In a disappointing and underwhelming 72-hour stretch this weekend, the Giants lost the grip they’d held on first place in the National League West for more than three weeks and slipped all the way down to third in the division.
A sweep against the Dodgers was clearly a gut punch, but the Giants have proven during the first two months of the season that they’re a tough team to knock to the ground.
With a series-opening 8-0 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks on Tuesday at Chase Field, the 29-19 Giants stood right back up and showed why they still own one of the best records in the major leagues.
Starter Kevin Gausman tossed five shutout innings, Brandon Crawford gave the team an early lead with a bases-clearing double and Evan Longoria enjoyed his best game of the year to snap the club’s longest losing streak of the young season at three games.
Nearly every Giants veteran contributed in a meaningful way to Tuesday’s win, but it wasn’t a great night for all of them. First baseman Brandon Belt has been dealing with left side tightness for more than a week and exited in the ninth inning against Arizona after feeling discomfort following a whiff.
After Gausman exited, three lefties –Jarlín García, José Álvarez and Sam Selman – helped complete the team’s eighth shutout win of the season.
The Giants grinded out long at-bats in the first inning against D’backs starter Corbin Martin, who had already thrown at least four pitches to four different hitters by the time Crawford came to the plate with the bases loaded and two outs. Crawford, who entered play with a career-high .878 OPS, had the best at-bat of the inning against Martin as he worked a 3-2 count and fouled off a pair of two-strike pitches before drilling a double into the right-center-field gap on the 30th pitch of the frame.
The three RBIs Crawford picked up against Martin gave him a team-high 32 for the season and moved him past Jack Clark into 10th place in the club’s San Francisco era history with 596 for his career.
Two innings later, Longoria broke the game open with another two-strike hit against Martin’s fastball as he launched a three-run home run over the left center field wall at Chase Field. Longoria’s 444-foot blast was the third-longest home run hit by a Giants player this season and the longest of the third baseman’s three-plus year tenure in a Giants uniform.
“I’ve been missing a ton of fastballs lately and I don’t know if it’s fatigue, bat path or mechanics, whatever it is, but in that situation right there, I was trying to stay on the fastball,” Longoria said on NBCSBA postgame. “I feel like that’s what I’ve been getting beat with mostly, so I really just wanted to get the ball in the air.”
In the seventh, Longoria added a double that brought catcher Buster Posey home from first base and gave the veteran infielder his third game with at least four RBIs as a member of the Giants. The last one also came at Chase Field, as he had three hits including a home run in a 7-0 victory on Aug. 15, 2019.
“When he’s elevating the ball, particularly to the middle and the right side of the field, it’s when he’s at his best,” Kapler said of Longoria. “When you’re seeing a lot of hard ground balls to the left side, his swing is not where he wants it to be. Today was an indication he worked to get inside the baseball.”
Gausman clearly didn’t have his best command on Tuesday, but he was still able to locate pitches in key situations when he had two strikes and when the D’backs had runners in scoring position.
Arizona hitters went 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position against Gausman, who generated 21 swings and misses, the most he’s had in an outing since he racked up 25 on May 22, 2018, when he was pitching for the Orioles and facing the White Sox.
Gausman’s string of nine consecutive quality starts to open the season came to an end because he only completed five innings, but of the 15 outs he recorded against Arizona, nine came via the strikeout as he now has 76 in 64 2/3 innings this year.
“I think he’s going to tell you he didn’t have his best stuff, that he wasn’t feeling his best, so on a night like that when he goes five scoreless and strikes out nine, that tells you what kind of competitor he is,” Kapler said.
The Giants’ ace is the only member of the rotation slated to pitch twice on the road trip, and after lowering his ERA to 1.53 against Arizona on Tuesday, he’ll face a much tougher test when he matches up with Clayton Kershaw in Los Angeles on Sunday.
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