Donovan Solano and the SF Giants stay hot in 7-3 win over the Texas Rangers

The SF Giants cruised to another victory on Saturday night behind the hot bat of Donovan Solano.

Don’t look now, but the SF Giants are officially above .500 for the first time in manager Gabe Kapler‘s short tenure in the Bay Area. Victors of three of their last four games, the Giants sit at a healthy 5-4 and have just clinched their first series victory of the season.

The shortened season as always going to provide an opportunity for some of the league’s lesser-talented teams to make more of an impact than usual. Just one look around the league provides proof of that.

The Baltimore Orioles, Detroit Tigers, and Miami Marlins (three games and all) are all above .500 at the moment. Now you can add the Giants to the list of expected cellar-dwelling teams to have more wins than losses at the time of writing.

What’s been most surprising about this recent successful stretch of games for the Giants has been their hot bats. The Giants have now scored seven or more runs in four consecutive home games.

As Grant Brisbee of The Athletic points out, that hasn’t happened since the year 2000. For a Giants team that’s been offensively-challenged for a long time now, it’s a development few saw coming.

The SF Giants’ bats have been led by Mike Yastrzemski and Donovan Solano.

They’ve been led by arguably the MVP of the 2019 team, Mike Yastrzemski, and the little-known utility player who returned to the big leagues last season after a couple of years in the minors, Donovan Solano.

Yastrzemski managed a career-high four walks in Saturday night’s victory, but it was Solano’s three RBI that carried the team to the win.

“Donnie Barrels” stayed hot driving in a pair of runners in the third inning to give the Giants a 4-2 lead at the time — a lead they would never surrender.

Solano is now batting an astonishing .448 on the season with a 1.123 OPS and an MLB-best 13 hits and 13 RBI through eight games. Many assumed that his success last season was a fluke — he’s proving it was exactly the opposite right now.

Elsewhere, the Giants have been given a much more impressive performance from their bullpen than anticipated. Hard-throwing righty Rico Garcia has impressed so far tossing four scoreless innings topping out at 98 mph on his fastball.

Meanwhile, young left-hander Caleb Baragar bounced back after a rough outing against the San Diego Padres freezing slugger Joey Gallo in the fifth inning for what was likely the most important out of the game.

Sure, the Giants aren’t exactly beating the MLB’s best teams right now. But they’re winning. And in a 60-game season, every single win matters.

San Francisco will close out their series with the Rangers later tonight as they look to for the clean sweep.