SAN FRANCISCO – The Casey Schmitt Show is also touring.
The rookie shortstop hit four hits Thursday night, including a thunderous home run, and led the Giants in their first meeting of the season to a 6-2 win over a young Arizona Diamondbacks team that looks ready to bid for a spot in the fight MLB playoffs.
The Diamondbacks started the night third in the NL on points, but Alex Cobb made an eighth-court shutout and Schmitt did the rest.
Schmitt went 4-for-4, scoring two runs and driving in three runs. He joined Hall-of-Famer Willie McCovey and was the only Giants to hit eight times in his first three big league games. McCovey made it in 1959 and went on to win the Rookie of the Year award. That didn’t seem likely at all when Schmitt was called up on Tuesday, but given the way he’s doing right now, how can you rule anything out?
Here are three more things to know from another night when the Giants had the Schmitts…
Cut it very, very far
The rookie first jumped on a 2-0 curveball from left-hander Tommy Henry and blasted it into the second deck, an area generally reserved for Madison Bumgarner BP’s home runs whenever the Giants visited Chase Field. At 443 feet, it was the fifth-longest home run of the year for the Giants, but the longest if you factor out all the bombs hit in Mexico City.
The ball left the bat at 111.6 mph, making it the third hardest-hit ball of the season for the Giants, just a few hits behind designated hitter Joc Pederson.
Schmitt has hit just one home run in 32 Triple-A games this year, but the bat got him two in his first nine at-bats in the big leagues. That shouldn’t be a big surprise; Schmitt hit 21 home runs in a landmark minor league season last year.
More like this Schmitt
Schmitt had a clean single in the middle on his second outing and then hit a grounder in the middle in the seventh, leading to an infield single when infielder Geraldo Perdomo couldn’t get it down. Early in the ninth game, Schmitt rebounded a ball off the hard infield and landed on the left field line with an RBI double.
Schmitt has scored 8 of 12 in his first three games and is the first modern-day shortstop to start his career with three straight multi-hit games and an extra base hit in each game. The last major league player to do so at any position was Chicago Cubs outfielder Jorge Soler in 2014.
Cy Cobb
If you knock out the Mexico City series — and that’s what every Giants pitcher wants — Cobb hasn’t conceded a run in his last three starts. He hasn’t allowed more than two runs in one start so far this season in the US.
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Cobb threw one shutout a little over two weeks ago and seven shutout innings against the Brewers on Saturday. The most recent dominant showing brought his ERA down to a 1.70, which puts him first in the National League and third in the majors behind Sonny Gray of Minnesota (1.35) and Eduardo Rodriguez of Detroit (1.57).
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