San Francisco Giants 3 Up, 3 Down: The First Series Win
The San Francisco Giants finally won their first series of 2018, so let’s go through some positives and negatives from the set with the Angels
3 UP
1 – Hot Corners
The Giants’ corner infielders Brandon Belt and Evan Longoria are both heating up in the lineup, and it’s coming at a great time. Belt is getting into one of those stretches where he’s capable of going deep at any moment, and Longoria is erasing memories of a miserable season-opening slump.
Belt sat out game one (happy birthday!), but came back and hit a home run in each of the final two games of the set. He was nearly robbed by Mike Trout on Saturday, but no one was bringing back the 410” blast to right field on Sunday. In addition to two other singles in game three, Belt made major league history with Angels’ pitcher Jaime Barria. Belt saw 21 pitches, the longest at-bat in recorded MLB history, fouling off 16 of those pitches. The Giants’ first baseman has hit a home run in four straight games, and leads the team with five on the year.
Longoria went 1-4 with a double on Friday, then followed with two singles on Saturday. In the series finale, Longoria launched his fourth home run of the season (briefly tying Belt for the team lead before Belt took it back), a two-run blast to give the Giants a 3-0 lead. At the start of this 10-game road trip, Longoria was hitting .132/.154/.289 with a 19 wRC+. As they depart for home, Longoria is hitting .243/.263/.500 with a 110 wRC+.
2 – Here’s Johnny
If you’re going to put a terrible 2017 season behind you, allowing one run over 26 innings in your first four starts of 2018 is a great way to do it. Johnny Cueto continued his torrid start to the year by keeping the Angels off the board in six innings. He struggled with his command a bit, walking two batters and plunking another two in the first five innings, but did a wonderful job of limiting hard contact and getting swings and misses. He took a no-hitter into the sixth inning, which is only his second-longest no-hit bid of 2018 (he took one into the seventh in his season debut).
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Through four starts, Cueto owns a league-low 0.35 ERA and a 0.654 WHIP that ranks third in the MLB. His ERA ranks as the lowest by a Giant through four starts since 1968, when Ray Sadecki posted a 0.25 mark. He also became the seventh Giant since 1958 to allow one or fewer runs in each of his first four starts in a season, and the first since Noah Lowry in 2004.
The biggest difference for Cueto continues to be the changeup. He recorded nine outs with the pitch on Sunday, including six swing-and-miss strikeouts. The last pitch he threw was a changeup, and he induced a groundball double play from Luis Valbuena to end a bases-loaded threat.
3 – A Series Win!
By golly, the Giants actually won a series. It took until the seventh series of the year, but they are finally off the schneid. They split the first three series of the year (a four-game series against the Dodgers, a quick two-gamer with the Mariners, and a rain-shortened set also against the Dodgers), then proceeded to lose the next three. The Giants haven’t been swept yet, though, so there’s that.