Let’s play a game of Mad Libs. Here, you give me an adjective. Any adjective.
Got one? Okay, great. Here was the sentence we can plug it into:
The San Francisco Giants have been [adjective] this season.
If you said “bad,” or “pathetic,” or “dysfunctional,” or “worms for brains-esque,” then I regret to inform you that you’ve failed. The entire point of Mad Libs is to say things that are silly and funny because they’re so nonsensical.
If you said “good,” or “entertaining,” or “a paragon of virtue and functionality,” then wow. You’re funny. You’re like, really funny. Do you do stand up? You should. Have you mentioned in your Hinge profile how funny you are? People will love that.
But a broken clock is right twice a day (assuming it’s not a 24-hour clock), and the sun shines on a dog’s behind as many times as the dog lays out in the sun legs splayed in a way that only dogs can do. And yes, in a 162-game season, the Giants are occasionally good and entertaining and virtuous and functional.
Wednesday was one such day. The Giants beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 5-4 in 10 innings, and they looked the part of a good baseball team. It was far from a flawless game — the bullpen once again blew a lead — but baseball is not a sport for the flawless (which is why I’m so bad at it). Baseball is a sport for doing more things well than you do poorly, and cashing out when that marginally influences the odds in your favor.
And so the Giants won because they starting pitching was good, and the offense did some dandy things, and the defense played well, and when the bullpen coughed up the lead the offense picked it up and then the bullpen succeeded on their second chance.
Really, it was Buster Posey’s Platonic ideal of a baseball game. The pitching was strong. The defense saved them from a second straight walk-off loss. And, for just the second time since 2009, the offense came through with multiple sacrifice bunts and sacrifice flies.
It began with a very encouraging start from Landen Roupp, who is entering the cruise control portion of his season. He’s already surpassed his career high in innings (including in the Minors) by a full 35 frames, so the Giants only let him throw 75 pitches in this one.
But he positively dealt through those 75 pitches, which covered five innings. Roupp didn’t allow a single baserunner in his first pass through the lineup, while striking out four Pirates hitters.
He finally bent in the fourth inning, and, as he’s done so often recently, flirted with disaster. But, as he hasn’t done so often recently, he avoided said disaster. A leadoff single by Spencer Horwitz (which ricocheted off of Roupp) gave way to a one-out single by old friend Bryan Reynolds, which led to a walk issued to Nick Gonzales. Roupp impressively worked an unproductive out from Oneil Cruz for a second out, but immediately turned around and handed an unproductive walk to Esmerlyn Valdez, allowing a run to score.
With that out of his system, Roupp settled in. He got out of that jam, and promptly set down the side in the fifth, ending his night with just four baserunners and one run allowed.
It was enough to put Roupp in line for a win, thanks to the way the Giants have been balancing the star power of Rafael Devers with the scrappy and spirited approach of a bunch of contact-oriented youngsters with jobs to earn and reputations to create.
In the first inning it was said Devers star power, as the Giants slugger once again left the yard with a glorious and glamorous solo home run off of Bubba Chandler, which was his third home run in as many games, and his seventh in the last 13.
And in the fifth inning it was the scrappy youngsters (with an assist from Devers). Shay Whitcomb led off the inning with a double, and swapped places with Christian Koss when Koss hit a ground ball to the left side that Whitcomb broke on, resulting in a rundown that he kept alive long enough for Koss to run 180 feet. After Drew Gilbert walked, Devers slashed a single to load the bases, and Bryce Eldridge brought in the go-ahead run with a sacrifice fly.
But, unlike the Pirates in the inning prior, the Giants weren’t scared off by the presence of two outs. Tony Vitello’s contact-focused cleanup hitter approach paid off, with Turner Hill ripping a ball into right field for an RBI single, and a 3-1 Giants lead.
They gave those runs back, though, as the bullpen did what it does best: not play well.
They flirted with trouble in the sixth, with Reiver Sanmartin allowing runners to reach the corners before giving way to Ryan Walker with two outs, but Walker got the job done.
Walker did not, however, get the job done in the seventh, when he issued a highly uncompetitive walk to open the inning, then a single and a bunt. With runners at second and third and just one out, Walker handed the ball to Vitello who handed the ball to Carson Seymour, who threw the ball to Horwitz, who hit the ball to Koss who threw the ball to Devers, which is a very silly way of saying that the Pirates hit an RBI fielder’s choice to cut the lead in half.
It happened again in the eighth, when Reynolds led off with a double against Seymour, before Cruz brought him home on a single, tying the game.
With the bullpen having once again let down both the offense and the starting pitcher, you could feel an inevitable result incoming. We’ve seen it plenty of times this year, after all.
But no. By the skin of their teeth they took the game to the 10th inning. It began with some good fortune, when Jacob Gonzalez smacked a 1-out, 3-1 hanging sinker from Jason Foley to deep right field, just deep enough to be a walk-off home run in 10 parks … but not the one they were playing in. Instead, it was mercifully a double, and the inning would end three batters later, when a potential Reynolds walk-off single was plucked out of the air by a running and sliding Hill, who smoothly caught a liner that had an expected batting average of .900.
To extras the Giants went, where they booked a date with old friend Camilo Doval, who hasn’t had a great season, and didn’t add to it in this one. The Giants quickly moved the Manfred Man over, courtesy of a bunt by Osleivis Basabe, who had entered the game late (it seems Gilbert may have hurt his foot on a foul ball).
With the go-ahead run 90 feet from home, the Pirates made the choice to intentionally walk Devers. It was a defensible move, given how hot Devers has been, and seeing as how it put an inning-ending force play on the table.
But it sure is nice having multiple sluggers at long last, isn’t it? The lovely thing about avoiding Devers is that teams now have to face Eldridge who, to the delight of his grandmother in the stands, inside-outed a double the other way to give the Giants the lead.
Critically, they would get the insurance run in as well, when the do-everything Hill lifted a ball into the outfield for a sacrifice fly.
From there, all that was left to do was not blow the lead in the 10th inning. And while Dylan Smith gave you a brief scare by promptly allowing a leadoff single — which put the tying run on base — he then settled in and struck out two straight batters, before forcing a game-ending line-out.
It’s only one game, and the season is already lost. So don’t get any funny ideas about that humorous Mad Libs answer actually being serious.
But one game can be fun and one game can be entertaining and one game can feature functional baseball. This was one such game.
It was nice.
