San Francisco Giants 3 Up, 3 Down: Back to .500
The San Francisco Giants took three of four from the Los Angeles Dodgers over the weekend, winning their third straight series and bringing them back to the .500 mark.
3 UP
1 – The Debuts
It was a solid weekend to make your debut in San Francisco. In the doubleheader opener on Saturday, Alen Hanson made a big impact in his first at-bat as a Giant, launching a three-run home run over Triple’s Alley. In the nightcap, D.J. Snelten made his major league debut, throwing a perfect 1-2-3 inning in the eighth with a big lead. He went out for a second inning, but couldn’t finish the game. Still, going 1.1 innings and not allowing a run while saving some other arms in the bullpen is a good way to debut.
And of course, the highlight of the weekend was Pablo Sandoval’s debut as a pitcher. He threw a clean ninth inning in a blowout loss, bringing life back to AT&T Park in what could have been a demoralizing loss. That curveball was really something.
2 – Patience with Dyson Paying Off
The Giants were patient with reliever Sam Dyson, and it’s beginning to look like that patience is paying off. They demoted him to lower leverage situations while he sorted out some mechanical issues, and he’s now back to pitching in big spots.
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Dyson pitched in all three victories in the series, earning a win in game one after a scoreless seventh inning. He entered to a big mess on Saturday, but he lived up to his name and cleaned up rather well. With the bases loaded, no one out, and a two-run lead, Dyson would get a double play grounder and a strikeout, allowing just one run to score and keeping the lead.
He had another slight mess on Sunday, inheriting a runner on second that he would let score on a groundball hit through the shift, but did his job and got plenty of groundballs to not allow any more damage. Dyson hasn’t allowed a run of his own in his last seven appearances, giving up just three hits in 6.1 innings over that stretch.
3 – Comeback Kids
The Giants trailed in each of the first three games in the series, but were able to come back and erase the deficit twice. On Friday, they trailed 4-2 heading into the seventh inning, but rallied for four runs of their own to reverse the deficit and, eventually, take a 6-4 win. It was an unlikely hero game, with Gorkys Hernandez and Kelby Tomlinson coming up with run-scoring hits that tied the game before a balk and sacrifice fly added the next two runs.
On Saturday night, the Giants again started at a two-run deficit, but scored three times in the fifth, once in the sixth, and four in the seventh to come away with a comfortable 8-3 win. Another unlikely hero, Austin Jackson, had the big hit in that game. He entered the game with one extra-base hit and three RBI to go with a .208 average against lefties, but cleared the bases with a double in the fifth inning to score three runs and put the Giants ahead.
This is an extremely promising development for a team that had so much trouble scoring runs early in the season. After averaging 2.8 runs per game in the first 18 games of the year, the Giants have scored 4.9 runs per game in the last 10.