PHOENIX — Finally, the Giants’ luck started to turn in the fifth inning Wednesday night.
All series, San Francisco batters had consistently made hard contact against Diamondbacks pitchers but had little to show for it — nothing at all, if we’re talking about wins and losses.
But then, Heliot Ramos launched a missile that cleared the wall in the deepest part of the park, and Victor Bericoto followed two batters later with a two-run shot nearly as ferocious.
Ramos’ home run traveled 427 feet and jumped off his bat at 110.4 mph; Bericoto’s blast was a 422-footer with an exit velocity of 102.7 mph.
Statcast defines hard contact as anything above 95 mph, something the Giants did 38 times over the course of the series but only began to see the payoff in a 6-4 win to avoid being swept.
Their bashing had produced only six runs and six extra-base hits in two losses in the first two games, fewer than Arizona on both accounts despite squaring up eight more pitches.
Entering the series, the Giants were among the lightest-hitting teams in the majors by exit velocity, making hard contact on only 37.5% of their balls in play, 23rd out of 30 teams.
This series, that rate jumped to 41.3%, which would rank fourth.
That had resulted in only a .203 team batting average through their first two losses, more than 50 points lower than their expected rate based on the quality of contact.
But in the win, their first over the Diamondbacks in nine games this season, those seeds began to blossom.
Ramos and Bericoto contributed two no-doubters that got the Giants on the board against Zac Gallen, Jung Hoo Lee laced a pair of 95-plus singles that put him on base to score twice and Ramos tripled him home on another 99.3 mph rocket to right field.
For four innings, it looked like a pitcher’s duel was in store between Gallen and the Giants’ starter, Trevor McDonald. But only one side held up their end of the bargain.
The Diamondbacks struggled to make much contact at all in McDonald’s strongest effort at least since mid-May, arguably all season. He struck out five, didn’t issue a walk and limited Arizona to one hit — a 107.6 mph single from Ketel Marte — over six scoreless innings.
The Giants’ gloves seemed to stop working all of a sudden in the bottom of the eighth, almost souring a superb start from McDonald and a barrage of hard contact against Gallen.
Leading 6-0, it was harmless enough when Ryan Walker surrendered a leadoff single to Nolan Arenado, allowed him to reach second on a wild pitch and score on a single from Pavin Smith.
It only really began to get dicey when Christian Koss fumbled, juggled and bobbled a groundball up the middle from Tommy Troy that, if handled correctly, should have been a double play.
Koss was credited with two errors in the inning, but neither occurred on that play. His poor throwing decisions cost the Giants one run and nearly led to another as Arizona pushed four runners across the plate in the inning, cutting San Francisco’s advantage to 6-4.
Bericoto went diving after a double from Ketel Marte that glanced off his glove and into foul territory. When he threw the ball into Koss, the cutoff man, the relay was too hard and too late to Casey Schmitt at third, allowing a second run to score as the ball bounced away.
Koss made another snap decision that went awry after Gabriel Moreno singled to right and thought twice about stretching it into two. Ramos fired the ball to Koss, who thought he had a chance to get Moreno retreating to first. But the ball went into the Giants’ dugout, and Moreno was awarded third base. They only averted further disaster thanks to Dylan Smith, who took over for Walker and got Lourdes Gurriel Jr. to swing at a slider in the dirt for strike three.
What it means
The Giants won’t have any better opportunity to keep up the hard-hitting than what lays ahead: Three games against the Rockies pitching staff at Coors Field in the middle of summer.
As for the result Wednesday night, it prevented the Giants from becoming the first team in MLB to lose their first nine games to one opponent in a season since the Yankees beat the Red Sox nine straight times to begin 2020.
Who’s hot
McDonald had been anything but hot coming into this start. He was 0-6 with a 6.87 ERA the past seven times he took the mound, with the Giants going 1-6 in those games.
But he looked more like the pitcher who was 2-0 with a 2.37 ERA through his first three starts.
Who’s not
The top four spots of the Giants’ lineup combined for only two hits in 18 at-bats, didn’t drive in any of their six runs and contributed only three of their 13 hard pieces of contact.
Two of them came from Bryce Eldridge, who shot a single through the right side at 101.7 mph in his fourth time up, only his sixth hit in his past 43 at-bats since his last home run.
The cold snap has come as Eldridge has seen fewer fastballs and more offspeed pitches, dropping his average (.276) and OPS (.833) down from high-water marks of .324 and .962.
Up next
The Giants have the day off in Denver on Thursday before starting a three-game series against the Rockies on Friday, when Willy Adames (back) is expected to return to the lineup.
