SAN FRANCISCO — Twenty eight years ago, the 1993 San Francisco Giants wrapped up a remarkable 103-win season with feelings of anger, pain and frustration.
The 2021 Giants, who captured their 103rd win of the season with a 6-4 victory over the Diamondbacks on Tuesday at Oracle Park, are doing everything in their power to avoid a similar sense of disappointment.
With their fourth win in a row, 19th of September and 50th at home this season, the Giants (103-54) tied the franchise’s San Francisco-era record for victories by matching the 1962 National League pennant winners and the 1993 club that lost the NL West by one game to the Atlanta Braves.
Tuesday’s defeat of a woeful Arizona Diamondbacks team allowed the Giants to maintain their 2.0-game lead over the Dodgers in the NL West with five games left to play and dropped their magic number to four.
The Giants’ incentive to win the division and avoid a one-game wild card playoff has never been greater as the second-place finisher will meet a St. Louis Cardinals team that clinched a postseason berth with its 17th consecutive win on Tuesday.
Five solid innings from starter Logan Webb and a patient approach from the Giants’ lineup allowed Gabe Kapler’s club to beat a woeful Diamondbacks team that handed San Francisco half of its runs. Set-up man Tyler Rogers allowed two runs in the eighth inning, but rookie Camilo Doval earned his first career save with a scoreless ninth.
The Giants scored four runs in the sixth including one on a bases-loaded walk and another on a wild pitch before a second wild pitch led to an additional insurance run in the seventh. First baseman Wilmer Flores, who entered the game as a pinch-hitter, and shortstop Brandon Crawford delivered RBI singles during the sixth inning rally.
After giving up four runs in a disastrous first inning in his last outing against the Padres, Webb was much improved against Arizona on Tuesday. The 24-year-old battled some command issues, but he made his best pitches with runners in scoring position and completed five innings while allowing only an unearned run.
The Diamondbacks scored their lone run off Webb in the third inning when center fielder Jake McCarthy led off with a single and advanced to third after first baseman LaMonte Wade Jr. dropped a routine pickoff throw. Starting at first base in place of Belt for the first time since Aug. 4, Wade showed rust at the position as the misplay ultimately led to a run on a sacrifice fly.
Arizona’s lineup threatened twice more against Webb, but he induced an inning-ending 6-3 double play with the bases loaded in the fourth inning and then stranded the potential go-ahead runner at third base by retiring the Diamondbacks’ best hitter, Ketel Marte, by getting him to ground out to second base to end the fifth.
Diamondbacks starter Luke Weaver needed just eight pitches to record the first out of the game, but the Giants forced the right-hander to throw more than 40 pitches in a marathon first inning that featured a Buster Posey double and three walks, including one to Mike Yastrzemski with the bases loaded.
Posey doubled into the left center field gap on the ninth pitch of his at-bat before Brandon Crawford, Kris Bryant and Yastrzemski all drew walks to push San Francisco ahead 1-0. The Giants had a chance to add on when Evan Longoria watched a 3-2 offering from Weaver narrowly miss the outside corner of the plate, but home plate umpire Scott Barry called the pitch a strike anyway to end the inning and leave Longoria walking back to the dugout in frustration.
The Giants wound up with a big inning in the sixth and will now spend the next several days trying to surpass the 1904 New York Giants’ franchise record for wins of 106.
It may take at least that many to hold off the Dodgers.
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