Three days ago, the Giants were 6-13. Daily questions about the club’s level of concern amplified by the day. It’s still April, they cautioned. There’s no reason to panic just yet, they reasoned.
The Giants on April 21 were never going to be the same team as the one weeks or months from then. But already, just three games after manager Gabe Kapler said he wasn’t worried about his club’s record, the Giants are looking like a much sturdier club.
On Sunday, San Francisco earned its first back-to-back victories of the season. Then Monday, the Giants are looking like a sturdier club.
Mitch Haniger and Austin Slater returned, and although they didn’t instantly resolve Giants’ struggles against left-handed pitching, they did lengthen SF’s lineup. Alex Cobb lifted them and everyone else with an old-school, efficient complete-game shutout.
Haniger and Slater went a combined 2-for-5 with a walk and RBI. Behind them in the order, J.D. Davis provided the biggest lift with an seventh-inning three-run homer and multiple stellar defensive plays.
Their work made Cobb’s effort stick. His last complete game came in 2018, and his only other complete game shutout happened in 2012 — the veteran’s second MLB season. In the Giants’ third straight win, a 4-0 victory over St. Louis, Cobb’s 109-pitch gem lowered his ERA from 2.79 to 1.91.
“For everything to work, it starts with us, the starters, working deep,” Cobb said postgame. “Whether it’s guys that are going longer or guys that we’re planning on piggybacking. To keep our bullpen fresh, our key guys in they’re fresh, not in May, June, July, but August and September, making a push. We’re going to have to have those guys healthy and ready to go.”
Since joining the Giants, Cobb has been statistically one of the most unlucky pitchers in baseball. The gap between his ERA and FIP last year was an anomalous gulf representative of poor defense behind him and batted-ball hijinks.
Against the Cardinals, Cobb the opposite came true.
“Just ground ball after ground ball,” Giants manager Gabe Kapler said postgame. “One obvious difference from some of the outings that Cobb has had like that in the past, where there’s been some ground balls, is we just made all the plays behind him. That made the biggest difference.”
Kapler noted Davis’ Gold Glove-level defense, David Villar’s increasing comfortability with second base and Thairo Estrada’s athleticism at short.
With the help of SF’s infield, Cobb retired the first 10 batters he faced by flooding the zone with sinkers and splitters. Sixteen of Cobb’s first 22 pitches went for strikes. He kept the ball on the ground, inducing seven groundouts to one flyout.
Two singles and a walk loaded the bases against Cobb in the fifth, but he danced out of the jam. A pair of stellar plays from J.D. Davis, who has played Gold Glove-caliber defense this year, helped Cobb escape.
The Cardinals came into Monday’s context ranked sixth in OPS. Even though Nolan Arenado took the night off, St. Louis’ lineup still featured Paul Goldschmidt and a slew of athletic, dangerous hitters. And Cobb was shutting them down.
To that point, though, the Giants hadn’t given Cobb any run support. They put two runners on base in the first, second and fourth inning but came up empty-handed despite a longer lineup featuring Slater and Haniger.
Through five innings, the Giants left seven on-base. As Carindals starter Jordan Montgomery’s pitch count rose through the 90s and then into the 100s, he only got stronger. Montgomery retired the last eight Giants he faced, including a 1-2-3 sixth inning he started while already at 91 pitches.
Montgomery was matching Cobb, only less efficiently. Cobb needed just seven innings to get through the seventh inning, which put his total pitch count at 76.
The Giants finally gave Cobb runs to play with in the seventh. Haniger drove in the first run of the game — a sacrifice fly — in his fourth at-bat as a Giant. Davis, SF’s leading slugger so far, followed him up with his fifth home run of the season.
Davis, who has consistently ranked among the league’s best in advanced hitting metrics, is putting together an all-around season that has earned him regular time at third base for the first time in years.
After Davis’ three-run shot, Cobb stranded a double in the eighth by striking out three-hitter Nolan Gorman looking.
The Giants didn’t warm up any reliever. Cobb earned the ninth.
“You just feel a boost of confidence that Kap trusts you in that situation, that he wants you to go out and finish it,” Cobb said. “It’s exhausting to be working that deep in the game, especially with the pitch count. So when you get that boost of confidence and adrenaline, knowing you’re going to have to finish two more innings, you have the trust of the team. You’re able to dig a little deeper.”
With the added juice, Cobb retired the Cardinals in order, striking out Tyler O’Neill for the 27th out. It was only his fourth strikeout, but Cobb was pitching to win in his second career shutout.
One game prior, the Giants deployed an entire bullpen’s worth of short relievers. Both Rogers twins, John Brebbia, Scott Alexander and Camilo Doval all worked in SF’s 5-4 win over the Mets. Cobb’s economical pitching giving most of them a night off could have immense value over the course of this series.
It was a third consecutive win that sets up for more.
“It’s just a huge stress relief,” Kapler said of Cobb’s bullpen-saving start. “So you have the win on the field led by Alex today. But then you have the cascading effect of that win. We’ve seen what the other side looks like, when we’re not converting ground balls into outs and we have to use several relievers. This is the opposite of that.”