walked, then a wild pitch brought Estrada to third base in time for Joc Pederson to hit a sacrificial fly to bring Estrada home. Then Brandon Belt brought out the big guns and tripled deep in midfield to hit Bart, leveling the score at 4-1.
The Nationals were determined to make this game interesting, however, and late in the third a home run by Yadiel Hernandez with Keibert Ruiz on base put them within one run of the Giants, 4-3 after three innings.
So the Giants decided to do what they did best: keep scoring. At the top of the fifth, a Pederson double followed by a Ruf single and a Flores single gave them a run back; it was 5-3 after five innings.
In the seventh inning, Joc decided a home run wasn’t nearly enough, so he hit his second solo shot of the day and fifth of the year.
The score was 6-3 after seven, and while Logan Webb didn’t have his best stuff of the year today, his finishing line was still extremely good: 6.2 IP, 7 H, 3 R/ER, 1 BB, 6 K Jose Álvarez , Tyler Rogers and Zack Littell came together for the next seven outs, allowing no hits and no walks with a strikeout to keep the Nationals at 3.
That seemed like a reasonable way to end the game, but the Giants had other plans. In the top of the ninth, they batted around and added six runs to their total, helped somewhat by the Nationals’ inability to throw shots. Belt walked to start the inning, then Ruf walked as well, then Crawford was HBP to load the bases with an out. Two back-to-back singles followed – Flores and Luis Gonzalez – then a sack fly from Estrada was followed by a Jason Vosler single. Then Bart was HBP. The result was 10-3 San Francisco before Washington made a pitching change. After the pitching change, Austin Slater hit a two-run single to finally end scoring before Belt single and Dubón flew out to end the top of the inning. Littell pulled the side back to complete the win over the Nationals at the end of the ninth game.
The Giants are now 11-5, 2nd in the NL West behind the 10-4 Dodgers. They fly alongside Milwaukee to play a game (one of the postponed due to the delayed start of the season) before returning home to face the A’s.
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