Brandon Crawford led off the second inning with a ground ball down the first base line. He’d gotten jammed by a Patrick Corbin slider coming into the zone from his hands, but Crawford muscled it into play.
The ball left Crawford’s bat at 85.2 mph and had an expected batting average of .080. But it skipped off the bag and over Washington first baseman Josh Bell’s head for a stand-up double.
The stroke of luck ignited the biggest inning of the Giants’ season so far. By the next time Crawford dug in, the Giants had already hung four on the Nationals in the inning. This time, the shortstop blasted a true double into the left-center gap to score three more and knock Corbin out of the game before he could record six outs.
San Francisco (9-5) jumped all over Corbin on Friday night in Washington D.C. to build an insurmountable seven-run lead. Crawford and Austin Slater each drove in three runs in the massive second-inning, propelling the Giants to a series-opening victory.
The last time the Giants saw Corbin, he was a Cy Young candidate coming off his second All-Star season. Corbin won a World Series since that meeting, but has also posted two seasons with ERAs of 4.66 and 5.82.
The Corbin that took the mound in Washington D.C. didn’t particularly resemble the 2019 version, and it only took the Giants 1.2 innings to send him to the showers.
It started and ended with Crawford’s doubles, but six other Giants reached base between them in the second.
Mike Yastrzemski knocked in Crawford with a single up the middle. He hit .170 against left-handed pitchers last year, but the Giants have remained optimistic that was an anomaly. If he can put together competitive at-bats lefty-on-lefty, the Giants questions about how SF might fare against southpaws would subside a bit.
Slater is one of San Francisco’s answers for left-handed starters. The platoon outfielder hadn’t started a game since April 10, but remained in rhythm enough to crush his first home run of the season. He’d already saved two runs in the first inning with an inning-ending diving catch in left field before driving in three for the Giants with an opposite-field home run.
After Slater’s homer, Wilmer Flores and Darin Ruf singled. Against Corbin, the lefty, SF stacked the top of their order with right-handed bats like Slater, Flores and Ruf. Then Thairo Estrada, another righty, walked to load the bases.
That’s when Crawford bookended the inning with his bases-clearing double, blowing open the game. The inning’s conclusion: seven runs on six hits and two walks. San Francisco has recorded fewer than six hits in four of their previous 13 entire games.
Seven runs was more than enough of a cushion, but the Giants still got an impressive effort out of their relievers anyway. In their first bullpen game of the year, Sam Long and Jakob Junis tag-teamed seven scoreless, five-hit innings. Combined quality start.
It was Long’s fourth scoreless outing of 2022. He spent the winter working on his lower half to both improve his stuff and limit the stress on his back. Friday, his changeup and curveball complemented his fastball that touched 95 mph wonderfully.
Junis, fresh up from Sacramento, used his plus slider 51% of the time in his five innings. The pitch has great movement, with both depth and horizontal bite; Junis earned 10 called strikes and whiffs with it. He made Washington hitters, even veterans, look foolish.
Maikel Franco got Washington on the board with an eighth-inning solo home run off Yunior Marte, but by then the game was well in hand. It had been, really, since the second inning.