Letting Their Guards Down

Sep 12, 2023 | 2023 Season, Latest Post | 0 comments

by
Greek Giant

The Giants won their fourth game in a row last night beating the Cleveland Guardians 5-4 in ten innings. While it was a win, a very entertaining one at that, it was also on the ugly side. The Giants made quite a few errors and mistakes, but so did the Guardians. In fact the winning run in the bottom of the tenth was scored on a LaMonte Wade Jr single into center field with Blake Sabol on third base.

He was on third because the Cleveland pitcher balked him over. If that balk does not take place it’s likely Sabol scores anyway but you never know. Sabol had tied the game earlier in the inning with a clutch hit to center.

Yaz hit a solo homer in the bottom of the first inning on a 95 MPH sizzler on the inside half of the plate about belly high. It was a beautiful moonshot that got the small crowd going.

But in the top of the third inning Josh Naylor, a player who had a great game for the Clevelanders last night, hit a two-run homer off Alex Cobb to give the Midwestern team the lead. One batter earlier Cobb had an issue with his hip and asked to see the trainer and the Manager. After a conference and a few warm-ups Alex stayed in the game and pitched well. In fact he pitched so well that he gave up only those two runs, which were unearned because there was an error before the Naylor homer, which came with two outs.

In the bottom of the third inning The Giants answered with two runs of their own to re-take the lead. Pederson singled to score Thairo Estrada and J. D. Davis hit a hard smash that Naylor made a spectacular play on. He was able to retire Davis but Mitch Haniger scored from third on the fielder’s choice. It’s 3-2 Giants with Cobb cruising now. The Guardians scored a run in the top of the seventh inning on a Kwan single. That made the game 3-3 till the tenth when Cleveland plated a run in the top of the inning.

The Giants countered with two runs of their own and won another crucial game to stay in the Wild Card hunt. The Giants are now 74-70 and 1.5 games behind Arizona for the final Wild Card slot. The Giants are tied with the Marlins and both teams seem to have a tough road ahead in their remaining games. The Giants and Marlins have a game in hand over the DBacks which means it could be a one game deficit with a win in that game.

This was not a perfect game. There were errors by Crawford, Wade and Rogers but the boys hung tough and found a way to win.

The announced crowd of 20,705 was one of the lowest ever at Willie Mays Field.

Farhan, we have a problem. With attendance that low when your team is still in the playoff chase…. The fans are not buying this brand of baseball, pure and simple.

Tonight’s Game

The second game of the series takes place tonight at 6:45 PM. The pitchers are listed as Quantrill against Manaea.