PHOENIX — Austin Slater looked completely and totally lost.
Entering Saturday’s game at Chase Field, the San Francisco Giants outfielder was 0-for-his-last-14 with six strikeouts, a handful of lazy groundouts and several uninspiring at-bats that suggested his next consistent stretch of playing time might come for the Triple-A Sacramento River Cats.
Slater didn’t have an extra-base hit in June, so when the right-handed hitter stepped to the plate against Arizona Diamondbacks southpaw Ryan Buchter in the eighth inning on Saturday, it wasn’t a drop-everything-and-watch-this moment.
Until it was.
With a go-ahead, two-run home run that shot through the stratosphere, Slater delivered the game-saving blast the Giants needed to secure a 6-5 victory.
Slater’s 463-foot home run out to left center field marked the longest home run hit by a Giants player this season, besting the previous high of 460 feet set when Slater hit a game-tying home run in the eighth inning at Chase Field in a 5-4 San Francisco win on May 26. The Giants hope the homer marks something that’s potentially far more significant for a club clinging to a narrow 0.5-game lead over the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League West: The return of a productive version of Slater.
A year after Slater posted a 1.127 OPS against left-handed pitchers, the Stanford product has fallen into a deep slump as he went 4-for-36 with 12 strikeouts in June. Slater has never been an above-average performer against righties, but with the ability to play all three outfield positions and the skill to slug the ball against southpaws, he’s long been viewed as an important part of manager Gabe Kapler’s roster.
That Kapler even turned to Slater on Saturday was relatively surprising, considering the outfielder replaced Alex Dickerson in the cleanup spot in the order in the top of the fifth when Arizona turned to lefty Joe Mantiply out of the bullpen. Kapler could have chosen Jaylin Davis or Darin Ruf to be the Giants’ first right-handed hitting outfielder off the bench, but he went with Slater in part because the D’backs still had a handful of lefties poised to enter later in the game and because Slater offered the Giants maximum defensive flexibility.
When first baseman LaMonte Wade Jr. committed a rare defensive miscue with an error in the fifth inning, the Giants capitalized on Slater’s versatility by inserting left-hander Jose Alvarez for righty Zack Littell as part of a double switch that brought Ruf into the game to play first.
With Wade heading from first to left, Slater moved to center to replace Steven Duggar, who left the game knowing he was a logical candidate to be replaced after making one of the last outs in the fifth inning.
The decision to pull Duggar, one of the Giants’ best all-around outfielders, could have haunted Kapler late in the game, but Alvarez bridged the gap to the club’s high-leverage arms with 1 2/3 innings of scoreless ball while Slater delivered the decisive blow in an otherwise sloppy game for the Giants.
Despite making three errors, coughing up an early four-run lead and relying on a player who was hitless over the last week in the game’s biggest spot, Kapler’s club improved to 22 games over .500 and ensured its 0.5-game lead over the Dodgers in the National League West would stand for at least one more day.
