SAN FRANCISCO — For the last six months, the Giants’ organization has built and executed a marketing campaign around the resilient nature of the 2021 club.
Posters of Giants players next to the word “resilient” hang around the city, “#ResilientSF” hashtags accompany every social media post and manager Gabe Kapler has spent plenty of his postgame press conferences highlighting the resilience the team has shown after potentially crushing losses.
If there’s a better adjective to describe this club, which defeated a weary Mets team 7-5 on Monday at Oracle Park, relentless might be the only one.
Months past the point when they were expected to tumble down the standings and fall back to reality, the Giants haven’t stopped winning behind a relentless offense that finds a way to grind down opposing pitching staffs on a nightly basis.
After chasing Mets starter Rich Hill with five consecutive hits in the fourth inning, the Giants turned to their stars to carry them the rest of the way as Kris Bryant launched a pair of home runs, Brandon Belt came off the bench and hit a pinch-hit blast and Brandon Crawford finished the game with four hits including an RBI triple.
After the Mets scored three runs in the top of the fifth off starter Kevin Gausman, the Giants regained control of the game in the bottom of the inning when Bryant drilled a 2-1 slider off reliever Miguel Castro over the center-field wall. Bryant’s two-run blast marked his second homer in a Giants uniform and his first since his debut game in San Francisco.
Alex Dickerson was the runner who scored on Bryant’s home run as he reached on a double that nearly cleared the brick wall in right field on a fly. Dickerson has struggled at the plate for much of the season, but with his sixth extra-base hit of the month on Monday, the left-handed hitting slugger is now 11-for-31 with an OPS above 1.100 in August.
The Giants tacked on three more insurance runs in the seventh inning when Belt greeted Mets reliever Trevor May by homering on the first pitch he saw. The next batter, Bryant, crushed May’s next pitch halfway up the left field bleachers for his second homer of the game.
Following an Evan Longoria walk, Crawford nearly hit the Giants’ third home run of the inning, but his high fly ball out to right center field caromed off the wall and stayed in the park for an RBI triple.
The extra runs proved important as set-up man Tyler Rogers allowed a two-run homer to Mets shortstop Jonathan Villar, who became the first player to homer off Rogers in 57 career appearances at Oracle Park.
Gausman kept the Mets scoreless through four innings but wasn’t exactly dominant as he never had a 1-2-3 inning and allowed New York to put a runner in scoring position in three of the first four frames. The Mets finally chased Gausman from the game with a three-run fifth inning as Brandon Nimmo singled and Michael Conforto walked before Alonso drilled a two-run triple into the right-center-field gap.
After Dom Smith broke the tie with a sacrifice fly to left field, Gausman induced two hard line outs to get out of the inning.
The right-hander’s 2.40 season ERA suggests Gausman has been one of the best starters in the majors all year, but since the All-Star break, he’s only registered one quality start in six outings. With a 5.27 ERA and inconsistent command of his splitter over the last month, there’s reason to be concerned about Gausman until he shows he can throw his best pitch the way he did during the first half of the year.
Some good pitching news for the Giants? Reliever José Álvarez pitched out of a sixth inning jam and hasn’t allowed a run in 26 of his last 27 appearances while closer Jake McGee picked up his 26th save of the season after back-to-back rough outings last week.
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