The Giants’ clubhouse was lively on Sunday morning. There were sunburn chirps, chatter about All-Star break plans, takes on snubs and jokes about a fresh bullpen. Players and coaches quipped across the room. Even Sunday’s starter, Logan Webb, joined in; starting pitchers are usually stoic on days they’re taking the ball.
Vibes like these have been sparse for the Giants, really since April. Two .500 months and a horrid midsummer swoon tested the club’s even-keeled mantra.
“We have a better brand of baseball, I think, in us than we showed in the first half,” SF manager Gabe Kapler said Sunday. “At the same time, I think we’re in a fine position. We stayed in a strong position to push for the playoffs.”
San Francisco was in that position because by Sunday, the Giants had strung together six victories in their past eight games. They won weekend games against first-place Milwaukee on a miraculous ninth-inning comeback and a bases-loaded balk. The playful pregame environment wasn’t just the product of a good batch of coffee.
And the vibes remain sky-high, with the Bay Area July fog, after the Giants’ series-clinching 9-5 victory. LaMonte Wade Jr.’s third-inning Splash Hit — his first since last September — put the Giants up 7-1 and allowed a cruising Webb to turn on autopilot. Another homer from Brandon Belt kept the engine humming.
The dominant effort sends the Giants (48-43) into the All-Star break winners of five of their last six.
Much of San Francisco’s first half — both good and bad — was on display on Sunday afternoon.
The Giants’ rotation, led by Webb and All-Star Carlos Rodón, has posted the fifth best ERA and best fielding independent pitching in baseball. The club is built around the starting staff, and they’ve done their job as well as the front office could have imagined preseason — especially considering Anthony DeSclafani will have finished 2022 with five starts.
Aside from a slider down the middle to Willy Adames in the first inning, Webb was his normal, dominant self. He generated fewer swing-and-misses than usual, but spun two inning-ending double plays. Nine of the 10 outs on live balls came from grounders.
Webb has now allowed seven earned runs in his last seven starts — a stretch of 46 innings. He’s struck out 42 and walked 11 in that span. Webb will have time to enjoy a couple days off in Tahoe, as he wasn’t selected to represent the National League in Dodger Stadium.
Webb’s six-inning quality start — capped with a standing ovation — epitomized the SF rotation’s first-half dominance.
But if the Giants have baseball’s best rotation and the fourth best offense — at least in runs per game — why are they just floating over .500?
Some of the little things just haven’t been as sharp as they were last year, and as they should be.
Austin Slater got cut down at third for the final out of the second inning in what was likely a mental mistake. Making the third out at third is taboo, and it didn’t look like Slater was running at full-speed for some reason.
Slater’s head-scratching out was microcosmic of mental lapses that have sprouted too often for the Giants — on the base paths but more often in the field. In the eighth inning, Thairo Estrada got eaten up by a playable ball, resulting in an infield single; a harsher scorer would’ve given him his seventh error of the season.
The physical limitations of the sports worst ranked defense likely won’t course-correct, but the missed cutoff men, incorrect situational decisions and miscellaneous brain farts could.
Neither Slater’s out nor Estrada’s misplay cost the Giants, who jumped over Jason Alexander for five runs in the third and added two more in the sixth with Belt’s homer.
Four of San Francisco’s five third-inning runs came with two outs. In a 2-2 count with two runners in scoring position, Joey Bart chopped an infield single. He would have almost certainly struck out in that situation a month ago, before he was sent down for a mental and physical reset.
But Bart’s recent surge — he’s 8-for-29 with two homers since returning to the big club — has inspired optimism and portends well for the second half.
The rookie catcher doesn’t need to be a star, but there’s so much value in his ability to contribute. Because he legged out the infield single, Bart brought Wade up to the plate with two runners on.
Wade then torched his third career Splash Hit. The Giants’ fourth dinger into the drink of 2022 ensured a series victory over the first-place Brewers. The 95th ever Splash Hit by a Giant stretched the lead to blowout territory.
It cannonballed the Giants into the second half.