San Francisco Giants 3 Up, 3 Down: Split Four with Colorado
After dropping the first two games, the San Francisco Giants finished a four-game series with two straight wins against the Colorado Rockies to keep them at .500 on the season.
1 – Belted
Brandon Belt just keeps hitting. The Giants’ first baseman is having an incredible start to the year, and he didn’t stop during the four-game series against Colorado. On Thursday, he slammed a game-tying home run in the sixth inning against Chad Bettis, and one-upped himself on Sunday. In the seventh inning of a tie game, Belt made the Rockies pay for bringing in a lefty reliever, hitting his 11th home run of the season to break the tie.
Belt leads the Giants in just about every offensive category, and is high on the league leaderboard in a number of categories. He’s in the top-10 in the NL in average, in the top-five in OBP, slugging percentage, and wRC+, and tied for fifth in home runs. He’s certainly become the Giants biggest offensive threat, and is coming through with big hits. He’s a major reason the team has been able to keep its head above water so far.
Belt also came through defensively on Sunday. Starting in left field for just the fifth time this season, Belt came up with his first outfield assist since 2011. In the fourth inning, he and Brandon Crawford connected on a perfect relay to nail Noel Cuevas at the plate, stuffing the Rockies’ rally at two runs.
2 – Surprising Source of Power
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While the combined outfield is still struggling at the plate, Gorkys Hernandez is starting to play his best ball as a Giant. He drove in a run on Thursday with a sacrifice fly, then led off the game on Friday with his third home run of the season. His double in the second inning on Saturday set up a scoring opportunity to give San Francisco their first run of the afternoon.
He continued his hot streak on Sunday. In the fifth inning with the Giants trailing 4-1, Hernandez skied a two-run home run to center field to cut the deficit to one. In the seventh, he led off the inning with a single and later scored when Belt broke the tie with his blast.
Over the four-game set, Hernandez went 5-14 with a pair of home runs to double his home run total prior to the series. On the year, he’s hitting a rather respectable .279/.308/.430, a big turnaround from how he started the 2017 season.
3 – Holding Arenado Down
The Giants didn’t exactly do a great job of keeping Rockies’ slugger Nolan Arenado off the basepaths. He picked up eight hits and two walks in the series, but he didn’t come through with one of those typical Arenado soul-crushing hits that he normally does against the Giants. He only drove in two runs, and he didn’t hit a home run in the series. Surprisingly enough, it’s the fourth straight series that Arenado didn’t homer against the Giants. The last was a walk-off home run to complete a cycle and four-game sweep on June 18th.