Johnny Cueto had one of his best outings of the season and the Giants continued to swing the bats well en route to a 7-1 victory Sunday over the visiting Atlanta Braves.
The scoring came early and often for the Giants as they battered Braves’ starter R.A. Dickey through the first three innings. After Posey walked to load the bases in the bottom of the first, a wild pitch by Dickey allowed Eduardo Nuñez to score the first run of the night. On the next play, Brandon Crawford grounded out to first to score Brandon Belt and give the Giants an early 2-0 lead.
San Francisco simply never looked back after that, scoring four runs off of three singles by Gorkys Hernández, Nuñez and Crawford respectively in the second, and taking on another run in the third off a Cueto sac fly.
This was the second straight game in which the Giants scored six or more runs, after scoring just six runs combined in their four games before that. Every starting player in the lineup reached base at least once except for Justin Ruggiano and Cueto.
Giants manager Bruce Bochy said after the game that his players did everything they needed to do to find success at the plate against Dickey.
“They knew they had to be patient up there, “Bochy said. “You have to expand the zone sometimes with a knuckleball. Try to not get caught up in all the movement and don’t forgot the swing and I thought they did a good job. Crawford, I think that was his first hit off of Dickey, and it came at a good time with a big base hit. Gorkys (Hernández) had a nice day, couple important hits and made a great catch out there in left field. More than anything they did a good job of being patient and putting the ball in play there early.”
Cueto was especially impressive on the day, matching Ty Blach’s performance on Saturday, and didn’t seemed hampered at all by the hand blister that had been bothering him recently. Cueto gave up just one run off a ground ball in the sixth, while going six innings with six hits and eight strike outs. Cory Gearrin finished off the Braves in the ninth after a ground ball to first by Danny Santana ended the game.
Bochy said that he thought Cueto looked good on the mound, and didn’t notice any issues with Cueto’s hand blister.
“(Cueto) did a nice job,” Bochy said. “Really mixed it up well. His pitch count climbed up the last inning there but good job by him. Could he have gone another inning, sure, but with the lead we had that was enough. But as far as his fingers, they’re fine.”
With the victory, the Giants won their home series against the Braves two games to one. Now they hope to keep their hot bats going into their home series against the NL East-leading Washington Nationals. Matt Moore will face off against Tanner Roark in the first game of that series on Monday at 4 p.m.