San Francisco Giants 3 Up, 3 Down: Happy Flight from New York
The San Francisco Giants dropped two of three to the New York Mets, so here are some positives and some negatives from that series.
The San Francisco Giants dropped two in a row to start the series with the New York Mets, but came back for a tough win on Wednesday to close the set. Here’s three good things and three bad things from that series.
3 UP
1 – Happy Flight
After dropping five games in a row on the trip since leaving Los Angeles, the Giants needed a win in the worst way. They still sit in last place in all of baseball and have a long uphill climb ahead of them to dig their way out of the hole they’re in. Getting a hard-fought win here at least gets them back off their heels for a day, and as Angel Pagan would say, they have a happy flight back to San Francisco.
2 – Got the Monkey Off Their Back
That monkey, the one that climbed all over the Giants’ backs and put fingers in their ears and pulled their hair, was the fact that they couldn’t collect a comeback win in the ninth inning for two years. In fact, Wednesday was the two-year anniversary of their last win when trailing after eight innings. On May 10th, 2015, Mother’s Day, rookie third baseman Matt Duffy became the hero by erasing a 2-1 deficit and delivering a walk-off hit in the ninth against the Miami Marlins.
On Wednesday, it was the new rookie at third base that was hero (though he was playing shortstop at the time). After Hunter Pence tied the game with a seeing-eye single and Buster Posey worked a four-pitch walk to load the bases, it was Christian Arroyo‘s turn to take his hacks against Mets’ closer Jeurys Familia. The second pitch he saw caught too much of the plate, and Arroyo smoked it. The ball left his bat at 109 miles per hour and split the gap in left-center field, clearing the bases and allowing Arroyo to celebrate at second and fans to cheer.
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The win didn’t come easy though, as the Mets scored a pair of their own in the ninth and got the tying run to second base, but it wouldn’t be a Giants’ win without a bit of torture, right?
3 – Posey Power
Buster Posey has been hitting the ball well all season, entering the Mets’ series with a very strong .356 average, but the extra-base power just hadn’t come yet. Despite the gaudy average, his slugging percentage was a rather meager .460 and he had just five extra-base hits in 24 games. That all turned around against the Mets.
Posey homered in each of the three games in the Big Apple, marking the first time since June of 2013 that he had gone large in three consecutive games. He also added a double, nearly doubling his extra-base hit total in a single series. Unfortunately, no one could get on base in front of Posey’s home runs, but beggars can’t be choosers at this point. Posey’s slugging percentage took a big jump, and it stands at .561 as he flies back home.
And since Lowell Cohn surmised that Posey is overrated on May 1st, the Giants’ catcher is hitting .400 with a pair of doubles and four home runs.