The price of gas was $1.12 per gallon.
A loaf of bread would run you 50 cents.
Okay, it hasn’t been that long since the Giants last won a ballgame, but it’s been 32 years since San Francisco was this bad.
A night after being shut out for the eighth time this season, though, the Giants received a wake-up call on a three-run home run off the bat of rookie left fielder Austin Slater in the top half of the eighth inning and answered it in a 6-3 win, the team’s first victory in more than a week.
The Giants narrowly avoided matching their longest losing streak –eight games– in the last decade, and stopped well short of the season-high 10-game losing streak the 1985 San Francisco Giants encountered on their way to losing 100 games.
That 1985 club also dipped 20 games below .500 by the middle of June, and experienced every bit of the doom and gloom the current version of the Giants are currently encountering, but on Tuesday, Slater’s opposite field smash helped the Giants right a week of wrongs.
The Giants tacked on a pair of insurance runs in the eighth to take a 5-2 lead, and a San Francisco bullpen that cost the Giants a pair of games in the Colorado series once again had skipper Bruce Bochy’s heart racing. Still, an RBI double off the bat of Matt Kemp against reliever George Kontos wasn’t enough for the Braves to author a comeback, and a combination of Josh Osich, Sam Dyson and Mark Melancon helped the Giants hang on.
On Monday night, it was 42-year-old R.A. Dickey who turned back the clock and dealt seven innings of shutout ball against San Francisco to send the scoreboard operator in a slumber, and on Tuesday, seventh-year Major League veteran Julio Teheran was determined to match Dickey’s output.
Teheran finished with 7 and 1/3 innings pitched, five hits and four runs allowed on Tuesday, but for most of the night, the Colombian right-hander looked untouchable. Through his first seven frames, the Giants’ primary offensive highlight of the evening came in the top of the second inning, when first baseman Brandon Belt worked a 10-pitch at-bat and slammed a long flyout to center field to end the inning. Seriously, that was it.
But in the eighth, Teheran finally met his match in Slater, who represented the go-ahead run thanks to a series of Braves’ miscues. Giants’ right fielder Hunter Pence led off the inning with a slowly hit infield single third baseman Johan Camargo couldn’t field cleanly, and reached second base when shortstop Dansby Swanson botched a double play exchange on a sure-fire twin killing off the bat of Belt. With two on and no one out, Slater stepped up and blasted his second career home run over the short porch in right field, ending a week of utter embarrassment for a club that’s invented new ways to lose.
After spoiling a solid outing from Monday starter Johnny Cueto, who went seven innings and allowed just five hits and two runs in the Giants’ loss, San Francisco bailed out left-hander Matt Moore, who entered Tuesday’s start with the worst road ERA among qualifying starters this season.
Though Moore has steered the Giants’ ship into various icebergs in enemy waters this season, he turned in his finest road outing of the year against the Braves on Tuesday. After posting a 10.42 ERA in his last nine road starts dating back to last season, Moore was sharp and efficient, setting down the Braves in order in his first two innings and striking out the side in the fourth.
The Braves took the wind out of Moore’s sails in the top of the third inning, when Swanson cracked a leadoff single and came around to score on a double from Atlanta’s No. 8 hitter, third baseman Johan Camargo. Later in the inning, Inciarte plated Camargo with a sacrifice fly, and the Braves probably figured they had done enough.
But Moore settled down, pitched into the eighth, and kept the Giants in the game long enough to pick up a ‘W.’
After Slater’s home run, singles from third baseman Kelby Tomlinson and center fielder Denard Span turned into valuable insurance runs following a pair of Braves’ errors on balls put in play by second baseman Joe Panik and shortstop Brandon Crawford. Then, in the top of the ninth, Belt delivered a solo blast to right field, his 12th home run of the season, to cap off the Giants’ scoring.