SAN FRANCISCO_It crushed vice president of baseball operations Brian Sabean to admit the San Francisco Giants have too much ground to make up in 2018, but if the franchise is forced to look ahead to 2019, at least the view is filled with promise.
With rookie Andrew Suarez on the mound and a pair of prospects, Chris Shaw and Aramis Garcia, making their major league debuts, the Giants took down the Mets 7-0 in a fashion the kids grew up dreaming about.
Thanks to seven scoreless innings from Suarez, a go-ahead sacrifice fly from Shaw and a solo home run from Garcia, the next generation of Giants prospects gave the current generation of fans a reason to cheer.
Garcia became the 11th Giants player in the San Francisco era to slam a home run for his first major league hit, joining an impressive list of alumni including Orlando Cepeda, Will Clark and current teammate Brandon Crawford with an eighth inning solo shot to the left field bleachers.
Later in the inning, Garcia added his second career hit as he drove in a run with a two-out single to cap off a six-run rally that put the game out of reach.
As the Giants turned their focus toward next season, they started four rookies in the same lineup for the first time this year. Suarez, Shaw and Garcia were joined by right fielder Austin Slater, who added an RBI single and scored a run as part of a five-run eighth inning rally.
Although Sabean and general manager Bobby Evans spent the 48 hours leading up to Friday's game confronting the inconvenient truth the current club is out of the playoff race, they can at least rest easier knowing next year's help is already on the way.
Over the last three months, the Giants posted some of the worst offensive numbers in the league and remained close to .500 thanks to the work of a pitching staff that owns the best ERA in the majors since June 1. For more than a month, Suarez was driving the ERA up as he suffered through a string of rough starts, but the left-hander has found a second wind as the season winds down.
After surrendering a double on a groundball up the middle to Mets second baseman Jeff McNeil in the top of the first, Suarez didn't allow another baserunner until he hit McNeil with a pitch to lead off the seventh inning.
Suarez retired 17 consecutive Mets hitters from the middle of the first to the end of the sixth and demonstrated some of his best command of the season. Even when a pair of Mets reached with no outs in the seventh, Suarez worked his way out of trouble by inducing a flyout and a 3-6-3 double play to preserve a scoreless tie.
Shaw and Garcia enjoyed the opportunity to support a pitcher who climbed through lower levels of the Giants' organization with them. While Suarez made his major league debut back in April when the Giants rotation was decimated by injuries, he waited to turn in his best performance of the season until the next generation of prospects debuted Friday.
