There wasn’t quite as much drama as last year’s 13-2 instant classic, but four lead changes and just three scoreless innings between the Mets and Giants provided plenty of theater.
Joc Pederson didn’t have a Bondsian three-home run performance, the Giants didn’t blow a six-run lead and the Giants didn’t need a Brandon Crawford walk-off, but San Francisco outlasted the Mets nonetheless.
Pederson scored from first on an eighth-inning Mike Yastrzemski double to break a 4-4 tie. Closer Camilo Doval shut the door with his second save of the year with a 1-2-3 inning.
On Sunday Night Baseball, the Giants (8-13) showed a national audience the team that they can be. The 5-4 victory splits the four-game series with the Mets and is the second half of SF’s first back-to-back wins of 2023.
“Hopefully a little momentum,” Sunday’s starter Ross Stripling said postgame.
San Francisco jumped out to an early lead by scoring a run in each of the first two innings.
Pederson, in his first at-bat back from the injured list, roped an RBI single just over a leaping Luis Guillorme at second base. He had fallen behind 0-2 before working the count full.
An inning later, the Giants padded another run onto their lead. Second baseman Thairo Estrada met a slider over the middle and parked it halfway up the left field bleachers.
Estrada’s fourth of the season left his bat at 106.6 mph and traveled 413 feet. Before Sunday’s game, he ranked 16th in Baseball Savant’s sweet spot rate, which measures batted balls with launch angles between eight and 32 degrees. He’s elevating the ball better than he ever has.
Entering Sunday, Estrada had already amassed 0.9 WAR, leading all Giants. The Giants’ first 20-20 season since Hunter Pence is well underway.
But two runs was probably not going to be enough for the Giants with Ross Stripling on the mound.
Stripling, starting in place of Alex Wood (hamstring), came into the game allowing 4.38 home runs per nine innings — most in MLB among pitchers with at least 10 innings.
Stripling, who described his outing as “a step in the right direction,” kept the Mets in the park, but left Taylor Rogers with the bases loaded and no outs in the fourth. Michael Conforto, battling the sun and shadows that 4 p.m. first pitch creates, dropped a routine fly ball in right field for a costly error.
The Mets plated two runs in the situation, both of which got charged to Stripling. New York led 3-2 after the defensive gaffe.
Conforto’s error was SF’s 17th of the year, tied for the MLB lead (although five of those came from pitchers). Improving in the field was the Giants’ main priority this offseason, but it appears to remain an issue.
Yet the Giants offense responded. They knocked two more runs in with a string of three singles and a productive out from Brett Wisely. Their four runs set a season-high for Mets starter Tylor Megill.
That Giants rally became the third lead change in the first four innings. It wouldn’t be the last.
Tyler Rogers replaced his brother and looked unhittable. He made a fool out of Francisco Lindor during a six-pitch inning. Then he struck out back-to-back Mets looking. The submariner was one out away from a 28th consecutive scoreless inning.
But then catcher Francisco Álvarez hacked a slider levitating above his letters for a game-tying home run.
The next, and final, lead change went the Giants’ way. After a rare scoreless inning in the seventh, Pederson drew a walk off Drew Smith. Then he got waved around third on a double to center field by Yastrzemski, sliding into home feet-first.
It wasn’t the most graceful, but with it, the Giants slid away from the Mets with a split.