San Francisco Giants 3 Up, 3 Down: Get the Brooms Out
The San Francisco Giants put together one of their best series of the season, sweeping the Colorado Rockies in three games. Here’s 3 Up and 3 Down.
3 UP
1 – A Sweep!
It took until the halfway point of the 2017 season, but the Giants earned their first sweep of the season by downing the Rockies in three straight games. They broke a four-game losing streak with an 8-2 win on Monday, during which they played as smooth a game as they had all year. They needed 14 innings on Tuesday, but Denard Span sent everyone home happy with a walk-off single. The 5-3 win on Wednesday sealed the deal.
Even more impressively, the Rockies had beaten the Giants nine straight games entering this series. San Francisco put that behind them, starting their own mini-winning streak. This is only their second streak of three straight wins this season, joining a five-game stretch from May 12th to May 16th. During that stretch, they took the final three games of a four-game set with the Cincinnati Reds, and the first two of a three-gamer with the Los Angeles Dodgers. But they’d never been able to clinch that final win of a potential sweep before this series.
2 – The Bullpen
In order to win all three games, the Giants needed huge contributions from everyone down in the bullpen. They took on a heavy workload, but came through strong. In 13.1 innings against Colorado, the only run the relievers allowed was an inherited runner from Jeff Samardzija, and they struck out 14 batters while allowing only eight hits and a walk.
Maybe the most important contributions came from one of the newest Giants, Sam Dyson. The former Texas Rangers’ closer pitched 2.2 innings of shutout ball in the first two games of the series, and hit as high as 97 on the radar gun with his hard fastball. He gave up a pair of singles and a walk, but was able to work around that by striking out four batters. With another bullpen injury, Dyson’s role on the team is only going to get bigger.
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3 – Jae-gyun Hwang
Jae-gyun Hwang’s journey has been a long one. He was one of the biggest stars in Korea, but gave that, plus a ton of money, up to live out his dream of playing Major League Baseball. With his opt-out date coming in just a few short days, it seemed like that wouldn’t come with the Giants. But a recurrence of Conor Gillaspie‘s back injury opened the door, and he made his big league debut on Wednesday.
He drove in the team’s first run in the fourth inning with a groundout, but saved his biggest hit for the sixth inning. With the scored tied at 3-3, Hwang got a 2-0 fastball down the pipe and he did not miss. He launched a home run well over the left field wall for his first career hit, and he nearly launched his bat as well. Instead, he opted for a nice, easy bat drop on what would be a game-winning home run. He’s a well-liked player and he might just be the shot in the arm that the team has been missing.