Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
The Giants’ offense threw Joey Bart a party.
Perhaps fitting for this season, he was a bit late arriving — but he made it.
There was an onslaught of runs from bats that have made Oracle Park their home, exploding yet again for nine runs in the first four innings en route to a long, sleepy 10-5 victory over the Angels, a game that doubled as a coronation for a much-hyped prospect who has been awaiting his chance and was not sure it was going to come.
It’s here, and so is the Giants’ future.
The Giants had to wait until the bottom of the sixth to catch a glimpse of the bat they salivate over in a game that they were leading, 9-4, and was mostly decided. Bart, who had been hit by a pitch, struck out and popped out in his first three major-league plate appearances, fouled off a Julio Teheran sinker before getting a slower, 78-mph slider that got too much of the plate.
All 6-foot-2, 238 pounds of Bart turned on it, slamming it 109.5 mph off the bat over Anthony Rendon’s head at third. That qualifies as the fourth hardest-hit ball of the Giants’ season. It also qualifies as Bart’s first career major-league hit, a double that had much of the dugout calling for the ball’s retrieval.
Joey Bart’s first career hit flies off the bat at 109.5 MPH, the fourth hardest hit ball by a Giant this season ? pic.twitter.com/lZxWtah9Zc
— KNBR (@KNBR) August 21, 2020
Bart will get to keep a ball he has waited too long for, through 26 games of this season as the Giants’ catchers sputtered and the front office insisted it wanted to see more development from the former No-2 overall pick. The Giants wanted to see more at-bats from a player who only had played 22 games at Double-A Richmond, but they also wanted to see his receiving improve, a focal point that has been spotlighted by Tyler Heineman’s and Chadwick Tromp’s catcher-interference struggles.
“It’s something Joey’s been working on, and sometimes guys with bigger frames who can have kind of subtler movements when they’re receiving pitches along the edges actually have an advantage,” Farhan Zaidi said before the game. “Joe Mauer was a big catcher and he was a terrific framer for that reason. We feel really confident in what Joey can provide for us from a defensive standpoint.”
Bart looked comfortable in receiving from a shaky but overpowering Kevin Gausman (5 1/3 innings, nine hits, four runs, eight strikeouts), as well as the chorus of relievers who followed. Though, there was little comfort in the seventh, when Bart was introduced to his first dose of MLB drama.
Shaun Anderson, who nearly beaned Mike Trout twice Tuesday, was summoned for the same matchup and threw a very high, mostly inside fastball that made Trout duck. Angels manager Joe Maddon barked from the dugout, and the umpires conversed and warned both teams. Trout then warned Anderson with his bat, firing a triple off the left-field wall.
Anderson would load the bases in a game that took too much sweating, and Wandy Peralta walked one run in before striking out Luis Rengifo to keep more drama out of a five-run game.
Larry Baer was on hand to witness Bart’s history, but the Giants packed on the runs to make the CEO happy, and Brandon Crawford chipped in his own record-book moment.
While the first four innings slogged (Angels pitchers walked five in the span), they showed more of the powerful offense the Giants have assembled against lefties.
Wilmer Flores hit his sixth home run of the year — all with two strikes on him — for the first two runs. Mike Yastrzemski’s two-run double was the big blow in the second, and Flores added a two-run single in the third, finishing with four RBIs on the day.
Crawford’s opposite-field shot in the fourth was the 100th of his career, a ball he, too, will treasure.
The Giants have now won three straight for the first time since Sept. 15-18 last year. They finished with 12 hits and now are averaging 6.45 runs per game at home in 11 tries, a stunning turnaround after their years of struggles in the San Francisco air.
Of course, the story of Thursday was the other heir.
Bart is 1-for-4 with a hit by pitch. He’s also 1-for-1 with a win in an era that has dawned.